 Good morning, everybody. There might only be one of you out there, but that's fine. Good morning. Welcome to Watercolor Wednesday. We are going to work on a little still life, and we're going to play with the Prima watercolors this morning. I just sprayed them down a minute ago to sort of activate all the paints. I need a rag. I need a rag. I need a rag. How is everybody this morning? Got a rag. That's the only thing I need. I got a cough drop. I didn't have time to make tea. Hey, Sabrina. Hey, Tamari. How are you? Tommy girl, good morning. So we're going to work on a little still life this morning. This is my watercolor journal that I've been working in since last year. And we're going to find a page here to work on as we are doing the flip. I'm a little stuffy and wheezy to be really honest this morning. So I've taken some medicine. I've got a cough drop in my mouth. I didn't have time to make tea, but I will as soon as our broadcast is over. I left the house yesterday and had to go run errand. So that means I'm exposed to dust and pollen and mold and perfume. And usually I'm wheezy and gross the next day because of all of my allergies that I have now in asthma and everything. So let's see. Some of these are good. Some of these are not so good. But it's been fun. And I learned something from every single one of these. I really like this kind of sort of test, journal-y page. I can't think of the word this morning. See, I'm telling you guys, I'm just having a morning. Let me call that like study, like field notebook. Field notebook, that's it, kind of page. I like that. So you might want to look forward to me doing more of that like in the future in other journals because I really like the field notebook style. All right, I think we're, this is, I think, the one we did last year. So, I mean, last year. Hello, good morning. This is last week. Oh, yay, yay. I took my asthma and allergy meds this morning. I've got a cough drop in my mouth. That means I'm going to be a little bit more flighty than normal. Sorry guys, but I couldn't breathe. All right, so we've got our Prima watercolors here. Now the Prima watercolors come in three sets. In the interest of full disclosure, I bought two, they sent me one. I had to have all of them. I just had to. They do normally come in a smaller watercolor box. I wanted them all in one box, so I got this bigger box to put them in. Not because there's anything wrong with a small Prima watercolor box. I did not get rid of them. I have one of them right here. Hey, Cindy, I love these small watercolor boxes. This I put the whole buying watercolors in. These little watercolor boxes are fabulous, especially for traveling, but I wanted all three sets of my Primas in one box. Hey, Josie, hey, Lisa. So I re-boxed them into this larger palette, which I ordered from Jackson's Art out of the UK. And I have all of them in rows by the sets they normally come in. So the classics, tropicals, and decadent pies. And then in this fourth row, this is a really big box. I put a little piece of a sponge. I'm sort of hoping at some point they come out with more colors. Can you see that? Oh, yay. Well, I'm glad that you are finding something to do, Cindy, to occupy yourself during this difficult time, which we won't get into on a live broadcast, but if your son is watching, hello. And I hope that things improve for the family and for him soon. All right, so we're gonna work on some still lives. And I won't get into it, because I don't wanna violate anybody's privacy, Cindy's privacy, or anybody else's privacy, but let's just say that Cindy Utter and her family could use some love and support this week. And there are a lot of, you know, artists and mixed media people, YouTubers out there that I know are going through difficult times, so let's spread the love and support and less hate, everybody. I don't give a crap what color your skin is, what religion you are, or anything else, as long as you're a nice person and you love art, you're welcome. I just, I'm done with all the hate and the killing and the, you know, I'm with the rest of you guys on that, I think. So anyway, let's paint and have some fun. All right, so I have little tiny small, my little speech aside, that's as political as I usually ever get. So just FYI, all right. Told you guys I took medicine this morning. All right, so I have a collection of little small things I pick up every now and then at thrift stores and garage sales that I use for props. And when I come across like really pretty flowers or I bring home some really pretty fruit from the grocery store, before we do anything else with it, I usually break out my little box of props and my cell phone and I take some inspiration photos, which these are. And I'm gonna try to lift it up here because I'm noticing there's some glare on the album. In this case, I came home with some Rainier cherries and I took out this little silver creamer that I have somewhere. I put it away so I don't know that I can get it quickly for you guys because it's a way. I don't know, I put things away and then I've taken medicine, I don't know, anyway. So I printed these photos kind of a while ago and I altered the photo in a photo editing app to make it more painterly. So I have the original and the altered one side by side here in my album. And I thought that we would just play an experiment with doing some kind of little still life inspired by this photo with the Prima watercolor paints. Now you don't have to do this, you could just play with the colors and see how they blend and mix on the page. And we're gonna do some of that, so I'll show you. Don't be intimidated by the fact that you think you can't draw or anything. Just have fun and play and experiment. And just, especially if you're going through a hard time, let all of that out in your page, in your color mixing. Hey Josie, hey Hanny. All right, so I've got a variety of brushes, some rounds, a fan brush, a flat one. I'm gonna stick them over here in the water. I've got my, holy cow, heated boxing tool. This is what happens when I've taken medicine, you guys. So why don't I take it too much? All right, let's spray these one more time. And then we need a pencil. Pencil, pencil, pencil. Okay, so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just kind of just do a quick sketch. I'm gonna try to do it like a little darker than I normally would because I want you guys to kind of see. I'm just, I'm drawing what I see, not what I think I see. Think about that. It's a lot harder than you think it is. But just draw the shapes. You're not, you know, worried about, oh my God, I've gotta draw a cherry. And I've gotta, you know, you're just drawing the shapes. And you know, if you've been watching me for a while, I like all the, you know, kind of loose sketching lines. I like the effect that they give me on my journal page. The challenge in this one, because the little pictures silver is similar to when you do glasses, getting the color right and the highlights in the right place to actually have it kind of look like or suggest the creamer, the little creamer picture thing. And I'm not, you know, I'm not, you guys know I'm not all about the details. I'm not the detail girl. That would be my sister Karen. That's not me. And there's plenty of artists out there who