001[Music] hi everyone i'm alicia anglin and welcome to my master class today we're here at madison center for the arts first a little bit about myself i'm originally from long island new york i moved out here to phoenix about 12 years ago and i've been here ever since i'm inspired by jackson pollock and pablo picasso which are two famous abstract artists and they have art all over the world including many museums in new york and paris we're going to actually be painting in the style of jackson pollock today which is action and drip painting or guest oral painting which basically means we're going to be moving around the canvas and a lot of arm movement and shoulder movement so we're going to have a lot of fun today so i want to go ahead and
002explain what abstract looks like and kind of show you some examples here so over here we have mercurial which means sudden change of mind or mood and as you could see it's got a couple of different colors here we have some red and brown black and also some yellow and green and there's a lot of action painting on here a lot of movement and a lot of definitely a lot of dripping as well this actually was one of my paintings i just did recently probably about a month ago and uh yeah so that's and that's on a 30 by 40 inch canvas which is what i'm going to be working on today and then over here i have my very first professional painting with my with my art career here and this is motley eye
003this is my first motley eye of the series there are six in the series and this is this is abstract as well and you can see a little bit of paint splashing on here and that's a little bit of jackson pollock style on there as well very abstract as you can see there are different colors blending in with the other colors a lot of different movement and brush strokes so that's definitely it's definitely a cool painting there and i did this one about 10 years ago so first before we get started i want to let everyone know you'll want to have the right surface to put your canvas on make sure that it's covered with either a drop cloth or a newspaper or paper bag something that's going to cover you can even put it
004on the floor as well so it's up to you jackson pollock actually used to paint most of his abstracts on the floor so we're going to go ahead and use the table today this is just a little bit easier for me for the master class so you guys can see everything and and i want to go ahead and talk about the types of canvas so we have the 16 by 20 canvas which is the size that you guys should have at home that should be the size roughly what you're using and then i have my 30 by 40 inch canvas here and this is a gallery wrap canvas this is for professionals it's a little bit thicker and it's definitely heavier but it's it'll we're all going to do the same thing on it it's
005just the surface that i'm going to be using i'd like to go into the tools that we're going to be using today you should have a brush a small paintbrush a regular paint brush that small like that maybe a shorter handle i'm not sure but something along those lines and then i have multiple brushes i wanted to show you my collection today i have many brushes here so we have all different shapes and sizes and that's to do different strokes on the canvas these are all acrylic brushes very good to use when when painting this way as well or doing something along the lines of motley eye this would be what we would want to use for a motley eye type of painting but today we're just going to be using this one paint brush
006because we're going to actually be making the paint more thinner that way it sprays and drips right onto the canvas i also wanted to show you what painting knives are in case you ever want to add to your collection to your paintbrush we have different sized painting knives here which are size one through five and as you can see they're definitely really cool to use and i'll show you actually a little tutorial in a little bit on how to use those for the future and then we have something funny here something you probably have in your kitchen right now it's a turkey baster and this is something that jackson pollock actually used when he would action paint sometimes he would use a turkey baster back in the 50s and 60s and this was definitely something
007really cool that that we that i use sometimes and then i just have some regular household brushes i actually got these from the dollar store really long time ago but they work just as good as other brushes if you want those bigger strokes so definitely something that's also really cool and these are between one and three inches as well i also have a sponge looks like a like a little loofah sponge this is good for texturing so if you're making a painting that you want to add some texture or some more thicker paint that would look really cool with it kind of makes some holes in the paint it looks really it's pretty awesome to use this as well so that's that's really fun so moving on to our paint so a lot of artists
008we use different paints as an abstract artist i like to use acrylic paints which are somewhat water-based and these are the vibrant colors that we're going to be using today there are other other types of paints oil paints and watercolors oil paints are usually used for more of a portrait type of painting maybe of a face or something a little more detailed and within the lines but for abstract i like to use acrylic paint so i'm going to go ahead and use these we do have a lot of different colors here i know you guys only have maybe about four colors but you can always add to your collection so i have kind of the colors of the rainbow here we got a lot of different stuff going on so the first thing you'll want
009to do is you'll want to dilute the paint the paint is very thick when you have it right out of the tube and in order to splash it with your brush you'll definitely need it to be able to drip and throw onto the canvas so you want to start off with just a tiny bit of water so just maybe just a couple of drops like that and i'm just going to just drop just a little bit of water in each one of these because this is where my colors are going and i do this the same way at home so this is a really fun and cool way to dilute your paint and even blend colors as well you can use these little cups so first i'm going to be doing a metallic type of
010purple that's going to go in there mix this up with the water and you'll know if you need to add more water if it doesn't drip off the brush so as you can see it's not dripping yet so we'll want to add a little bit more water i might add it a little too much but that's okay next i'm going to use ultramarine blue which is a really really cool looking blue so i'm going to splash that in there and in between mixing colors if you don't want to mix them together then you'll definitely want to rinse off your brush in the water so you'll want a clean cup of water next to you that way you can definitely rinse that off in between changing colors unless you want to mix the colors that's totally
