Hey Michelle, how are you? Just waiting for other people to come on. I'm using the new stencil that Ann designed for me and Williamson. I'm good. The stencil is much easier than measuring things out by hand. I'm tired. I just got back from the gym tired and stinky. That's not bad. Hey Shannon! I used just plain cardstock. In fact, I think this might, I'm not sure if this is a piece of Nina or just generic. I don't know what white cardstock I had and I cut this stencil that Ann designed for me out of that. It makes tracing the squares on the sample card much easier. And then of course she did the what do you call it, color wheel one too. We're going to share these. I'm going to post the I need more coffee this morning. I'm going to post the files with Ann's permission to the watercolor Wednesday page. And if you have a silhouette cameo or Silhouette die-cutting machine, then you'll be able to cut these out. So this morning we're going to swatch, if we can, we're going to swatch three different brands. We have three left. The final three. Good morning, Lisa. We have the Gonsai Tombi watercolors, which I've taken mine out of the cardboard box and put them in this metal box instead. I also have Brush-O, which is a powdered pigment. And then a Royal, the Royal and Langnickel sent me some tube watercolors. And we'll talk about this palette in a minute. And how I made it, and there's a video for it coming out next week. But we're going to do swatches for all three of those this morning, if we can. I was going to do all this before I turned on the cameras this morning, and you know, it just didn't happen so I have to do it now. I hope everybody's having a good morning and like I said, these are the final three watercolors. Now these are all kind of student craft grade. They're not artist grade. I'm not even sure they're all lightfast, but if you're just playing, I don't even know how to spell green this morning. If you're just playing in your mixed media with your watercolor, then you don't, see, I can't even write and talk at the same time this morning. This is going to be a fun broadcast.  I don't think any of them are super expensive. The Royal paints, you can get in a kit, usually with brushes and a palette. At most of your big arts and craft stores, they're probably between 25 and 35 dollars. Brush-O is a powdered pigment. I mixed it here with gum arabic to create more of a cake watercolor. And those I think you have to order online. I don't think, I don't remember ever seeing them at the arts and craft store, but if I'm wrong, one of you can clue me in. I took, this is an alcohol ink palette from Ranger and I just wanted to make a small swatching of these two brands so that I could do today's broadcasts. And again, the video for how I did this exactly is going to air next week, but you'll see with the royal ones. And this is true with lots of your lesser quality watercolors. See how they cracked? Even though I added extra binder to them, they still cracked when they dried in the palette. And that's pretty common with the lesser quality ones. But I was able to get two brands in here, kind of a lot of colors, and there's still plenty of room to like add more. And this is small. You know, it's flat and thin, so you could maybe do a small sample palette if you wanted to take watercolors with you on vacation. This is and you have one of these. This is small and thin and it would fit in your travel bag real easily. You could bring a whole bunch of colors. And then of course we have the Gansai Tambi watercolors, which again, I'll I'll nag you all about doing a color key. They look nothing on the paper the way they look in the palette. Most of them. Um, so you really have to do a color key and you'll see I've been I've used them occasionally using for making tags and things and you can see where I've gotten purple like in the white and you know, they're they're you they've been used but they don't look anything usually like Oh, some of these colors like that just looks black, but it's purple. And this one's a real pretty shade of cobalt blue. Not that you would know that by looking at the cake. So you really have to swatch them. All right, so let's try this again. And I wanted to come on the air and correct mistake on my part from last week the Holvine gouache colors. Unlike most gouache paints, the Holvine ones are acrylic, which would be why they did not rewet well. Which I don't understand because why would you just not buy an acrylic paint so that I don't know? But that would explain why I didn't like them. And then why they didn't rewet well because they're an acrylic paint. Um, so I looked at the tubes and somewhere on here says acrylic, acrylic polymer emulsion. Um, and there's no way on the camera. You're going to be able to see that. I don't think but it says acrylic polymer emulsion on there. So, um that explains a lot. I do like them. They're bright, vibrant colors. But if you're expecting them to be like watercolor gouache and to be able to squeeze them out into a palette and rewet later after they dry, they don't do that because they're acrylic paint. All right, so here we're going to do, um grusho, royal and langnickel and gomsai. Hey Nancy, how are you? All right, so let's get some paint wet. So again, we've got our little spray bottle and I've got a few drops of oxal liquid in here to help the rewetting process of the watercolor paint. I am probably at some point going to have to get a bigger spray bottle because this one's really little. Let's just get everything wet. And you'll notice with this ranger palette that I, um, punched out dots and I, um, um, did my little swatches on the dots and then arranged them on the inside of the lid to match where the colors were on the palette. I just, um, used my zyron after the swatches were dry. I've used the gomsai before and I like them, especially for like doing greeting cards and things. I think they're great paints. You know those things, little gifty things that you want to maybe do a little watercoloring on, but you don't want to use expensive like Schmincke watercolor because it's just for a little greeting card. Um, I think that the, um, gomsai work great. I haven't really used the brush-os. I've had them for a while. These were gifted to me in Happy Mail from Lou Jean Martin. So if you all know Lou Jean or Lou Jean, if you're out there, thank you. I've actually had them for a while. So these are the brush-os. Now brush-os are a powder pigment that a lot of people get the paper wet and they just drop the powder in and they do these fun bursts of colors in the paper. I took the powders and I mixed them with gamarabic to make them more of a paint. Um, they mix okay. So I don't have orange. So we'll skip that one. Not in the brush-o. I only have a few colors. This is the red that I have. Let's see. I've got a couple of greens. Let's do emerald. And again, because brush-o is a powder, you can do lots with it.  You could maybe do a painting in regular watercolor and then drop some brush-os in it. I wondered after I did this palette what that would look like. I also wondered what it would do is if you had wet wet acrylic paint on a, um, page, and then you dropped the powder brush-o pigment into the wet acrylic paint, what that would do. So there's some fun things you could probably do with the brush-os. Yeah, let's see. Do I have a purple? I do have a purple. It's like a dusty gray purple. Okay, so that's the brush-o paints. And then now we have the royal, royal and lying nickel. And if you saw the, um, unboxing video, the review video where they sent me the kit, they sent me a big kit of stuff, including some really great brushes. Um, I have some vermilion. Which is dark orange. No, I'm not sure on lightfastness on these. They are student grade, craft grade, so I wouldn't consider that they're probably lightfast at all, but they are pretty well pigmented, as you can see. I mean, look at this red. They're pretty opaque for watercolor, but to make them more translucent, just add more water. Um, let's see. Green. Let's do the deep green. If you guys have any questions while I'm doing the swatches, let me know. I have to catch up on, um, scanning some of these images and posting them to the watercolor Wednesday page. Um, I didn't get it done last week, but I will. I promise. And here's the purple. Look at that purple. That's a nice purple. Okay, those are nice and bright. The brochures don't really compare, but that is in part because I don't have the same colors. Um, for what I have, they're both pretty vibrant. All right, let's get that out of the way and let's do the Gonsai paints. I need my color key because I can't tell what colors are what. All right. Um, Let's do lemon yellow. Hey Teresa, Charlene. Hello everybody. Let's see. Um, in the Gonsai paints, they don't really have anything they call orange, but they have a scarlet red, which is kind of an orangy red. They call this scarlet red. See, that's not in my mind. That's orange. All right, and then, um, let's do this one is just called red and then green. Let's do ocean green. The colors are funny on these Gonsai paints, but the paints are nicely pigmented as you can see. They're great for doing like tags and things with coloring and stamped images. These work well for that. Here's the blue. Now the Royal and Langnickel was more of a Prussian blue. This is more of an ultra marine blue. Yeah, there's a May green. I think is the one that you're talking about, Nancy. It's a really pretty bright green and then purple. We only have one purple, but look at it. Isn't it pretty? Now they have these at a lot of different places, including Hobby Lobby. So use a coupon if you're going to buy them. So those are our three colors compared side by side. Here's some of our other ones that we've done in the past. They compare pretty nicely color-wise. You know, I'm just not sure about like I said about lightfastness.  So they compare really pretty well. You know, for the most part, you guys can tell from looking at all the different brands of paints we've been swatching and playing with, they really the biggest two choices or decisions you have to make when buying watercolor paint are what are you going to do with it? How much do you have to spend? And do you care if it's lightfast? Most of them are decently pigmented or they're pigmented enough to work with. Of course, there are brands out there like Sennelier, Schmincke, Daniel Smith. They're fabulously pigmented. Most of the colors are very lightfast.  Let's do... Oh, thanks, Joe! All right, so let's draw some little houses. Hang some stuff up from my desk. I just cleaned my desk yesterday. How does it get messy so fast? All right. All right, let's divide our paper into quarters. You could do this again. I mentioned this before. You could do this with a stamped image. You don't have to draw anything. But if you're going to do any kind of product comparison, use the same stamp image. Anybody have one of those days where you just feel off? That's definitely me today. I got to tell you. So we're going to just draw a simple house shape. I'm going to put some perspective in there. So you're glad it's not just me. So lots of your big box craft stores have a decent selection of paints to choose from.  