STRING Workshop 2 - Exploring Drawing with String (S02E04WS02)

[♫ Playful bouncy music]
[Ghost Dance by Kevin MacLeod]

Hello everyone and welcome to

ArtStarts Explores.

My name is Kay Slater and I will be making

along with you today.

I am the gallery coordinator and

preparator at ArtStarts in schools.

And so it's my voice that you are hearing

or reading,

as we explore week two of string.

This week, I thought what we could try is

some painting with string!

So if you joined me last week,

we explored drawing with string

and you can still check out that episode

and any of our previous episodes,

they are all saved online on Facebook

or YouTube or on our website at

artstarts.com/explores-online.

So for this week

for painting with string,

I collected a couple of things that

that I'm going to explore with today.

And so if you can find yourself

some paper,

and as always, when I say paper,

I mean out of the recycling bin

that can have things already on the back

of it, it can have water damage,

it can be ripped.

Really taking things out of the

recycling bin,

you know that you've got permission

to use these because they were already

going to head out to the garbage. And

nothing we're making is for keeps.

So using recycled paper is great.

Some string, and really that's

any kind of string

that you can find whether that's

cotton string,

whether that's yarn,

whether that's twine,

and I really I really learned to love

twine last week,

so I'm going to I'm excited

to try that again.

Or even some floss

some floss for your teeth.

That will work as well.

If you have some thread or really

any kind of thing.

Oh, I also, I found some rope that was

hanging around.

And I really like the frayed edges

on these.

So I think I'm also going to explore

some rope.

So if you had the end of some rope

that was in a workshop, or that you have

permission to use

that's starting to fray-

we're going to see how that

works this week.

So any kind of string.

Scissors,

I suggest using some scissors

just to be able to cut the string.

But if you just want to play with one long

piece of string, that's fine, you don't

have to have a pair of scissors,

If you've already got one cut,

you can use the middle of the string

you could use the end of the string

you've got two ends already with one piece

of string

so you don't have to have a pair of

scissors

if you don't have some available

or if the only scissors you have

are really sharp

and you don't have grown up available to

help you cut that,

that's fine.

Then I have put paint

because we're going to be painting

this week

and so if you have some paints,

whether that's watercolor or acrylic

or any kind of paint that you might have,

that's great,

but you might not have some paint

right now

and you still want to participate,

and so I wanted to

I wanted to suggest some

some other options.

So if you have some food coloring,

if you've ever done some icing before-

icing cakes or cupcakes,

you only need a very tiny amount of this

and while this will still stain in your

fingers,

it's non toxic so it's not going to hurt

you if it gets on your skin.

And while you might be dyed

a little bit green

for a little while,

this this is very safe to use

and you can just put a drop of that

in some water

and there you go-

you've got some some paints

you can work with.

I wrote down cornstarch here

there's a really cool recipe that Lily

shares

are both in our gallery

but also on our Facebook page

on how to use cornstarch and

green food coloring

to make a waterless paint which is really

awesome.

And so you might know that

that recipe or you can go and

check that out that is

archived on our Facebook page.

You can boil some veggies.

So my favourite food

my favorite vegetable

my favorite food of all time is cabbage

and red cabbage in particular,

it makes this great purple shade

and it will stain your fingers as well

even if you don't cook with it.

But if you

if you yourself are allowed to use a stove

or if you have grown up I can help you...

If you had some cabbage,

even green vegetables

or any kind of vegetable really

check it out.

You can boil some of those down

and then you can have some colored water

that you can use for paint as well.

And then I also wanted to say if you've

got any turmeric

this spice which you will find in a lot of

Asian

or South Asian and Indian cuisine

is great.

It's it's so strong - the the color of it,

I have, I've used this to actually dye

clothing before-

cotton- where I have put,

I put in a bathing suit that I had

that was kind of a off-white

and I boiled it with a bunch of turmeric.

And it turned bright, bright yellow.

And so you could take some turmeric

and you could add a little

bit of water to it.

And then you've got some very,

very bright yellow paint.

And so there's options beyond just having

paint to explore.

And even if you do have paint,

you can try all of these things

and see how they're different.

The last thing that I put there

was gloves.

And so everything that I'm going

to use today

might get my fingers a little stained,

and I'm okay with that.

But if you are using any of these

that are going to stain

your fingers,

you may actually want to find some gloves.

And so that could be anything from gloves

that you use to wash the dishes.

Or if you have some nitrile or latex

gloves for cleaning

or to protect your hands,

you might want to do that,

especially if you're going to be

using food coloring.

And if not, just go slow as you're

exploring

and try to keep your fingers away from

what we're making.

But you'll see I'll get a little bit messy

as we're going this week.

