Make Paint Knife Flowers with Christie

Hey guys, it's Christie with The Social Easel, and I am popping on to do some impromptu painting with you. So I just got done being a guest artist in a Facebook group, and I had some leftover paint, and I thought I would share with you what I shared with them. So We are gonna start off 2020 with a bang and get to painting right away. So I hope you guys can jump on and join me. And this is impromptu, so you will be able to go back to this later if you want to try out what we're doing today, and you'll be able to rewatch it later on replay. So we're gonna have a little bit of fun today painting. I'm gonna show you a little sneak peek of what we're gonna do. Not this exact thing, but we're gonna play around with some palette knife flowers. And I decided, why not make it fun? And for everyone that sprinkles this with their friends, comment and let me know that you did, and someone is gonna get some happy mail from me and get this finished piece of art that I do live with you today. So if you would love an original from me and and you want to be a part of that, make sure that you let your friends know about it so they can join us and have fun. These are some of my favorite things to do. I have full tutorials of this inside my membership, so, um, the ladies who are in that already know how to do this, but I thought it's so simple, I can jump on and show you guys how to do this, and I'd love to see what you do with it. And you can post it in the free Facebook group that we have. So if you're not one of my tribe members, you can post your work that you do from this video in that group, and I'll be sharing it over there later today too. We're gonna flip you around here, so you're looking at the painting and not me, but I wanted to say hi. Happy New Year! This is a new year, new plans, big things happening with the Social Easel that I'm excited to share with you guys. You'll find out more over the next few weeks as we, as we nail some dates down for you. But I will let you in on one little thing that is gonna be new this year for 2020. Every month I am going to be offering a chance for you guys to sign up to do a full tutorial with me for only $20. It's gonna be a live paint session all in one, not a 4-day, 3-day challenge or anything like that. We'll still have those, but But this is gonna be something new I do. Every single month there's going to be a $20 live paint night with me. Paint night, paint morning, we'll see. And it's gonna be in a private Facebook group. This month is gonna be that cute little gnome that some of you have seen. Let me go grab it really quick, okay? It's in, it's already hanging up in my kitchen 'cause I love this little gnome. But this month, for those of you that are not members in my tribe, this is your opportunity to paint one of my tribe paintings. If you are a tribe member, you don't need to worry about it. You're getting it. It's included in your monthly membership, and it'll be taught the second week of this month. But if you're not, what I'm going to start doing every month is featuring one of my tribe paintings and allowing you guys to be a part of that if you want to. So for $20, you can get access to that painting, color list, template, all the good stuff, and the rights to do it for paint nights, and there will be a featured painting each month that you get to sign up for. So the gnome is the first one. I'm gonna go grab it. You like my slippers, by the way? Workout clothes and slippers. That's what we're painting in today. So this is our little gnome. Isn't he the cutest? So I'm kind of obsessed with gnomes lately, and I decided to do a Valentine's one because I didn't want them to just be for Christmas. I needed one up again. I'm probably gonna do a St. Patrick's Day one too. He might be my theme for the year. So this is going to go up later this week. You will be able to sign up for this if you want to paint this, and it's going to be $20. It's going to be a live paint class in a private Facebook group, and then you'll have 24/7 access to it after that, so you can go back and paint it whenever you want to again and again and again. All right ladies, I'm going to flip you around. Let me know if you have any questions as we're going along. I'm still going to read your comments. From the iPad. Okay, so this is— I'm working in a mixed media pad. Again, any information you want about the supplies that I'm using today, we'll get you straight here. Hang on, this way. So normally I paint in an 11 by 14 mixed media pad. Okay, so this is an 11 by 14 mixed media pad. Today I'm doing the painting— that was Sophie's. I'm doing this in a 7 by 10. So you can get these at your craft stores, Walmart, my Amazon store, whatever you want, but it's called a mixed media pad and it's basically like a sketchbook for painting. So this is like your practice pad to do all kinds of fun stuff in. You don't have to be committed to anything. It's for you to practice and learn