Good morning, everybody. There might only be one of you out there, but that's fine. Good morning. Welcome to Watercolor Wednesday. We are going to work on a little still life, and we're going to play with the Prima watercolors this morning. I just sprayed them down a minute ago to sort of activate all the paints. I need a rag. I need a rag. I need a rag. How is everybody this morning? Got a rag. That's the only thing I need. I got a cough drop. I didn't have time to make tea. Hey, Sabrina. Hey, Tamari. How are you? Tommy girl, good morning. So we're going to work on a little still life this morning. This is my watercolor journal that I've been working in since last year. And we're going to find a page here to work on as we are doing the flip. I'm a little stuffy and wheezy to be really honest this morning. So I've taken some medicine. I've got a cough drop in my mouth. I didn't have time to make tea, but I will as soon as our broadcast is over. I left the house yesterday and had to go run errand. So that means I'm exposed to dust and pollen and mold and perfume. And usually I'm wheezy and gross the next day because of all of my allergies that I have now in asthma and everything. So let's see. Some of these are good. Some of these are not so good. But it's been fun. And I learned something from every single one of these. I really like this kind of sort of test, journal-y page. I can't think of the word this morning. See, I'm telling you guys, I'm just having a morning. Let me call that like study, like field notebook. Field notebook, that's it, kind of page. I like that. So you might want to look forward to me doing more of that like in the future in other journals because I really like the field notebook style. All right, I think we're, this is, I think, the one we did last year. So, I mean, last year. Hello, good morning. This is last week. Oh, yay, yay. I took my asthma and allergy meds this morning. I've got a cough drop in my mouth. That means I'm going to be a little bit more flighty than normal. Sorry guys, but I couldn't breathe. All right, so we've got our Prima watercolors here. Now the Prima watercolors come in three sets. In the interest of full disclosure, I bought two, they sent me one. I had to have all of them. I just had to. They do normally come in a smaller watercolor box. I wanted them all in one box, so I got this bigger box to put them in. Not because there's anything wrong with a small Prima watercolor box. I did not get rid of them. I have one of them right here. Hey, Cindy, I love these small watercolor boxes. This I put the whole buying watercolors in. These little watercolor boxes are fabulous, especially for traveling, but I wanted all three sets of my Primas in one box. Hey, Josie, hey, Lisa. So I re-boxed them into this larger palette, which I ordered from Jackson's Art out of the UK. And I have all of them in rows by the sets they normally come in. So the classics, tropicals, and decadent pies. And then in this fourth row, this is a really big box.  I'm sort of hoping at some point they come out with more colors. Can you see that? Oh, yay. Well, I'm glad that you are finding something to do, Cindy, to occupy yourself during this difficult time, which we won't get into on a live broadcast, but if your son is watching, hello. And I hope that things improve for the family and for him soon. All right, so we're gonna work on some still lives. And I won't get into it, because I don't wanna violate anybody's privacy, Cindy's privacy, or anybody else's privacy, but let's just say that Cindy Utter and her family could use some love and support this week. And there are a lot of, you know, artists and mixed media people, YouTubers out there that I know are going through difficult times, so let's spread the love and support and less hate, everybody.   So anyway, let's paint and have some fun. All right, so I have little tiny small, my little speech aside, that's as political as I usually ever get. So just FYI, all right. Told you guys I took medicine this morning. All right, so I have a collection of little small things I pick up every now and then at thrift stores and garage sales that I use for props. And when I come across like really pretty flowers or I bring home some really pretty fruit from the grocery store, before we do anything else with it, I usually break out my little box of props and my cell phone and I take some inspiration photos, which these are. And I'm gonna try to lift it up here because I'm noticing there's some glare on the album. In this case, I came home with some Rainier cherries and I took out this little silver creamer that I have somewhere. I put it away so I don't know that I can get it quickly for you guys because it's a way. I don't know, I put things away and then I've taken medicine, I don't know, anyway. So I printed these photos kind of a while ago and I altered the photo in a photo editing app to make it more painterly. So I have the original and the altered one side by side here in my album. And I thought that we would just play an experiment with doing some kind of little still life inspired by this photo with the Prima watercolor paints. Now you don't have to do this, you could just play with the colors and see how they blend and mix on the page. And we're gonna do some of that, so I'll show you.  Just have fun and play and experiment. And just, especially if you're going through a hard time, let all of that out in your page, in your color mixing. Hey Josie, hey Hanny. All right, so I've got a variety of brushes, some rounds, a fan brush, a flat one. I'm gonna stick them over here in the water. I've got my, holy cow, heated boxing tool. This is what happens when I've taken medicine, you guys. So why don't I take it too much? All right, let's spray these one more time. And then we need a pencil. Pencil, pencil, pencil. Okay, so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just kind of just do a quick sketch.  I'm just, I'm drawing what I see, not what I think I see. Think about that. It's a lot harder than you think it is. But just draw the shapes.  And I've gotta, you know, you're just drawing the shapes.  I like the effect that they give me on my journal page. The challenge in this one, because the little pictures silver is similar to when you do glasses, getting the color right and the highlights in the right place to actually have it kind of look like or suggest the creamer, the little creamer picture thing. And I'm not, you know, I'm not, you guys know I'm not all about the details. I'm not the detail girl. That would be my sister Karen. That's not me. And there's plenty of artists out there who do detail work honestly way better than I do. But I wanna suggest just enough of the detail that we can get an idea of what's going on. Wait, let's see. I'm gonna bring this and I'm gonna draw some of our shapes up here. And like I said, we don't wanna draw too many details. The Frugal Crafter just had a watercolor tutorial the other day. I didn't get to watch all of it because I got interrupted, but it was a pretty good one. She wasn't doing cherry. She was doing something else. Hey, Jodi. Alrighty. The rest of our cherries. Now, the one thing I think I'm gonna do is not draw all the crazy stems that are sticking out of all my cherries over here in the inspiration photo. I think I have about a few too many put some in. Let's see. Something like that. So yeah, I made the mistake yesterday of having to go to the grocery store and get my mammogram done.  