Working out the issues when creating large abstract art | Betty Franks | 60x60 canvas

[Music] hello and welcome this is betty frank's krause with betty krauthart and i am excited to have you guys here today and watch me create this 60 by 60 on canvas i'm using a blick canvas and there it is 20 ounce 1 and 3 8 inch deep all right so getting started here i like to start with mark making and i usually start with a pencil and i've got a pencil in my hand i'm just kind of loosening up and making marks now i've got a variety of different tools that i like to use if you go to the first comment in this video or the notes from this video i'm going to include a link to my favorite art supplies so you'll be able to see the type of art supplies that i'd like to use so again different tools here to make marks and this particular stage of it is really about me just being able to stretch out my arms and loosen up i know that these marks are not going to end up showing up on the final but it's just simply part of my process so the next thing i like to do in my process is i like to use black paint i'm using black straight out of the jar i like to use nova color paints and you can find them online only they don't sell their paints in the stores so they're at nova color paint dot com and again in the notes i'll include a link to them and i've been using their paints for several years now and i really love them i love the quality of them the colors are amazing the um consistency they have just one type of paint and it's kind of a blend between not a heavy body and not a fluid fluid either so somewhere in between it's got some nice um weight to it texture um consistency trying to think of other ways to describe it but um really love their paints so i've been using them for a number of years as i mentioned if you decide to use them what i would recommend is try out their paints by buying the four ounce jars first and that's what i've i've done over the years is every time i want to try a new color i'll buy the four ounce and i'll use that first and see if i like it and then i'll upgrade to buying the pint or the quart and if you decide to use them it would be great if you could put in your comments in checkout that i sent you i'd really appreciate that although they don't have an influencer program i love letting them know that i'm sending folks over to them so this beginning stage again as i mentioned is just loosening up getting down some paint this first layer that i'm going to put down is going to be just a variety of different colors and marks throughout the process and that'll get me going and getting that layer down because i'm all about the layers i'm not going to just put down one layer and be done so this is a layer that parts of it are going to show through at the very end but not a whole lot of it now one of the things that i really like to do so that i don't create mud is i like to work with cool colors first or warm colors on this particular day i decided to go with cool colors so your cool colors being your blues and your greens purples i also throw in yellow with that too yellow seems to work both on the cool side and the warm side and of course when you mix yellow with blue you get a wonderful green and i often like to mix my own greens although i do see that i'm using here a jar of green and that's the let me try to think which green that is it's one of the lighter color greens because i've put down a lot of black i'm kind of working around the black so that i don't pick up too much of that dark color and darken my paint too much and then earlier as i was chatting about paints i was also using a spray bottle to create drips that's just part of my process i love to create drips so i did a little bit of that early on as you noticed i did speed up this video otherwise it would have been several hours long didn't want to do that so if this is too fast for you and you want it slowed down just a little bit more what you can do there's a couple of options so if you are on your computer at home on your laptop there's a round icon gear underneath the video and it's usually on the right side underneath if you click on that you'll see the option to slow down the video and you'll also see the option to turn on captions and the reason i suggest that is because you my voice is going to slow down drastically if you slow down the video so turn on captions and you can read what i'm saying if you are on your phone watching me on your cell phone then if you tap on the screen i think this works for most people i've got an android phone but if i tap on the screen then i'll see some options up here there'll be three little dots in the upper right corner and if you tap on that you'll see the option to slow down the video and then also to turn on captions so again if you want to slow this down you've got a few choices there so what i was doing there earlier a few mo a moment ago was i was scratching into the wet paint and i usually do that maybe with the back of my brush i've also got a metal palette knife that i like to use or i've got a nail that i like to use to scratch into the wet paint and start creating some texture a lot of folks ask me how i get my canvas to stay up on the wall like this and the way i do that is um here in the united states i don't know if it's true for all the countries but we have studs in our walls and the studs are spaced i believe they're 16 inches apart so what i do is i put in long screws into the studs and then i have that screw head sticking out about a half an inch and the reason i put it into the studs is so that it doesn't rip apart the wall if i didn't put into the stud i would easily the the screw would eventually just loosen up because the sheetrock would not be able to hold it up so by putting it in the studs it allows it to be very strong and sturdy so i've got them every 16 inches so that way i can just hang up any size canvas i