technique, which is the key to learning how to paint. So if you are new to painting, especially if you're new to palette knife, and you're like, sounds fun, but it sounds scary and I've never used it before, get a mixed media pad and you don't have to worry about it. If you don't like it, flip the page and start over again, throw it away. Doesn't matter what you do with it. If you do like it, You can tear them out, lay something heavy on them after they're completely dry, and then you can frame them. So they're awesome, awesome to have. All right, so let's just start. This was an example. This is another example. These are super simple and easy. All right, so I'm gonna start with my, um, let's do a different style. I'm gonna do horizontal. So I am just grabbing some paint. I'm going to do my container first. This is a mint and some teal. I picked up a little bit of pink in there. If you haven't painted with palette knife before, it's super messy and freeing. I'm just going to get a basic shape down here. And when you are working with a palette knife, you're actually using the back of the knife. So see how I'm just kind of scraping that along? Now you don't want to over-blend. So palette knife painting is a little faster because it's such a messy kind of freestyle. And I like to have some different colors in there. Now I will say, for those of you that are watching, this is flipped. I got in the Facebook app and it wouldn't let me switch it, so I am actually right-handed, but you're seeing it like I'm painting left-handed today. So if that's throwing you off, that's why. Okay, now I did my background in a black on the last one. I think I want to do something different on this. This is pretty. We'll try this. I'm using all DecoArt paints today. This is a 7x10 paper. The palette knife is a 1 that I'm using. You can use any palette knife, by the way. You can get the cheap plastic ones if you don't want to get a set of them. However, this 5-piece set that comes with all different sizes that I'm using is only a few dollars. In my Amazon store. If you haven't sprinkled the video yet, be sure to do so, because if you do, you might be the lucky one to get some happy mail and get this original piece of art. So all you have to do is tell your friends about it and then leave me a comment telling me that you sprinkled it around, and you will be in entered into that drawing. So this is— this is really pretty. I don't think I've used this one before. Light Sage by DecoArt. Happy New Year! I'm gonna get a bigger palette knife for my background. I have so much paint on this, I honestly can't tell you what size this is. I'd guess it was a 3. All right, so this is a Light Sage. I'm scooping it up. On the back here. And this is why I love palette knife painting, because it's fast and messy and freeing. So yeah, someone's gonna get this original. Hopefully you like it. It's kind of fun to not know exactly what you're painting sometimes when you start. I should probably move my original from underneath so I don't make a mess of that. Yeah, let me know if you guys are first-timers. If you're in my membership, if you're in the inner tribe, go ahead and comment "tribe sisters." Let me know you're here with me. And for all you tribe sisters, you have 2 full painting tutorials on palette knife flowers inside our membership hub. That you can go back and look at. If you're not a Tribe member yet and you want more information about that, when you comment, you will get the link to get a free tutorial from me for my Winter Chapel, and that will also put you on my email list. So when we open the membership back up, you'll be the first to know about it too. All right, so this is a Light Sage I want to add something else to it. What do I want to add? Oh, you know what? I love this color. Nothing added, no, not for this one, Angie. So you can add— here, I'll show you. This is also in my store. Hold on, I just had it. You can add gel medium if you want to thicken up your paints, but I do use DecoArt because their acrylic craft paint is thicker than most, and so you can use it with palette knife. I love it. So this is one of my favorite colors from DecoArt, by the way. It's called Periwinkle. I just love this color. When I was in college, this was the color of my room. So this is another thing I do sometimes when I'm working with palette knife is just put the paint directly on to my surface. I'm painting in a mixed media pad. You can do this on canvas, on wood, on a mixed media pad, whatever. Oh, look at that! I love that color. So that is mixed with our Light Sage that I had back there. So you guys see how fast and crazy I am doing this, and you get that fun texture that you just cannot get this with a, um, you You cannot get this with a paintbrush. What do you guys think of the texture so far? You like it? Like this better than black? Yeah, I want to do something different. I do love a good black background, but I'm really liking this periwinkle too. I'm really trying