 Okay, we're jumping right in today's video. Hello, welcome back, I'm The Average. Today I want to recreate some paintings from Studio Ghibli. And they are various paintings, and I'm very afraid, but I'm gonna go for it. This video is brought to you by Squarespace. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build your beautiful online presence and run your business. So I started out by putting down some tape and I decided that I wanted to recreate three different paintings. And I don't know why I did this, because this took me like all day long. And when you're very tired and burnt out, it's probably not the best decision to decide to do something as big as this. But, you know, I went for it. And yeah, so we started out with the first one, which is Image From Spirited Away. When Sen is traveling on the train and she goes by like this abandoned house on an island and it's just very fantastical. And I love that film so much. It's one of my favourite films ever. So of course I needed to paint this scene and I really felt like it was a very difficult one to start with because it's just very, very hard to recreate these clouds behind this beautiful little scene of the house and the island and then also the reflection on the water. I don't know why I started with this one because I think this is probably the most difficult one. But I don't know, maybe I'm just thinking that because I hadn't warmed up yet, because as I go on, I think I would get a little bit more confident with my painting. Anyway, in the beginning, I realised that this painting was super under saturated with colour. When you look at Studio Ghibli's works, you notice that all the colours are really vibrant. But then also somehow have this magical water colour like quality to it. It's just bizarre. I don't know how they managed it. Then I realised that I needed to make the sky much more dense with pigment and it went in and did that and tried to give it a little gradient as well. And you can see that I was struggling to get the right colour to match what was actually in the film scene. I think I kind of hit it in the end, but all the colours that I have here are slightly different. And I'm going with the idea that I'm drawing Studio Ghibli images, but in my style. So I'm giving myself that little bit of an out there where I'm allowing it to be slightly different and slightly more my style, which I'm hoping right now is becoming a little bit more impressionistic because that is just what's inspiring me at the moment. But Studio Ghibli obviously isn't really that impressionistic because... Well, I guess it is slightly, but it's not really because it's obviously supposed to be a background for a film and you're supposed to know what you're looking at and it's supposed to be very clear. And these people are just amazing at doing these beautiful backgrounds and that will only be shown on screen for a few seconds. So it's just nuts. I just think like I learnt a lot from this process because when you go in and recreate someone's art, I've probably said this before, but when you go in and recreate someone's art, you kind of really look at the details and how they might have done something a lot more in depth than you would if you were just looking at it, especially if you're just looking at it for like 10 seconds or however long this one shows on the screen in the film. So I was really noticing a lot of details and little things I didn't notice before, like the little washing line there. So it just hints that somebody's living on this island or by themselves and just away from reality. And it adds such a depth and feeling to the whole universe of the spiritual way world where obviously there's this whole land of different people living there and just I love these little details and I think it's so special. Yeah, so I tried to draw the clouds and I was having such an issue with them because I think they were just very different to how I would necessarily draw clouds. I think what my problem was is that the house and the tree and stuff are all in front of this cloud, this big former cloud in the background. And then just in front of those clouds are even darker purple clouds. So obviously it's like a storm is coming through and I had to figure out how to do that. I moved on to the next painting quickly because I thought as that one dries, I'm just gonna lay it down some base color over here for this next painting because I was getting a little bit frustrated from it and I thought my eyes were getting a bit tired. So if you step away from something for a minute or two and then go back to it, you might see what was going wrong and you might be able to fix it sometimes when I step away from stuff and take a break and then I go back and I'm like, oh yeah, actually this is what was frustrating me. It really helps. So like I said before, this video is sponsored by Squarespace and it offers such a great range of website building tools for you. I use Squarespace to host my portfolio site and I really felt like it was useful to have something for people to go to to search for your name and to see your artwork. In the future, I'm thinking about selling my comics using my own commerce website on Squarespace and I think that would be really handy. I just took a template that I liked and I went with it and then I just uploaded a lot of images that I thought were interesting and then I went to the About Me page and I wrote a little bit of a description about myself and it was super straightforward and easy to use. Please head to the link in the description if you would like 10% of your first purchase of your website or domain. So just adding a lot of details, trying to highlight areas. I