011up to you it's fun to do that as well and remember i'm here to help you express yourself in a fun crea and creative way through art today so that's something that we're going to be doing and you're definitely some of you may have already been an artist maybe you already paint and this is just an extra fun thing to do this next one's neon orange as you could that looks like a highlighter but that's a pretty cool color i like bright colors usually when i'm painting like a jackson pollock action style i do like to use brighter colors that red is a little bit dark but a lot of my other ones that are in that style the action style are pretty bright but you could do whatever whatever your preference is if you
012want to do all just one color you can do that as well so now we're going to go ahead and create our own masterpiece using action painting method so i'm going to go ahead and get started you want to take your brush and pick the color that you want to start with i'm going to roll my sleeves up i know paint's going to get everywhere i'm going to start with this light blue here this is a nice color blue and you're just going to take your paint brush i'll try not to you're just going to start just moving your arm and kind of throwing the paint onto the canvas you can let it drip as well but i personally like to use my arms and my shoulders and kind of move around almost like i'm
013dancing or directing a choir kind of looks like that to me this is a really nice you can also kind of hit the end of your canvas and kind of just do that you'll also need i'm almost done with my glue here and i get paint everywhere when i paint so just keep that in mind i usually wind up having paint in my hair on my clothes my shoes on my face it's definitely washable so you can wash it off with soap and water so don't worry if you get a little splash on something you can definitely wash if you use a good soap and water you'll be perfectly fine and i hope you guys are enjoying yourselves doing this this is a really great way to express yourselves and put yourself onto the canvas
014that's kind of how i see it i'm going to go ahead and move on to my next color i think i'm going to go with red this time this is like a really nice red make sure you have some paper towels too because if you want to get that other color off there if your water is not really working and you don't want to blend your colors just make sure your you can use a paper towel and just clean it like that going into the red and sometimes i like to walk around my painting and kind of see what it looks like at other angles see if i see anything that that i like or don't like and remember and remember if you see too much color on one side of the painting and you're
015and you don't it's it's okay because it's abstract it's not supposed to be perfect this piece of art is of you so it's going to be your own little masterpiece and sometimes i like when i put one color on one specific area instead of them all kind of meshed together there it goes there goes the first i'm gonna go with this pearly green it's like an emerald green but it's kind of curly i like this nice color too i think it'll go good with everything save this color because i want to show you guys another tool in just a few minutes of how to use the painting knives as well as the turkey baster so i do want to keep some paint so that i can show you guys that now we're going to use
016this really cool purple same method action drip painting and sometimes you could do these pretty quickly and then sometimes you might want to just go back to it the next day or two days later jackson pollock was big about that he would sometimes leave a painting for a couple of weeks and then go back to it and say you know i want to add this color to it and you can do that if you feel like you really want to add a different color or change something on it remember this is your your painting and your creativity on the canvas so i'm going to stop for just a second here and i just want to show you my palette so i use this palette a lot of the times to paint abstract paintings like motley
017eye or any type of painting where i want to keep the colors separated and i want to keep them thick i'll use this so i just want to show you what a painting knife can do which is really cool as well so i'm going to go ahead and use one of my painting knives here i think i'm going to use this one this is a number three painting knife and i'm actually going to put some new paint on here i think i'm going to use this yellow this is lemon yellow so we're going to use that and as you can see it's thick but i want to put enough on there and then to use the painting knife you'll just you see how it won't really come off well it does come off but it's
018a lot thicker than putting water in there so we want it to be like that because right now it's going to be a different bit of a method so now we're just going to take this and just this is where it gets messy sorry because of the pink being so thick it does tend to go a little farther because it has a little weight to it so just definitely be careful when using a painting knife this fluorescent yellow it's kind of like a highlighter yellow and we're going to put that in there too so i am going this is going to brighten up the painting even more kind of looks like a glow-in-the-dark yellow it doesn't i don't think it glows in the dark it doesn't and sometimes i do that i just go right
019off of my canvas right onto my canvas from my palette okay the next thing the next tool i want to show you guys is actually the turkey baster so this is something that a lot of people have in their homes in their kitchen you'll want to buy a different one not the one that you know you definitely already use so what we're going to do is take off the top and this is something again jackson pollock used as well you're going to take off the top and you're going to hold your finger right at the bottom here to make sure it covers the hole on the bottom and then we're going to take one of these colors i'm going to use this plum color and we're just going to pour this in here make sure
020to keep your finger on the end or it'll all come out and then what i'm also going to do is i'm going to take this other color this couldn't get that top open but we're just going to toss that and i'm going to take this because you can mix the colors as well you can even put like one color up to here and then another one you can kind of just you can put as many colors as you want to fill it up and then what you'll want to do is put your cover back on remember to keep your hand tight around this because it'll put some pressure once i put this back on and then for once i release i could start really making some movement here so as you can see all this
