 I think the reason as to why I create art and why I would love to continue creating art can be summed up in a lyric from one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals and written by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Sarah Bareilles. It is from the musical The Waitress and from the song What Baking Can Do and the lyric goes, tell them all my secrets but disguise them. And I think that just perfectly captures what I've been trying to do with my art the last couple of years and also what I would like to do with my art from today and into the future. In this video, I want to talk about my process for creating this painting right here that you were seeing on screen. I created this painting about two weeks ago so I'm finally finally posting it here on YouTube and sharing the process with you. But I also had this wooden panel which I primed with Gesso. I primed it like maybe three or four years ago. I think I was really optimistic thinking I was going to paint with it but then obviously I didn't and so it sat in my drawer for years. And to finally be able to use it for a painting, I think that's a pretty big achievement and the fact that I also quite like the painting that I created, I think that's also a big achievement. So yeah, this painting is also pretty spontaneous I would say. Before this I was doing a bunch of practice gouache painting sessions in my sketchbook and I also shared a lot of that on Instagram and here on the YouTube community post tab. And also a lot of the struggles that I came across as I was trying to learn how to use gouache for painting portraits because there's a specific style that I am trying to achieve. And I was really struggling with mixing colors and I was also starting to get really frustrated but at the same time I was just really really motivated to paint on a surface other than my sketchbook because a lot of the ideas that came to my head I envisioned myself painting with gouache or painting with acrylics on a panel like a wooden panel like this or on a stretched canvas and on an easel. So I was just like dying to paint on this wooden panel. The gouache practice sessions I wanted to use them to number one like learn different techniques but also for me to kind of be ready or to feel like confident enough to paint on a surface like this because coming from a watercolor background if you've been watching a lot of my old videos I used to do a lot of watercolor paintings. I have so many artworks on watercolor papers that I haven't really thrown out just yet but they are kind of like rejected artworks because I like made a mistake on the painting and I couldn't really salvage it. So a part of me like feels like I wasted like money because you know like surfaces like watercolor paper and especially canvases they're not cheap they're quite expensive. So I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't make a mistake by the time that I was painting on surfaces like this. However I really needed to get out of that mindset because watercolors they're translucent and they're different from gouache like they kind of overlap a little bit because gouache you can kind of like create watercolor textures with them but gouache is a little bit more opaque that you can like layer more paint in order to salvage mistakes which you will definitely be seeing in this video. And so because I was motivated to just paint on this surface I decided to just take that opportunity because if I'd waited until I was ready or if I was feeling confident before I painted on this wooden panel this would have probably sat in my drawer for another two or three years before I painted something on it. So I decided that now is the time I'm just gonna go for it. If I make a mistake I could literally just cover the entire panel with gesso and start from scratch. Because this was a bit of a spontaneous painting I sketched directly onto the wooden panel and I also didn't really have an idea of what I was going to paint. I mean I knew that I wanted to draw someone holding a bouquet of flowers but in terms of like what the pose was gonna be what the flowers would look like things like that I did not really have a clue I kind of just started sketching a circle which is how I always start to draw portraits and just went along with the flow and I was using colored pencils to do the sketch on the panel which aren't erasable. So I struggled a little bit especially with the hands because like I said I didn't really have an idea. Normally I would probably sketch it on my sketchbook where I can kind of move things around or I could scan it and put it on a printer like if the proportions are out of whack and I can like fix things and then I would print it and then I would transfer it onto the wooden panel like that's how I would probably do it in the future and that's how I normally do it as well. But for this one because it was so spontaneous and I was just really dying to paint I just started sketching on the canvas and you probably would have seen in the past or the previous clips that like the pencil sketches were pretty messy and in order for me to fix it I just used my gouache paint and I just started outlining like the flowers and then outlining the fingers and I think that helped because coming from a watercolor or maybe like a Copic background especially because I learned drawing through manga and anime and cartoons I like I feel like my brain needs outlines and when it comes to painting with gouache it often or actually most of the time it covers the sketch that I have underneath like the pencil sketch which I find to be very important for my process because those are my outlines as you would say like it establishes where the different shapes are like where the eyes are where the nose is where the mouth is things like that like where the face ends and the background begins like those are things that are pretty important for my brain to know like okay this is what you're painting but with gouache even in the first couple of layers it already covers a lot of the pencil sketches so then it makes it a little bit hard for me to maintain the proportions so the technique that I ended up learning and the one that I'm using in this video especially with painting with gouache is that I started with the darkest color and I think that really helped because by starting with the darkest color it's almost like I was outlining the face first the same way that I outlined the flowers I was kind of establishing where the eyes are where the nose and the lips are things like that and then I started just working my way towards the lighter color and I think that kind of worked I don't know what went into my brain to