 How are you today? We are here for another video this week for my year 2017. This is the book review and the prompt to this month is gratitude and because it's holidays in the next couple months I'm just doing the one sort of tutorial setup video with this and then a book review. I may be online in the Facebook group for Q&A and chit chat but I think I'm only going to do the two videos it's just you know that's the holidays we're all like super busy so you guys have enough like if you're like me you have enough stuff to catch up on you don't need to add to the pile so the book I want to talk about this month is mixed media portraits with Pam Carricker and I love this book in fact it doesn't really ever get put away look at that she's a really fabulous artist and portrait artist I love the way she draws and paints I love her realistic but yet expressive style she goes over specifics about how to get your proportions right on your face you know how to make sure your your people don't have flathead syndrome and their foreheads aren't too short and the proportions on drawing lips and getting different expressions and different painting styles she's got a whole section just a mouth look of noses ears ears are so hard but if you get a tutorial from a good artist like her it's so much easier to figure out and less mystifying so I really do if you like to add people to your art you like to add a hint of realism to your people I really do recommend if you want want to be better at drawing people and doing expert this is a great book for that she does have another one called art at the speed of life and creating art at the speed of life and those are also really good books I would recommend any of them to any of you she does go through creating these portraits with different mediums too in the book it's a fabulous fabulous book filled with all kinds of really great information so you can get it at Amazon I will put a link in the description below Amazon most of their books also have a used book list so if you're on a budget and you want to get it that way you can I would recommend especially if you're on a budget check and see if your local library has a copy and if they don't maybe you can search their online card catalog and see if a local library has it they can send it to your library I know here in San Jose California we have that and they can search other libraries and then have the books sent over for me to look at for a week so I would definitely do that this is one though that has been in my stash as sort of a reference book for a long time and there's a reason for that this is one of those books that I won't be getting rid of just FYI so mixed media portraits with Pam Keraker and I would definitely recommend her I do want to say that she might teach online too because it seems to me I might have taken a class with her or classes she taught at yeah she's creative issue videos for Strathmore she's a designer at Stencil Girl she also works at Stampington and Company she has a design line with Dara Van and Matisse and you can find more about her at Pamkeraker.com I would definitely recommend looking her up she's really really talented so there you go this month our book review Pam Keraker mixed media portraits actually any of her books I think are great this particular one is really good though alright that's it for this month I hope you're all having a good time here in my year 2017 I hope you're having a great holiday spending time with family friends and loved ones and if you want to join us in my year 2017 and you haven't yet the group is still open to accept new members until December 31st and the link for it is in the description below we are starting a brand new group for 2018 and going forward that address blah blah blah that the link for that is also in the description below so you can join both of them they're free Facebook groups that's where you can download you know free illustrations from me or any of the other artists you can get you know a list of all the book reviews we've done to date you can get all the video links and getting started documents and all of that stuff and plus it's just a great fun sharing mixed media life exploration created creativity inspired community that's a big that's a lot of stuff but anyway alright so you guys all have a great holiday have a happy new year and I will hopefully see you and wonder both of the groups going forward and above all go out and have a great day be grateful this month and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it I'll see you later bye guys