 Good morning everybody. Hey at vex creations. Good morning So before we do anything else, I thought we would do something like small and fun and easy Okay So this is a pre-cut greeting card made out of Cold press this is the Strathmore Watercolor paper these are pre-cut this is cold press These are pre-cut card greeting cards with envelopes you can get this kit like this a 50 cards I actually got this one on Amazon I don't remember how much it was but it wasn't very much and I like this because they're already pre-cut You don't have to score anything. You don't have to cut anything. You don't have to search for envelopes They're already here. Whether you're just making greeting cards to send out to friends or you're getting ready for Summer arts and crafts show and you want to sell them. I Like to have cards around anyway So this is just an easy greeting card that you can do With any watercolor paint It doesn't matter if you just have Really inexpensive like Crayola paint this work. I use the Prima Watercolors I have all three sets here. I've put them into one palette I use this top row the classics for this You'll need a crayon. Yes a crayon a white crayon just a kid's crayon and some table salt I Did some of this ahead of time because you have to let it dry naturally you can't There's no way to rush this Hey, Grease good morning. Well, it's morning here So what I did was first I took my watercolor greeting card and I wrote a couple of words on here with white crayon now You can kind of see the letters here. I didn't push hard enough with the crayon I should have pushed harder, but that's okay But the white crayon acts as a resist for the watercolor So this is going to be handy and we're going to leave this out because we may use this in the page We're going to do today So you write your word on here first Then I went and I wet the page and then I use three colors of watercolor from the Prima Classic set that would blend well with each other and I wanted sort of a pastel look While it was wet. I sprinkled some salt on here and sort of a diagonal from corner to corner pattern It's dry now. I did this earlier. So I'm going to I'm going to brush this off Into the garbage can which is off camera See So just just feel it. Oh, it's at night eight at night. Oh, wow So just feel it you'll feel the grains of salt and just keep rubbing at it until You get all the salt off because as it dries it'll kind of stick into the paint Okay, so then this is what you're going to be left with Which has this interesting texture and you could definitely do this Without doing the crayon part and then rubber stamp over it or Write over it you definitely could do that. Hey Sharon I'm going to Use my Tim Holtz Distress crayons. This is picket fence I don't know if this is going to work. I have no idea But these are pretty opaque But I don't know if they're opaque enough No, they're not well. No, I take that back And see it works, but it's not it's not opaque enough For me, so let's try, you know, there's always options. Let's try and what acrylic paint pen Now you might have trouble with the paint pen getting it to right on here over the Wax you definitely could do this kind of a background and you could Then emboss over it too. I know we all have like embossing supplies hanging around That we haven't used in probably an eternity if you're going to do the crayon resist part then just You know, it's hard to see because it's white but push down hard With the crayon, I know you guys are probably asking questions, but I'm not looking at the iPad so give me a minute. I couldn't figure out what to write this morning and This is something that Cali black Says a lot which I love to park joy So if the things in your life and people in your life don't spark joy, I think that's an issue Oh, I love Maya Maya road. Oh You mean your mystery package? I'm thinking Maya road Maya road. I love Maya road I way back when I had a wholesale account with Maya road love them. That was like a million years ago All right now. Let's Let's make our words pop out a little bit more It's probably Let's put a pen here And let's zoom in a little bit Does anybody else having trouble with it being blurry? This is a carbon ink pen. I'm not sure it's gonna work, but we're gonna try the carbon ink pen Doesn't always like to write on top of watercolor Need to clean the nib. Yeah, it's not that's not happy right on top of paint. It doesn't like right now paint Let's see. Let's try a different pen It's not like I don't have lots of pens See, this is that pilot varsity. I love this pen and I'll write on so many different things as I say that it stops writing. That's pretty funny Most of the time when I do Any drawing or sketching I don't try to be neat about it Because they usually fail tremendously So, you know instead of just trying to be neat just try to be you know be messy and be free with it and put some scribbles in there and Do lots of sketching lines. See now, you know my secret That's why I do all the crazy sketchy lines I'm probably too obsessive compulsive to try to do neat very well That's probably why it drives me crazy And that's a cute card and it's simple. It's easy and you played with your watercolors But you also played with a couple other things and I do have a stamp that for the back of the cards that say hand made by And it has my web address on it. Hi Katana The limelam. Hey, hello, you haven't missed much We were just playing with a little card while everybody was sort of logging on and and getting ready now and Bex creation says It's a little blurry. Is anybody else having trouble with it being blurry? Hope not. I'm watching on my iPad. Let's see Okay, if you go to your Yeah, yeah, okay, so if you go if you click on the picture You touch if you're on a mobile device I'm on an iPad. I'm watching my own broadcast on the iPad So if you click on the picture three little dots come up in the right upper right corner of the picture When you click on them one of your options is quality Most of the time it's going to be set to auto Adjust your settings until your picture is clearer You probably want 720p My own picture was a little blurry on my iPad until I did that now. It's clear and The picture on the camera, which is on the desktop behind me is perfectly clear So adjust your settings We were just doing this quick fun watercolor greeting card and these greeting cards are fun because you can practice with things like sprinkling salt into your paint in the background and Letting it dry and seeing what kind of effect you get and just do it on it little greeting card something fun And and then when you get used to that technique then you can use that in a painting But you also can do fun things with dropping alcohol in it using white crayon as a resist and this one we did both So do some playing with these watercolor greeting cards again. This is from Strathmore. I got them in a pack of 50 They come with the envelope. They're already pre-cut pre-scored. So these are fun And you don't have to have expensive watercolor paints to do this with these are the Prima classic set All right, so today We might want the salt. I don't think we're gonna want the distressed crayons. Let's see We're gonna get out our watercolor journal