have actually not any size certainly it has to be less than 16 inches wide so but but that seems to work because on this wall i tend to work on my larger pieces and then the plastic on the wall is four mil plastic so the number four mil mil and it's a thicker plastic and i like to use it on my wall and i also use it as my palette on my table and that's something that i don't change out often at all actually the one in my studio here at home i've had up for more than three years and the one um here ever since i moved into the studio that i'm at where i'm creating right now i've had that same palette so and that's been over a year now so i just peel back the paint when i when it dries so i let several layers pile up and then i just peel it back and and remove it and then i've got a clean surface again it works for me and i really like being able to spread out and have all that extra space to be able to mix my colors as i go so here i've introduced some i think that's cadmium yellow medium which is one of the colors i like to use mixed in i think with a little bit of black creating that little bit of a greenish color too and there i flipped my brush over and scratched into the surface a little bit it's most convenient when you can just flip your brush over and scratch in they're creating a few drips on the side i like to paint all the way around the edges so that if a person decides not to frame these out into a floating frame you've got finished edges where the painting just continues around the sides so i'm always conscious and aware of making sure that i'm painting all the way around and getting getting that completely covered and i usually do one final check towards the very end to make sure that i've got it completely covered really liking that blue green color there is a jar of paint called blue green which is my latest favorite and it looks like it's that color but i added a lot of white to it so it's kind of like a really light turquoise color i really like to just mix colors as i go i think that's part of the fun of creating art is not just the creating it on the canvas but mixing colors and i just find a lot of joy in in creating new colors by mixing several colors together the other great thing about doing that is you're harmonizing colors as you go so it's um the colors are working together and they are um playing nicely together it is one way that i like to describe it so this is uh the next day and as you can see i come in first and i kind of knock down any big chunks of paint that are sticking out a bit too much so i just kind of smooth my hands over it it's part of my process of reconnecting with my artwork and continuing my process and yes i'm kind of moving up and down i've got the music going in my ears lately i've been listening to a lot of music when i'm creating and i did that pretty much throughout this entire process in the past i would normally not listen to music but rather i would listen to podcasts and podcasts really allow me to focus on what i'm doing and not be critical of what i'm doing because i'm busy listening to somebody talking and the concepts that they're talking about so that kind of forces me to listen to them and doesn't allow me to be critical of my work and question my work and and um judge my work i guess so i really like listening to podcasts for that reason but lately i was just kind of in a dancing mood i've been dancing lately before i start painting that's something i didn't capture on this video but um i do like to dance a little bit and loosen up that way too all right so you can see here now i've switched over to warm colors red straight out of the jar is probably one of the only warm colors that i like to not mix because that particular red when you put it with white i just i don't like the way that looks so i tend to just use that one straight out of the jar sometimes i'll add some yellow to it and of course we're going to get more of an orangey color and and that's okay too and i'll probably end up doing that somewhere along the point along the way here as well so we're working on the second second layer here and one thing i want to go back when i started this as i remove some of that dry paint that was sticking out a little bit too much i also started this process again with mark making so again loosening up putting down marks and just kind of enjoying that process now here you can see that i'm starting to think a little bit about composition in terms of larger elements smaller elements so i've put down some larger elements these do not show up at the very end but i'm already starting to think about it in my second layer not not a lot but just starting to introduce it so i have a love for all colors i have a really hard time just working with a limited palette and one thing that i especially love is when i switch from warm to cool or cool to warm i love those previous layers peeking through a little bit and i can see them here i love seeing those blues and greens peek through now this color i've got in my hand is actually a neon uh color no a fluorescent color so i've kind of mixed it in with i think the orange that i was creating and that in the very center you can really see how it stands out i've got a couple of jars of different fluorescent colors i don't like to use them by themselves i think they're just a little bit too much for my taste but when i mix them in i think it adds a little bit of a punch of color so again here i'm adding some larger elements and those actually do show up at the very end those those three orange ones there's there that i just added again kind of making some marks with the back of my brush so i've been creating in this particular style for just over two years probably about two and a half years now and it's been wonderful it's been prior to that i was trying all kinds of different styles trying things that trying to figure out what i like and what i don't like