 I really want to show you guys this because it's probably quite an insecure thing to do. Oh, a video. Hello everybody. Welcome back to The Average. I'm Steph. I'm The Average Art. That was really weird. I'm Steph, I'm The Average Artist and if you haven't been here before, welcome. If you've been here before, welcome back. Long time no speak, I think. I mean, we speak in the fun videos that I do but I haven't really filmed a vlog for since I became freelance. So I wanted to update you guys and how that's going and everything and what I'm doing this week and yeah. So what I've been doing is I have a contract with King who do like Candy Crush and all these really fun games and I had such a blast working with them. It was like a dream come true because I got to do like illustration as well as design work and it was really nice and everyone was really nice and it was really cool. But unfortunately they ran out of tasks for everyone for the freelancers so they couldn't keep me on until maybe the future when they might have some more work for me, fingers crossed for me. So I've been applying, applying, applying for different stuff and just haven't got anything back. It's been quite difficult. I feel quite panicky about it but as I've heard that's kind of the way things roll with freelance. Suddenly there'll be like nothing and then suddenly there'll be like loads of things. So fingers crossed for me that stuff's gonna come through soon. In the meantime I've been keeping myself really busy. I've been posting more YouTube videos, trying to make more content, trying to upload more to Instagram, trying to draw more. I did this massive print, this massive drawing for a video and then I decided that it's going to be the print for the Patreon award this month because I really like it and I thought people would like it too. So it's basically a hundred characters from The New Leaf and what's on it. I've added little details which I'm going to disperse through the illustration and I'll show you a clip of me doing that now. And I'm also going to be printing them out properly. I say printing them out properly because I've been using a home printer to print out my prints usually. But this time I thought what I was going to do is just send them off to Awesome Merch. If you guys have heard of that company it's a really nice company. It's a little bit expensive but I think I've used them before and they've been quite fast to send me stuff out. So I'm going to send the prints off to there to be printed and then get them back to me in Gibraltar and then send them out to everybody. So there's plenty of time for everyone to join up. You can join up anytime of the month if you want to. Anytime of the month that sounded. But yeah, so hopefully I'm kind of leaning on at the moment sponsorships for YouTube which I've got a couple of which is really lucky because otherwise I would not be able to pay my bills this month. And then also Patreon is helping me a lot. I think I've pretty much been surviving off Patreon this month. And then yeah, so I'm trying to push stuff and I hope that you guys don't mind. It seems like a bit of an advert but hey, that's what I'm doing with my time. So I thought I should let you guys know. I also was thinking what I'm going to do is every 10, no, every 15, first 15 people that sign up are going to get a free, one of my comics free in this bundle. So if you sign up for this month, you're going to get a comic, a random comic, one of my free comics, a print of Animal Crossing and some stickers hopefully once I get those done. So pretty good deal. So check it out in the linkers in the description. I hope that you guys go and have a look at least because yeah, it would really be helpful. I look at all these other artists who are just obviously surviving off Patreon alone and it's amazing because they can just sit and do whatever art they want and that just sounds brilliant to me. I don't have to go for emails every day. I don't have to scour LinkedIn and beg people for a job and not get any and get completely ghosted. So it will be really awesome for that to happen. I'm sorry if you can hear like a drill or something going on outside. I usually film these vlogs pretty laid back so I also had a free coffee from Costa so I'm going to get my free coffee, my poor budget coffee and yeah, getting on. What I do with my day is I start with a list and basically what I've done this month is like do a whole thing of what I need to do because I have got a couple of sponsorships this month for videos which is like amazing. Thank you to the sponsorships and just trying to budget them all out really. It's been tough and yeah, so here's the vlog. It's really funny because I think people go to other people's vlogs and they're just like la la la, beautiful artwork, beautiful story, happy vibes. You come here and I'm like and then this happened and then this happened and everyone's like is she okay? Like yeah, I'm fine guys. Okay, roll the clips. I just did a test print. Basically what I want to do is just see how it looks and feels. Obviously this is not going to be the final paper and I think it's going to be a lot brighter than this when it comes from like the professional printers but yeah, it's looking kind of good. I want to move the whole thing down a little bit so there's a bit more space at the top. Maybe shrink it down slightly, maybe shrink down these presents slightly as well because I think like they're taking up a lot of eye space if that makes sense but I think it looks pretty cool. What do you guys think? Yeah, just messing with the contrast now, trying to up the colors a little bit and then I'll send it off to the printers. Boom. I seem to get a little bit into doing shorts. I think they're supposed to help bring traffic to your YouTube channel but also they're kind of fun so and they're quick and easy to film. Right now I'm going to film like a satisfying art supply video using the Artex blending sponge, the jelly paints and masking tape, just like a quick fun video to show, I don't know, like fun stuff in art. I think it will be a cute video so just working on that right now. Today I'm trying to get inspired and I'm watching some masterclass videos because I have a subscription to masterclass. This is no sponsorship, I just like their work. I might sign up for some more classes at other sites and stuff just to get inspired. At the moment I'm just playing with art supplies trying to get into the groove. I thought about making this a sticker but I wanted to improve on the design because this was just like a rough idea of just like a little cloud character and then yeah just saying positive vibes because that's what we all need right now and yeah so I'm just messing with art supplies right now. I did a few different concepts or just playing with the idea of the sticker and yeah I quite like how it's going. I'm just trying to do what I always say to do which is like find the joy in what the process is and what you're doing so once you find that the rest will be easy so I'm just playing today basically which is really