 Hi guys! As usual, I'm not ready yet. You know, I'm just, I don't know, I'm just not. Gotta find my pen. Hey guys, I gotta find my pen and I've gotta get my iPad. Hang on, I'm not ready yet. Okay, I guess we should do one thing at a time because I can't see the chat without the iPad on, so I guess we should do that first. And oops, let's turn the sound off. There we go. Hello, Wanda, Sabrina, the Limelam. Hello. Alrighty, I'm gonna prop the iPad up here. All right, then I can see the chat. I need my, I might need my Sharpie Pen. I might need a pencil. Um, I kind of want a 2B. Let's see. To be or not to be? Huh. Well, I don't know. That's a 6H. It's not even closed, but it's gonna have to work. You know, it's one of those mornings. I'll tell you guys about it in a minute. This week is just one of those weeks. Now I gotta find my Sharpie Pen. I mean my Pilot Varsity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you what this thing is in front of me in a minute. There it is. We'll have a little chat. Hello, Lisa. Melinda, hello. Alrighty, and I'm still printing pictures because, you know, so let's discuss this first. First of all, I'll tell you about my week so far. I am having some allergy issues and asthma issues, so I of course took some more medicine this morning, and you can see my hot tea and a beer mug. Oh, see, Sabrina, I'm so glad then that we did it later today. So I'm drinking my green tea and a beer mug as per usual. Some of you have seen me do this already before on camera. It helps. This is gross, but the tea helps me keep the phlegm at bay, which helps me keep coughing at bay, which helps keep the wheezing at bay. So anyway, that combined with the medication works like a charm. I also grabbed something to eat real quick. Okay, so this, we will discuss this first. So I caught a little bit of the Archerpa's broadcast the other day. I want to say yesterday, but again, I did take asthma medicine, and my life's a little bit stressful right now, and I'll tell you why in a minute. And it doesn't take much to stress me out, because let me just say, for those of you who don't know, I have anxiety disorder, so it doesn't really take a whole lot to stress me out. Anyway, I caught a little bit of her broadcast, and I haven't watched all of it yet, but she did bring up some good points that some I knew about and had got me thinking, and I understand Clive Five Art has a video out that again, I haven't watched it yet, about how to properly dispose of our paint water, our leftover dried paint and bits, rather than putting them down the sink, because they're really not good for the sink drain, the pipes, not to mention the water system. And I'm as guilty as some of you are for just willy-nilly just dumping whatever down the sink drain. I have a garage sink that used to be, that's where my studio used to be, and there's a video coming up soon, I won't say soon, for August, hopefully, that you guys will be seeing where I actually show the sink, and it's disgusting. So this is my new system that I'm using for my paint water that I thought I would tell you guys about. Go watch Clive's video, I understand he does something with kitty litter, which I haven't watched yet. I'm not sure what the art sherpa does, like I said, I only caught part of her video, this is what I'm doing. So lots of people pour their paint water through some kind of paper or filter. This is a coffee filter, and that catches all the hard bits and chunks of like acrylic paint, and the minerals and things that you don't want to go down the drain, in theory at least. You can just let this dry, and you can put this in the trash, and then in theory, you can just dispose of the water that's left over down the drain. Now, if you're still not okay with dumping the water down the drain, you of course, if you're in a hot area, especially, you can just leave this sit out on the, you know, like back patio, like right here in California right now, it's between 75 and like 105, depending on the given day. And it really probably wouldn't take too long for this to evaporate. So I could do that. I'm not too worried about whatever's left in here. It's mostly just, it is dye, but I don't think the dye is harmful. You, and this is just, this was water that was in here right before we broadcasted, which is the reason why I'm running late. And this is just, what was in here was like leftover bits from like glue and fluid matte medium. And when I repotted the brush show, not brush show, color burst powders. So most of that dissolved in the water, and that's down here. But you will see here on camera, I know you can see a few of these dark spots, and there's a big chunky piece of something that got caught in this little strainer. So this is perfect, and it's cheap. The little strainers from the Japanese dollar store cost two bucks. You can probably find something similar at Dollar Tree for a dollar. This plastic bucket is from American Science and Surplus. I think, again, I think it costs two dollars. You probably could find something that'll work at the Dollar Tree or Daiso, whatever Japanese dollar store or, you know, family dollar, whatever you have nearby. And when you are ready to dump out your water, you