and that just took several years for me to do it was in 2015 that i decided i wanted to be an abstract painter it was august of 2015. so from that moment forward i was trying to do abstract art and when i say trying it's because i was really struggling with it it was difficult for me it was hard to grasp grasp the the concept of doing something in an abstract way and before that actually i was never a true painter or artist i was it was just a few years before that that i started creating mixed-media art and that's where my love for layering started was um just like six years ago so it's been quite the journey for me but abstract art you know after i turned 50 i just fell in love with abstract art and i wanted to do it for do it myself i wanted to create abstract and that's where i decided to just start focusing on doing abstract work and that meant i got rid of all of my mixed media products i had like well over 20 25 boxes of um of mixed media art that i just needed to get rid of and just so that i could focus on doing abstract work so those were two 36 by 36 pieces that i was also working on so here we are back to the larger one again a 60 by 60 and i'm starting with mark making once again because my canvas is dry and this isn't my final layer so i like having those marks showing through at the very end because the ones that i did at the very beginning very few of those right now are showing through so i'm adding just another layer of marks especially that white that i'm using right there you can see those now and you can definitely see those showing up in the in the final layers so going back to you know finding my style it was um it was a matter of doing all kinds of stuff to try to figure out what i loved and what i didn't love and this particular style kind of snuck up on me in a sense i'm i didn't realize that that i was developing this style until maybe six months into working this way when i finally said wow this is my style because this is what was kind of flowing out of me most naturally i wasn't struggling with it each painting i was doing was flowing fairly well and i say fairly well because you know i still struggled with composition i was still making sure that my colors were looking good that i was creating harmony with my colors i was creating values in my painting so still working on all of that but i i wasn't like really forcing it i guess is what i want to say is it was flowing out of me without being forced i love that color that i've got at the very top there i just love turquoise or a really light blue color those are like happy colors for me so again back of my brush making marks into that wet paint so we went with the cool colors as my first layer second layer being the warm colors and now i've switched back to cool colors again and at this point you know it's it's i'm not seeing the end yet i'm nowhere near seeing what the end result is going to look like but i'm certainly enjoying the process and you know it's truly a journey each one of these paintings is a journey and i just need to trust that i'm going in the right direction and i need to just keep moving forward and honestly some days i look at it and i'm i'm not 100 sure where to go but if there's one thing that i remember to do when i get to that point is to stop and just look at an area that needs work and work on that and then look stand back and you'll find that i'm often standing back a bit because it's so large i have to stand back but i'm looking at you know what's the next area that i can be tackling so here i went down into the bottom left corner because i can see that that's an area that i haven't come back through so i'm just going one area at a time but i'm not trying to like work a corner from start to end i am just simply moving from one area to the next here i'm offloading my brush i like to offload it to just leave some interesting marks behind so when i look at this now at this stage we're about maybe halfway through and i can see that there's a few marks in there that definitely show up at the very end but a lot of them still there's still a lot of marks to come like this large green that i just added again thinking about composition thinking large small medium size those marks that i just did the green ones at the bottom there i consider those more of a medium size mark and then here i'm filling in in between the marks that i made so deciding what do i want to save what do i want to cover up and with this process you might get to a point where you just absolutely love something but it's not going to work with the rest of it and you've got to let it go and take a picture and move forward by covering it up so that you can continue to bring the painting to a finish and that'll happen to me there there are parts that i just immediately will cover up because i as much as i love it it's just not working with another area the brushes that i use are fairly inexpensive brushes i often get them at michael's which is a craft store near me and i usually will spend sometimes i'll buy the the pack of whatever is it like eight of them in there for like 10 bucks excuse me or if they have a sale on the individual brushes i'll spend probably somewhere around eight to ten dollars on a brush so um i don't go for the really expensive brushes because i know that i really beat them up and so i don't want to spend my money on something that i know that i'm just gonna immediately destroy so i tend to go with the cheaper ones and switch them out when they when there's no bristles left so here i'm thinking values too i've got some lighter colors that that i brought in i've got see some of the black is still showing through i've switched to a finer brush here so i try to switch out my brushes so that i get a variety of different size marks so there i'm kind of circling some of the earlier marks that i made so if you're just watching me for the first time my inspiration