 Let's talk more about staying. Hey guys, how are you today? I'm getting a cough drop. I hope you're all having a good day so far for Monday. I am getting ready for my trip. Packing, doing laundry, all that kind of stuff. Okay, so we're gonna do some more work on some more small canvases with Deco, our products. This is a mini binder from Staples. And this is yet another inspiration book of mine. And I have some photos in here in the back, this one. That I'll tell you about here. So I actually took the picture of this flower at my brother-in-law's wedding with my iPhone and it turned out so nice that I knew I wanted to reprint it. When I went to print a copy of it to put in the book this morning, my printer's obviously running low on ink because the photo was not this color and I didn't do this on purpose. But I decided instead of changing the cartridges, I was gonna leave it and work with that. I did alter the photo in a program called Dynamic Auto Painter. Now Dynamic Auto Painter has an app for smartphones and tablets. They also have a desktop program. So it's something that you can download no matter what kind of device you have. And using this app, you can apply painterly effects to your photos. So I did that this morning and so I printed that also. Now I have the trial version so it prints this bar up across the bottom but for my purposes, that's not a problem. So I have both of these pictures side by side here. So we're gonna work with that this morning. I also have the stack of canvases. So these are a bunch of old canvases. These are from like 2013. Some might be 2011. They all have the same theme and they're all kind of ugly. I, you know, none of them are fabulous. They're all the same kind of bird. I did them at the same, you know, around the same time or close together anyway. I guess they're all 2013. And so these have been sitting out in my in the garage storage space for a while. I pulled them out this weekend when I was actually looking for something else and I ran across them. And I thought, well, instead of buying more small blank canvases, let's paint over some of these and I'll show you how you can do that. So we're gonna pick one of these this morning to repaint our flower on. And I'm thinking I kind of wanna do that one. But yeah, these are ugly. They don't have any kind of clear coat or varnish or anything on them. I painted these before I knew that you should do that. And when I do this and I repaint canvases, especially if I've already signed the back, I don't try to cover that up. I leave that there and I'll put a note on the back of the canvas that says repaint it on. And the date. So anyway, they're pretty bad. I've got some DecoArt traditions paint and I've got some Americana paint, both by DecoArt. This is a craft paint. This is more of an artist paint. Now, one thing that's been, okay, one thing that's been going on back and forth about on the internet is light fastness. Every few months or a year, every year or so, the issue of light fastness with mixed media products comes up and I don't know if any of you saw it, but over the weekend, Jane Davenport had, I think it was a blog post, but I saw it on Facebook. And she said what I've been saying, which is no matter what kind of materials you use if you create a piece of artwork that you really love, scan it. She rarely, she says sells original prints. She sells fine art reprints because she uses a lot of products that are not light fast. And she doesn't wanna sell a customer a product that a few years down the line is gonna fade or have other issues. And I don't disagree with that. Pretty much if a product doesn't say light fast, it probably isn't. And craft paints usually aren't. I don't have my reading glasses on. Let's see, hold on. All right, so let's see. A lot of times if they say non-toxic with your, which your craft paints usually do, they're usually not light fast. And it doesn't even say, so my guess would be it's not light fast. The DecoArt traditions paint on the other hand says it is light fast. So if you're really concerned about that, don't use any products. You make sure you research your products before you use them on your piece. Now I also always seal everything. I keep it out of the sun, I keep it out of the UV. You can spray it with UV protectant. Krylon makes a UV archival aerosol spray that you can use on all kinds of mediums, including watercolor acrylic, that will help reach hard fading. It will prevent it completely, but it'll help. I'm gonna just check the computer, hang on. All right. So here we go. So we're gonna use, as you can see, we've got a variety of mostly pinks and purples, some blues, white. I did pick a red and a yellow. We might want to use, and actually two yellows. We might want to use it for contrast and have a little bit of brown. But we're gonna start with, I think the traditions Aquamarine. If I can get it open. There we go. That was dried closed. So let's set up our palette here. We'll put some Aquamarine, we'll put some white. Let me know if you guys have any questions, comments, concerns. Yeah, Jane Davenport's, I think it was a blog post. Like I said, I saw the link on Facebook. But it was a very good article, and I do recommend you go read it. I've got Goober stuck in my paint lid. White. Now the original flower was creamy white and green. Hey, from Grease