Okay, so you know who I am.

And I'm gonna move this sticky.

Let's explore together.

Move that over here,

this over to the side a little bit,

there we go.

And so I have this big piece of paper here

and it's got some marks on the other side,

I've used it for other things,

I'm going to use this as my background

this week.

Actually, just- -sorry,

not as my background

as my backdrop.

And so I'm going to paint on other things

on top of this,

because I want to protect my space.

And so while I didn't put that here,

if you had some newspaper or some

newsprint

or an old t shirt that you were gonna

throw out

-some rags, whatever,

make sure you protect your space

as we're going along,

because we don't,

we don't want to just worry about

staining our fingers,

we also want to have respect the space

that we're working in.

Okay, lots of setup this week.

And that's always the case whenever

you're painting.

The cool thing about drawing or

paper ripping,

is - it's pretty easy to get started.

Whereas paint,

you have to be a bit more intentional,

you have to slow down a little bit,

have to think about everything

and set it up beforehand

so that you don't make a mess.

But we're gonna make a mess

within this space.

Because this, this is the clean space

that I've set out that we can,

we can get a little messy.

All right.

So for our warm up,

I thought what we could do is

we could just look at some of the string

that we have,

and see what happens

when we try different things.

So we don't really have

any kind of goal in mind,

we're just going to see what happens when

we do different things.

And so if I was thinking about

a paintbrush,

before I got started,

I mean, I could start by just

taking my string and putting it in my dry

paint and seeing what happens.

But I've done that before.

And I know that I need to

activate my paint,

I need to get it a little bit wet

before I can transfer it

on to the page.

And so just like a paintbrush,

I'm taking my cotton string

that I have here

and I opened- I frayed the edges

a little bit

but I don't have to

I could have a nice clean edge

on one side,

and then a frayed edge on the other side.

I'm going to get both of those wet.

And then I'm just going to touch them in

the paint to begin with.

Dab it a little bit, see what happens.

All right, alright.

Got a little bit of pigment, but not a

lot.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to

use my fingers and I'm going to rub the

string down into the paint a little bit.

See if I can get it - there we go.

Okay, so the difference was

is that before I had a

little bit of paint,

but now you can see that I got both my

fingers but also the string itself has

started to become the colour of of the

paint itself.

So just like that, I'm going to try and

put it on my page.

Go. Okay, so this was the

thinner line one,

the one that I didn't, I didn't kind of

spread out.

I can get these - these cool lines.

Put that down over there.

And this one I did,

I did kind of frey a little bit

so that it's a bit more fanned out

and this one's got - it's a little bit

harder to control.

I don't really know what strand is going

to touch the page.

With the - with the paint as I go along,

so it has a bit more of an organic,

textured feel to it.

Cool.

All right, I'm going to dip these

back in water

and see what happens.

Remember, when I say "see what happens?" I

don't know what's going to happen

for these too,

I'm just exploring along with you!

If you get an idea that I haven't tried,

or that is inspired by something

I'm doing,

go ahead,

check it out, see what happens.

You can always let us know

if you have permission

in the comments by telling us what

happened

when you tried different things,

and we'd love to hear from you.

Okay, so that was with a bit more water.

Okay, so I'm still getting that,

that really clean line that I got,

before, when I didn't have a lot of water

on it,

look at that! It is basically a pencil,

right?

You can really control the lines

but for this one, it did kind of turn into

a flat brush.

I'm getting these thicker lines now

I still have pretty good control if I'm

going in a straight line,

what happens if I try and curve it?

That's a little bit harder,

I've still got a pretty good swirl.

What about this one, I go back and forth.

A little bit less controlled.

I can't really make a sharp turn, still

are a little bit curved.

If I wanted to,

oh! there we go.

Okay, so I just have to lift,

lift the string.

(Laughst) Looks like I've got some fuzz, I

think I've got some floss fuzz.

Cool.

Okay, so those were just with

those ends there.

I'm gonna put those over to the side

because I want to keep trying some

different string

because we're just trying,

and I'm going to go over top of this,

because this is just-

this isn't for keeps

this is just seeing what happens.

So I have this really thick,

chunky piece of wool here.

I tried to learn how to knit

a couple of years ago,

and I thought if I had some really really

big, thick yarn,

that would help.

It turns out,

I am better at crocheting than knitting

though that's okay,

I wanted to try it out

and see what happens.

Okay, so I'm gonna put my string

my yarn down into the blue.

And so without adding

more water this time,

just like before, see what happens.

Alright, basically what we noticed before

kind of with the the larger string because

there's a bigger surface here, I can get

these nice big lines.

