 Hello and welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Sandy Allnock and I am a brush snob So what am I doing with these brushes that are about a buck a piece? That's like the cheapest brushes that exist in my world They're like 12 brushes for I think 14 ish dollars And I thought I would try them out for a specific reason. This is another mom story Mom spent some time in Japan while she was younger and one of the things she did while she was there in addition to living at the beach and Driving a red sports car and being really cool and hanging out with all these hip international people Well, one of the things she did while she was there was take some sumi classes sumi painting and I have none of her art. She didn't have any of it still to this day, but having seen her scrapbooks And going through all those pictures and everything I thought, you know I really have always wanted to look into sumi and See what it what it's like and is it something that would appeal to me and I've done some like Cursory research and so I bought this set of calligraphy brushes so that I could mess them up with inks And I wouldn't have to worry about messing up my nice watercolor brushes So I'm gonna test out this set of brushes and show you what you might do with them Ways you might deal with them if you decide to get some for yourself I do have a new class where I use this set of brushes. Yes This cheapo set of brushes to do some painting And we'll see what happens. Let's get started doing some testing. All right So this set of calligraphy brushes came with the brush roll and everything For roughly 14 ish dollars and I actually ended up with more than the 12 brushes I think one of them was from my buda board and I don't know where the other one came from I feel like I got extra But you know, I won't complain about that the brushes have gum arabic. I'm assuming in them Most brushes do they come with something hard in them. You don't want to break it. You want to wash it out So put it in water and work slowly Don't try to force it because you could break all those bristles These brushes as you'll see have enough trouble with things breaking off of them Without giving them any more trouble because I'm sitting here trying to get the brush to soften enough that I'll be able to use it This one is another one of the brushes and I uh, yeah, turn the camera on so you could see what happens in the water Look at all this stuff that falls out of the brush And that's from one brush that was clean water When I started So yeah quite the mess, huh? I wondered if this brush was even going to be usable. Would there be any hairs left any bristles at all left in the brush when I got the gum arabic out I just pressed it very softly to try to get it to be more pliable And I was surprised that when it was all done it did have a point to it But notice the point has another hair ready to fall out So I don't know how long these brushes will last but since they're really only here to keep me from messing up my good watercolor brushes I'll be okay with it So let's do a Buddha board test And the Buddha board which you saw in the beginning is basically a board upon which you paint in water And then it will evaporate so you can just reuse it Mine came with a little stand and the stand holds the Buddha board so you can paint vertically You can put water into the stand at the bottom. You can Rest your brush across it And be ready to paint. It's kind of a nice thing to have on the corner of your desk So if you're on the phone and you just want to doodle you're not wasting paper. So it's good for the planet, right? And given that it is earth day then good things for the planet are a good thing Even if these brushes are on the disposable side because they're so terrible But you know, we'll we'll compliment that with a lovely earth friendly Buddha board So I'm painting a couple of flowers here. These are some of the ones that are in the new class And basically I tried to mimic the sumi style I am not a sumi painter. I haven't taken any classes haven't studied it I just looked at pictures on Pinterest and google to get inspired on how to simplify An image enough to make really pretty flowers In a real simple way for cards. I wanted to focus on something for cards because that's what mom wanted me to do Mom said That card makers should just learn how to paint their own flowers because then they wouldn't have to buy all the flower stamps Now, I know some of you will just think that's crazy because we should just buy all the flower stamps But i'm just telling you what mom said. So I have made this class in honor of mom So if you would like to honor mom then go take the class It's almost done. The class is not completely finished It is a card class, but the card lesson is number six We'll do five different flowers would be painting through them But the design portion is not done yet and I'll have a note in there explaining why it's not done yet In the pre-class lesson if you want to see that And there's also more about mom and her history and everything in that pre-class lesson If you'd like to read that the pre-class lesson is free Okay back to the Buddha board I'm testing out the first tree was my fancy brush And if you have seen me paint with my liner brush and googled For that brush and saw the price Be like, okay. Is there anything else that's cheap that I can afford? Well, these other brushes kind of do a reasonably fair job It's not as comfortable an experience to paint this kind of a tree a scribbly tree with these brushes They kind of can do the same thing but a lot of brushes can It's more in how you wield it But the thing that I love about that liner brush is the way that it pours out water And these brushes don't do that at all But you know if it's all about getting results then you can kind of get something similar Using these kind of brushes because of the point that they have they they focus on having a point because they're a calligraphy brush So the Buddha board will dry on its own This is about a five minute