do detail work honestly way better than I do. But I wanna suggest just enough of the detail that we can get an idea of what's going on. Wait, let's see. I'm gonna bring this and I'm gonna draw some of our shapes up here. And like I said, we don't wanna draw too many details. The Frugal Crafter just had a watercolor tutorial the other day. I didn't get to watch all of it because I got interrupted, but it was a pretty good one. She wasn't doing cherry. She was doing something else. Hey, Jodi. Alrighty. The rest of our cherries. Now, the one thing I think I'm gonna do is not draw all the crazy stems that are sticking out of all my cherries over here in the inspiration photo. I think I have about a few too many put some in. Let's see. Something like that. So yeah, I made the mistake yesterday of having to go to the grocery store and get my mammogram done. You guys all get your checkups done or do self-checks, I hope. Anyway, now I'm all congested and wheezy because the whole planet bothers me now. Thanks, American Greetings. That's pretty good. All right. Let's start with a big brush and let's do like what we usually do and do our back room round first. Strawberries, that's what she did. Lisa, thank you. She did strawberries. I loved her strawberries. I didn't get to watch the whole thing so I am looking forward to watching it later and commenting. She's commented on one of my watercolor videos which was very sweet of her. I know she's like super busy. So I'm getting the background wet just because I kind of, you know, I want, I don't mind if the paint kind of goes everywhere. In the background, I want it to be a little bit abstract. Okay. Um, I think I'm going to stick with the big brush so I don't have to be sketchy at work all along. We're working on these little still life of these cherries, Jodi. I think this picture is on my inspirations page, on my website, jeanandbearons.com. If it's not, somebody let me know, but I think it is. I'm going to start, one of my problems with the Prima paints, they don't have color names. They have numbers. I don't like that. I'm going to start with number 14 out of the tropicals which is kind of an ochre color. You can see right here, it's kind of an ochre color. And because the paper's already wet, the paint's going to just, it's going to follow the water. I don't have to worry about it going into the fruit or into the picture because that's not wet. But if it did a little bit, I'm not too concerned about it. Okay, and let's put a little bit of that color up here. Now the Prima watercolors are really well pigmented. I like the way they're pigmented. We have no idea if they're light fast. Prima says they are light fast or they have some light fast qualities, but we can't get any positive data out of them regarding that. So I would kind of, as my grandmother would say, take that with a grain of salt because I have no idea if it's true or not. So now staying with the tropicals for the moment, we're going to go into number 24, which is more of a Sienna color. I have the little pitcher sitting on top of a bamboo mat. These kind of still lifes are fun to do with limited palettes. I do these kind of things when I'm traveling and I have a, I mean, I have a large travel palette, but it's really kind of limited. I mean, I don't carry nearly so many colors as I have of course in my studio. And it's fun to do these kinds of things with a limited palette and maybe to, I'm going to lift some of that, and maybe to do the cherries and do the shapes, but do them maybe in purple or something like that. Those kinds of things are fun. If you want to do a picture like this, but you want to change up the colors, then definitely print maybe your inspiration photos in black and white. Okay, so I'm going to kind of be a little bit more conscious of where my shadows are. I got a little bit of that Sienna color in too many places where I didn't want it. And again, I'm looking at my inspiration photo for shadows, where the dark spots are. And if you want to have expressive paintings, no matter your medium, go with a bigger brush than you would normally use, maybe paint with your non-dominant hand, something like that. Okay, let's see. Now we're going to go, and we're still working on the background, we're going to go a little bit darker, and let's go with number 10 out of the Classics palette, which is like a sepia color. And again, being very conscious of in the inspiration photo where the shadows are, I like that. Now's the part I'm not looking forward to, you guys. We're going to work on the little picture. Now it's a silver, antique silver picture. So it's reflecting all kinds of different colors. You could just paint it gray, but it's going to be really flat. And it does have reflections of like the cherry colors in it and the colors from the bamboo mat. So we're going to put first some of the ochery color in here, and then I'm going to put some of the Sienna-type color in here. And again, I am looking at my inspiration photos, and I'm looking at the shapes reflected in the little picture, and it doesn't have to be perfect. Just get that right out of your brain. That's one of the reasons I like working in a journal is because if I don't do it exactly perfect, nobody's ever going to see it except me, well, and you guys, because I'm crazy that way, and I share with everybody. Actually, I can see my face reflected in the picture in the creamer in the picture, and yeah, we're not going to go there. Holy cow, I just noticed that. All right, so I'm going to switch to a round brush now because I think it's time. And, and, and we are going to start with from the classics color number 11, which is a light gray. Because we're using the Prima paints, and we have metallics, I may throw some actual silver in here at some point. Hey, Ann. Okay, so I'm going to go in with the lightest gray color. I'm going to put some of this on here. I'm going to try to leave some spots white because there is light or the flash reflected in the picture. And we're just going to go around and your colors are going to overlap and we're going to be okay with that. The picture's the hardest part. Hey, Gina, hey, Patricia, hey, Gina. Staying high to myself, hello. Hey, Patricia, how are you? It's just a matter of practice, Sabrina, honestly. One of the things you want to remember from doing from a photo, and maybe I should, well, you guys can kind of see the photo here, can't you? So you want to remember when you're doing a photo from a photo is to really work with the shapes that you actually see, not what you think you're seeing, which I know is really hard. I tell that to drawing students and they're like, oh, you know, once you think about it and you get the full implication of what that means, it's very difficult and I know that. But once you finally train your brain to do that, you're going to find you have a much easier time of it. So I'm going to just put some water here. I'm going to go with, I'm going to mix some of our gray with number 35 out of decadent pies, which looks like a dark Prussian blue color. A little bit of that and stick it in here. Yeah, that's a good color. And we're going to start to map out our shadows a little bit better than we have. And I like to work from not only the original photo, but an altered one because