The Best Art Techniques of 2026

Today we are going to look at five of the best techniques I've tried this year. They are all super fun things you can try yourself at home and I'm not going to include the basics you've already tried dozens of times like glue gun or an acrylic swipe. So get comfortable and get creative. Number one UV resin. This was a new one for me this year. Let's see how I used it to bring a beautiful tulip piece to a new level. And I am going to transfer it on the canvas and yes it's going to be this way but I don't mind at all. I am using a blunt edge and pressing every section. You know it's so different when I do it on the mat. I kind of have to get used to canvas again. Perfect. Now if I can somehow make a thinner line in the middle I'll be pleased with myself. If I hold it higher I can see better. Wow I made this design pretty complex. Thank you Mr Hockney. Last week I took my classes to National Portrait Gallery and we saw many interesting portraits but I came across this quite an unusual one by David Hockney. I really love the bunch of tulips. It doesn't look identical to his but well bunch of tulips. That was my inspiration. What do I want to see where? It's going to be strange because I'm going to do a cover everything. The darkest I want to see somewhere here mainly. Right I am going to move it a little bit and just that's a lot of green. You see I love this. I think there's too much paint here. I think all that is too much wood. Okay I'm going to drip it down which is very strange. I've never done it like this but I wanted to preserve this really lovely section. Yes yes yes. All edges are nice. What I'm going to do now of course I am collecting the paint. I hate wasting it and also I am going to use it for something else. Very pretty light green. Maybe it's my amazing hair dryer but the paintings are always dry. The very next day it's not even 24 hours. Why am I using white? Because I'm going to paint the flowers red. Red and yellow. I don't know how much yellow but let me start and apply yellow to all the edges. I am adding some feathery marks here. Now guys I am super super excited. I'm going to try something out for the first time. I know it's nothing new to some of you but for me this is I'm hoping life-changing. I've got a box from Let's Resin. They sent me this and I am going to try the UV resin first time ever in my life and you are going to watch me try it. That's a piece of the two things I received from them. So here we've got all in one. Everything you might need. That's the UV resin. Two of them. Okay you see because I have never done it it's not a hardener and resin. I'll have to look for some instructions. No mixing. Oh great! You know how I like adding resin to my pieces. So for example I made this flower and I thought oh it's quite beautifully painted. I really like the background. I poured the resin and I'm going to show you what happened the following day. I hope you can see that. Have a look. This is like unbelievable. You see that? I think it's called blushing or I don't know. I can't put it in my shop. I can't give it to anybody. I'm just obsessed. Okay finally time to apply resin. I honestly love the fact that I don't have to mix anything. I use the bottle and that's it. How cool is that? I did check if all my areas were enclosed. Yes. Spread it evenly. I'm going to do at least two flowers at a time. I could do probably three. To start with I am going to do this one and that one. I genuinely wanted to test the product and see if it's going to be useful for my purposes. I need to block some of the sections here. I am using blue tuck. I am using a torch to remove bubbles. There weren't actually many. Okay time for the lamp. Two clicks for three minutes. Let's see the result. That's so nice. Number two. I call this one the forbidden art technique because it's so wacky. I can't even believe it worked. Let's turn a balloon into a wonderful cherry sculpture. Last week I made half an apple on the painting and it was a fun sculpture with aluminium foil, kitchen paper towel. So I thought the level of the challenge is getting a bit higher because I want to make the whole fruit. And why am I doing fruit? I'll tell you what the inspiration was. So with my classes at school we've been discussing sculptures by class Oldenburg and they were really fascinated by this one. It's called the spoon bridge and the cherry. I think it's around 15 meters long. It's difficult to measure. It's 9 by 15. I'm just going to make a cherry sculpture based on this one. I came across a tutorial. I do hope that this lady was the original inventor of the technique. Her name is Liliana Hamm. If there's someone who did it earlier forgive me but I think that she was the first person who made a big sculpture of an apple out of a balloon. So I found an old balloon. You can see it's old but why am I using an old balloon? Because it's a big one. Big and soft. So forgive me. I'm not going to destroy it in the process. Let's catch it from this side. Oh no I made a hole. I did it but I made a hole in my balloon so I need another one. Oh you can see the hole. We've got this. Pushing it through. That's why it can't be too tight otherwise it won't work and then I'm going to push it to the other side and I'm going to grab it here on this side. You see that? I think it's perfect. That will give us a really nice indent. Okay. I didn't blow this one so much. It's quite soft. All right. Yeah. I've got PVA mixed with water. I could use regular newspaper but I am using hand towel. I could also use bigger pieces but I do like making them rather small. My PVA glue and then a brush that I don't care too much about. Of course we'll be adding quite a few layers and maybe one of them just to make it a bit more solid. I might use newspaper on one of them. It doesn't have to be absolutely smooth because we're going to be using some paste on top so don't you worry if we've got some creases and uneven bits. That's absolutely