So decide what your answers to your questions are as far as what you're going to do with it and budget and then go see what they have and try to make an educated choice.  Yeah. See, I just, yeah, I'm just, I don't know, I just feel off today, which is funny because I just had a checkup and my checkup actually, my yearly checkup went fabulously well. The doctor actually said word for word, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. It's working great. So it's not something you hear too often. So I thought, okay, well, so I should actually kind of be feeling better about them than I am, I guess. I don't know. I just feel off. Okay. So there's our houses. So we'll do, you know, right down here, which paints we're using. Again, these are the Utrecht generic watercolor brushes, the 6150 round. This is a number six. I'm really liking these brushes. They're not expensive and they work great. All right. So let's do, let's do this one first because it's next to me. All right. So we're going to get this a little more wet. Where am I supposed to be painting over here? Okay. So decide where your light's coming from, right? So, and sometimes, you know, I stick a post-it note there if I'm working on a big painting. So I don't lose track of where it was I wanted the light to be coming from because yes, I lose track. Hey Ann, sometimes I lose track of my head if it wasn't attached to my body. At least I feel that way. So I'm just starting light, though with the lightest color and working my way darker, deciding where the light would be shining and hitting the ground and those the lightest, brightest, warmest color, which is the yellow. Then we're going to work our way darker. Next would be the orange, which is still a warm color, but a little darker than the yellow. And you see how the yellow is wet. So it's mixing on the paper with the yellow. These are, right now, we have Gansai and then we also have Brush Show and Royal this morning. So when these colors mix on the paper, I'm going to get a secondary color, but that's okay. I'm okay with that. One of the things I like about watercolor is working with whatever happens on the page and making it work. So this is now the red. The stencils worked out great. We used one of them already this morning. And if it's okay with you, Ann, I think I'm going to put the files up on the watercolor Wednesday page for people who want to maybe download them if they have a silhouette. It's hard to get them really wet here in the cakes, Tracy. You're not wrong. And I have that little spray bottle, which has the Oxgall liquid in it, but you really need to sort of do this. But that's true with some of these paints. I mean, sometimes my problem with the paints is not how they paint at all. It's how they rewet because a lot of them are decently pigmented, but they don't all rewet well. Let's see. Let's do ocean green. I forgot where I was painting again. Now, these are, what are they? Japanese watercolors. They're more opaque than your traditional watercolor, in my opinion. So if you're expecting something really transparent, excuse me, transparent, this is probably not it. Yes, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area to be precise. Okay. And have lived most of my life. Okay. Now we're going to go with blue. So blue is a cooler color. So we're working our way cooler and darker. So I'm going to start to put the blue in those areas where I want the shadows. I kind of stopped explaining what I was painting, how I was painting these little houses kind of a while ago. So I thought this morning maybe we would do a little bit more explaining for those who maybe haven't seen me do this before live. So as part of these watercolor tests, I always do these little sample paintings. I'll do four of them pretty quick. I do like the way these blend easily on the page in the water. They don't all do that. And I'm getting some gray tones that I like. I'm getting some of them by accident, but I like them. And then the last one will be the purple. Purple is a nice cool shadow color. So there's the Ganzai. So that's one of the things that you have to decide. And one of the reasons I started doing these is so you guys could see you know what the pigment load is on the different paints, how they flow. I'm again, I'm not super picky about my watercolors. I can find use for any watercolor, even Crayola. But depending on what you're doing with them and what's going to make you happy, your choices are going to be different. And I want you guys to, I don't want to tell you, oh, you have to have Schmincke because that's not true. That may be your preference. Maybe somebody else is going to like the Ganzai and there's nothing wrong with that. All right. So let's start now with, this is the brush show. Now, like I said before, brush shows a powder. And it's so funny because I have my brush show. So when Lou Jean sent me my brush show, she sent me what I think of as dime bags of watercolor paint. I can't help but think of them as dime bags, but they're, you know, they're just watercolor, but she sent me this little packet of dime bags. Yeah, I don't mind Crayola. You know, when I first started, I used Crayola and, yeah, right? I used Crayola and Art District. So yeah, I was gifted, like I said earlier in the broadcast, I was gifted the brushes by Lou Jean Martin. She sent them to me in some happy mail kind of a while ago and I hadn't ever done anything with them until now. And to make them from a powder into this little cake, I mixed them with some gum Arabic. They're pretty well pigmented. They do fun things.  Yeah, wasn't it? It's so sweet of her. She sent me this huge box of happy mail, which was fabulous. I'm still using some of the papers and things that she sent. Okay, so we don't have orange in this, so we're going to skip right to the red, but it's going to mix with the yellow that's on here. So we will probably get some orangey colors. So a little bit of pigment and then just some water and just push your paints around. Fun fact, I forgot to empty all my water containers out before I left for Las Vegas, and the family doesn't come in here if I'm not home. My water things stank when I got home. They were gross. All right, so let's see. Let's go to the green. I know, right? You would think I, this is one thing I forgot to empty the water in both in here and in my brush cleaning jar. That really smelled. In fact, I forgot about the brush cleaning jar until yesterday and that was gross. I know, right? So now we're going to go to blue. Yeah, you can also, I was reminded by somebody's broadcast yesterday, and I don't remember who it was, but it was a new video. It showed up on my feed yesterday that you can make homemade watercolors out of like cornstarch and food coloring. Maybe one of you remember who it was said that. They were going to try that. I don't remember who it was, but I was reminded that you can do that. I used to do that for my daycare kids. And then you really know for sure it's non-toxic. You know exactly what's in there. I think my favorite paint of the new ones I've tried. I mean, I'm still, my favorite is still ultimately Daniel Smith, but think of the new ones I've tried. My favorite favorite is the Mission Gold. I really like those paints. They're nice. Yeah, you can make inks out of a lot of stuff and you all know I do that. Coffee, tea, food coloring. And if you're worried about it evaporating, put a little bit of glycerin in the water. Okay, so that's the brush-o. Now let's do the royal. I really need a bigger squirt bottle. Hey Josie! So now the brush-o yellow is kind of an orangey, goldish yellow. You can tell by comparing them here side by side with these other yellows. These two are more of a lemon yellow. And if I'm setting up a watercolor palette for myself, I usually want one of each in my palette. So I'm putting on a little bit of pigment and then I'm putting on some water, pushing them around. Yeah, the Mission Gold, they're not super cheap. You have to order them. I have not seen them in a store anywhere. I'm going to go back and look at their website and see if there's anybody near me who carries them. I don't think there is though. But they're super vibrant. They do have, I guess, a kit that you can get with a palette that you can pour the tubes into. I'm not a big fan of the palette. I've seen it in a couple of videos. I'm not a huge fan of it. I don't care for the way it's laid out. Yeah, see, and so mix them with a little bit of, you know, they may be brush-os, but see how they work. Maybe you want to do a video and share with all of us and see how they work. Oh, sorry, Nancy. Go take care of yourself. This will be up on the channel later. You poor thing. You'll have to let us know, Ann. Try them with some water. Do some experiments on camera and let us know. Maybe somebody will recognize them by the way, the look of the vial. Maybe somebody will know. Since I'm allergic to everything on the planet now, lots of things make me nauseous. I don't know what to say to that. Yeah, they could be some pure pigments. That would be fun to use. So this is the red, working our way from warmer and lighter and brighter to cooler, trying to give your painting some hints of three dimensions or two dimensions, at least a little bit of pigment and then some water. Now, if you don't want your colors to blend so much with each other on your painting, then you need to really dry your painting in between colors or color groups. So before you go with the cool colors like the green, you would want to dry all these. Let's see, blue. I only have the Prussian blue. Not today, at least, Teresa. Not dropping things. Although my husband would be the first one to tell you that my middle name is neither grace or patience. So not by any stretch of the imagination. A little bit of pigment and then some water.  If you don't want it to go there, you don't put the water. Yes, but we like your brand of weirdo, Michelle. And we're artists.  