 everybody. How are you today? Typical Monday morning. There's lots of stuff going on. I think we're good. Good morning, Kim. How are you? So we're gonna do a little mini canvas here. I was inspired to do this by a couple of things. Let me see if I can get one there. I got it without messing up the camera. Good morning, Coy. How are you? Lola, good morning. All right. So I know, as you all know, the holidays are coming up. And good morning, Carol. Hey, Cindy. And you know, I don't know about you guys, but I love to make handmade Christmas presents. I am good. I went out for a walk this morning in the rain and I got soaking wet and it was so much fun. And there's a video for that coming up. Straight to YouTube. So anyway, Christmas is coming up. And you know, I love to make homemade gifts. I'm not high. I'm not really into doing lots of shopping at Christmas, which is funny because I've been in the retail business for a long time. But maybe that's why I don't like to do lots of shopping. Recently, for past the brush, I did this little small 4x4 canvas. I think it's 4x4. It might be 3x3. I don't know. It's a little mini canvas. For past the brush where we did it. No, it's 4x4. We did it for Inspired by Bob Ross. And I did this little mini landscape. And I actually bought more than one of these. And I thought that we would continue along that line. I've got to make some of these for Christmas gifts anyway. So I thought I would inspire you guys to do the same. These little mini canvases are really cheap. They come in a two pack at Hobby Lobby for $4.99. And they're fun to do and they're quick and easy because they're so small. And you can do lots of different things on them. So I thought for the Monday with Decowarts that we have between now and the holidays that I would do a mini canvas every other week because we do Monday with Decowart every other week. And today I thought I got a lot of questions about we're doing sunflowers with Watercolor Wednesday this coming Wednesday. I got a lot of questions for people about how to do about doing sunflowers in acrylic. So I thought well let's do a sunflower. So we're going to do a sunflower. So I've got my blank canvas here and this is just a number two pencil. This is a Faber-Castell one of their jumbo pencils. But any number two pencil doesn't have to be anything fancy. And first thing you want to do is just draw your flower center on the canvas. Now remember we're working with acrylic paint. So if you get lots of sketchy lines here with the graphite it doesn't matter. We're working with lots of acrylic paint and it's going to cover it right up. No worries. And for right now we're going to just do one sunflower. You of course after you get the hang of it can do more than one but we're going to just do the one. Then we're going to put some petals. Now remember nature is not even in straight so you know you don't need your petals to all be exactly the same shape, size. They're not going to be in nature so they shouldn't be in your painting and if you make them irregular it's going to just give it that more of a look of realism. And definitely I would in the case of something like this I would give yourself a guide by drawing your sunflower. Now of course you could get a picture of a sunflower and you could trace it on with some transfer paper. DECO Art has some really great transfer paper in both black and white that you could get. You could use carbon paper too. And then I'm going to go behind. I'm going to put another round of petals. Nothing complicated. This should be pretty easy. And you know don't be afraid. You notice I'm turning the canvas. It's easier. Remember I'm the lazy crafter. Whatever is easier. It's what I'm going to do. So there we've got our little basic drawing. Nothing too complicated. I have some DECO Art Artists Traditions colors. I forgot to get out my palette. Let's see if I can grab one of them. Got it. Yay. Alright. I've got to move my tanks around. Okay, so we're going to start with doing the background. Thank you. You know I like to do the background first because then later on as we do our focal point, then I don't have to worry about touching up the background. So I'm going to use some DECO Art Traditions. This is Aqua Marine. And I'm going to use some opaque white. You can get this little sample pack of artists. There are traditions paints. I think there's 12 bottles. And it comes with a couple of mediums. That's a great way to try their artist acrylic paints, which I like they're very affordable. I'm going to put a little bit of a darker blue in here. I'm going to use phthalo blue. So this is what my palette looks like right here. And I'm going to just take a large flat brush not large but I mean large for the size of the canvas. This is a number eight flat. I don't know this is a cheap brush. It says art color. I God knows where I picked it up and it's kind of it's on its last legs. I don't know if you can see that but that the bristles are kind of all splayed out like goofy. Oh, see, you're not even I'm not even on camera. Can you see how that there? The bristles are all so you know, but it's all right, we'll use it anyway. So I'm going to grab a little bit of the Aqua Marine and the white