 Hey guys, how are you today? So I am filming this video in October, the beginning of October in full disclosure. You probably won't see this video until sometime in December or January 2020. I am creating some Christmas gifts for my design team, close friends, people who have helped me out this year, to express my gratitude. And my idea behind this was to create them each a piece of artwork that individually, while pretty, is part of a larger whole. To symbolize, you know, us working together to achieve a goal. And yeah, all kinds of flowery stuff like that. I'm gonna write them a nice letter about that. So anyway, I had the idea to take a bunch of canvas boards. These are four by four canvas boards and I took eight of them. Excuse me. And I used painter's tape to tape them together. And I'm going to paint them as if they were one canvas. And with the idea that if I break them apart, each one will be an interesting, unique piece of artwork, together, if you put them together, they create a larger picture. I'm going to use my art inspirations book that I made of volume one, Skyscapes. I think I'm gonna go with this page, I think, or one of these pages like this. I like the idea of having some of these peachy pink tones in here. It kind of really showcases, you know, some of the sky colors of the Pacific Northwest where I live, which I really love. So I think that that was the first one that really spoke to me. So I think we're going to use that for our inspiration. And we are going to go from there. I am going to speed forward some of the process so that it's not a five million long hour long video. And I will slow down and explain or voice over what I need to. So I'm going to get to it and I'll be back. I do also want to say that partly because I think it would be better for the gift for the canvases, but partly because it's been requested by some of you that I take the inspiration journal, which I created with craft paints and show how to take artist paints or other paints, even craft paints, if you don't have these colors, and mix colors that match or that are close. So we're going to do some color mixing. I've pulled over my artist paint trolley that I have next to my easel with that has some of my artist paints on it. And we're going to use some of these. There's golden. There's Utrecht paint. There's Liquitex Basics, all kinds of stuff. Not a ton of colors, but good basic colors. So I'm going to mix up my palette that resembles this for the colors I don't have. I do have paints gray here somewhere. So that'll work for the media night. For this media night color, but I don't have. I'm going to have to mix up most of these other ones. So I'm going to do that and I'll be right back. Okay, before we get into the painting, and maybe as I'm thinking this, maybe I should not fast-forward too much of this video. But anyway, we're going to first mix up some colors. So first we have Decowart. Where are we? There we are. Try to get like the book and the plate in the in the frame. So we have this Decowart Moon Yellow, which is sort of a pale, paled, almost a grayed yellow. So this is Cadmium Yellow. Cadmium-free yellow deep. This is Utrecht. Oop, Brant. I'm going to add a little white to it because it's dark. Holy cow. There we go. And actually looking at what we're working with, we're gonna need a couple piles of Cadmium Yellow. So let's let's do that. I'm going to want to add some white to the first one. I don't know if that's enough white and I'm gonna add a tiny bit of brown. Sorry about the beeping in the background. That is my computer. We're also going to get some slow-dry medium so that our paint doesn't dry up as we're mixing it before we can actually put it on the canvas. I'm gonna get just a little bit of brown. I'll see how that works. Excuse me. That's actually pretty good. So that was titanium white. The Cadmium Yellow deep and a little bit of this brown, which is Brant Umber. A little bit of Amsterdam paint, by the way. Let's move on to the next. Okay, so for the next one we want to have a bright orange. Now the bright orange I have is it's Azzo Orange. It's another Amsterdam paint. I think it's a little bit too bright and maybe a little too orange. It's not exactly the right color. I'm gonna add it to the Cadmium Yellow and again, I'm going to add a little bit of brown, but I'm not going to add any of the white. Yeah, that's better. So you can see it's a better color. So I need to add some slow-dry medium to that one because I didn't do that. Okay. Next we have this pink. Which is Deco Art Carousel Pink, which again is sort of a gray-out pink. So I'm going to use the Cadmium Free Utrecht Deep Red. Just a little bit of that. I'm going to use some titanium white. Like at least double the amount of red, if not more. I'm going to add, of course, my slow-dry medium and again, a little bit of the brown. Just a little touch. Okay, let's see what happens. So that's the direction I wanted to go in with that, but can you all see what the problem is? It doesn't have me nearly enough red in it. And it is possible I should be using magenta instead of this red, but this is the red that's out on my table. So this is the red we're going to use. Okay. At least this is the red I'm going to try to use. We'll see if it works or not. It might not. I might get a color that works though. It'll work for me. Let's see. I do think it needs to be slightly purple-y. And it's just not it's... Yeah, it's too fleshy. The worst thing that can happen when you are mixing paint is that you mix up color that you just don't like. And so then you just, you know what, have a journal nearby, mirror it on a journal page, call it a day and start over again. Okay, I'm not getting the pink I want, but I do think I am getting one of the secondary colors that I wanted for this. There was a mixture here of that carousel pink and the folk art French blue in between. I actually think I'm closer to that than the pink. Which is funny. Let's add some more of that blue to it because I think that's I'm gonna get there. That's a primary cyan, by the way. I do think that red is too warm and I think I need a cooler red. Yeah, I've unintentionally mixed a color of blue-ish purple, like a warm blue that totally works. That wasn't what the color was shooting for, but look at what happened. It's I mixed French blue with the night, which is like a paint's gray and look what happened. I got that color. So that's good. It's a color I needed. It wasn't what I was shooting for, but totally not the color I was shooting