Fabulous. Hey, Sharon. But I was very inspired by the mistaken low ink thing that happened with my printer. So I'm gonna change up the colors to blues and purples. And we're gonna take advantage of the fact that the color misprinted. And this is something I've mentioned before in the past. If you have a photo that you wanna try to paint, I gotta try to keep the colors separate. Cause I will update the description to this broadcast afterwards with the exact colors that I used. If I can keep them separate. Anyway, if you have an inspiration photo that you wanna paint, but you aren't crazy about the colors in the original photo, print it in black and white, or print it in a different color way. This year, this morning happened to my mistake, but it's a happy mistake. And I think I want some paint, paints gray. We'll put the paints gray right in the middle. All right, at least to start with. Okay, so we're gonna just start mapping. Now, when I do these repaintings of old canvases, I'm not necessarily looking to cover up completely the painting that's already on there. Whether I'm doing a Buddha face, or I'm doing, in this case, a flower. If some of the original painting shows through, then I just considered a bonus extra texture. So I'm mapping out the dark spots in the background. As I'm doing this, I'm gonna make sure that I drag the paint around the edges. Now, you could just paint the edges black, instead of painting them as you're kind of going along. That's up to you. But if you're not gonna frame the painting, then you should do something with the edges. I'm not gonna clean my brush off. I'm gonna go right into grabbing some purple. This is dioxazine purple. I hope you guys all had a great weekend and a great, fabulous Mother's Day, I hope, if your moms. Hey, Lisa, how are you? No worries, I set up the broadcast this morning, and I was ready to go. And then I started working on packing for Alaska and almost completely forgot that I was doing a broadcast this morning. And no worries, I am not one to catch spelling errors, because my spelling is horrible on a good day. We're repainting an ugly canvas using this inspiration photo. I'm doing the background first. And remember also what I've said before, I've said it like a million times, you've heard other artists say it. Every single painting anybody ever does, most artists, if they're honest, will admit to you, they all have an ugly duckling stage. So this is definitely ugly right now. And I'm not making it any better, in fact, I'm probably making it worse. But they all have that ugly duckling stage. Just keep working through it and keep going. Now I'm kind of mapping out where the white flower is gonna be, but if I go into where the flower is gonna be a little bit, I'm not too concerned. Trying to make sure I get my edges. But yeah, I've got a huge stack of these canvases. Some of them are kind of old. Some of them are from like 2008, 2009. And some of them are really bad. So my goal over the next few months is to repaint them, hopefully sell some of them. Cause I'd love to keep them all, but there's only so much space in my house to hang things. And in case you missed it this morning, I'm using a combination of Americana paints and DecoArt traditions paints. There is no reason why you can't mix your craft paints and your artist paints together. If you're concerned about light fastness, it's gonna be an issue. But just make sure you scan your work. Can you tell I'm having trouble talking and painting at the same time this morning? It's not you guys, it's me. All right, let's keep going. I need a rag. Yeah, see? That's gonna be when I pass away, my children and my daughter, they're gonna just find boxes and boxes of canvases. Some are gonna never be painted. Some are gonna be ugly. There's gonna be tons of paint. There's gonna just be tons of stuff. And my daughter's creative and she's a photographer, as I've said before. She also does a lot of doodling and drawing in. She's already said that none of my art friends are gonna get any dibs on anything until she has a chance to go through the art room. Hey Chowchetta, how are you? We are repainting an ugly canvas this morning because it really is ugly and it needs painting. I'm working on the background for those of you who are just popping in. I reprinted some photos this morning after I altered them, some photos I took at my brother-in-law's wedding and my printer was out of ink and it mistakenly printed it in shades of blue and shades of blue and purple, so I decided to go with that. Somebody's messaging me over Facebook but they're gonna have to wait because I'm live and I do not multitask well anymore. I don't know about you guys but that is just not something I do well anymore. All right, so we're gonna keep, we're gonna just, I wanna get the background really good. I wanna get it really, where I'm really happy with it and I probably won't have to do too much else to it before we start actually putting the flower in and the app I use most, there's a lot of apps out there for altering photographs but the one I use the most is called Dynamic Autopainter. That's my favorite one and I'll just call you Cheta, that's fine. I can do that. So you can see now that I've got a few layers of paint on here on the background, we've only done the background. Now it's already looking better. It's looking more