What if I add some water to it,

oh, but because there's more water, and

more paint that I was able to collect in

this big fuzzy yarn, check out all the

colour that is at the end of each of these

lines here.

I kind of had it a little bit here, but it

didn't have it at all these smaller lines,

I basically have the same amount of color

all throughout these ones.

You can see I've got these really dark

lines or really dark areas at the end.

Cool. Okay, I'm gonna add some

more water again.

I want to see if it'll do a drip.

Yep, there we go.

It's really, really collects a lot of a

lot of paint. It doesn't want to drip it

at all.

Alright, same thing as before.

Okay, yep, still got the the extra at the

end.

What about curves?

Okay, so this bigger yarn, I think because

it's more wet.

I picked up some green in there.

That's cool.

It doesn't-

it makes even bigger curvier lines than

the small one did.

So I was able to make these large looping,

looping lines as I went along.

Okay, put this over to the side.

Pull out my twine.

I say it like that because I really

enjoyed working with twine last week, I

didn't think I was going to enjoy working

with twine and I pushed past it.

I went "Nope, it's okay that I don't

really like how fuzzy it is".

I don't need to have a nice clean piece of

yarn.

I can try it with the with the twine and

it ended up being the most fun.

Okay, so for this one right now, what I'm

going to do is

I'm going to add a little bit of water,

right to my paint dish over here.

I did it to my my red.

And instead of adding water to the twine,

I'm just going to go with this really

soupy, soupy paint.

Here we go. Alright.

Alright, let's play with some twine.

Oh, here we go - let's see what happens.

All right, because there was a lot of

water on it.

It's still made these kind of thick areas

like a brush,

and it collected like the yarn where

there's a bit over there.

But it still has a kind of organic feel

like I'm not really sure where where the

paint is going to collect.

And you can see I'm kind of moving, moving

the twine around as I move it because I

want to, I want to see, I want to have

kind of a random element for which of

these different fibers hits the paper as I

go along.

Here we go.

Got a bit more pigment this time a little

bit more color.

Yeah.

See as I twist it.

So happy that I had the twine, just all

these things that I wouldn't have ever

tried.

I'm going to bring it over-

Oh, I think I got a bit of blue.

That's cool.

I'm gonna have some blue and red.

I'm gonna go right off my page over here.

What happens?

Yeah, I really like how twisty

has this kind of enthusiasm and energy

lines that around the outside that I

wouldn't really be able to plan for.

I really, really, really liked the twine.

Okay, put that over to the side.

What else do I have?

Oh, I had my rope.

So this one, this one was more just

because I knew I had it.

And if you've ever used a really big brush

before,

this, this large multiple strand rope

that I have that was kind of braided

around the outside edge,

it just feels very much like a broom.

And so you're not broom, a brush, normal

brush.

And so I wouldn't really feel I don't

really feel like this is exploring too

much because I've worked with brushes a

lot in the past when I've painted, so I

kind of know what to expect.

So this one I feel like is going to be the

most boring

one that I know the most as I'm going

along.

But let's try it out.

Because we should always try it out.

Even if we assume we know.

I think I'm gonna

go with the red again,

I'm gonna get another piece of

paper out here,

just so you can see as we go along.

I'll move this over to the side, just so

we can compare.

This over here.

Alright, go with the red, get a whole

bunch of my brush.

And here we go.

Oh, it didn't do exactly what I thought.

Because the strands are bigger

than a brush.

Usually brush has smaller strands.

You don't get to see all of these lines.

But because each one of these strands kind

of picked up a different amount of

pigment. I got these.

I got a wash of all the color, but I also

got all of these cool lines.

Oh, see, I'm really happy I tried that-

if I hadn't tried it, I wouldn't have

realized that I was able to

do that technique.

That's cool.

Okay, one last thing because I have some

twine or not twine, some floss here.

And I just want to use

all the things that I've got

that I pulled out just to see

what happens.

Okay, so this time, this time, I'm going

to get it wet.

Actually, this time, what I can do is I'm

going to put all of the twine in there.

Not the twine (laughs)

I have twine on the brain because

I really like it.

I've put all the floss in there, and I'm

going to add some-

I'm going to add some

water to my blue.

I don't know if you can see that-

that may be off the screen, but I'm adding

a little bit of water

to my blue tray and

then I'm going to do is

I'm going to take

all of this floss.

And floss is pretty water resistant.

Right?

If you think about when you're flossing

your teeth, you don't really want it

to absorb water-

it needs-

because if could it absorbs saliva it'd

actually break as you're going along.

Okay, so what I did was I balled up balled

up my floss and I'm just smearing it down

into the paint.

So now I've got a whole bunch of paint on

top of my floss and I'm just going to drop

it on the page.