to get you guys positioned a little better on the camera here. Okay, so I have red, hot pink, plum. I think these, um, some lavender. I'm just gonna play around with these colors. You know what I might add? Because I have this blue periwinkle background, I'm gonna add some yellow into this one. This is Banana Cream, because in case you don't know, Periwinkle, which is kind of a purple, a purpley blue, is gonna look really good with yellow because they're opposites on the color wheel. So we're gonna have— that's really gonna make them pop. The yellow against that periwinkle is gonna be a nice little accent color. Yes, Joanne, you can do this on stretched canvas as well. All right, so let's start with our flowers. This is just going to be kind of a little bouquet of flowers we're doing here. I'm going to start with my hot pink, and I'm just coming around in a curve. You can think of it like a parenthesis or the letter C, however you want to think about it. And then I'm just going to start coming around on the other side. Now I'm not putting a ton of pressure down with my palette knife as I'm doing this. Just kind of lightly dragging it around. We're going to start by just adding a bunch of different circles, and then we'll tweak it and we can add to it and all that good stuff. I think I'm going to do some big ones. I want to do an odd number when you're doing like arrangements like this. And you're coming up with your own composition, odd numbers are just naturally more appealing to the eye. So just keep that in mind. Really, when you're doing anything, groups of anything— can be flowers, it can be trees, it doesn't matter. Thank you, Lynette. Lynette, I have missed painting. I literally am so excited to get back to a routine again, and I kind of feel like I have my life back. It's been a long, long 3 weeks, and we did a big family vacation, which I'm not complaining about, don't take it that way, but it's just been a lot of downtime. And we had a family vacation, and then we went to Thanksgiving, went from that, that was during Thanksgiving, and then the kids were back in school for a handful of days, then we had snow days, then we had Christmas break, and today is the first day that I have my normal life back, which has allowed me to get on here and paint with you guys, so I'm excited about that. Wasn't planning on it, but I had this leftover paint and thought it would be fun. So right now, just kind of adding my shapes in. Trying to decide what I want where. And the good thing about acrylic paint is if you do something that you're not happy with, you can just let it dry and paint over top of it. And you said, I used DecoArt paints, but when I bought acrylic in a tube— yeah, the acrylic in the tube is great to use too. You can't— no, there's no oops, Angie. You can most definitely use the thicker tube paint as well. I just have found just through practice that I'm happy with using this with palette knife, and I think it looks good. So you can definitely do that. Let's pull— oopsie, see that? That just means a little flower is gonna go there. This is how messy I am when I'm painting this style. Let's do a big plum one up here. Let me know if you guys have any questions. I'll be keeping an eye on the comments. I'm gonna get these flower shapes down, and then I'm gonna— that red's got to go on top again. You can change this, by the way. As you're getting your shapes down on the second go-around, you can change what you want on top and what you want to go behind. Maybe make that red a little bigger. I am gonna add some greenery in here as well. Lynette, you just had surgery on your hand? How long until you can— is it your painting hand? How long until you can paint again? Thank you. I think I'm digging these colors so far. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. All right, we're gonna stick with 7 flowers. I'm gonna grab— I'm just gonna wipe off my palette knife. You can wipe it on a paper towel if you want to. Naomi, I don't do everything in palette knife. Um, I do actually several different styles of painting. This is some of the flowers that I've done. Those are done with a brush. Um, but then I also do completely different style. This is one coming up, my little Valentine. This is a painting for my tribe, and I'm teaching it to them next week. But I'm doing something new in 2020, and I'm gonna start having a live paint night once a month for those of you not in my tribe, and you can sign up for $20 and get to paint the full painting with me. And in January, it is going to be the Valentine's gnome. So be looking for that on my page. That link will be going up, and you guys will be able to sign up and paint that with me. Again, if you're in the tribe, you don't have to sign up for it. It's included in your membership. Hello. If you lose sound or it gets fuzzy or something, sometimes you have to jump out and then jump back in. Hey, Miss Kara. All right, so I've kind of got my flowers where I want them. Where