 So we are here with another quick video for Artjoy of Sharing and this month again I want to show you some more watercolor tips and tricks especially for using it in conjunction with your mixed media. I think these are slightly out of the box ideas that I haven't really seen too many other people do so we're going to, I'm going to just do some quick stuff with it. Now I am going to give you all a download for this picture. It's not the best picture I've ever taken with my cell phone but this part of it is interesting it is a view that I got from the car on a recent road trip it's a gorge near here I don't remember the name of it right now it's Tuesday but it feels like Monday anyway I'm going to use it for inspiration and of course I will let you all have the download for it and you can print it I'd love to see what you all do with it so that's going to be just sitting off camera up here I have a piece of watercolor paper and the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get it wet with just plain old water you can do this with a brush you can do this with a spray bottle whatever works for you I happen to have this from I know something else I'm filming at the moment I'm going to grab my Pacific Northwest palette and let's get them wet a cheat sheet for the colors oh there we are so no which colors are which all right so what I'm going to do the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take the blue that's in here which is and the quadro quite own blue I can't pronounce it but it's a blue it's a bright blue see that's pretty bright blue and I'm going to take a little bit of that and some will add some water and I'm going to put some on the paper because the paper is wet it's going to go everywhere now the way I am doing this I am not super worried about leaving white space because of what we're going to add to this I'm going to take and add just a little bit of green this greenish blue mix I have on here I am going to take a rag this is just a piece of t-shirt and blot and I'm going to let that create some shapes suggest some shapes you could this is going to be very abstracted but you could do this with anything okay so I like that I want to take and add a little bit of blue to that greenish blue mixture I have here already on the palette which is going to give me sort of a gray and I'm not going to do any more than that and I'm going to dry it well as soon as it turned the dryer on okay then here's where the mixed media comes in so I'm going to grab a couple of tubes of paint at least one I think I'm going to use the titanium white I believe I don't think I'm going to want the unbleached titanium I think it might be too too beige maybe but these are small tubes of acrylic paint I keep a box of them just for doing stuff like this I also have some acrylic wash in here and some pastel watercolors which I don't think we're going to need but anyway we're going to take the white and I'm going to take these are called these are by low Cornell and they're called stippler brushes folk art used to make one too they may still make it that was called a scruffy brush the thing they all have in common are really stiff bristles the favorite sorry the full folk art one is stiffer than these but any of these will work I like the shape of the little Cornell ones that being said I can't find these anymore so at the end of this tutorial I'm gonna I'm gonna show you what my idea is for maybe making a hack of one of these but these are a very short bristled stiff bristled brush and I'm not going to do anything special except grab a little bit of I'm not even gonna use a palette I'm going to grab a little bit of this white paint with a brush straight out of the tube and looking at sort of my inspiration photo and doing a twirling motion I'm going to suggest my cloud shapes as I sort of see them on the inspiration photo and like with any other piece mixed media or not it's about layers right layers and texture so the more you do of this on your piece on your journal page in your artwork the more interesting it's going to be don't feel like you can't use your acrylics your markers your pens with your watercolor I am far from a watercolor purist I love mixing all my materials together and using them together and making something that's really interesting I love using these brushes with this because you can really blend your colors in a really interesting way I also like using you know gift cards to scrape and pencils water soluble pencils and pastels to make marks with my watercolor I normally don't sit down while I'm doing this so that part's a little bit challenging now wherever I put the watercolor paints gonna probably resist more watercolor that doesn't mean I won't go put some because I will and just keep at it now I love this and I have created a piece using these same techniques I'm gonna go get it and I'll be right back this is a piece I created not long ago there we go sorry about the glare using the same techniques watercolor and acrylic and then some scraping and blending with one of these brushes and an old gift card and it turned out beautifully I love it and I'm gonna end up keeping it because I can't bear it apart with it now as I said if you don't you can also do things like I didn't do it in this one but if you wanted to add sort of a sandy pepally grainy texture