on the same brush. And I'm going to just I may go over some of my pencil lines. That's okay. They're not precious or anything. Long as I have some kind of an idea of where they were. Now, when you're doing these, don't forget to get the sides of your canvas. So I'll show you what I mean. That's pretty. So I'm going to go into the sides here. And I'm going to try to keep my paint my brush strokes in the same direction as the paint is on the front of the canvas. It just makes it a little more interesting. If you guys have any questions, I do have my iPad on. I don't think you can see it on camera, but I can see when you guys type something. And this will be on YouTube later. And I'm going to grab a little bit of that darker blue just a bit, not too much. I just want to make the background a little more interesting. You could do this on paper. You could do this on a little board. You could make little bookmarks, anything like that. Okay, that's interesting. I like that. Hey, Mary. So while that's drying a little bit, we're going to work on our flower center. And seeing you can tell I'm a painter. I've already got paint all over me. No problem. It's going to be on Periscope for 24 hours and later on, it will be on YouTube. Within, you know, by tomorrow, I'll have it up on YouTube. Okay, so for the flower center, I'm going to use raw umber, dallyeride yellow. I do not know how to pronounce that. D-I-A-R-Y-L-I-D-E yellow. I don't know how to pronounce that, but it's a pretty color of yellow. These are deco art traditions. This is Monday with deco art. So we're using deco art paints. I like their traditions, artist acrylic paints. You could use any of their craft paints, too, for these little mini canvases. And these are great practice little pieces. I'm going to start with just these two colors. And we are going to switch to a smaller brush. I'm going to use the smaller flat brush. This is a number two flat. That's what it says. And again, it's kind of warped in, you know, in Arfton. I'm going to start with the brown on the edge of the sunflower center with the brown. We're losing some viewers. I think the watercolor episodes are more popular than the acrylic paint. Okay, and I'm just scrubbing it into the canvas. And I'm going to grab some of my yellow. The brown is still wet. That's okay. And I'm going to just put it. I'm going to say the sun is coming from this way. And I'm just dabbing the yellow on. Okay. It's really just a base coat. Now I'm going to take my heat tool, hopefully without knocking stuff over. And we're going to give this a little bit of a dry. Now when you're using your heat tool to speed dry acrylic paint, be real careful because if you dry it too quickly and get it too hot, it's going to bubble and create a texture. Now when you're doing certain paintings, that may be okay and you may want that texture. But for a lot of things, you probably don't want that. Okay, so now two things. So be careful when you're using your heat tool on any painting, whether it's acrylic or watercolor that you don't burn your fingers. I did get one finger a little hot right there. So use a lot of caution. Also when you're doing something like a sunflower, if you put a little extra paint here and you really kind of hold the heat tool there, being careful of course not to burn the canvas, it will start to bubble and kind of pucker the paint will and it'll create a texture that may suggest sunflower seeds. So that may be an interesting thing to try and you might really like that. It might lend itself really nicely to your painting. All right, so we're going to go to a little smaller brush here because this is a little painting. Got a smaller flat. This is like a zero. This is really tiny. Can you see that? Okay, it's really little. Okay, I'm going to, um, I have my same yellow that Dahlia Ride Yellow that I can't pronounce. I've also got Hansa Yellow I'm going to put out and I have some Rossiana which is kind of a ochery color. Okay, so we're going to start with our lightest color and I'm going to paint in these petals that are on the top in the front. While the paint is wet I'm going to grab a little bit of my darker Dahlia Ride Yellow and I'm going to drag it around the outside of the petal, up a little bit in the center. Don't worry so much if you get, you know, some paint like this in here. First of all, you can just wipe it off with your finger or baby wipe, but also we're not done with the flower center so don't worry about it. Now I'm going to take my darker darkest yellow and I'm going to do this petal in the back. Now yellows, generally speaking, don't cover, um, background textures well. They're very translucent so if you're bugged by the fact that some of your background marks or pencils show through the yellow you may want to start out by painting your petals out with some white. So once I get that background petal in there then I'm going to grab some of my lightest yellow and I'm just going to go in here into the tip. I'm not cleaning my brush, mind you. My brush is dirty, that's okay. I'm going to get interesting marks that way so I like that. So I'm going to just use a small brush. I'm going to go around my petal. This is a great time, my flower. This is a