 Why? Good morning and welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Sandy Allnock. I'm an artist and I'm soggy because it is kind of half misty, half rainy, half goodness knows what, but everything feels very wet and very cold and the dogs don't care. They want to go for walks anyway. So we got outside. I thought that would be kind of fun to show you around the neighborhood a little bit while I chat about what's going on. I'm going to be on sabbatical in December. That means there's no long form videos planned for December. I'm not going to say there won't be anything, but there's nothing planned right now because I take the month to just do things for me, my own art. I'm going to be working on some commissions and some planning for the next year and some catching up on sleeping that I've been missing for a long time. I also want to let you know that it is giving Tuesday and I love charitable giving as somebody who used to run her own nonprofit. It's a super important day. I've always had a bunch of classes that raise funds for causes I care about and I'm adding another one today. There's a new page on my website with all of the classes and the printables that are fundraisers and you can check that out in the doobly-doo after the video and the dogs want to show you our favorite house that you can see in the distance at the end of the video. Stick around for that. Let's go get started painting, shall we? Let's get this watercolor fiesta underway. First is a green thumb sketch. I have been doing these green thumb watercolor sketches to do some paper tests and color tests and gathered them in a class and it's a real cheap class. One of the cheapest I think I have anywhere except for Art Venture and the test this time is Saunders Waterford. White versus high white is the color comparison here. I suggest you get high white. I will be painting on the regular white. Saunders Waterford is an expensive paper. It's a pricey paper. Sometimes a little more than arches. Sometimes a little less seems to kind of bounce around. I don't know if it's still supply chain stuff somewhere in the world that's causing that but I've never noticed watercolor paper prices being as flexible I guess as they are now but nonetheless I like the paper. I don't love the paper. There are some painters who swear by it but it's got a very soft surface and that means you know you just have to adjust your painting technique a little bit. I haven't figured out exactly how I want to adjust it if I'm going to use this paper much which is one of the reasons I got a bunch of it so I could test it out and see because if I find techniques that work particularly well or styles that work particularly well then I'd be happy to use it but I just want to see more of what it does and this painting didn't teach me a whole lot about it because the painting went fairly well. I did notice that my paper didn't dry all the way when I used my dryer on it and how do I know that? It's because I can see the buckling. You can see the rivulets in the paper and good watercolor paper which is what this is should not buckle when it's all dry so if I had dried it more probably would have flattened out arches, flattens out really well. Some papers just don't do that necessarily some cheaper papers so if you have that trouble then you might want to try some better papers and in the class you're going to get to see this at significantly slower speed you'll get voiceover telling you everything I'm doing but basically I did a sketch of the poinsettia and then started painting in layers just lots and lots of layers building up the richness of the color so that each darker color is pushing the other sections backwards in space so I'll just get darker and darker over time and drying it completely in between layers really helps so that you don't end up getting like weird blended edges and softer edges. I wanted something nice and crisp for this and this worked really well. I almost did a red poinsettia but of course this is the green thumb sketch class. I've been doing everything in greens and I wanted to test out some other colors that I haven't tested before a friend of mine has been using azo yellow I had a tube of it that I hadn't really used much so I thought I'd get that out and another color that was in one of my original back back in the day like back at the beginning when I first put together a palette I put indan thrown blue in it because I didn't know how to mix dark colors so I bought dark colors not realizing I could use some other things in my palette to create the colors I wanted so I had way more colors than I needed back then but nonetheless I decided to get it out and this color is like really really strong. Whenever I mixed any of the greens I had to be really careful about how much yellow I had and how much blue because this indan thrown just loves to take over anything and it's got a color as soft as a yellow it's going to do a number on it so making the lighter greens was difficult just with the vast difference between the two colors but it did make some really pretty greens. A note on mixing darks in whatever it is that you're painting don't use black unless you absolutely have to because if you use a complementary color or something that is an analogous color like here I'm making greens and I'm using something analogous like a bluish-green mix in order to make my shadow colors you're going to get something that looks more harmonious than if you throw in a black. A black is going to just make the color look dead and it's not going to have much life in it so try a complementary color which is opposite on the color wheel or try something that is analogous but darker because there are some hues that have darker tones available to you in them and in this particular case this indan throne is very very dark not super dark not like blackish dark but it's still very dark and this way my shadows since I'm only using these two colors are harmonious with the lights because they're all made out of the same colors and if you you know use those kinds of things together use a limited palette so that you end up with colors that are related to each other you can use the word harmonious when you post it and you can sound really really smart so that's a good thing right so there's the first painting this one is fundraising right now today only for the nature conservancy so if you want to help out the nature conservancy it's like a seven-dollar class so head over there it's a level two