 Hi there, my name is Sandy Allnach. Welcome to my YouTube channel. If we haven't met yet, I'm an artist and I love to teach and I love to learn from you as well. And as we've built this community here on YouTube and all over the internet, I have been blessed to be able to celebrate all during the month of August 2023, my 10 year art anniversary. I've been making art my whole life, but I finally quit my last day job 10 years ago this week. And I can't even tell you how amazing it is to realize that I've been doing this and supporting myself for 10 years. So whether you are a patron, whether you're a student in my classes, whether you have just clicked the like button on every video and social media posts that you find for me. Thank you for whatever part you have played in making this all possible. Today I'm going to continue with my plan for August, which is to basically take an old video of mine and somehow redo it, redo part of it, redo all of it. And I realized that I have done many videos with the Crazy Birds stamps from Tim Holtz. And I don't have the stamps anymore because I've given away the stamps, but I do have a pencil and some skills. So I'm going to show you today how to draw some birds. And then I'm going to paint mine in gouache and let you watch some steps of that. Not the whole thing because I was doing this for about four hours. And I want to show you at least a little bit of it because these are going to be a prize in an upcoming Zoom party. Yes, a Zoom party where we're going to play some games. And I'll talk about that a little bit as I do the painting. So let's get started making some birds. I'm going to be drawing on these scraps of mat board-ish stuff that I have. It's not high quality stuff. It's something that I buy in order to ship the art out that I send to people. And the way that I cut it down, I have just dozens and dozens of eight inch strips because that's what's left over when I cut them down. So I'm going to try using them for some projects. So it works fairly well with gouache. That's why I'm going to do this project on it. And I've got them marked off so I can make a bunch of little rectangles. Now I've created an oval and added two wings to it, added some legs and feet, and then made some crazy eyes. Now one of the things that makes a drawing like this look really crazy is to make the eyes different sizes. So that's what I'm going to be doing. And if you just have the eyes with the pupils and the irises in the center, then they look like their eyes are wide open. They have one expression, but as soon as you put eyelids on them, then that expression changes. Sometimes it's just a little bit sleepy. And something like this looks a little sleepy. But as soon as you put eyebrows on it, it suddenly changes. And now you start realizing this creature, whatever it is, it's a bird, but you could do this with anything, has an emotion that it's carrying now with it. And if you're using these for cards, you can make it have all kinds of different emotions. Just take a piece of sketch paper and try out a bunch of different expressions. Try making the eyes look to the left, look to the right, move the eyebrows to different places, and see what happens so you can get the right expression that you're looking for. So the next one, I want to make a smaller body of the bird and then big, long legs instead. And that's just how I've come to do all these. Just draw a shape and see what fits in it. The body is going to be that bottom portion as if it's a bowl type of shape. And the top part is going to be looking around in the other direction, but I'm working off the same circle that I drew originally. And then I'm going to give them a really long beak, that these are not really based on any actual birds, but they're based on different bird parts that I happen to know of. And you can do this with any kind of bird. If you like flamingos, you can look up what the body parts of a flamingo look like and add them to some really basic simple shapes and then create something silly from it. And then try an eyebrow. And that one suddenly makes them look either terrified or sad or something. And then you can change it and try it a different way. Sometimes having the eyebrows up off of the cartoon is going to help to make it have a little more expression even. And you can have it face in different directions. Doesn't have to just be a surprised one if it's up there. Lots of different ways to do this. It also works on realistic animals. Because one of my students was asking a question, why her animal that she had drawn didn't look right. And I said, just check the eyebrows. And she went, oh, that, that makes a difference. So that's just one of the ways that we anthropomorphize pictures. And whether it's photos, drawings or cartoons, we give them personality. They don't have personality. They're not people, but we do that anyway. So this one has a big, like two can kind of beak to it. I'll give him a bit of a smile. And then he's going to be looking down and over and have an eyebrow to him. And then I'm giving them all like crazy tail feathers. And on some of them, they're going to have, I don't know, hair, mohawks, something coming off of their head. So you can get creative and make up your own shapes. This one I'm going to make two can like as well. But the beak is going to be more of a, I don't know what kind of shape this is, more like a hammer. It's got, you know, more, more flatness to it. And I even decided after I was doing this that I really didn't