interesting. Sorry, there was something funny happen there for a second and I don't know about you guys but my screen went to an ad. So let's make sure we've got our edges good. Now when you dry acrylic paint of any kind, if you use a heat tool, be aware that basically from a heating perspective, your acrylic paint is basically plastic. So if you get it too hot, it's gonna just melt and bubble. So be careful. Yeah, I do too and it was a happy accident. I was gonna reprint it. The original photo is like white and green but I thought this would be more interesting. I do have another ink cartridge but I just chose not to put it in. The reason I'm drying this is I don't want the purples and blues to mix too much with the whites that I'm gonna use for the flower. I don't mind if they, I get a little bit in there but I don't wanna mix it too much. Thursday, okay so I just took the shine off of that. I leave for Alaska on Thursday. Okay so now I'm gonna go into the white. I'm glad you're able to join us too. Just wanna get the outline on here. This is a Filbert brush again, my favorite brush. You guys probably all know that. And this is a Snap by Princeton which is an affordable brand of brush and this brush according to Princeton is good for watercolor or acrylic. I try not to buy the same brand or model of brushes for acrylic that I use for watercolor because then I have a tendency to get them mixed up and I used to not care that I did that but you really shouldn't use your brushes for both mediums. It's hard on the brushes. Okay let's see. Let's get rid of some of this beige paint so that I can get a better idea of what I'm doing. Oh we're gonna have a great time I think. We already booked our excursions and everything. I've got my art bag packed because you all know when I travel that that's the first thing I pack. And I carry it on because they could lose my clothes but don't lose my art stuff. Yeah they are very affordable and I'm very, I'm liking them very much and the Filbert is my favorite. Gonna get some white paint here on the edges. Bring our image around. Can you tell I had too many cups of coffee this morning my hands are shaky? Let's get some of this covered here. That's good. Much better. Yeah I can always buy new clothes but don't lose my art supplies. I'd have an issue with that. So while the white paint is wet I'm gonna pull in some of the aquamarine here and I'm not gonna really clean my brush too much. I'm gonna mix the colors right here on the flower. And the nice thing about fig leaves, yeah. The nice thing about acrylic paint is you can just do it in layers and if you get too much of a color somewhere just let it dry and put some more and just keep adjusting your colors and putting different layers of marks until you get something interesting. I can always buy new clothes but I don't think there's too many art supply stores in Alaska. So not to mention the fact that I don't wanna lose my journals or anything. So I always carry my art on board, the plane. Most of the time it's not an issue. Every now and then TSA wants to stop and check my bag. They usually wanna look at my watercolors or something. I'm not bringing any liquid paints or gel mediums or anything with me this time. Not only because I wanna pack light but because we're going to Alaska by way of Canada. So, oh thank you Crafty Stella. So now I'm just adding some more white paint on here and I'm just, I'm kind of using a light touch. The thing I like about these deco art paints is they have some translucency to them and I kind of like that because that means that I can really play with the layers and have the other colors show through. You want to play with your paints and know the ones that are very opaque and the ones that aren't so that you can do something like that too and you know how to get the effect that you want. I need more white. See, I knew that was gonna happen. Oh, we're gonna just keep going here. Covering up an old ugly canvas this morning for those that didn't catch that part. And you can see the texture on here from the old painting. That just gives your painting more interest. Gonna paint the shading on all the petals first before I go in and do the flower center that way hopefully in an ideal situation I won't have to go in and touch anything up after I've already done the flower center. At least in my mind, that's how it should work. I don't know if it's gonna actually work that way but that's in my mind, that's how it works. Oh, thank you so much. We're not done yet. I just barely got started. I have a ton of these canvases. I've got some really big ones too but I think I'm gonna do the little ones first. And if I have time before I do go to Alaska I'm gonna try to scan a bunch of things. I've got kind of a pile of stuff to make some new digital downloads for Etsy. I don't know, I might not get to it until I get back. I need an assistant. Okay, that's better. It's getting there, huh? Just comparing it to the original and the altered image that are right over here. And I think I want to lighten this up a bit. Not too much. Okay, so there is a link to the DecoArt website in the description of the broadcast. You can go to their website to not only buy but I believe you can buy directly from them but you can also find where locally you can get the paints. But DecoArt, especially the Americana paints