and today we're gonna do a painting with the Yarka white nights watercolor, I got to zoom out arrange my desk so Today we're gonna use some more inspiration for my Alaska trip One of the first nights on the trip. I took this sunset picture from the ship from our balcony So we're gonna use that as inspiration and I have this Version of the picture that I have altered using a photo editing app called dynamic auto painter and This is the application called Benson Dynamic auto painter applies painterly effects to your photos and drawings and it has different Effects named for different artists like there's one called Van Gogh and there's a bunch of different I don't know who Benson is, but this is Benson So we're gonna use that as inspiration I don't know Put it over there We have these These are the white night watercolors. This is their pocket Pocket set It is in this really is they're made in st. Petersburg Russia and it comes in this nice plastic case with a pre-cut Color key to do your swatches on you know, usually I have to make one So I love that and it fits nicely in the lid. It has two mixing spots in the lid There is a space for a brush although there is no brush so fail in my you know from my Perspective I love when they put a pocket brush in there So I know they're just trying to keep the cost down and if you have a pocket brush that fits in there, then you can use it In fact, I wonder let's see I wonder if the Windsor Newton-Cottman pocket brush fits in there. Let's find out shall we have to find it though I don't know where it's at right now. I don't know. It's around here. I put it away But anyway, I bet it fits in here. There's a lot of little like pocket foldable Travel brushes that I bet you could get to fit in here it comes with 12 colors and It came with this really neat little piece of paper that's all in Russian. I have no idea what it says I'm assuming it's their contact information because it looks like there's a telephone number on here But you know, I'm gonna save that just for collage because it's interesting for writing And I can't read it so it's useless to me any other respect So these are brand new. So the first thing we have to do is take them out. Oops and Unwrap them Now that I messed all the colors up So let's do that All right, so obviously these slide out real easy. Well You can rearrange the colors To a way that makes more sense to you. Okay, I am totally gonna need a pair of reading glasses for this Because holy cow that writing is little. All right, let's see neutral black burnt umber yellow ochre cadmium red This Azure blue I'm old green. Okay, so we're gonna put them like this Okay, I already see a problem Anybody else see it? This is the color key paper they sent me This is the way the paints lay out in the box. It's a problem here, right? Is it just me? I don't think it's just me Well, it's nice that I have a little piece of paper, but we're gonna have to turn that over Everybody have a great weekend Memorial Day weekend If you follow me on social media, you know that we came home from Alaska to the news that our daughter and her boyfriend were moving in together Which is great. We love polyus but You know, we weren't settled in very long before we had to get her moved out and then that leads to much of cleaning and purging and Yeah, my mouth is not my strong suit. Let's see close enough Close enough. So when you're doing this and you're doing your color keys use a waterproof pen It doesn't have to be exact, but you want to give yourself some swatches of what the color looks like on paper Hopefully the picture is clearer for everybody and you all figured out the settings on there on the on YouTube So another fail on the white knight paints If you're gonna include a color a chart for the customer to do a color key on that's fabulous But make sure the layout of said key matches the layout of the paints in the box. Oh, I just you know, it might be a good idea All right This was so the first thing you want to do it before you unwrap anything is write the names down on your color key Because frequently when you unwrap these they have not printed the name on the pan One of the brands I own they printed the name on the pan and it might be the Schminke I don't remember but most of them do not print it, which I don't like that. I like pretty should print it down there But I know I'm just picky so write all the names down and the names are in English Russian characters and then there's another name Underneath that's in English letters, but that's not English and I don't know it might be another version of Russian I'm not sure and again. This is a carbon ink pen. So it's waterproof. I got it at Amazon at some point we'll add all of these Watercolor sets that I've been getting into our swatch and review book. I Haven't done it yet But I am keeping them out not putting them away until we do so I like to try to save these labels if I can They make interesting collage materials, especially if you're doing You know mixed media tags or something. So let's see. This is cadmium lemon and Yes, just like other a lot of other paint brands the name is not printed on the pan It does say st. Petersburg on the bottom and have their logo This insert into the box is interesting Do any of you out there have these white knights and have an opinion on them? This is a paint brand that's been requested by different people You could probably save these two if you really wanted. Oh, let me just I don't know if I want to save them or not But let's not throw them away until I can think about it If anybody has any questions, let me know First we're gonna get all of our paints unwrapped and we're gonna get them swatch So we can see what the colors look like on the paper and then we're gonna start painting our sunset But you definitely could practice on ATC cards greeting cards Let's do the blue one first So this is very different and I bet these pans are just a little bit different in size than a regular they Then they look like full pans and they're very very full full pans Clear to the top just about There's a little depression in the center but my daughter moving out and doing all the cleaning and moving and purging lead of course to all of my garbage cans being full a huge load of stuff that went for donation and And Kind of a continual purging process on my part. I did some more cleaning and purging yesterday And pretty much all weekend The garbage cans are very very full tomorrow morning is garbage pickups. Thank God, and I'm probably not done with the purging We've lived here a long time and that just means we've acquired a lot of stuff I have started sending things home with my daughter She comes over to pick up the mail or something and I say here's a box of stuff Take it home. If you don't want it. Don't bring it back Anybody else do that to their kids. So now we've got our paints. We'll put them back in the box Yeah, I have discovered because of this process. I do like pocket sets. I think I have a pocket set issue I think I'm developing a collection of them So if you know of a set of Watercolor paints that come in a pocket box a small like travel box. Let me know one that I'm not aware of Because I might need to acquire it Okay, let's see wet them Now