pretend this is a cup of water. Literally, when you're done washing your paintbrushes, you're done painting for the day, you put a new filter in the strainer, you dump the water into the strainer after the filter's in it. The filter catches all the big chunky bits that shouldn't be going down the drain. All you're left with is water that you can then put down the drain, or you can let evaporate on your back patio. And as you can see, whether you're working with colored powders or watercolor or, of course, acrylic paint, you may still be catching bits and pieces. So we probably all should be more diligent about making sure we're not putting these chunky bits of paint and God knows what down the drain. There's my little lecture for the day. So I'm going to just put that aside. And I'm just going to like leave that in here until like the end of the day. And at the end of the day, I'll go take care of it. All right, so I was printing these pictures of a peacock that my daughter took these when we were in Hawaii a few years ago. I was on Facebook again. You know, I don't know if it was yesterday or the day before. I'm not sure. Somebody did a Gene Haynes style of painting of a peacock. Now we've done a peacock before in my watercolor journal, but I thought, ooh, we should maybe try that. Gene Haynes has a very kind of abstract, drippy, messy style. And I'll show you some pieces I did that are in the journal that I've done from her books. If you don't know who she is, go look for her books at the library. Go look for her books at Amazon. And she's got a new one that just came out. And she's a fabulous artist and teacher. And I love her drippy, expressive style of watercolor. I love it. All right. That being said, the other thing I want to tell you is if you don't know about this Facebook group, I think where I saw the painting was in the World Watercolor Facebook group. There was July is World Watercolor Month, and there is a Facebook group for that. As I was putting these photos, trying to go live, trying to get my teammate, trying to eat something, I made sure to stick the link for the World Watercolor Facebook group in the description. So it's in the description. So if you want to join the group, click on it. So all right. We are going to get a few different sizes of brushes out. And we've got our pictures. I'm going to have them to the side propped up so I can see. I've got my sharpie pen, refillable sharpie pen, which has permanent ink in it. Hey, Heidi. Hey, Melinda. And I've got my pilot varsity pen, which is not waterproof. This is water soluble, which I love. You all know if you've watched me before, I love the pilot varsity pen. The sharpie pen, of course, is waterproof. And I've got my mixed watercolor palette. This has Quar, Windsor Newton, Grumbacher, Schmink, and Van go in it. And these down here. Yeah, these are samples of Sennelier watercolors, except for that one. What is that one? Oh, that's a Schmink. They sent me this little free sample. So we're going to use this mixed palette today, which I love. And actually, hmm, I have a spot extra spot for a red. August 2nd is coloring book day. August 2nd is also my birthday. Just FYI. I'll throw that out there. Yeah, I'm supposedly able to watch videos on my TV too. That doesn't mean I figured it out yet, Lisa, because I haven't. I haven't at all. My husband keeps saying, he keeps saying that I can watch them on the TV, but I haven't figured it out. Cobalt blue is never a color that I mix. I always buy it. I view cobalt blue as a true blue. You may be able to mix it with great difficulty, but in my mind, it's a true blue and it's not a color you should mix. It's a color you should just go buy the tube. Ah, see, August is a good month. Us leos, we got to stick together. All right. So here is my watercolor journal, which I started last year and I'm still trying to finish. Let's look for some Gene Haynes inspired paintings so that I can show you guys what I'm talking about. We do have Netflix and we also have HBO Go. Oh, and the reason I'm stressed out is because my dog Vandit might be sick. He is, he is 12, but he's got some issues going on and he's not acting like he's in pain, but we're concerned. So he's, we're taking him to the vet this weekend, which I don't, don't enjoy doing because every time I've taken a pet to the vet, I've come out without the pet. So I don't, anyway, it's got me a little stressed out. This is one that I did a semi successful lesson from the Gene Haynes book. And this is, I have direct TV, Lisa, and I'm supposed to be able to do it through direct TV. And this is one that I did from a photo that I took while I was studying from the Gene Haynes book. Yeah, I, you know, like I said before, I don't, you know, I have anxiety disorder, so it doesn't take much for me to not be able to handle stuff. And having, you know, pets or family members die is definitely at the top of the list. So we'll see. He's got in a human, what I would call skin tags. He's got one on his snout. Now we've noticed one on his head, one on his paw. We're not super worried about those, but now we're noticing a fairly large swelling above one of his legs underneath the skin. So I don't, I don't know. These