 Hello and welcome back to the average, yes it's that time of the week where maybe you tune in to watch my videos, I don't know, maybe you're new here. If you are, my name's Steph, I'm the Average Artist, and today we are going to paint with some jelly gouache, gouache. It is super nice and creamy as you can see. I am very happy about my purchase. I'll be using these aquafine paintbrushes today. You can buy them in a set on Amazon for like £10. I'll link them down below because I really like using these brushes and they're not super expensive, which is nice, you know? I kind of like that. Anyway, today I'm just sort of doodling in my sketchbook. I started out by painting this fake IKEA plant that I have, which was like £2 from IKEA, and when I got it I was like, oh this is cute and then it got delivered and I was like, this is so ugly but it's grown on me a lot because I've painted it a lot in different paintings, and it's just kind of nice to have it around because I'm useless at keeping plants alive, which is no surprise to anyone. But yeah, I put it on this desk that is in front of me and I also put this succulent that I got from my job here. They sent me a little succulent with my company name on it and a little concrete pot, which is super cute and it just was really nice. So I don't know, my plan was to just doodle and paint and I sort of started with this wonky plant pot that you can see and then I realised like, why don't I just paint my whole desk over these two pages to spread. I really like the way that this gouache paint goes down on this thin sketchbook that I have. I have the A4 Midori sketchbook and it has this really thin paper that is not very absorbent with paint but it is quite durable. But I really like the way that it has this quality of texture that it has with the paint where it doesn't absorb it into the page. I don't know how to quite describe it but it's just something I really like in my paintings, just seeing the brushstrokes I guess. I don't know, maybe some people don't enjoy it necessarily as much but it's something that I really like and I like it in other people's work so I tend to try and just follow what I like doing and maybe in my head I'm like, why would I do this? It's not necessarily that aesthetically pleasing but it is to me so you know, gotta go with what you love. Pesto trying to come in there, don't think so, get out. But yeah, we're just doing a super chill painting day and I realised as I went on that I wanted to just draw my whole desk, paint my whole desk rather and I feel like this is a really good exercise for art block so if you don't know what to draw in your sketchbook literally just look up and draw a section of your room even if it's messy which actually yeah my room is often quite messy but even if it's messy it does make for a nice image I think especially like the maximalism, I can't say the word maximalism, I can't say it, you know what I mean. In this painting it's really cool, I'm definitely not a minimalist person I think you can tell that, I have too much stuff, too many cats and yeah a bit of a hectic lifestyle as you can probably tell by this painting itself. Just blocking out shapes painting the shapes in, not using any pencil or anything because I just wanted to be really loose with this and I really think it's better than just like sketching out and then rubbing those lines away and then painting on top, I think it makes you be more critical of the way that you paint if you don't have that guideline. I'm not saying don't ever use guidelines because obviously they are good and this painting wouldn't be so wonky if I had guidelines beforehand, if I actually knew what I was painting before I just started painting it would probably be more clear as well but because I just went in with this plant pot straight away it's a little bit wonky and yeah some people might be like no that's stupid but I actually kind of like the wonkiness of this, I like the way that it's just simple shapes, a little bit wonky but you can still see the mood and the feeling of the overall desk I guess and I really like it, I don't know what do you guys think? I mean it's not finished so you can't really say yet but Pesto, Pesto I'm trying to speak, she's very rude. Okay Pesto please for goodness sakes. Pesto says that she hates my painting and I should quit and I'm not going to Pesto so yeah. At this point some sunlight was coming through and I don't know what was going on with the sun but it looked quite pretty so I kept painting then I realised that's going to look a bit weird so I shut my curtains and that was why the lighting has changed, very interesting isn't it? Anyway I'm switching in between these different paint brushes because I think they do different things, they do different things, they have different shapes for different jobs so this one is more like a fine detail for me and then the square one is more for like blocking out shapes and then the bigger rounder one is just for like getting colour down, you can also get like a lot of control with these brushes which I really like, the Dalla Rowney ones that I showed you before, they're the best brushes that I've found and I've tried a lot of brushes guys because you know I paint a lot and get through a lot of jelly paint as well as you probably know if you're aware of my channel but yeah I was thinking maybe this video could be a little bit more relaxing than my usual ones but I realised that my voice over here is probably not that relaxing but there we go I'm just not that kind of relaxing channel I'm sorry maybe you can enjoy this, maybe you can get some relaxation from this but I doubt it, I sincerely doubt it. Yeah I started painting the jelly paints here because you can see the corner of it over my sketchbook here and I really like the way that that looked, I was going to continue on to the other page to make it like a full page spread but then I was really liking the way that it was just looking as like a long portrait style size and as I was doing it I was thinking I was really liking the way it turned out so actually in the end I went and ordered prints of this so these will be up for pre-order on my Etsy site if you're interested, you might like the way that it turns out in the end maybe not so much now because of that weird camera leg there but I do straighten that out so at the moment I am painting my iMac, my ancient iMac where I just have on my desk to watch stuff basically like YouTube and things whilst I'm painting or