Anyway, now I'm all congested and wheezy because the whole planet bothers me now. Thanks, American Greetings. That's pretty good. All right. Let's start with a big brush and let's do like what we usually do and do our back room round first. Strawberries, that's what she did. Lisa, thank you. She did strawberries. I loved her strawberries. I didn't get to watch the whole thing so I am looking forward to watching it later and commenting. She's commented on one of my watercolor videos which was very sweet of her. I know she's like super busy. So I'm getting the background wet just because I kind of, you know, I want, I don't mind if the paint kind of goes everywhere. In the background, I want it to be a little bit abstract. Okay. Um, I think I'm going to stick with the big brush so I don't have to be sketchy at work all along. We're working on these little still life of these cherries, Jodi. I think this picture is on my inspirations page, on my website, jeanandbearons.com. If it's not, somebody let me know, but I think it is. I'm going to start, one of my problems with the Prima paints, they don't have color names. They have numbers. I don't like that. I'm going to start with number 14 out of the tropicals which is kind of an ochre color. You can see right here, it's kind of an ochre color. And because the paper's already wet, the paint's going to just, it's going to follow the water. I don't have to worry about it going into the fruit or into the picture because that's not wet. But if it did a little bit, I'm not too concerned about it. Okay, and let's put a little bit of that color up here. Now the Prima watercolors are really well pigmented. I like the way they're pigmented. We have no idea if they're light fast. Prima says they are light fast or they have some light fast qualities, but we can't get any positive data out of them regarding that. So I would kind of, as my grandmother would say, take that with a grain of salt because I have no idea if it's true or not. So now staying with the tropicals for the moment, we're going to go into number 24, which is more of a Sienna color. I have the little pitcher sitting on top of a bamboo mat. These kind of still lifes are fun to do with limited palettes. I do these kind of things when I'm traveling and I have a, I mean, I have a large travel palette, but it's really kind of limited. I mean, I don't carry nearly so many colors as I have of course in my studio. And it's fun to do these kinds of things with a limited palette and maybe to, I'm going to lift some of that, and maybe to do the cherries and do the shapes, but do them maybe in purple or something like that. Those kinds of things are fun.  Okay, so I'm going to kind of be a little bit more conscious of where my shadows are. I got a little bit of that Sienna color in too many places where I didn't want it. And again, I'm looking at my inspiration photo for shadows, where the dark spots are. And if you want to have expressive paintings, no matter your medium, go with a bigger brush than you would normally use, maybe paint with your non-dominant hand, something like that. Okay, let's see. Now we're going to go, and we're still working on the background, we're going to go a little bit darker, and let's go with number 10 out of the Classics palette, which is like a sepia color. And again, being very conscious of in the inspiration photo where the shadows are, I like that. Now's the part I'm not looking forward to, you guys. We're going to work on the little picture. Now it's a silver, antique silver picture. So it's reflecting all kinds of different colors. You could just paint it gray, but it's going to be really flat. And it does have reflections of like the cherry colors in it and the colors from the bamboo mat. So we're going to put first some of the ochery color in here, and then I'm going to put some of the Sienna-type color in here. And again, I am looking at my inspiration photos, and I'm looking at the shapes reflected in the little picture, and it doesn't have to be perfect. Just get that right out of your brain.  Actually, I can see my face reflected in the picture in the creamer in the picture, and yeah, we're not going to go there. Holy cow, I just noticed that. All right, so I'm going to switch to a round brush now because I think it's time. And, and, and we are going to start with from the classics color number 11, which is a light gray. Because we're using the Prima paints, and we have metallics, I may throw some actual silver in here at some point. Hey, Ann. Okay, so I'm going to go in with the lightest gray color. I'm going to put some of this on here. I'm going to try to leave some spots white because there is light or the flash reflected in the picture. And we're just going to go around and your colors are going to overlap and we're going to be okay with that. The picture's the hardest part. Hey, Gina, hey, Patricia, hey, Gina. Staying high to myself, hello. Hey, Patricia, how are you? It's just a matter of practice, Sabrina, honestly. One of the things you want to remember from doing from a photo, and maybe I should, well, you guys can kind of see the photo here, can't you? So you want to remember when you're doing a photo from a photo is to really work with the shapes that you actually see, not what you think you're seeing, which I know is really hard. I tell that to drawing students and they're like, oh, you know, once you think about it and you get the full implication of what that means, it's very difficult and I know that. But once you finally train your brain to do that, you're going to find you have a much easier time of it. So I'm going to just put some water here. I'm going to go with, I'm going to mix some of our gray with number 35 out of decadent pies, which looks like a dark Prussian blue color. A little bit of that and stick it in here. Yeah, that's a good color. And we're going to start to map out our shadows a little bit better than we have. And I like to work from not only the original photo, but an altered one because I like to not get stuck trying to paint all the details because that really doesn't make me happy. And if I'm just only working from the original photo, I tend to try to paint all the details. That's just where my brain wants to go. And I know it's not going to make me happy. It's just going to frustrate me. Again, I'm trying to leave some spaces white or very light because that's where the flash is hitting the picture and where we are getting the most reflection of light and I want to duplicate some of that. Now, you may screw up. I actually did right here. I'm going to put it right next to it. You may screw up and you may lose your white and that's okay. We're mixed media artists ultimately. You can always go in there with a gel pen or a white paint pen. I hope you can keep a connection too. So we