 All right, hey guys. So I wanted, I've been asked a lot of questions about this journal and I know we've at this point shown it briefly before and we've talked about it, but I haven't shown you how I actually do a page and what my process is, which I'm going to now. This is my color inspiration journal. And the last time I talked about it, I shared the pages that were in here that I'd found in some art and other magazines and then this is the one that started it. I was inspired by this image, the color and composition of this image to create sort of a color mood board, if you will, on inspiration dashboard of the original image that inspired it and then the colors of paint that I was able to grab from the image, this stamp here at the bottom, which is a mixture of all of these colors along with notations about where the image came from and the different paint brands and their colors that I used. Although this is done in acrylic, you could definitely use this as just a color inspiration landing point to find out or mix these colors in your watercolor palette, your gouache palette, whatever medium you're using. You could go find your olive green pen and still be inspired by the same page. And it is funny, I get asked about this all the time. So this is literally the leftover paint from doing the swatches and then I dip this piece of cardboard in it. This is actually my second piece because I wore out the first one and this is all that's left of the first one. So it's just a piece of cardboard packaging that I then dip in the paint and get well coated with the paint and then stamp. So I can see what the colors look like mixed together besides just swatches this way. So we are going to work on a page. It started out with these magazine images and then I realized in the last video where I talked about this that I had all these other inspiration notebooks I showed in another video. I'll try to figure out which video it is and link it in the description below in case you haven't seen it. Anyway, I talked in that video about maybe taking those notebooks apart because I really liked this format better and those notebooks were very old and past it. I did that except for the people one because the people one, I really, that notebook I'll keep adding to, it's a good reference book, personal reference book for me when I am doing something with the human form or faces in it. I collect images out of magazines and I paste them in the people book and that way I have a good reference for positions of head and facial features and body and hands and feet and all that sort of stuff. So the people one I kept, everything else got taken apart. I took the images that I loved from those books and I put them in here, starting here and I put them in groupings. I usually start out being inspired by one photo and sometimes like in the beginning it's still gonna just be one photo but sometimes it's gonna be a collection of photos that I think play well together and together give me interesting inspiration for composition and shape and movement as well as color. So these are the new ones that I've been doing and a lot of these images I've had a long time, if it says random magazine photos, it's because I've had it so long I don't remember where it came from. So I'm like this one I took, I don't remember exactly where I took but I took and so I love this one. And a lot of them are very much departures for me in color because I'm used to traditionally doing something that's more like this. So this color palette that would be a challenge for me but that's why I like doing this because I can flip to this with intention and okay just be inspired by these pages to create an interesting work of art. These images with these movements and the shapes and the textures and the images as well as the color palette inspired by these images. So that's what this is all about. So now we have this new page and I've got this new collection of images that I think I wanna see if we can work together on one page. So the first thing we're gonna do is grab some glue because that's important. Okay, which I didn't grab. So these are our collection of images. So they're all from, I think a house beautiful magazine that I picked up at the library and I found this one first and there was just something about the colors in this picture and the textures in this picture. Did I say picture? Picture. Colors in this picture and the textures in this picture that I was very attracted to. Then I found this one which goes, I don't know which way but it's like a piece of a photo like the corner of some architecture. And there was something about the colors and texture in that distressed stone or wood or whatever that is. And then I found this one is just gigantic bright pop of yellow. So I think that I wanna use all of these. So what I wanna do first is find out the important parts of this one for me to add to our book. I do also like the size of this because if I am traveling, say for instance, or teaching, this is a good size to take with me. Those other ones were a little big. So, but the space is limited. So I wanna find out which parts of the photo for me are important. I do think this dish not necessarily the hands but the dish is important. I usually don't think about it this much to be really honest with you. Grab some bigger scissors. And I'm going to whack off a piece. I don't usually bother getting the paper trimmer out at all, trim this one. This is just really, yes, the shapes are interesting and the fact that they're all yellow. Mostly it's just about the color. That doesn't mean I wanna lose the shape. So I think when I trim this one, I wanna keep some of the shapes by doing this because I think those shapes are inspiring. And I think I wanna do something like that. Now, if the little bits are interesting enough, I will save them to do collage work with or paperclip art or something like that, a tag. So I generally set them aside at least for a little bit but this, I like this. So my only question is, do I want these other? I don't really think I need them. Do I? I really like this bit. All right, so now we're gonna get to glue in. So you can use glue stick, you can use Elmer's glue, Taki glue, whatever you have, nothing fancy. Just glue your images down. In the old journals, they were taped in with scotch tape. So I mean, you could do that too. Scotch tape, washi tape. If you're gonna do washi tape or decorative tape, try to pick tapes from your collection that add to the color and inspiration of the images and the movement in the images, the texture in the images. Don't just add like hot pink washi tape to this. I don't think that will work very well. I love this yellow, which is so funny because I'm not normally that big a yellow or orange fan, but when you're painting, it is a must have color. When you're painting, you must have yellow and or orange. It just gives a nice pop. I do wish I knew which house beautiful magazine this is from and I might actually still have it in the garbage