but I believe also the traditions paints are available at your big craft stores like Michaels. Hobby Lobby, I know has Americana. And most of the purples here are Americana paints. I do have three traditions paints. I've got Phthalo Blue, which I haven't used yet. Aquamarine and the white. Okay, now we're gonna come in here and we're going to put in some purple. And I'm gonna wipe my brush off. This is just a piece of canvas on my table that I have on here purposefully to wipe my brush and stuff off on. I'm gonna take my dry brush and drag it through the wet purple paint and just pull it out towards the flower petals just to blend it a little bit. I might take a little bit of the aquamarine color. Okay, there's a little bit of the purple up here because this was kind of, I don't know what kind of flower this was some sort of orchid-y type thing. I don't know. But again, I was at an event and I was completely distracted by the plant life around me. I don't know. It happens frequently. At least this time I didn't knock over anybody's drink or anything, because that's happened. I get distracted. I don't know what to say. So I'm gonna switch to a round brush because I want to do these flowers, these little seeds in the middle. We're gonna start with, I think some Pains Grey. I think Pains Grey, yeah. So the round brush is gonna help me do dots better for the little seed, these little things. And I'm not looking to copy exactly how many are on there. It's not what we're shooting for. We're shooting for an artistic interpretation of the photo, something interesting, but it doesn't have to be an exact copy. Oh yeah, I love strawberries. It's not quite the time here in California. We can get them. They're a little pricey, though. Now you'll notice that I'm putting the lighter colors in on the little seeds in the center of the flower and I'm not putting them in exactly on top of the Pains Grey. That's intentional. Hey, Hanna, how are you? This is a really old paintbrush. I don't even know what the brand is because all the paint on the handle is coming off. And the bristles are a tad past it, but we're gonna work with it. I'm gonna take some white and I'm gonna mix it with the aquamarine. Give myself a lighter color here. I don't always get rid of all my old brushes that are past it and buy new ones. The old ones, even if the bristles are splayed, they give you interesting marks. So I usually keep a couple of the really old brushes around. I feel like I need more up here. So every time I do a painting, this is something else I've said before. There's always part of it that you have a hard time with. If it's a face, it's sometimes it's the nose. You know, sometimes it's, in this case, it's those little seed things, kind of having an issue. I'll get it. But yeah, this brush is a tad past it because it's kind of not really holding a great shape, but it's giving me interesting marks on these seed things. So I'm okay with that. Well, thank you, Jenna. I appreciate that. You know, we are our own worst critics, right? Let me zoom in so you guys can see what I'm doing with the flower center. Okay. I haven't used the pink yet either. I have some pink here. I don't know, we'll see if I decide that we need it. So the nice thing about the DecoArt paints is not only the color ranges that they have between the traditions, artist acrylic, which is light fast and a great brand of paint, but the Americotta paint, which is probably not light fast, but it's a good quality paint is the color range. Between the two of them, they have a huge color range. And especially for like art journaling, I think they're fabulous. That's pretty good. Now there is a bug on the flower, but I don't think I'm going to paint the bug. I'm going to let that dry a little bit, but I like the way that looks. Let's go back to the filbert. Hey, Frankie. So we want to, so we're, when I paint these pictures, I usually have my altered one next to the original because I never know how far I'm going to want to take the expressive thing. And if I'm going to want to do it completely, sort of impressionistic and kind of abstract, or if I'm going to want to add some of the details from the original photo in, this flower is kind of a little bit of mixture of both. And that's usually what happens for me. But I have to admit, this is turning out better than I thought it would. I like this picture. Now see, I'm going to have trouble selling this one too. That's going to be an issue. It's a big problem, you guys. I paint these things and then I don't want to sell them. So we need to fix this petal a little bit. That's better. Now we're just doing some fine tuning, some finishing touches. But I'm going to stop pretty soon because I actually really like the way that's turned out. I am going to do something with the sides here. Make sure I slap some paint on there. And I've gotten it all. Yep, here we go. That's nice, huh? I've got more of these little paintings. Maybe we should do another little one. See, this is how it started out like this. Okay, so it's my substrate. These are old canvases I painted a few years ago. These say 2013, they're ugly. They're really bad. And so I decided to paint over them. I found them this weekend when I was cleaning. So we painted over. This one looked like that. They're all, there's a bunch of them, see? There's a bunch of them. The