nice to have the opportunity to just sit and play with art supplies and different designs which is not really an opportunity that I've had for a while so it's really nice to sit down and just do that. So I didn't really want to show you guys this because it's probably quite an insecure thing to do but this is that giant sketchbook that I bought from Tiger probably about a month and a half ago two months ago I'm not sure now probably like two months ago. It's basically just this giant not great as in like the paper's not spectacular sketchbook so it's just like good for doodling random stuff so I've started to use it as purely just like breaking out of art block or just like warm-ups basically so you can see here like the first face I did I don't like it personally lots of people don't like it when I say I don't like stuff they're always like that's my favorite thing you did and that's fine it's just that this is my opinion from where I come from to say if that makes sense so I'm not like putting anyone's work down and personally talking about my own level and stuff if that makes sense I quite like her she came out really good I think this is probably like the best image that you'll see in this sketchbook because it buckled up guys I am ripping off the band-aid here so these are some terrible sketches warm-ups that I did these are all like freehand with the ink pen which I'm trying to get better at drawing these were a practice for the patron print for October which I then went and did in my other sketchbook which turned out like this which I'm really happy with I really like the colors they feel very autumn in autumn in me autumn me or tunnel that's the word that's the word on search for but autumn in me that's not a word so there's loads of blank pages practice pages I did this last night some shoes and feet just practicing this was the print for September I really was trying to get the colors right and stuff so I was doing a lot of practice prints on the same piece of paper but I really liked the way that this came out and it's something I kind of want to I don't know play with in the future maybe I don't know why see there's loads of like empty pages because I just flipped around and page and do whatever I think here so for instance here I think I use the jelly wash here yeah so revisiting the big jelly paints and I quite like the painting but as you can see it kind of with this paper it causes a problem and they stick to each other I really like the texture here but unfortunately it's been ripped up a little bit but it's okay because this is my mega practice thing so now you will see how stuck this was like super just art blocky page so I'm not that bothered that this is going to be painful okay I'm sorry guys yeah it's completely stuck together um does anybody know any tricks to help look at these pages stuck together and yeah um so this was just for a short for youtube I had to think of the name then because I was like tick tock and I was like no um it's such a shame that it's ripped up but this was really fun because I lay it down the acrylic wash paints and then I drew over them with Posca and I realized that the Posca goes on really nicely over this smooth surface so it was really nice to just doodle I've also got song lyrics here don't read into them they're just song lyrics but it was just nice to like not think just write down put some song lyrics I like and some doodles this looks kind of bad and then this doodle page which I think I filmed but it's just like a massive thing of just going for it and whatever like I don't know it's a really nice way to just get into like meditating whilst you draw I guess and just draw anything random that comes into your head draw things that are on your desk draw images that are on your phone draw things that you see online um things that you like random shapes random it's just really good to like get the creative flow going and uh yeah really helped me I drew out a house because I was planning to um um make a little cat house which I'm half done but I need more time on it basically pesto it's not ready yet I'm a humble abode she obviously likes it do you like it pesto um I want to I want to paper mache it so it looks like a proper little house which will take loads of time but I don't know why I've given myself these projects um yeah and then I started thinking about doing stickers and then I ripped out this page because I like this sticker but I wanted to see more of it and then it became this doodle page which was another just like creative expression I think I was watching like a masterclass about graphic design and this guy who like does collages and how to like express yourself and put down things that express your mood and I think I was just really inspired to just do the long whilst I was listening to that but yeah this is my crappy sketchbook as you can see I just do random stuff some of it doesn't turn out good some of it's like completely random and I've got loads of pages so it's really nice to just have a place where I just exist and do stuff and it's really fun and appealing and it's no pressure so that's why I'm showing you guys because I think like there's a lot of pressure to have like these perfect sketchbooks and yes don't get me wrong I feel that way about my my sketchbook sometimes and my other sketchbook I'm pretty like try to be quite perfect in it which is bad because it can like stop you especially if you do something you don't like you feel like put off so it's good to have like a really rubbishy sketchbook which is what I have and I think if you know Franard she has a Patreon where she talks about her ugly sketchbook and then she posts pictures and I'm always like those aren't ugly so I feel like but for her they're probably like they're just rough stuff so she's probably that's why she calls it that so this is my ugly sketchbook I guess which is actually ugly but yeah um I think I'm gonna call it there for the vlog but bear in mind that if you please sign up for my Patreon or even look at it would be really helpful because oh my god I need help this month I have those comics so you can pick one of the comics and let me know if you've already signed up this month or you're already a past patron please let me know if you want one of those comics because obviously you are already supporting me so you get one as well if you want one and also um there's only three Emily's burnings left so whoever's first to say I want that one will be first so the first 15 people are gonna get a free copy of one of the comics that I showed you today and then also um people who already I've already said this whatever people who already a patron you can pick one if you want as well just let me know um but that's it thanks for watching guys and please like and subscribe and all that lovely stuff that helps me it's loads of nonsense I know I'm trying to really push YouTube now I don't know if you got your notice but I'm I am posting more frequently yeah okay well anyway I'm just talking a little rubbish now but thank you for watching and see you next time bye