I like to not get stuck trying to paint all the details because that really doesn't make me happy. And if I'm just only working from the original photo, I tend to try to paint all the details. That's just where my brain wants to go. And I know it's not going to make me happy. It's just going to frustrate me. Again, I'm trying to leave some spaces white or very light because that's where the flash is hitting the picture and where we are getting the most reflection of light and I want to duplicate some of that. Now, you may screw up. I actually did right here. I'm going to put it right next to it. You may screw up and you may lose your white and that's okay. We're mixed media artists ultimately. You can always go in there with a gel pen or a white paint pen. I hope you can keep a connection too. So we are working with watercolors and I do like the messy thing with all of the pencil marks. If that really bugs you, then you're going to want to at some point go in and erase the pencil marks or just do it without. But I don't recommend that. And one of the things you can do like a shortcut is you can blow your picture up, whatever your inspiration photo is, to the size you want it to be on your journal page or your piece of paper and then use some tracing paper to trace the shapes onto the paper and then paint it. You could totally do that. Hey, Chetta. All right, so now we're going to go, I'm quite done with this color, hang on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope I could paint something that looks actually decent for you guys because the medicine kind of makes me loopy. I probably shouldn't say that out loud. All right, this is from the classics. This is color number 12. I think it's just black. You know, again, they don't have names. You just have numbers. So we're going to put a little bit of this in here. Hey, Ramo, I never have anybody physically helping me in the studio with these broadcasts. I'm watching on FYI, for those of you who are new, I'm watching on my iPad. So if I miss comments for a little bit, it's because I'm painting and I'm not looking. It's really great when YouTubers have, you know, people helping them with the comments and stuff, you know, live in the studio. I don't have that. So we're just, we're making our shadows in the little creamer darker. We haven't done our cherries yet, but we will. Now, if you want your colors to be more blendy, then you don't want to go too far before you get back in here with some water. I'm looking at it on the camera. It's actually not too bad. All right, we're going to do the cherries for a little bit. I don't think I'm done with the picture, but I want to let it dry a little bit. So let's work on the cherries. And these are Rainier cherries, which are yellow and orange and red. They're not a solid red. So I want to start with yellow. And I'm going to go with Decadent Pies number 29, which is kind of a muted yellow, which is actually a color I really love from this set. And I'm going to just lay down some color in the bits of cherries that are yellow in the inspiration photo. I'm trying to breathe. I can't breathe. This one has some yellow in it. And there is some yellow reflected in our picture. So as you're painting the cherries, you're going to look and you're going to see that there's different colors reflected because you have this shiny mirror surface. All right, so now let's go in with number four from the classics. We're going to mix it with that yellow that we just used, just because I can and I want to. So on this one here, I'm going to make the parts of the cherry that are farther away from me and that are sitting, because the cherry is round, right? So the edges would be darker. Some of it's bleeding into the little picture, but that's okay. We're going to just blot it up with a rag, or let's see, for being proper watercolor artists, what do we call that? Lifting, I don't call it lifting. It's blotting, blotting people, blotting. So just adding that little bit of darker yellowy orange color to those cherries already starts to make it look round. I'm going to lift some of this here in the middle because it's bleeding a little bit more than I want it to. That's much better. All right, so now we're going to make that redder and we're going to go in with the classics number three, which is a nice true red. We're going to mix it with those other colors that we had on here to just orange it up just a little bit and I'm going to go into this one just with like that much. And then I'm going to take what's left on my brush and add it to some other cherries. And I'm not going to get too close to this one that I just did because I don't necessarily want the colors to bleed into that cherry too much. So then I just have just water, plain water. Lift a bit. There we go. I always have like a rag or paper towel handy. Hey, Toy, how are you? If you haven't seen the Frugal Crafters painting on the strawberries yet, oh boy, you guys go watch it. I didn't get to see the whole thing, but what I did see, I loved, she does a fabulous job. So definitely go over and take a gander at that. Now this cherry has a little reflection on it. A little spot that's almost completely white, like right about there. And it's almost a complete square. Oh, little creative, hello, welcome. And don't forget you guys, if you have some questions to ask me some questions, may take me a minute to see the question, but I will see it eventually. So I put a little bit of the color and then we're just spreading it out with the water. All the rest of these cherries have a lot of red in them. And you know, I have the heat embossing tool here because at some point I'm going to come in and dry this. Y'all know I'm going to do that, right? All right, so I'm going to take, before we do anything else, I'm going to take a little bit of the red from our cherries. It is reflected in the picture a little bit. So we are going to add that where I see it on here. Ah, so I did. These are the Prima watercolors. I have all three sets of Prima watercolors. They did, in the interest of full disclosure, 71 set. I bought the other two. I unboxed them from their individual boxes into one big box because I prefer to work that way with them. I have a variety of brushes from Princeton Select and Grumbacher, Princeton Neptune, and this one is just a royal round and a flat. I do have a fan brush. I'm not sure we're going to need it, but I do have a fan brush out. This is already looking pretty good. You know, if I wanted to stop here, I'd be happy, but we're going to keep going. Thank you, Patricia. That's very sweet. I like my art some days, but you know, I do have the great archive of painting failures out in the garage on canvas. My daughter's boyfriend thinks that's hilarious, but I call them the painting failure graveyard, but I do. All right, so we're going to go in with the tropicals. There's number 19, which is kind of more of a magenta color. Can you see how bright and kind of magenta-y that is? Yeah, I prefer to work with them like this, and I can have all of the primas, you know, out at the same time on my palette. All right, so I'm going to use this kind of darker red around the edges of some of these cherries. So I'm getting these like streaky lines because my brush was too dry, just FYI. Yeah, I