for. And we can take a little bit of this, put it like here with some white. I have a couple different shades of blue on here. One is the pure French blue, one is the French blue mixed with night. So we'll take a hint of the accidental mixture that we made that works and we'll add some more cyan to it. That's my computer going off in the background, by the way, just in case anybody's wondering. So that color works. It's a little bit more turquoise-y than the French blue. So I'm gonna add a little bit of the It needs to be warmed up a little bit. It's not exactly the right color. I think it needs a little red. Oh, that might have been too much red. It's okay. Oh, yeah, that was way too much red. Some blue back. Looks like I've mixed the same color all over again. Holy cow. Closer. So there's no fast way around color mixing. It's a lot of trial and error. I will say to you if you're working on a big canvas and or you've mixed a color that you really, really like, try to make some notes and make a big jar of it. I save all kinds of jars, old jelly jars, all kinds of things. I use them when I'm custom mixing colors like this one, which is a purple. So you have one that's more blue, one that's more purple. That works. We still need that pink. We have something that'll work for the night. Let me grab another red. Okay, whoops. So I have another red. So I have Golden's Primary Magenta. So this is the first one that we use. This is a scrap, an old business postcard of a friend of mine. This is the Cadmium Free Deep Red and I don't know if you can tell on camera how kind of orangy that is. And then this is the Primary Magenta, which is a lot cooler, more blue. So I think that will work much better. So we're going to use that one for what we want. It's all about the tone of paint that you use. It's easier to, it's easy to make them warm. It's hard to make them cooler. In fact, you can't. I think that's impossible. See much closer. Yep, that'll work. So we have our basic color palette, including the Paint Pains Gray, which I'm going to get out and scrape off my palette knives. Let's see. Here's the Pains Gray. We will put that on here somewhere. Okay, there is these fun little gadgets I have around the art room, some of which are intended for using in the kitchen for opening jars. This little one is from, I think this is from Dick Blick. It's for opening paintings. Because they get to be really difficult to open. Okay, we're going to put a bunch of that there. As per usual, when I'm painting, I'm going to start with the background. I don't think I'm probably going to get the whole thing painted in one go round. I think I'm probably going to let it dry. You guys won't notice any difference because it'll just be a second for you. And but we will see what happens. This part I am going to speed through and I'll be right back. Okay, I paint any canvas. I always have multiple layers of paint starting and stopping, adjusting colors. This one is, this project's not going to be any different. So what you saw in the previous clip was I mixed up a few more colors. You didn't really see a lot of what I was doing. The plate was sort of off-camera, but I mixed up some more of the blue, the purpley blue, some orange and some of the yellow, omitting the pink, and then a little bit of lighter blue with white, which isn't in the original selection of colors, but you definitely get inspired to create it by the pictures. This is all about inspiration. This isn't that you have to only use this thing. Anyway, one of the things I remembered from one of the classes I've taken as an artist and student is to mix colors instead of with titanium white with unbleached titanium or a buff. And so I went and grabbed that and instead of using titanium white and then a little dab of brown, use this instead and you get a different kind of a color. That worked a little bit better for me. I like this better. The other thing I'm not going to do is try to add the treason before this is dry because I I didn't that that was just a muddy mess. I also was doing a little bit too much brux brushing and mixing with the blue and the orange and I got some brown back there, which I didn't want. There's still a little bit of it showing here, but actually a lot less of it than there was originally and I'm okay with it. So we're going to let this dry and then we're going to proceed forward with adding some more touches to the paintings. All right, I'll be right back. Alrighty guys, so here we go. A really cute little foresty sunset scene. Together the paintings create an interest or yeah, the little canvases create an interesting painting separately. They're still interesting. So each one of the people in question is going to get one with a little note. Probably wrapped in tissue stamped with some of my rubber stamps from my product line, things like that. I'm going to put a little gift bag together for them. But this was a really fun project. It worked the way I thought. I did go back and add some lighter tones to brighten it up just a little bit because I didn't think it got a little dark. You did see me take the tape off of the backs of them, separate them, and then I was just looking at what each canvas on its own needed in the way of color. Keeping in mind that I still want them to, not that they're ever going to be put together again, but I still wanted them to look good together, and I love the way they turned out. So this gives you some idea of something interesting and unique that maybe you can do. If you have a group of people you want to give gifts to, you can do something like this. It's a lot of fun. I just did it with paint, but there's no reason why you couldn't collage on the canvases or something once they're taped together. And then you just treat it as one big canvas. And then when you want to, when you're done, take the tape off of the back. And if you've collaged on them, you need to cut down in between each canvas. And yeah, really cool. All right. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please leave them down in the comments below the video. There are a lot of links always in the description. There's my Happy Mail address, my Etsy shop. There's a link tree list of links where you can follow me on, you can find a list to follow me on social media. You can find my Amazon affiliate store and all that stuff on my website and all that jazz. So check it out. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe and go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll see you later. Bye, guys.