are working with watercolors and I do like the messy thing with all of the pencil marks. If that really bugs you, then you're going to want to at some point go in and erase the pencil marks or just do it without. But I don't recommend that. And one of the things you can do like a shortcut is you can blow your picture up, whatever your inspiration photo is, to the size you want it to be on your journal page or your piece of paper and then use some tracing paper to trace the shapes onto the paper and then paint it. You could totally do that. Hey, Chetta. All right, so now we're going to go, I'm quite done with this color, hang on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope I could paint something that looks actually decent for you guys because the medicine kind of makes me loopy. I probably shouldn't say that out loud. All right, this is from the classics. This is color number 12. I think it's just black. You know, again, they don't have names. You just have numbers. So we're going to put a little bit of this in here. Hey, Ramo, I never have anybody physically helping me in the studio with these broadcasts. I'm watching on FYI, for those of you who are new, I'm watching on my iPad. So if I miss comments for a little bit, it's because I'm painting and I'm not looking. It's really great when YouTubers have, you know, people helping them with the comments and stuff, you know, live in the studio. I don't have that. So we're just, we're making our shadows in the little creamer darker. We haven't done our cherries yet, but we will.  I'm looking at it on the camera. It's actually not too bad. All right, we're going to do the cherries for a little bit. I don't think I'm done with the picture, but I want to let it dry a little bit. So let's work on the cherries. And these are Rainier cherries, which are yellow and orange and red. They're not a solid red. So I want to start with yellow. And I'm going to go with Decadent Pies number 29, which is kind of a muted yellow, which is actually a color I really love from this set. And I'm going to just lay down some color in the bits of cherries that are yellow in the inspiration photo. I'm trying to breathe. I can't breathe. This one has some yellow in it. And there is some yellow reflected in our picture. So as you're painting the cherries, you're going to look and you're going to see that there's different colors reflected because you have this shiny mirror surface. All right, so now let's go in with number four from the classics. We're going to mix it with that yellow that we just used, just because I can and I want to. So on this one here, I'm going to make the parts of the cherry that are farther away from me and that are sitting, because the cherry is round, right? So the edges would be darker. Some of it's bleeding into the little picture, but that's okay. We're going to just blot it up with a rag, or let's see, for being proper watercolor artists, what do we call that? Lifting, I don't call it lifting. It's blotting, blotting people, blotting. So just adding that little bit of darker yellowy orange color to those cherries already starts to make it look round. I'm going to lift some of this here in the middle because it's bleeding a little bit more than I want it to. That's much better. All right, so now we're going to make that redder and we're going to go in with the classics number three, which is a nice true red. We're going to mix it with those other colors that we had on here to just orange it up just a little bit and I'm going to go into this one just with like that much. And then I'm going to take what's left on my brush and add it to some other cherries. And I'm not going to get too close to this one that I just did because I don't necessarily want the colors to bleed into that cherry too much. So then I just have just water, plain water. Lift a bit. There we go. I always have like a rag or paper towel handy. Hey, Toy, how are you? If you haven't seen the Frugal Crafters painting on the strawberries yet, oh boy, you guys go watch it. I didn't get to see the whole thing, but what I did see, I loved, she does a fabulous job. So definitely go over and take a gander at that. Now this cherry has a little reflection on it. A little spot that's almost completely white, like right about there. And it's almost a complete square. Oh, little creative, hello, welcome. And don't forget you guys, if you have some questions to ask me some questions, may take me a minute to see the question, but I will see it eventually. So I put a little bit of the color and then we're just spreading it out with the water. All the rest of these cherries have a lot of red in them. And you know, I have the heat embossing tool here because at some point I'm going to come in and dry this. Y'all know I'm going to do that, right? All right, so I'm going to take, before we do anything else, I'm going to take a little bit of the red from our cherries. It is reflected in the picture a little bit. So we are going to add that where I see it on here. Ah, so I did. These are the Prima watercolors. I have all three sets of Prima watercolors. They did, in the interest of full disclosure, 71 set. I bought the other two. I unboxed them from their individual boxes into one big box because I prefer to work that way with them. I have a variety of brushes from Princeton Select and Grumbacher, Princeton Neptune, and this one is just a royal round and a flat. I do have a fan brush. I'm not sure we're going to need it, but I do have a fan brush out. This is already looking pretty good. You know, if I wanted to stop here, I'd be happy, but we're going to keep going. Thank you, Patricia. That's very sweet. I like my art some days, but you know, I do have the great archive of painting failures out in the garage on canvas. My daughter's boyfriend thinks that's hilarious, but I call them the painting failure graveyard, but I do. All right, so we're going to go in with the tropicals. There's number 19, which is kind of more of a magenta color. Can you see how bright and kind of magenta-y that is? Yeah, I prefer to work with them like this, and I can have all of the primas, you know, out at the same time on my palette. All right, so I'm going to use this kind of darker red around the edges of some of these cherries. So I'm getting these like streaky lines because my brush was too dry, just FYI. Yeah, I really like their paints. I have two gripes. One, I wish there was an option to get all of the paints in one box. And two, I wish the colors had names instead of numbers. Those are my two gripes, and I just saw something pop up about Pam pastels. I'll read it in a minute. But if it's a question, have I tried them? The answer's no. I have chalk pastels, and I like them okay? They're not my favorite. Although I've done some fabulous pieces of artwork with them, they're not my favorite. I know it's probably a sin. It's probably some kind of art sin. Okay, let's not forget these down here.  