really like their paints. I have two gripes. One, I wish there was an option to get all of the paints in one box. And two, I wish the colors had names instead of numbers. Those are my two gripes, and I just saw something pop up about Pam pastels. I'll read it in a minute. But if it's a question, have I tried them? The answer's no. I have chalk pastels, and I like them okay? They're not my favorite. Although I've done some fabulous pieces of artwork with them, they're not my favorite. I know it's probably a sin. It's probably some kind of art sin. Okay, let's not forget these down here. Now again, if you wanted to do some sort of, you know, fruit study, still life, and you wanted to switch it up and have the, you know, fruits be, you know, purple, some color other than what they really are, then, you know, definitely, you could do that, but put the picture in black and white, so you just get the tonal value. It'll be easier for you, I think. Okay. AG2 fan, welcome. Hey Ian, hello, welcome. Yeah, the frugal crafter does some fabulous Pam pastel tutorials. I would say, look at her channel. I have chalk pastels. I haven't done a tutorial on them in a really long time if I've ever done one on YouTube. I don't remember. They're not my favorite. I do love charcoal, but both of those, I used to use a lot more than I do now because the dust makes me wheeze. So there you have it. We're using the Prima watercolors today, Ian. All right, so now I'm gonna take these reds, the magenta-y color that I have here from the Tropical Set number 19, and I'm going to add some number 32 to it from the decadent pies, and we're gonna orange that up a little bit. Hey Shelly. All right, so we're just slowly working our way darker and getting our tones in there to make our cherries look more round instead of flat. So I'm going into the edges and anywhere where I see darker, even darker red colors, and putting this color there. This darker sort of orangey color. Again, I'm gonna put some of this up here. Hey Teresa, I'm gonna use a little bit of this darkish red-orange color that we made to darken our yellow cherries. Let's see if I can lift some of that. That's too much. There we go. A little bit goes a long way, so put a little bit, put some water, see if that works for you. Maybe then you wanna add more. It's easier in watercolor, of course, to add more color than take away. So try not to get into a habit where you're having to take away lots of paint. It's not like with acrylic paint where you can just cover up a mistake with more layers of paint, but that makes it more of a challenge, which is fun, I think. This is the Prima Watercolor Palette. Okay, let's see, what other color? So I'm gonna take this number 30, this dark brown from the Decadent Pies, and again, I'm gonna mix it with my reds. I'm gonna get this really dark reddish brown color. And I'm going to actually dry these a little bit because I wanna be more controlling about where this color goes. And no worries, Teresa. All right, so I'm gonna go in between my cherries. There's some dark shadows in between the cherries. And so we're going to paint those in. So I'm gonna put this color in around. I'm gonna actually zoom in a little bit. I think that would be helpful. Yeah, these are all the Prima Watercolors in one box. I really like the Prima Watercolors. I think for the value, I mean, for the cost, they're a good value. They're decent paints. And the box is fabulous. I just wanted all three sets in one box cause you know, that's how I am. So this yellow cherry is in front of the red one. So I'm darkening up the one behind it. Thanks, Ian. I have chalk pastels and I do like them. And I have to though use them outside and usually wear a mask because the dust from the charcoal and the pastels make me wheeze. And thank you, Ann. I just started a long time ago just, you know, playing with watercolors. See, I'm starting to get lost in what I'm doing. Can you tell? So I'm pretty sure at least the unaltered version of this photo is on my website. GinaBEarons.com. It's free for you to download. If it's not, somebody let me know and I will make sure it gets on there this afternoon. Hopefully as soon as we're done with the broadcast. Ooh, that's too much right there. So we've got a rag. There we go. Always have the rag handy. So I'm barely touching the brush to the paper. You of course could go with a smaller brush. I've got one here, but as I've said before, I'm the lazy crafter. So, you know, there's that. So there's nothing wrong with being splattery and kind of heavy handed, I think, with the watercolors. If you haven't seen who Jean Haynes is, definitely look at her. She's fabulous. I definitely am not a super realist painter. I like things to look painterly. So I'm gonna add detail to this, but I'm not gonna add a lot of detail. And Jean Haynes really does amazing work with things that are splattery and crazy. So I definitely would say look her up. Okay, so we're gonna add this dark reddish brown here to our little creamer because there is a very dark shadow right here. And then there's some in between these cherries. There's a dark spot. And while I want this to be painterly, I don't wanna completely lose the shapes of my cherries. So I'm gonna come in with a little bit of the paint and then I'm gonna come in with some water to blend the paint out in the direction I want it to be blended out like that. Okay, so this, you know, I've tried to, at this point, Ian, and the rest of you know, I've tried a lot of paints. And some of them you can really push around and they really flow well when you put it down and then you put the water because you want it to go that way and not the other way. And some of them blend really well, some of them don't. This one does really well for kind of a student-quality, craft-quality watercolor paint, which I do stick it in that category. I think these blend really well. The color selection is really nice. They move really well on the paper. This is cold-pressed watercolor paper. I'm pretty sure it's Fabriano. It could be Kanton or it could be Strathmore. Honestly, I'd have to go back and watch my own video on how I made the book, which is on you to me because I don't remember. But I'm pretty sure it's Fabriano. No, don't hold me to that. But it is 140-prown cold-pressed watercolor paper. And I think this paint does very well on it. Of all the kind of student-quality paints I've gotten, it's, I can definitely say it's one of my favorites. I'm really liking these cherries. Now, a few minutes ago, I would have said to you that I wasn't so sure where this painting was going. I like this up, though. Definitely look up Jean Haines. Maybe one of you guys can type her name in with the proper spelling for Anne and some of the others. Jean Haines has a fabulous, splattery, kind of almost heavy-handed style with the paint. And I love her style. I won't show it too much on camera because that's not fair to Jean. She's got some great books out there that you should really look up. But I think she does a great job. Now, one thing I noticed with this paint that I like, this is not something I dislike. You notice right there, I kind of had a blob of dark brown where I kind of wasn't so sure I wanted it. So I came in with just some water. It reactivated nicely. It