add more layers because that is exactly what I did and you will definitely see that in this video I start to kind of add more layers to the face I guess maybe because I wasn't happy with it I have no idea looking back at it like as I'm watching the video like right in front of me I'm like thinking I could have literally just left it at that I don't know what's wrong with me but I didn't so you will see but anyway I also want to talk about what I mentioned at the beginning of this video which ties into what this artwork is about like yes this painting was very spontaneous but I also knew that I wanted to draw a girl holding a bouquet of flowers and I actually wrote down a note to myself a couple of years ago it was on my phone and it's like really really vague literally just says like a painting of a girl holding a bouquet of flowers like it's it's that vague and I don't even remember like why I wrote it down what I was trying to achieve with it I have no idea but as soon as I read it a couple of months ago it immediately gave me an image in my head and it was clear as day that I knew I wanted to paint that exact thing and this artwork I would probably say is not the painting that I have in my head but I did want to use this opportunity to practice as well so that's what this painting is about but I also still want to use that imagery to explore a theme or a word that I have as my word of the year for 2024 so I also want to explore that through a bunch of artworks now that word is nurture and I'm not really a word of the year kind of person but I was reading a bunch of like predictions because it's just for fun of 2024 and nurture like I saw it as a word and then it just really resonated with me especially because I'm at a point in my life where I feel like that that's that's what I need especially as I try to get back into art and that whole journey I just need to nurture the things that I love and one of those things is definitely my passions and my skills things like that because in the last couple of years I definitely have just been neglecting all of these things that I really enjoy and so moving forward I want to start the whole process of nurturing these things and it could be as simple as literally just like taking the time or setting aside time to paint and things like that but before I do get into detail with the word of the year and what I plan to do with it like my goals surrounding that word we're getting to the painting where I start to go a bit downhill especially with the colors on the face I'm also just going to speed up the process for this because I feel like we don't need to see me work on this and make mistakes in real time let's just let it pass as quickly as possible but I also don't remember what was going on in my brain why I decided to layer again but the culprit you'll see in the video it's that brush right there oh look at that just mixing all of the colors it's literally one of the things that I read in terms of like how to paint with gouache like one of the tips that they had is that you don't mix paint with your brush you try to use like a palette knife or something like that and I probably would change up my ceramic palette right there because it actually makes it hard for me to mix with a palette knife which is why I opted for a brush but even if you're using a brush it's probably best to use multiple different brushes do I have a lot of different round brushes yes yes I do did I use them no because I'm lazy and that was kind of the downfall especially around here I would say like look at me just mixing the colors this is it this is the layer because I was adding a second layer trying to tone down the skin because I felt like it was maybe a little bit too orange I think that's what I was thinking I have no idea but then it just wasn't working right and I think I mixed a color that was just like way too gray and like way too contrasty even though I was trying to add contrast but it just wasn't what I was expecting and so I tried to salvage it by adding another layer on top which is a lighter color and then because I'm working on a wet layer underneath that all of those colors just start to kind of mix in and all of the pigments it just becomes muddy and it becomes gray and I think that is what happened so luckily I realized that I just needed to stop I needed to stop trying to fix it and just let that layer dry and once it was dry and I had a fresh fresh mind I would be able to go back into it and try and fix whatever I was trying to achieve over there but here's the thing like gouache also dries differently when compared to its wet condition so here here it actually starts to look like it's okay but will I add another layer on top of it yes I absolutely will and will it look better I would I would say so because here it's looking a little bit gray so I'm not super happy with it but it also doesn't look that bad but anyway I decided to just focus on other things around the painting such as the flowers the arm the background the hair all of that in order to kind of just get my mind off of it and that's usually what I do when I make a mistake with whatever artwork that I'm doing and I just need to kind of like step away from something usually because it just needs to dry and then after it's dry then I can focus on it again so that's what I'm doing so on to a more calm note I do want to go back and talk about my word of the year which is nurture how that relates to the artwork that you're seeing right here and also how that relates to the reason as to why I create art which I mentioned at the beginning of this video and why I want to talk about my reason is because honestly it's mostly to benefit me and future me because yes I only started getting back into creating art again a couple of months ago and we're just fresh into the new year I'm very very motivated to create art to put aside time for art but as the patterns and the habits have been in the last couple of years I also am what would you say like I'm also a little bit apprehensive that there will be a time in my future that I won't be as motivated and I might start forgetting as to why like I'm putting all of this effort into creating artworks because right now I feel like I'm a little bit in like the highs and lows of creating art but more more so highs like yes I'm struggling with like the practice sessions but I'm still creating art that I'm actually quite happy with but what if in the future there comes a time where I just become like really frustrated with art and nurturing like my skills and my passion like requires a lot of effort and like what if I start just like having doubts in my head and all of these things as to why I