 Hi everyone! In this video I'm going to be talking about how I use mixed media in my illustrations because I actually had this goal where I wanted to incorporate all of my favorite art materials such as watercolors, gouache, colored pencils, ink, and even Copic markers into a single style that I can use for my artworks. And before we actually get started with this video I do want to say that this is in partnership with Skillshare which I'm sure some of you guys have already heard of. I actually did a video with Skillshare in the past which I will put in the cards section somewhere in this video so you guys can check that out if you want but if you haven't heard of Skillshare basically what Skillshare is is it is an online learning community for creatives taught by creatives and the classes actually focus on creative skills and entrepreneurial skills with a premium membership which is less than ten dollars a month if you pay annually you actually get unlimited access to all of the classes that they have on the platform which are taught by professionals who have made it in their respective industries so artists, writers, photographers, business owners, and designers they're the ones teaching the classes there which range from things like how to draw, how to start your own business, marketing tricks and tips as well as productivity classes so how to get yourself organized and the way that Skillshare is actually set up as a platform is that some of the teachers can actually put up an assignment in their class so what you can do is you can download that assignment or that task do it yourself and then upload the work that you've done back onto the Skillshare platform and people can actually give you feedback like you can get feedback from the person who is teaching the class as well as feedback from your peers or people who are also watching the same class as you so I think that's actually really good value for money and if you want to try it out there's actually a link in the description box which is the very first link that Skillshare has provided for you which is two months free premium membership so that's two months where you can get unlimited access to all of the classes without having to pay for anything so if you really want to try out Skillshare then I highly recommend clicking the link down below so I sat down and I watched a bunch of classes on using different media such as watercolors, gouache or how to use mixed media for your artworks and the biggest takeaway for me is the importance of experimentation like you really need to use the medium in order to know what it's good for how you can use it how you can control it how it reacts with other media and what you actually love about using it so the way that I've applied all of that learnings to my own art problem which is coming up with a style is I had the main question what do I like using this media for and in this video I'm actually going to be talking about the style that I've now established or that I'm trying to develop and also a bit of a breakdown to the art materials that I use and why I use them the way that I do colored pencils I've been using colored pencils for such a long time and what I absolutely love about it is the texture it has on paper with a little bit of tooth on it so my favorite combination when it comes to colored pencils is actually when I use it on cartridge paper as well as on cold pressed watercolor paper with a little bit or medium tooth in it I am actually using the Prismacolor Premier pencils which aren't actually my ideal sketching pencils I prefer pencils with a hard led to them however I have a huge set of Prismacolor Premier pencils that I just don't know what to do with anymore so I'm trying to get my money's worth out of them so I'm trying to use every single color that I really like and using it to sketch so now I actually am sketching on the same paper that I will be coloring in normally my rough sketches tend to be on a separate piece of paper and then I transfer that into a clean sketch on a new piece of paper but I really want to maintain the same energy of my rough sketches into my final piece so instead of actually doing the transfer now I've scrapped that process all together and I've decided to just do the sketch on the same watercolor paper I actually really like the look of it it shows through in some parts of the finished piece which I quite like because that's some of the texture showing through and that's how I've pretty much decided to use it for this style watercolors watercolors can be very unpredictable it takes a lot of practice to control however if you can actually control this medium I think you can achieve so many things with it which is amazing but for me the unpredictability is what I absolutely love about this medium I actually really like using a wet on dry technique because it creates a nice texture on rough cold pressed watercolor paper so all of those layers just look really nice in my opinion and what I've found through experimenting with this medium is that I absolutely love painting the skin with watercolors so that's something that I knew I wanted in my style and as you've seen in some of my older videos here I've used quite a few different media to color in skin and nothing quite compares to watercolors and my love for it so I knew that for this style I really really wanted to use watercolors to paint the skin the hair was kind of just an added part to it because that's something that I also did quite enjoy painting with watercolors I think it complimented the skin quite nicely gouache gouache is versatile it can be opaque or translucent um some people say it can behave like acrylics or it can behave like watercolors and that's what I absolutely love about it it also dries matte which is a look that I also really love but at first I wasn't quite sure how to use gouache with watercolors first because when I was practicing with gouache I would normally just paint landscapes like I tried to paint people but I wasn't really keen on how it looked or the way that I was doing it I still preferred watercolors so I was not really sure how to go about using gouache for my illustrations but of course through experimentation research I found that other people were using it to paint flat bold shapes and so I started incorporating it to my portraits as just a background color so I would paint the portrait in watercolors and then the background was going to be a solid gouache paint but as I started to experiment with backgrounds and elements I decided to keep using gouache but I would paint for example in this demonstration I would paint the fruits in gouache so I did that and then that eventually evolved to me using gouache for the background background element as well as clothing I actually really like how it complimented the skin it separated what was human and what was a non-human element so I actually quite like that and like I said I would only be able to have achieved this through experimentation which once again very important when it comes to using mixed media for your artworks ink black liquid ink is one of my favorite mediums which I'm sure if you've been following my art or my videos you would definitely know that I use this a lot for my artworks especially for the line art I don't think I can create an artwork without it I mean I've tried and it did look nice like I've cut out using a black line art for my art and it looked nice but it just didn't feel like it was mine like it felt like someone else had created the drawing I feel like for me it definitely is the cherry on top for my style it's the finishing piece and with this one it was an absolute no-brainer as to how I was going to use it for this style I knew that I was going to use it for the line art the same way that I've been using it for a very long time so that's how I approached my own art problem of developing a style based on my favorite art media and the media that I use actually they all have a part to play in every artwork that I now make so for example the watercolors I only use that for the skin and for the hair and the gouache I only use that for the clothes and for the background elements I don't really cross over when it comes to this style obviously I'm not restricted to just using watercolors just for the skin or just for the hair I am obviously free to use them however I want but I currently like how they all look right now I feel like I have achieved what I wanted and I think I'm going to stick with this for a little while something that I didn't actually achieve though was this particular look that I want for her cheeks or for the blush however after watching the class on mixed media on Skillshare I have figured out a solution using my Copic markers now I haven't used my Copic markers in such a long time but I did have a problem with the cheeks or with the way that I wanted the blush to look so the way that I've been using watercolors is I've been layering them to create this blotchy effect that I really love and I do want to preserve that blotchy effect but I also want to achieve a nice smooth gradient for her blush and I've been using Copic markers for a long time I know what it's really good for and what it's perfect for is actually blending colors smoothly creating a nice beautiful gradient and it's perfect because it's actually translucent so I decided to layer that on top of the water colors blend it out nicely and then I layered color pencils on top of that so I managed to maintain the watercolor effect underneath for the skin I added that nice gradient and then I added some texture with the colored pencils on there because I actually do love the look of the colors purple yellow pink and blue on some of the shadows of the skin so that's how I pretty much used mixed media to achieve the style that I am really enjoying at the moment as well as how I used mixed media to solve a problem that I had with this style so trying to achieve a more specific look within this process so I hope that you like this artwork as much as I do I'm really happy with how it turned out I can't wait to keep using this style in future artworks so if you would actually like to see some of my artworks you can head on over to Instagram where I definitely post them way more than I do here on YouTube I don't have a regular schedule here on YouTube as of yet so I would highly recommend popping over to Instagram and giving my profile or my account a follow but also feel free to subscribe here if you like this video and if you're keen for more content from me and yeah so that is it for this video once again feel free to check out Skillshare in the link in the description below for your two months of free premium membership that's through the link in the description box so thank you so much for watching this video and I hope to see you in my next one