does, yes, stain a little bit, but it will still move around. Some of them stain so much that once they dry, they're really difficult to go back in there and blend out. And I really like when I have the option of going back in there and having it move. This is watercolor after all, and I like that it moves. Yeah, I haven't cracked mine yet, but I do have it a little creative. I do have it. I have every single one of her books. I even sent to the UK for one of them. All right, let's see where we're at on this cute little picture. I think we need to go a little bit darker, and we still have to put our stems in. So as you build up your layers of watercolor, start with your lightest value of colors and work your way darker. And that will create an interesting layered painting, something that's gonna give you something that you're really gonna enjoy. I'm noticing right here, let's see, let's go in with, let's make this a little bit darker. Or I'm gonna grab some of this other color that's on my mixing palette down here. Oh, yeah, that's much better. I do wanna add some shadowing right here. Any one of her books that you can get her, you won't go wrong. Just pick one of her books and get that one. All of her books are very well written. Her tutorials are really easy to follow, step-by-step instructions. You won't go wrong. If I was gonna write a watercolor book, which I won't, I would write it very much in her style. And I can't wait. Someday is on my bucket list to take a class with her. Someday. I wanna get some more brown out. So let's go with number 24. And we're gonna mix it into some of this gray-green we have going on over here, which I don't remember what color that is. I have a feeling it was a mixture of something. Alrighty. When you put in the really dark color, this is when things are like, holy crap, I could really screw this up. Just be brave and take a deep breath. All right. All right, let's put a little bit of it here. I'm not gonna go too far with it because I wanna be able to blend it out. Although that's less of an issue with the pre-mote paints than it is with some, I'm going to take a little bit of number 33. And let's need to darken up this cherry here a little bit. So don't think just because you're a beginner that you can't go take a class with some of these really great teachers. Pauline Agnew is one of those. She teaches people painting from all skill levels. A lot of people are afraid to take our classes whether online or in person because they're afraid they're not good enough. Don't feel that way. She's a fabulous teacher. I knew nothing about proper painting when I first met Pauline and she taught me a lot. So definitely don't feel like you have to be a certain way to learn from some of these fabulous teachers. They'd probably be the first one to tell you that that's a load of belonging. And yes, I'm watching my language because that's not the word I'd probably normally use. Just FYI, okay. So I'm just putting some of these dark shadows in. So the hardcover revised version of color and light has more in it. The original version is a less intensive book. I have both of them because I got the one before the newer version came out. No, if you have the new one, don't get the old one. Her work is absolutely stunning, Ann. I'm telling you right now, she's like my favorite. You guys should all go look her up. So I'm following my inspiration photo around. I'm bouncing around and I'm adding my darker color in every place where I see that there's darker colors on the inspiration photo. I'm just using the same color. I haven't done anything to it. This kind of grayish-greenish-brownish color. Trying to remember to leave white space where I want to have a white highlight or at least a light colored space. Now these watercolors, these Prima watercolors are nicely transparent. So when I lay them over the other colors that are already on here, like over the gray and silver, it's gonna be more grayish-blueish-grayish-silver. And over the reds, it's more warm, more carmely, more red. So it's one thing I love about them. I prefer watercolor over gouache because I love for it to, I love the transparency and the layers of sort of puddling on the paint. Oh, Ann, you're gonna have to send me the name. There's a bunch of fabulous watercolorists out there and definitely we should start some sort of a file over in the Facebook group of ones that you guys all love for inspiration. If there are some favorites, we should probably start a list of at least the proper spellings of their names so people can go look them up either on Amazon or Pinterest or something. That's probably a really good idea to do. So bouncing around your painting, whether you're working with watercolors or acrylic, just allows like this up here to dry a little bit while I come down here and work down here. Let's see. Oh, hey Paula, Ron Ranson. Okay, Ayan, we'll look him up. And yeah, I've heard good things about her, Lisa, that she's very nice. That's actually not too bad. I'm looking at it in the camera to see how it looks. Things always look different on camera too, FYI. So when I get stuck on something frequently, I'll take a picture of it and then stand back. I don't know why that always aids me more than just standing back from it, but it does. Okay, let's put some stems in. I'm gonna use the smaller brush. I do have a smaller brush or somewhere. This is a grumbocker. No, and remember that these are always saved on the YouTube channel, the recording is saved. So you can always watch it later. Again, I have this grayish-greenish-brownish color here that was already on my palette, just different Prima colors that were mixed together. We're gonna just use it to suggest our stems. There's a lot of stems in the inspiration photo. I don't think I'm going to paint them all in. I have some other really dark brown over here. I think this might be color number 10 out of the classic set. I'm gonna mix some of it into this greenish-brown I had going on. So when you're near the end of your painting and you've spent all this time putting shadows in your cherries and shadows in your little creamer, shadows on the table, don't neglect to put shadows on the stem. Okay, Prima has metallic colors. They have gold and silver. So this is silver. And I think I'm gonna bring a little bit of it. You probably won't be able to see that this is metallic on camera. You have to trust me. Maybe you don't have the Prima paints or maybe you have watercolor paints, but you don't have the metallics. You could use twinkling H2O's. You could add a little bit of metallic gel pen. Look at what you do have and see what you do have. And I'm not adding a lot of it. I'm just gonna add a little bit here and there. My favorite are Daniel Smith. They've been my favorite for a while. One of the reasons is they're made in the USA and they are easy for me to get when I run out of a color. That being said, there's lots of really great paints out there. Which ones are best for you is gonna depend on the budget that you have going on. Windsor Newton are a fine brand. I own Windsor Newton. I think they're a great brand. I just got a Windsor Newton. Was it Windsor Newton pocket kit? Yeah, I think I did anyway, or it's on order. Get what you can afford. Don't break the bank. Use a coupon. If you