 hey guys we are here with another hashtag love summer art video yes all right cool so this time i thought we would talk about something i love to do when i'm on vacation or shortly afterwards when i get back which is make some little watercolor postcards i always when i go on vacation or go out of town that to anything even if it's something that's not very far away take photos with my phone my iphone and i print them out frequently and put them into albums like this or this to use for artistic inspiration later so that'd be my first tip that i'd give you even if you don't bring any art supplies with you take some photos and print them out when you get home i like this newer size paper i've been using which is a five by seven hp photo paper that i have been printing the photos on um i'm not getting any younger they're a little easier to see to be perfectly honest than these ones um so that's something i always do i have a few pictures here um this bigger album is pictures i've taken more recently this is one that i took quite a few years ago um in a little small um town off the side of a highway somewhere up in i believe it was oregon and near where my parents used to live it might have been northern california i don't exactly remember i remember taking the photo i just don't remember where it was located it might have been northern california and this is actually an image of building that's been photographed before it's a little abandoned building um and i always thought it would make an interesting art piece an interesting painting or something this is one that my daughter actually took with my phone when we were in hawaii the last time a couple of years ago these are some photos that i took in um and the drive to and from red rock canyon in nevada uh when i was there uh last year with my husband these are some photos that i took literally out the sidecar window when i was driving to and from visiting my friend and williamson in brentwood california and um some of the parts of the drive were so pretty and the sky was so interesting that i kept pulling over like here and taking photos and then this album is full of different random photos i've been taking lately from we've been out at different fairs and festivals uh people have given me flowers and i've taken photos of them in my kitchen we were at a wedding and they had these beautiful floral centerpieces these are all things that would make interesting watercolor postcards or painted postcards should you choose to do so now maybe you don't paint well you could definitely take the photo and glue it to a piece of cardstock and turn it into a photo i mean a postcard this is my dad by the way when he was uh young man 1958 57 57 um some more photos in my kitchen some still lifes these are these are still lifes that i actually created and um in my in my kitchen and then i took photos of them out of little small bits and pieces i have little small containers i save for doing still lifes and i happen to have just gotten some cherries i thought would photograph interestingly more flowers i like flowers garlic bulbs this is actually a photo i thought we might try this one today this is a little small miniature uh cream picture that my daughter brought me back from her recent vacation to spain this is definitely the kind of thing that i would see on my hotel table on a desk or dresser top and i would just sit in the corner with my coffee and i would watercolor on a postcard this would be a very cute one let's see what else we have some flowers that i saw at the grocery store we went to a concert recently at the mountain winery which is this that's where this is some photographs of the beach at la selva beach in near santa cruise here in california that my daughter took uh quite a ways ago some interesting sky shots uh from fourth of july here in san josei i love the colors that were in the sky that evening so any and all of these would be interesting watercolors let's start with something easier first let's do um it's expressive floral we may do a couple of them we'll see how long this takes so i'm going to take my photo and i'm going to put it right here where i can see it really well and if i had the actual flowers i would have them right in front of me this is one of my i have a lot of travel art kits um and a few watercolor kits i'm going to go over them with you all um and i'm going to show you some things the way they have them set up some new things some old things and we'll discuss what works what doesn't this is one of them and this is the one we're going to work out of today i'm going to first grab my number two pencil it's a mechanical pencil and i love this um is a fluid cold press watercolor block 140 pound watercolor paper and i i got this at hobby lobby on clearance for 359 this is a four by six block which is a good postcard size so i really like i really like this and because it's a block it's um you know glued down on at least two sides this one's two sides so that you can watercolor on it without worrying about your paper curling so i like that we're going to need this palette knife to remove our piece from the block when we're done some water and in this kit i have my koi um pocket field sketch box so we're going to use that i always have a color key when i get a new sketch box or a watercolor box or i set one up i always make a color key that's always the first thing i do and this one comes because this is intended to be a travel kit it comes with a water brush which you can refill in you know in the handle and then you screw the top on and the little black plug keeps the water in when you're traveling because i'm home and i'm not actually out of town i'm going to just use a one of my regular brushes today i think i'll use this one this is a royal watercolor brush it's a round size number eight first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to get my paints wet the koi set i think is a good basic set it has a good number of darks and lights and it has a purple so and for me i like sets that have like a panes gray some dark browns and a purple not more a little more than just your basic um warm and cool primary colors for me i know that's what works for me and so for that reason the koi is one of my favorites so the first thing i'm going to do while that's sitting from it is i'm going to just do a just a rough sketch nothing too detailed i'm going to sketch out a few of the petals which is very lightly i'm just copying the shapes that i see in the photo some of them you're using the photo for inspiration you're not trying to draw it exactly it's not what this is about and i'm not going to be erasing these pencil lines so i'm going to use them to have to help me give my finished piece some interest and because this is an