Okay, doesn't leave a mark.

Kind of! Let's try it again.

So I can't really can't really plan for

where it's going to land and how much

paint it's going to drop.

But this is another way if if I had if I

wanted to have a splatter effect, without

like taking a toothbrush or a paintbrush

and making it really mad going all over

the place. See how it goes kind of off the

page when you do this. This is a little

bit more of a controlled way. Like just

keep going out a little bit more water

again and profit So a little bit more

water, I'm getting splatters with - do you

see how it's a little bit lighter now,

because before I didn't add water, so you

can get different, different amounts of

water on your splatters when you drop them

by putting water on before we're putting

water on after.

Here we go,

Oh, it looks like my red has a has a bunch

of freckles now.

Cool. All right.

So that was us warming up, we just wanted

to try out and see what are different

kinds of string that we have would do play

and move these over to the side

and see if they'll dry

a little bit as we're going

along here,

I'm going to move that all the

way off to the side because there's a lot

of water on that one, see if it'll dry

while we're making.

This one, I didn't have a lot of water it

so it's pretty, it's pretty dry

at this point.

Same thing, I'm gonna move that

over to the side.

So we've warmed up, we explored a bunch of

different techniques -

I think I've got a stick to that. Yeah,

there we go.

We explored a bunch of different

techniques as in things that would happen

when we used the string in different ways.

And so now we have that information of

what will happen or the kind of marks we

can expect, when we're using the different

kinds of string. So if I brought this out,

if I wanted to make-

(laughs) ha! you can see all the paint on

my hands, and I've made the page a little

dirty, and that's okay, right?

Because these are-

this, none of this is for keeps.

So which of the techniques that I tried

before created lines?

If I wanted to have a really consistent

line.

Well, the yarn was pretty good, right?

Because I was able to get really, really

gentle slope.

So I was able to figure out exactly where

I wanted to go,

it did create a lot of pigment,

it did put a lot of color at the

end of my lines.

But in general, I had the most control

with this.

So if I was thinking if I wanted to

explore lines, drawing or painting lines,

and I almost had draw there, because

really painting is drying.

But with paint, right?

If you think about it, it's just a

different different tools.

So rather than a pencil, maybe you're

using a brush.

But there's no reason why you couldn't use

a brush in some charcoal or some graphite,

which is the graphite is stuff that these

that are the lead in the pencil.

And there's no reason why you couldn't add

water to a pencil drawing.

So a lot of these techniques, you're doing

the same, the same thing...

there's some things really, you can only

do with paint, the material paint,

and there are certain things you can only

do when you have like a marker, or even

just a pencil.

But in general, you can use the techniques

and ideas and things that you learn as

you're trying both when you're doing

painting or drawing.

So I'm going to paint with my yarn, a line

that I could draw.

And so I'm going to draw

a circle.

There we go. Right?

And so I did that with yarn and paint.

But I could have done that with a marker.

Right?

Let's just keep going.

Let's make a face out of this

Happy face?

Here I go with some smaller eyes.

And so because I know from trying before,

how controlled my curves are going to be,

I can kind of expect it when

I try my picture.

What else does this character need?

Maybe some years and then maybe some hair,

it'd be a really big-

Oh! It's didn't stay all the way this

time.

I still have a lot of pigment in this

yarn.

It's still a lot of color.

I can even make some details in the air.

Oh, I have a little bit less water.

So now it's starting to be a little bit

harder to control.

All right, so I'm going to add a little

bit of water.

Just like when you're painting.

You don't want to-

I don't want to totally dunk your brush.

I mean you can you can try it out right?

This is the this is the time to try it.

How much water do you actually need?

I'm gonna add some bangs.

Oh yeah. And you know what?

I think I'm going to try and color it in

as we go.

So I'm trying to use the side

of the yarn now

more of it.

Now that I've got a bit more water and not

only quite as much color,

still a lot of color.

And so instead of just using the

top of the yarn,

I'm using the side of the yarn.

I'm trying really hard

not to touch the

end of my yarn so that the yarn itself

still has a lot of wiggle room,

Oh! I'm spraying water all over.

Because what I could do is I could try and

bring it right down to that I was

holding the yarn, but really,

that's more my finger.

That's drawing at that point, right?

I really want the yarn to be able to go,

wherever it goes.

Oh, this character is missing a what?

That's right.

Here I go - give it some nostrils, so that

it can smell

...the little part of the lip where it

comes up.

Maybe they're smiling,

maybe some dark dots in the center.

Oh, so that's something

I didn't even name.

So using the end of it like a dot so I can

control the size

of how much I'm putting down.

You know what? I'm going to add some

freckles, because worth trying right

there.