have Hobby Lobby or Michaels or Joann's near you, go see what they carry. Use a coupon and get the best one you can afford. If you can afford, even a better student quality brand, definitely I recommend that you do that. If you're not familiar with watercolor, you wanna just try them and see if you're gonna like them. I would still recommend you get the best one you can afford. I don't know who WJP is. Let's see, I wanna do this, I think. I'm having a couple of different thoughts. There have been a couple of brands I don't like. Let's see, hold on, I can only, I can't do this, I can't. Oh yeah, yeah, one thing at a time. So, cheap brand to learn with. I started out with Artist District. If anybody knows what that is, they're not great paints, but they did the job and I decided after using them that I love watercolor. Watercolor are fabulous. I have Twinkling H2Os, I have a bunch of them. I'm not a big fan of the Gonsai Kurataki paints. They're great if you wanna just do painted watercolor like tags. And I own the Gonsai paints. At some point, I may end up re-gifting them, but they're not my favorite. I had to just put that out there. They're not my favorite. If I'm gonna do tags and cards with an inexpensive student quality paint, I'd rather use the Primas, I prefer them. I like the Mission Gold paints, they're fabulous, but they're not cheap. And I have not seen them in a store anywhere near me. I have to order them, so they're not easy to get. I like the PBO watercolors. Again, they're for me in the same category as the Primas, more of an experimental student quality paints. I do like them. I especially like their round, hold on. Their round palette, I like. I like them. There's mixed reviews on this, but I actually like them. The Van Gogh are nice. Old Holland, I wasn't super impressed with the Old Holland paints. They were okay, they weren't my favorite. In fact, they were back here in that little, like this, I didn't think they were, I mean, maybe it's the colors I had, but I wasn't too, I wasn't too impressed with them. Quar, I like my Quar paints. Now, Quar, they are super pigmented. They're fabulous paints. They're expensive, so they're not, they're not starter paints, probably, because they're kind of pricey, but they're super pigmented. In my mind, along the same lines as like Mission Gold, they're pigmented Quar and Mission Gold, and also Maymary Blue, which I like. Now, all three of those brands, again, not my top most favorite because they're harder for me to get, not because there's anything wrong with them. I like them, but they're definitely on the pro end. Yes, Ian, I agree with you. They're on the pro end, they're not cheap. They're fabulous, they're just harder for me to get. Daniel Smith is made on the West Coast of the United States, so it's, you know, everywhere that I go shopping almost has Daniel Smith. So, and my parents live near the Daniel Smith factory, so I can get them easily. And they have 238 colors. So when you're, pardon my French, a color whore, I'm like, I am, and you just love color and you hate mixing color and you want, you know, when a paint brand comes in a million colors, you want one of all of them. A brand like Daniel Smith is just fabulous. Schminka's great, I love Schminka, but again, I have to order them. There's one art supply store here that carries Schminka that is not super close to me, but they do have it. I don't like Schminka better than Daniel Smith though. I like Daniel Smith better. I think they have a better color range for me. Amazon has fabulous prices on a lot of things and they're my preferred place to go shopping FYI. What other ones have I had? Oh, the whole buying watercolors are not my favorite. They sent me them to try. Their gouache is not a watercolor gouache, and so it's more of an acrylic paint. So in my mind, what's the point of having it? Because if I'm gonna have a gouache, it's gonna be something that I can have dry in a palette and reactivate with water. Otherwise, what's the point I got acrylic paint? And their watercolor tubes are nicely pigmented, but they're very chalky and I am not a big fan. Those were probably the gonzi and the whole wine. They're my two ones I'm not too crazy about. Daniel Smith has a color dot chart of all 238 colors, a little dot of each one, and you can get the whole 238 sample dot chart for like 20 bucks or so directly from their website, danielsmith.com. And they have a really great selection of really well pigmented, lightfast colors and ones that are really great colors that aren't lightfast. The paints will vary in price depending on how precious the pigment is that's used to make the paint. They have a lot of colors that are made with precious minerals, and they're just wonderful. I do do it not a lot, Ian. And I do wax resist sometimes, Shelley. Not a, I mean, Da Vinci. I have Da Vinci things, but I don't know that I have Da Vinci watercolors. I did just get a whole, you know, I showed this last time. I haven't done anything more with it since the last time you saw it, but I don't think there's Da Vinci in here. I have a couple of, I'm a pocket box addict, just FYI. So I've got a lot of pocket boxes of paint because I'm an addict for pocket boxes. But I don't think I have Da Vinci. I do own the pocket box from White Nights. Again, it's okay, but it's not my favorite. They're a little chalky for me. They're well pigmented and it's super affordable. And if you've never used watercolor before and you're not sure you're gonna like it, these, the White Nights watercolors are available on Amazon. They're really inexpensive and they're well pigmented. I like Koi better in that category though. If you're gonna buy, and this, I just bought this. If you're gonna buy a starter set of watercolors, I'll answer that in a minute. If you're gonna buy a starter set of watercolors and you've never used them before, buy Prima or buy Koi. Koi, this is their new 30 color box. I've been waiting for it to come in somewhere. Nobody has it. So I finally just ordered one from Amazon and just came in. So I saved the boxes and I use them as travel boxes to put other paints in or I've used them to put some of the companies have sent me tubes. And so I use the Prima box, like this is the Holbein palette of the tubes that they sent me. And I used it to set up the Holbein palette. Again, the colors are really fabulously pigmented. They're a little chalky for me and they don't rewrap real well. So I wasn't too impressed. Yeah, I'm not, I mean, the White Nights are okay. Don't get me wrong. And I own a pocket box and because I'm a pocket box collector, this is probably never going anywhere. I'll still own it. They're just not my favorite. I don't hate them, but they're definitely not my favorite. All right, are we done with this? I don't know that we're done with this. I need to think it needs to pop a black. So I'm gonna take some of the black, which is number 12 in the classic. I have a little bit of blue here on my mixing tray. So I'm going to just mix it in. And I'm just twirling my brush off so that it's not only at a point, but that it's getting some of the extra paint off. And I'm going to go in with this. What's now a really dark blackish blue into a few spots. And I'm gonna put a little bit. And then I'm going to put some water and