did I just lay my palette knife down at? Oh, it's right there. Okay, I'm gonna add some leaves coming out of here. Again, everything's super messy. This is not about perfection, or maybe even necessarily it looking like a leaf. We just need some green kind of popping in and out. Kara said she painted some palette knife flowers last week. Awesome! They're so fun, and you can kind of see with the painting here, they're also quick, which I love. Let's have a big one down here. So I am just playing. I don't really have a plan, so to say, in my head yet, so I may come back and change this a little. But that's what I love about this style of painting, because it gives you the freedom to do that. And I told you I wanted to add some of that yellow in there. I think I'm gonna choose to add it in— oh good, Heather's got sound. I think I'm gonna choose to add that yellow into the green. How many of you on here have done palette knife before? I'm assuming most of you are pretty new to it. You know, I hadn't— I've been painting my entire life. I've been teaching painting for the last 6 years, but I didn't start using palette knife until about a year ago, and as soon as I started using it, I fell in love with it. It because it's kind of messy and free and crazy, a little bit like me. So it's fun. You can go outside of the lines with this. All right, I'm going to come in, add my little black centers here. There is literally no right or wrong. Yours can look however you want it to. It's just fun. And when I jump off here, I'm gonna keep on working with my palette knife. I'm doing a new one for my tribe that is going to be a winter barn. and I've been sketching out some ideas, but we're gonna have a winter scene with a red barn, and I want it to be a palette knife one. I'm just digging it right now. Okay, so I've got my base colors down on everything. Now I'm gonna come back and start adding some accents in, and again, there's no right or wrong to this on what you want to add in. I add all kinds of colors in all my flowers. I'm going in with some heavier pink first, and this one's going to go behind, so I'm going to come in and add some colors to this one first. Maybe grab a little plum. So as I'm going around, again, think of it like little parentheses, little curves kind of going around the center and expanding out. You want to make sure that they're not all the same size or that they are symmetrical on each side. You don't want your brushstrokes to look all the same. So like, if you're looking at this one and you split that in half, nothing is identical on this side as it is this side. Keep it interesting. Change your colors up. I threw little pops of blue and everything in those, so it doesn't have to be realistic. It's your painting, it's your colors. Maybe you're making it to fit whatever room you're decorating and you want to make a piece of art to go with that room. So pick those colors, go find those colors in the store, and make it your own. So I just grabbed a little bit more pink here. This is just a hot pink. I think it's— I think this one's called Peony Pink. So you can see they're getting a little heavier, a little bit thicker with the second coat. You could also blow dry in between coats if you wanted to, if you don't want things to mix. I kind of like it when they do. When you're working with a palette knife, it's kind of like these constant happy little accidents, and you make a little stroke here and there, and then you get this cool combo of colors. So it's kind of like a surprise of what's going to happen. And again, not a lot of pressure, just kind of going around. I'm going to grab some of this lighter pink here. All right, so I'm going to my plum, and I've got a little like lavender color with that. It's got a little bit of pink in it. Feeling the need to add a little bit of this mint to my pink just for some contrast. Thank you, Christine. Hey, Debbie. Glad you guys are liking it. Some different color combos than I've done before. And these flowers don't need to be perfect circles either. You actually don't want them too perfect. Let them have some curves to them. All right, we're gonna jump over here to the red. I'm adding some pink into that, and then I'm gonna come back with some more red too. So quick movements, not applying a ton of pressure, and I'm not over-blending. This palette knife painting is definitely not about blending. So I know, Kirsten, you will sign up on the list, so you will get a link, and you just need to go to that link and it will put you on there. I talked to you about how I just squirted some of that Periwinkle in the background. I'm gonna do the same thing here because I know I want those to be some bolder areas of red. Instead of me scraping it from my palette to my canvas, I'm just going to put it right on there. And this is really thick paint, so I would recommend painting this flat, not on an easel, because if you do paint it on an easel, you will have drips. All right. I want a little