comes from fields of flowers and flowers in general i love flowers and i just love the colors of nature there's um the mark making that i do has a lot to do with the lines in nature so the lines of the stem of a flower the leaves the um another example is fence lines i love old fence lines especially ones that are falling down uh so some of your some of the marks that you may see me do will be kind of like they're like their lines up and down but then they kind of start to fall to the side so that shows my love of fence lines i also like stepping stones so sometimes i will put in images or larger marks that would represent stepping stones here i am dancing around again listening to i usually listen to oh let's see i like 80s music yes i'm an 80s girl um i'll listen to 90s music i like danceable um kind of fun music is what i've been into lately other times i like slower music and yeah it just depends i'm sure all of you go through stages as well so here just continue to fill in i've got some neutral color going on here added a little more white to it there and scratching in making circles so going back to my mark making so definitely circles representing flowers or even the sun i love the sun i love sunshine i love heat and you can tell i'm wearing a tank top it is uh let's see late september when i'm when i created this and uh we've had some really hot days like up in the 90s upper 90s over 100 there was a several days that were really hot so that's my kind of weather so just filling in more areas that are from the first layers and just adding to that all right so here we are another day i worked on those two pieces some more action actually i think those were done now and let's bring back in the 60 by 60. all right again wiping it down checking to see if there's any gobs of paint that are sticking out a bit too much and reconnecting with the canvas as well so at this point i'm really trying to think about what direction am i going to bring this home uh there i was cleaning out my water because i was working on those smaller canvases so at this stage i think it looks pretty cool at this stage but it's to me it's not done it's um a little too raw a little too unfinished and you probably can't quite see that from this distance but if you came up closer you'd definitely be able to to notice it on this particular canvas i wanted to stay loose and relaxed because on my smaller pieces i tend to tighten up quite a bit and be more oh what's the word for it um more intentional about all of my mark making where it doesn't feel quite as loose and free and that was my intention on this this the 60 by 60 and i'll tell you right now that's not what happened in the end but i do love how it finished it's just uh it didn't go quite the direction that i was thinking it would all right there i am i have to get down on my knees to get the very bottom of that canvas because it's down pretty low so i was very happy with the way it ended up um but the whole thought of oh staying loose and free kind of went out the window as i came to the finish line so that happens and and that's okay i'll have other opportunities to try again so at this stage i was really struggling with how to bring this together but i moved forward anyway trying to just add more paint and like i always say if you don't like a color that you put down let it dry or spray it down wipe it off right away or let it dry and paint right over it so that's what happens with a lot of my paintings is i'll continue to put down paint until i'm pleased with the color and the the shapes that i'm using i think one of the challenges that i've had over the years is taking what i do on smaller pieces of um paper which is what i really like to work on like a five by seven or a nine by twelve and taking that design elements that that i use in the smaller pieces onto a large substrate such as a canvas of this size and the reason i say i'm really pleased with the way this one turned out is because i really felt like i was able to do that with this one i was able to take what i would normally do on a smaller scale and supersize it to the scale so here i'm bringing in a lot of white because i'm thinking about values so i want to bring in a lot a lot more light nests or a light area and then to balance that white i've got adding some white towards that bottom right side and again do a lot of scratching into that wet paint it's something you really can't see from a distance like this but my paintings what i like to do is i'd like to be able to create a composition that's going to draw you in so that you walk up to it and you then you start seeing all of the smaller markings that i have on there so again trying to introduce some kind of larger elements but those are really competing with those orange ones in terms of size so they don't end up staying for too long now i'm bringing back in those darker areas i think i'm doing that with i want to say i don't think it's pure black i think i was using a dark blue color yes it is the dark blue i can see it now and there i removed one of them because i didn't like where it was located so that's an example of you know if you don't like it spray it down right away so the best way to really see values is when you've got a really light area like i have in that upper left-hand corner and then introducing something dark right next to it and the same at the bottom right i've got some really dark areas underneath the white so i'm a person that doesn't create every day i have a hard time creating every single day and with this particular piece i think i was i was working on it maybe every other day or or thereabouts i think there was actually like three or four day gap in there somewhere too i just find that i do much better if i kind of have like pent up creativity that needs to come out of me i feel like those sessions after i wait a few days are are much more productive for me than getting