Okay, so there's our three paintings. Now, you'll notice this one's almost dry and it's lightening up a lot as it dries. That's true for almost every watercolor. They lighten up a lot as they dry. Okay, so next we're going to do our some of our blending experiments. This is one of the new stencil things that Anne made for me. So I just cut it out of plain white card stock, which is going to be a little sturdier and easier to trace around than plastic would be. And I'm going to add the files for these to the watercolor Wednesday page. So those of you with a silhouette can download them and cut your own. Yeah, Michelle, you've got to be more careful. You could have really hurt yourself worse than just getting a bruise. So you haven't seen too much from me on social media with artwork lately, because I am trying hard to get all of Journaling Crazy Island style filmed for the entire year of 2016. I'm up to July. Yeah, you've got to be careful. Okay, so I need one more. But I think I have one. Yes, I do. See, I have one. All right. So hey, Cody. Okay, so first let's do a brush. Do it in pen. And let's do yellow. And then skip three spaces. And then we'll do scarlet. Skip three places and do ultramarine. So let's see how they blend. So yellow, yellow, yellow. So here we're going to put the pure pigment, which like I said before, as you can tell, is more of a gold yellow or almost an orange yellow than the lemon yellow in the other palettes. And then we'll put the scarlet. A little bit of this pigment goes a long way. These brush shows more pretty well. So now we're going to take our plate. And we're going to take some of our yellow and mix it with some of the red. Okay. So we'll put that mixture here, about 50, 50. And then we're going to take it, add some more yellow to it. See, I lost track of where I was. All right, more yellow. That's almost the same color as what I got to begin with. Let's see. So I'm noticing that mixing these brush shows is not easy as it should be. It might because of the colors that I have. If I had something that was more lemony, I would probably have more luck making these different orange colors. But because I don't, I'm getting some variation in tone, but not by a lot. You just eyeball it and write. There's no exact formula. So let me do another one. So let's grab some of the blue. This is brush shows ultramarine, which is a little bit more of a, in my opinion, a little bit more of a on the Prussian blue side. It's a little bit of a blue green side. Okay. So then we're going to mix it. We have the scarlet. Need to put some more. Let me grab some water. Okay. So here's the scarlet. So between the two, the scarlets here, the ultramarines here, the one that's right in the middle between the two, do 50-50 of the, of the two colors. A 50-50 blend. And you can tell that that blue is, got some yellow in it, because look at that brownish, purpley color that we ended up with. And what color you end up, end up with is just going to depend on what color you start out with. Let's put the ultramarine here so you can get it clear. See, this is very, very Prussian blue. Here's ultramarine from Daylar Rowney. And here's the brush show. It's more of a green. Okay. So then I'm going to take this color here that's in the middle, and I'm going to push the rest of this red into it. And I'm going to put it here. Learning how to color mix doesn't mean that you always want to have to do that. But it's a handy skill to have. And sometimes there's a color that you use a lot. You don't want to mix it all the time. That's why you want to go with a paint company that has lots of different colors. You can just buy a tube of that color. So now we're going to take on the other side and mix the rest of our blue into that same color we started with. And we get this dark violet color. Now the colors are bright and vibrant. I'm not sure. I think they're a little bit difficult to blend. And I also didn't want to have people. Yeah, it does. So which brand you use, they're going to blend differently. And which colors you start out with when you are blending and mixing is going to depend on what colors you end up with. Yeah. And you don't need a lot of colors. I'm having trouble articulating myself this morning. Isn't that a big word for me this morning? Okay, so you don't this this exercise is to show yourself not only how to do this, but that you can do it and that you don't need a ton of colors to start playing with watercolor paint. You can get away with only having three colors, a yellow or red and a blue. And you can get all these other colors and create a painting. That's enough colors to get started with just three tubes of paint. You don't need a ton of paint. It's nice to have a ton, but you don't need a ton to get started. I would recommend a yellow that's more lemony and a red that's more of a violet red than an orangey red. The scarlet is kind of on the orangey color, orangey side of things. The ultra brush, ultra marine is nice. But if they have something that's maybe more like a crimson or like an alizarin crimson or a true red, I would say get that. And then something that's more like a lemon color. This one is kind of on the golden orange side. All right, so for the last one, we'll do the yellow and the blue. I want to do it the same way. So I'm going to put some yellow. There we go. Yellow and then the blue. Okay, so we've got them here. So now in the middle, we're going to mix them together. And that goes here. Now with any watercolor brand, I don't care what brand it is. If you want a lighter, more transparent color, add more water. Yeah, see, exactly. Van Gogh did a lot of paintings where he only had three colors of paint. So, or four colors of paint. He did a lot with only three. So, all right, so now we're going to mix the rest of the blue into some of this and put that here. I almost put it in the wrong spot. Did you see that? You know, it's funny how when there's no men in the broadcast, we're not talking about like menopause or something. But when there are men in the broadcast, we always start talking about menopause. Why is that? Okay, so you can see here, just with these two brands of paint where I have this more lemon yellow and I got this more pretty like sap green. This is a pretty green, but it's kind of a brown green. I knew what you meant. See, I got it wrong too. Secret club talk, exactly. All right, I need, I need a baby wipe. Okay, so that is the brush show. They're going to lighten as with any watercolor, they're going to lighten as they dry. And that's another good reason to do some of these blending and paint experiments because before you start doing a big important painting with any paint, whatever one you end up with, you'll know how they blend, you'll know how they're going to look after they dry. The first thing you should do is do your color key. All right, so now let's do the other two brands. Yep, that's true. Okay, so let's do Royal and Langnickel, whoops. And then we're going to do Gansai. So a proper watercolor paint palette should have a warm and cool version of each of the three primary colors, yellow, red, and blue.  I prefer also in my palettes to have a warm and a cool green and a violet in my palettes. And instead of black, I usually use neutral tint or Payne's gray. So however the paint comes, I always squeeze it out into a palette and let it dry. So I always use it out of a palette like this. I don't ever use it out of a fresh tube, rarely, only when I'm doing these kind of tests. Okay, so for Royal Langnickel, we're going to use lemon. One, two, three. And then we're going to use crimson. And then we're going to use Prussian blue. And then for, we'll do the Gansai. Oh, there it is. Okay, so for the Gansai, we'll use, again, we'll use lemon. One, two, three. Red. And then it just is blue. So let's do the royal first. Yep. If you look at the watercolor Wednesday page, I do believe there is a picture on there of my Daniel Smith paints, the swatches from the complete set. That's the set I use the most. Let's see. Somewhere. Here we go. So this is my favorite palette. This is my Daniel Smith palette. And I do think this is on the watercolor Wednesday page somewhere. There's a lot more than just the basic minimal palette selection here. But I definitely can give you some suggestions for certain colors. Okay, so here's our lemon. And then we're going to get grab some crimson. But you want like a lemony yellow and then like a nickel azo yellow or a Naples yellow, a permanent red and like an alizarin crimson, ultra marine and like Prussian blue, sap green and like cascade green, a pain's gray or other dark, dark color, blackish, bluish gray and a white. Those are like the minimum. I like Quedocratone gold in my palette. New Gamboge. I like a violet. My favorite is either Daniel Smith's Quedocratone purple or Rosa of the Ultramarine. Okay, so now we have our two colors here on our plate. So again, we're going to mix them here in the middle. With this selection of Daniel Smith paints I have, I don't have to mix too much because I have a lot of colors. Because unless I'm doing this for you guys, I don't like mixing paint. I'm the lazy crafter. Remember, I'm not the frugal crafter. That's Lindsay. I'm not a big fan of color mixing if I don't have to. I need more yellow in that sample. Just for some color variation. Let's add some more yellow to that. Okay, next, blue. This is Prussian blue, which is one of my favorite blue colors to add to get for any palette. It's more of a green blue, which I really like. And it's easy to turn it into a teal-y color. Yes, I don't do that. I forgot to put blue here. Shannon probably has. If Shannon's still here, she's probably had everybody asked just about every question out there you can think of. She's a much bigger channel than I am. Shannon green was on here earlier. Okay, so now we're going to take our purple and we're going to put more red into it. And then I'm going to take it and put more blue. This is a Prussian blue, so it's kind of a cooler blue. So you're going to get more gray purples. Gray mixes because of the kind of yellowy orange and the blue already. Okay, now we're going to do lemon and Prussian blue. I recommend doing this not just as watercolor paint, but with whatever mediums you like to work with. If you like to work with acrylic paint, this is a good experiment. So okay, so we're going to mix the two together in the middle and I'm going to take and add more yellow to it and more blue. There we go. There's our Royal and Langnickel color wheel. And we got a little bit better blends here than we did with the other brand because of the color, because mostly because we had a lemon yellow. Yep. And you know, I have to say doing all these color wheels, the color wheels themselves would make an interesting journal embellishment. I noticed that the other day, I might have to reprint some of the color wheels and put them in my journal or something. I don't know. I thought they were interesting. Okay. Now let's work on the Gansai. So let's start with lemon. Yep. So this is the wheel and made for me and this is the one we were using. They're both, they both are interesting, but the nice thing about either one of them is when you get these kind of pages done with your notes and things on it, maybe you want to put your conclusions on there. Even in itself makes an interesting like journal composition thing, like it would be an interesting edition reprinted on my tag or something like that. Now some of these images are available for download on the Watercolor Wednesday page. They're free. So you can go over there and download them. This is the Gansai lemon. Now let's grab the red. Yep. There you go. Yeah. If you're doing DLP or, you know, sort of documenting your year in a journal, you could go to the Watercolor Wednesday page and print one out and put it on a tag or a piece of card stock and add it to your page. You could print it on sticker paper. That would be fun. I forgot to put my red swatch. So you can see right here. I don't know if you guys can see. Wait. Sometimes like right here, you put the paint on and it kind of wants to pull away from the paper and not stick to the paper or absorb in the paper. That's because there's something on the paper. It could be oils from your fingers or something like that. Okay. So now we're going to add more yellow to some of that. No, oils on the paper make a difference with how the paint is absorbed into the paper. And that's why a lot of watercolors like to buy paper that's sealed and not been touched by anybody. We won't talk about slacking because I have yet to start Lifebook for 2016. And it's April. So yeah. All right. So now we have the blue. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to get, if I can get journaling crazy island style done for all of 2016 soon, then I can focus on catching up. It's kind of my goal. I do have a plan. Yep. So the oils from your hands and things like that can affect the way the paint sits on the paper and is absorbed into the paper. So you do want to be careful. And sometimes the papers, you know, been fingered by, you know, a million people at the art store before you buy it. It's one reason why when I buy big sheets of paper, I don't buy loose sheets from the art store. I usually buy a whole pack of it from like Dick Blick. Even though it costs more money in the long run, it is better for me because it's not been touched by anybody. And you don't have that problem like right here if you can still see even far away on the camera, looking at my view on YouTube, you can see a light spot in the red swatch. That's where there's something sitting on the paper. Hang on a second. I'll pick it up again. You can see it's drying and there's a light spot right there. It's because there's something sitting on the paper oils or something that was right there on the paper. So another reason to play with it and do these swatches because you can learn about things like that and what your paint will and won't do and how you can and can't manipulate your paints. And then now we need some blue. We're going to do our blues and our yellows. Next week we'll be able to get back to actually doing some paintings because this is the last of the swatches of paints that I have right now. And we're kind of all caught up in that regard. And we will, if I can get some of the other brands of paint, there's still a couple brands I'd like to try like YARCA. So we will do those when I get them, but we can go back to doing paintings next week and we can work on some little watercolor paintings or journal pages. So these Gonsai paints blend pretty well. I'm happy with the range of colors that I'm getting without trying too hard and having to go back and grab more of one color or the other. I'm getting some nice colors. So that's a nice color selection. I think these two especially are pretty comparable. Okay, I should probably keep that out instead of throwing it away. All right, so there's that. Let's do that. This is just a different way to do color blending experiments. So this is one and this is using my old template. You might try to do this with Ann's, the one Ann did. I don't know if there's a picture of these on the watercolor Wednesday page or not. If there's not, I will scan that. I have scanned them and I'll add it. And Ann's files will be up there too.  Okay, so four by four. Gotta make some squares people squares. Where's my pencil? All right, squares here. So this is just a different configuration of a basic color blending experiment. This is one that was inspired by Daniel Smith's website originally. Sandy Almok figured out how they did their version of this and she showed it on her YouTube channel and I thought it was so clever and it's just a different way to get color blending practice in. Yeah, okay, let's do this over. It is much easier to trace these little squares than it is to like measure and get out a ruler, which honestly was a pain in the neck, especially since math isn't my strong suit and measuring things out isn't either. At least not anymore. It's funny to say that because I used to be a licensed dispensing optician and math was very important to my job, but I think when I stopped doing that job I forgot how to do math. Okay, so now we have our two and you know it's a little bit smaller in scale, but it's not too different. All right, so we're going to do, yeah I hate math. I mean I always got good grades in math without trying because I could do math, but I just don't like math. Makes my brain want to go to sleep. Brasho and Royal and my nickel. Now, like the other swatches, the first thing that everyone is really quiet. I don't know if they're there or not, but they're really quiet. There's a lot of people watching. Oh, see Cody's there. All right, so the first thing we're going to do is put the color names across. Yeah, okay, so we're going to do yellow, red, and blue. So let's do lemon, red, and blue. You still coming on Friday to for a visit, Ann? Because I've got surplus art stuff in the garage that you hope your trunk is empty. Okay, okay, so lemon. So here we're going to put the pure pigment under the name, pure pigment under the name. And like I said, this is just another color blending experiment. So where the two squares meet, then you put that pigment. You put a blend of those two because this is yellow and yellow, so this other square will be yellow. Okay, so then here we've got the red. So I like the Gonsai red. It's more of a true blood red. My favorite red to paint with is something more a lens or in crimson, which is more a little bit more towards the purpley color. Okay, so where the two red lines meet would be red. So here, now where the red line meets the yellow, it would be a mix of the two here. I'm going to make it so it's more red than yellow. Here I'm going to make it so it's more yellow than red. So we'll get our plate, bring our plate back, and we've got some of our red. And then we will put a little bit of yellow in it. I'm sorry, Lisa, that you're having a bad two weeks. And then I'm going to add more yellow to it and put this color over here. And again, there's really no specific formula to this. This is a color blending exercise. So what colors you come out with exactly are going to just depend on how much of each pigment you put in there. But it's a fun exercise in color blending. And I would recommend trying any of these exercises with whatever yellows, reds, and blues that you have and doing a number of different ones with different colors of yellow that you have, and different colors of blue that you have, and mixing up your selection of colors. So this is the blue. And where the two blue lines meet, again, is going to be blue. So here, I picked up more of the pigment with less water. And here I have more water.  But it's watercolor. So you can make it darker, but you can't make it lighter. So you always want to err on the side of lightness. Okay, so here's some blue. And here where the blue meets the red is going to be, I'm going to make it blue and red, but I'm going to make it more blue. And here I'm going to make it more red. So first, we'll just grab a little bit of the red is really strong. Let's put some more blue in there because that was really strong. So this is what I mean about color mixing. So you just have to play with it. That's better. Okay, so that I'm going to put here. Now this red is an orangey red. So you're getting sort of a gray purple. Because what happens when you mix all of your primary colors together? You get black, black and gray tones, neutral tones. How do I know that? I've mixed them by mistake together a lot. I've made a lot of mistakes. So that's all I know. All right. So now we're going to turn our plate one more time. And we're going to take our blue and yellow this time, the lemon. Okay. So first we're going to take just a little bit of lemon into our blue and put it here. That's a pretty green, I got to say. And then we're going to take more of our yellow, bring it over. So this is just a different way to do color blending.  The color wheels, if you're going to use it in your journal, I think are prettier than this one. But this one is more challenging than the other one. All right. So now we're going to do these. I'm going to get rid of this palette somewhere. Okay. So now we have, yes, probably. It's probably because of the shade of blue and red that you're using. So I would try a red that's more of a blue red, like alizarin, crimson, quedocridone, magenta, and a blue that is more of a true blue, like cyan or ultramarine. Cyan might be a good choice to try. Okay. So for brush, oh, we're going to do yellow, scarlet and ultramarine. But the advantage to what you've already done, Regina, is that you know how to mix those colors. So try cyan, alizarin, crimson, or something that's more like the royal here, the crimson lake, where you can tell if the vermilion's kind of an orange red. I used it as an orange, but it's kind of an orange red. But you can tell if you put these two next to each other, this one's way more blue. If you take the Daniel Smith palette, where did it go? Here we go. So if you take my Daniel Smith palette that I had out earlier, if I was going to shoot for something that's more of a blue purple, a royal purple, if I was using my Daniel Smith palette, I would use for my red, probably quedocridone rose or quedocridone red, which are both more blue and ultramarine on this palette. If I was going to use my schminkup palette, I would use, let's see what do I have on here, probably magenta or ruby red and ultramarine. So it really just depends, and that's just because these are more less, the red is not orange, and the blue is not green at all. So if you stay away from that, then you should find more of the color that you want. But now you know how to make those other colors. So that's always a bonus. And I recommend doing a chart like this and doing your color mixing and your testing and writing down what colors that you used, and then making a chart of what you came out with using those colors so that later on, when you want to mix that color again, you know how to do it.  