one that we painted over had two birds. It was landscape like that. And so I just painted over it. And now I never know when I do this if I'm gonna end up leaving some of the old paintings showing through or not, I didn't. You can't really see it. Maybe a little bit on the edges, but it just makes it interesting. Now I'm gonna let it dry completely. And then I will give it a coat of the antique deco page. And let that dry completely. And then a coat of the deco arts cream wax. And that'll give it a very slight golden glowy finish. And it'll give it like a satin finish. The Americana craft paints are pretty matte. So it'll make it a little bit satiny, a little bit shiny. And the wax keeps the deco page from being sticky. And those two things will help protect the paint for light fastness. They won't come solve it completely. The Americana decor paints are probably not light fast, but I will also be scanning this. And I keep them out of the sun. It hasn't really been an issue. Painting now. Yeah, see, it's a hard, it's a big deal. You paint these paintings. Hey, we're gonna do another one, so no worries. So you paint these paintings and then the problem is you don't wanna get rid of them. So I do lots of digital reprints. That's why I do the digital reprints. I don't know if we wanna do the square one. Maybe we'll do another one of these. Do we wanna do another flower, or should we do something else? What do you guys wanna see? I can do another flower. Maybe if I paint another one then I'll be okay with getting rid of one of them. You notice I put the pink out here. I didn't even use it. A bumblebee, a bumblebee, a dragon, flowers. You guys are all over the place. Let's get some paint on here first so this isn't distracting me. I gotta use up what's on the plate here. Bumblebee has me intrigued. It's stuck in my brain now. So I don't know about the dragon only because I have a dragon coming up for a lesson later this year for journaling crazy island style. And I'd be too worried that it would be too similar to that one and that's not fair to that program. That class. But FYI, there's a dragon coming up in that class. So we're just gonna do some kind of a background. No plan, no inspiration photo, holy cow. Yeah, maybe with a B. That's what I'm thinking. Let's see. Let's see what we can come up with. It usually doesn't take me too long to get my fingers involved. Yeah, my husband upgraded our TV thing to get HBO over the weekend because he's a huge Game of Thrones fan and yeah, so anyway. I told him, why don't you just get HBO? That would make sense. Just get HBO. Just break down already. I want a different filbert brush. Let's see. So this is another snap brush I just bought to replace some old filberts and this is a filbert number four. Okay, let's see. I want it this way. I think I want it this way. Okay, so you saw, I just basically did random painting on there. I'm kind of liking this here because it's very light and bright. I think we might use some yellow on this one. More dried pink lobs. So I'm gonna use the smaller filbert to put flower head. Now most of your yellows, no matter the brand are very translucent. So you can see here, so where it goes over the edge, there's a split. That's easy collage. So I would start with a collage layer and I have canvases and I think we're gonna do one at some point because I'm gonna keep working on redoing these old canvases. I have some that have three-dimensional objects on them that I wanna pull off and the problem with that is it will leave a hole or a thin spot. So then I take a used dryer sheet and I collage it over that thin spot or that hole with some heavy gel medium and let it dry and sometimes I'll do two or three layers. You could also just use tissue. You could collage on some fabric around the edge where it's split, but I would do that and start with a collage layer and then do your painting on top of that, Lisa. So you'll notice that a lot of your yellows are fairly translucent and you'll notice here, you can see the background color through it. If you don't like that, then you need to paint that object white first and then put your yellow on. I'm gonna actually just mix the yellow right on the canvas with the white a little bit. Now I don't like to do anything in just one, necessarily groups of three are more interesting unless you're doing something really, you know, like close up like this. I do like the way that one turned out. That's gonna be a problem for me now. I'm gonna want to keep it. All right, I'm gonna start with, we're gonna need green for this, let's see. So we're gonna be doing some canvases like that, Lisa, coming up over the next couple of months because I've got a bunch of these canvases I need to fix and redo. So I'll be showing you guys how to do that and I'll be pulling three-dimensional elements off. But yeah, use dryer sheets, tissue paper, little bits of muslin. Make sure that you guys can see everything that I'm doing. My purple is mixing a little bit with the yellow but that's okay. I'm all right with it. Now see these branches that were here originally kind of, I don't know if you guys can see, but they're kind of suggestive of stems. So I kind of like that. So let's pull that out and make that look more, even more like the stem. Now we do have colors on here that we haven't used yet. So I think if we're gonna do this, we're gonna use them on here. I've got this other blue. So let's see what happens. We're just gonna experiment and see what happens in play. You can see some of the old painting coming through, but I'm all right with it. It looks cool. Okay, let's pull in some stems. I'm gonna get a little tiny brush. Let's see. I don't know what this is, simply Simmons. Round number, I don't know, small. Round number, small. 