into the studio every single day and kind of forcing myself to to create now i know some people say you should create every day and the thing about being an artist is you don't have to or you don't have to listen to all those shoulds uh you need to figure out what works best for you and i say that from experience because i would listen to what everybody else was saying and i was there was a period of time where i i did a 30 day challenge which i absolutely hated at the end of it and the funny thing is is that the instructor the artist that was doing the 30-day challenge was encouraging us to do it at the end she said i don't do 30-day challenges i don't paint every day it doesn't work for me and that was kind of my my moment of i don't have to listen to what everybody else says i should be doing or what an artist should do i need to listen to what i think is best for me so i i don't even do challenges anymore i don't like challenges i don't have an issue with getting creative and i don't feel the need that i need to do a challenge in order to get creative so excuse me if i ever do a challenge it would probably be very rare and i probably wouldn't last very long at all so listen to to what you believe you need to do but with that said try everything just like painting try every style try if you're trying to figure out what you like and what you don't like try everything try different products try different techniques try different processes try different colors and then you're going to be able to figure out what you like and what you don't like and i think more importantly figuring out what you don't like is is key and you're not going to be able to do that unless you give everything a try so here i'm kind of thinking i'm headed in some kind of direction and adding more elements in there looking at more of my mark making here tapping my foot trying to figure out where to go next what to do next and again looking at this at this stage you know i can almost say well this ain't too bad but it just wasn't speaking to me yet it just wasn't what i wanted i didn't feel like it was coming together and it took some doing to to pull it all together so here i tend to stand back more and and look at it more trying to figure out where to go next i just put down some circles and sometimes i don't like the circles to be really bold so i'll soften them out with a with a rag is what i was using just to soften it out a bit oh someone is at my door if i remember correctly that's why i stepped stepped off to the side for a moment there's other fellow artists in the building where i'm at so we tend to stop by and visit each other so i've switched to a smaller brush got the other larger brush still in hand and at this point i'm kind of going between warm colors and cool colors as i come towards the end all right so i'm trying to figure out what to do with that middle area there that let's see that okra color i want to say that what other color would i call that it's not yellow um mustard mustardy color i'm not happy with that whole field of that mustard color so i'm trying to figure out how to you know what to do in that area i started adding some marks to that area maybe kind of pushing it towards the back all right i think this is a song i really like what do you think do you guys dance when you're when you're painting hopefully i'm not the only one that does this i've just been in such a dancing mood lately barefoot and dancing i've got a rug down below okay so at this stage i'm done for the day and really i think i took about three days off because i was not happy with where i was at and i really had to think about it so i spent several days thinking about it and i kind of came up with an idea so i wanted a darker area down that corner and i'm not used to the camera being there but i wanted you guys to see it more straight on so i moved my camera all right so i've got black in there and then i kind of wiped it down i got a bunch of drips out of that so i'm struggling with this bottom area that's just one of the areas that i'm struggling with hitting it with my hair dryer so that i can move on trying another color there but still letting some of that black show through all right so i'm liking that i think just that whole area there was too plain meaning there was just um these fields of color and not really a whole lot of interest happening so i was trying to figure out how to make it more interesting so that it connects better with the rest of the painting so taking that same color moving it to another area of the canvas and softening it out a little bit all right actually i ended up spraying it but it dried pretty quickly because it's still really hot in san jose california where i'm at and so what happened was i sprayed it down and the edges dried so they kind of look like circles all right so here's my inspiration that bottom corner there i kind of like that dark color so again went home thought about this some more that last session was a very short session because i was kind of feeling frustrated with it so now i've got this smaller piece that i created this is what i was talking about that's a 5x7 that i recently created and i really liked the colors that i had used now do i end up using those colors on this painting not exactly but inspiration comes from everywhere for me so it could be a previous piece that i created and there might be just something about that that's going to help push me through on this larger piece okay at this point i've discovered that my spray bottle that i've had for years it's completely covered in paint is no longer working it's very sad moment for me i need to buy a new one but luckily i've got a backup little small bottle not as effective but i had to fill it up with water and it's one of those little travel size spray bottles okay so now i'm going to be really bold and don't like that okra color in the middle that mustard yellow