 Hey guys, welcome to a new year of my creative year I've said it before I'll say it again. I can't believe we got this far Just it's surprising to me, but in a good way. I am Here to bring you this month's topic and my spin on it so this month our topic is nature We are gonna be carrying on with the daily creative words and I'm gonna try to sketch them As much as I can every day and share them here I'm gonna try I am missing my daily sketching and at the time of filming this. I'm trying hard to get back into it. So Anyway, so this month our topic is nature and There's a million ways you could take that and use it in your art as I said in the challenge video you could Go out in nature and you could pick up things that you can print With in your art you can pick up things that you actually can put into your art So that being said in this bank of drawers behind me I actually have a drawer that says nature and it's full of things like dried flowers dried leaves bag of moss a bag of sand red lava rock from Las Vegas sticks driftwood Many seashells like all kinds of things that I find interesting. I bring them home. I dry them out I wash them off. I put them in a little bag. I stick them in my nature drawer So I want you this month to find some things like that to either give you inspiration into your art or use Actually in your art now that being said I had an idea I I live in the Pacific Northwest now the land of much rain and much moss and so I'm going to go outside and I'm going to put some shoes on in a sweatshirt because it's a bit chilly I think it's like 40 degrees and Wet and we are going to go grab some moss And we are going to use it to print in our journal. I Have no idea if it's going to work I just thought I was going to do something completely different in my journal for this prompt and then I was like wait moss is wait so let me Unplug the camera from the tripod and let me drag y'all outside with me. Let's get a sweatshirt. Let's get some shoes Yes, they'll be flip-flops. I'll show you. I'm crazy that way the neighbors all know. Oh, yeah, she's that one the nut from California Anyway, let's go get to it. All right, I'll be back so we are here In my driveway. I was hoping we wouldn't have to go too far because there's usually moss on these trees somewhere But of course when I want some moss I don't see any moss Well, there's some green moss down there Hmm, let's go over to the wetlands That are part of my community and let's go see what we can do with without getting in trouble So these are the woods and wetlands next to my house and There is a creek over here You're not supposed to go in them It's actually not allowed for any humans to go in there for any reason I'm usually Filming the little creek for my log. I don't have to go far though. I saw a piece of moss just laying on the ground So let's go grab it That'll work. All right, let's go back and oh, there's another piece. We'll grab both of them. All right Let's go back and see what we can make okay, so We found some moss and let's find a page in my journal that I want to work on. This is a Dina Wakeley journal and I spent a lot of time just wiping off paintbrushes in here It's a great place for that Let's find a page and Obviously as you can tell I skip around Maybe this one so let's move our page protectors around And put some clips I Had the idea to do Sort of a woodland scene in my journal With a prompt of nature and then I was like ooh moss. I think we're going to combine the two ideas so The first thing I'm going to do is take a pencil or a pen or something Maybe a pen. Oh, let's do pencil Let's do a pencil That's to be low all pencil. All right, and we are going to just draw some Tree shapes now trees are not They're not smooth. They're not even. I don't have a great grip on the pencil. I'm not pressing too hard as you saw my house is Surrounded by woods and wetlands They're just gorgeous So let's draw a few trees. I'm not Sure if you're going to be able to see that too much on camera, but We are going to fix that As soon as I find my water brush Here we go So like with any other water soluble medium, it's really all about the water So put the water where you want the color to flow to that where you don't want it keep it dry and Obviously as you can tell this pencil is water soluble That was a really nice dark Blackish gray color when it's dry. I Mean when it's wet and it dries very nicely, too I could get it darker, but I don't need to not right now By laying on more of the pencil So we are going to do that across the page and this page is bumpy because I put I Scraped acrylic paint on it. So that's okay because that's going to lend itself very nicely to the tree shapes So I think I want to do them all the way across okay, if you need to Stop And get that pencil wet So you can make those lines darker and you can see better where you're at The nice thing about sketching in a water soluble pencil Besides the fact that you can just do this and leave it at that Is that when you put your paint on here and the pencil is going to dissolve with the paint? So it's not going to leave very many if any pencil lines behind I Like to use this little trick When I'm painting especially when I'm watercoloring. I'm not always super concerned about the lines disappearing but I do Sometimes not want big heavy lines and I just make sure I use a color of pencil that will blend nicely With the paint that I'm going to use Okay, I'm going to do this all the way across and I'll be right back Okay, now that we have our trees sketched out. Oops things are a little