want that curve on the bottom. I wanted it definitely more flat across hammer shaped. All these things are just decisions I was making on the fly as I was sketching. And I'll make some more changes as I go through painting them as well. Now, if you're going to draw some birds and then do some other coloring on whatever medium, then you can draw them in pencil like this and then take a kneaded eraser and go over it. Just, you know, kind of roll it like a hot dog and then roll it across the paper, which will really lighten the lines of it. So if you've made scribbly lines like I have, then you'll have a little bit of those light lines. If you want to take a pen and outline them and make nice lines in a black pen, or if you want to just add your color straight on top of it. So this one is roughly ish based on an owl. I thought it'd be fun to have an owl in this collection as well. I'm going to give him some crazy eyes, of course, because, you know, owls have big eyes. I mean, you could make the eyes giant on any one of these, just alter the size of the eyes and the eyebrows and stuff, and you immediately have a totally different creature. And then when it comes to adding color and whatever ways you decide to decorate them and accessories to add to them, then you will have all different kinds of options in front of you for what you can draw. So I wanted him sitting on a branch of some kind, and then I'll have his tail sitting down at the bottom, kind of something swirly. And a lot of this I was just sketching it in so I could remember when I got to the painting stage that I wanted to do something with a swirly tail and look at that ginormous beak. I just love that. He's going to be cute. So this last one is going to be another that's egg shaped, but I'm going to give him more of a pointy head. And as I started working on it, I realized he has very much the flavor of a penguin. So if you are, you know, working on Christmas projects, remember this video so you can do some penguins. So as I was adding the eyes and then trying to figure out where this was headed, was there something I was going to do to him that would make him not a penguin? Because I didn't want him to be too close to a penguin because so far he kind of fit the mold and decided a hummingbird beak on a penguin would be kind of hilarious. And so that's what he ended up with because I wanted him to feel as silly as the rest of him did. So there you go. We've got a little craziness going on. So while I'm working on the gouache painting, I won't be explaining any of that, but I thought it would be fun to watch some of these creatures develop their personality. So some of the things that I've added are not only the eyes and eyebrows and stuff, but they each have a little party element of some kind that got added after the sketch because I thought it would be nice if they were partying as well since they are prizes for the party. Six people. I hope we have six things that people need to win because I've made six of these. And at the party we're going to play games obviously. So there's something you'll need to do in order to win something. But while you guys are playing games and being occupied with that, I will be working because they decided that we should revive stump Sandy for this party. If you've been around during Operation Right Home, you'll know that that used to be a thing during my livestreams that I used to do back in the day. And it won't be the same as that, but it will be like Sandy's going to sketch this in this medium in these colors or something. We'll find a way to randomize that so that it'll be something ridiculous that I have to do. But I will be working on that while you guys are playing games. So that'll be fun. Bring your own snacks to it, of course, since it's on Zoom, we can't send you cookies and cake and that sort of stuff. So bring something yummy and delicious. And yeah, should be a good time. The date is either the 11th or the 12th. And as soon as we have an official date, I will set up an event. So there's an events tab. I think it's on the left where that will be listed so you can find out when it is and we'll put all the party information inside of that. The Zoom link will be inside of that as well. So I also wanted to talk a little bit about Substack because lots of you just joined right up. As soon as I mentioned Substack in my previous video, you were like, yay, sign me up. You may not know what you're signing up for. Lots of you asked questions. So I thought, let me just explain that a little bit better here. Substack is a blogging type platform. And it's mostly people who like to read and to write. My blog is more for people who just want the tutorial. They just want to see the pictures of the project, see the tutorial, the video, and get the supply list. And that's really what my blog mostly is. I sometimes put stories in there, but it's mostly the projects themselves. And what I have in just countless journals and sketchbooks where I just make notes on different pages of things that are running through my head at various times in my life. All of that has just ended up stuck in these sketchbooks. And I thought I would like to have a digital, I don't know, digital library of my own thinking on those kinds of things. Because if I ever, you know, someday when I retire, if I want to write a book or something about my life, it would be nice to have some of that written out already. And at least those thoughts in a coherent way that I'd be able to pull that together somehow. So