It'll be easier for you, I think. Okay. AG2 fan, welcome. Hey Ian, hello, welcome. Yeah, the frugal crafter does some fabulous Pam pastel tutorials. I would say, look at her channel. I have chalk pastels. I haven't done a tutorial on them in a really long time if I've ever done one on YouTube. I don't remember. They're not my favorite. I do love charcoal, but both of those, I used to use a lot more than I do now because the dust makes me wheeze. So there you have it. We're using the Prima watercolors today, Ian. All right, so now I'm gonna take these reds, the magenta-y color that I have here from the Tropical Set number 19, and I'm going to add some number 32 to it from the decadent pies, and we're gonna orange that up a little bit. Hey Shelly. All right, so we're just slowly working our way darker and getting our tones in there to make our cherries look more round instead of flat. So I'm going into the edges and anywhere where I see darker, even darker red colors, and putting this color there. This darker sort of orangey color. Again, I'm gonna put some of this up here. Hey Teresa, I'm gonna use a little bit of this darkish red-orange color that we made to darken our yellow cherries. Let's see if I can lift some of that. That's too much. There we go. A little bit goes a long way, so put a little bit, put some water, see if that works for you. Maybe then you wanna add more. It's easier in watercolor, of course, to add more color than take away. So try not to get into a habit where you're having to take away lots of paint. It's not like with acrylic paint where you can just cover up a mistake with more layers of paint, but that makes it more of a challenge, which is fun, I think. This is the Prima Watercolor Palette. Okay, let's see, what other color? So I'm gonna take this number 30, this dark brown from the Decadent Pies, and again, I'm gonna mix it with my reds. I'm gonna get this really dark reddish brown color. And I'm going to actually dry these a little bit because I wanna be more controlling about where this color goes. And no worries, Teresa. All right, so I'm gonna go in between my cherries. There's some dark shadows in between the cherries. And so we're going to paint those in. So I'm gonna put this color in around. I'm gonna actually zoom in a little bit. I think that would be helpful. Yeah, these are all the Prima Watercolors in one box. I really like the Prima Watercolors. I think for the value, I mean, for the cost, they're a good value. They're decent paints. And the box is fabulous. I just wanted all three sets in one box cause you know, that's how I am. So this yellow cherry is in front of the red one. So I'm darkening up the one behind it. Thanks, Ian. I have chalk pastels and I do like them. And I have to though use them outside and usually wear a mask because the dust from the charcoal and the pastels make me wheeze. And thank you, Ann. I just started a long time ago just, you know, playing with watercolors. See, I'm starting to get lost in what I'm doing. Can you tell? So I'm pretty sure at least the unaltered version of this photo is on my website. GinaBEarons.com. It's free for you to download. If it's not, somebody let me know and I will make sure it gets on there this afternoon. Hopefully as soon as we're done with the broadcast. Ooh, that's too much right there. So we've got a rag. There we go. Always have the rag handy. So I'm barely touching the brush to the paper. You of course could go with a smaller brush. I've got one here, but as I've said before, I'm the lazy crafter. So, you know, there's that. So there's nothing wrong with being splattery and kind of heavy handed, I think, with the watercolors. If you haven't seen who Jean Haynes is, definitely look at her. She's fabulous. I definitely am not a super realist painter. I like things to look painterly. So I'm gonna add detail to this, but I'm not gonna add a lot of detail. And Jean Haynes really does amazing work with things that are splattery and crazy. So I definitely would say look her up. Okay, so we're gonna add this dark reddish brown here to our little creamer because there is a very dark shadow right here. And then there's some in between these cherries. There's a dark spot. And while I want this to be painterly, I don't wanna completely lose the shapes of my cherries. So I'm gonna come in with a little bit of the paint and then I'm gonna come in with some water to blend the paint out in the direction I want it to be blended out like that. Okay, so this, you know, I've tried to, at this point, Ian, and the rest of you know, I've tried a lot of paints. And some of them you can really push around and they really flow well when you put it down and then you put the water because you want it to go that way and not the other way. And some of them blend really well, some of them don't. This one does really well for kind of a student-quality, craft-quality watercolor paint, which I do stick it in that category. I think these blend really well. The color selection is really nice. They move really well on the paper. This is cold-pressed watercolor paper. I'm pretty sure it's Fabriano. It could be Kanton or it could be Strathmore. Honestly, I'd have to go back and watch my own video on how I made the book, which is on you to me because I don't remember. But I'm pretty sure it's Fabriano. No, don't hold me to that. But it is 140-prown cold-pressed watercolor paper. And I think this paint does very well on it. Of all the kind of student-quality paints I've gotten, it's, I can definitely say it's one of my favorites. I'm really liking these cherries. Now, a few minutes ago, I would have said to you that I wasn't so sure where this painting was going. I like this up, though. Definitely look up Jean Haines. Maybe one of you guys can type her name in with the proper spelling for Anne and some of the others. Jean Haines has a fabulous, splattery, kind of almost heavy-handed style with the paint. And I love her style. I won't show it too much on camera because that's not fair to Jean. She's got some great books out there that you should really look up. But I think she does a great job. Now, one thing I noticed with this paint that I like, this is not something I dislike. You notice right there, I kind of had a blob of dark brown where I kind of wasn't so sure I wanted it. So I came in with just some water. It reactivated nicely. It does, yes, stain a little bit, but it will still move around. Some of them stain so much that once they dry, they're really difficult to go back in there and blend out. And I really like when I have the option of going back in there and having it move. This is watercolor after all, and I like that it moves. Yeah, I haven't cracked mine yet, but I do have it a little creative. I do have it. I have every single one of her books. I even sent to the UK for one of them. All right, let's see where we're at on this cute little picture. I think we need to go a little bit darker, and we still have to put our stems in. So as you build up your layers of watercolor, start with your lightest value of colors and work your way darker. And that will create an interesting layered painting, something that's gonna give you something that you're really gonna enjoy. I'm noticing right here, let's see, let's go in with, let's make this a little bit darker. Or I'm gonna grab some of this other color