 Hey guys, welcome to another video. We are here with another video for my year 2017, which is a Facebook art sharing and collaborative teaching group. I know that's like a total mouthful, but I don't know what else to call it. It's a group on Facebook where I got together with three of my friends and we share videos, art ideas, try to teach a few lessons. It's all free. It's in Facebook. If you want to join the group or know what my website is or my happy mail address or go shop in my Etsy store or anything else like that, look in the description because it's all down there. Alright, so every month we do a book review. I've got two books to review. So, and I have two more that I'm trying to find time to read. And if I do get them read, I will pop into the Facebook group and I will put something in there over there about them. So, if you want to know about that, you have to go over there. One of them is by Twyla Tharp and the other one is Magical Housekeeping. I think that was the title of it. It's a book my daughter said, Mom, you should read this. So, okay, I'm going to read it. She doesn't say that often. So anyway, these two I'm going to talk to you about today. I love both of these. Let's talk about this one on the bottom first. This is called the Brushstroke Handbook by Maureen McNaughton. I think I picked this up at like Tuesday morning. I don't remember. And it's a basic like one stroke painting folk art painting technique book. It's a really great reference book to have in your library for how to load your brushes, how to use your brushes, how to make different marks with your brushes. You know, here she's showing how to use a Q-tip to make dots. There's so much great information here I can't even tell you. Now, yes, mostly I don't paint like this, but I do sort of know how. I wouldn't say I'm an expert at it, but it is fun to do. How pretty would that be on a journal cover? And I love these kind of books just for reference. There may be times when I'm working on a canvas, maybe even an extra abstract piece, or maybe I want to bring in just a little bit of a one-stroke technique just in one little element. You never know. And this kind of book is just, I think, a very useful reference. I have these kind of books on watercolor painting and all kinds of things. So any books like this, I do recommend this one. I really like this one. It opens flat. The pages are all kind of slick and laminated. I generally have it here in my workroom, and if I do accidentally spill something on it, it's generally going to wipe off pretty easily. So I won't say it won't stain, but the pages and the cover kind of got a satin glossy finish. You can see it right there. So things won't be as likely to stick as they would like on raw paper. So I love this book. So I'll be writing it here down on our book list in my section of my journal for this month. And this one is Brave Intuitive Painting by Flora Bowie. I love this book, and it's actually supposed to be an art journal you work in. I have never gotten the courage, as you can see, to ever work in here. I do have her other book around here somewhere. If you follow me at all, you know my bathroom at this time is still under construction. And I have books in front of my bookcase. I mean, boxes in front of my bookcase. So I can't find the other one. It's probably on the bottom, behind the boxes. But she has a couple of books out, Flora Bowie, and you wouldn't go wrong by either one of them. She's one of the first teachers that took a painting course with online when I discovered what online learning and online teaching was. I didn't have any idea. One of the first people I took a course with was Flora Bowie, a painting course. And I would recommend her as a teacher in a heartbeat without even second guessing it. If you want to learn more about intuitive art and painting, she's definitely one to take a class from. And I enjoy both of her books very much. This is a great book. The reason it's blank is because I love it too much to work in it. I do have to get over that because I really should work in this book. The other, the only criticism I have about books like this and, but again, I love the book. So it's something I've hesitated to do. I've done it with a lot of other ones. It's just not this one is that it's bound like with a regular spine, which means that when you want to work in it, you have to like crack the spine to work in it and to work on the pages because it doesn't want to open flat. So that kind of, I like spiral bound notebooks because they open flat. So that would be my only criticism. I myself wrote a book. You can buy it in my Etsy shop or on Amazon. Put my name in the Amazon search boxes there. Anyway, the one on Amazon is Paperback and it has a spine. It does open flat, but I recommend in the video when I made, when I talked about my books that you take the book to Staples, you can have them cut the spine off and have it spiral bound. And I actually did that to a sample of one of my books and I don't have it with me. I also have some that are bound and signed and they're spiral bound because you can open them very flat to work on the pages. And you can also do this with them, which I really like. So that would be my only criticism about Flora's journal is that you can't do that with it. You can't, you know, so I may have to, I really love this book. It has just beautiful papers on it, but I may have to take it over to Staples. I may have to have them chop the spine off and spiral bind it. It doesn't cost too much. Binding it, I think, is like $5. And then it's a couple dollars per cut. Usually I have them do the one cut and then bind it. So I don't know, we'll see. But I love the book and I, like I said, she has another one. I don't remember the title of it and I can't find it. So put Flora Bowley in the Amazon search box too and her books will come up. I will put the name and author of both of these books in the video description. And with links, of course, I'll put links for my book too should you want to buy it. It's also a journaling workbook, a discover yourself kind of book, as is Flora's. Very different methods. Mine has a lot of narratives you have to read in it. Hers doesn't. It's really got art prompts. Yeah, I'm going to have to get over it. I'm going to have to just have the spine cut off so I can work in this. All right, so that's it for today. Check out the video description. If there's anything I've forgotten to put down there that I said I was going to or information that's not down there that you would like to know, put something in the comments. Don't be afraid to leave a comment. I will get back to you as soon as possible. I'm going to answer your questions and correct any mistakes. That's it for today. The biggest thing is go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Make some art, buy some books, that sort of thing. That's it. All right, talk to you later guys. Bye.