great time to, you know, just turn up some music and do some painting. Remember if you, also if you get the wrong color in the wrong place, this is acrylic paint so acrylic paint is all about layers of marks. So say right there you can see the blue through the yellow petal but maybe later on I don't like that. I can add some white and then some more yellow to that and it'll be just fine. So we're going to keep going, keeping the ones in the front a lighter color, the ones in the back a darker color, farther away from the viewer would be darker. And of course it's easier to do these flowers, you know, on a bigger canvas. It's a challenge to do it on a small canvas but that's not a bad thing. I'm going to put a little yellow here, a little yellow there, keep going. Now if you want your sunlight to be coming from a certain direction on your sunflower and you're doing what I'm doing and you're turning your canvas around and you've forgotten where that direction should be, you may want to stick a post-it note out from underneath your canvas and write sun on there. These little paintings are really nice gifts, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts and everybody has room for a little painting. If they're like me and you've lived in your house a long time and you have lots of stuff, big paintings are a different story but little paintings everybody has room for a little painting. Already it's looking good, just keep going. I just got some deco art, so soft fabric paints in so we'll be doing some painting on fabric too, not today but it'll be coming up. So I'm just getting a base coat on here, try not to be too fussy with it. I like to be suggestive with most of my painting, whether I'm painting with acrylic or or watercolor. I hope your guys's Monday is starting off well. Fill us a couple of back petals in. Let's put some yellow in some of these where we didn't quite catch up yet. All right, we're going to take some of our medium color and see what I mean about the yellows being transparent and it doesn't matter the brand, it's not because I'm using a deco art paint and it could be golden, heavy body acrylics yellow just by its nature of the pigment is a very translucent color. Okay, so we're going to give it a little bit of a dry, being careful not to get it too hot. We just want to get the shine off. So it's not completely dry, we just got most of the shine off and I'm going to, I have this little tiny round brush so we're going to switch to that. I'm going to grab some white. I'm going to do one petal at a time and we're going to do the front petals first. Um, I don't always when I do seal my watercolor paintings I usually use something like a Krylon matte finish spray and aerosol. Okay, so there we added some white and some more yellow. I'm going to add some more of this kind of medium yellow that I have here and see how I'm putting in these little streaky lines and I'm not going to blend all that. I want that to be on there. That's going to give your petal some suggestion of realism there and that's that's what you want on all of your petals. So we're going to do the upper petals first and then I'll go back and touch up the lower petals. Being careful now to get our edges looking the way we want. I'm adding the white to sort of even out the tone of the paint that's on here. I'm not too I'm not too concerned about the set that center part because if it if I go into there like I said we aren't done with this. So good morning everybody who's just joining us now. I see a bunch of new people coming on. Chalk pastels are fabulous. I have a whole set of that. Chalk pastels and oil pastels. Okay, so now we're going to go in with our medium yellow. Now remember to sunflowers you know come there are some other colors of sunflowers. There's some you know ones that have some red and stuff in them. So we're going to keep going all the way around. I really should have my reading glasses on and I don't because you know I always seem to forget to get them before we turn. I turn on the cameras. Our lightest yellow. I'm going to go with our medium yellow and you know don't be afraid to you know put some just kind of brush marks and blobs and it's going to give you a little painting some interest. And remember you know acrylic painting especially is all about layers of marks. So the more layers and more marks you put the more interesting your painting is going to be. And what's the worst that could happen? It's only a little four by four canvas. If you mess it up you can just you know start over. That's why they made gesso. Good morning everybody. And you know there's a little sunflower painting. Something bright and cheery would make a nice Christmas gift especially for those that are by the time Christmas comes around are going to be in an area of the country or the world that's all you know dark and cold and snowy and a little piece of brightness will cheer them up. Of course I like dark and cold and snowy so you know what do I know? But I'm from California so I probably don't really know what it's like. That's what my husband tells me he's from New York like Wisconsin exactly. My husband likes to call us California and the people that were the people from the land