 This video is in paid partnership with BetterHelp. Hello and welcome back to the average or to the average, if you've never been here before, I'm Steph, I'm the average artist at Nice to Meet Ya. So recently there was an exhibition with Van Gogh and Pokemon over in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. When I first heard this, I thought that sounds incredible because I like Van Gogh and I like Pokemon. So I wanted to check it out and I think there's some really cute stuff. Apparently it all sold out in like minutes and everyone was grappling over each other and probably not like the best of times but it's really cool to see all this different works in the style of Van Gogh. You know with Pokemon which is just just a really fun collaboration. I wanted to paint something similar because I just saw the idea and immediately of doing Starry Night with some ghost Pokemon because it would be super fitting in my opinion. So I set my washi tapes up and I wanted to do just a wash of color underneath first so that when the color peeks through it's not just like a blazing white white color, it's going to be coloring it quite nicely hopefully. So I spent some time blocking out shapes, trying to figure out how to replicate a masterpiece because you know it's kind of difficult because it's a masterpiece for a reason. Definitely difficult if you don't have oil colors I felt because the paint definitely doesn't push around like oil paint does. I'm using a jelly wash as usual here and I'm trying to replicate. I started using like the back of my paint brush to sort of indicate those brush strokes but just it didn't look right so I didn't go with that in the end but it did add some texture to the piece. This video is in paint partnership with Better Help. It's something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals. 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And then I started On The Sky which I tried to just get those brush strokes in those classic Van Gogh strokes of paint the busyness the emotion the the energy from the painting itself trying to replicate a master's work and I just wanted to do it sort of in my style as well but I think in the end it does come out quite nice so I'm just using lots of different colors and I realize that Van Gogh probably has a bit more of a limited color palette than I used but this is just me. I'm blocking out the tree in the foreground here because I just wanted to block out where that shape was so it helped me define where everything else was in in the piece because I think this is the most apart from the sky it's the most iconic bit of the painting because it just stands out so strangely but it works. When I was younger I remember I used to think this was like a tower it was like an evil tower looming over and then I got older I was like no it's probably just a tree so he's looking over the tree tops but he only has this like solitary tree in the foreground and it's a really odd composition if you think of it that way because just to have like this thing in one of the set like one of the thirds of your painting but it balances out nicely with the way that the sky and the hills roll up to the right and I have a appreciation for Van Gogh a new appreciation I've always liked Van Gogh but trying to replicate his work I definitely have a much bigger appreciation of how he created these works how difficult it was I've always been a fan of his since I was young because I think you know everybody in our class learns about him quite early on I think we all get that same education of this poor man and he went mad and he painted anyway he painted what he wanted despite the times despite people telling him his work was no good and I think that's just a sign of love isn't it of what you do of doing something even though everyone around you said it's crap I know I wouldn't be able to continue doing stuff and putting it out there if I didn't think that someone out there likes what I'm doing so this is purely from his passion that's why I was drawn to Van Gogh when I was younger it's just him using what he has and just going for it even though life always gave him a bit of a kick up the bum is the the way I would say it and also I really like it because he used to not you know paper was expensive back then it was very difficult to get and he was doing these weird experiments that no one else was doing even though it was very expensive and he couldn't really afford to so it's like takes a lot of courage and I think that's why Van Gogh is a big inspiration for a lot of people especially myself so yeah well we're coming to the end of sort of this painting and I was figuring out what Pokemon I wanted to do I knew I wanted to do Ghost Pokemon because that was just you know October spooky season this painting is somewhat magical and haunting so it just it made sense to me I mocked up where I wanted these Pokemon to go before I put them in the painting and at first I thought I was going to use Posca's for the whole thing because I thought that would be simple to just draw over and I did put a varnish coat between this and the Posca's between the painting and the Posca's because I knew that the gouache could reactivate maybe with the Posca's and it did it anyway even with the varnish so I ended up just using more gouache to make these these little guys and I think he turned out really cute this one is ghastly and I really loved him as a kid I know all the first gen of Pokemon because I was obsessed with it I had Pokemon blue and then I used to be obsessed with the show me and my friend we were gonna go to Jesse and James to the school Halloween dance thing but then I realized that it would probably be expensive to dress as them um yeah I used to be obsessed these collect Pokemon cards all the stuff and now I'm realizing that my obsession isn't quite as big as everyone else's because I stopped being obsessed with Pokemon quite a bit because it was too many to learn really bad old names and things anyway so it was too much to learn for me I obviously still play like the Nintendo games and stuff when they come out because it's just fun but I'm really bad at remembering what the Pokemon except the ones that I'm like super into uh like Litwick which you will see in a moment painted Gengar next and I really like the idea of him sort of jumping out at us uh from the frame if that makes sense uh from the painting and uh he is the Pokemon that took the longest to paint because even though he looks relatively simple I think the fact that he's got arms and feet and all these spiky little fingers and toes it took ages to get that right and also his eyes and mouth I feel like with a Pokemon if you don't get it spot on the design the drawing whatever the painting it looks really weird so even the smallest like mistake can make it look really off and yeah I know my paintings of these Pokemon are not perfect but I think I get them pretty close where you can look at them without looking at them side by side with the original they're possible and uh yeah this Gengar took me ages I don't understand why he's so hard to paint I realized that I did his eyes a bit too close together here and then I think I went in later on and painted them a bit of paint in between and went back in with like another Posca and also I realized my reference image the light is coming on him on the left of his body and it would have been nice if I had flipped that and uh because the moon is shining down on these Pokemon from the right but whatever it doesn't matter let's say there's a lot of radiant light around and uh next I painted Litwick who is just adorable I love this little guy I think he's so cute one of my faves definitely and he was relatively simple to do compared to uh Gengar he took like I don't know not long at all very simple little guy and I think he looks pretty spot on to the original don't look it up just uh just um believe me thank you and yeah so these are kind of like all the final Pokemon together I wanted to do a Haunter up in the right corner but I think I just ran out of time basically might add Haunter to this maybe one day if I get the chance but adding some more light beams over to just kind of put Litwick into this painting I know that maybe it doesn't make sense of how big he is in this painting but I like to think they're just like kind of images stuck on so this is the final result I would love to know your thoughts and feelings I'm really pleased with it I think I might add Gengar up in the top right if I have a moment because I think it would just look really cute but overall I think it was a really fun job and I hope you guys like it I hope Fango and Pokemon fans out there alike like it please let me know if you do down below and give this video thumbs up or whatever thanks again to better help for partnering with this video and see you guys next time bye