are two done from the Gene Haynes books. I love this one, and this one you've all commented on a few times. Yeah, so it doesn't take much. I mean, I almost locked my, between our daughter moving out now being at empty nesters, which I didn't think was affecting me, and I still don't think it was, but it was just one more thing. Then the dog getting sick, my husband's having some issues at work and us deciding where we want to retire is a lot. And I almost locked myself out of the house the other day. And for me, that was a clue that I wasn't handling my anxiety nearly as well as I thought I was. Hey, so I thought we would do a peacock kind of in this drippy, abstract kind of style. So I thought, see if I, so here's the other peacock that we did. I thought it would be fun to do one kind of the other style. It really intrigued me. There's a bandit. This is a painting I did with him. I love this one. I love the way this one turns out. I may try to do this one again on watercolor paper bigger. Okay, there's our eyeball last week. I really liked the eyeball. I think it turned out pretty well. All right, so we're going to turn the channel, the channel, we're going to turn the channel. Holy moly. I'm going to turn the page here and we're going to put down some protective paper to get our paints out and let's spray them down. Oh, thank you. I like to when I can do a flip for you guys at the book at some point when we finish the book. And honestly, we're nearing the end. I don't think it's going to be too much longer. I may in between the live broadcasts try to just push through and get this journal done. At some point this year, though, there will be a video flip with music of this book. Hey, Chadda, how are you? And thanks. Yeah, I love the eye. We're barely getting started. I'm running behind. Okay, so we're going to let that sit for a minute. Oh, I want to talk to you guys. This is kind of vlog and painting. I hope you guys are okay with that. So I was out, one of the things I was doing today with the intention to get my mind off the fact that our dog band, it might be sick and everything else that's stressing me out right now, was go to Daiso. And the best time to go is at 10 o'clock in the morning. That's why we're not broadcasting until noon. And that way, I don't have to hit traffic or anything. And I was looking for things for the giveaway boxes. So there's going to be a video on that soon. I'm honestly just waiting for the watercolors that are going to go in the box to dry. And then I'm going to do a video. But what I found was, look at these. So these are business card cases. And they have them in different sizes. And what I mean by that is different thicknesses. They had really thin ones, medium ones. And then this one, which was a thick one, it fits an Altoid tray. And this has eight colors in it. And five of the giveaway boxes have these in it. And the sixth one has the extra mini Altoids kit that I made. But this nice thick one also, and these were $1.50 at the Japanese dollar store. So I wanted to tell you guys about them. But look, they fit a watercolor pan. Like you can fit three. I don't know how many you can fit in here. Well, maybe let's try. See, the only problem is you'd have to be able to slide them out because they go underneath a slip. But maybe you could cut it off. That's why I like the Altoid tray. But you know what you could do is you probably could, there's plenty of vertical room here. You could put the little pans on a piece of cardstock that you can slide in and out. That would be good. But I thought these were cool. You could fit a lot in here. You can go three up and five across. That's a lot. That's 30 colors. So I thought they were interesting. I don't know if you guys think they're interesting. Like I said, some of you are going to get them in your whoever wins the giveaway. You're going to get them like this. Now you could, if you want to stick with the Altoid tray idea, you could fit at least two Altoid trays in here, full of paint. I'm going to give you one with eight colors in it. And these just have to dry out completely. And then I'm going to pack all the boxes. And each box is a little bit different. And they're going to be sent at random. And like I said, there'll be a special video for that with like a raffle copter link. But look around when you're at like the dollar store, look around for different things that you can make homemade, you know, travel little travel pocket kits from. I love pocket kits. The best thing in my mind, Heidi, for beginner, the best value is the Windsor Newton has a number of different pocket kits, pocket sketch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, Windsor Newton has a number of different pocket kits. They're available at stores like Hobby Lobby. You can get them with a coupon. So that means you can get 40% off on them. They have basic colors on them, but it's just enough to get started. These are fabulous. And my brush is somewhere else right now, because I didn't want to lose it. But it comes with a really nice little travel brush. So these, this is going to probably cost you less than $20 if you use a coupon. I don't know exactly because I don't remember. Maybe somebody