I am weekly writing up one of those kinds of stories or something, whatever the topic is, be writing that up in a newsletter. And that one is for paid subscribers. And a subscription is 50 bucks a year, which works out to like $4.17 a month. Or you can also just do it monthly if you want to try them out and see, you know, if that's what you want. Totally fine. So there's that. And then for free subscribers, because you can subscribe for free, or you can just go to the page and not even have to subscribe. But for free subscribers, I'm doing daily sketches. And this is another thing that's like, as I've been going through these sketchbooks, I realized like a lot of these sketches, some of them are gorgeous and some of them are trash. But a lot of them have never been seen anywhere, for any reason, like, and a lot of them shouldn't be seen. But it really made me realize that I would like to have a digital library of that as well. Just have some pictures of my work. And, you know, my sketch type of stuff, rather than just all the finished things that, you know, I did a nice photograph of, like, what does the daily stuff look like? And that's what this is going to be in the daily posts. And I've had, you know, about a week of doing this now. So you can see a week's worth. And if you are a free subscriber, you'll always have access to two weeks worth of archives. And then for those who are paid subscribers, you'll have access to everything for as long as, as long as you're a subscriber. So there's, there's that. As I said, I don't know that it means that everybody is going to have to subscribe to that, because it's meant for a certain type of person. So if you're not that type of person, please don't feel obliged to go and subscribe to yet one more thing. I don't want to annoy you with more emails. That's not a fun thing. But that differs from also the content that I put on ArtVenture. And if you have not been, like, visiting ArtVenture regularly, which lots of you have not, I want to just let you know that every time I put a blog post and a YouTube video out, I also do a post over at ArtVenture. But I don't just copy and paste what's in the blog post. I actually write a different post in ArtVenture. And a lot of that has more chattiness, more behind the scenes stuff, more here's what I was thinking when I did this thing, here's like a place where this, this thing went wrong, it went off the rails, and then I recovered it this way. So there's more information over there. If that kind of post is more interesting to you, then what I write on the blog, which is here's the picture, here's some tips, and here's the links to the supplies, then you might want to read it over at ArtVenture instead. So I'm trying to make the content so that you can choose what kind of thing you actually want to be reading and what kind of things you want to get as part of your, your, I don't know, consuming of all of the craziness that I put out. And I of course have continued to post on Instagram every day, Facebook most days, because Facebook doesn't like me. So I'm getting really depressed about even trying to post stuff there because it just disappears into the ether. Facebook told me that 4pm is the best time for me to post for my followers. And I think they, they lie to me because it's just been getting no engagement over there. So there's that. But anyway, one of the other things that you've seen being added to all of these birds has been party items. So hopefully that has been something that tickled you and got you a little excited as you're watching the painting happen because I hadn't included those in the sketches. So I was giving mine a party theme and you could do the same thing with, you know, art supplies or fishing gear. If you're making a card for somebody who's a fisherman, you know, do all kinds of personalization to whatever it is that you create and make some birds that do all kinds of stuff. Because why not? When I finished all this and started peeling the tape up, I realized I had not tested the tape on the surface. Like I said, this was cheap board that I use for shipping stuff. And I thought this was going to work because I've painted on it before, but I guess I had never used tape on it. So I had to trim some of them down a little bit close, which was a bit of a bummer, but they still came out cute. So you could certainly go to my blog, download this picture, and you'll get all of the creatures there so you can actually work from them and have some ideas on ways you can make your own birds. Or if you want some help along the way, you could take the Imaginary Creatures class. It's $10 off right now for three days, $10 off a class because it's the 10th anniversary. And you actually print out this page, you print out the line drawings, and then you just color them. And I'll give you all kinds of tips for colored pencil, because that's what this class is in colored pencil on how to do the shading and stuff. And then if you're a patron, hopefully you will be seeing this video tomorrow on my Patreon page, these cute little birds. Since I was in a bird mode, I decided to do some more birds. I hope one of these is going to be on its way to you as a winner in the Zoom party. It's going to be a lot of fun and I hope you're going to be able to make it. And I will also be back here on Tuesday and Saturday, because that's the day that I put out my videos every week. I'll meet you back here then. And until that time, go out and create something every day. I'll see you later.