There we go.

So I painted this drawing with this piece

of yarn, because I knew how much control

I would have

with this big piece of yarn

because I tried it on my technique

page before

so I knew what I could expect.

Okay, I'm gonna put this over to the side,

let it dry a little bit.

So that was using string as to paint

lines.

But what about-

what about string as something to tie,

Right? That we use to tie things.

If you ever used-

actually, if you've ever tied your shoes,

right?

You tie your shoes closed.

If you've ever had a bundle of sticks, or

a bunch of cloth, or if you ever-

if you've ever gone camping where you have

to tie up

your sleeping bag or your memory foam

underneath your sleeping bag,

lots of reasons why we would use string to

tie things-

if you have been learning how to do things

in the kitchen, you might have seen

somebody use butchers twine to tie up meat

or vegetables.

Before you put spices in soup,

sometimes people will tie up spices.

And so there's lots of lots of reasons to

use string to tie.

But what if we wanted to tie something to

be able to paint with it.

And so I was thinking, I've got a whole

bunch of old,

older pieces of stickie

from previous-

from previous sessions.

Is that another one? [paper rustles]

Yes, there we go - over there as well.

And so I thought, what we could do is

we could just tie up some objects

that we find and then use the string to

paint with them.

This is just an idea that I had.

So I've got all these pieces here.

And I'm going to use my string

to tie it up.

Make my own brush.

And a totally unique brush.

So maybe somebody else is also tying-

tying up paper and they have a similar

idea to us.

But the paper that they tie up,

that is ripped in the way that

they ripped it

is going to be different

from the way I ripped it

and the way you ripped it, right?

So even if we all had this idea to use

that paper, it's still going to be

different.

And you can see I'm still using the string

up here at the top.

And so just like my yarn where I said that

I could use my finger and I could actually

hold on to the yarn,

I basically just be using my finger

if I painted with my finger

right behind it.

And so I wanted to leave a whole bunch of

yarn up here, that would kind of move

around and not be exactly directed by my

finger

it'd be the yarn that would kind of decide

where the line would go.

Same thing with this.

So while I've used the string to tie off

the paper, I've still left some string

here so that the string gets to decide

what's going to happen.

Okay, so before I use water,

I think I'm just going to take the paper

and I'm going to put some paint on it.

I think I'm going to use two different

colors this time.

I'm gonna use the red and the blue.

Okay, so you can see I've got a bit of

paint on my dry paper,

some wet paint on my dry paper

and let's see, let's see what happens.

So I'm kind of getting these random marks,

I'm getting some lines, I'm getting some

dots can't really decide, I can't really

tell how much is going to happen-

when-

I go back and forth.

Oh, I've got a little bit more blue this

time.

Well, if I go really wild all over the

page, have a dance party with my paper.

So those kind of freckle marks, okay, and

move this aside,

I'm going to bring back the freckles that

I did before.

What do you notice?

What do you notice it's different between

when I used the dry paper with the paint,

versus the floss that I got wet?

And also the backgrounds?

So I already had some wet paint on my

page, when I added my wet floss.

This was a dry page that I use wet paint

with dry paper on top of.

So you can see I still have the freckles

Excuse me,

I still have the freckles, but they're not

the same.

This is a bit more energy

you can see these kind of lighter freckles

behind.

Whereas this has

doesn't really have any lighter freckles

where the paint hit it,

that's where it was,

there wasn't a lot of extra extra marks.

This feels more like fireworks or

something exploding or just falling down

or sparkles.

Whereas this feels more like freckles or

maybe chickenpox or maybe some dirt

splattered on the side of something.

And so even though we could both describe

both of these as splatter, I use different

techniques to get them.

And they still look

a little bit different,

just a little bit more bold, a little bit

more washed out.

And so exploring all of these things to be

able to figure out the different ways

to accomplish this

is going to lead you to have this toolkit

of how to create things when you want a

certain look.

Okay, so before I said I was gonna leave

these as as just dry paper.

This is-

Oh no, it's not gonna

come outyet.

Now I'm going to get the paper

a littlewet.

See what happens.

So I've got a bit of paint on here.

So before I even adds more paint, I'm just

going to see what happens when I add water

to the page.

Not much.

Not super interesting, kind of just smears

a whole bunch of the water on, it collects

on the side of the paper.

I think I liked it better when it was dry.

And I couldn't really guess what was going

to happen.

Okay, I'm going to add some more paint to

this again.

Get more water on my page now, so it's

going to collect a bit more.

Oh, and so now it's getting

really clumpy here.

Let's see what happens.

Oh, I want to hold it by the string too-

let's get this...

I was forgetting to use a string?

