 Oh my gosh! I hope that I can use all this acrylic! Hey everybody, welcome back to The Average! Or if you're new here, welcome to my channel. I'm Steph, I'm The Average Artist, and today we were reviewing a special paint. So this is the old H.I.M.I. Mia gouache that I reviewed a while ago and that I absolutely adored, so I gave it like a really positive rating. And here's how it looks now. It's kind of, I've had it for a few months, so it's a little bit, you know, used up. And I thought what I would do is try this new version because lots of people have been telling me that there was a bigger version of this that just came out. And I think actually it isn't gouache, it's acrylic. And I haven't tried acrylic since I was a teenager. I think I did all my exams, all my art exams with acrylic paint. Anyway, it's just slightly bigger than this. The lights are going to reflect on the top of this right now, but I will show you, I will put some shots in of this beast now. This is a giant case of acrylics and it has this little handy handle, handy handle, oh my gosh, really stuff. Okay, yep. Yeah, it's six kilos of paint. It's absolutely ginormous. Okay, let's open it up and see what's inside. I really, I don't know why I didn't read the description. I was not expecting this giant thing, so here we go. Let's check it out. I'm excited. I hope that I can use all this acrylic. So it does come with this kind of spongy top. As you know, acrylic is not really like gouache and the fact that you can keep it out and then water it and reactivate it. It does dry and when it dries, it turns into it's kind of like a plasticky type of substance. So they have included this foam casing. So when you put the lid back on, it shouldn't dry it out, hopefully. I hope so. Here are the paints and as you can see, they come with all this plastic casing, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I guess there's no other way around it. I don't know. With a list of colors here and there's a lovely little card here with the little jellies inside. And yes, guys, this is the same kind of idea as the gouache paints that they come in these little jelly type boxes, which I really, really enjoyed actually. I really like that. So there's green and they're just ginormous boxes of jelly paints and I'm so excited because I really like the other ones. And I'm not looking forward to unpeeling all of these paints, but let's get into it, I guess. I just like the look of it right now. It's really satisfying. Okay, I'm sorry, but how much does that look like chocolate pudding right now? Oh my gosh, I want to eat it. But don't, don't eat this, this is paint. I really want to. As you can see, we do get some excess paint coming off on the lids, which is a little bit frustrating because I want to save as much paint as possible. Okay, that took a while, but here are all the paints and I'm, oh my gosh, this, sorry, this is like nudging my camera. I was about to lift it up, but I remembered it's six kilos of paint, so no. That's how heavy this thing is. And you can see it's looking really cool. I'm really looking forward to using some of these pinks. I don't know why this gray brown beige is kind of attracting me or two. I like these colors. I'm not a fan of that green. There's some really nice colors here and I'm looking forward to using them. I'm a bit worried about them being open for so long and me trying to paint with them, but let's try and see what we can do here. I'm not sure how I'm going to fit them on the camera, so I'm probably going to only be able to fit like half of it whilst I paint, but let's try these out, shall we? Now, I'm not sure if you're supposed to take these out like one at a time and then seal the box, but I'm going to use them how I think they're intended. I don't think they would dry that quickly or as long as it would take me to make a painting. So I'm just going to do some quick swatches and figure out what I want to draw. Now you forgive me because I haven't used acrylics like I was saying since I was a teenager when I did my GCSE exams and my A levels. I don't know what you guys do in USA or around the world, but I was probably about 15, 16 and then 17, 18 when I was using these and that was a few years ago. I honestly don't remember acrylics too well or how to use them. I think use a little bit of water with them if you want to water it down, but other than that I think you can use it straight. I think that's why they come with such a big amount because you can just use them straight from the pot and yeah, let's just have a go. Okay yeah, so like I thought a little goes a long way as well in using these paints, so I'm just going to have to remember that when I am using them. I think if I remember correctly they dry extremely fast, so it's great if you want to do something like a layering technique and yeah, so I'm just gonna keep that in mind. At the moment they're not feeling too different to wash. Like I said, I'm watering it down and it's feeling quite nice with the water. It's not spreading quite like water color does, but it's giving me a bit of the opacity that I want and also like the being able to like see through it is quite nice. I think the whole point of this as well is that you can mix them if you want to and I think I probably will because I never, I'm not a huge fan of using paint straight out of the tub because I think that looks a little bit generic. It's always nice to have a little bit of variety in your paints. I'm not sure what to paint. I think I might need to paint another motel or something to do with that sort of comic idea that I had. If you haven't seen the gouache, the previous paints where I tested out the little pink palette that I showed you before, I had a video where I painted a motel scene because I'm thinking about for a new comic that I want to do that I've been thinking