can look up how much this is at Hobby Lobby. Because I live in San Jose, and it's just, you know, it's way too big a city. But you can also get these at Amazon. And this is again, this is the Windsor Newton pocket sketch. I forget what it's called. Pocket sketch something. I use this for doing watercolor with mixed media, where I don't care if I use like an acrylic brush in here, which is why it's all gnarly. Oh, Daiso. Well, all the places we're looking at retiring to don't have Daiso. So don't be jealous for too long. But I have family here, so I might need to come back and visit them so I can shop at Daiso. They're going to stay here. So all right. My dad's family, my dad is first generation, and they're originally from Italy, but they settled in San Francisco. So most of them are going to stay. The Koi 24 pan watercolor kit. The Koi kit has 24 pans, excellent selection of colors, and a really good value for the student grade paints that they are. I would recommend that one, which is also available at Hobby Lobby. May not be available at Michaels, but definitely it's available a lot of places online. And I know it's available at Hobby Lobby, because that's where I've gotten it. And then it has 24 colors and a removable large mixing tray. I don't actually have one, because I took mine apart. I actually dropped mine and I broke it. And so I had to take it apart. But maybe somebody can put, you can't actually put a link, but maybe you can type the name of where she can go look for it. But the Koi one, the Koi, I would recommend. If you want more colors, then are in the Windsor-Newton Koi. Now Windsor-Newton does make larger kits that you can get at Hobby Lobby. I like this one, because I'm a pocket kit collector. I really like pocket kits. And this one's pretty nice. It doesn't have tons of colors, but it would work. You have enough colors in here to mix from. All right, so let's work on our peacock. Now if I was going to do a true Gene Haynes painting, then I wouldn't do the pencil part. But I'm a mixed media artist. I really like the pencil lines. I like, you know, the drips. I like, you know, a little bit. I like it to look messy and sketchy and like a study. This is going to be really easy. So I'm going to use my painting, my painting, my photo. And I'm going to use the one that I kind of blew it up. And you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to zoom in, because I want you guys to see the sketching part. Hold on. Move some more stuff around. You know, no matter how much I clean my desk and give myself more room, I still don't have enough room. I know the rest. I know you all understand that too. All right, let's see. I think that's better. I'm going to look on my computer behind me because the feed hasn't caught up yet. There we go. All right. So now I'm looking at the photo. And this photo is not on the website, my website yet, but I will put it on there after the broadcast. And you guys can use it, download it and use it for inspiration. Right? Tiny mixing area in any of the palettes is not always enough, but I usually carry a piece of plastic with me or a gift card or I ask for a plate or something wherever I'm at and I use something, but I just make it work. But my travel palette, I squeezed in like 24 colors and it's a small metal box, but I squeezed in a lot of colors, so I don't have to do so much mixing. So I'm just sketching. I'm sketching his head. I'm not sure how much of the peacock I'm going to end up drawing. And this is a study. And you know, maybe the next time I do this, I want to do more of him, but I love that you guys are helping each other out with questions like mixing, mixing area. I love that. Okay, that gives me a nice like base. And I don't know how well you guys are going to be able to see that. But I'm going to go over it now with the pilot varsity pen, at least in the parts that not all of the parts, but some of them. I love this pen. Yeah, I always have like a little lid or something or I ask for a plate. You know, sometimes you'll get your morning coffee. They'll bring you a cup and saucer. You can use the saucer in the hotel room and then just wash it off before you give it back to room service. So I'm going to put the water in places where I want the ink to bleed. I'm not going to put it, you know, places where like over here, I don't want the ink over there. This ink is basically, think of it as watercolor in a pen. And you want to just don't put water where you don't want the paint to be. And I can't recommend enough the Gene Haynes books. She's just fabulous. And she takes you through very easy lessons, step by step. Yes, you can because I know because I did. I just got back from Alaska. It wasn't an issue. Alrighty. Let's start. We want to start light and work our way dark. So let's start with manganese blue. Now I don't bring a large palette. I have gotten stuffed by TSA when I carry the Koi palette with me before I disassembled it. For some reason, it set off the TSA people all the time. Now that I've switched to a smaller one, it hasn't been an issue. So I don't know what's up with that. I brought my little suitcase full of paints and stuff. I brought a small watercolor palette that has