just pull the paint out. And you'll see that little bit of black really makes it pop. No, there's not a pain's gray. I mean, you could definitely make one by taking the black and adding some blue to it. It's not exactly pain's gray, but it's sort of it. But there's no pain's gray in this palette, the Prima palette. So now we're going to rinse the brush off just coming back in with just water after putting the dark color there and pulling it out. There we go. We're going to continue around our painting that way, putting that clear water where we want the paint to flow and blend and not where we don't. Watercolor paints always going to take the easier road and it's always going to follow the water. It's a good thing I didn't have an extra cup of coffee this morning. That's all I can say. Holy cow. All right, let's put some in here. I'm barely, barely touching the brush to my paper. This is 140 pound cold press. I prefer cold press because I like the little bit of texture that's on the paper. I also prefer paints that granulate a little bit and have a little bit of a texture in the paint when it's going down and drying. Not all water colorists like that. Some people like a much more smoother, less blotchy, more blended look than what I usually paint with. Those are all personal preference things that you'll learn as you experiment with your paint and none of them are wrong. They're just what you like. I keep forgetting to talk because I'm painting. That's what happens in real life too if you take a class with me in real life. I start working on the demo and I forget to give instructions. I prefer also back to the paper. I prefer Fabriano paper, but I use Strathmore a lot too. And I'll buy, you know, I'll tend to buy whatever's on sale. Okay, hot press, which is really smooth, is also good if you're going to be doing something that you know is going to be scanned later into say a computer system. So if you're creating paintings that are specifically for illustration work or that are gonna be turned into some sort of computer graphic later, use hot press because the cold press texture will give you a funny scan and you won't like it. Sorry, I'm having trouble talking and yeah, doing this at the same time. Okay, there is some light in here. So I'm gonna grab some of it because I didn't leave enough. Some watercolorists really are opposed to adding white and there's nothing wrong with that. I consider myself more of a mixed media artist than a watercolorist. So for me, adding white at the end is, I'm not opposed to that by any stretch. I mean, I try to leave the white space but it doesn't always work out. Yeah, I can do that. I did play with them when they first came in. I actually like the PBO watercolors. They do have a mixed review. Some people find them chalky. I actually kind of liked them. Maybe next week we should work with those. What time is it? Oh wow, we've already been on a long time. I did do a painting with the PBO watercolors when I first got that round one in. I do actually now have a pocket palette from them also. But yeah, if you're gonna do any kind of paintings and you know that it's going to be scanned later into a computer system, then you probably want to save yourself some time in trouble and use hot press paper because you'll get a better scan. Now you can go back and do the white highlights with gel pen, paint pen, any of those. I mean, whatever, use what you have. Maybe the set of watercolors you have doesn't have white in it. I think that's pretty good. I'm gonna stop now because I like the way that looks. It is almost 11.30 here, almost lunchtime. I've been on an hour and a half. Time flies when I'm painting, that's all I can say. But yeah, Anne, why don't you private message me or post something in the Facebook group and tag me and remind me. And next week we will do the PBO watercolors. They may be easier for some of you to get than the Primas. And in my mind, they're both the same, the same level of quality of paint. I like them both equally. This one, of course, I had to have because it was round. Who does a round watercolor palette? And here is the colors in this particular palette. Here are the colors of the Prima. Let's see, wait, let me put this here so that I don't mess up my painting. So you can see that they're pretty comparable in intensity. I do have a PBO pocket palette because I found out they make one and of course, y'all know I collect pocket palettes. So I had to have it. I haven't even cracked it open yet. It's still wrapped up, but I love the box. The box is not only a metal box that I like, the metal boxes, but the mixing tray has sides all the way around. And not all of the mixing trays do you have that? I love that, plus it's white. I mean, instead of black. And Koi, I've had the 24 Koi palette before. I actually disassembled it and I used some of the colors in my Permanent Travel Watercolor Kit. I knew they came out with the 31 from, like back in January, I'd heard about it from some of the CHA stuff that started popping up on YouTube, but I had never seen it in the store. So I finally just ordered one. And it's just like the other Koi pocket box, except for the paint pans are a little bit smaller. So they can fit 30 colors in. And then the well down here is smaller. And you have a, the water brush in here. And instead of two sponges, you only have one. So the other half of the brush sits over here, but that's okay with me. And you have 30 colors. So I haven't, again, this just came in. I haven't swatched it or anything. I, for me, I have to get one hot press from usually from Dick Blick, or I have to go to a proper art supply store. In my area, there's only two of them. One of them's in San Jose, but their selection's not that great on anything. It seems like every time I go, the shelves are half empty. But I prefer Lens Art, L-E-N-Z in Santa Cruz. So if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and you're going to the Santa Cruz, visit Lens Art. They are a fabulous mom and pop art supply store. Filled to the rafters, I am not even kidding, with art supplies. They have Daniel Smith's and L-E-A, Shminka. They have all the brushes you would want. They've got all the paper you would want. They've got, they've got everything. They're fabulous. So go show them some love if you're in the Santa Cruz area, because they're wonderful. They do have a website, LensArt, I think, dot com, or Lens Art. I don't remember which, if it's with or without the S. And Coy, Coy, you know, if you're in the market for a starter watercolor set, you want to try them. You don't know what to buy. Or all you have are the Crayola or Art District or Artist Loft type of watercolor sets. You want to go like one step up without spending $500 on watercolor. Okay, I recommend something like the PBO set, something with at least 24 colors in it. If you're gonna make a step up, make a step up. This was under $50. So, and get at least 24 colors. This PBO set's nice because it has a paint gray in it. And it has violets and everything. So this, if when you get 24 colors, you get a nicer range. So PBO is nice, Prima's fabulous. Each one of these sets are $25. So if you want to do all three, that's 75, they come in nice little small pocket boxes. I repotted, re-boxed mine, but you don't have to do