oh and here's my here's another artist al look what he gave me so superwoman he says that um that it reminds him of me so he gave me his little superwoman which was so funny he's a really nice guy great artist he's been teaching art for 35 years recently retired from that and is just creating art all right so back to um decide to do something bold cover up what i didn't like and introduce more the values the dark values so that's pretty bold and dark right well i don't end up leaving it like that but it was a move in the right direction i'm letting that dark area dry before i actually tackle it again tackle it several more times so at this point i'm also thinking i need to pull this together in terms of colors i've got probably way too many colors going on and how am i going to bring it together so that it's a bit more cohesive so i'm back to using cool colors and down on my knees making sure i get that bottom nicely covered so that blue up there is a little too close to that blue that's right in the center i think i might go back and either lighten or darken it at some point and this color here is a bit more of a neutral color kind of a grayish color with a little bit of color added to it from one of whatever was on my paint brush one thing that i really like to do that i've continued to do over the years is take workshops preferably in-person workshops but as i'm recording this in the age of kovid we know that in-person workshops are not happening this year and i had to cancel all of my in-person teaching this year as well so i switched to doing online teaching which has been going great i've really enjoyed it i've done several live what i call paint with betty sessions where i've got folks painting along with me and i'm answering questions for them as i go and we spent a couple hours together doing that and it's been wonderful and i also record it so that they've got unlimited access to the recording and then my last session that i did in the end of june we're now at the beginning of october or yeah beginning of october i have available as a recording for purchase i've got i've had a lot of people asking for that recording so it's been great and um and i'm available to answer questions via email for them after they watch it or while they're watching it so it's been a great way to be able to connect with folks and to paint with them during the age of kovid so here what i've done is i've put a lot of paint on those lines and then i take paper and just remove some of that paint and then i just move it to another part of the canvas and that's just a way to lighten up the marks that i made and then also add some interest somewhere else on the canvas all right so here's my attempt number two for this section trying to figure out what to do because it's way too dark although i wanted the darker value but it's not quite working so again just trying different things oh going back to workshops so i love to take in-person workshops myself i took a couple of them last year i like to do at least one a year so last year i actually did two of them because they were not too far from me there was like a two-hour drive and they were four-day workshops which were fabulous i absolutely love those kinds of workshops and then this year i really wanted to take one but it's not going to happen i like doing i've done online workshops but i much much much prefer in person i just love that um the ability to just be there and be with other people and to be learning in person and the the energy in the room i think is really exciting and and just pushes me to um you know to to try new things and and to create a little bit differently all right so covering up that dark area with large marks this time kind of neutral marks something to think about that's it's actually a no but i'll get to that eventually but it is already looking a little bit better so i encourage you to take workshops that's one way to to learn or expand your learning and to try new things and you know if you can't do in person of course the next best thing in my opinion is is an online workshop or a live workshop where you can interact um and just continue your your journey and your growth and your ability to expand and take what you already know and add to that so never stop learning so here i'm back to making some smaller marks balancing that with the larger marks and i'm lightening up some of those dark areas but still leaving a little bit of that really dark color showing through around the edges nope there can't figure out what to do next so this is where i say you know those early stages are so freeing and fun because you're not thinking about composition you're being loose and relaxed and just putting down color and this when you get towards the end is where you start doing a lot more thinking and figuring out and and really it's about solving problems i always look at it as how do i solve this problem there there's an issue here and what can i do to solve it to pull it together and just by covering up that dark area although i needed the dark area because it's still showing through a little bit but it was too much so so coming back in and making marks on top of that was the better solution than just coming in and painting over the the entire area with a different color if that makes sense so instead of having that big field of color like i had with the okra color now i've come in and i've i broke it up a lot more and i'm adding more interesting marks in here instead of just a field of color when i put marks down like that those white ones that i just did those represent my love for a grouping of flowers so sometimes they're they're grouply they're they're in a group together and then sometimes they they scatter away so sometimes like towards the bottom there you can see they're a little for those few marks are a little further away than than the rest of them and that's just representing how i love