 Hey guys, welcome to another RT Trio video. So This month is my month and I created the mood board Which is this one and you can get a copy of it if you would like to participate in our RT Trio Facebook group The link for which is in the video description along with the videos from my two fellow collaborators Mike Deacon and Abaya Grob so anyway, this is The mood board I created and going based on this and after thinking for it about it a little bit And if you've been following me and RT Trio and my art in general, especially lately most of my work is Based and are inspired by nature. I seem to really just It seems to me my fallback go-to thing constantly So my mood boards usually reflect a lot of that I'm getting to a reason why I'm saying that so way back be I think Before the pandemic started maybe around at the time it started I picked up these two Strathmore Journals softcover journals fun fact. I don't I like the paper in the journals, but this Particular kind of softcover you can kind of I think see how Not marked up it is and I don't mind a marked up cover, but this particular Softcover it's not my favorite the paper inside is wonderful. So this is the toned tan This is the toned gray when I first started working in these journals. I decided to use them To play with my colored pens and markers specifically my gel pens I started out just doing these kind of drawings Which we're okay. There's some that I really like that one is really great I also used some just black and white things that I had laying around It was sort of my way of practicing my sketching or one more way of practicing my sketching but also using Supplies in my art room that I don't I feel like I don't want to get rid of in all of my million Times I've purged things, but at the same time. I don't use them nearly enough I quickly gravitated to in that mindset to gel pens And I sort of have a love-hate relationship with gel pens, but I did Discover that although I still don't use them enough. I do love working with them on this kind of colored background paper and I discovered I went from doing these kind of drawings Very quickly to doing these sort of drawings a very nature-inspired and then abstracted nature Some of these have been turned into digital images and stickers And you can see I mean I live this journal is full. I filled I filled up this one This one is completely full. I started a new one. This is the toned tan toned gray upside down and So I was thinking about this month's mood board and the fact that I really am trying to get back into Incorporating these drawings occasionally in my work And I just I really love drawing and if you said tomorrow you have to just pick one art Style and the supplies to go with it and you have to get rid of everything else It would be all my drawing stuff drawing and my watercolor If I had to just pick one Anyway, so we are going to experiment this month because as I was thinking about this month's mood board and this particular kind of gel pen drawing I had a thought and The thought was I wonder if I can do these kind of drawings over a wash in the background of some wash paint Would that work would it mess up the gel pens? The answer to that is no no it won't So if you do any kind of mixed media, you know that using any kind of pens over paint Can be a struggle and it's a love-hate relationship. This is a watercolor wash in the background It's not a very thick coating. It's just a wash of it And I let it dry completely and then I went over it with the jelly roll gel pens. I black one It worked great So I thought okay, we were at the beach recently I'm gonna put this to the side and I got these this picture of these wild bleeding hearts Which I will include in the Facebook post in the artsy trio group if you want to be inspired by said photo And I thought that's a good photo to be inspired for one of these abstracted drawings by And so we are going to do a wash I wanted and the page that was next in the journal was black I put a piece of tape here to remind myself that this page is going to stay blank for the minute because I really want to work on Tone tan, I think So I think what we're going to do is We're going to do a wash of some paint on the background. I'm going to let that dry I'm going to do I'm going to do a drawing over the top. I Picked these gel pens out of my step in my bag of pens that I thought were colors that were inspired by the mood board and We are going to see where this goes and of course I'm going to use the other side to make notes and Like I do this is my experiments journal for those that don't know where I try different art experiments see what works see what doesn't make notes about it and Let's get started. Shall we I'll be right back I'm going to speed forward through the process a little bit, but I'll be back at the end This is what I came up with I absolutely love it When I do these kind of drawings, I just take inspiration from nature from what I've seen what I've taken pictures of I take a lot of pictures Nearly daily with my phone in around the neighborhood or wherever I happen to be and then I just Abstract the shapes and the colors and the form I see from that photo to create the doodle or the drawing Which is definitely what I did here with these? while bleeding hearts these were actually wild out in the woods somewhere where I was over the weekend and This I love this. I love the way it came out the gel pens worked great over the light coating of gouache in the background That was a fun experiment. I would definitely do that again, although I will say again I think if you have too much paint in the background, you're gonna Have a problem. So just some light coating and it because it's a matte finished gouache paint and it's not a shiny acrylic paint it Wrote really well on them and again because it's a thin coating. It's not thick So this is what I did this month. What are you gonna do? I'm going to go over this way now and make my notes and I'll be right back. Okay, so there we go I will definitely do this again because that was a lot of fun. I Debated about pasting the sample in here with the rest of my notes because that definitely turned out cute And I could use that in a journal or something somewhere else But it is really about this experiment and to be honest, I could recreate that again So there you go. There you have it. That was a lot of fun What are you gonna do with this month's mood board if you're gonna do anything? I will to encourage you to go watch the other two videos if you're not inspired by mine maybe you'll be inspired by one of them and Join the RT Trio Facebook group and share what you're doing Ask questions if you have anything you want to add leave your question comment or concern down below Or over in the Facebook group be sure in the Facebook group to tag me or one of the other teachers in the post So that we can see it and we don't miss anything Don't forget to check out the video description again for the relevant links ways to support the free content Here on my YouTube channel a lot of my social media and everything else is in my link tree list of links Also, I have a happy email address down there if you're so inclined and anything else Relevant is down there like share and subscribe Most importantly stay safe stay healthy stay creative go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it And I'll see you later. Bye guys