this has ox skull in it which aids in the rewetting of Watercolor paint my picture froze or something there for a minute. I have to catch up on that Messages hang on a second. So we're gonna swatch. Look at how bright these colors are you guys? These are fabulous My iPad froze or something for a second. So Don't know what happened So hang on a second. I've got a Bunch of messages to catch up on let me let me do this first Look at that cadmium red. Wow. Okay. Let's see. Oh, okay. Okay. Now. I'm all caught up. Yeah, so it's So it's a van go I know somebody I own I own or have own paint There's hasn't printed on there. They don't all though and it would be nice I know what's the pain in the neck probably to get the printing on there, but geez You know, what if you what if you drop your paint set and then you don't know which one is which you know Some of them all just look black There so I'm barely touching my brush into the paint pan And look at these co look at this blue. This is ultra marine. Holy cow This is the one they call as your as your a as your I'm thinking it might be like a prussian blue. Yeah, it is it is sure a pretty blue All right, this is Emerald green and welcome Carson cats in life. Welcome the real Myrtle Who else joined why my iPad was like freaking out? Let's see? Jesus redeemed. Welcome Kelly welcome. Hey, this one. They just call green. Oh Well, that's pretty though I've got hookers green. This is umber Which is a nice brown color like a gray brown. I like this color This is burnt umber, which is should be more red Yeah, it is and this is something they call neutral black It's very dark But it's a good color So I got this set on Amazon. This is again. This is their pocket set I have a thing for pocket set sets. I'm discovering and it didn't cost very much money It did take a little while to get for some reason I don't know but I like it All right, so here we go. So we've got our mixing plate and we've got our paints Let's get and we've got our pictures here to the left of me. I Need my journal. What did they do with it? Oh Oh It's on the floor. All right, I'm gonna have to move all my little pieces of paper So yeah, I'm having the daughter moved out led to a whole Kind of a fresh start by everybody. I agree with that comment that was left in the chat Which is good and you know, my husband and I Never planned on retiring in San Jose for one thing if you guys are watching anything on the news or financial Things not only is California as a whole super busy, but Santa Clara County is just Outrageous and it's getting very crowded suddenly. We're having another building boom Like we weren't crowded enough We'd like to retire some place a little quieter So let's open our Journal and create a painting with using our white night paints and see whoops Let's see what happens These are supposed to be good quality paints they this is the box they come in It says extra fine artist watercolor Manufactured with finely dispersed and light fast pigments the paint will paint structure also comprises gum Arabic this results in quality paint giving artists full assurance when Completing important artwork and that is important because some of the lesser paints are not made with Either enough gum Arabic as a binder or i'm thinking no gum gum Arabic because when they dry in the In the palette they crack their powdery they can like brush off the paper They don't stick So there was some okay, so there is a star System for light fastness One star is low light fastness two is medium Three is high and they so they do mark them so again bonus points for white night Of course now i put all the labels away, so hang on Okay starting from left to right top to bottom cadmium lemon Three stars so high light fastness High light fastness i'm going down this way down this first row yellow ochre medium Cadmium red is usually not highlight fast. Let's see. Oh, no it is Carmine high Ultramarine is high as your high emerald green high Medium this one this green is a medium light fast That just means that the highlight fast one is going to last longer before it fades than the medium one The umber is high The raw umber is high And the neutral back lack is high. So these are all fairly light fast So there's no low low light faster or not light fast at all paints in this little set um So that's good to know And they're fabulously pigmented as we already found out. All right Um, so here this is my watercolor journal that we've been working in since last year. I'm still trying to fill it up Different paintings different experiments. I just my journals are mostly just to do like studies in You know experiments that I might want to do it later on in a bigger more important painting Working through classes. This is a piece. I did after I was um studying from a gene hain's book I should probably you know what I'm thinking. I want to save that bottle That's so bad. That's why I have so much stuff and I have to purge all the time So just different pieces. I was just playing with different techniques So another piece from a gene hain's um book when I was working with out of one of my books Some of these are more successful than others. Some of them I go. Ooh, that's really bad There's a few like this. Some of these are where we were trying different paints There's another one different paints quar whole vine van go and winzer newton There's another one. So this is the last time that we did a painting. I think Yep So we're going to work on this side I'm going to put these papers in here to protect this backpapes Pages a little bit I did make this journal. It is part of My class on you to me on making journals This is the actual journal I made on camera as part of that class When I made it, I intended it for it to be a glue book And um, of course, that's totally not what happened So that's fine. Um I ended up watercoloring it. It's Fabriano cold press. I believe paper Some of it could be kansen XL watercolor paper, but I don't think so you'd have to actually go watch the class to know for sure because I don't remember Um, but yeah, it's fabulous. All right. I'm going to use a really big brush This is a master's touch 24 round And it's pretty wet In fact, I'm going to kind of do this with it on my mixing plate here And I'm going to grab some of the cadmium yellow Thank you. I really like this journal. I'm going to put more water in here Because I want it pretty thin and the first thing we're going to do is just Kind of do a wash of yellow paint I'm not sure if these pictures are on the inspiration photos Page on my website. I will look after the broadcast if they're not I will for sure add them Thank you. Yeah, I really like that it had I wanted something with a lot of pages and foldouts And like I said, I intended intended for it to be a glue book when I made it And then realized I wanted to do watercolor work in it. Um And I like that it has like flip outs and sections rather than just straight pages. It has something that's more interesting Okay, so we're gonna I I want to just do this yellow wash because our inspiration photo is very yellow and golden in the background, right? And with watercolor you start light and work your way darker So we're going to dry this because I don't necessarily want this