even bother and I kind of just want something that I can like grab onto in those times so that it can anchor me back into the mindset that I have now which is you know like I want to create art because I want to write down all of my feelings or I want to paint all of my feelings I also am really big on journaling and that's something that I've kind of carried across with me even during the years that I wasn't creating art I was still very much writing down all of my feelings because as a cancer I am very emotional and I'm also very in tune with my emotions and a lot of the times like these emotions they just don't go away even just after one session of talking about it I need to talk about it like multiple times and sometimes like it can be very exhausting to other people when I speak about the same issues again and again and again but with my journal that doesn't happen I can write about my issues like as many times as I want and the only person who gets sick of them is me because why aren't they over yet but anyway with that said that's just how I view art especially in high school I think is when it started I took studio arts and we started learning about art history and all the different paintings and artworks that a lot of people enjoy and love and the stories behind them the meaning behind them things like that and I started to think that I want to create artworks just like that not necessarily for other people I the very very very core of it I want to create artworks because I want to put all of my feelings and my emotions down into a visual representation and literally as it can be perfectly summed up by the lyric just like I said in the beginning of this video tell them all my secrets but disguise them share all of my secrets not in writing form because no one's ever gonna see my writing in the light of day but I am very very much happy to share my artworks with you and I may not explicitly like say what they're about and like the emotions and you'll never I feel like really get a sense of how deep things can be because I personally like I don't want to divulge those kind of things I feel like they're very personal for me but at the same time I feel like I am sharing all of that not through words but through a visual and so what I've always been trying to achieve with my art is to create a visual representation of all of my emotions and why I absolutely love that lyric which is from a song titled what baking can do from the musical the waitress is because it's literally the same thing it's literally the same thing except she's a baker she makes pies but the whole like song is about her telling the audience that she makes amazing pies and people ask her all the time like oh what's what's your secret ingredient what's inside these pies like they taste so good and she tells the audience that what makes them so good is the fact that I pour out all of my feelings and all of my emotions into the act of baking it's like almost like a therapy for her and literally like it's the title is what baking can do and it allows her to kind of present this beautiful pie this pie that tastes amazing but you as a customer don't don't know like that it literally contains like a piece of her not literally but metaphorically like a piece of her emotions and her feelings at that time into the pie and I feel like that is definitely what I try to achieve with my artworks is that every now and then I always like have an idea in my head that oh like I'm kind of feeling like this at the moment and like this is kind of like a cool visual representation or like this like a cool metaphor for this emotion that I'm feeling or like a symbol and I think like that's what I'm what I've always been inclined to do with my art and why I want to go back into it because it's something that I missed and I feel like it's something that I want future my future self to look back into because a lot of the paintings that I've created in the past which you can definitely still find here on YouTube like I look back into them sometimes just to scroll down memory lane and I still really like the paintings and they still they still bring me back to like that emotion but you know not necessarily like make me feel depressed or something like that but it just takes me back and I can instantly put myself in my own shoes like from whenever I made that painting and kind of dig deep into that emotion which I quite like and I would like for my future self to also be able to do that which is why I would love to create art continuously and I would also love to document it because then aside from knowing the feelings because yes I can remember my emotions very well but can I remember my drawing and painting techniques very well no no I can't which is why I want to document my process as well for future me to also to also see like what what were the things that I was thinking about during that time that somehow I would have forgotten because it might not have been associated with that feeling so things like that and that's definitely why I have been back into making videos again and why I would love to continue making videos again and so that's what this artwork is definitely all about I think it's it's a great starting point to the artworks that I want to explore especially with my word of the year nurture I've already started to gather a lot of ideas and hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll be uploading um artworks that I create from them have I created more no I haven't but I am definitely hoping to get a good start on them and then share the process and the artworks here with you as well I also feel like nurture has a lot of emotions that I feel like you could definitely unpack or I could definitely unpack but will I I'm not entirely sure I feel like the artworks so far that I've created in the past and even this one like the symbolism that I use are pretty obvious okay maybe not maybe I take that back but I feel like they require you know someone else to kind of just pay close attention and you'll know exactly what it means I think that's what my artworks are and I think that also kind of applies a lot to my real life and how I want my emotions to be perceived is more like you know it's it's it's right there you just you just need to look and that is pretty much it for this painting I'm pretty happy with how it turned out I think the process could have been a little bit smoother to my liking because then instead of it being three hours maybe it would have been a lot a lot less but with that said there's definitely a lot of room for improvement and I'm ready to tackle the next painting that I create and yeah I would love to see you in a future video