Well, no, I don't really like it with the

water. I think it was way more interesting

when I was doing the dry paper and see if

I could spread this out a little bit and

see if I can get more pieces of paper to

touch the page again.

And I ripped that - that's ok.

Let's try it again.

Nope.

So what I learned was, if I was going to

tie off a bunch of paper, I think I would

want the paper to stay dry and the paint

to be wet so that I could get that really

cool effect.

But yeah, the smearing of the paper kind

of disappointing, not something that I

would do again.

Cool, but I wouldn't have known that if I

hadn't tried it.

Okay, so I'm going to put that

to the side.

So I was tying something else with the

string to make our own new brush.

Kind of tying and finding.

Okay.

So what about

what about a string, where we fold the

paper?

Have you ever done that before?

So I'm going to get some some water,

water on my-

water on my string.

And I gonna get a bunch of paint.

nd if you had paint in like-

a cup or a bucket and it was like

acrylic paint

where you had a whole bunch of paint,

you could just dip it.

Because I have watercolor I'm kind of

patting my fingers down.

You can also use another brush.

If you had a paintbrush,

you could put the

string in there

if you wanted to keep

your fingers really clean.

And then you could use the brush to help

you get a whole bunch of paint on the on

the string.

But I didn't bring a brush over this week.

I just wanted to use my my fingers and the

string.

Okay. So-

Oh, cool. I got a-

I got a drip here.

So I'm going to do is I'm going to use the

string to draw a few things on the page.

kind of abstract.

However I feel

wherever the string wants to go,

oh, cool...

whatever lines that wants to make,

and then I'm gonna gradually

drop the string onto the page.

There we go.

Okay, what now I'm going to do,

I'm going to fold the paper in half

on top of the string

that has paint on it, right?

[Papers rubbing/smearing sounds]

And there we go, I was able to get this

kind of cool mirror vision

and see how it has the two dots here

and the swirl here,

it's the same.

So if I hadn't drawn beforehand,

if I had just put the string on the page -

here I'm going to add a bit more,

I think I'm gonna

add a different color

this time, I think I'm gonna

add some pink.

If I hadn't just drawn it, and I just put

the string down on the page, which I'm

going to do this time, I wouldn't have

these extra lines,

but I like it,

I like it that it's not exactly perfect.

It's kind of like a face,

you know how your,

your eyes aren't exactly equal on your

face,

it's kind of the same thing

is that-

it's not perfectly symmetrical.

It's not exactly the same.

Okay, so I've had a bunch of pink to my

string.

And this time, I'm just going to place it

on the page,

I'm going to draw anything extra, I want

to come over here, there we go. Same as

before, fold it over.

And then...

Cool.

There we go. can see the pink line here,

where it kind of smeared out here, same on

this side, smeared out a little bit over

here we have two little dots came down.

really like this.

And if I was going to be using

this technique-

I think this would be really

really beautiful

to do for some flowers.

I think I'm going to try that with you

right now

I'm going to put this over to the side.

So with this new technique that we've

learned by using the string and the fold,

what I'm going to do

is I'm going to take another

piece of paper

has paper on the other side,

or it has stuff on the other side,

that's fine.

I think I had a second piece.

Yeah, here we go.

I'm gonna cut it off so there are two.

And what I'm going to do is

I'm going to get some green.

Oh or brown?

You can really use any color.

Really get a lot of paint

on my string.

And you could try this while you're

exploring with short pieces of string, or

with long pieces of string.

You could use multiple kinds of string

before you fold it.

Well, I could do that too.

Maybe I will do that.

Okay, so I'm going to place this like

that.

Well, it's scraped a little bit, but

that's alright.

And then I'm gonna use my big yarn

to get a little bit of the blue

out of there.

But if there's a little bit of blue,

that's fine,

there's there's blue in flowers

all the time.

And then I'm gonna grab a bit more of the

green, I have two different greens in my

paint palette.

So I'm going to see if I can get a second

kind of green with my yarn here.

Okay, same as over here, only I'm going to

squish it over there.

There we go.

Okay.

And I'm going to fold the page in half.

So this yarn is really, really wet.

And it ripped the page a little bit.

That's okay, I like it.

Oh, cool.

Okay, so I got the line here on both I

think I'm going to do this again.

But just with this one-

I'm not gonna add some more,

I want to see how much paint stayed on the

page just by going like that.

And that's okay, that my page ripped,

right?

We're just trying things out.

You could use different kinds of paper to

see what would be easier.

This paper that I'm using right now is

just printer paper and it's usually harder

when you paint with it.

You can actually find a paper that is good

for paint,

that holds paint,

that doesn't doesn't rip up quite as much.

