 Hello, my name is Michael. I'm a local painter from Longmont, and today I will be showing you how I create my paintings. I use generally acrylics, soft pastels, sometimes oil, sometimes spray paint. And basically I'm going to show you how I do that, and I follow more of an abstract style. So we're going to get started. I'm going to use some red. Oh, that's great. Now since I feel like we have enough, I'm going to hit it with some yellow. I'm just going to spread it around with it like a straight edge. You know, there's enough spread. I want to add a little darkness to it, so I'm going to add some black. I generally try to go for more, I guess, dark colors in the background, and then I generally like red, yellow, purple. And then I generally go for some more neon-ish kind of colors in the front, like white, green, like neon green, pinks. Overall, just bright colors that pop off the canvas more. So now I'm going to spread that around again with a straight edge. Now I'm going to go outside and quickly just spray paint this. I've been making these characters for around five months. I started them when I was kind of developing my style as an artist. I kind of designed this head, and I always just kind of thought it was interesting, especially with the even anatomy of the shoulders. I think that's just something weird to see in a character. You don't really see unevenness. It's always some sort of symmetry. So I personally like to do uneven shoulders like this and that. These are more even, but they're overall just not symmetrical. I got inspiration for these characters after reading a couple of books by some of my favorite artists, Basquiat. Specters are just overall a bunch of people I follow over on Instagram. Kimo, he's a cool artist. They've somewhat sparked my vision, but I've also developed a lot of it myself. Now I'm going to add some more lines to the characters to show more detail in a way, because as they are right now, they're a little more, like, thick. I'd like to keep them a more thinner, like, obvious texture. So I'm going to add some lines to them. And do you typically use textures in your painting? I usually do. I like to use a lot of heavy acrylics, which generally, like, stick out of the canvas more. And I like to use, like, spray paint as they kind of have this, like, glowing sort of feature to them. I think it's quite interesting and it pops off very nicely. And the reason I'm doing this is as they are so thick, I think they need some sort of linearness to them. I use the spray paint because when it mixes with the acrylic in the background, it dissolves the spray paint in a sort of way. It gives it a little more appeal to the eye, in my opinion. So I generally add a sort of acrylic and spray paint mixture and it acts weird and dissolves quite nicely, in my opinion. I got into painting because my dad came home one day from some sort of work trip, and he came home with a set of these, like, miniature little acrylic bottles of paints and a paintbrush, and he thought, since I had already begun drawing many years in the past, that maybe I should give painting a shot and I just fell in love with it and have been painting for the last year and a half to two years. But I also do a lot of photography and I also do just digital art as well. Mostly painting. What do these characters mean to you? I don't know, I guess a sense of humanity. They show some sort of sense of humanity in a way. The general theme that I try to achieve with these paintings is some sort of chaos that I expect, like, experience in my daily life. Whether it be, like, awkward conversations or, like, just, like, random things, I generally just kind of convey what I feel at the moment and it's not much more deep than that. It's not, like, some sort of, like, necessary meaning, but it's just what I want to do. Not necessarily everything has to have a meaning, but I sometimes very rarely give my paintings meaning. I'll just put something on the canvas and just kind of roll with it and that's what I've been doing for, I mean, the last year and a half. I don't know exactly where I want to go with these paintings, but I know it's somewhat hard to make it in the art world. So I guess I would love to, you know, get farther with them and maybe gain some more attraction, but I'm just at this point just doing this for fun. I would love to do this as a full-time job, but I don't think I'll ever be able to just because of the world that we live in. It's real hard for us artists. So I don't know exactly what I want to do with these paintings, but I just want to kind of have fun. And if I get to do something I like, why not do it? I feel like these paintings have affected my life in the way that I've met new people. It has created some sort of bonds with some people. Some people really like it. They'll ask me to do clothes for them, pay on their clothes. And it just created a sort of like community with some people. And I quite enjoy that part of it. It affects my life in the way that I feel like I'm actually doing something with it. It gives me some sort of hobby to not just, you know, do nothing at home all day. Currently I'm just doing multiple outlines because a lot of my paintings, I like the sort of melting, sort of dripping aesthetic. So I'm trying to create that with doing these heavy nozzles so they'll disperse the painting very thickly and they'll create like a drip sort of effect. As you can see with this guy, he's dripping. I am going to go add some sort of background to it. This is the first line I did. I'm going to do some more. And I basically just kind of do it in like very perpendicular directions and just have fun with it really. It's going to be not like some sort of like crazy, perfect line. Just going to do it randomly. And then I'm just going to do this with one or two more colors and I'm going to also add dots around the line to give it some sort of like detail. Kind of, in my opinion, looks like nuts and bolts. And it also gives a physical texture to the painting. It brings the, like with this one, it's going to spike up and it's going to harden later. And it'll like be spiky and it'll be cool. I think my paintings have improved in the way that like, there's a lot more creativity behind it. I feel like my paintings in the past have been necessarily like, somewhat bleak and bland, just