wobbly Okay, now that we have our trees sketched out We're going to take I'm going to take these acrylic paints. These are called 12 shades of gray They are different shades. Of course of gray tones. There's also a gray Orange a gray green a gray violet You don't have to use these use what you have you could mix up something similar using Gray paint and then a little dab up say blue or red or green To that gray or you could of course make gray with black and white and then add a little dab of green to it To turn it slightly green or a little drab of red. I have a mid gray a Warm gray Cold gray, which is probably more blue Pale gray and Pain's gray, which is dark. Those are great different shades of actual gray paint I'm gonna swatch. You know what? Let's swatch these real quick for you so you guys can see what I'm talking about Have conveniently a piece of paper and reading glasses. Okay, so I need a little bit of these anyway for the journal page, so We'll put a little ball of them on there that is warm gray You can see that it's kind of a brown this is Mid gray I'm a cold gray Very close to mid-grey but slightly bluer Pain's gray. I'll put a link to these paints in the video description But again, you don't need these you can use what you have you can mix up colors. What's what use what you have? This is the pale gray Then we have green gray and then brown gray This isn't the order they come in the box by the way, this is just the order. I'm grabbing them out of the pile yellow gray blue gray The nice thing I've noticed about these two is they actually blend really well With just a little dab of water red gray Which is a very terracotta color Violet gray and then the last one is orange gray. Okay I'm gonna show this video in real time. I'm not gonna do too much cutting out or speeding up of anything We're gonna take our paints here now. We're gonna just use this paper as a palette and I'm going to Paint my trees in More friend pull them out from the background I'm gonna use the warmer colors of gray the yellows oranges the reds To bring parts of the trees forward and have them look like the light is hitting them and the cooler colors and the bluer colors To make the tree parts of the trees recede into the background and make them darker So let's actually start with Pushing things into the background I'm using a filbert brush I'm using a very light touch. I'm not hardly Touching the paper at all again, these paints Blend very well with water. I'm gonna grab some water up there. I'm actually very impressed by how they blend I'm gonna leave these streaks of orange and yellow paint in the background because they make Good sort of sunlight coming through the trees. I'm just kind of bouncing around with the paintbrush with the colors But I should say color with putting the color here and there And you can already see if you're watching you can see The shapes of the trees start to pop out from the rest of the page Just with a few brushstrokes Okay, and we're gonna just sort of go down our Samples swatches Grabbing different colors Remember what I said about trees aren't straight. They're not even their nature. I've said this before in other tutorials The joy of painting nature is you don't have to worry about making straight lines because there's nothing in nature that's straight and even It's all crooked And if your lines come out too straight a tip for you I have is use your non-dominant hands switch hands So if you're right-handed use your left-handed if we're left-handed use your right hand Now because these are acrylic paints once they're dry, they're not going to move And that makes them nice to layer over unlike watercolor where you really you can do some layering But you can't do a lot of layering You really need to start light and work darker, but with acrylic paint If you get too much of dark in one place, just let it dry and you can go back over with a light color I want these to blend so I'm not super concerned I'm gonna avoid the paints gray, which is our darkest color And I'm gonna skip down to the light gray I know you're thinking well, what about that moss? She took us outside to go get moss Trust me, and I just thought of a quote for the page Just now that frequently happens and I'll have no idea what the words are gonna be on the page Most of my work does have words on it. I don't always know what those words are gonna be Until Sometime during my process Something comes You notice I have not changed paintbrushes. This is a plain old filbert brush. It is I don't even know what brand it is Just a plain old filbert brush It's probably a Princeton because I do I do like Princeton paintbrushes They're a good value for the money, I believe Okay, I'm also gonna skip over the green and I'm gonna go into one of the Redder tones. I think this is a brown And I'm just dipping the tippy top of my Filbert brush and I'm just going to I'm barely I'm barely touching the page. Don't forget to get some paint on the little branches If you're not part of my face my creative year on Facebook, and you would like to be it's a free a year-long Group where we explore art and our journaling and Daily creative practices We'd love to have you the links in the description below. Okay, so now I'm not gonna even clean my brush off. I'm gonna grab the blue and Again, I'm just barely taking Dipping the tip of my brush. I'm not touching it hard to the page streaking it on Okay, there's also a violet color And I guess I wanted the brown too because I just accidentally stuck my brush in the brown That's okay Just keep building up your