to blend with the paint layers that are going to go on top A little couple wet spots out here, but they're okay It's dry enough Let's see. I'm gonna go to a smaller brush This is one of those newer escado brushes versatile Um round number eight. This is one of the ones I got it from Jackson's art was recommended by one of you all Um Do I want to work? I think I'm just gonna leave that on there. We're gonna work with it. So I'm gonna Take some of the next color of yellow, which is cadmium yellow medium just more of a golden color and First thing we're going to do is put in Our horizon line. I'm going to go beneath the horizon line. I just painted in and add some water. I want the New color to blend into the page Below but I want to leave it a fairly straight line above and add some like swatches of it going down here into what's going to be the sea I don't want you guys to think this is too hard that you can't do this. I want you to just play and it's one of the reasons why Sometimes it's easier to work from an altered photo is because You just want to paint the feeling that the paint that you get We're not we're not shooting on creating An exact copy of the seascape. I don't know why I keep losing the signal on my ipad Everything's fine on the computer. I don't know about you guys It's very weird My ipad's having issues this morning With my own broadcast know us Anyway If you want an exact copy of something that you see around you, of course, that's why we have cameras But when we're painting you want to just you know paint How how did that thing make you feel? Suggest the shapes, but oh see it's not just me YouTube I don't know. It's very weird And everything's fine with the camera the camera is operating off a different computer And i'm checking the broadcast behind me and it looks fine. So I don't know what's going on It's very strange All right We are going to add a little bit of Cadmium red to this, but i'm going to be careful about how much I do want an orange color We're gonna again. We're using the paint that's already on the palette plate I use a porcelain plate because it's easy to clean And it's white. I got these at the dollar store. Don't buy spend a lot of money For for a palette plate You know at the art store. I mean, they're nice and all but just go to the dollar store or better yet. Goodwill As you can get one for a dollar or less Um, they're easy to clean. I use them for both acrylic and watercolor Okay, so now we have a slightly darker More orange yellow that I've mixed I like the way these paints mix. I gotta say Yeah, I'm having to refresh my iPad from time to time katana So i'm not i'm not sure what that says about youtube I don't know Nothing's perfect. There's always issues So work your way from lighter to darker Get out the big brush again because I think I want to do Something more like that Put us off of color Yeah, I like it Maybe it's because some kids are getting out of school And there's a lot of people on the high speed Because sometimes even though i'm in the heart of silicon valley, our high speed is not actually high speed My favorite Can't stand how they mix especially trying to mix greens and CLs are so opaque Well, thankfully this kit has greens because mixing greens in any paint is not my favorite These are more opaque Than some other brands I have but i'm liking them Of course, I haven't really met too many watercolor paints. I don't like to be perfectly honest I'm gonna put some more red in here Now, you know to get a true sense of these I would have to do Some work in the review And the watercolor review and swatch book which I haven't done yet But we will be doing that the that with The white nights I have the pbo which we've played within this journal already And I also have some old holland paints all of them need to go into the Swatch book. So that'll be on um That'll be upcoming at some point in the future. Um I don't know if i'm going to do it on live broadcast or on a recording Yeah, I thought about getting um a bigger set ramo, but um at this point because I've been doing all of these swatches I have so many paints You know, I do like collecting my watercolor paints. I I will admit But I have so many of them at some point you have to you know say When I don't know Um the other color I have trouble mixing sometimes ramo is or that I get frustrated trying to mix The right one that I'm looking for is purple And this kid doesn't have a purple. Um, I don't mind if the kids come in white as long as they come with a good dark And they don't all so that's an issue for me This one came came with a nice black um Would I have preferred a pain's grave probably I think it's more interesting to paint with In both watercolor and acrylic. That's just me I have tried mission gold and I've done swatches with the mission gold in my review book Um, I have a small set that actually they sent me That's just fabulous of their tubes and they're nice and bright and they're wonderful Okay, so we're going to add some um burnt umber to this now Brown it up and we're working our way darker, right? So So we're having issues everybody's having issues with youtube this morning So try refreshing Your screen That's very true And um, also, you know, you can use things like white gel pen white acrylic paint I don't disagree with that statement Too much water So mission gold is fabulous paint. I do really like them, but they're very expensive So you would have to decide if that's you know, how serious are you about your paint? um that you want to spend money on them now for me I would I like the mission golds um, but I would get daniel smith Or schminke because they are and they're a little more expensive than the mission gold but they Are easier for me to get for one thing And yeah, you don't really have to have a dark in your palette I do tend to be a lazy crafter painter person And I like to have not make to not mix colors So for me, I would rather have it In my palette. I like to have a good dark A purple and a purple Um, because those are colors that I can mix of course. I know how but I would rather just not be bothered because I'm lazy Oh sepia is a good color to have in your palette. I like sepia. That's a good color All right, so now Here what I'm gonna do. I think I'm gonna add some of this blue color And I'm adding it to what's on the palette. So I'm gonna get sort of a It's gonna gray green up the blue Tone I should um say gray it up. It's gonna tone it down a little bit make it less bright Which is what I want So we're gonna add some of this See I've never taken a proper watercolor class. I just like playing with the colors and the puddles of water I do read the occasional book. I watch the occasional tutorial I just like playing with the paints Because it's watercolor who wouldn't We're taking inspiration from our photo. We're not necessarily looking to copy it exactly That's what cameras are for I'm also because this is sort of a field notes study kind of um Watercolor journal. I'm not looking up to fill up the whole page Frequently, I put splatters in the background or I rubber stamp in the background. I highlight things with pen So this is really sort of a freeform place to experiment with new paints and do studies And most of the time