30 inch by 30 inch is a nice big size, Lisa. But yeah, do a collage layer. You know, you could even just grab a bunch of collage scraps that you've got laying around your studio and just collage them on there. And just, you know, that way you, the nice thing about doing, starting your paintings that way is you get past the fear of the white canvas. You know, of starting with a white canvas. Okay, you can tell I had way too much coffee. That is way too thick of a line. Gonna bring the stem shapes around to the edge of the canvas. I'm gonna pull some of this stem color up into those flower petals because that's just a base coat. Like with the other flower, we're gonna put multiple coats. Yeah, don't throw it out. I think it's savable. Of course, the other thing you could do is pull the canvas off of the stretcher frame and use the Gessoed canvas on a smaller stretcher frame or as a journal cover or something like that. That would be the other option that you can do. Okay, that's better. This is, what is this? Indian turquoise. Put these over here, put that over there. So before we even start to finish our fine tune, our flowers, always, always, always, I can't even sell you guys enough to do this. Make sure you get your background. We are really happy with it. Don't be too precious about, you know, any of your basic shapes that you've already kind of mapped out. Just get your background the way you like it. You can always go back and touch up the flower. In fact, we're gonna be adding more layers to our flower anyway. We just want to not have to fiddle with the background once the flower is already done, because that's a pain in the neck. And you know, you guys should know, I always tell you not to do things that I've already done and made the mistake of doing it that way. Dryer sheets, I use the dryer sheets on a collage like that to repair canvas mistakes. I use that a lot. They're cheap, you know, they're easy to get a hold of. So now we got to go back to our flower stems because we kind of messed them up. That's all right. Actually, I want to do something to this one. All right, so now let's go back with our small brush. Hopefully I can keep my hands steady. So I'm gonna rest it on the table. Light touch, pull out some leaf shapes. How many of you used to do like toll painting or one stroke painting back in the day? So there's no reason why you can't use some of those paint brush strokes when you're doing some of your canvas in art journaling painting. That probably just dated me, didn't it? Oops, although I'm not nearly as good at it as a friend of mine. I have a friend who's fabulous at it. I'm not that skilled. Oops, wrong color. Yeah, see? So don't forget, you know, just because that is not in vogue anymore, you know, those brush strokes, those come in handy, especially when you're doing like floral paintings. I'm just kind of smooshing the brush down on the page. And then as I'm going up on the leaf, I'm lifting it up. Okay, so now we're gonna go back and we're gonna touch up our flowers. I put way too much yellow out here, but that's all right. I'll have to smoosh it into another journal or something. I know, right? I don't know where the time goes. I don't have an answer for that. Okay, I'm gonna go back into my dark purple. Oops, I need to quick get all the water off of there. That's all right. Yeah, because we all may be new to, you know, the online mixed media thing and not on here as long as other people. But most of us have been crafting in one form or the other for a long time. I know you're all like me, you know, one stroke painting, floral crafts. How many of you used to be in one of these artist cooperative gift shops? Probably a lot. I know I was. I haven't done an arts and crafts show in a while, but I did just get an application for one, a Christmas show the other day, which I was kind of surprised. I thought, wow, isn't it too early for that? But I guess it's not. Okay, so I'm gonna pull some of this pink in here that I pulled out before and then didn't use. I'm gonna see if we can use it to give our flowers a little pop and then we still have to put a bee in here. Yeah, I haven't been in a salon, but yeah, I've done a lot of those things. Let's see. I'm not gonna introduce any new colors. We're gonna work with what we have. So let's go back to our teeny tiny brush and let's just use white, except white without like a whole gob of water. Again, a very, yeah, I'm gonna have to, I mean, I like this one too, but I'm gonna have that first one as a favorite. I like this one too. It's certainly an improvement over what was on here. So there is a really good book by Melinda Couttsona. I don't remember the name of it. Holy cow, it's just gone from my brain. Her last name is C-O-O-T, no wait, yeah, T-S-O-N-A. Yeah, T-S-O-N-A, Melinda. And she has a really great book out. I'll try to look the name of it up later and put it in the video description, but she recommends