time lapse to watch all the water disappear But you can also hurry that by either, you know waving at your dog In the studio and cooling your dog down with your Buddha board or use a heat gun or a hairdryer or something to speed it along Just don't get the hairdryer too close to it. I don't want you to burn the surface And you also want to make sure your brushes are clean when you use it because you could leave paint residue on there You can get that off with kind of a baby wipe just a soft scrubbing of it And if you paint anything you want to save take a picture of it Do not let it just disappear if you get a great idea for something that you want to try So that's the Buddha board and there is a Buddha board lesson I have an expectation you will get a Buddha board and use it in the class Now let's talk about the ink mixing because For this kind of painting you need to have a couple of different levels of ink You know from a dark to a light and I'm going to be using platinum carbon black ink. It's a waterproof ink You could use sumi ink, of course And if you want to go buy some that's great But I figure most of my people may already have some platinum carbon black for your fountain pens So I put a little bit in each dish. One is going to be just ink The other is going to have some water and the third is going to have a lot of water And you need to kind of test out your mix to make sure you get a nice range You want, of course, the solid black ink to be solid black The next one should be, you know, kind of in the 50 percent ish range And then the other would be in maybe a, you know, 15 to 20 percent range And what I ended up doing for even one that's lighter than that Is my leftover water. I have one that's clean water and the other one I just always use that to take the first ink off a brush And that serves as a fourth light value So I have an extra one a little bonus And I also just a little bonus tip. I keep my old platinum ink bottles that one with the x is an old one I just added water to it when it like ran out of ink when I used it all up So you I always have some some like gray ink and that little one I just painted at the top of my swatches is the paint water or the ink water. I guess it is I'm going to be using this Sumi sketch paper And it has two surfaces. One is kind of a soft toothy surface. The other is a little smoother And on the interwebs, they say that it's easier to paint on the The textured side that you'll get less bleeding now. I found both sides bleed on me This is one of my earliest attempts So I thought I would capture that so you can see I was trying To touch just the tip of the brush to a darker pigment And try to get a two tone look and I was just experimenting with it. I didn't know what I was doing But as I was playing around with it, I realized I was not squeezing out enough water from The brush, you know, these these brushes hold a lot of water and the Sumi paper is so soft It's a mulberry paper and not only does it bleed through So I put a paper towel behind it to absorb some of it because when I had it just on the freezer paper It just kept sucking back up into the Sumi paper So a paper towel seemed to save that a little bit But I had to be careful that even that didn't suck back into the mulberry paper But I started really Using that black towel to suck out most of the water and tried only To have just the pigment that I wanted in the brush and that worked a little bit better It was, you know, just a challenge to Practice mixing so that I would end up getting that kind of a difference in values And not get all the spludging all over this really soft paper Because it was just a little bit much I did try some on some regular watercolor paper because I use You know cold press and rough paper or love me some texture But for these paintings, I found that that was too much texture Even though it works and you could still do these simple flowers on it It just didn't have the feel of Sumi even those eat these aren't real Sumi because I am a Sumi dummy Maybe I'll take a class at some point and uh and learn more I know there's a whole lot more about your mindset when you're painting And so that is why I say mine is just inspired by Sumi rather than being any kind of traditional Sumi painting So here's one that I did later on after having practiced And I was getting a lot more control over the kinds of shapes that I was making So it is possible for even this old dog to learn new tricks I got better at remembering to squeeze out my brush And what I did throughout the class was constantly say don't forget to squeeze out your brush Don't forget to squeeze out your brush. Don't forget to squeeze out your brush Don't forget to squeeze out your brush Because i'm telling you when I first started doing this I went through pages and pages I just did like whole sheets of that's 9 by 12 pad full sheets Just covering every square inch with brush strokes and flowers and leaf petals and all kinds of stuff Because I couldn't seem to remember How to do that without making a mess And having everything bleed all over the place because this paper is just so so so so so soft But I finally started getting the hang of it and my flowers started coming out a lot better And these are really quick to do once you get going as well Especially when you practice as many as I have because I practice with the Buddha board I practiced in black and white with the ink And you can use black watercolor to do these but it's as you can kind of tell It's hard to mix a little bowl of watercolor in three thicknesses It's hard enough to make a puddle out of watercolor. So I would definitely recommend doing this in ink Now one of the things I figured out to do was to create masks And I cut masks for both a2 cards and for slimline cards eventually Because I realized what I was struggling with was trying to find a size that was going to work For a card and how to make the flowers the right size for that and this really helped to just paint inside that mask because Like putting a frame around it made