can, so I might need to go take a look to notate the month. I do try to write it down. In fact, one of the pages, there's a print of a piece of artwork from one of my teachers, Pauline Agnew. And it was part of a class I took with her and I took a piece of it and put it in here. I really am inspired by her work and the colors in that piece. Okay, so that's all well and good in there. We're gonna take these and put them over there. Let's find out what issue of that magazine that was. Right, it was still in the garbage can. Holy cow. So it was house beautiful November 2017. So then just make a note, right? And if it's a picture of a painting, like, let's see, this one, this was from Southwest Art Magazine May 2019, artist's name is Andrew Denman and it's called Stacked Bluebirds, I believe. So always make note, give credit where credit is due. All right, so we've got that now. We need to do our paint. So I was inspired by these collection of images to pull some certain colors. So I pulled a white, a buff, a gray. I pulled a fuchsia, a red, a yellow. And this one's called Coffee Latte. This one's called Light Cinnamon and this is a dark paint's gray. So we're gonna swatch all these on this adjacent page now. So what I do is pull a pallet over and start lightest to darkest and put out just a small drop of paint and then take the bottle and I'm gonna put it in front of me with the color name facing me. If you're gonna do this with watercolor paints, you probably want to, this is a Moleskine Cayet. I like this journal, I like the paper for this kind of thing. I like the weight of the paper. It's interesting for mixed media, but, but, but, but. If you're gonna do this kind of thing with it, you probably want to use, with watercolor, you probably want to use watercolor paper. It's a Coffee Latte color. Go with the yellow, which doesn't want to come out. There we go, and the red. Remember what I said, lightest to darkest, right? Is that fuchsia? Oh, sorry, yeah, fuchsia. I thought these two reds very much would be inspired by the flower petals here in the image and the color of the beets and the beets stems in the background. I'm pretty sure that's what those are. They're beets, which I'm not a big fan of in real life. I don't really like beets, but it makes an interesting image. And the paint's gray, which is a dark blue gray. More interesting than black. Okay, I'm gonna a small, flat brush and start with the white and paint some swatches. And I'm gonna take my small pad of Muji newsprint paper here and wipe my brush off in between colors on the pad. Hopefully as I'm putting the swatches on the paper, you can see by looking from the swatches to the images and see where I was inspired to pull that particular color. Look at that yellow. That is Dekowart Americana Cadmium Yellow, just FYI. Okay, now we are going to write our color, brand and name down. Now in the front of the book, I made some notations about what my different abbreviations for the brands mean, what brand that actually is, like when I write media, what is that? It's a Dina Wakeley media paint, okay? So you can make yourself a little key in the front if you use abbreviations like that. This doesn't have to be neat. It doesn't have to be, you know, typed or anything. Nobody's really gonna see this except you. This is for you. So just use your own handwriting. If it's messy, it's messy. If you spell something wrong, you spell something wrong. I think every time I write paints gray, I spell it a different way. So yeah, just FYI. I know I misspell it and my misspellings are not consistent. Belling is not my strong suit. It's G-R-E-Y. I keep spelling it G-R-A-Y. All right, then I'm not quite done yet. Where's our piece of cardboard? So I take my piece of cardboard and whatever paint is left over on the palette and I find a spot. Sometimes it's this side. Usually it's over here somewhere. Usually at the bottom, sometimes at the top. Push, push, push, push, push. There we go. So then I can take this and put this over here and then leftover paint. And now I have so many of these little pieces of paper. It's crazy, you know, but I have to send some to the design team or something. Maybe bundle some with some other stuff in Etsy to see if you guys want like a $5 hand-painted embellishment pack or something. But you see the interesting white paper that you can make. I do do a fair bit of pushing on the piece of cardboard, which is why they don't last forever, but I do have a bin full of these from moving last year and buying furniture, so. Okay, and then on the last one, what I do, because I really, really don't want to waste paint, is I do this and then rub and you get that. So then you just clean it off what's left here with a baby wipe, which I'm always sad to do because I always get something that's interesting. So when you are going through your magazines and your materials looking for collage items, if you see a picture you find interesting and maybe it's something that you know, I'll never use that in a collage, but wow, that's an interesting image. I love the colors of that. That's one that you should pull and cut out and save and put in a color inspiration journal. So that's all done and we're left with a few pieces of hand-painted collage pages, papers, sorry, and a new page in our collage inspiration journal. So I hope it gives you some ideas of what you can do to build your own personalized reference library, which is really what this is all about, something that will aid you in your creative endeavors and give you inspiration, especially when you get stuck and maybe you have all these reds and yellows and maybe some of the browns, but you're like stuck as to what else you can put with it. Maybe you didn't think of the gray and the buff and the pain's gray, or maybe you had everything but the yellow and then you're like, yellow, that's what I need, I need yellow. So this is just to give you some kind of an idea or inspiration for your artwork. I hope it helps. I know it helps me, I've already been using it and it's not even finished yet. So that's it for today. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe if you will. If you wanna follow me on social media and see what pages I come up with every day as I add to this journal or whenever, now it won't be every day now cause now I'm out of images, but when I add more images, if you'd like to see what I'm up to or see whatever other creative endeavors I come up to every day, you can follow me on social media and find all those links and the links on where you can support me and the free content here on YouTube and over in the art groups and Facebook by clicking on the link tree list of links in the description below. My happy mail address is down there, the link tree list of links is down there and a bunch of other stuff so check it out. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe and above all go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself cause you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.