about, I think it's got about 24 colors in it. But it's one of the small pocket metal boxes that I've squeezed a bunch of colors in. And some pens and markers. I brought my journal where I document my year. So I made sure to bring some washi tape and some glue, but just like on little bits of things, like on wrapped around credit cards, not, you know, big wads of stuff. Because we were flying to Seattle to catch our ship. So it's hard to, you know, you got to get all that stuff through TSA. All right. Let's go with, I want to go with, I'm going to put some blue violet. Yeah, blue violet. It's really dark, bright color. I'm going to use my rag. You know, I'm really trying hard not to get the new cabinets like all gunky. Hold on. I'm not really being super successful about it, but I'm trying. They are really great and they worked really well. And I had, you know, I had there in our state room, we had a little like desk area next to the TV. And I my husband just knows that I'm going to take that over. And that's going to be my art playing space. He just knows that. So I set it up there. And whether I had done a watercolor painting or I done something in my book where I was documenting my year, I could just leave it set open while we went out on excursions to dry and that sort of thing. We also had a balcony. So that was fun to be able to go paint on the balcony. You know, while you're cruising down, we did the inner passage to Alaska. So that was a lot of fun. Okay. So far, I'm liking it. I don't know about you guys. I'm liking it. All right. All right. Let's go darker blue. Let's go with cobalt. Somebody asked about cobalt earlier. Now I almost always use a ceramic plate to mix on whether I'm mixing, whether I'm working with watercolor or acrylic because it's easier to clean. So even if you're just doing this in blues, you're doing some monotone painting, as you can see, this cobalt is a lot cooler than the manganese is a lot warmer. So you could just do a monotone painting and still get your highlights and shadows in by using cool and warm tones. Thank you so much, Heidi. And yeah, I do. I have to force myself sometimes to use other colors. That's why it's fun to, you know, take classes with people like Jean Haynes where she gives you lessons that you, you know, do things with certain colors. It really kind of breaks you out of your rut that you get into, well, that I get into. I call it a rut. And see, a lot of watercolors would want to blend this out, these edges of these puddles. And I maybe would want to blend it a little bit, but I like the puddling and the graininess you get here on the paper. I love that. I'm just looking. I'm comparing it to the picture. I'm seeing where we go. I think we need some green in here. I gotta figure out which one it is. I think it's this one. I'm gonna use sap green. So this one thing I'm trying not to do is buy more colors because I have too many already. Although I do have a trouble resisting if I see a new interesting pocket kit, I have trouble resisting not buying it. So you notice how I'm accidentally getting these brush marks here in this green, right in amongst these other, and it's kind of suggesting tail feathers right here. Hey, Carol. I consider myself having too many when I can't store them in my office anymore. When my drawers are full, you know, I have a set space for things, and if they don't fit in that space then I can't keep them. Okay, let's go with phthalo blue. Hey, Jody. And the nice thing about this kind of painting like this is, you know, this is the kind of thing you can just play with. This is not about, you know, creating the perfect copy of the image or anything even remotely like that. So this is the kind of thing you can just have fun with, and they're really just stutter studies, stutters, studies in color and working with what colors are warmer, which ones are cooler, which ones blend better than, which paint maybe brands better that blend better than others. My first set was by Art District and it was a 12 pan set from Aaron Brothers that I got for, I think, eight dollars, and I was hooked. So this is a mixed palette and the the phthalo blue is Quar, the other blues are all Windsor Newton, and so is the green. The violet is Van Gogh, the blue violet. This is a mixed palette. This is next to Daniel Smith. This is one of my favorite ones to use. You don't need to spend a lot of money to see if you're going to like playing with watercolor paints. You really don't. Buy, hey, Superbeth, hey, so buy what you can afford and, you know, especially if you've never tried watercolors before, don't go spend a ton of money on the paint. Buy what you can afford and see if you like it first. Windsor Newton's a good starter brand, so is Koi, because they don't cost too much and they're a little bit better quality paint than the Art District paints. I probably, I mean, if I had known somebody that watercolored, then I would have asked them and I probably would not have bought those. So this is just a mixture here in the corner of like Payne's Gray and probably Neutral Tint. It's just leftovers on my palette, so we're going to use it as like sort of a gray, neutrally tone, pulling some dark. At least we'll use