Stay away from the orange end of the red spectrum and the green red of the blue spectrum. Okay, so for the royal langnicle, I'm going to just go ahead and put these on here too. So we're going to use lemon, crimson, and prussian blue because that's what we have. But prussian blue, for what Regina is talking about, is not a blue I would use because it's got some, it's a little bit on the green side. So I don't think that's not a good blue. One of my goals for this series always was to educate myself and you guys about what you actually really do not need, but what you can really have. Hey Michelle, how little you can really have to achieve some by Josie, some interesting looks that you don't have to do what I did when I first got into mixed media and or watercoloring and think, oh, okay, I need watercolor paints and I have to have one tube of all 238 of Daniel Smith's colors. You don't need to do that.   Okay, so first let's do the brush. So we've got our yellow here, which again, is that kind of an orange. See, this is an orange yellow because the yellow is on the orangey side. All of our colors are going to be kind of on the gray, gray tones. Okay, so then scarlet. Was that scarlet? Yeah, that was scarlet. That was scarlet, but it was a lot of pigment. So I'm just grabbing it off of this other square and moving it around so it's not so dark. There we go. Hey, how are you? Okay, so this is the Ultramarine. These are, again, these are brush-o watercolors. One of the brands we're working with today. Brush-o is a powdered pigment. I took mine and I mixed it with Gum Arabic. Now this, in my opinion, the Brush-o Ultramarine blue is a little bit, I would, it looks more Prussian-y blue to me. It just looks more like it has a little bit of green in it. Good to have you back, Michelle. Okay, all right, so there we go. So those are our pure pigments and where they meet pure pigment, right? Okay, so now we've got a plate back. We're going to get lots of gray-ish tones. These, because of the colors that I have in the Brush-o's, in fact, this one's so yellow. So the first thing I'm going to do is grab some of said yellow. I had some blue on my brush, but that's okay. Okay, and we're going to grab some scarlet. Can tell it's almost time for this broadcast to be over. My water is filthy. Okay, so we're mix some of the scarlet into the yellow and make a mixture that's more on the red side and put it here and then put more yellow in it. See what we get? Good luck, Regina, and yes, there's a reason they call us starving artists. You don't make money until you're dead, unfortunately. All right, so now we're going to take some, we're going to do the blues. So we're going to take some of our ultramarine blue. Now if you're really into saving your paint and not wasting any money, then all of this paint I've been wiping off on baby wipes. You can use these baby wipes in collage. You could spray this with lots of water and drip it onto book pages. There's lots of stuff you could do with the stuff that's left on your palette. Okay, some of the yellow. We're going to mix a little bit of an into the blue. Make one that's more blue here. Okay, mix some more yellow into it and put that here. Grab some more of our red and put a little bit of an into the blue that's over here. It made this, look at that color that I came out with. I think it had a lot of red in it, but wow, that's an interesting color. Excuse me. I think I need to make one of those more blue. What do you think? I think one of those needs to be more blue. Let's add some more blue to this one. It's really dark. Okay, so there's our brush out palette. So see, this is what I mean. So these baby wipes can be dried and you can use that in other mixed media things, applications. I have lots of baby wipes with paint on them though. So now we'll do the Royal Langnickel as last, last but not least. All right, so we have our lemon. Whatever palette you set up should have a good lemon yellow in it and then our crimson and then our blue. It's funny that this basic set of 12 paints in the Royal Langnickel came with two browns but only one blue. I think that it should have come with, instead of bird sienna and burnt umber, they should have done one or the other and then they should have put an ultramarine blue in my opinion and they didn't do that. So I think that's a little bit of an odd choice. Okay, so there's our pure colors. So now we're going to start with our red and mix our red with a little bit of the yellow, more yellow. Now I do have to say that I think it's easier to get the blends that you want, the colors that you really want with the artist grade paints than it is some of the lesser expensive paints. I think that you can get the blends but it takes a little bit more work and if you're lazy like me you don't necessarily like that. Just putting that out there. Okay, so here's our blue. So first we're going to mix it with a little bit of the yellow. Make something that's more blue and then more yellow. We should get something that's more of a sappy green and then if I've done this right I don't have to add any more red or blue to my palette and I can take the blue here and add a little bit of the red to it and get something that's more of a blue violet but because this crimson is still again a little bit on the orangey side I think that's still a little bit more gray for me than I would prefer but I tend to like purples that are more on the orchid-y scale anyway, more on the red side. So now we'll add more red to it. I think I like this one better. Yeah, it's still it's still got some gray tones to it. It's not perfect but I could work with that. So there we go. There we have it. Let me get some of our other clean my stuff off. Okay, so here we have the Brush-O and Royal Langnickel. Here we have the, this is Dayla Rowney which we did last week. The little small Dayla Rowney kit from Hobby Lobby. This one and these are just the student grade Dayla Rowney paints. These of course are the Schmincke and Daniel Smith, Mission Gold and Maymary Blue. See the purples that we got here are really nice because I used a primary red magenta and that's a good color with the ultramarine that I used here but also if you used a cyan it would be even better. Winter Newton and Van Gogh, Holbein and Croix, Grumbacher and Sennelier. And then the Sennelier, look at these colors we got because we started out with yellow, light, opera rose, scenarios blue. These are fabulous colors and if you want these really bright palettes, these are the kinds of colors, whatever brand that you choose that you want to pick to add to your palette. Now I know in Daniel Smith I have an opera rose and I have a blue like this and I have a yellow so if you want to be able to mix light bright colors then you want to use these three types of colors. And you can see by putting, doing the comparison here, just by the color choices, the different blends that you're going to get even if you're in the same brand. This is Prang and Prima and this is Coy and something I didn't write down. How did that happen?  This is peerless. So for the moment that is the end of our swatch tests, swatches and tests and reviews of paint. So next week we will be back with some paintings and we will try some of these brands and we'll be doing some more four part paintings and experimenting with doing paintings two to four part paintings side by side doing like half of it in one brand and then they get next section in a whole another brand of paint and trying to continue the photo or the painting and see how we go. And I'll give you some reviews and conclusions. Does anybody have any questions? You're welcome everybody. I'm still going to try to get, I have to wait for either them to send them to me or for funding. I'm still wanting to swatch the White Night Yarka watercolors and I also want to swatch PBO has their own brand of watercolors. So I want to still get those two. I'm working on it. Sometimes yes I noticed weird smells with um the Holbein kind of stink the Holbein watercolors kind of have a funky smell which I wasn't too fond of. My favorite is still the Daniel Smith but my favorite favorite palette is a mixed palette. So you know that's the other thing that I think people forget is you don't have to pick one palette. So say you like these three colors in Sennelier. Cool. And then you like some of these colors in Schmink. Why can't you mix them on a palette? There's no there's no law that says you can't do that. My favorite palette is a mixed palette. And that's one we haven't done because all the brands are okay. So here we go. I'll show you. So this is my favorite palette. When I'm not filming this is the one I use more often than not. This is a mixed palette. This is Quar, Winter Newton, Grumbacher, Schminke and Van Gogh all in one palette. The only one that's not on here is there's no Daniel Smith on here. And I love this palette. Frequently I have this one and the Daniel Smith out because they're a little different. But I love this palette. It's well loved. You can tell it's well loved. It's very messy. It has a great selection of colors including three metallic colors. There's a gold, a silver and a pearl in here. And those are all Quar watercolors. It's got a nice selection of dark colors and neutrals. I can make a nice painting out of this palette. Now if I was going to buy paint and as I buy paint, my three brands I generally buy for myself are Daniel Smith, sometimes Schminke, but I don't really need any Schminke paints right now. And I do want to add to my May Mary blue collection. My favorite brand if I had to just pick one is Daniel Smith. They have the best range of colors. Most of them are very light fast. They're not horribly expensive. You can buy them one tube at a time to add to your collection. They have a fabulous color dot sample chart and they're made in the USA. So they're very easy to get and they're available in lots of fine art supply stores. Now that being said, I do want to in the future add to my collection of watercolor paints by getting some more May Mary blue colors and I would like to get some more Mission Gold colors. I really do like those Mission Gold paints. I think of all the new ones that we've tried, the Mission Gold is probably one of my favorites. I really like the Mission Gold colors. This is my little Mission Gold palette. Yeah, it's just got 12 colors in it. It doesn't have a paint's gray in it. I wish it did, but it has enough of the other colors in it that I can mix what I want and create almost any painting. And the fact that I do only have 12 colors means it fits in this little small box, which is great because if I wanted to take this with me and put it in my travel bag, I could because it's so little it's easy to take. But I love these colors and I could see me adding to my collection of them in the future. These are really great. Some of my least favorites, the Peerless are not a huge big favorite of mine. The Royal Langnickel are okay, but they're not a favorite. I like the Koi. They're nice to just do tags with and greeting cards. So are the Gansai. The Pranger are okay, but I like the Prima paints. The Prima paints are nice. They're kind of a good surprise paint, and they come in a nice palette.  