my paintings whether it's watercolor or acrylic are not about perfection anyway Because that's not who I am Now I'm having to add a bit more water than I probably normally would To get more of a transparent look and to be able to see all these puddles of different colors through the paint But that's because these paints are very opaque and very pigmented Which those of you who already have them know And I had heard that Now we know that now they did not send me these paints. I paid for them So this blue is going to mix with the orangey brown that's on here and it's going to make something That's a dark gray, but that's not black Or maybe the occasional hint of blue like right there, but that's perfect for what I want for the ocean My preferred palette has two colors of yellow two colors of red two colors of blue sepia pains grave and violet And two colors of green because I hate mixing green And then if I have room I like to put some fun colors like opera rose opera pink Or like daniel smith's moon glow, which is a color. I just love A teal is fun if you have room You can create a pocket kit Really easily out of some of these small containers and just take if it's a metal one take the insert out You can get a lot more paint pans in it I'm just touching the tip of my brush to the painting adding some of these this dark color in So what is above the water is always reflected in the water so to do Uh a Painting with water in it that suggests realism even if it's an impressionistic style painting you need to have some of those hints of reflection and shadow in the in the water That's actually pretty good. Let's see Checking my photos, which are that way Yeah, I like that So now where do I want to go? I think we're gonna go back to a brown I need to get I need more water So this is the umber color, which is more of a gray brown And the other one was a red brown Yeah, that works Does anybody have any questions? so one of the reasons I work from both the altered photo and the original unaltered one is because sometimes you need to add in a couple of Suggestions of those details that you've lost when you altered the photo In order to get the piece to look Or suggest the picture that you want With a seascape you really want the horizon line to be straight Again, I'm just I'm just tapping the very tip of the brush to the painting I'm actually barely touching it to the paper And then I'm going to go in below where I made those marks with water Some of them have dried a little bit and so they're not going to really move too much, but that's okay So I like these paints. They are you know, you are I'm they're very brightly pigmented I'm having to add and they're very light fast, but I'm having to add more water to them. They are a little opaque But I think it would be a good set to have For like for traveling. I think you know, it's affordable And I think if you want nice light fast paints and you don't you can't afford to spend a ton of money I think these white nights are a good alternative Monday, we're going to do Monday with deco art I don't know what I'm going to paint yet, but we'll paint something No questions Oh, here we go. See I'm having to I'm having to refresh my um my um Chat every now and then Yeah Good morning, everyone. Oh good morning, Melinda. I love uh video tutorials from like Jerry Zardorama Hi Deborah My favorite thing to paint is Probably anything with water in it Um probably because I find it a challenge So we're just gradually going darker Getting a little less abstract with our mark making This was a inspired by a sunset photo I took from aboard the celebrity cruise ship solstice On my recent vacation to Alaska I'm not sure if the original photo is on my Uh inspiration photos page on my website or not Um if it's not Then I will add it. I think it might be um, I Yes, and no Melinda Okay, so You know, I've used water soluble crayons like the target up and up crayons. I have those And things like that. I never had a proper watercolor stick or crayon until recently Um, one of the things I did while I was on my vacation my parents live in Washington state And our ship left out of Seattle So my husband let me Talk him into taking me to the daniel smith um Fact store and factory while we were in Seattle, which was hilarious to get to because my dad and mom Got lost we're driving and they got lost a few times and they were arguing and my dad was pretending He couldn't hear her and it was pretty funny. Um Hey, Andrea, how are you and so anyway, so we went to the daniel smith store and One of the things I wanted to get while I was there were the watercolor sticks So I do own 10 colors and I have been playing with them And their store is fabulous. I can't tell you enough about their store. Um I do have videotape of this somewhere I think I think I have a bunch of unedited videotape that has to be edited and posted but um Their store is fabulous and most of the time you go to these stores that are associated with websites We're all used to shopping at online As artists and mixed media artists because we can't find what we want at our local stores Um, but most of this time the stores just can't possibly stock everything they have on their website There's just no way on the planet. They can do that. Um, it would just cost too much. It's too cost prohibitive Daniel smith is the opposite. So that store has on their website. They only have daniel smith products for the most part The store has so much more. Um, they even have they had a whole row of just golden products Um, so I can't recommend it enough. It is a little challenging to find the location Yeah, I have to edit it. Um, so, uh I have to it's a challenging to find their store But I do recommend going there. I didn't get lots of videotape there, but There are some still shots and I do a little chat about it Um, again, it's on my computers. I did shoot a bunch of Little things when I got home I haven't edited any of them yet. Um I did meet one of their executives in the parking lot. She was very sweet. She says, you know, your name sounds familiar She went inside and immediately found me on youtube and She's so yeah So anyway, um, it's very sweet very nice stuff I can't wait to go back. Of course, you know, I had the family with me and they're all hovering around in the background and you know Any of you who have ever shopped with your other halves Um Who are not into the arts or crafts know how how interesting that can be so It when it was Let's see Oh debbie, you're welcome It did it was so much fun and I got to tell you guys they have all of the daniel smith products in the store um But they have like I said, they have golden they have Painting supplies they have framing supplies. They have paper crafting supplies They're just there's so much They have so much Yeah, see mine does the same thing adria Um, so I just added some black to our mix here And we're using a lot of water these white knight paints are very very pigmented So I do recommend that You know Don't chince out on the water Build up your layers slowly keep them as transparent and light as possible Until you're super happy with them. Don't forget to do some lifting really quick If you get some colors in the wrong space Well, all I can say is I didn't