class so the paintings are more for beginners the next painting though is for level four people like this has so much going on in it it's kind of crazy it took me a long time to paint it but the footage is about an hour's worth for the whole thing I took out all of the you know I'm gonna sit here and fuss around I'm gonna test out this I'm gonna test out that I'm gonna grab a scrap and try this and just giving you the actual painting itself and lots and lots of learning along the way the videos are in real time and you're gonna get to see the transformation I'm gonna tell you when there's something to watch out for and no I'm not gonna be painting it backwards like is being done here I just thought it would be kind of fun to see it backwards and see what where it ended and how it began so I started by painting the bear I moved to the scenery and the sky and then back into the icebergs so this is just going to rotate backwards through it now one of the reasons that I say this is an advanced painting you know you might look at it and say yes that's true but one of the reasons that I point that out is that you might look at this and go man I really want to make that sky I want to learn how to make that sky you can make that sky in a mini class because I have a course called galactic watercolor and you'll learn a whole bunch of different techniques for that sky but if you want to learn the whole thing then you can join the class it's going to be more expensive than the galactic watercolor but you make your choices you're a grown-up and this one though I found really interesting to try to figure out how to paint night with like a really limited color range because I wanted to have something that felt very harmonious for an arctic scene at night and it looked up a lot of arctic photography and Antarctic photography as well I'm following some Antarctic people that are on a trip there right now some photographers and amazing work they're doing but it's like everything's bluish grayish kind of colors and I wanted to have some brightness in them but I really wanted to make it look like it was nighttime and that you know there was water and there was ice and then it was cold and in addition it's also a little weird of a painting I get it because there is first a polar bear who is wearing a scarf polar bears don't need scarves I realize that don't don't think that I don't notice that there's also a little birdie and he's feeding it the berries and well I know that that's not realistic either because there's no little tiny birds up there in the arctic that's all right as well because you know we're artists we can paint whatever we want I had done a color pencil drawing of this same bear last week and once I did that I also created a principal image that you can purchase and download and it comes with a free class and there are four different ways to color this bear in that class in color pencil there's two an alcohol marker there's two so you can still get the free class along with it all the sale is over on the price of it so it's $14 for all of that but this class is going to be more expensive because there's just much more going on in it and there's a lot more teaching to be had and that sort of thing so I will put links to the page that I've created on my website that has all of the fundraiser stuff I've been wanting to put all that in one place for those who want to feel good about the artwork that they do and the classes that they take you can sign up for any of those you can purchase a printable that raises money for various causes that sort of thing if you wish but they're all in one spot now including arctic bear watercolor and this is a different title than very good friends which is what the other version is called the one that requires the digital image this one does not require it you'll just get a sketch along with it and then learn the painting techniques also if you want to learn just that sky because some people might have seen that and I want to learn how to do that galactic sky there is a class that I'm going to put into just for today put it in the fundraiser batch and that one is called galaxy watercolor galactic watercolor I think and that class will show you a bunch of different ways to make that sky so you don't have to pay for this full class if really the sky is what you wanted to learn now there's a few other updates that I have been making things that have been added to some of the classes and I want to draw your attention to those one is the tag class and in that one I add new tags every year and the 2023 editions are on the way you're going to get them on December 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and 6th because I do six days in a row with a video for each of those days with four tags in each and they are going to be coming up so it's going to be kind of fun if you've already got that class make sure you mark December 1st on your calendar to go check out the first of the videos and look in the beginning first lesson and it'll tell you where all of the tags are going to be next up is an addition to the winter bookmarks class this one is not a bookmark but it shows you how you can use some of the lessons in the winter bookmarks class to make a full painting so that one is already there has the bonus lesson at the end of the class and now to keep our promise that we would show you the house the house in the distance we walk by this thing every day on our walk and it's bananas look at all this stuff they have it on both sides in the driveway all over the roof they're all inflatables from all I can tell they did the same thing for Halloween and they're they keep them inflated all day long like they just keep the generators or whatever going and power these babies up they still have one skeleton left who is holding a snowman up in the air it is crazy these people must have a fortune to spend on not only these long ornaments but the power to keep them inflated they even did the backyard it's wild it's wild anyway I hope that you all have a merry christmas if we don't see you by then this is the dog's look that says merry christmas even though they look like they're either scared or bored but they're wishing you a merry christmas just like I am so I will see you in shorts and I will also see you in January 2024 lots of new creativity and on social media and art venture and everything else so please do check the link in the doobly-doo for the charitable page and I'll see you again take care bye