overdone. I used to do a lot of pattern paintings, but now I feel like I've actually kind of developed my own style in a way and not just like relating to other people's style. Whereas before it was kind of based on others. Some struggles I faced have been putting my stuff out there. I feel like putting myself out there has been somewhat like nerve wracking in a way. I feel like I'm going to get judged a lot. And so in some way it scares me to actually put my art out there because I feel like somebody's going to look at it and it's going to be like, oh, this is complete, you know, ass. And nobody wants to look at it. So I guess that's the biggest struggle I've been through. But overall, I'm now much more confident overall as an artist. I definitely put myself out there way more than I used to. How I want to develop my paintings in the future is just to kind of go bigger and larger. Because I feel like as somebody who's my age, it's somewhat harder to get paintings and tools to build nicer and bigger canvases. So I want to basically increase the size. I mean, this is a somewhat big canvas, but I've done larger. My largest one was like a five foot by eight foot canvas. And I would like to continue on that style, but as somebody who's my age, it's harder to make money. The person who influences my life the most currently is my dad. Although he's not necessarily in the picture, I still talk to him very often. And he is very, very supportive of my progress and my painting. He loves to support my stuff by sending me art supplies. And just overall wants me to continue with this. He thinks I got something really to do in it. And he's just probably my biggest inspiration because he was also a painter. And I guess I maybe probably learned a lot of that from him. So I take a lot of inspiration from his paintings, even though he doesn't do it anymore. I am just a fan of it. And he's given me painting statute paint on because he thinks that it'd be cool to do like a realistic take in the background and then some sort of like this chaotic style in the foreground. Basically overall just creating this. He loves to see me progress and I really appreciate it. Some of my influences have also been my mother. My mom has also done art for a majority of her life. She was a fashion designer for, I'd say for half of her life. And so she inspires me to do it a lot. She helps also provide for materials. And she pushes me to strive for this career as well. So now I'm going to add some pastels. And they're just going to basically give the characters a little bit more depth. Because as they are right now, it's kind of hard to tell what's going on. It's going to show the characters a little bit more. So they're going to be a little neon, a little bit more like bright. Whereas the background is somewhat dark. Some other influences in my life are definitely people like... I mean, I know he's overplayed, but Basquiat, very interesting person. I mean, he really brought the idea of this not necessarily traditional. Like, ooh, I have to do realism or ooh, I have to do like some sort of uniform style. His style is so much like, I mean, chaos and creativity in it. And it's personally just super interesting to me. When it comes to clothes, because I also do clothing. When it comes to clothes, I take a lot of inspiration from fashion culture. That's more like thrift story, more just generally like easy pickups, overall just easy, acquirable things. And I like to do a lot of stuff like that, like Ed Hardy. While he may be somewhat basic, he has a lot of interesting concepts and a lot of like cartoonish designs for his pants. So I get a lot of inspiration from him when it comes to doing my clothing. I also really like Jankos, huge in the, you know, like jeans. They're just massive and I just find that style very interesting. And I think that honestly can somewhat play in towards my paintings with the fact that these characters are somewhat massive. I also put gems on their eyes just to give them some sort of idea that there's a pupil because a lot of people confuse the fact that these are two eyes. When it's actually just one eye, my dad actually introduced the idea to me. And he thought it would be cool because, I mean, it gives the painting some sort of texture and also gives it like just like that much more detail to make the painting a little more interesting. So just basically still giving them lines, neon lines. While it's hard to mix like get to those lines in between these cracks of the painting so the paint doesn't mix with the pastels because it can be very annoying with the pastels because it'll basically add this coat to the pastel that you're going to have to dig off. I generally just try to avoid that at all costs. Generally by trying to dry the painting before or like just letting it sit even without like a blow dryer. Just giving it its time to dry. I did not do that today. I blew dry it so we had time. I guess another inspiration that I find in my life is I like those bar signs. Like you know like neon bar signs. Like I think the idea of neon is really cool and I think it's not used enough. I'm sure it's like it's considered basic in a lot of times but I think it needs to be used more creatively because a lot of times it'll be like some stupid sign will say, Send Nudes. And I just think that's personally just very dumb and I think neon colors overall are just like better and they could be used better overall. Like I mean there's just people who use them terribly, corny and I just think it just does not click at all. Then I'm now going to go with a pink-ish to keep that neon aesthetic. It's going to just bring out those characters just a little bit more. And sometimes with these especially pastels, if they're not oil and they're like soft pastels like the ones I'm using, you got to try going up and down with them a lot more to get that like real like thick color. Like as you see there I had to go from left to right a couple of times and just basically have fun with it honestly. It's really not too crazy of a process other than just don't get in the pain. If you get in the pain it's going to, it's not going to be too much of a hassle but it's just not something you want to deal with. Overall just pain in the ass. So I would just do that. Just overall I think the chaos of life is something I try to