seeing flowers like that a grouping of them and then a few seeds you know went a little further out so right there i was just putting another color over the marks that i had previously done i think those circles probably have like three or four different lines of color around them and up close it's a lot more interesting because you can see a little bit of those previous circles that i put down so when i do that it doesn't necessarily mean i didn't like the original lines i think it just adds more interest when i continue to put line over line over line again my love for layering and depth and seeing you know having things go to go towards the back and some are coming forward towards me all right so now it's coming together a lot more i feel like it's a bit more cohesive there's still a little bit of work to be done but um i've kind of decided that it's a lot closer all right so another day we're back i'm trying to what am i doing oh i'm showing you guys my studio here okay i was picking up the whole camera tripod and all all right so here's my workspace so you can kind of get a up close personal view of it look at all those layers of paint there eventually they'll get peeled off there's my rack of different supplies on the wall that's an older piece a couple of years ago that i made love that one uh that's a 20 by 60 next to it there's some pieces on the floor that were created on paper actually from a workshop that i did those are the two 36 by 36 pieces that just need a final mark making layer which i absolutely love those and then up on that wall i think that's a 20 by 20. there's my door there and we're back to the painting wall all right so now here we go all right so what i did the night before is i pulled up the image on my phone and just using whatever program i had on my phone nothing fancy it's just my editor is i went in and i made some lines and i darkened some areas because i was trying to figure out how to balance this piece and i felt those big orange circles or lines um were kind of floating there and they didn't feel very grounded so by doing this on my phone i was able to figure out what areas i wanted to tackle so i came in the next morning the next day and um was really excited about feeling like i was going to be able to finish this painting because i had some ideas for it okay so starting with kind of putting some darker colors around those large orange pieces i felt like that was balancing the dark that i had over on the right side and again i felt like it was really grounding those pieces and i'm just doing i'm using a really small brush and i'm kind of using a dry brush technique because i didn't want to glob it on there like you can see on my phone i don't like the way it looks on my phone it's too dark and i just wanted a lighter area it was a little hard to do on my phone with the with just the photo editing tool so here just going over a little bit more and i think i smudge it out a bit too just to soften it out a little bit okay so then we're looking at let's see okay that green in that upper area so that white that we look at is just too big of a field of white compared to everything else so i decided i'm going to bring in a green and the green is um and i'm going to show you because i'm going to put a little green next to it once i finally figure out how to make that green and that's part of the problem with mixing colors as i go i certainly don't write down what i'm mixing and i i have paint on my brush that i dip into the next color so there's no way to to really recreate those colors but i came pretty close to recreating i took a little while a little thinking i needed the phthalo turquoise in there and some i think yellow just a touch of yellow and definitely white there we go all right so see right there that's the color i wanted so i came really close to it surprisingly and decided to add some of that i still leave some of that white but i wanted to kind of make it more cohesive with the other fields of color that i had and that one was just way too big if that makes sense and i'm going to pull that one down just a little bit so that it's not exactly lined up with the with the other colors so i came down just a bit more all right so that takes care of that and now i'm going to focus in on that white area that's in the lower um lower right so i gave the okay there but i think i wanted to show you guys i think i'm coming back there we go coming back okay so if i zoom in so here can you see the flower i added there that's what i want to do and the dots i don't know if you can see those dots they're kind of a bit subtle so i'm going to be adding a flower and some dots so one of the other things that i love to do is i love to doodle and i've been doodling for many many years i've got pieces of paper if i'm talking on the phone i am doodling flowers and so i decided to incorporate some of those onto this particular painting so first i'm going to start with doing those circles and as you can see my circles are not subtle here whatsoever i went a little too dark but that's okay i finished that up go around the corner there all right so i'm looking at it going nope too dark add some white lighten it up and i'm going right over i know it's wet but i'm not using a lot of paint so and i've got a fan blowing so it's drying pretty quickly all right so it's a little bit lighter but i decided still not light enough so needed to lighten it even more and i think this is the final layer of paint that i put on it because i thought it was light enough and i like that a little bit i didn't cover it entirely i let a little bit of the previous layers show through and that upper corner is dry so i just tested that and now i'm going to i think at this point i'm going to grab my pencils so yes i'm closing up all of my jars of paint because i'm feeling like i'm done with that so if you get stuck think about doing some drawings on your