spend nearly as much time there as I would have liked But I'm definitely already wanting to go back um In fact, my husband has this project going on at work and he keeps saying that at some point He might need to go to portland for the day. I'm like can I come? He says you want to go to portland? I said no, I want to go to seattle And he gets it. He doesn't he doesn't question it too much. He gets it I try not to be too out of control because you know I It's expensive So that was that azure blue again And mixed with the black mixture that I had on there If it was just my husband and like my mom It would have been fine, but my dad's like, you know, he Okay, I am I have no patience and my middle name is neither grace nor patience. I get both of those traits from my dad You guys think I'm bad He has no patience either And he knows that I get it from him So I you know just be careful about you guys thinking that you need to go out and buy every kind of paint every kind of medium Try to buy small sample quantities of things until you figure out number one if it's going to work for you um I need another plate because I want to go back to some yellows and reds And I don't necessarily want to clean that yet because I might need it um so anyway, so Buy small quantities until you figure out you really love it and then if you do then you can buy some the bigger quantities So this is the yellow. What is this cadmium yellow medium? I love clear gesso because I love watercolor. My favorite though is the daniel smith transparent watercolor ground So this is a master's touch brush, which I like this brush I like the size, but I'll be honest sometimes it loses bristles And which I don't like It's an okay brush. It's not you know Some of their brushes are really bad. This one's not that bad, but Too much water Now it's mixing with some of the other colors on here and we're getting a really dark brown gray tones for this painting That is fine. If you were working on something else, then it might not be so you would want to um control How much you're putting where you're putting it whether that blue was dry or not It's really all about controlling your water No, yeah, lost bristles and acrylic is a bigger deal I doesn't bug me as much as it does in my acrylic paintings Because then digging it out is a pain in the ass. Pardon my French um The master's brush touch it uh blah blah blah blah master's touch brushes Are a good bargain brush um If that sort of thing doesn't bug you And if you're not spending too much money on them, I mean there are bargain brush. So I you know You're kind of getting what you pay for But there are better bargain brushes out there in my opinion. Oopsie. There's a hair Getting there. There's a facebook chat going on right now some of my friends Okay, so this is the yellow And you notice I didn't put too much water in it now these yarka paints white nights are very opaque. So they're going to act sort of like a gouache and You're going to be able to highlight on top of some of these other colors and have it really stand out Of course, it would do more if I was willing to wait for it to dry Yeah, priming your paper for some things is a good idea I like to work over like collage backgrounds and things in my with my watercolors and so then I want the Page to take the medium the same over The collage papers the raw paper You know the matte medium. So I'll give it a good coat of The clear transparent watercolor ground And let it sit for a couple of days and then and then I'm good to go You can use regular clear gesso In a pinch It'll work The transparent watercolor ground I think is a little better Yes, so not Yes, I know so Anyway, um Most gouache is like an opaque watercolor. There are some acrylic gouaches out there Which do not reactivate with water. In fact whole buying makes one and it's an acrylic gouache I don't understand why they don't just call it an acrylic paint, but they call it acrylic acrylic gouache Yes, some more gouaches are way more opaque than others. I agree with that Um, so when you use the transparent watercolor ground you get your best result if you Put the coat of the transparent watercolor ground on it's a daniel smith product And then you leave it sit for 48 to 72 hours and you let you let it go through a curing process that um if you do that you'll have much better results with it and It will react very similarly to watercolor paper No matter the Uh mediums or papers or things that are underneath it Yeah, I would you know, I don't use gouache enough In fact, I have a whole palette of gouache and I barely use it. I'm actually thinking of I know hesitate to say this sell One of my large round palettes the one with the gouache paints in it and it's full of gouache paints with the paints in it um But I have no idea if anybody would even be interested it would be kind of expensive to ship um I don't I don't know I've shown it on camera before so if any of you are interested you have to let me know Okay, and this is the lighter yellow. This is the cadmium lemon And you can see right there how opaque it is. This is you know, pretty much straight out of the Out of the palette. I haven't really added any more water in it than there took to activate the paint Oops, that's a wrong color oops You can see right there the difference between the two colors Picking out the lighter spots where the sun would be setting and and the light would be shining through the clouds Yes, I'm occasionally using the original photo as inspiration that at this point the painting is taking on a life of its own Okay, so now to make it really pop I'm gonna get crazy crazy crazy. So this is the black I am watering it down a bit and I'm going to add some of this blue to it. Oops, so take it easy when you Start to add these, you know dark colors. Take it easy and just do a little bit at a time pick out the dark parts of your ocean scene you've unintentionally creating created darkness in some parts So highlight those just like we did where we highlighted the light parts with the yellow And purple I'm not see. Yep. So purple is a great shadow color Uh, this palette doesn't have one. I could mix one. Of course I could you know, but Didn't I just say it was a lazy artist? You know I may still add purple. I don't know. We'll see because I'm thinking it needs some purple So we may have to see if we can mix purple Purple is one of my favorite colors to use for shadow. Okay, that's not bad. Let's see. Um, I'm gonna use the carmine Which is already more of a blue red So when you're mixing purple Don't use your orangey red because you're probably not going to get a color that you like And use a true blue stay away from anything that's kind of blue green. So I'm going to use the ultramarine Oh, that's a nice purple Look at that first try That doesn't happen that often Yeah, usually using other colors cool or warm colors for your shadow um colors will um make your painting more interesting and um work for you better Then just adding black or white Ah, see, so I'm glad I mixed purple instead of buying a purple So a lot of times with a lot of paints Um your purple the colors that we all love the most Because we're artists and we just are very attracted to those colors i.e. teal Opera rose