me really stick to those confines And figure out what size flower I wanted on that particular card And then when I finished it I could readjust that mask because you know sometimes when you paint The stem of a flower and it's not quite straight or it makes the whole thing lean a little bit I cut the paper bigger than the size of the mask And that meant I could just tweak the angle that the mask was over top of my painting So if it came out a little crooked I could fix that and then I drew a pencil line inside the mask And that helped to make the card front Square to where it should be And that was great Now this paper that I'm painting on here is Hot press watercolor paper The cold press has a lot of texture to it. So you'd end up getting Potentially and I decided not to do that. Um you'd potentially end up getting a lot of You know kind of dry brush edges that sort of thing And I wanted something with a crisper edge to make a little sharper types of flowers And they come out much more simple feeling as opposed to fussing with the The edges of dry brush on a textured watercolor paper But you could certainly do it on a textured watercolor paper if you wish if that's your jam Then rock on with it. Um I I just tended to like it better on this kind of paper And it was just something that I haven't done very much of using the hot press But as soon as I got done with the sumi where I couldn't really make changes to it It was just tickling my little little happy bone to the core to be able to fix watercolor By doing You know just a little fussing around with the leaves or the petals to get them to be the right shape Because once you start doing that on sumi paper everything grows because you're basically putting more moisture in it So your leaves will get thicker and bigger Every time you start trying to clean them up. So The more practice you can get at just Making those simple strokes the better off you're going to be because you won't have all those areas where you're fixing things Although in the class I included some of them where I fixed something And I show you how you can maybe address that By fixing it in particular ways So just know that I included some bloopers in there some things that didn't work and said, okay Here's something you can try if you have this issue and you can make that kind of a thing work Now one of the things that I'm waiting on that one of the reasons why the card designs are not done yet Is because I am waiting On some adhesive I did some research to find out like okay. Is this sumi paper really supposed to be Wrinkly when you're all done. I know you're not supposed to put any more moisture than necessary on it And since I'm used to using a lot of moisture with my watercolors I was over splooging and maybe that was my problem, but It apparently is just a thing that this sumi paper does and people use a particular kind of adhesive To glue it to another piece of paper and that you know The process for doing that flattens everything out and makes it all perfect Well, I'm not going to tell you that that's going to work until I try it and my glue is not here yet So I'm just saving the whole Sixth lesson in the class for as soon as that gets here and of course it's going to get here After this video goes out. So yeah, there's that But in the five lessons, you'll learn five different flowers. We'll do the Buddha board lesson We'll do some black and whites and then we'll do some with color And something else interesting that I found out about sumi um, it's in both japan and china so People who think it's one or the other. It's actually both and in japanese sumi The the focus is on more short brush strokes You'll end up seeing a lot more small brush strokes over and over And you'll get lots more long simple brush strokes in chinese sumi and then also you get more color in chinese sumi and In japanese, it's more black and white sometimes with just a pop of color So it's interesting to play with both throughout the class and sometimes we do the leaves in black Sometimes we do them in color and you can learn lots of options in the class for changing it up on your own as well So while I paint one more on hot press paper I thought i'll just give you my overall impression of both these brushes and the sumi paper Now the sumi paper. Let's do first. I find it incredibly interesting it's just a very different kind of paper And it takes some practice So give yourself like 12 of those 48 sheets and like the pads are not that expensive Give yourself like 12 sheets to just make marks Just keep making marks and marks and marks Because that's going to help you to get to know the brushes and Get used to squishing off all that excess water so your brush is not really wet Then as for the brushes you're going to need to Kind of give them little nicknames. That's what I did in my head You know, this one is the one with the brown handle and the white bristles or the The red handle with the brown bristles So that I knew which one is going to make what kind of mark for me Your hand is going to react differently with them. So you need to figure that part out for yourself But they're kind of fun brushes if you want to do some ink work And you don't want to mess up your good watercolor brushes. So they're not going to last Don't have high expectations of them. They're a buck a piece Some of them are going to die quickly. I'm sure but I've actually done a lot of painting with them in the last couple weeks, I guess And not done too badly So if you're interested in the brush stroke flowers class that is on a deeper sale right now until Tuesday While I finish up the last details If you think you're going to want to take that class now would be a time to sign up for it But you can also sign up for it for a smaller discount on Tuesday once everything's done And on Tuesday, I'll show you all the rest of the cards that I have made So there's that too And I will see you in a couple of days I'm going to go get busy making cards as soon as my amazon package arrives and I'll see you later. Bye. Bye