it until it's empty. Van Gogh is a nice starter brand. I like, I have a lot of Van Gogh paints and I like them. You want to watch, if you're concerned about it, that when you're buying them that your colors are light fast. And I mean, maybe you don't care about that right now while you're practicing and playing, but if you want your paintings to last the test of time, then you probably are going to care about it at some point and you probably want to look and make sure that you're getting colors that are light fast. A lot of companies will have two similar colors like Daniel Smith does. They have Opera Pink and Opera Pink, which is really bright and beautiful. And then next to it, Rhodonite. Now they're similar colors. They're not exactly the same, but the Opera Pink is not light fast and the Rhodonite is. So when you're looking for colors for your palette, you may be attracted to this one. But if you don't want to paint with things that are not light fast, then you probably want to pick this one. So just look at your labels, figure out what their markings mean, and then buy your colors accordingly. And I would start with like 12 to no more than 24 colors. These are, this is too many colors probably for a beginner. This is 52. Yes, that's a good point to line lamb. I started out by watercoloring on drawing paper and by accident, I taught myself how to control my colors. So, you know, because you can only do so much scrubbing on non watercolor paper. Okay, I have indigo here, so we're going to use it. Look how dark that is. Do I know where we're going with this painting? No, not really. Now you'll notice, see how that's like bleeding out right there? That's because the paper is still wet. But I love that. You can really feel the difference between paper that's meant for watercolor and paper that's not. And when you're learning to watercolor, you should probably try different kinds of watercolor paper. And figure out which kind of paper is going to be your preference. I prefer cold press. I like my paper to have a little bit of a texture. But not everybody does. Some people like hot press, which is really smooth. I'm not a big fan. But that's a personal preference of mine. I'm just going to go in here and suggest a few details. I'll catch up with the chat in just a minute. So, you'll notice how I'm just making marks. I'm suggesting shapes. I am letting, in some cases, the paint just kind of go where it may. And the pop of dark really helps. So, if your painting is looking a little boring, it probably needs a little pop of something really dark or really light. I'm going to switch to this really big brush. Look at that. Because I have less control. This is a master's touch number 24 round. I'm seeing something about sound difficulties. I'm, and I'll catch up to the chat in a minute, but is anybody else having sound difficulties? Okay, let me, let me catch up here. I bought a few of the hobby vangos when they were on clearance at Hobby Lobby too, especially because I was out of Chinese white and it was on clearance. So, I bought their Chinese white. You can definitely feel the difference between the kinds of paper. And I do recommend if you have a local art supply store that's having summer demos, see if they're having a paper company do a demo. And if they are, see if you can get in there because the paper companies will give you samples. Most of the companies at the demos will give you samples, including the paint companies, paper companies. So, you know, see if you can get in and if they, you can, that's a great way to try different kinds of paper. Yeah, Kansan, I still use Kansan and Strathmore paper. They're both affordable. You can frequently get them at Michaels or Aaron Brothers, which is owned by Michaels, buy one, get one free kind of a thing. So, that's right now papers on my do not buy list, but when I do buy paper, those are the two I use, especially to do something like this. Really, my preferred top brand is Fabriano. I use, when I'm doing important work, I use Fabriano or I use Arches, if I'm doing it for a client. For journal making, I usually use Fabriano because I just get a whole bunch of the big large sheets and I can cut one of them up and make a journal out of it. Okay, good. I'm glad you refreshed. Okay, I'm glad Wanda. Yeah, hot press is harder to find and nobody's really got it in stock. You have to go to a fine art store. Cold press is easy to find. Everybody has it, but there's cold press, hot press and there is something called soft press, which is not as textured as cold press and it's not as smooth as hot press. It's in between and it's actually a really, really nice paper. It's made, I think, only Fabriano is the company doing the soft press and there's only going to be a couple places you can get it online or at a fine art supply store and I got a sample of it at a paper demo that I went to and I love it. It's fabulous paper. I'm always avoiding paperwork, Beth. Oh my god, don't remind me. I've got to catch them on bookkeeping. It's actually on my list to do this week. I hate bookkeeping. I really want to be successful enough to hire an assistant. I don't want to be rich making art. I just want to be successful enough I can