of fruits and nuts. He's not wrong. And I can say that because I'm from here without offending people because I'm only making fun of myself. We are kind of nuts here. Okay. So see as I do more of these petals look at that. Look how pretty that's coming out. So we're going to keep going and while I'm painting these petals if you guys have any questions please you know I'm glancing over at the screen so let me know if you have any questions. Good morning. Okay we've got all our white on here so now it's out of yellow. Bouncing around the canvas you'll notice if you've watched me do my watercolor Wednesdays and now you're watching me do this one you'll notice that I do I bounce around the canvas in both watercolor and acrylic that's because I want to try to finish whatever I'm working on without having to wait and you know working on the petals while this part is drying gives us time to dry and then you know after I'm done with that I'll work on more petals and that gives that time to dry. So bouncing around the canvas gives gives things time to dry so that you don't have to wait and you don't necessarily have to always use your heat tool. You can use the heat tool and you guys have seen me do it I do it a lot you just need to with acrylic be careful that you don't bubble the paint and with watercolor that you don't that you don't set the paper on fire guess how I know both of those things and I try to have you guys learn from my mistakes exactly I've done it I have done it okay so while that's drying a little bit I'm going to come in with some green and in this small set I have this phthalo green blue which is like a darker green don't need too much and I'm going to start with it straight out of the bottle okay but with a different brush because that is not going to work let's see something that actually has bristles that aren't like this all right so I've got a nice flat brush this is a Princeton Princeton art and brush company shader number six all right so I'm going to pick a couple spots and I want to put in some suggestions I believe I use all kind of brushes for both acrylic and watercolor but I have to say if you made me pick a favorite brand that favorite brand is probably Princeton they make really nice brushes they have their really nice quality now we're going to put in some leaves or suggestions of leaves and we're going to put them in before we do these back petals and that way if we you know get some of this paint on the back petals we can touch it up when we paint the petals I should have probably done this before I did the front petals but hindsight is always 2020 right and you know you doesn't always have to be an exact petal it could just be the suggestion of something green back there and you know what I like that and I'm going to I'm going to leave that because I like the way that looks now I'm going to take some of my same green and I'm going to mix it with some of my light yellow to make a lighter green and I want my sun to be coming from this way so I'm going to take this lighter green it's not very light I need to be lighter let's put a little white in it that's better so remember from our you know blending experiments we were blending our paints right we were learning how to make colors last time when we were doing our charts so I added my lights now I'm going to add some dark back now my brush has no paint on it now it just has some water and I'm just going to push around the paint that's on here of the of the color chart the blending yeah that did go up on YouTube it's a recorded you can always tell the ones I did on Periscope because they always start out with recorded live on Periscope and I did put the color chart one on on YouTube so we're going to let that dry and we're going to let it dry so that we can do our back petals so let's work on the flower center and I'm going to get out some see I have a blue we've got raw umber let's see oh black let's do black I like black I don't use black a lot in my paintings but I do use it we're going to stick with this small brush right now I like this little brush and we are going to first darken our center so I'm going to take some of my brown and mix it with some of my black and I get a nice black brown color so it's not straight black it's a little more interesting and I'm going to carefully here go around the edge but it doesn't have to be too careful remember what I said about nature not being straight colors I mean straight lines nature's all about you know bumps and squiggles and nothing in nature is straight and even so I'm going to outline my center with the black brown I just made I'm going to clean off my brush so I'm just damp with water I'm going to kind of scrub at the edge of that paint to blend it in with what's already on there kind of scrubbing in and moving my brush into a circle so on the color blending Monday with Decowart basically what we did was we blended every color we had with every other color we had to figure out what we would get and it's a great basic thing to do and it teaches you about what colors and what colors you can make with what you have now I'm dabbing in some of my just brown I'm going to clean my brush off and I'm going to grab some of my darkest yellow