021paint is being dripped onto the canvas this is one of my favorite tools actually over the paint brushes and my painting knives and it does make kind of a farting noise so i know that's really funny you guys are might be laughing at home i don't know if you can hear it but it just means that i'm out of pain but yeah that's something really cool that you can maybe use and get one of these tools and i'm actually going to fill it up with another color now i just really like this method so i'm gonna use this neon i know orange sorry i hope i didn't get anything on you guys okay so i put a little black in there as well with the neon orange like a fluorescent highlighter color and we're just
022going to do this again as you can see the color is coming out through the other ones okay so that's turkey baster method now we can go i want to show you how you can take this sponge and make a little bit of texture i'm not going to go too crazy with it but probably around the edges i really like the way the this part here in the middle looks it's very colorful it's not too blended but it's definitely i definitely want to keep it i think it looks to me i think it looks pretty pretty cool so what we're going to do is i'm going to take this blue that we haven't really used yet you're going to dip your sponge whenever you get these tools i know you guys are working with a
023with the brush right now but that's you can add to your collection and we're just gonna lightly very lightly just kind of go over some of this area here around the edges you don't want to push too hard because then it's going to make like a blobbing type of thing which is kind of lightly you can kind of see some of these colors are blending really nicely there's some purples with greens blue what a weird thing nobody would have ever thought to maybe use a sponge but i can you can use spoons there's there's a lot of different tools even household items that you can use i know a couple of artists that sometimes will use even a cup like this and put paint under it and make designs with that they can use their
024fingers there's some artists out there that use their toes to paint just get creative with it it'll be something you'll definitely enjoy so i like i like the way that looks for now so i'm going to go ahead and put the sponge down and then what you can do is take your brush our original brush you wipe this down a little bit and you can just kind of hold it very lightly and even just very lightly you don't want to you don't want to make too much movement you don't want to blend too much because you do want that action style but just lightly just to kind of throw in some different areas there now i'm not sure if you guys have a squeeze bottle at home or if it's just a pot of paint
025if you do have a squeeze bottle i just want to show you something else that sometimes i do instead of using any of these tools i just squeeze it right out of the bottle so that's actually another thing that jackson pollock did he would squeeze the tube all the way down to the end i'm not going to do that but i do want to show you guys how how cool this kind of is you just want to keep moving your arm around while you do this remember this is the artwork that you're doing right now and this is a an abstract expressionism piece of art it's it's definitely expressing yourself so don't worry if you don't like it at first you can go back and change things or just leave it as is it's not
026supposed to be perfect abstract art is beyond the lines so keep that keep that in mind because i'm a little hard on myself sometimes i don't like some of my pieces but this is one of those that i actually it looks pretty pretty good i'm going to use this red as my final color go ahead and mix this up this is something else you can do too this does make a lot of mess too but if you just tap your brush it'll make almost like a airbrush effect to it or a spray paint effect i should say and that looks kind of cool on the painting it kind of fills in a little bit of the areas and sometimes when you're painting if you want to put a little music on the background that's usually
027a lot of the times i do that it depends what mood i'm in because music sometimes moves me to paint as well so it's really a preference with that and i listen to all music all fun music you know i think i'm gonna stop right here i like the way this looks i like the colors i think i'm done okay so here you have it i'm going to lift this up you'll want to make sure that when you're lifting your painting to take a picture you could usually take a picture like this but when you're at home this is my painting i know i got quite a few colors on there but that's what it looks like right now as you can see there's a lot of different colors on there you don't want to
028hold it up like that for too long because the paint will drip it might drip where you don't want it and i like the results of this right now so i want to leave this down like this so what you'll want to do next is you will want to make sure that you do allow this painting to dry for about a day or two there is a lot of extra paint on it there should be a lot of like extra wet paint on there you'll want to put it in an area where there's no pets or any hazards where something can be stepped on or the paint can be messed up just put it somewhere where it's a little safer and away from everything even if it's outside in a backyard that's completely fine as
029well now for our final thing every artist has to sign their painting so you'll want to sign your painting with your paintbrush i have a paint pen that i use i just like the way my signature comes out with it so i'm going to go ahead and do that and you never know you usually sign it in the bottom right hand corner of your painting so i'm going to walk around it and kind of see which way i want to hang this painting so that's what i'm going to do right now and i think it's facing me i think i think this way i'm gonna paint it down here because i feel like this is definitely definitely fit when it's hanging i think this will look nice the way it is i also want to
030note before i sign the sides of the canvas don't worry if that gets paint on it that's the fun part about action painting you're supposed to get paint on the sides so sometimes it'll drip off the sides sometimes it'll stay you know and you'll have one little area but it's supposed to be like that so don't worry so i'm going to go ahead and sign my name alicia anglin and then 2021 because it's the year that i finished my painting and then so i hope everyone had a great time painting today maybe one day you'll want to paint with a friend or have your own little painting class or help your family member and teach them how to pee i showed you a lot of different tools you can use so that's going to be
031really fun in the future when you do want to paint again and i hope you enjoyed yourselves today and remember the world is your canvas so until next time guys thanks for coming thanks for watching me pete and i'll see you next time bye