expressive floral i don't want this to be a exact it's about giving you the impression of a flower and not the exact image of the flower take some of the pressure off to be perfectly honest so just follow the you know pick a point and just start following the pencils around just sketch the shapes that you see roughly sketch you don't need to have any more firm lines than the ones you see me doing you know doesn't have to be perfect that's we're not about perfection and these you don't ever have to really mail these postcards if you you know just use them as practice they're quick simple easy small little pieces of art okay i'm not going to do any more than that i think that's good enough so this flower is very dark like fuchsia e color so i'm going to move this here so i'm going to start with i'm going to start with quadocratome rose i need a rag okay i do have napkins in my travel kit i'm going to start with quadocratome rose and wet paint on dry paper and i'm going to start with the parts that i see in my flower that are darker and i'm going to lay some of the paint on now when you have a limited color palette like this even this one which is a little limited if you want to match the color of what you're seeing you're going to have to do some color mixing so now i'm going to spread some of the pigment out let it bloom and wick out by just adding just plain water lift some by just taking the dryish brush and lifting some of that up that'll give me some interesting colors interesting shades i should say and again we are shooting for a expression of the flower an impression of the flower not an exact representation of said flower don't be afraid to leave white space either or to drip let your paint drip and run remember if you're doing this in watercolor that you can't take it back so if you want something to be white you need to leave it that way i want to add in some purpley red so i'm going to take my purple and i'm going to put it up here on my mixing tray and i'm going to take some more quinacridone rose going to mix them together a little more purple go into some of these spot now because i'm doing this and the paint that's on here is really wet this is going to bloom it's going to spread it's going to bleed out and i'm okay with that it's going to give me something really interesting and i'm going to keep doing that until i get a finished piece that i really like i like to knock it on the table and make it run i think that gives me something interesting i go in here now with um crimson lake which is a dark red color i'm going to come in here with a damp brush and no paint and i'm going to start lifting and defining some of these petaly shapes that i sketched in before you also can lift by doing this a little bit i'm going to put a little yellow in there before we dry anything i do want to dry something i'm going to do use permanent yellow deep the yellow is going to help you indicate sunlight and more most important thing to remember is to just play in there with some green i'm going to use yellow green i use a different color too but right now let's just put some of this in here that's my phone sorry about that okay so before we do anything else i'm going to dry this now if you're on vacation you have to just let it dry unless you're in your hotel room or near someplace in the plug and you have a hairdryer with you i do in my bigger watercolor kit have a portable travel hairdryer with me and that doesn't work great let's keep going so now it's dry it's or mostly dry so we're going to keep going and this time i'm going to go in with i'm going to get my paints wet again they're drying out a little bit i'm going to go in with what color am i going to go in with i think i'm going to go in with the purple straight and i am going to darken up the areas behind some of the petals put on a little bit of the paint and then get in here with the water and blend it just a little bit no you don't have to copy the colors in the inspiration photo if you want to copy the shape and style of the flower that you see but maybe you want to do it in a different color this is your painting you can do whatever you want so i'm going to work on one area and then i'm going to move to another side of the flower and work on that i'm going to jump around a little bit that gives the chance that areas i just worked on a chance to dry a little bit before i add any more paint because i want things to blend a little bit but i don't want them to blend too much and as you can see this starts to really bring out the shapes of the petals and the flowers i should have put my reading glasses on i forgot i'm going to just follow my way around and maybe despite the pencil lines you see the shape of a petal that's somewhere that you didn't draw it but it you like the idea of having that there well okay put it in let these colors help you to find that shape you hear that text messages turn my phone off i don't want to stop painting so i like the way that's looking a lot a little bit right here that's nice now i'm going to go in here with some prussian blue while that's drying just a little bit and i am going to put in some stems i'm going to add a little bit of this blue to a few areas of our flower not too many it's going to mix with the purple and make some things really dark if you get too much right away while it's wet you can go ahead with a damp brush and do some lifting just know that you're not going to get it all up and be okay with that i'm going to go next to some of these parts of the stems so it will bleed a little bit that's really nice i like it so i'm going to just keep going around my flower i'm going to add some more green i'm going to go in here with permanent green deep i'm going to go into here with some permanent orange it's a really warm color and gives it a nice a nice glow so it's an expressive watercolor it's not a realistic interpretation of a flower by any stretch but i love it but it's dry you can take your palette knife in here underneath this first layer of paper and you can use it to break the seal on the glue and you have a cute watercolor postcard you can turn it over then and write a note on here and stick a stamp on the back and just stick this in the mail don't be afraid to keep adding layers to it until you get something you're really happy with remember with watercolor you can always make it darker but you can't make it lighter so keep that in mind as you're adding your layers and create and play and relax and have some fun you're on vacation and just enjoy the process don't forget to go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it do a search on hashtag some love summer art and see all those other great fabulous creative people out there who are doing videos right now i'll see you all later bye