I'm going to try and

do it one more time.

Because I can still see a

bunch of the green.

And I really like this vine effect that I

have going on.

Down,

unfold again.

Well, yeah, there's lots of lots and lots

of pigment in that

in that a piece of string.

Okay, so now what I want to do,

so I already had a bit of pink

paint on the string-

gonna add just a little bit more.

So just like I did before, only this time,

instead of just keeping it on one side of

the page, I'm gonna bring it

over here aswell.

Just to see what happens, there we go.

Okay, press it in half.

Oh, lots of water on this one.

But cool do you see how it looks like

do you see how it looks like

there's like this flowers up at the top

here?

I didn't have to keep it

all on one side

of the page,

I think I want

some flowers,

oh I think I want a little bit of red,

I'm not going to add too much water

because this had

a lot of water this time

and add some red to my string.

And I'm going to put

some flowers over here.

Oh, and it moved around a little bit.

So same as before,

I'm going to have some

marks on this side that

weren't on the side.

And I'm gonna bring it up over here

because I wanted to red for

these flowers.

There we go.

There we go.

And you could take some markers now and

you could draw on top of that

you could keep painting with a brush,

or you could just leave it like this.

You could you could cut one side

and then one side, you could throw out.

If you were doing it and you didn't like

the rips,

you could throw out the rip side and just

use that as a background.

Sorry, as the side for your final picture.

Remember, this is just for practicing.

We're just learning-

but if you wanted to do

a final piece,

let's say you wanted to do

a card for somebody,

you wanted to have

some pretty flowers on

the front,

you could totally do this as a card,

cut this and then paste this

in the front of card and then you'd have

some pretty flowers there.

Cool.

So that was using string to fold, I want

to do string one more time.

This time, I'm going to add a chance

element to it.

Still have more of my recycled paper.

So without even adding anything on top of

it, I'm just going to put some of these

pieces in here.

By chance, I mean I'm not-

for the other one, I placed them where I

wanted them to go.

And even though I wasn't 100% sure, when I

folded them how much water

was going to happen-

I kind of knew where

they were going to go

on the page.

This time, I'm going to

fold it in half again.

I placed the string so I kind of decided

where that was-

where the string was

going to go and then

press it down.

So I got the lines again.

But now what I'm going to do is-

without without opening it, I'm just going

to pull the string

to see what happens.

Here we go.

Check it out.

I still have this kind of flower

feel to it-

do you see where it's smeared along the

page?

And so I couldn't have decided to do

exactly that-

the string had to make that decision.

Here, I'm gonna add a bit of water to

this-

maybe I'll add a

little bit of paint again.

Okay, so we're going to do this again,

only we're going to have more paint and

more water.

I'm gonna place it.

This is a slightly different color green.

So maybe we'll be able to see it?

I'm gonna place it like this, put it in

the spots that didn't really have as much

paint - there.

And I'm gonna fold the page again.

Press it down, so we've got that nice

clean line so we know where we placed it.

And then same as before, pull it.

All right, what's going to happen?

Cool.

Cool.

You know what? I'm going to bring this

back into my other my flower picture.

Kind of kind of really liked that smear.

Okay, it got a bit more paint on my string

again.

Just some green

green over here.

Bring it down. Bring it up - there we go.

Oh, there's a lot of water on it, so I'm

probably going to have something really

messy like before.

But remember

I got it over the edge of the

of the paper so I have something

to pull on.

Press it down so that I got my nice, cool,

green line and pull.

What's gonna happen?

Oh, yeah, so I have these kind of smear

lines over here.

I think this one was too wet, but it still

works, right, it still looks kind of

green, I think I would let this all dry.

And then I do another hard line over here.

And I can make those decisions now as I'm,

as I'm going along.

Cool. Okay, so that was using string, and

a fold technique, and then string with

chance.

Alright, let's try.

Let's try one-

one last thing, using using paint

and string.

And that's just with me,

you can keep going because there-

I've only come up with four or five

different things that you can try.

But I know that your string is going to be

different.

And there probably plenty of other things

that you can be,

you can come up with.

And so before, what we were doing was we

were painting with string.

But the last thing that I want to try

before we wrap up this week is painting ON

string.

And for that, I am going to need a brush.

You don't have to have a brush,

I didn't put that in with

my original tools.

And so that's fine.

You could use a rag, you can use your

fingers, you could use

another piece of string.

But on my background here,

actually no, I will take another

piece of paper,

what I wanted to do was

I wanted to take some of the string that

we've used so far, put it on the page

and have it influence painting.

And so there's a couple of different ways

we could we could do that, we could just

make it as a line. Right?

Okay, that's where-

those are the borders,

those are the lines now of where the paint

is going to go.