think I got impatient with this and just started to add highlights when the image, the picture overall, wasn't really ready for it. I just really wanted to get those highlights in because it's so satisfying to do that. And also the shadows, I had a bit of like spiral downwards of these shadows because I couldn't figure out how to make them work. So I went in with some pencils to define areas that I couldn't really define with the paintbrush and I know probably in Studio Ghibli they do not do this but hey, like I said, I'm kind of doing it with my own vibe and my own techniques and I hope it's okay. You can see I'm really struggling with this image. It took me ages to get on course for what I wanted to do correctly. And I think in the end, I just kind of leave it and yeah, I'm happy with it but I think as the first piece, it's kind of alright. It's not the best image but it's also not the worst and I think I just, at first I was getting quite frustrated with it so I moved on to the next one that looked a little bit more fun to try and recreate. This is a scene from Labita Castle in the Sky and it's just a scene of mountains and village and hills and also looked very complicated at first and I was very intimidated again because obviously the first image isn't the worst thing ever but I wasn't that proud of it yet and I think I was going into this one like with a little bit of lack of morale because you know when you do something and it's not quite as you like it, it definitely makes you think that you can't do something well again. I don't know, you guys have that feeling too but yeah, I just went into this and I tried to have fun with it. Like I said, when you forget all the pressure and you forget that you're trying to make something look like something else and you just start to enjoy it. I think it really shows in the picture. I've said this a lot and you guys probably have heard it loads of times. If you're new here, then you have a good but I say that you have to have fun with painting because it definitely shows if you're not, if you're being really careful. Like if you look at the first image you can see that I was being really careful then trying to replicate, that's not a word. Replicate what was there but then in the second one I just start to have fun with it and try to put my own little spin on it a little bit, take the pressure off and I think it really shows in the end. I'm really proud of this one. I go in with a dark black at this point as well in this image and I think you should never use just a dense black within a painting. You should definitely try to mix colours together to make a dark black and never go, never go in with a black so I learned that lesson and I went over with another light purple colour and I think it helped a lot. I do go back over those mountains so as I gradually lean into this painting and loosen up a bit then I think that you see a lot of difference in the overall image. I think it looks a lot better. So loosening up here was definitely key and as I go on with these three images I think I get a little bit looser and it's always the case where the last one you do is the best because you're loose and you're ready to go and you don't mind the pressure and stuff because you've just kind of forgotten about it and you're in the zone as I like to call it, meditation zone because painting can be a form of meditation so it's pretty good to do painting and then studying with somebody else's work can really help out with that situation because you don't have that pressure of trying to create a composition and stuff like that because you're just copying. Obviously I don't think it's the best idea to just continuously copy other people's work because in the end you're not really developing your own compositions of stuff but it is a good useful technique to learn and to show development in yourself but I never think it's a good idea to just completely copy because I don't think that's your work at the end of the day like when I look at these I think they're good but I think they're only as good as they are is because I'm copying someone who is obviously a genius at painting and their work and I don't think I can claim that this is all my doing I think obviously if you're copying something it's their work so in the future I want to take what I've learned from doing these studies and apply it to my own work when I do my own landscapes and my horror comic and I think what I'm learning a lot from is blocking out colors and techniques like that is really helpful finding a light source and going with it is useful here because I think when I do my own paintings I tend to move the light around a lot and from studying these paintings you can see that there is a true light source and I have to follow that because I am totally copying so that's just an idea for me to take on with myself in my evolution of my growth and my own personal techniques and stuff so would I do this again? probably I would because I think you learn so much from doing stuff like this and you can also take away little things that these people do in their artwork like for instance the first painting the sky is so dense with color where I wouldn't have done that myself I probably would have just left it kind of water-calorie and loose whereas I think it has a real impact in the composition when it has that really thick blue color like a block of color and yeah I think it really works in this piece I'm painting now there was actually a lot of space above it where the snowy mountains are behind it but obviously the way that I set out this paper with the three drawings I didn't have that much space to continue it up but in all compositions that I've