doing anything at the desk and it's just nice to have, it's so old that it can't even, it can run nothing but maybe like Netflix and that's it or YouTube or Twitch but I really like the style of this I wanted to include all the stickers on my iMac but I kind of failed in that approach but do hint at them a little bit, it would have been cooler for me if I had painted the stickers that I could see a little bit more in detail because I do have a lot of stickers stuck with it but I think it works for what it is right now, I think it would be too much maybe to have that much detail, I don't know, it's kind of nice, you can see here I'm super messing up with the leg because it just wasn't straight so I was like okay I'll go and paint that over again, if you can recognise what this box is, more power to you because it is quite a niche thing to have on your desk I would say, it is a box of salt and yeah I just have it here because I often eat in my desk so it's just always in my desk, we're like where's the salt, we're in the kitchen, you know where it is so now I am painting the background on my computer which is like this windows scene you know what they pre-install these photos for each update so this one is, I don't know where it is, it probably does say on the screensaver or whatever but yeah it was nice to paint it because I think it's it's kind of interesting because maybe if you have a Mac you probably recognise the scene and then I just think it's nice, I don't know, I think it really rounded out the piece together because it's like oh you have all this junk on my desk and then you have this painting of a picture of a landscape which is kind of cool and it's really inspiring me to just go around my house and just take snapshots of kind of bits of my house which are full of junk maybe but not junk but like my possessions maybe I should not call my possessions junk but things that I like in my house and then paint them like this because I really like the way it came together in the end and I don't know it's something really pleasing about it to me the whole look and feel of it I also have this thing where I really enjoy during my desk at different moments of my life and then looking back and being like oh that's where I worked all that time all those hours of spending at that desk doing all those things like making my comics or you know writing or painting or doing YouTube or working at my job so it's just interesting you spend many many hours and then you kind of don't think about your desk too much once you move house or I don't know you know all places you've lived in I've been doing this thing where I've been sketching a lot in my little sketchbook like my rooms and stuff that I've stayed in and things like that just so I can capture that memory I mean you could take a photo but it's not as interesting as it to look back on so this is why I kind of like doing this I suggest you to do it as well just paint your desk if you're stuck or want to draw just do it it's really therapeutic and it's pretty chill I mean it doesn't look exactly like my desk does the perspective is not quite right on anything especially the plant pot where I began before I realized I wanted to paint the whole desk the shadows are a bit wonky but the whole feeling and mood is there and that's what I enjoy the most I'm painting the mountains now and just wanted to do like a really basic blocking of shapes as I've said before in other videos I block out like the shapes and then I'll go in with finer detail but with this one I just really wanted to do like basic super basic shapes and to give you that impression of what's on the screen because the photo already exists so I don't want to like do a hyper realistic painting of a photo that already exists it just doesn't really make sense you want to make it your own if that is something I was gonna say can make sense as well because you know I think it does and I really like this I like how the way it turned out and I definitely wish that I had maybe done the whole spread over two pages but you know it also works as a postcard at this size I mean it probably would have worked as a postcard a horizontal postcard at the other side but whatever there's just something about this portrait shape that makes made sense to me at the time as I was painting it also can I say I'm using these sheets of paper which are kind of glossy for my palette I think it is it's a paint palette paper set and I've had this for a while but I never use them but I'm really liking using them and mixing my paints there also it's kind of like a weird abstract art piece on its own over there in the corner and I'm thinking about you know those like comic books now comic books coloring books where people just have the shapes of color like that and then they paint on all drawer different things that they see I feel like I could do that with that page as well I feel like it's pretty I don't know why I always like looking at paper that's had lots of paint mixed onto it just it's just interesting so now I'm just going in with the final details highlights the folders on the iMac which is a detail that I really like in the end it just makes it clear that that's a desktop computer I hope and just adding in details and basically finishing up this piece and like I said I really liked it in the end it was just gonna be just a simple exercise just drawing whatever just to have a little break from doing my comic and stuff just a little artistic break and turned out to be really cool I really like it so I ordered some prints from Mixam and they will be on my my way on their way to me next week and hopefully if anyone orders any they'll be here by the time people order stuff so go check that out on my Etsy if you're interested and yeah I'm excited to see what they look like because I kind of changed them you know I scanned this in and I changed it up a little bit like the colors I mean they're a bit brighter and stuff in Photoshop which you'll see at the end I just popped it there at the end so you can see it but yeah this is it this is just a really fun painting and I really like the shapes really like the mood kind of expression of it and here's kind of the mess that I was painting you can see that I left out a few things but that's how it went so let me know what you guys think and thanks for watching again and supporting so if you made it this far please subscribe if you're not subscribed and like the video because it super helps me out thanks again everybody bye