And I picked a really, really big brush,

because I didn't want to have a lot of

control, I just wanted to see

what would happen.

But you can use whatever size or brush, I

said you could use a rag,

so a piece of material to paint

those areas.

If you're using safe paint, that's okay to

touch like me, I've got this watercolor

paint or you're using some finger paint,

that's okay to get

to get dirty, then that's fine.

But you could just use the string as the

outline.

And just paint in the areas water.

There we go, just paint in the area that

the string defines.

The string moves, so be it

that means you got more stuff to paint.

Okay, so now we've got this kind of the

dark line.

And it's lighter line,

I kind of like that it doesn't go right to

the edge,

you could push it down so that you've got

exactly no white showing.

Right? there you go.

So it looks like I didn't go over the

lines at all.

But I kind of like it when it looks a

little bit,

a little bit raw as if, as if I didn't

color

or maybe I colored over the lines in a

couple of different places.

I like that, I feel feel like that's got a

more friendly feel to it.

But maybe that's not the look

of going for-

you can try it out.

I also said-

Oh, and remember how I was talking about

rags before-

when you're painting with rags.

Or having material with you

that's really great.

I'm just going to use a piece of an extra

piece of paper that I have here.

But you don't always have to use water to

clean your brush,

you can take a piece of material and just

pull some of the water

and some of the paint off of the brush.

And that keeps your water clean for

longer.

You don't have to always

push your brush back into the water.

I'm gonna ut that over to the side, I'll

use that again-

...a little bit and I have green.

That method of using a rag

is a great way of keeping paint

out of the water

when you're pouring it down

the sink as well.

And so what you're doing is

is you can either throw out an old rag

with the dry paint in it

or you can use it again over and over

again when the rag dries out.

Just keep pulling paint off your brush.

And so I said before

I can, oh!

I'm gonna go right off the page

because I know that I've got my clean

background in the background or the clean

paper.

So I'm not going to go into my table.

And same as before, I've got that outline

that dark outline of my string.

That's- that's there.

But what happens if I just paint on top

of my string?

Get my paper again, get some of that off.

Grab some blue this time.

All right, we're gonna paint

on top of string.

So this string had some paint

already in it.

So I got this cool red line

when I pushed down

my paintbrush on it.

Same with the green over there.

But if these had been clean lines, do you

see the white or clean strings?

Do you see the white where where I painted

over top of it, then they become blocks,

and then they block the space.

And so you could use the string to make a

base drawing.

And here were my scissors of it so much

paper, now I tried so many

different things.

Okay, I'm going to take a couple of

smaller pieces string.

And then I'll put that down there.

Put that they put that there, I'm just

coming up with an abstract shape doesn't

really look like anything figurative, it

doesn't have a form to it, whatever I

wanted to put down.

And now I'm gonna pick pink. Same thing as

before using my paper or my rag to push

some of that paid off.

And here we go.

You could also glue down the string, if

you had like a light blue string also

moves around.

That's cool. Right,

and so now it's blocking off these

different spaces.

To do this again, I'm going to do, I'm

going to do one, now I'm going to do two

again, like that.

And then I could take my other my string

that I had painted and pretend like this

was a painted line, bring that into my

drawing, or into my painting, I could

glue, glue these pieces of string.

I could also glue these down.

So they stick on the page. And then I

could just paint over the glued lines, and

then they would have texture. They just be

a part of the painting.

Kind of pretending right now because I

don't have any glue.

And I don't really want to keep this but

if you were making something for keeps

there, the water makes the makes the

strings stick to the page.

There you go. Right

and so the string could become a part of

your painting, you let that dry and then

you just paint around the

pieces of string.

These are just a few different ways that

you can practice painting with or on

string that we tried today, we tried the

painting on string. We tried string

and chance.

We tried string and folding. Here's

another one of my folding examples.

We tried tying paper or tying different

objects together with string.

Then we tried, we tried string as a mark

making tool.

So for an actual drawing
[outro music begins].

And then we explored a whole bunch of

different techniques using different kinds

of string.

So we tried a whole bunch of different

things this week.

But if you tried something else that I

didn't try, I would love to hear from you.

You can always comment with our live

making sessions on Saturdays.

Or you could just let us know on any of

our social media what

you're making at home.

Thanks so much for joining me this week,

I had a blast.

I'm gonna leave my video

running a little bit

like I do all the time

so that I can clean up

because that's

an important part of Explores,

is that we always respect

our space and our tools

by cleaning up at

the end of the session.

And I can't wait to

explore with you again

for week three of string

next Saturday.

See you soon. Bye for now.

[Captions by Kay Slater, 2021]