highlight of pink there. I love the freedom of just being able to squirt the paint directly on. Isn't that pretty? I love that. Tina, this is acrylic craft paint, so it's DecoArt. They look like this. You can get them in 2-ounce bottles. Some of the colors come in 8-ounce now. And if you guys are new and you're just starting to watch me, make sure that you join the free Facebook group. I'll post that link in afterwards. You can follow me on YouTube and Pinterest. I have a blog, so if all of this is brand new, there's lots you can go back and check out. I want a little bit of black in my, in my vase here. Come back with a little more mint. I always like to have different pops of color. Where's that turquoise? Christine, you can get it in my store. I have a link in my Amazon store. You can get it at Hobby Lobby— has the biggest selection if you're going in a store to get it, and they put it 30% off every other week. So you can stock up. All right, what are you guys thinking so far? We're getting near the finishing point. Pull a little pink in here, why not? It's fun to just keep Keep moving. Now, I always recommend in my group too to take some pictures while you're painting and figure out where you want to add something, what you like, where you think you need more color, maybe a pop of color. So that's very helpful to take pictures. I'm able to look up at the screen while I'm painting with you guys and see where I want to change some some stuff. I'm gonna grab a little bit— this is like a bright, bright purple. Let's try a little bit of that in here, see if I like it. Add some white in. This has a little bit of black in it too. I always like to add little pops of completely different colors in my flowers too. Let's get a little white down in our vase, and then I'm just going to add a little bit to our flowers here and there. A little pink in this one. All right, I'm checking it out. I don't feel like it has enough contrast. I think I'm gonna go back with some more white around here. I love that periwinkle, but maybe I'm Maybe I got a little too much of it. So this is what I mean, you can just go back and play and change things up. What do you guys think? Oh, I know what I need to add. I know what I need to add. I need to add the gold. I'm still going to leave some of that periwinkle showing behind, but the gold is going to help. So this is where, you know, one of my sayings is just trust the process. I didn't have this painting planned out in my head in the beginning. You kind of— it's, it's a work. Like, you just kind of go with it and figure out what works, and then figure out if you need to change something. And that's okay. There is no right or wrong. I can do— because I like my periwinkle, I can do a little around the edge though, because that's not gonna be too too close. And then I'm gonna come in with my gold. If you haven't painted with me before, I really love gold. I put it in a bunch of stuff. Yes, it is a very forgiving style. That's a perfect way to describe it. This is DecoArt Metallics. What color is this one? This is Vintage Brass. They have a ton. Like, they have a 24-karat gold that's really pretty. I have like almost all of them. All right, what do you guys think? Are we done? I think I'm done with it. It's a little different. Different color combos than sometimes what I do a lot, but I like it. So if you want a chance to win this original piece of art, make sure you have sprinkled this with your friends, and then let me know in the comments that you did. I'm gonna go back through the comments We will let it run. We're gonna let it run until Friday this week, and on Friday I will announce the winner in the comments here, and I'll contact you, and someone's gonna get some happy mail. I'll get your address and mail this out to you. It's on a piece of mixed media pad that will be flattened and dried for you, and then you can frame it. If you want to. So hopefully you guys had fun with that, and we'll be back on later this week. So Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you guys, if you're wanting to get involved in painting and you want to learn more, make that commitment to yourself. It's the new year to, you know, make some goals for ourselves and set aside time for things that make us happy, make you relaxed. We all need a break away, right, from the world. If this is the break that you need, then set yourself some time to do that. It could be as little as 30 minutes a couple times a week just to try things out. It doesn't have to be a full painting. It can just be practicing. So hope you guys had fun. I'll be back on later this week, and then be looking for this little guy to be popping up with a link If you want to learn how to paint this, we're gonna do a live paint session in January. You can sign up for $20 and learn how to paint our little Valentine's gnome. Completely different style. So I do all styles in acrylic painting. Hope you guys had fun. Have an awesome rest of your Monday. Bye.