and I'm just right now I'm just dabbing and just dabbing the brush on here and I like that right there I like the texture that's giving it I'm going to grab some of my darkest color that I just made that's interesting I like that now one thing we're going to do is take you can do this with a toothpick you can do this with the back handle of one of your paint brushes but if you're doing it on a little canvas like this you need something really small this is a clay tool and it has ball tips on each end and I'm going to take first some blue and remember I said I wanted my sun coming from strip canvas this way so I'm going to put dots of the blue paint in here to start to suggest seeds then I'm going to wipe off the little tip and I'm going to grab some yellow I need some more yellow the light yellow there we go now see how you're getting different size dots there depending on how much you know paint is on the end of the tip you know when you first start it you get a bigger dot and towards the end you get the smaller dots that's perfect that's what you want do some white just like that all right and we're going to go back to where's our little round brush I'm going to go back to the little round brush we're going to take care of these back petals back here I am going to start with my darkest color of yellow and I'm going to take some of my brown actually and mix it with some of that yellow and while this dark yellow is wet I'm going to pull some of that in and then I'm going to grab some of the light yellow and just wipe my brush off on my rag and just kind of loosely blended into the other wet paint that's on there let me take some of this medium yellow a little bit of it to the remember these petals are behind the other ones so they would be darker they'd be more in shadow so don't make them too light but you can take some of this darkest color as you're working your petals and if you wanted to you could add some of it to there now you know if you get too much of it on there like I just did don't freak out have a wet rag or baby wet next to you I can't tell you how many times I've done this on a paint and just go in here with the baby wipe and remove all or some of it now I didn't take all of it off that I like that just like that that's what we want okay and we're going to work our way again all the way around the flower not really you know wiping my brush off too much unless I really get too much paint on it and then making sure if I do that that I dry it off on the rag so I don't get too much water on here now you could add like something like neon something like neon yellow or neon orange in here to really give it a pop of color and make it look like it's really sun kissed just I just grabbed a little bit of white that's better I like that better okay so we're going to keep going now if you did your background first then you don't have oops you don't have to worry about it anymore you just have to worry about the flower but if you didn't you're going to get your flower perfect and then you're going to have to worry about the background and since I'm lazy and I never want to have to do that I always always always do my backgrounds first a cranky crafter good morning I still love that name a cranky crafter I so relate to that some days it so resembles me some days not this morning I took a nice long walk in the rain it was great stepped in a few puddles it was fabulous had had a lot of fun we're finally getting rain in California at least a little bit yay I know right it's a good name it's a good name for Monday the cranky crafter that's what I thought so just layering your colors layering your marks blending them a little bit working your way all the way around and you know start these things on these little canvases they're way less intimidating than the big ones I think at least when you're starting out thank you so much so you'll notice I'm blending my colors a bit with my brush but I am not going overboard with the blending you don't need to okay oh cool we're we're still getting a bit it was as soon as I got home it started really pouring but I think it's lessening right now I'm in San Jose for those that don't know that are in California and need if you know where that is okay I think we have to do this one still so just keep layering your colors on your petals until you get something that you really really like and like I said if it takes you a little bit to get it don't worry about it just turn up your music and have some fun painting should be fun otherwise what's the point so that's looking pretty good now we're going to really give it some pops so I'm going to take what color what color what color I'm going to take some dark brown to start but I think I'm we're going to introduce some red and I'm going to this is the darkest brown it's the same color that we just used in the in the center of the flower and the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do this I'm just dabbing the end of my brush tapping it on the painting all the way around close to the center on the petals that's cool I like that I'm going to introduce some another color let's see I want to do no I don't want to do red I want to do the red violet that color so we've got some