that's on my mixing palette down here. Oh, yeah, that's much better. I do wanna add some shadowing right here. Any one of her books that you can get her, you won't go wrong. Just pick one of her books and get that one. All of her books are very well written. Her tutorials are really easy to follow, step-by-step instructions. You won't go wrong. If I was gonna write a watercolor book, which I won't, I would write it very much in her style. And I can't wait. Someday is on my bucket list to take a class with her. Someday. I wanna get some more brown out. So let's go with number 24. And we're gonna mix it into some of this gray-green we have going on over here, which I don't remember what color that is. I have a feeling it was a mixture of something. Alrighty. When you put in the really dark color, this is when things are like, holy crap, I could really screw this up. Just be brave and take a deep breath. All right. All right, let's put a little bit of it here. I'm not gonna go too far with it because I wanna be able to blend it out. Although that's less of an issue with the pre-mote paints than it is with some, I'm going to take a little bit of number 33. And let's need to darken up this cherry here a little bit. So don't think just because you're a beginner that you can't go take a class with some of these really great teachers. Pauline Agnew is one of those. She teaches people painting from all skill levels. A lot of people are afraid to take our classes whether online or in person because they're afraid they're not good enough. Don't feel that way. She's a fabulous teacher. I knew nothing about proper painting when I first met Pauline and she taught me a lot. So definitely don't feel like you have to be a certain way to learn from some of these fabulous teachers. They'd probably be the first one to tell you that that's a load of belonging. And yes, I'm watching my language because that's not the word I'd probably normally use. Just FYI, okay. So I'm just putting some of these dark shadows in. So the hardcover revised version of color and light has more in it. The original version is a less intensive book. I have both of them because I got the one before the newer version came out. No, if you have the new one, don't get the old one. Her work is absolutely stunning, Ann.   So I'm following my inspiration photo around. I'm bouncing around and I'm adding my darker color in every place where I see that there's darker colors on the inspiration photo. I'm just using the same color. I haven't done anything to it. This kind of grayish-greenish-brownish color. Trying to remember to leave white space where I want to have a white highlight or at least a light colored space. Now these watercolors, these Prima watercolors are nicely transparent. So when I lay them over the other colors that are already on here, like over the gray and silver, it's gonna be more grayish-blueish-grayish-silver. And over the reds, it's more warm, more carmely, more red. So it's one thing I love about them. I prefer watercolor over gouache because I love for it to, I love the transparency and the layers of sort of puddling on the paint.  There's a bunch of fabulous watercolorists out there and definitely we should start some sort of a file over in the Facebook group of ones that you guys all love for inspiration. If there are some favorites, we should probably start a list of at least the proper spellings of their names so people can go look them up either on Amazon or Pinterest or something. That's probably a really good idea to do.  Let's see. Oh, hey Paula, Ron Ranson. Okay, Ayan, we'll look him up. And yeah, I've heard good things about her, Lisa, that she's very nice. That's actually not too bad. I'm looking at it in the camera to see how it looks. Things always look different on camera too, FYI. So when I get stuck on something frequently, I'll take a picture of it and then stand back. I don't know why that always aids me more than just standing back from it, but it does. Okay, let's put some stems in. I'm gonna use the smaller brush. I do have a smaller brush or somewhere. This is a grumbocker. No, and remember that these are always saved on the YouTube channel, the recording is saved. So you can always watch it later. Again, I have this grayish-greenish-brownish color here that was already on my palette, just different Prima colors that were mixed together. We're gonna just use it to suggest our stems. There's a lot of stems in the inspiration photo. I don't think I'm going to paint them all in. I have some other really dark brown over here. I think this might be color number 10 out of the classic set. I'm gonna mix some of it into this greenish-brown I had going on. So when you're near the end of your painting and you've spent all this time putting shadows in your cherries and shadows in your little creamer, shadows on the table, don't neglect to put shadows on the stem. Okay, Prima has metallic colors. They have gold and silver. So this is silver. And I think I'm gonna bring a little bit of it. You probably won't be able to see that this is metallic on camera. You have to trust me. Maybe you don't have the Prima paints or maybe you have watercolor paints, but you don't have the metallics. You could use twinkling H2O's. You could add a little bit of metallic gel pen. Look at what you do have and see what you do have. And I'm not adding a lot of it. I'm just gonna add a little bit here and there. My favorite are Daniel Smith. They've been my favorite for a while. One of the reasons is they're made in the USA and they are easy for me to get when I run out of a color. That being said, there's lots of really great paints out there. Which ones are best for you is gonna depend on the budget that you have going on. Windsor Newton are a fine brand. I own Windsor Newton. I think they're a great brand. I just got a Windsor Newton. Was it Windsor Newton pocket kit? Yeah, I think I did anyway, or it's on order. Get what you can afford. Don't break the bank. Use a coupon. If you have Hobby Lobby or Michaels or Joann's near you, go see what they carry. Use a coupon and get the best one you can afford. If you can afford, even a better student quality brand, definitely I recommend that you do that. If you're not familiar with watercolor, you wanna just try them and see if you're gonna like them. I would still recommend you get the best one you can afford. I don't know who WJP is. Let's see, I wanna do this, I think. I'm having a couple of different thoughts. There have been a couple of brands I don't like. Let's see, hold on, I can only, I can't do this, I can't. Oh yeah, yeah, one thing at a time. So, cheap brand to learn with. I started out with Artist District. If anybody knows what that is, they're not great paints, but they did the job and I decided after using them that I love watercolor. Watercolor are fabulous. I have Twinkling H2Os, I have a bunch of them. I'm not a big fan of the Gonsai Kurataki paints. They're great if you wanna just do painted watercolor like tags. And I own the Gonsai paints. At some point, I may end up re-gifting them, but they're not my favorite. I had to just put that out there. They're not my favorite. If I'm gonna do tags and cards with an inexpensive student quality paint, I'd rather use the Primas, I prefer them. I like the Mission Gold paints, they're fabulous, but they're not cheap. And I have not seen them in a store anywhere near me. I have to order them, so they're not easy to get. I like the PBO watercolors. Again, they're for me in the same category as the Primas, more of an experimental student quality paints. I do like them. I especially like their round, hold on. Their round palette, I like. I like them. There's mixed reviews on this, but I actually like them. The Van Gogh are nice. Old Holland, I wasn't super impressed with the Old Holland paints.  