phone onto your painting to figure out where to go next so of course you can't see these marks that i'm making and i end up darkening the one up in the upper corner because i wanted it to show a bit more but i wanted these to be subtle so at this stage this is my final mark making and i'm moving the camera so you can see a little bit better but it's really hard to see you'll see them at the very end here i've got photos in addition to a video showing you the mark making it would be nice to have an assistant that can just follow me to where i'm making my marks but um i don't have one it's just me so there i'm using a i think that was a prismacolor pencil i was just circling some of the the circles that i did with paint and then over in this corner i decided i just needed a little bit of white right there so i believe i used a china marker a white china marker for that i think that's the china marker that i'm using there adding a little bit of white again the nice thing about the china marker and and some in the crayon like the um prisma excuse me not the prismacolor pencils those are not water-soluble so they don't really move around but the neocolor 2 crayons i like using those and then just kind of smudging them a bit kind of gives it more of a painterly look so this final mark making is really about detail and it really doesn't change the overall composition very much at all it's more of something that you're going to see when you're up close to it as opposed to standing further back all right so the flower that i put there i just smudged it a bit so that i can see it a little bit better and then i'm looking at that one in the top corner now i'm using a graphite pencil or crayon actually it's it's a thicker one and i wanted that to show a little bit more but not too much and then i didn't like that particular leaf so i erased it and redrew it and now i'm smudging it with my finger and outlining it a little bit more so i wanted it to show a little bit more but not so much so i come back in with my eraser and say ah that's a little too much there we go i wanted to be very subtle didn't want your eye to go there first all right so again kind of slowing down here trying to figure out where else can i make some interesting marks oh what i'm doing here actually you'll see it in the in the final pictures is i'm drawing flowers again i'm drawing a row of flowers that are smaller again with a pencil and then here i'm drawing some leaves i think there's like three leaves that i put in there very subtle from way back here but you'll see when you get up close and i want to do some circles so i'm trying to figure out where can i do some circles like i don't have enough circles right let's add a few more and i am okay so i'm using a pencil i'm kind of doing like three circles um one inside the other just to add something a little bit different and interesting and i erased that back a little bit because i thought it was sticking out it was a little too noticeable so i'm thinking i'm pretty close to the end here sharpening another i'm sharpening my pencil i think all right so i'm pulling you back so that i can take the canvas down and sign it so i like to sign in pencil because sometimes i mess that up and i like to just erase it and redo it so calling it done i am super happy with it and like i said it's not loose like my last 60 by 60 but i love that i was able to get all of these marks on here and create a piece that is similar to my smaller pieces so here you can definitely now see the mark making the layers layers peeking through i'm going to zoom in a little bit where you can see some of the marks that i made i think i'm going to point some out there we go so and i don't make those circles perfect because i don't want to make i don't want to do a perfect outline it's more interesting when it's not perfect in my opinion those are the circles that i was doing that i erased back a bit and then there were those are the leaves that i added again very subtle some marks there with a prismacolor pencil in orange and those circles up there was and those lines there is going into the wet paint and there's the dots and you can see a little bit of those darker colors and the flower i added on top now on my phone i had more of a whitish flower but i decided to go with the pencil markings instead you can see drips there i love the drips something that you can't control and it's just interesting and those are the flowers there that i added so four of them in a row more like petals i guess and there's the corner there with the drips with the from the dark paint and there we have it very very pleased with it super happy and excited that it is done that i can call it done here you can see just how happy i am that this piece is now called done all right so here it is in its entirety and i'm going to show you some close-up pictures in the meantime thank you again for watching i so appreciate it if you like what you saw please give me a thumbs up that gets the news out to other folks that my video is here and also lets me know to create more like it subscribe to my channel by clicking on the bell below and then you'll be notified of my new videos check out the show notes for all the useful links i talked about and then also please leave me a comment below let me know if you picked up any good tips that you're going to try out or just ask me a question i'm almost always happy to answer thank you so much again and hope you have a fabulously creative day you

Channel: Betty Franks Art

Views: 88,107

Rating: 4.9110522 out of 5

Keywords: abstract art, flowers, acrylic painting, process video, art, intuitive, canvas, painting, mark making, mixed media, step by step, betty krause art, betty franks art, art2life, nicholas wilton, jane davies, expressionism, nancy hillis, donna downey

Id: CN8PJSPq61c

Length: 69min 10sec (4150 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020