chose they all have a lot of empty space above so there's like three thirds three thirds there's a third at the top which is completely empty and then the middle third is empty and then the lower section there is a lot of detail and I think that is a really nice example of a good composition because it draws the eye down but also it frees your eye to like look around and it's just easy to look at and they really like that idea so I'm going to try and recreate this kind of composition in my own work like I said constantly take away little things from each design it's really useful for my own personal growth and that is the takeaway from doing these there's no point to do them otherwise because I'm not going to show them off and say this is my work because that's just wrong and I'm not going to sell prints of this because that's kind of illegal as well even though it's fan art it's technically fan art you can't really sell fan art like conventions and stuff like that or it's just frowned upon as well generally but so I try not to do it I don't really like the idea of it so I moved on to the spirited away image that is probably quite famous to you guys the entrance to the actual world that she and her parents come across it's just this like old wall that you can see the paint chipping off of and then there's this little creepy statue dude that she gets creeped out by and it all looks very ominous but her parents are totally into the idea of exploring it and stuff as I would be to be honest to be fair I would be the parents in this movie because I'd be like yeah let's go through and then when there was food there I'd be like yeah I'm eating all this food I would totally be that person if you haven't seen spirited away I highly suggest go and watch it now it's the best film ever if people say they don't like it then get out no I'm joking I'm totally joking yeah so I just lay it down the paints and I got a lot looser with this one like I was saying as I continued to move on to each painting you can see that I kind of get more confident which is another takeaway for me that maybe I should do a lot more warm up pieces before I start an overall big piece because as I can see I've gotten more confidence and yeah I think it definitely shows overall in the in the final image that you see it's not perfect like none of these are perfect but I don't think anything is going to be perfect I don't think it's pretty close to what I wanted it to be though and considering I'm copying Studio Ghibli images that is just I think that's insane for me I don't think I would have been able to recreate them to the standard that I have done last year and I think this has really spurred me on to to do more freestyle paintings and more paintings for myself because I think this definitely built up my confidence a lot and maybe some of you guys are looking at this like well what are you talking about these aren't that great but for me they're good if that makes sense like I'm proud of them in myself and I think they show a lot of development for my my own technique and style so I'm glad that I did this I mean overall I think these paintings took me about six hours to do all of them and I think if you spend six hours painting anyway you're going to learn a lot and you're going to build confidence so if I could do this every Saturday when I have a day off then I think I will develop a lot and it's just about lending time to your technique and your craft I think it's quite difficult for me because obviously when I have free time I want to just relax chill maybe play Animal Crossing but I have to spur myself on and I think YouTube really helps me if I didn't have YouTube to do I probably would be like not doing anything which is kind of sad but it helps spur me on and I'm really happy and glad that I have the YouTube and I'm glad that you guys all are here watching my stuff because it really helps me continue to do what I do and I'm really thankful for it to be honest and really thankful for you guys so overall I really liked these paintings and I really like how they come out and I think that I have learned a lot and I really suggest you guys go ahead and try this out like just try and recreate something that you really like or maybe maybe even something different like if even if you see an artist on Instagram try and recreate their stuff but just don't show it off just keep it in your sketchbooks privately and then you will learn a lot from what you see and you will learn a lot about what you actually like about the image because if you just look at something maybe you don't really know why you like something but if you go ahead and recreate it you're like actually the reason I like this is because it has such a mood to it the reason that I like this one is because of all the flecks of paint coming off the wall and the idea that it's been there for some time it creates a mood it tells a bit of a story even though it's a background which I think is probably really difficult to do and yeah so I finally suggest doing this little study of stuff I think it really helps adding up a few little windows here I kind of regretted but overall I think it looks quite good and that is the end of the process okay guys so I think I'm pretty much done with these I've spent a long time with them and I'm pretty proud of them they're quite nice and yeah I learned a lot from doing them which is really good I hope to do some more studies like this because I think it was really helpful let's just do some peelage this didn't work at all oh well no the most unsatisfying peel ever okay there we go thanks for watching guys please like and subscribe for more content and I will see you next time bye