to parts of the painting of course do things like put salt down in the wet paint and as it dries it's going to pick up some of the pigment and it'll leave you with a grainy texture on the piece you can do that I think we talked about that in the last one of these I did for our Dory sharing if you don't have one of these fun blending brushes and if you're like me and they're hard to find I don't know why you couldn't do this and I wanted to do this I bought this brush for doing this to try it because I love these brushes and they're all very well loved but that means that they've handles have been glued back together more than a few times so this is actually an oil painting brush it is a round number 16 master's touch from hobby lobby I should say oil and acrylic brush it was 1499 so it's a synthetic hog brush but I used a coupon so I didn't pay that and then what you can do is get a sharp exacto knife or a sharp pair of scissors is probably going to make a gigantic mess and you want to just trim it because the bristles are stiff because they're the synthetic hog hair but they're way too long so get it as flat as you can don't pay full price for a brush because you're gonna whack the crap out of it so right let me clean this up and let's go back to our painting and take some more that same blue and again add a little bit of this greenish gray color to it water it down usually I have my piece taped down I don't it's usually not bouncy like that just FYI I'm just looking at my inspiration color photo and adding more color where I think it needs it I'm not doing anything special it's gonna end up being abstracted but just have fun with it little bit more okay then you then we're gonna try our new brush again so I'm going to go in this time with a different color obviously because I'm struggling a bit let's see let's try this is a probably a little purple but for demonstration purposes we're gonna try this actually and I'm gonna put a little bit this is Liquitex basics light blue violet and then I'm gonna put a little bit on there just right on the brush I'm not doing anything special on this is Amsterdam acrylic manganese blue again right on the brush I've got them both on the brush together it should be kind of a darkish color so I'm going to go in here where I can see sort of the mountainy shapes in the inspiration photo and this actually you know what this brush works really well just as good as the other ones a little bit more that actually makes it those two together make a nice color let's put this on here this actually works really well you just want to don't spend too much money on the brush because as I said you're gonna be crap hacking the crap out of it but that being said don't get too cheap of one because you don't want the bristles to fall out then I'm gonna go back to the white do a little less blending so it stays a little bit more white again just keeping an eye on the inspiration photo and where the brightest spots are in the photo I actually really like the way that's turning out making sure I put all the caps back on my paint because that's the thing we don't want the tubes to dry out okay and then I'm going to again remember what we said this is a mixed media piece so this is a Derwent pencil and this is a Derwent inktense pencil to do I want to even do that so that's the thing there are some trees in the inspiration photo you see those are I want to do that do we want to just add splatters you could add the tree marked to simulate the trees with a pencil you could use a water-soluble pencil you could use a pen you could use charcoal you could use paint a crayon think I'm gonna use the regular color pencil I dipped it in some water I don't think that's really gonna do anything I'm just very light touches I'm not digging any holes to China with the pencil we're just we're suggesting what we see in the photo and creating some movement in the piece and I like that I don't want to add any more and make it any darker than that so think about combining your things like your watercolor paints with your acrylic paint with your markers make yourself one of these blending brushes getting an oil painting brush around one and just cut the bristles off short or maybe you have a stiff bristled brush around one that you don't enjoy using for other things but the bristles are pretty stiff you already have it cut it if you're not using it cut off the bristles short and this is maybe a half an inch long and try it and see what you think that's it for today I hope you enjoy this little quick tip and quick tutorial don't forget to check out art joy sharing for other videos if you're not a member of that Facebook group I will leave the link for it in the description below there's also a link for a site called link tree which has all the links for every place you can find me on social media my Amazon store my Etsy shop the tip jar the patreon all that stuff so if you would like to support the free content here in YouTube or follow me on social media click on the link tree link and you will find all the places that you can do that don't forget to like share and subscribe and hit that little bell icon if you'd like notifications for future videos the most important thing is to go out and have a great day and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it I'll see you later bye guys