incorporate a lot because you know something like I think everybody learns at least in their life is that you know life's not fair and life's not also perfect. So I mean I mean I'm true, I truly experience that in my life. And I think you know sometimes it's okay to bring that into paintings because I think a lot of things are censored now and especially with current paintings nowadays with Pinterest and Instagram there's a lot of f***ing bullshit. There's a lot of oh I want to do realism and hyper realism. At a certain point I don't think people want to see this you know this like realism, hyper realism style and when I think people want to see something fresh, something new, something that really catches their eye because like I mean a picture of a balloon that says 100 that you could buy from the store in real life and then go f***ing frame in your house is basically the same. Like I'm not going to pay you for some sort of silly ass drawing you've been doing for a couple of hours because it's just ass. Silly, it's like come on bring some real creativity into it. I'd say my least favorite trend in art, like I said previously is the ultra realism and those 365 day books where you draw something 365 days is just like my god. It's really that uncreated that you need a book to teach you what to do because like you can't think of any ideas of your own. I paint around like once every week to every two weeks if I really need it I'll take a month long break because sometimes you know although it's fun to do it can take a lot out of me and it takes a big portion of my life so I generally try to you know give myself time to relax at the same time and maybe like come up with new experiences to base my life off of so I think that generally helps me like it I think people need to take breaks between artwork they can't do art every single day because if they do art every single day then it's just becoming like a supply chain of art so like you're not giving yourself time to think creatively and do stuff creatively and so like the reasons why I do so much of the dripping and then I do more lines is because I think like those like patterns where it integrates itself is really important because I mean we see it a lot in the world but at the same time I don't think we see it enough Next favorite form of art that I personally enjoy the most is photography because although I was saying oh you could take a picture of this and then draw it I think with photography specifically it's kind of like painting in a way that you get to tell your own story through it you also like get to use composition overall just like exposure color balance just basic things and you like you can go into like like programs like Photoshop and just like destroy the hell out of an image and it would just look amazing I personally had a great example of photography and I mean it's now an album cover but the whole lot of red cover is very interesting in a way that like it removes majority of the details from the photo and just brings in the complete highlights and shadows and I think that's really interesting it gives it some sort of like a very dark aesthetic music like painting too I mean I wish I dabbled in music because I don't I don't know I don't have that skill set but I think music overall is just super important and I think production is important and I think a lot of people hate the way people produce is because they use samples and say oh you're stealing another person's art well you know what I mean people have been doing samples for years like I don't know why it's now just a trend to hate on people for doing samples it's been a thing for decades and samples are so important I mean like look at MF Doom look at like people like this like I mean one of my best friends Vince he produces all the time and he uses samples and just makes in my personal he hasn't released anything yet but personally in my opinion some of the most creative beats in a very long time he gives them a very sort of grittiness and grimeiness to them and I mean I think you even need to incorporate that grittiness and grimeiness that we experience in the real world I mean to art to my art I personally love to implement it into my art now currently I'm adding some sort of body to the character this neon character it gives it like a texture and it gives it a sort of depth to it that you generally don't see I mean like it's very messy and very just out of the blue in a way in the way that it's like sure we see you know this all the time but it's like at this point I'm not too worried about where my lines are going because not everything has to be perfect and the world's not perfect but so I'm just generally adding like neon colors it really makes just the characters pop very like so much it gives them a real body to them whereas before if I were to leave it as is you would just see the background with it and you'd be like oh cool outline there's nothing really else there and I'm going to add some other colors in the background that might make it so the characters a little bit more visible so I'll probably add some like darker colors some blues maybe some purples and just basically use the whole range of color I mean personally I believe that our eyes tend to look at bright colors way more than dark colors now since this painting is coming towards an end I'm finishing the last couple of lines I'm just going to hit this guy's eye a little bit more and this one a little bit more as well but overall my message is to people I think you should really just bring out your creativity because everybody's got it everybody should use it more often and I just don't think a lot of people use it now so just like advice from somebody use it and just embrace what you want to do in life like embrace your ideas and just have fun with everything because you want to have fun with everything and so this is my painting I don't have a name for it yet but it was fun to have it and it was fun to do it now since I finished everything on the painting I just like to shout out to people along on public media my friend Vince who's helping me record and also CJ they're both doing a great job here and overall if you want to continue to follow my art I have an art account so if you have a question underscore 001 and that's basically it thank you for watching and I truly appreciate it