that. These are Prima's. So these are fabulous. So, and you get a metal, a fabulous metal box with them. And you know, if you've already been playing with watercolor and you're ready for that one step up, you already know what colors you gravitate to. So do you do mostly landscapes? Then maybe you want to get the classics or the tropicals. Do you want to do fun mixed media stuff? Maybe you want decorative pies. It comes with two, it comes with some metallics. A pearl, a silver and a gold. Maybe you want to, you know, mostly do flowers. Maybe you want, so there's lots of different kinds. I would get all three of them personally because there's colors in each one of the set. As you saw me do today, I use colors from each one of the sets to do our little still life. I love these. The Prima tin, the $25 for one of these. Totally, Sister Ella, I agree with you. It's worth it just to get the tin. I keep putting the tin away and I keep needing to take it back out again. Hold on, let's see, where is it? These little tins cost more than that. If you just want to buy an empty tin like from Jackson's Art, these little tins cost more than that. This is one of the Prima tins. I took the paints out, I have something else in here so I could put them in here, but they come in these little tins and the $25 is worth it to get the little box. The other one I would recommend is Koi because Koi is got, they have a 24 pocket box that looks just like this. You can get it at Hobby Lobby with a coupon. And it's great, I've never seen the 30, I've only seen the 24 at Hobby Lobby. I had to order the 30 from Amazon. I ordered the PBO from Amazon and my Primas, like I said earlier, are from Prima. They sent me one and I ordered the other two from directly. So I lost track of what I was saying. Definitely I think the Primas are really nice starter paints if you're ready for that step up and if your local arts and crafts supply or your Hobby Lobby or your little scrapbook supply store if you still have one carries Prima paints then I would think about going and doing that step up and away from Crayola or Art District or artist loft paints and doing a step up to these and work your way up towards buying those really expensive tube paints like Daniel Smith and Schmincke and that sort of thing. But I would do it as a gradual thing unless you have unlimited funds. That's a whole different conversation. Most of us don't have that myself included and when I was ready to start buying artist quality paints, I did it slowly and I bought two or three tubes at a time until I had the color selection I wanted and when I ordered my Schmincke palette I saved up for months and months and months until I had the money to order it from Dick Blick because it was the cheapest place around to get it from. And I have the 48 palette Schmincke paint but I have 52 in it. Any other questions? So this is all done with Primas and these are nice paints. It's a good color selection to do most of your painting with and there are some colors that aren't in the palette like earlier Ian and I confirmed there's no really no paints gray. You could mix color 35 with color 12 which is like Prussian blue with 12 which is like a black and you'll get something paints grayish and it would work. You could get a really dark blackish violet by doing 12 with one of the violets number nine or number 20. So you can work with it. There's enough of a color selection here so there's 36 colors if you get all three sets. If you're like me you're gonna want to get a bigger box. This is a 48 half pan box. This one is from Jackson's Art. I do have two problems with the Prima. I wish the color numbers had names. I wish they had an option of getting all of them in one box and I wish they had paints gray so I guess that's three things but despite those things I like these paints. Oh, thank you guys. Yeah, 53, woohoo. 50 and fabulous, right? Well, 53 and fabulous. Thanks, I appreciate it. All right, so go out today experiment with paints. Have some fun with it and let's show the world some love even if it's just through our art and let's like lose all the hate and the killing and the like really I don't know about you guys but I'm done with all of that. I will look at my website as soon as we're done and I will make sure that these, at least this picture is on the website and if it is you can download it and paint from it for free from my website, GinaBierns.com and you are more than welcome to sell said painting to reproduce said painting that you make from my picture. It's not my picture but the painting you make from it. It's a royalty free picture that you can do, whatever an art inspires you from it. See, Amazon, I love Amazon UK and occasionally I order things from Amazon UK shipped to me here in the US because I love Amazon UK, ha ha. Ian, and I'm, you know, England's on my bucket list. I really want to go over there. And you're welcome. And I like the PBO, the PBO, like I said, now if you watch some, some, they have mixed reviews. Some people find them kind of chalky. I didn't find that, I don't mind them. I have other paints in my collection that I think are way more chalky than these. And I, I mean, I love the round palette box. Like how do you just not love the round palette box? Now I don't know about the brush. I haven't actually used the brush yet. It reminds me more of like a Chinese painting brush. I'm not sure about the brush. I think, I think I'm not gonna like the brush but the paints are fabulous and this is the color key. And it has a paint's gray and an indigo. So, I mean, you know, nice violet, great selection of blues. You all know, like I love blues. So all right, that's it for today. Don't forget the most important thing. You all know what that is, right? Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourselves because you deserve it. Thank you. I love a round color key, like seriously. Anyway, this is my favorite palette just cause it's round. It's a favorite shape palette, round. What's a Broly, Ian? I don't know what that is. And I like the cold. I don't know what a Broly is. All right, you guys, have a great day. Again, my three least favorite paints. Holbein, not a favorite. They're okay, not a favorite. Gonsai Tombi, they're okay, not a favorite. And White Knight, they're okay. Again, they're okay, not a favorite. They're not, personally, they're not my favorites. I think there's other things out there that you would be better off looking into. Old Holland wasn't a favorite either, if you're gonna add a fourth one. They were okay, but they're not a favorite. Umbrella, oh, okay. Yes, I have umbrellas. I like the cold, FYI. I'm a middle-aged menopausal womanie and I love the cold. I'm hot all the time. I'll probably be out in the rain in a tank top and flip-flops, because, you know, that's what I do. That's what I did in Alaska. All right, I will see you guys all later. Have a rest of your great afternoon. Have a great rest of your afternoon. I'm gonna go have some food and make a cup of tea. And then I have to work on Lifebook Week two. All right, and I think I'm gonna have to take some pictures of this because I like the way this turned out. I love cold weather. My husband's freezing all the time. He wants to live somewhere more tropical. All right, see you later, guys. Bye.