I'm not a fan of plastic palettes. The Prima are nice. Nice paints, nice selection of colors, nice metal palette. I don't like the fact that the pans aren't marked with the colors on them. That's my only gripe. The whole mine are okay, Quora are okay, Winter Newton Van Gogh. I still like Maymary Blue, Mission Gold, Daniel Smith, and Schmincke. And then fourth may be Sennelier. The only reason I don't like Sennelier too much is because their binder is honey, and they stay sticky. They don't ever dry, and that kind of drives me crazy. The only one I've noticed a weird smell with is the whole vine. The Winter Newton are okay. I use them in mixed media projects for greeting cards and things like that. I have one of those little 12-color pocket sets. Is that this one? My favorite part of this little 12-color set is the little brush, which isn't in here. It's in my travel watercolor kit. That's honestly my favorite part of this kit. It's not a favorite of mine, but again, I use it for mixed media things. At some point, I get so many of these kits because I'm doing things like these reviews, and then at some point I start purging them and sending them out in Happy Mail or selling them or something like that. So look for something like that to maybe happen at some point. But this is one that I keep, and I just use this one. It gets pretty messy. I use it for mixed media, and that way I don't care if I've stuck an acrylic brush in this paint. It doesn't matter. I like the Prima. They have a nice metal box. The paints are good quality. We don't know the exact light fastness on them because Prima doesn't—I don't think Prima knows. They do claim to be light fast, but we don't know how much. My only gripe is that they are not marked with the color name. So as you're unwrapping your little cakes, we'll come individually wrapped. So as you're pulling your little pans out and unwrapping them, right, with a Sharpie on there somewhere, the number of the color. You know what, Michelle? That would be a fun picture. I will actually work on that because I have a lot of pallets of paint. At this point, I have a lot. Maybe Anne can help me with that when she's here Friday. So yeah, my only gripe with the Prima box is that you need to mark your pans as you unwrap them. Anything else? So I would get a pallet box. This is a Schmincke one, but you can get generic brands, a pallet boxes. Without the name, they're cheaper. Jackson's Art out of the UK, actually, even though they're in the UK, with shipping is one of the cheapest places around to get empty metal pallet boxes. So look there, Jackson's Art dot UK, I think. The link's on the Watercolor Wednesday page, I believe. You can get an empty box.  And then start buying your tubes of paint and adding to your collection of tubes and fill up your paint. Just do one or two tubes at a time. That's how I started most of my pallets. Now a pallet like this is supposed to hold 48 of these little small half pans or 24 full pans. I will tell you, you can get four more pans in these than they say you can. And then they fit really nice and tight and snug. And yes, it will be a leading leaning tower of pallets. Because in the last few months or year, I've been purging some of my acrylic paints, but not so much on the watercolor paints. And now that we started doing these swatches and companies started sending me paint, I have a lot of paint now. A lot of paint. So I might have to do something about that upcoming happy mail or something or sell it on my arts and parts. All right, that's it for today. I am going to go take a shower because I'm still stinky from the gym and then get something to eat. And I think that's it for today. I have to edit that July video for journaling Crazy Analyst style and then I got to work on August. And I wish I could share some of these pictures with you guys because some of these pages I've been doing are fabulous and I think you're going to really enjoy them. But I can't. Not even if you're a student. All right, that's it for right now. Have a great day. I'll try to get the Watercolor Wednesday page updated today, tomorrow at the latest. Everybody have a great day. Play with your paints.  And if I decide to do some purging, I'll let y'all know. All right, that's it for right now.  Buy some watercolor paint. All right, that's it. Bye guys.


Yeah, I got the truck camping accessories all ready to go cooler waiters camping gear All the good stuff I showed you in one of those videos as it turns out bad weather thunderstorms coming through Nasty cold front. Well, what did I decide to do? I decided to go up north up north of the wall into, Oklahoma And do some trout fishing so right now you and I are going to investigate the waters and see how they look I see a duck flying Look at that sucker go Off into the distance he goes boy. It looks like some flow Hello flow Progressive you're here nice to meet you Flow and muddy water that's not what we want to see quite honestly Putting them in the box Little sort that's This water so muddy. This is not the jam That was a trot. I would this is like last time I was here the second day It's terrible. Oh my gosh. There's ice It's ice on my guides What am I doing here? Okay, okay, okay pause it right there. That was me about eight hours ago Attempting to make a trout fishing video. I was wanting to go back. I know a lot of you watch the trout fishing video You like the camping and everything and I've been all set It's been on my mind to go back there But this is also the day after getting back from seeing the brain surgeon Obviously, you know what I'm about to get into but for me getting just back from the doctor This is an escape for me to just go out and this is my mechanism whenever I have issues I go into the outdoors.  I can't really get off my mind loaded up with lures I'm giving it a dangle. I'm enjoying the river I'm enjoying just being out there. I'm camping. I'm doing all these things making delicious coffee and I'm doing everything I can To try to get what is going on off my mind, but I started getting phone calls and texts About this this issue that I'm having and some other issues that are going on and Suddenly I realized like I'm basically just out here trying to Not really go through the motions But I'm trying to make a video and I'm not I'm not myself at this moment And I never want to not be myself on video And just go out there just just to just to make videos and put them up you know the reason I make Fishing videos and all these videos that I do is to When I get excited about something I want to share that and I want others to get Inspired to go do it or help others and I enjoy it myself I want to share that experience just being out of meet-up a few meet-ups meeting people Hands down. Hey, I watched one of your videos. I got excited to go out there and do this It's changed changed my life or I got back into this after not fishing for 20 years and man I'm so happy right now and hey, I'm using this to cope with this and it just it helps me out so much that Is it might be my life's purpose?  Well, he never really left It's just he's like Respond and started growing again And I think I always knew that that was going to happen and I was gonna have to deal with it I just wasn't ready to do it this soon I have to go get my checkups every few months and then hey no growth Okay, we'll deal with it. You know five ten years down the road if something happens, whatever But the reality is it's here right and now and I have to deal with it right here and now and what I realized Be out there in the outdoors Even though I was escaping it's like I Don't need to be here right now. I need to be back home. I need to be with the family I need to be with my girls and Resolving this issue and kind of talking this out a little bit more because Literally, I just got back to the doctor and I'm like, okay got brain tumor growing. All right I guess I'm going in the outdoors mom. So as OSG my wife Stephanie was calling me texting me and relaying information about you know insurance and doctors appointments and all these things I just decided I needed to come home and deal with it. The fishing was not good I would have been out there all day trying to just catch fish and I realized it was it was just me Excaping really it was terrible conditions of 28 degrees. I mean snow was falling It's just one of those days where you know, I don't need to be here. It was like God was telling me You don't need to be here. You need to be dealing with this situation and kind of resolving what is going on with the fam And now I'm here to relay more information Intel to you guys and resolve this so I can go back into the outdoors with a clean conscious of okay I have vented. I've talked about it.  I had a tumor back. This was a year and a few months ago I had surgery on a tumor named Willis and it was around five centimeters Wide if I remember correctly and the doctor reminded me of this, you know five centimeters wide pretty good size, but then Imagine the circumference of that all the way around. I don't know how big a golf ball is But you know probably around ping pong or golf ball size. That's actually not a huge tumor There's there's a lot of people that have like base ball size tumors Somehow your body absorbs that your brain like absorbs it and you don't realize the growth because it's just slow and Your body just gets used to it over time and my case I found out because it was bumping into some important wires in there The crotted artery and the optic nerve the reason I named the tumor Willis was because of the bundle of nerves It was around it was called. I think the bundle of Willis or it had something to do with Willis anyway, so there's a lot of important circuits there It's kind of attached like a tick to My carotid artery which is the main artery going up and down all the way, you know through your spine into your brain And it's one of the most important not it probably the most important artery in your body So when pressure starts forming on that carotid artery you can have stroke. Thank God I was just having the The headaches and the extreme I mean the extreme and you guys I documented it But but a stroke happens when your arteries cut off your brain's not getting enough oxygen and then starts starving and anyway That's a real thing could happen. So thankfully through all of your support amazing doctors great people in the hospital system With all sorts of other issues with insurance and the whole the buckle I was able to have brain surgery get Willis not removed But reduced dramatically can't really give an exact measurement. They're really looking at MRIs and then using these all these great digital tools that they have to the digitally Measure it's crazy the technology. They have so but it's just enough to know. Oh, yeah, it's growing. So Problem so will this went down to about a quarter in size Which is livable? Definitely you can live with that size to bring your brain your whole life You never even