fine. I had some leftover putty with a bit of PVA added but not much. A very small amount of PVA so it's not really in liquid form. So this is going to be my first layer. Very tempted to put my maybe gloves on and spread it with my fingers. Time to make the stem. This is solid. It's not sanded yet so it's quite rough. Very well positioned. Doesn't move. I was thinking and thinking how to make a stem and I concluded that probably wire would be the best idea first and then I'm going to wrap it up and make it look like a like a real stem. What do you think? Now I'm going to wrap it up with the masking tape very tightly all along. What do you think? Not too bad for the very first layer of paste. Now I'm going to spread some water over. I'm going to be using crimson and scarlet as a base layer and then I work into it but I do want to cover everything with one colour first. It's fine for the base. So altogether this is roughly the colour I want to see but I'll be adding of course highlights and shadows and check if it fits. Almost. Oh my goodness it's just perfect size. The places that I want really dark I am going to add some phthalo blue to my crimson and that's the colour I'm going to apply here. Number three. Stencils. This seems like such an easy technique because it is but you can create unimaginable texture and beauty with this one. Let me show you how. It's very hot in London. The first day we've got 30 degrees. I somehow managed to catch a cold. I don't know. So forgive me the occasional sniff. I'll try my best not to sniff all too much. Now I'll tell you what I'm planning. This is dry by the way. I've been planning on some botanical floral bunch of plants painting. You know I always say that I actually I don't have time for watching other people's tutorials online at all. I don't watch them. However something popped up on my feed. I was so intrigued and I had to watch it. I watched the tutorial and the artist's name is Dee Gillette Cox. I just fell in love. I fell in love with her techniques because you know I even noticed she's got very similar stencils to what I have. I bought these a couple of months ago but I absolutely hated the edges. I wouldn't be surprised if the artist I mentioned had the same ones. They look they look very very similar so maybe it's from the same source. I bought mine on Timo of all places and what's been brewing in my mind I actually saw her making such a good use of it. I absolutely recommend her channel so I'm going to link it. What I am going to do now I'm going to look first of all what plants I want to use and then yeah let's proceed and I was just thinking what colors I put them here. I'm going to look through these first. Cute and little. I've realized that I actually don't have stencils of some big flowers at all so there's something I'll have to purchase. I do have some really nice big blades of grass which might be useful. Okay that's fine. We should have spread them with my wet tissue. If I spread them there'll be hardly anything seen. See I picked colors that I don't mind intermixing. Very quickly I am going to apply this in the background. I can do this one as well. Let's do this. Let's see. Let's see if it's visible. Oh yeah it's very visible. Oh lovely. Okay nice. I've lost some of the leaves so I can basically recreate them. Wow that's really cool. I'm using the first thing I found on my table. Now I'm going to make an arrangement. Now the only problem is that they are kind of slightly moving. So what? Oh this is completely dried. It's beautiful. What shall I do? I know it's very strange. I'm not going to glue it down. I'm going to just very gently put some gasoline on so it doesn't fly away. Why? Because I can clean it off later. Oh you see. Ta-da. It doesn't move. I'm a genius. Sometimes I'm like what? I know this is completely unconventional. Nobody does such stupid things but I am creating this negative stance all the way. So badly wanted. I'm going out with this and peachy rose and also maybe I'll use some of that somewhere here. Just I'm covering this area. I only want to spray the top. I'm back. If you're wondering why on earth it's peachy pink it's because this is a new bottle. It just doesn't work. The nozzle doesn't work. Look at my fingers. I'm so disappointed. Anyway let's see what we have. Oh this is glorious. This is gorgeous. Nothing here. Some leaves there. Oh wow. Oh nice. Oh a very faint one. Beautiful. Guys come on. Tell me this is not gorgeous. Oh look at this. I'm reusing the big stencil that I used yesterday. Anxious here. So I am adding a little bit of this darker color here. Oh that's it. I'll take this off. Oh yeah. I don't think I will need a big one anymore. And then I'm going to apply a few of the little ones because now I can maneuver. All right. I'm going to spread it between the leaves. Oops. You know basically anywhere I want. Touching gently because I'm a bit worried. I don't need so much. I've got tons. I'm a bit hesitant to use any more. Definitely liking the pink here. I'm trying to shift some colors and at the same time unify the rest. By the way you can find all of the full videos linked in the description of all pinned comment below the video. Number four. This piece is a combination of plastic stencils and a handmade giant Frisket stencil and resulted in maybe my most beautiful lady ever. Let's see how I did it. What if I make a different lady today but based on my design. So I've got these here. I keep all my designs and if you're wondering where to find them I do share them with my Patreons. So that's the place you can find them. These are some of my ladies here. I started making the ladies on 30 by 30 canvas so maybe I'll go with this. I have at least 10 of these. I think I like her the most and I found something else. I might utilize the hair. I was going to sketch the outline but then I thought I probably don't want to see plain canvas. So let me start with the color for the background first. We've got naples yellow and some