colors Until you get something you like We're going for an abstract or abstracted For a scene we are not going for a realistic if you know anything about me in my art I generally don't do anything that resembles anything too realistic. That's just not who I am When I grab some of the orange Okay, now We're gonna grab I'm gonna wipe my brush off a bit and I'm gonna grab some of that pain's gray and With more thought Than I used on the other colors I'm gonna use the pains gray To highlight some of the shapes Pull them out from the background. I probably should finally switch to a smaller brush because it's a little bit big Let's see what we can do Okay So anywhere where lines are too sharp or too defined You want to get some water in there and do some blending. This is about suggesting shapes rather than Defining them and just use a damp brush with your brush off in your water This paint is great because you don't Generally need too much water And even if it's a little dry, it seems to still blend really well, so I Don't know. I really like this paint. I'll be honest. I had it in my stash a long time. I bought it on a whim and You know, it's one of those things you know, that sounds interesting Let me get some of that and then you never use it and finally I used it not long ago and I thought wow Why haven't I used this before? Really nice. I like this. Remember we haven't used our moss yet. Okay Payne's gray is my favorite Dark accent color has been for a long time It's more interesting than just plain all black So it's usually I some kind of a dark grayish blue. I like that. All right Now This is the plan anyway. I'm gonna take a clip I'm gonna take our moss which honestly has been sitting here next to me on a paper towel and It was a little bit damp when I brought it upstairs. Now. It's a little drier Which is a good It's very it's not clean. This is just how I picked it up off the floor ground outside Let it clump it all together when I clip it in my Clip try to get some of the excess dirt off of it Not that it matters we're gonna dip it in the paint and this is the gray green and the The green gray and the yellow gray So if some of the moss sticks into the paint and sticks to the page You know what I'm okay with that All right, I'm gonna grab a baby wipe Zoom in just a bit. It's like right there So I'm going to take the baby wipe and I'm just going to The background is dry So I'm gonna wipe away where the moss hit between the trees Not all of it, but some of it. I May not be able to get all of it Whoops wrong way. So where the moss landed on paint It'll rub away just fine where it landed on paper probably not so much We're just fine but in most of the woods around our house the trees are covered with a decent amount of Moss So I want the marks to be on the trees, but I also want it to suggest maybe foliage So it doesn't have to be Defined as a mark. I love that. It's very subtle. I don't know if you can see I don't know if you guys are gonna be able to see I Like what it did. Let's get some more of the Yellow green let's reposition our moss Oops stuck my finger in some paint. That should be no big surprise We are going to I could do it with a Jelly roll pen then we got to wait for things to dry Why don't we try a whiteout pen? I want to add some white highlights If I can get it to work. It's not working. It's a brand new whiteout pen. So that's dust Nope, I want something thicker Let's get a white paint pen. Shall we? White Molotow marker. They never never never let me down the Molotow Okay, so let's So we're gonna give it a big pop This is gonna be one of those cases of do what I say Not what I do So what do I mean by that? So you should really wait for your pages to dry completely before you take any kind of a pen Paint or otherwise to your pages. I'm I'm pretty bad about that. I Kill a lot of pens. I love that way that looks okay, so the quote I want to add to here is can can you It's not a quote. It's a question. Can you see the forest through the trees? Think about that one. So, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get out my typewriter Yes, I do have a typewriter an old-fashioned manual and I'm gonna type it up and I'll be right back Okay, anybody who knows me or has been following me for a while knows spelling is not my strong suit So while I know I spelled the words correctly. Oops, who are we? Is that the right version of through? No idea. I'm sure one of you can tell me if it is or not probably isn't that's okay I don't mind so I'm going to just rip this I wanted to have torn edges And we're gonna stick it down right about there. I Think I'm gonna just use a glue stick because it's easy. There you go. Can you see the forest through the trees? So I would love to see what you can make in your journals or with your art or whatever Creativity you choose to practice at the moment using the prompt of nature Where does that take you? What kind of journey does that take you on? What kind of inspiration does it give you? I would love to see that I would love to see you share here in the Facebook group Again, if you're watching this on YouTube and you're not a member of the Facebook group And you'd like to be the links in the description below. That's it for today I want you all to go out and have a great day like share and subscribe Leave a question or comment if you've got one in the below here on the video Or if you're in the Facebook group ask over there and that's it right now Go out and have a great day do something nice for yourself because you deserve it now. I'll see you later. Bye guys