In fact, they were back here in that little, like this, I didn't think they were, I mean, maybe it's the colors I had, but I wasn't too, I wasn't too impressed with them. Quar, I like my Quar paints. Now, Quar, they are super pigmented. They're fabulous paints. They're expensive, so they're not, they're not starter paints, probably, because they're kind of pricey, but they're super pigmented. In my mind, along the same lines as like Mission Gold, they're pigmented Quar and Mission Gold, and also Maymary Blue, which I like. Now, all three of those brands, again, not my top most favorite because they're harder for me to get, not because there's anything wrong with them. I like them, but they're definitely on the pro end. Yes, Ian, I agree with you. They're on the pro end, they're not cheap. They're fabulous, they're just harder for me to get. Daniel Smith is made on the West Coast of the United States, so it's, you know, everywhere that I go shopping almost has Daniel Smith. So, and my parents live near the Daniel Smith factory, so I can get them easily. And they have 238 colors.  A brand like Daniel Smith is just fabulous. Schminka's great, I love Schminka, but again, I have to order them. There's one art supply store here that carries Schminka that is not super close to me, but they do have it. I don't like Schminka better than Daniel Smith though. I like Daniel Smith better. I think they have a better color range for me. Amazon has fabulous prices on a lot of things and they're my preferred place to go shopping FYI. What other ones have I had? Oh, the whole buying watercolors are not my favorite. They sent me them to try. Their gouache is not a watercolor gouache, and so it's more of an acrylic paint. So in my mind, what's the point of having it? Because if I'm gonna have a gouache, it's gonna be something that I can have dry in a palette and reactivate with water. Otherwise, what's the point I got acrylic paint? And their watercolor tubes are nicely pigmented, but they're very chalky and I am not a big fan. Those were probably the gonzi and the whole wine. They're my two ones I'm not too crazy about. Daniel Smith has a color dot chart of all 238 colors, a little dot of each one, and you can get the whole 238 sample dot chart for like 20 bucks or so directly from their website, danielsmith.com. And they have a really great selection of really well pigmented, lightfast colors and ones that are really great colors that aren't lightfast. The paints will vary in price depending on how precious the pigment is that's used to make the paint. They have a lot of colors that are made with precious minerals, and they're just wonderful. I do do it not a lot, Ian. And I do wax resist sometimes, Shelley. Not a, I mean, Da Vinci. I have Da Vinci things, but I don't know that I have Da Vinci watercolors.  I haven't done anything more with it since the last time you saw it, but I don't think there's Da Vinci in here. I have a couple of, I'm a pocket box addict, just FYI. So I've got a lot of pocket boxes of paint because I'm an addict for pocket boxes. But I don't think I have Da Vinci. I do own the pocket box from White Nights. Again, it's okay, but it's not my favorite. They're a little chalky for me. They're well pigmented and it's super affordable. And if you've never used watercolor before and you're not sure you're gonna like it, these, the White Nights watercolors are available on Amazon. They're really inexpensive and they're well pigmented. I like Koi better in that category though. If you're gonna buy, and this, I just bought this. If you're gonna buy a starter set of watercolors, I'll answer that in a minute. If you're gonna buy a starter set of watercolors and you've never used them before, buy Prima or buy Koi. Koi, this is their new 30 color box. I've been waiting for it to come in somewhere. Nobody has it. So I finally just ordered one from Amazon and just came in. So I saved the boxes and I use them as travel boxes to put other paints in or I've used them to put some of the companies have sent me tubes. And so I use the Prima box, like this is the Holbein palette of the tubes that they sent me. And I used it to set up the Holbein palette. Again, the colors are really fabulously pigmented. They're a little chalky for me and they don't rewrap real well. So I wasn't too impressed. Yeah, I'm not, I mean, the White Nights are okay. Don't get me wrong. And I own a pocket box and because I'm a pocket box collector, this is probably never going anywhere. I'll still own it. They're just not my favorite. I don't hate them, but they're definitely not my favorite. All right, are we done with this? I don't know that we're done with this. I need to think it needs to pop a black. So I'm gonna take some of the black, which is number 12 in the classic. I have a little bit of blue here on my mixing tray. So I'm going to just mix it in. And I'm just twirling my brush off so that it's not only at a point, but that it's getting some of the extra paint off. And I'm going to go in with this. What's now a really dark blackish blue into a few spots. And I'm gonna put a little bit. And then I'm going to put some water and just pull the paint out. And you'll see that little bit of black really makes it pop. No, there's not a pain's gray. I mean, you could definitely make one by taking the black and adding some blue to it. It's not exactly pain's gray, but it's sort of it. But there's no pain's gray in this palette, the Prima palette. So now we're going to rinse the brush off just coming back in with just water after putting the dark color there and pulling it out. There we go. We're going to continue around our painting that way, putting that clear water where we want the paint to flow and blend and not where we don't. Watercolor paints always going to take the easier road and it's always going to follow the water. It's a good thing I didn't have an extra cup of coffee this morning. That's all I can say. Holy cow. All right, let's put some in here. I'm barely, barely touching the brush to my paper. This is 140 pound cold press. I prefer cold press because I like the little bit of texture that's on the paper. I also prefer paints that granulate a little bit and have a little bit of a texture in the paint when it's going down and drying. Not all water colorists like that. Some people like a much more smoother, less blotchy, more blended look than what I usually paint with. Those are all personal preference things that you'll learn as you experiment with your paint and none of them are wrong. They're just what you like. I keep forgetting to talk because I'm painting.  