pricing your paintings by the square inch, so no matter what you've painted on the canvas, this size canvas, which is like five by seven or four, I think it's five by seven, all of them would be the same price. It creates consistency, and that's what I do. And that, you know, less well-known you are, you know, the less per square inch you can charge, of course, and the more well-known you get, the more, of course, you can charge. That's true with anything. I don't sell lots of canvases, even the ones I do have for sale. People would rather get digital downloads or lessons, to be honest. I wish I sold more canvases, but yeah, nope. Because Lord knows I have a lot of them, but she's a pretty well-known California artist. She teaches online and in person. She knows what she's talking about. I'm gonna mix up a little bit of some kind of a green here with what I have on the palette, a little bit of white in it. Oh yeah, here. So this is the first painting, oops, I didn't want that there, okay. This is the first painting. Don't worry, we started a second canvas, so now I have to finish it before we stop the broadcast. I'm almost done though. We're just adding some more layers, some highlights, I'm gonna add some more white. Yeah, they are very popular right now, the Sippin paint parties. I need to add more yellow to that, that's not a great color, warm color. It's too cool, too cold, that's better. So I'm barely touching the brush to the canvas and it's skipping and giving me interesting marks, but I like that. I prefer watercolor, but I would never give up acrylic to just only do watercolor, because I like it also. I like the fact that it's a different process and I like that, and I get bored easy. All right, so now our original thought from everybody was let's do another canvas and let's do, and I have paint all over me, and let's do flowers, maybe with a B. So let's put a B in here, at least one, maybe two. We're gonna use the darkest color on our palette for the base of the B, which is the Payne's Gray. And let me zoom in. Thank you so much. Just wait for the camera to catch up with what I'm doing. Okay, so we're gonna put a B in here, a couple, maybe more than one. So when you're painting things like this and you're painting small, rather than trying to paint it exactly, just make a suggestion of whatever it is. So I'm first, I'm gonna go in with the dark color and you'll notice there are different sizes. I don't want them to all be the same size. You could totally do this with a paint pen. Would be very easy. And this brush, I probably need to get out my really teeny brush, because this is really, not gonna be small enough. If you're gonna do this with a paint pen, make sure that you let this dry completely, because you'll mess up your pen. I'm like one that's like painting with a hair or one that's new and not, you know, this way. Like a lot of my brushes are all splayed because I'm really hard on my brushes. Oh, here's one. This is around five slash zero. It's really little. So I'm gonna go in with some yellow. Oops. Put that in there. Yeah. Yeah, the craft store. That's a dangerous place. So to do these really small little things, you need to have a really small little fine liner brush or a super fine paint pen. Posca makes a really teeny little paint pen. Yeah, Amazon. I leave things in my Amazon shopping cart for a while and I think about them. I don't like order them right away. Frequently I find that I've decided I don't really need them and then I just let them go and take them out of my cart. Sometimes I've decided I have to have them. That was too much paint. These little bees are hard. Why did I say I'd do this? Yeah, yep. Been there, done that. You guys are not alone. You should really think about stuff for a while before you buy it. I'm gonna turn the canvas around just because I don't wanna stick my arm in something while I'm painting these other bees. But that one didn't turn out too badly. He had a very ugly duckling stage but now I'm happy with the way he turned out. So let's work on another one. And really I'm just suggesting the bee. I'm not looking to paint an exact representation of a bee. We're just, we're being very suggestive about it. Yeah, when I holidays come around, I usually ask, they say, what do you want? I say, Amazon gift card? Cause that's easy. I can get some of those things on my wish list. Yeah, good for you. There are some things that I have very limited storage space in my room. And so my room is little. It's a small bedroom. And so that means that there are some things that they're great and all, but I not only don't need them, I probably have something else that I can do that with. There are some supplies that when I was first getting into this, I thought I would take a class from a very well-meaning teacher who was using a particular supply. And I not only thought I had to have that exact supply, I thought I had to have it in every color. That's not true. Use what you have and see what you have that you can get that same kind of result with. Yeah, my little room is only 10 by 10. And I think that includes the closet. Whoops, that was the wrong color. Hopefully, oh, see, I'm not even, I'm gonna push this up. I'm not even in the camera frame. Yeah, shopping online is very much less dangerous than going to the store. I agree with that very much. Look, stuff's