about for months now is set in a motel. So I'm still trying to find style for that. Still playing with the ideas. I've been like I said busy with work and stuff so it's kind of been on the back burner a lot and yeah but I'm still determined to eventually eventually guys make something with it. So today let's try and figure out if I can paint another thing like that because I do want to make like a painterly style comic. So let's give it a shot. Speaking of comics actually my other horror comic well my first horror comic hopefully not my last is restocked on Etsy if you fancy grabbing a copy now is the time. I did sell out last time but I'm not sure how many more people want this comic but yeah it's there in case you want it. I will put the link in the description. So about the painting I decided to paint sort of a on-the-road kind of image. I found this image on Pinterest and I wanted to make it my own and fit in with the style that I've been doing previously for the other comic images that I've drawn and I struggled a lot with this because of the acrylic it was really difficult to get used to at first and there was a lot of textures and I felt like I felt really panicky like oh no I don't know what I'm doing with this it's very difficult why did I buy all this massive tubs of paint and it's just going to be really hard to use but in the end I think I kind of got the knack of it and I really enjoyed the process. I think I fell back in love with using acrylic because what's great about acrylic is the texture that it leaves you so you could be really expressive and the quality of the paint just shines through. The texture just gives a little bit of like grounding to it it makes it feel believable maybe in some areas like the dirt looks a bit dirt like in the road seems paved I don't know I just that's what I think in my head so yeah I had a little bit of trouble painting this stop sign it was really hard to get it symmetrical and yeah I think it works quite well because it looks like it's slightly tilting to the right a little bit. When I was doing the zebra crossing I found that really hard as well because of the foreshortening of the lines on the road was really like messy with my head I was like this is not looking right this is looking a bit wrong but I think it kind of works in the end and it's always this perspective I feel like it's something I definitely need to work on because from the few of my last videos I've noticed that perspective on like some areas has been a little bit off and I do kind of like that in a sense but also it's not intentional so yeah I don't want to do that unintentionally. I think this painting works overall and I'm happy with it but I think it's not my favorite piece that I've ever done I do like how it looks I like the tones of it I like the feel of it I like the texture in it the perspective is a little bit off in some cases and I think that's my biggest concern with this one but hey we learn something every time we paint and if we just go through it then that's the best way to approach something you learn something every time you fail so here we go we're learning and we're enjoying and we're experimenting and getting out of a comfort zone with acrylics again so I really enjoyed painting this in the end that's the whole takeaway from this it's not perfect but it's finished and that's what I can say overall I really do like these paints I think they're just really nice and I really like the whole jelly look and feel of them I think that was really great in the gouache set so it's really great now and yeah I finished it up with a little bit of a stop using my molotow pen acrylic pens so I thought that looked really nice I used a grey not a white on the stop sign and I think it works perfectly okay guys so that's my final look yeah there's some dodgy areas and I found definitely there was a learning curve back into using acrylics because they do dry so quickly that it's hard to get gradients and it's a completely different feel to how watercolors feel but I did actually really enjoy these paints and it was really nice to just have all these colors here to just dip into really quickly and go for it I think that's key when you're working with acrylics just have something there quickly and that was a plus for me I really like these paints I think they're really cool and I think yeah I definitely do not regret buying them they were quite expensive but they were at the time 20 pounds off so I thought yep I'm gonna dry them out so if you come across them at a cheaper price then yeah I definitely recommend getting them if you enjoy acrylics that is if you don't enjoy acrylics then do not buy these but yeah they are really cool and this is a really nice hand you set with that carry case and I just really liked it I guess I should let you guys know that I bought this with my own money of course I did not this is not a sponsorship or anything like that I wasn't sent this I bought this myself and yeah I really enjoyed the painting I think there are some key areas that are a bit funny and I think if I was doing this in gouache it would be more of my comfort zone but I think in the end I enjoyed what I was doing I think I'd get a lot of texture with acrylic that you don't necessarily get with gouache so I really enjoyed that like I said I could probably keep working on this for a while because there's bits that I'm not happy with but I think I'm just gonna let it be now I'm just gonna stop I could really with acrylics I could just work forever so there we go that's the final piece I'm not a hundred percent happy with it but I quite like it if you do this with it yeah so that's the final piece and that is the end of the video I hope you enjoyed it and let me know what you guys think of this thanks for watching guys please like and subscribe and I will see you next time bye