or opera pink Purple they have poor lightfastness a lot of paint brands have Problems with lightfastness with those colors. So you want to be careful if lightfastness is a concern for you You want to be careful? but if you're doing a piece And this is especially true for those of us who mix our mediums And you really love it Scan it Especially if you use things on the piece that you're not sure or lightfast um Or you know aren't lightfast that scan it So see adding this purple here and you can mix purple and you can mix teal from colors that are lightfast so, you know, that's usually It's usually a better option to not be lazy and to mix your colors from you know paints that are going to work for you But if it's a concern for you, you should always check To see if they're lightfast or not So you see right there how sometimes I put the paint down then when I go to blend it a little bit with the water I've waited a little too long and that's not a yarker thing. That's that's just a gena thing So then I just add a little bit more paint to it and then use that And that'll help me Disguise the original paint that's already kind of dried on there this is 140 pound cold press Fabriano paper I like cold press. It's my preferred paper Texture I like it has a little bit of a texture, but it's not flat And I like that about it I'm not a big fan of hot press because it's too flat Unless I am working on a piece for a client that I know has to be has to be turned into a digital Image then I will do do work on hot press because it's very flat and it scans really well So I worked on the sky a little bit and let this dry Down here And at this point I'm just playing and if it turns out and I like it cool if it doesn't I'm not too worried about it This is like I said, this is a study. This is a way for me to play with the paints See what I can get them to do play with the colors play with the composition And this is a great way to work um out Those things before you do a piece that you're gonna like sell for a client or sell to a client or Um do for a show Yeah, good. Um I don't like rough Rough press either because I'm not it's got too much check texture for me So now I'm bouncing around and going back to my, um, yellow The lightest yellow in this particular palette, which is the cadmium lemon I saw andria's question. Hang on Oh good cathie. I'm glad you're having a good day off I will have to look her up the line lamb that I don't know that I've seen that. Um any videos by her Yeah, I like canton or strathmore cold press is nice. Is they're both fine papers, especially for doing like studies and things They're perfect for that um I store my artwork in journals And in a portfolio. I have one very stuffed very fat portfolio that actually sits Underneath the table here. I actually go through it every now and then because it gets really full I didn't use to On the watercolors. Um, I didn't use to but I do now Spray them with some kind of archival spray or sealant When I first started doing artwork More than, you know, just as the crafty thing. I didn't know that you should do that And it's funny all the two tutorials that you see nobody like says, oh by the way You know, you kind of should spray, you know, it's a good idea to spray your work With an archival spray Or a protective spray If you really want it to last like, you know, they don't I don't know what the deal is And yeah, I take pictures. I take pictures or scan a lot of things I'm just I'm fixing this here right here because I'm not really happy with the way the clouds are right here So I'm working on it They're a little too like uniform And they shouldn't be because they weren't in the original photo Yeah, if you want to preserve them, then you need to, you know, spray them and take care of them. So, you know, and a lot of You take classes and they don't mention that not even with, um, like acrylic classes You know, you really should seal your acrylic paint after you're done if you paint on, you know, on a canvas or anything If you're, you know, in your journals, you should, um Give him a good coat of wax at the very least But and I always sprayed my charcoals because, you know, they smudge and smear all over the place if you don't But nobody ever said anything about the watercolor paints Yeah, just like you want to use an aerosol Use an aerosol product and just give it a couple coats Very light coats. You don't want to reactivate the paint But just a couple of protective coats All of your work, if you really love your work, you should protect it Store it in away from the light Spray it with the sealer Um If it's water reactive, I would recommend probably spraying it with a workable fixative or a Matte finish crylon makes a matte finish spray that I'm I'm pretty fond of Uh a couple coats of that and then spray it with after that dry spray it with a clear varnish let it dry in between Okay, that's better. I'm liking that better Wax Um, so I like daddy vans. I have daddy vans. I use it in my journals all the time um I can't buy it anywhere local so I have to order it it works great I also have dorlands, which is an art wax, but it's toxic. So you have to use it with gloves Um, it's dorlands is great on canvas And deco art makes a cream wax which works great The cream wax and the dorlands I use more on canvases because They work better on canvases and I use them after I've already put a coat of Mod podge or deco page or some other kind of brush on Clear finish and then I put wax in my art journal pages. I spray them with um A uh Usually I use spectra fix because it's not as much as I can I use non aerosol because I'm allergic to everything else and so I use Spectra fix I spray a couple of light coats on the page let it dry Then I put my daddy went vans on and um that prevents your Pages from sticking together now again. I didn't know to do that at first So I have lots of journals that have bits of wax paper between all the pages because I didn't know how else to get the pages not to stick Oh good. I'm glad even if it's not, you know watercolor related. I'm glad So now I'm gonna just go in with the black I need a little I need a little water So I'm gonna highlight a few places in my water that are dark I like pastels and charcoal When especially when I was first learning I found that um learning about shading And getting something that made me happy was way easier in pastel and charcoal than it was in um paint And I saw a question about spectra fix. Hang on. I want to get this before it dries too much Yeah, I like somebody must have asked. Thank you, adria. Somebody must have asked about spectra fix um So hairspray works in a pinch But it can yellow over time. So I would be careful about doing anything like that on stuff that you really love I do keep aquanet cheap hairspray in the studio But I don't use it on pieces that I really love and I never use it in my journals Now right now I have some lightfastness tests going on on the dashboard of my car They have been sitting on the dashboard of my car since before I went to alaska Um because of course as soon as I put them out there, we you know, it It was not sunny anymore. We had two weeks of overcast So they've been sitting there and they will continue to sit there for a while