hire somebody to do all the horrible things like bookkeeping and YouTube thumbnails and iCards and all the not fun stuff so I can just paint. Well, you keep me on low so you can keep watching me. Okay. Thank you so much, Sabrina. I really love the way it's turning out. I don't think I'm done yet but I think it needs more splatters and we're going to pop out the eyes a little bit. So I, yeah, so I like Wanda. I really like the Van Gogh watercolors. They're the first better quality student brands that I got where Van Goghs. I still have a lot of Van Goghs. I have a whole palette of just Van Gogh and there's a lot of Van Goghs in this mix palette. They're good paints and right now if you have a hobby lobby that's got them on clearance, it's a good time to pick them up. I got some Chinese white out of their clearance bin the other day because I was out. They're nice affordable paint like anything else if you're concerned about light fastness. Figure out what Van Gogh has, what their markings mean for light fastness and make sure you check the tubes so that if you're concerned that you only buy colors that are light fast. If you don't care because you're just playing, don't worry about it, then you create something that you really like just scan it. That's the best thing to do anyway probably. Kurotaki paints, I have some Kurotaki paints. They're really great for like card making and I use them for doing tags and little watercolor embellishments. I don't know that I would use them for doing a whole painting because they're a little bit more opaque than I prefer and they're a little bit chalky. That doesn't mean they're not nice paints. I just don't, they're not my thing but I do have them. My biggest problem with the Kurotaki paints is I hate the cardboard box and so I repotted mine into a metal tray because the cardboard box drove me crazy. I don't know and toilets, what Melinda, that's a funny, I don't know what the prior comment was and toilets, that's funny. No, I didn't check them out. I haven't had time yet but can you send me those two names and I will check them out the limelamb. I just haven't had time to be honest. I'm going to switch greens here to a green gold which is very yellow right? You see that? But we've sort of accidentally on purpose made this the shadow side. So go to your fine art supply store, Wanda, and see what they have and also ask them about demos. Demos are something that art stores do worldwide and I think that you probably can get some interesting information about the different products but also samples to try. A lot of them will give you samples. So we're going to say that the sun is coming from this side. This is a really strong color. This is this green gold, this might be a quark. Yeah this is a quark. So the golden paints makes their own watercolors. They're called QUAR Q-O-R and they are super pigmented as you can see. I probably put too much on there but they're fabulous and their colors, they have some of the same colors that they have in their other paints like the acrylic. So I'm going to try to lift some of this because that's a lot of color. So I'm just putting water, no paint, and then my rag and I won't be able to lift all of it. That's the other thing with the QUAR paints is they really stain really fast but that's better. That's already better. I do think I want to put some blue over there because it's a lot of green. I'm going to go to a littler brush. Yeah look and see if they have, they should. And in the UK, I love Jackson's Art. I don't know what you guys think of it over there but I'm in love with Jackson's Art. So this should be paint gray which again is a really dark color even though I've added water to it and it is a quark color so it's really going to be pigmented so I want to be careful. So I don't want to go too far before I rinse my brush off and come in here with water again keeping the water on the side where I don't mind the paint going and keeping it away from the parts that I don't want it to go to. Some companies will send you samples in the mail but you have to pay for them because you have to pay for shipping. So you can also do that like I want to say it was Fabriano that would send you samples but you had to pay for it which is where if you caught their demo you didn't and it might be Fabriano. I don't remember now and of course I know Golden sells you know they sell sample packs of different things. So if you get to if you put paint down and you don't get back there quick enough with the water for it to blend so here's a little trick. So I put some water on there and it wasn't blending so now I'm just coming back with a little bit more pigment in the water that's on there and this is a Princeton Neptune number eight round. Mostly I use round brushes when I'm watercoloring. It's my preferred watercolor brush. I do own a lot of watercolor flat brushes but I find that if I'm not thinking about it I grab the rounds every time. Okay I'm really thinking I want some more of this Prussian blue in here. Well thank you. Dick Blick has Fabriano paper. That's where I usually order my Fabriano paper and that's where I usually order it from. Dick Blick and thank you. I think it's turning out pretty