know problem is when it starts bumping into things growing into things that shouldn't That's where you really start having issues. So for me. That's the carotid artery It's on my left side behind my eye currently it is about four millimeters away from my Optic nerve before it was actually pressing on the optic nerve. That's why I was having just my eyesight was off For about eight months, and I didn't really know why I've always had really great vision when that pressure came off my optic nerve My vision came back, you know, it's better the part that is on the carotid artery. It's never gonna go away That's why you can't touch it. It's just one of those things. You can't touch it no matter how good you are As brain surgeon you go in there and start fiddling around It's not like they fiddle around they take it very seriously and they're extremely good, especially My doctor dr. Kim However, you just can't touch it. It's too dangerous. So that has to stay and then Branching off it was bumping into my optic nerve. So treatment-wise they want me to go ahead and Schedule a treatment. It is called gamma knife Radiation and it's amazing technology. I believe this is correct GPS coordinates I remember thinking when I heard this out of the surgeon's mouth, I was like, he's just saying GPS because you know I did with GPS all the time but GPS coordinates of basically think of your your head as a Earth a globe and then it is putting precision coordinates where the tumor is and then attacking it with Multiple laser beams of radiation. I shouldn't say laser beams. It sounds bad multiple beams of radiation I think up to like 190 beams of of light radiation Not like right.  Honestly, I still have to do my research on Radiation treatment, but for anyone out there that's wondering what radiation treatments used for it's basically to kill anything You know, they use it in cancer treatments all the time I don't know how long this gamma knife procedure has been around, but it's used to kill The tumor and shrink it basically and prevent it from growing any more radiation in your body never did the problem with being a young younger person and using radio Radio treatment it goes into your body kills the cells kills pretty much everything but then Morphing can happen later if that makes sense like teenage mutant Ninja Turtles, you know when they got in that green sauce Not immediately over over time Cancer advances and all that's the only thing that scares me about this is I don't think there's any long term Research on on this thing.  I probably have a dog. I won't have that issue but what they recommended is Definitely go in within 12 months get the procedure done more likely six You know just because if it grows outside of that area where it starts to bump up against the optic nerve then the radiation affects your optic nerve then, you know, you could lose vision and Where where else happens on your your eyeball nerve pretty important little little dangler there So that is basically what I know about the prognosis and the treatment and Basically trying to just relay that message to you guys the best I can And hopefully help someone out there my previous experience with this has definitely helped people in fact I know one person for sure that got diagnosed because of the same symptoms and went to the same doctor and had the same treatment and Maybe even saved their life phishings awesome phishings, you know, that's that's how I've Made it into the outdoor career that I have if you want to call it that but being able to share information On this platform that could potentially help someone else. I believe that is even more important I feel like I'm a steward of these of these Terrible health stories and what I was feeling today was I want to be over it Like I was already over the tumor the Willis. I was already over it now. We're here again guys So it's time to do battle once again. One more thing about the treatment. Well, it's crazy I mean, you know, yeah, you think you're gonna be like in the hospital for a while No, it's it's just a one like you're there all day from what I know of And then you can go home outpatient procedure have to do my research But I think the radiation doesn't take effect for quite a long time like many months maybe a year So my fellow phishing freaks and anyone else here. I started today's video thinking I'm gonna go catch some trout.  I got out there conditions were terrible phishing sucked home life was calling and I Believe that is the most important thing is taking care of a family family first got to tell you without without her I would be lost especially in these situations sort of shut things off and that does my problem that I'm getting back to today I just went in the outdoors and I was struggling Dealing with having to do this all over again. The lady upstairs Taking care of baby emi right now She also takes care of me quite a bit more than you guys see on camera and not that I'm Not that I'm like handicap. She might think otherwise sometimes, but just things around the household Think other things with business taking care of the family. She's there. She's there She's the rock at home. So now we have gone to battle stations to deal with the issue Stephanie again She is scheduling out appointments surgeries and talking to different insurances currently we don't have Coverage on that we should we're trying to get an exemption, but I will keep you guys abreast of that I think I've updated you on everything. I possibly can about Willis officially back You know 2.0.   You're like, how'd you keep a good attitude through that? Well faith Just positivity family like just just putting a smile on and just going for it Honestly, like you can really choose to deal with it in two different ways You can get down you can get depressed and then it causes even even more issues You can like kind of feel sorry for yourself or you can just attack it be positive. I think that's a better approach personally Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for all your support guys I will keep you updated as as we learn more, but here we are again 2019 outdoor season dealing with Willis Hopefully he will be shriveled gone dead over the summer and never to be found again And that is all I have for you today. What a doozy, but I do hope wherever you are You're having a blessed day in the outdoors or maybe it's freezing cold You're inside spending some time with family good should cherish it most important thing in life your family I love you guys and I will see you on the next one


Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Annie. Hello. Hi. For folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Yeah. I'm Annie. I am from Finland originally, living in Zurich, so it's in the nowadays. I am an Azure MVP as well as a CNCF Ambassador. What those two essentially mean that I love sharing my knowledge on both communities in Cloud and Cloud-native and container topics in general, both the conferences as well as online activities and whatnot. I've been a track chair at CubeCon for a few times already. I have hosted a weekly live stream for CNCF which is called Cloud Native Live since 2021. I've organized meetups since 2017 for CNCF and Kubernetes. I was a co-organizer for Finland. What else? I always keep forgetting half of the things that I've done, but a lot of conferences to be honest, I did 30 last year or actually- It's always a question because in fact, it's a question I ask a lot of interviewees is what's happening with the local community or things still? Does it feel like it's ramping back up or is it back ramp? Does everything back to normal post-pandemic? Well, I think for Europe in general, it's been quite good for a quite a long time now, so I think it's ramped up for sure because all the restrictions and all of these gathering with these restrictions were lifted a while ago already, so I think it's quite normal. Now, at the same time, I think communities always change and move and whatever. They never stay put, which is the good part about community as well. I think there has been a lot of communities that have gone through a lot of changes after the pandemic but that might also be due to time passing and whatnot. I also help out organizing the Swiss meetups for CNCF and communities nowadays because my employer vision where I'm the CMO, we organize and we've organized them from the beginning, so I was very happy to jump into a Swiss company as well who's been involved in the community space for such a long time. Well, I think that's where a lot of the user groups I think are struggling and part of it is, it's good and bad. It's like more of them are hybrid or virtual and so there's more of them and they're getting a lot of people that are dialing in, but an incredibly powerful part of community is the in-person aspect of it. I think that's why, I mean, I'm glad to see events are ramping up. It's a little bit slower, but it's also happening in the US and numbers are looking really good for some of these events. But it's for user groups, there's fewer people showing up in person, more people want to dial in. I think it's the same in Europe as well, because I think people got used to the easiness and you just open your laptop, you listen in, so those changes are happening here as well. But there was a bit of craze when all the restrictions got lifted, like all events were so full, so buzzing, so fun, because everyone was just so joyous to be getting desperate joyous, the same. Just same emotion. Yeah. Well, and I guess that's the hard part, is that what we see for our user group here locally is that we know more than half of the people are from out of the state, many from out of the country, and so how do you build the local community, and is that even as important as it was, the local community versus anybody that's interested within that topic? But yeah, so that's, I know that's just a struggle a lot of groups have seen, but you're right. I think events are getting back and back up to speed and more people reaching out, and there are more way to describe it, smaller events that are popping up as well. So it's good to see that. So you talked a little bit about the topic, so what are your primary contribution types? Are you more of a writer, speaker, video content, community person? Yeah, so far very much heavily on the speaking because it kind of became a whirlwind, essentially I started speaking, well, I was organizing the meetups for a long time and all of these kinds of things and doing local things, but then when I started speaking at international conferences, I was maybe a bit not greedy, but like, you know, when you're having fun and it's fun and you know what not, so I started doing a lot of them, but now I'm scaling down a bit because doing, I did through two years of 30 conferences per year, which is a lot, which is kind of, yeah. Did that for years, right? No, it's, no, people need to understand