red violet here and I'm just twisting the end of my brush while it's damped so that I get kind of a little point and I'm going to tap my brush into the red violet and get just a little bit of paint on it now if you try something like this and you don't like it remember we had those baby wipes out right so then I put a little bit of these this paint on here and then I got my brush damp and now I'm just blending it out a little bit a little goes a long way now if you want to try this and you want to let what you've already done dry first then if you did this and you didn't like it at all you could wipe it completely off without disturbing the other acrylic paint have some fun with your painting always it should always be fun so you don't want to go too far before you come back with the water otherwise it's going to start to dry and you won't be able to do any blending so there's a little too much red so I'm going to come in here perfect now you can stay with your small brush you can come back in with the yellow if you get you know too much of a color remember what I said it's about layers of making marks right now I should really stop turning it and I should do it this way I don't know we'll see I'm going to put a little bit of that red violet in the middle in the center it gave the red gave it a that you need a pop you need a color that's going to give it a pop and dimension and as I was painting it I realized that red violet it was going to be the color now to also give the leaves some dimension besides just the flower thank you I'm going to go in with my blue that's black wait that's not the color I wanted oops so I'm going to go in with this phthalo blue that I have out here on my palette and I'm going to come in here and I'm going to add just a little bit of it with a clean brush I'm going to pull it out and blend it now if I get some of it in the wrong place or someplace I'm not so sure I like it I'm going to come in with my baby white you also can you know do a lot of painting and blending with your baby white so if you guys have seen me on journaling crazy island style or there's a few youtube videos you know I've done whole paintings without any brushes that's a lot of fun and that little bit of darkness just gave it a little bit of a pop by the same token I'm going to add back some really light green I think it needs it I like that I'm thinking the back pedals need something I'm really happy with it overall yeah not white you know what it needs I know what it needs neon so I think I think we're going to do the neon yellow neons are a great way to add pop to your paintings so let's do that so the sun's coming from here see neon I'm going to blend my painting marks a little bit not too much so if my sun is coming from here it wouldn't hit the outside of these tips it would hit it would hit somewhere in the middle God I love your neons see that's what it needed look at it look at that that's that's it that's what I wanted there you go that's perfect I'm going to stop touching that I love the way that turned out see and you can do these little paintings you know in about an hour they don't take too long and if you do like all of the same subject matter one year I did all little seascapes for some co-workers I think it took me two hours to do like 15 of them because I just did all the backgrounds then I did all the water so they're a fun thing to do for gifts and they're a fun thing to do thank you Mary they're a fun thing to do to practice on and you could just do a whole wall in your studio that's just a bunch of these little four by four canvases all you know pushed up together like tiles on a wall and these deco art paints are fabulous for this and americana neons which is by deco art they are have been my preferred neon paint for a long time they come in some great colors they're inexpensive and they work really well that orange especially is usually the one I pick but I thought because we're doing a sunflower that the scorching this is scorching yellow that was perfect so do you guys have any questions I put this up on youtube I will list the paint colors specifically that I use in the description along with the deco art website where you can buy the deco art products and you know use some of your 40% off coupons at your local craft shops to get some of these little four by four canvases and just play with them they're really a lot of fun I've got to go get some more because I need to do a bunch of Christmas gifts now that I have my car back because my daughter bought a new car I can go do that all right I think that's it for this morning and it's been about an hour and I'm sure you guys are tired of hearing me chat and you guys all have a great Monday you're welcome we will be back on Wednesday with watercolor Wednesday and we're going to do a watercolor flower sunflower so we're going to do a theme of sunflowers and I'll show you how to do a sunflower in watercolor and we'll work on some bookmarks maybe and another good gift idea and I'll show you some techniques we're doing interesting sunflowers in watercolor have a great day everybody go out and do something nice for yourself and maybe somebody else because you both deserve it I'll see you later bye