white. Can't go wrong with this. It's very light. Those first stencils were made out of tape. I had some leftover Frisket paper so I cut it out in the shape of a canvas and now I am planning my lady. If I change anything here she's going to look completely different. So I don't need her anymore. That's all I need. Look, that's it. I'm cutting the stencil out very carefully. I need the negative stencil not the positive one but of course I'm going to keep this. So this is all, as you can see, the outer layer is stuck. Imagine the sun shining on her. I used gold as well for the shimmer. It's so nice when you see gold shimmering. Let's do that. I don't know if I wanted so much yellow. No. Oh well. Oh well. Okay now we've got this and a bit of a different blue. Of course we're getting some green. I knew that would happen here. This is a very thick paint so I need to touch it with some water. It's fun applying paint like this. How should I call them? Oh the paint is getting really dry. I should have been a bit faster with the paint. This cloth is covered with paint and that's fine because I'm spreading the paint over the leaves that I'm making. I could add some more color here if I really wanted. You are going to be very happy. I'm not going to do 3D design here. I'm going to do something much simpler. I went for a walk. I found some nice plants. Now I'm going to think of a nice composition. I don't have a big image so I may not use all of these. I have much more. You see, I'm in serious business. So let me go lower with these. This is plenty. I couldn't think of a better idea. You're probably going to be surprised. Look what I have. I've got a thread. Maybe I am going to do this. I thought it was a good idea. Now I'm not sure. I need a hand. Can somebody hold it for me, please? I think the idea is genius. The execution was terrible. So I taped one end of the thread here and now, oh yeah, now it's easy. This is, yeah, not bad, not bad. I'm shaking in here for two minutes and I'm going out. I'm back. You know I can get overly enthusiastic, so apologies in advance. Like a kiddo. Okay, which ones first? Let's get rid of those. You see, they are not seen here. So the nice turquoises should be showing. Let's start with these. Okay, nice. This should be really nice, this one. Oh, how pretty. Now what did I do? I sprayed a little bit of brown at the bottom here, but a small amount, and then I went into the blue and then the top is with a little bit of this cream beige. Not too much, but that's good. I didn't want such a huge blob of yellow, but that's just enough with a bit of light. I think that's nice. A bit here, there. These, oh, they're so delicate. Hey, nice. Oh, I wanted this part darker. That's her face here. Goodness me. And we've got some patterns. I'm very happy with these. I do like this very misty yellow here, I must say. I want to create a lilac. It's super easy if you want to use only one section. Cover the other ones. Let's make the bottom part a bit darker. Oh, I love this. Okay, will I be satisfied with this? I don't know. Let's see. Yeah, I think the flowers deserve some type of stem. I don't want to make it very obvious. Okay, I don't want to go forever. That's it. Now we'll see the leakage, and I'll fix the edges if they are really messy. This is so satisfying. Oh, that's so nice. That's so good. Wow. Number five. Lastly, this one I have used in the past, but never to this scale. How do you make a poppy paste using a gigantic acrylic skin? Let me show you. As you can see, let me show you. I try to protect my surroundings, especially my poor radiator. Here comes the Luzerne Crimson. Now, how big do I want the flower? Not really sure. A smaller amount of gold in the middle would be enough. I never made it this way, so a small amount of black. If this flower was much smaller, I could use a straw, and I know it will probably work. Hair dryer. By the way, there is no silicone anywhere. I'm really worried if I will be able to control the flow of the air the way I want. Okay, guys, this is working better than I expected. Oh, my goodness. I love the cells. No, not a drop of silicone. Let me just rethink this one. I want to enlarge this one, but I don't know if this is a good idea or not. I am in love. That's it. I am in love. Officially, I'm in love. This is so pretty. Sorry, I am so happy. Yeah, somebody told me off. You're such a kid. Yes, I am. I'm sorry. Look what I've got. It does feel like fabric. Now, me, being a notorious peeler. I'm a peeling enthusiast. Yes. Oh, there's something incredibly relaxing here. Good thickness. Should I put some music on? Of course, it looks dark and brown. It's going to be very red on white. Now I'm adding some red splatter to make it more interesting, and I think I'm going to also add some gold splatter. I wasn't sure what to do with the background, but I couldn't really decide in the end. Sometimes I get stuck halfway through the process, and I'm not sure what I want to see. I think that we need some more highlights, so I am using crimson, orange, and white. That's what I'm going to be utilizing now. Mod Podge can be used as varnish as well and as glue. I'm starting with the smallest one because it's the easiest. I believe maybe it's even the thickest. I'm really checking the edges now. It is going to be coming off the canvas, and that's what I like. And this section, of course, black beads. Yes. Okay, so I'll keep producing because I want quite a lot around my mid-center. Well, there we are. Please let me know in the comments which of these is your favorite and which one you would like to see me use again. Just a reminder that you can find all of the full videos linked in the description or pinned comment below the video. Also, don't forget to check out my Patreon for extended versions of my tutorials. And if you want to own any one of my original artworks, you can head over to my website abcreativeofficial.com. Thank you so much for watching and see you next week. Bye-bye.