in the basement. Cause there's a lot of stuff. Yeah, my easel's in my closet because I don't take it out unless I'm painting a big canvas because there's just no room in here. So I'm right there with you on that. I do have a large easel and when I'm working on a big canvas, I do pull it out. It takes up a lot of space though. And I have friends and people that come over for painting lessons and stuff and to just hang out with me in my art room. And if I'm gonna do that, then it's hard for me to have that easel out. I do have to say I've gotten kind of used to painting flat because of the whole YouTube thing. So doing these little canvases flat on the table like this, I've gotten used to it. That's actually kinda cute. There's some stuff out of the way. I have paint all at my arm. My dog is outside. He's only inside at night. So that's not an issue for me, but I do sympathize with that. So just don't be afraid to play even on it. If you have an old piece of work that you don't like, what's the worst that could happen? You still hate it and you wanna still paint over it? Okay, I'm not out of anything if I don't like one of these paintings. I do like them both, so that's not an issue. Thank you. You can still see little bits of the old canvas through it and I like that. The other thing too is, let your paint brushes or other mark making tools work for you, not against you. Let them suggest interesting marks and shapes and don't fight with them. Play with them. Little experimental paintings like these little small ones are fun to do because you can really try different things and figure out what you have laying around that's gonna make interesting marks that you can play with. There's no shortcut to it. You've gotta practice, but why can't you practice and play at the same time? I love my dog, but he needs to be outside. He's Pitbull, German Shepherd and Mastiff and he's not super huge, but he's big enough and he sheds like crazy. So he needs, he comes in at night, but he would make me nuts. Yeah, I've always had dogs. We had German Shepherd purebreds before we had the dog we had now. My mom's a breeder, so I've always, I don't remember ever not having dogs. Mostly German Shepherds. There we go, I like that a lot. That is nice. Okay, we're gonna stop, I'm gonna leave that there because I like the way that it's much better than the way it looked. I'm gonna let the thing catch up for a minute so I can see, nope, nope. Yeah, let it catch up. Thank you so much. So again, like with the other one, you know what, I'll just zoom out. Then I can get both of them in the shot. So I'm gonna let both of these dry completely before I do anything else. And I will be giving them a coat of Deco Page Antique and letting that dry completely and then Americana's Cream Wax. And then buff the Cream Wax in and let that dry completely and then it's good to go. So here, you know, we have two little canvases. We're gonna be doing more of these. I've got a lot of these icky ugly canvases laying around. Some of them I'm not gonna be able to let go of and I'll end up doing digital prints and selling the digital like this one. Other ones I might be able to let go of maybe this one and sell it on Etsy. We'll have to see. I end up saying that and I end up keeping them. So I don't know, we'll have to see. But I will be trying to scan a bunch of things and putting them digital sale files up in Etsy before I leave. If I don't get it done, then it'll be done when I get back but I do have a bunch of images I've been saving up that I want to scan for you all. All right, that's it for today. Don't forget the most important thing. You remember what that is? Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Play with your paints, make some marks. Get on an ugly canvas. What's the worst that can happen? It's already ugly. Play. Yeah, and these little ones are fun, especially if you're like me and you have trouble getting rid of canvases, then don't buy big ones. Just do little ones. They're easier to store when you run out of room on the wall. They're both pretty and obviously we were in a purple and pink like mood today because you know, I don't know. This is really pretty. I like this one a lot. All right, does anybody have any questions? I will put the colors of paint that I used on the description as soon as I'm done here and I get all the paint off my arm and my hands. The video, this recording will be on YouTube to rewatch if you wanna see how I did this one. I'm also going to put those photos of this flower that we did this one from on my inspiration photos page. They will go up there today and you'll be able to download them later today. The name of the program I used to alter my photos to give them a more painterly effect is called Dynamic Auto Painter. Oh, I'm glad you could make it too. All right, that's it for today. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can leave them in the video after the recording is up on YouTube. You can also tag me in a post over in the Facebook group, A Life of Art and Self Expression. And if you'd like to support my channel and my art, you can shop in my Etsy store. All of that's in the description below. Bye everybody, have a great day. Don't spend too much money at the art supply store. See what you have that you can already work with that you already own. All right, bye guys.