I start working on the demo and I forget to give instructions. I prefer also back to the paper. I prefer Fabriano paper, but I use Strathmore a lot too. And I'll buy, you know, I'll tend to buy whatever's on sale. Okay, hot press, which is really smooth, is also good if you're going to be doing something that you know is going to be scanned later into say a computer system.  Sorry, I'm having trouble talking and yeah, doing this at the same time. Okay, there is some light in here. So I'm gonna grab some of it because I didn't leave enough. Some watercolorists really are opposed to adding white and there's nothing wrong with that. I consider myself more of a mixed media artist than a watercolorist. So for me, adding white at the end is, I'm not opposed to that by any stretch. I mean, I try to leave the white space but it doesn't always work out. Yeah, I can do that. I did play with them when they first came in. I actually like the PBO watercolors. They do have a mixed review. Some people find them chalky. I actually kind of liked them. Maybe next week we should work with those. What time is it? Oh wow, we've already been on a long time. I did do a painting with the PBO watercolors when I first got that round one in. I do actually now have a pocket palette from them also. But yeah, if you're gonna do any kind of paintings and you know that it's going to be scanned later into a computer system, then you probably want to save yourself some time in trouble and use hot press paper because you'll get a better scan. Now you can go back and do the white highlights with gel pen, paint pen, any of those. I mean, whatever, use what you have. Maybe the set of watercolors you have doesn't have white in it. I think that's pretty good. I'm gonna stop now because I like the way that looks. It is almost 11.30 here, almost lunchtime. I've been on an hour and a half. Time flies when I'm painting, that's all I can say. But yeah, Anne, why don't you private message me or post something in the Facebook group and tag me and remind me. And next week we will do the PBO watercolors. They may be easier for some of you to get than the Primas. And in my mind, they're both the same, the same level of quality of paint. I like them both equally. This one, of course, I had to have because it was round. Who does a round watercolor palette? And here is the colors in this particular palette. Here are the colors of the Prima. Let's see, wait, let me put this here so that I don't mess up my painting. So you can see that they're pretty comparable in intensity. I do have a PBO pocket palette because I found out they make one and of course, y'all know I collect pocket palettes. So I had to have it. I haven't even cracked it open yet. It's still wrapped up, but I love the box. The box is not only a metal box that I like, the metal boxes, but the mixing tray has sides all the way around. And not all of the mixing trays do you have that? I love that, plus it's white.  And Koi, I've had the 24 Koi palette before. I actually disassembled it and I used some of the colors in my Permanent Travel Watercolor Kit. I knew they came out with the 31 from, like back in January, I'd heard about it from some of the CHA stuff that started popping up on YouTube, but I had never seen it in the store. So I finally just ordered one. And it's just like the other Koi pocket box, except for the paint pans are a little bit smaller. So they can fit 30 colors in. And then the well down here is smaller. And you have a, the water brush in here. And instead of two sponges, you only have one. So the other half of the brush sits over here, but that's okay with me. And you have 30 colors. So I haven't, again, this just came in. I haven't swatched it or anything. I, for me, I have to get one hot press from usually from Dick Blick, or I have to go to a proper art supply store. In my area, there's only two of them. One of them's in San Jose, but their selection's not that great on anything. It seems like every time I go, the shelves are half empty. But I prefer Lens Art, L-E-N-Z in Santa Cruz. So if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and you're going to the Santa Cruz, visit Lens Art. They are a fabulous mom and pop art supply store. Filled to the rafters, I am not even kidding, with art supplies. They have Daniel Smith's and L-E-A, Shminka. They have all the brushes you would want. They've got all the paper you would want. They've got, they've got everything. They're fabulous. So go show them some love if you're in the Santa Cruz area, because they're wonderful. They do have a website, LensArt, I think, dot com, or Lens Art. I don't remember which, if it's with or without the S. And Coy, Coy, you know, if you're in the market for a starter watercolor set, you want to try them. You don't know what to buy. Or all you have are the Crayola or Art District or Artist Loft type of watercolor sets. You want to go like one step up without spending $500 on watercolor. Okay, I recommend something like the PBO set, something with at least 24 colors in it. If you're gonna make a step up, make a step up. This was under $50. So, and get at least 24 colors. This PBO set's nice because it has a paint gray in it. And it has violets and everything. So this, if when you get 24 colors, you get a nicer range. So PBO is nice, Prima's fabulous. Each one of these sets are $25.  I repotted, re-boxed mine, but you don't have to do that. These are Prima's. So these are fabulous. So, and you get a metal, a fabulous metal box with them.  So do you do mostly landscapes? Then maybe you want to get the classics or the tropicals. Do you want to do fun mixed media stuff? Maybe you want decorative pies. It comes with two, it comes with some metallics. A pearl, a silver and a gold. Maybe you want to, you know, mostly do flowers. Maybe you want, so there's lots of different kinds. I would get all three of them personally because there's colors in each one of the set. As you saw me do today, I use colors from each one of the sets to do our little still life. I love these. The Prima tin, the $25 for one of these. Totally, Sister Ella, I agree with you. It's worth it just to get the tin. I keep putting the tin away and I keep needing to take it back out again. Hold on, let's see, where is it? These little tins cost more than that. If you just want to buy an empty tin like from Jackson's Art, these little tins cost more than that. This is one of the Prima tins. I took the paints out, I have something else in here so I could put them in here, but they come in these little tins and the $25 is worth it to get the little box. The other one I would recommend is Koi because Koi is got, they have a 24 pocket box that looks just like this. You can get it at Hobby Lobby with a coupon. And it's great, I've never seen the 30, I've only seen the 24 at Hobby Lobby. I had to order the 30 from Amazon. I ordered the PBO from Amazon and my Primas, like I said earlier, are from Prima. They sent me one and I ordered the other two from directly. So I lost track of what I