 Hey guys, welcome to another video for my creative year, December 2020. Now, this month for December, we have been working on or exploring the idea of working with cool colors. I wanted to bring you this example of this painting. I did in, I think, 2018, and I will be, oh yeah, 2018, it is dated right there. I will be turning this into a slow stitch portrait at some point in the future, probably filming it for Patreon, at least to start. But this, I love this portrait, first of all. I did it for a challenge I was doing at the time with Annalise Creates here on YouTube. And this is done on a giant playing card, which I sanded and then just sewed in black. And then I decided to do a portrait on it and use only shades of blue. So if you look at your color wheel, which I have one somewhere, there it is. So if you look at a color wheel and you divide it about in half, actually probably more like that. Okay, that side are for the most part fairly cool colors that suggest darkness, cold, shadow, right? And then these ones on this side suggest warmth and light. So when I'm talking about warm colors, I'm talking about the orange-red-yellow side of the color wheel. And when I'm talking about cool colors, I'm talking about the green-blue-purple or violet side of the color wheel. So I decided to go with cool colors for this portrait and use just shades of blue on the black background. So the black was my darkest shadow color and all the shades of blue were lighter, more highlighted colors. And I decided to use the lightest shades of blue as the highlight colors on the face and then gradually work my way down to the dark. And I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to turn it into a portrait. It is in some protective plastic right now, so sorry about the glare. I think that you can see it there. So I'm gonna use that as an example to you all of what you can do. Now, this month I've just been obsessed with skyscrapers. I created a folder in my creative year and over in a life of art and self-expression, full of skyscrapers pictures. Here's four more I'm gonna add to the album later today. They're not the world's most best shots. I take them all with my cell phones so some turn out better than others, but they are just to give you an idea of what you can do or some inspiration for something you can do. Of course, you don't have to paint them. You can just use the photos as they are if you want and use them, print them on sticker paper or something like that too. They're free for you to use. I take them all. So we're gonna take one of these. I printed them all for in a sheet because I wasn't exactly sure which one I was gonna wanna use. I'm gonna prop it up off camera and we are going to, I'm gonna actually have my iPad right here. So I'm gonna prop it up on the iPad. I have two pieces of mixed media paper here. Now, I tore a bigger piece of paper into sheets like this and then I used some painters tape to tape off the edges so that when we were done, we would have a nice square border. I've painted the background of one completely black and left the other one white. So first we're gonna do the black one and then we'll do the white one. For me, this one's gonna be the harder one. But anyway, we're gonna use gouache paints because I'm just really focused with gouache paints right now and I have this feeling I'm going to be, except for my fine art paints, transitioning my other paints over to gouache and or gouache type matte finish paints. I'm really enjoying the matte finish on the paints. I love the way they look when they're dry like this with just absolutely no shine. I love that you can draw over them very easily, much more easily than a glossy paint. You can use them in your journals, the pages don't stick together, all those things. So, yeah. And in fact, I asked for some more of these on my Christmas list because I want some more colors but also refills and the easiest way to get refills here in the US is to just get another set of gouache rather than trying to get them from Japan. So anyway, so this is the set that I currently have. I'll link it in the video description for you all. It's not very expensive, but use what you have. Don't go buy something special, you don't need to do that. Got some brushes, a rag, and we are gonna get started. And I think I'm gonna do this one. I think that one. I may combine this one with some elements of this one. I really like the way this just blue showed up around the moon. So I may add some of those blues in around. This is actually a sun, well, obviously it's moon, it's a sunset. This is sunrise like on a stormy day. So I might add some of these blues in. Take artistic license, these are supposed to be inspiration. Okay, I've got a palette that I've started that has some of these in it. These are nice because they're water soluble gouache. So that means if I have them here in a palette and they dry up, no big deal because I can just put a little water in here and reconstitute them. Speaking of which, I need a spray bottle. I don't think we're not gonna need all these colors but I'm gonna spray them anyway. I'm gonna take, what am I gonna do first? I think at first we're gonna start with, since our background is dark, let's start with the lighter colors which is opposite of how I normally work with water soluble paints or watercolors or gouache. But we're gonna start with the lighter colors or work our way darker. And this is our darkest color, the black background. I'm gonna, let me zoom in, because yeah, that will be better. Okay, so I'm gonna get started. I'm gonna speed through most of it and I will be right back. Okay, that's that one. That was quick and easy and I really like the way that turned out. Looks like a beautiful, stormy sky. So we are going to now do the light one. I have choices. So when I'm painting, whether I'm using water soluble paints or acrylic paints, I don't have trouble preserving the white space of the paper. And in this case, that's exactly what we're gonna try to do. So the white paper is going to be our lightest color and everything else will be darker. Now, does that mean you can't go back if you're doing it from a black background or a white background and add more dark or more light if you lose too much of that background? Of course that's not what that means. So if I lose too much of the white paper, I can of course come back with white paint. But I'm gonna try hard not to do that, not to have to do that. So I think we are going to do something inspired by this one and I'm gonna see how that turns out. Let's get started. I filmed all that. In fact, I know I missed part of it but this is my white on white one. Now, I did exactly what I thought I would do is I lost most of the white paper because I left a little bit showing but the point is to just make your mind work in a slightly different way than what you are normally thinking about working when you're doing some kind of artwork. Just expand your horizons a little bit, give yourself a little bit of a challenge. Maybe you don't wanna start with a white or a black background. Maybe you wanna start with a blue background or a purple background. Give yourself a challenge and start with a different colored background than you're used to working with and then focus on using primarily cool colors this month. You will notice in this one I added a little bit of yellow. It just really, really needed it and it wasn't gonna look right without it. So working with primarily cool colors doesn't mean you can't do that but I want you to give yourself the challenge and see what you can do thinking about primarily the cool colors. This one is, in my opinion, more successful than this one but I tried. I want you to try. I want you to share in the group. I'd love to see what you're doing. If you wanna make sure I see what you're doing, please tag me in the post and that way I can for sure catch it. Don't forget to support the free content here on the Facebook art groups and over on YouTube from not only myself but your favorite creators. Check out our video descriptions. There's probably Etsy links, YouTube membership, Patreon. I have a link tree list of links that have a whole bunch of stuff in it. Check out the video descriptions for your favorite creators. If you can't find a way to support them then ask because maybe they have one and they're just not saying for whatever reason. Please stay safe, stay healthy, stay creative. Please wear a mask and go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Play with your cool colors this month and let's see what you come up with. Bye guys.