Um, and it's all black different kind of black pens So at some point we'll be bringing that up Um in its own recording and um here on watercolour wednesday um It would be interesting to see if there's any studies been done on um clear finishes There probably it's got to be somebody that has So you notice i'm adding just some really dark color here to the ocean and suddenly our painting is really popping I'm not reading the chat. Hang on guys. I know I I saw some more messages I like that So knowing when to stop is usually half the battle But I like this it's an interesting little study. Is it exactly like the photo? No Do I want it to be? No Not necessarily So almost all my pastels are what you would call very inexpensive and budget friendly Um and up until recently I just kept them in a tin can all mixed up together Which is not something you should probably do Because again, you know when I was first learning nobody ever said differently So I want to do the same thing I just did for the ocean and pull out some details Make some things match up Or suggest up to the photo But I'm using the lighter color because I don't want the clouds as dark as the ocean They aren't in the picture And I don't want to do as much blending. I want to do a little bit but not too much And basically I'm just mixing all the colors except for the black over here together And I'm getting this dark like gray color I've used crylon's matte finish spray as a fixative for a long time I still do occasionally, but it's an aerosol and it does make me wheeze I do have allergies now. Thanks american greetings And if you don't know the story behind that we won't get into it today But yeah, let's just say I got hurt at work for those that don't know a little black to it I like charcoal if you want to take a great class charcoal class from a really good teacher And it's not a specifically a charcoal class, but um she teaches Or usually uses charcoal at some point in all the classes she teaches paulina agnew She's fabulous And you will need a fixative if you're working with charcoal Or it's going to smear all over the dang place Oh another hair We lost some of our blue up here So let's add it back in shall we? I'm using the big brush because I have less control over it and I don't want Um to have too much control So for me and how I like to paint um if I start to be too anal about Um controlling where the paint is going then I'm usually less satisfied with the result That's something that is just true for me. It's not necessarily true for you Let's see that. I'm happier with Yeah, so, you know for me, um Having something big change around here Um Not that I'm unhappy about it. I'm glad that my daughter is starting her, you know adult life And she and paulina's we love him. He's a great guy Um, but it's a big change and you know, I don't always react well to big changes and you know Mostly it's just because when things like that happen my brain just starts Going around and around about oh my god. Now. Do you know what how much stuff I have to do so? Yeah, sometimes I just need to Pull back from things It's not that I don't want to create and don't have ideas But there's so much other stuff to do I'm going to stop now because I'm I'm pretty happy with that it's It's something I can live with and it's something I like and I could keep playing with it But I really like it. I am going to do this And I'm going to take all of my paint colors And see I just mixed all of them together and I got this nice dark neutral color There's very little black in there But it's a nice dark gray color right I know some of you are going to go. Oh my god So and then if you have parts of it that you don't want to get splatters on cover them up with a piece of white paper But you know have fun in play. This is a Um, you know a book that's all about studies and playing with paint and I'm going to make a note here that at the bottom Thank you that it was the white knight so that I remember Mostly so that I remember so these are pretty nice paints and they were fun to play with Um, I do also have the old holland, um, which I think we're going to play with next week. I have A small I couldn't get the set I wanted, you know, I already said three times today in this broadcast that I really like pocket kits It's one thing I've discovered from this process is I'm a big fan of these pocket Different kinds of pocket kits and I could see me having a collection at some point But the old holland pocket kit I wanted seems to not be available anywhere So I have sent off emails to old holland and a couple of suppliers to see. Hey, what's up in the meantime? I got the small tube six tube set And there's a yellow a red a blue yellow ochre light burnt umber And golden green I I'm guessing by some of these names That the wrappers on the tubes do not match the paint, but I don't know that so next week We will be playing with this small set of old holland watercolors And I'm going to try to get myself a pocket kit because you know, I'm a pocket kit collector now at this point And yeah, so you're just playing with getting the light to come through the clouds I've done a similar seascape sunset seascape in acrylic in the past and it um In some respects these are easier to do in acrylic and get that Impression of the light shining through the clouds into the ocean because if you make a mistake You can just cover it up with more acrylic paint. You can't really do that with watercolor You're stuck with it and you have to work with whatever happens, but I love that I think that's why they love watercolor about because It's a challenge. So have some fun play and enjoy the process. It's not about whether anybody likes it or not It's only about what makes you happy Does anybody have any questions? I will make sure when we Stop broadcast that that picture is up on Um the website for you all. Let's see if I can get it here on camera I have all my brushes I have to leave this out now leave your paint open until the paint's dry after you've been using them If you close it too soon, it's going to get moldy So yeah, the one thing that I learned from this painting Is that I really I also really like how the light's shining through the clouds Now I could spend more time with it and really fuss with it and get it to look closer to this Of course, I could that's not the point of this painting. It's not the point of the broadcast Um, this is just me playing with these new paints and I love them. Um, they're nice They are more opaque than what I'm used to and if you use different paints you would get completely different results so You can also use something like this as an inspiration for an abstract piece What's the feeling you get from the colors in these two photos the original and the altered and use that Feeling you get from the photo to create abstract piece in the colors From the photo. So that's another thing that you can do there Either in a watercolor or acrylic All right, that's it for right now. I'm gonna go have some lunch. We've been online for two hours. Holy cow It's the longest watercolor Wednesday yet. I think Um, don't forget the most important thing. You all know what that is, right? Have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later Bye guys