too that even if your company is covering your, paying for your flights and the hotel and all that, which is fantastic when you have that support, you're giving up weekends, it's your time, it's away from family, it's away from everything else, I mean, it's a lot, I did that, I did that two to three events a month for years. It takes a lot to do that. Exactly, so now I'm switching a bit to other things and whatnot, but that's always kind of in a flux, but a lot of speaking as well as a lot of like program committee work for KubeCon and I've done mentorship as well, like helping young mentorship programs and whatnot, and then also the meetups, I basically is a big part as well of my contribution. Now, did you come over to the, did you do the MVP summit this last year, the kind of the smaller version? So this one, something happened, I don't know who was the one who made up with this, but it was at the same time as KubeCon Euro. Yeah, I've heard that from a couple people. I know, I know. And as a CNCF ambassador, and I was doing something, I think I was speaking as well or managing, I don't know, I always do something. So I was like, okay, I'm already settled in, I'm booked and I have to go there. And it would have actually been my first in-person MVP summit, which is why I was very sad to have to make that choice, but luckily this year MVP summit in the coming spring one is one week before KubeCon Europe. So this time I'll make it for the first time for the in-person one. I know there's a few people that were, that had made extended plans over in Europe. So to go early for that and do some community activities and then participate in the conference. And now they've cut all the community stuff so they could be over in the US, do the summit and over. And I say this again and again and again to people at the MVPs or people that are aware. It's like it is the number one perk of being an MVP. There's, you get so much value out of, again, meeting all of your peers, meeting the Microsoft engineering product teams, the marketing teams. I mean, I'd say for any MVP that's on the fence of, hey, there's other events or spending the money to go over to the US, especially I realize how expensive it is to travel. It's still such a high value event and I would highly recommend that if you can that you should participate. Yeah, I've been hearing exactly the same things so my expectations are very high and I only expect them to be met but I'm very much looking forward to it, yeah. Well, I would say that it's not so much like the content and there's tons of behind the, like these are all NDA presentations folks so sorry, we can't share what we learn. We hear about the roadmap, we provide feedback, I mean, some of them are very hands-on. What you don't get even watching it virtually, what you miss out are the side conversations, like hearing the questions your peers are asking and then out in the hallway, the grilling of the speakers that had to move out of the room to let the next speaker in and out in the hallway, the conversations around that. So it very much is a place where as an MVP we can take our list of questions from us personally from the community, from our companies and really get answers or attempt to get answers but develop relationships with the right contacts inside of Microsoft. Anyway, I'm soapboxing on, for folks that are just watching this that are not on MVPs they're like, yeah, what value is this to me? No, no value is you. Except if you know an MVP and you have a question you can actually provide your question those MVPs so you might be able to get some answers out of that. Yeah, and even if you don't know an MVP you can always reach out and send a message in LinkedIn, any social medias or whatever. I think people would be happy to help or I can, for example, just pass on the question as well if anyone has anything. That's a great way to do it. Well, I always say don't be shy to the MVPs, get to know your local MVPs. And so you've been an MVP now for three years now? Two or three. Yeah, yeah, I'm around that. So what was your journey to becoming an MVP? How'd you hear about it? Was it something you kind of aspired to do or what was that story? I actually knew a lot of MVPs at the time as well. So I, so back in the day, so I've done like a 10 year career in tech and tech marketing and other products and whatnot. And within that time I worked at Microsoft for example in DX before. So it was involved with a lot of the startups and developer engagements and everything. So even back then I was kind of diving deep into the tech communities from Microsoft, which obviously included the MVPs and all of these. So I already knew a lot of folks from that time. And then, well, I started organizing the meetups, the per-CNCF and communities and so forth, which eventually just led me to kind of doing my own contributions as well and everything. So it was, I think, for me, it was felt like a very natural path because I knew so many MVPs because they're lovely and very chatty folk. So then it just became kind of like a natural step too. And so I'm sure now you've had plenty of people that come forward. You talked about already providing mentoring. Do you provide mentoring around the MVP program? Do people come and say, hey, how do I go down that path and what is your advice to those folks? Well, a lot of people do ask me that in events. The mentorships that I've done have been for example, part of those I want to like, it's tech mentorship for starting founders, for example, in the Nordics. This is what I'm part of the, Microsoft wrote about it to the MVP plug as well, like about four different mentors around the globe. For example, I also coach early stage startups as well, part of an accelerator programs for a few years now because I used to be a professional, like a startup coach as well back in the day. But as far as like MVPs or people who want to do tech speaking because people might ask that from CNCF ambassador point of view as well and so forth. I just usually tell people, do whatever you love, like do whatever makes you happy as far as like teaching or somehow contributing to the tech communities around you. Because there's so many different ways to become an MVP or to be honest, to become someone who contributes to the tech communities, which is the most important part in my opinion is the contributions. It's the kind of helping other people. I know people who have become MVP, for example, because they do a lot of stack overflow, like answering. They just answered every single question for a certain topic. I think that's amazing. I know people from both of the programs who've been in both who have been open source maintainers and because they are a part of a project, they help people get started within their open source project, which is also a form of educating and kind of talking and so forth. Or people just do a lot of conferences, write books or whatever it is. So there's so many different ways to get to MVP or one of these tech community memberships. And I think the key is just figuring out what do you like to do? If you like writing blog posts, write blog posts. If you like anything videos, do that because whatever you like doing is the thing that you're kind of probably like to do for a long time and because it requires a bit more effort than just doing one thing once. So that's why number one thing. So find what you like and just rinse and repeat this issue. I've had conversation with a couple of folks that just said, ah, I'm not doing enough. I'm not blogging enough. I was like, well, no, you're out there creating video after video after video.  You're doing a lot of other stuff but that's what it really kind of comes down to is it's a lot for a lot of people that are, number one is you're given back to the community. That's what it's about. So if you don't enjoy sharing what you're working on and sharing the knowledge that you have, then it's not for you. That's the core of this. But if you're doing that, there's no, to your exact point, there's no single way. There's not a checklist of things to become an MVP. So it doesn't have to be a broad range of all of those things. You can be like, all I ever do is get into tech community or Stack Overflow and answer questions. That's it. There are people that get their MVP that way. What the volume needs to be, the area, that's the black box part of it. Like we don't know. It's Microsoft that makes the decisions but yeah, there's a place for everybody to get involved. And then of course, there are the people that do all those things and never get MVP. It's like, well, you're getting the value. You're making connections. You're helping people. It's nice to have the award. It doesn't always happen. So again, it's not a checklist just because you're in there doing it on a regular basis like doesn't mean guarantee that you're gonna get that. But again, there's a lot of value. There's a lot of benefits. And hopefully the people that are in there doing it for the right reason, helping people, that's enough. That's plenty. Yeah, exactly. I agree because at the end of the day while matters is that we're helping and sharing our knowledge because that's just like a very, I think very basic human nice thing to do as well. And that's the thing that matters is the helping other people and helping the people around you and sharing knowledge. And as long as you're doing that you should be kind of doing good as well in that way. Well, Annie, I really appreciate your time today. And maybe we'll see each other at the event. I'll definitely be there of course. We never know how they organize things whether we'll be in different areas. Usually the Azure topics are over in one building and I'm over in the collaboration, the SharePoint teams, areas and another building. And so we'll see how the layout is for this year. But hopefully we'll run into each other at some point. Yeah, there's gonna be a lunch or something where we can catch up or something. Likely something. Maybe there'll be a big jumbo party where they kind of bring everybody together again like the old days. So we'll have to see what's in the budget, what they're doing. But really appreciate your time. And for folks that want to connect with you, reach out and find you. Where are you most social? Where can people find you? I think LinkedIn to be honest is the most certain place but I am on, you know, the old Twitter which is the X nowadays or I am on Blue Sky as well and whatever. So, you know. So there's like a dozen of us on Blue Sky now, awesome. Yeah, exactly. But I think LinkedIn is the one that I use the most for sure, yeah. For sure. Well, we'll have the links to all of her contacts. You'll be able to find it out, of course on Buck the Planet blog, out on YouTube and out on the podcast when it all goes live. So thanks so much and hope to see you here in March. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Wow.