 Okay artistic friends in Monet Cafe. It's time for us to find out how much are we really saving when we make our own pastel surfaces. This is something that I've wondered for a while and I was glad someone else in our Facebook group recommended a cost comparison. So that's what we're going to do here today. We're going to compare multiple products and making your own homemade surface to a piece of already created or prepared UART paper. You buy these papers already ready to work on. Now you may have seen my last video where I used this product by Golden called Mycaceous Iron Oxide. It is a wonderful product. Now it does go on dark. I happen to like working on dark surfaces and it has a little sparkle to it which is really neat. So I loved it. I wanted to show you here because I didn't show it in the last video what the product sounds like, not just what it looks like. So here is a board that I created and I want you to listen right now. Now I play guitar and my fingers are a bit calloused but I think you could tell by that sound that it really does create a nice gritty surface to work on. I know I'm going to use this in the future but I was glad someone in our Facebook group pointed out I had made a little mathematical error in the previous video but it prompted me to recalculate make things much easier and now I want to share a cost comparison not just to the iron oxide but to multiple products that I have used not only in my videos but just through the years and I like all of these products. I would recommend all of them. I do have more that are not showing here but these are some of the goodies and if I ever get the time I would like to go in and organize my YouTube channel here to make it more convenient for you to find things. I would love to put a playlist together of all the videos that talk about making homemade surfaces and also for example videos that talk about under paintings or ones that talk about color and have them in groups so it's easier for you guys to find. Boy I could use a helper. There's not enough time to do life painting videos organization but hey it's all fun and I love being here with you guys. Alright so in the video that I created yesterday that I took down because of the mathematical miscalculation I shared about the iron oxide product and the price of it you can buy an 8 ounce jar of this on Dick Blick for around $20 okay 1919. So now I'm gonna go over my calculations that I've reconfigured and I think I've actually made it a lot easier to understand so this is going to be the first thing you see is just the one product the iron oxide but stay tuned because after this I'm going to do a cost comparison for multiple homemade surface products alright. Alright so let's get started in the comparison of the golden my case is iron oxide making your own homemade surface as compared to UART paper. Now I'm kind of glad I recalculated this because it's much simpler now. I'm going to be kind of equating everything to a piece of UART paper one sheet of UART paper that's 24 by 18 inches you can buy it on Dick Blick for $7.73. Now you will still have to cut this up into the size as you know so there's a little work involved in it but but this makes it simple okay. So I happen to know that one ounce of the golden my case is iron oxide will easily cover one sheet the size of UART paper it will and then some it will cover okay so I'm being real fair in this comparison I bought a little one ounce size on Amazon just as a sample because I couldn't get a one ounce on Dick Blick I don't recommend that it is more expensive but this is when I was just experimenting so now I will definitely buy the product again I think an eight ounce size is probably pretty good an eight ounce jar of the iron oxide is about $20 so if you calculate that out each ounce of the eight ounce size is going to be $2.39 okay so it costs about $2.39 to cover your surface in the same size the 24 by 18 area of UART paper okay so that's just the product as compared to the UART paper now we have to put this product on something so we've got to add that to our cost of our homemade surface now if you use watercolor paper like I did in the video for the painting that I did it is really cheap you know I mean it's really very very inexpensive but let's go ahead and compare it to the matte board that I used at the end of the video I do like to use matte board a lot I happen to have a whole lot of it from a previous project but I went on Dick Blick and compared the Strathmore white one-ply matte board it is acid-free archival good to use I couldn't find any sheets smaller than 32 by 40 inches okay that's $4.15 if we cut that in half that's definitely bigger than the sheet of UART paper okay so again I'm being very fair in this comparison so only half would be needed to put this one ounce on half of that is $2.08 okay so the grand total if you add the $2.08 to $2.39 it costs you about $4.46 to cover your surface with an ounce of the iron oxide as compared to one sheet a 24 by 18 sheet of UART paper that's $7.73 now keep in mind you do still have to cut this up these aren't the packs of UART paper those are even more expensive per inch so if we look at the difference there a piece of UART paper is $7.73 the homemade surface is the grand total the product and the matte board of $4.46 so it's a difference of $3.27 okay that actually I think the savings is better