good too. I never you know you never know when you're doing something like this how it's going to turn out it could be an utter failure but the joy of working in a journal rather than just starting off right off the bat with something that you know Dangwell is going to you know be hung on the wall is that if you make a mistake it's in a book you can close a book turn the page you know there's no stress don't stress yourself out about it just you know especially when you're learning and you're practicing get a journal and just practice in the journal and I'm looking at it in the in the camera because it looks a little different on the camera always they always do. I my favorite brush is the Princeton Neptune. I do own other brushes but my favorite's the Princeton Neptune in case you were going to ask. So the other thing you can do when you're doing paintings like this is you know drip salt put salt in the wet paint and it'll absorb some of the pigment and leave a texture which I think I want to do down here which means I have to get the salt out let's see. I have to remember where I put it first because that might be an issue here it is and I've had this salt a long time you can tell because it says Albert Sins which has been out of business in California for like a million years but this is my art salt you know everybody needs art salt right now when you do this this is not something you can rush and like set with a heat gun you have to just leave it there you you don't have a choice it has to dry naturally and this up here might be too dry but we're going to stick some up there anyway I don't know I didn't think of it soon enough I agree with you Heidi that so when I'm at a loss for what to do I just do backgrounds a painting papers anything to keep your hands in the mediums and if I'm really stuck then I rearrange and clean my art room or if I'm stressed out that's the other reason I clean a rearrange my art room usually stressed out because I can't find something yeah the Princeton Neptune brushes they're not overly priced they're a good brand and frequently at stores at least here in the US you can get them buy one get one free buy one get two free but they're a good brand brush no matter how you buy them and they're not super expensive I do have a $65 watercolor proper watercolor brush that's yeah and I rarely used it because it's too expensive I'm worried about ruining it I had a set by Talens it's not a great set I would rather see you get a Van Gogh set or Koi Grumbacher makes good watercolor paints some of the paints in the giveaway boxes are Grumbacher paints Windsor Newton of course is a good brand and it's worldwide all right let's see what we can do here about finishing this bird right I'm looking at the picture here and seeing does he need anything else I don't know maybe he doesn't need too much he's looking pretty cute I don't know if he needs too much so I'm mixing the sap green and the green gold together so I have something that's less yellow still in the yellow shades but it's less yellow and I've got some of the blue here I'll probably just pull that in and just kind of use what's on my palette it's a good color I don't know I'm kind of wanting to stop I think he's looking pretty good yeah I really like this style of painting and Gene Haynes is the first one I saw that did it and I really love this style of splattery suggestive expressive painting and yeah that's what I'm using Princeton Neptune I mean I have Masters Touch 2 which is a hobby lobby brand I have Grumbacher I've got a few different brands but the Princeton Neptune is my favorite and I just wanted to show you guys this is Gene Haynes new book paint yourself calm and this is an example of things that she's done I have any I have not barely cracked this book and I would recommend any of her books for you guys to get and try or to rent from the library and try because she has a really great easy way of teaching and I think you all would like it and learn a lot from it but this particular book is I really like this one what I've seen of it so far I really like it this is paint yourself calm by Gene Haynes this is her brand new book all right so I'm going to let him dry I of course will post pictures on Facebook later and social media don't forget the most important thing y'all know what that is right besides paint and express yourself go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it all right and yeah if you have any questions about paints or mediums or books or anything join the Facebook group and make sure you tag me in your post ask over there a lot of us watercolors are there also don't forget about the World Watercolor Facebook group the links in the description already and I love the way he looks he's he's he's really cute he's a lot of fun I will update my website shortly and I will add the photos of the peacock there I think there's a different photo on the on the inspiration photos page other than this one but I'll add this one in all right guys have a great day and yeah cross your fingers for bandit poor puppy I don't know what's wrong with him it could just be arthritis but it might be something more serious all right I'll talk to you guys later bye guys