 You probably never thought dogs could do plein air, but I'm Sandy Olnok and my dogs can paint plein air, at least my stamped dogs. This is Wishing You Happiness from Anita Jerome, which is put out by Colorado Craft Company. And this is the card that I had made earlier. You guys asked if I would show you how to do this card. And I'll link you to the original video where I used the stamp set with the bunny in it and all the other animals. I asked for which stamps you guys would like to see me do again. This is one of the ones that was requested. Yes, they were all requested. I'm not going to do them all, but I do have plans for a little bit more of them and I will do some on social media as well. For these guys, I sketched in pencil the shape of an easel in the background and used a little bit of perspective. It's a little bit bigger on the left hand side, a little bit smaller on the right. And I'm painting these as though they're my dogs because, you know, I can customize any way I want. And I have one dog when she arrived, she was larger than the other dog. So this is picturing them when they were first arrived. And she's got spots over both of her eyes. She's got black ears that hang down a little bit more than the ears in the painting or in the stamp. So I painted them a little bit longer. And I'm letting a little bit of the darker color bleed into the wet color that I'd already placed down there, just letting the color move around. I don't like anything when it's too perfect. It just doesn't feel like watercolor, so letting my colors move around. And then I'm going to paint the little dog as my golden retriever with some yellow ochre. And I think there might be a little bit of that black was still left in my brush. So it's a little dimmer of a color than it had been previously if it were a clean brush. But there you go. And I'm going to paint some of the darker color on the back side of the dog. And my dog, of course, has a white tummy, but I don't really want a white tummy on this. So I'm going to add enough water and then just do some blending to let the tummy be a little lighter and the dark color being on the back of the dog and adding just a little tiny bit in some of the darkest areas. And then I'm going to let that dry itself out. And in the meantime, I'll work real quickly on the brush, giving it a handle and the the bristles at the end. And then before I move on to the background, I'm going to let all that dry. So I have it heat set, so it's nice and dry. And I'm going to use a pen to outline my easel. If you choose not to do that, because on my other card, I didn't do that line. You can just paint around it and just leave that empty box there and then paint the black three legs underneath of it on top of whatever background you do. That's how I did the original one. But I thought for this one, it might be easier for some folks if you see them drawn out and then how you would paint around that. I also got Anita's new book, which is called. You see, I've got it right over here. Will You Be My Friend? Very sweet little book. And I was examining her artwork and she does do a lot more lines in her illustrations. So I thought the lines on the easel might actually work better for this in order to make it feel like it's her art. It's not her art. It's her stamps. The rest of it is mine, but I wanted to keep with the feel of it. So I decided that those outlines would work and that's just a sharpie pen. You could also use a micron pen. I think those don't bleed and that sort of thing. You could also do the line work after you get the painting done if you don't have a pen that will not bleed. So I've mixed a very, very light green to do for the grass down below. And I want to show you something. I wanted more color in there, but I wanted to show you quickly the difference between using lighter and darker pigment. I tend to go much darker with my watercolors than a lot of people do. A lot of folks do very pastel and soft stuff. And I want to show you the difference that it can make to do it a little bit differently and add more color. So we use a little bit of blue to make the sky. When you're doing a large area like this, I am experienced enough that I'm kind of jumping around different places to do it. But you want to keep those leading edges wet. All the area around the top of both of those sides is leading edges. And leading edges, if they dry, you're going to get a hard line. I happen to know enough from painting often enough. I know when that's going to be too dry. I know what to do if you're not that experienced. And most people aren't. I probably shouldn't have done this on this video. But, you know, start painting and things just happen. You want to start on the left side and just keep moving. So you only have one leading edge to contend with here. I had to contend with two and I am going back in and making sure everything stays about the same amount of wetness. Because if one part starts drying before another part, that's where you're going to get weird edges. If you want something to dry smooth. So did all of that that painting and then heat dried it. And now I'm going to add in the grasses. Now you can decide how tall you want your grasses. Do you want there to be plants, that sort of thing? Or do you want to just do just grass itself? Whatever kinds of edges you want on your plants have added. But notice what's happening to the dog that's next to it. All of a sudden the back of the dog that's white is very defined compared to the front of the dog. And that's because there's contrast every time there's contrast you see the edges of something. And when it's all pastel, you know, things just kind of blend together. It's not as dimensional. You don't have as much, I don't know, but as much pop when you use very, very light color. Fortunately with watercolor, you can do a couple layers of that or a few passes in order to create those darker hues and just add a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Again, same thing as with the sky. I'm being very aware of where my edges are before they dry. Like the line between the two dogs right now is a leaning edge that I need to pay attention to. And I have to take a couple seconds here to mix up some paint. So I need to be aware of how wet that bottom edge is going to be. And I knew it was wet enough that it was going to wait for me. So I continued on to connect the grass line up above. But look at how defined both of those animals are right now. Now, I don't want them to look like they were cut out and pasted on. But I do like the fact that there's some pop now. There's just just a difference between one and the other. But one of the places I noticed that there wasn't much in terms of difference is that weird place where the grass stops below where the the easel is or the the horizontal part on the easel. There's just a weird capture of blue in there. And what I decided was I was going to work the grasses to be taller so that I can fill in that area. Again, I'm being careful because that has to either be wet enough that the paint will mix in there. Or I have to wait until it's dry and then just go in and start over just doing another pass. If you're doing it while it's wet, make sure it's good and wet. And if it's not, then wait for it to completely dry because you don't want to create new hard edges for yourself. And I'm just paying attention to all of the bottom edges of everything because that's where any hard edges might actually happen. And I take a brush that has just a little tiny bit of paint and more water on it to smooth some edges out and soften things up and then dry it. Next up, I'm going to mix up some thicker paint. And this is neutral tint. You can use whatever kind of dark color you want for the easel itself. And I'm using thicker paint, which means my brush is going to stay a little stiffer. When you have a lot of water in it, the brush tends to be a little softer, a little mushier, harder to get those little details. But you could also just use a pen to make the outlines of this, make the legs and everything into black if you don't want to paint them. And I've mixed up a dark green color now to add some shadows underneath of the animals. This is going to ground them. And since I have all this other green around it, this really dark green is going to stand out because it's not only a dark color, but it's thicker paint. So I've got more control over it. I can get a finer line with that brush because there's not a whole lot of water in there. But then I'm going to add some water in there. I dipped into my water to get just water to drop into these areas. So it starts to act a little more water color rather than looking, I guess, like acrylic. Sometimes that can happen. And I'm even going to paint a little bit of water on different edges of these shadows because they're not going to I don't want them to be completely solid necessarily. Now, as for what the dogs have been painting, they're going to paint the sky and they're going to add in some grass that they're not going to paint a whole scene because they're dogs. If my dogs could actually get sky and grass onto a canvas or onto a piece of watercolor paper, that would be an amazing thing. But we're just going to let the colors be on there. I did fill in that one little tiny piece underneath of the dog's chin. But look at the simplicity of the shapes that I have now because I brought those grasses up behind the easel. Then I ended up with just a simpler, simpler look to that whole area underneath. And you can focus more on one dog, tickling the nose of the other dog with the paintbrush. So there is my little video for you today. I hope you enjoy this. Go see the blog. There is something over there you are not going to want to miss because it's a little giveaway and I will see you again very soon. Bye bye.