again I think I can cover more than a piece of UART paper that size and you're definitely getting more matte board you know than the size of UART paper so that's a very fair comparison but I thought we'd also go ahead and look at some of the other products in general as compared to a sheet of UART paper alright so let's go ahead with our comparison now of using the clear liquid gesso to make your own homemade surface and again I'm doing apples to apples comparison I'm finding everything on Dick Blick so you know here's your bottle of clear liquid gesso I use this a lot to put on watercolor paper it makes a nice little grit to make your own homemade surface and it was really nice that these also come in the 8 ounce you know to compare the same as our other product and an 8 ounce bottle of the clear gesso is $9.89 okay let's go ahead and go through all the product prices and then I'll go back and show the comparison sheet okay now the next one would be I've often used this golden coarse pumice gel I use this to make a homemade product that I emulated from artist Rita Kirkman she uses I have two videos on this actually how I recreate how she makes her boards and I add a golden quinacridone gold fluid acrylics to this to make a beautiful oh it's just a luminescent golden type of a underpainting along with your coarse surface to make for pastel surface so this is a great product here so let's look at the price of this I believe it also came in eight ounce sizes oh I actually this says course I believe I use the fine we'll see that in the picture so let's look at the fine 8 ounce okay that is $10.31 okay and now let's go ahead and look at the next one which is the art spectrum color fix primer these are great you can buy them in different colors you literally just apply it similar to how I did in my previous video with a foam brush or brush or and they come in all these different colors now they come in a 250 milliliter little jar and comparing that I went ahead and did a little comparison milliliters to ounces 251 is almost 8 ounces okay so we're kind of close to the same comparison so this I like this Australian gray color I tend with these to like the more neutral colors and then I tinted myself or do an underpainting myself so but again this is a little bit more expensive okay so these are $18.39 for basically 8 ounces okay so let's go back and compare these I couldn't find the Matisse product that I had in the picture it's probably going to be similar but these are enough to kind of get an idea so let's go back and crunch some numbers and see how much we're saving all right so now let's look at the savings that we can achieve using some of the other products again this is all going to going to be compared to a piece of you art paper 24 inches by 18 inches it's $7.73 on dickblick.com all right I went ahead and added the golden iron oxide in here just to see them all on one form one ounce of each of these should be ample amount to cover a piece of your paper this size so here's the prices the iron oxide 238 per ounce clear gesso a dollar 23 that's your cheapest one right there I don't think it works as good as some of these others but I use it a lot just because it's easy and and cheap so 123 for that golden pumice gel is a dollar 29 per ounce and our spectrum color fix primer is another one that's more expensive so the iron oxide is the most expensive and I really liked it and this color fix primer is also up there a little bit too but still let's see we're still getting a big savings now we have to put it on a board we don't have to put it on a board watercolor paper or a board on watercolor paper it's going to be a lot cheaper but again to be fair to you art paper let's put it on a piece of Strathmore one ply matte board only half of the sheet is needed it's actually still bigger than the piece of paper we're comparing it to so about two bucks for the board we will be putting it on when you do the grand totals of each product to make your own homemade surface from this product the iron oxide four dollars and 46 cents equated to that size okay 773 clear gesso 331 as compared to 773 golden pumice gel 337 as compared to 773 in our expected color fix for 37 still a savings even though well that one wasn't the most expensive that was the most expensive but still a savings of all of these over buying your own pre-made pastel papers such as and I'm sorry you are I'm not picking on you I love your paper it's one of the best that's why I'm using it as a comparison I will still buy you art paper I think it is most likely better than a lot of making it yourself but I sometimes like the that's probably not a fair comment because sometimes I like creating my own board it lends to a more painterly style sometimes and I have more control if I want to give it a little more texture so there's definitely advantages to both but if you're pinching pennies you can see there definitely is a savings this was very good for me to do this because you know I don't want to keep talking about making our own surfaces if it's really not saving you money so I hope that helped everyone and again I hope I haven't made any big mathematical errors here but I think we're pretty darn close and keep painting beautiful things join us here on this channel often and join us also in Monet cafe art group on Facebook it's lots of fun all right guys happy happy painting