was saying. Definitely I think the Primas are really nice starter paints if you're ready for that step up and if your local arts and crafts supply or your Hobby Lobby or your little scrapbook supply store if you still have one carries Prima paints then I would think about going and doing that step up and away from Crayola or Art District or artist loft paints and doing a step up to these and work your way up towards buying those really expensive tube paints like Daniel Smith and Schmincke and that sort of thing. But I would do it as a gradual thing unless you have unlimited funds. That's a whole different conversation. Most of us don't have that myself included and when I was ready to start buying artist quality paints, I did it slowly and I bought two or three tubes at a time until I had the color selection I wanted and when I ordered my Schmincke palette I saved up for months and months and months until I had the money to order it from Dick Blick because it was the cheapest place around to get it from. And I have the 48 palette Schmincke paint but I have 52 in it. Any other questions? So this is all done with Primas and these are nice paints. It's a good color selection to do most of your painting with and there are some colors that aren't in the palette like earlier Ian and I confirmed there's no really no paints gray. You could mix color 35 with color 12 which is like Prussian blue with 12 which is like a black and you'll get something paints grayish and it would work. You could get a really dark blackish violet by doing 12 with one of the violets number nine or number 20. So you can work with it. There's enough of a color selection here so there's 36 colors if you get all three sets. If you're like me you're gonna want to get a bigger box. This is a 48 half pan box. This one is from Jackson's Art. I do have two problems with the Prima. I wish the color numbers had names. I wish they had an option of getting all of them in one box and I wish they had paints gray so I guess that's three things but despite those things I like these paints. Oh, thank you guys. Yeah, 53, woohoo. 50 and fabulous, right? Well, 53 and fabulous. Thanks, I appreciate it. All right, so go out today experiment with paints. Have some fun with it and let's show the world some love even if it's just through our art and let's like lose all the hate and the killing and the like really I don't know about you guys but I'm done with all of that. I will look at my website as soon as we're done and I will make sure that these, at least this picture is on the website and if it is you can download it and paint from it for free from my website, GinaBierns.com and you are more than welcome to sell said painting to reproduce said painting that you make from my picture. It's not my picture but the painting you make from it. It's a royalty free picture that you can do, whatever an art inspires you from it. See, Amazon, I love Amazon UK and occasionally I order things from Amazon UK shipped to me here in the US because I love Amazon UK, ha ha.  I really want to go over there. And you're welcome. And I like the PBO, the PBO, like I said, now if you watch some, some, they have mixed reviews. Some people find them kind of chalky. I didn't find that, I don't mind them. I have other paints in my collection that I think are way more chalky than these. And I, I mean, I love the round palette box. Like how do you just not love the round palette box? Now I don't know about the brush. I haven't actually used the brush yet. It reminds me more of like a Chinese painting brush. I'm not sure about the brush. I think, I think I'm not gonna like the brush but the paints are fabulous and this is the color key. And it has a paint's gray and an indigo.  You all know, like I love blues. So all right, that's it for today. Don't forget the most important thing. You all know what that is, right? Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourselves because you deserve it. Thank you. I love a round color key, like seriously. Anyway, this is my favorite palette just cause it's round. It's a favorite shape palette, round. What's a Broly, Ian? I don't know what that is. And I like the cold. I don't know what a Broly is. All right, you guys, have a great day. Again, my three least favorite paints. Holbein, not a favorite. They're okay, not a favorite. Gonsai Tombi, they're okay, not a favorite. And White Knight, they're okay. Again, they're okay, not a favorite. They're not, personally, they're not my favorites. I think there's other things out there that you would be better off looking into. Old Holland wasn't a favorite either, if you're gonna add a fourth one. They were okay, but they're not a favorite. Umbrella, oh, okay. Yes, I have umbrellas. I like the cold, FYI. I'm a middle-aged menopausal womanie and I love the cold. I'm hot all the time. I'll probably be out in the rain in a tank top and flip-flops, because, you know, that's what I do. That's what I did in Alaska. All right, I will see you guys all later. Have a rest of your great afternoon. Have a great rest of your afternoon. I'm gonna go have some food and make a cup of tea. And then I have to work on Lifebook Week two. All right, and I think I'm gonna have to take some pictures of this because I like the way this turned out. I love cold weather. My husband's freezing all the time. He wants to live somewhere more tropical. All right, see you later, guys. Bye.


Item number SCP-114, Object Class, Euclid. Special Containment Procedures SCP-114 is kept in a 10-meter cubed standard concrete humanoid containment cell at Site-17. The cell is positioned at the bottom of a 40-meter shaft to prevent staff members from coming into the proximity of SCP-114. The cell is accessible by a staircase restricted to emergency use only. Daily rations are provided to SCP-114 three times a day by means of a dumbwaiter. SCP-114 is also permitted to submit written requests to attending staff by the same means. To date, SCP-114 has been granted one Quran, Arabic, one prayer rug, and one blank journal with pens. Research on SCP-114 is suspended until further notice. Elimination of SCP-114 is acceptable in the event of a multiple containment breach crisis. Description SCP-114 is a Pashtun woman of Afghani origin, approximately 40 years old and 160 cm tall. SCP-114 has the involuntary effect of fostering and escalating violent conflict between all individuals in her proximity. Arguments within 10 to 15 meters of SCP-114 become inconsolably aggressive at trivialities or points of little consequence, often to the degree of projecting hostile motives on others. Arguments generally arise between individuals after 1 to 3 minutes of exposure to SCP-114. The resulting arguments turn to violence in all cases. Notably, persons affected by the presence of SCP-114 will never exhibit hostility towards SCP-114 or attempt to inflict harm upon her. Subjects ordered to deliberately injure SCP-114 find themselves unable to do so. Communication with SCP-114 has only been possible through written notes or electronic means. Researchers have gleaned that SCP-114 is unaware of her effect on other people. She shows little to no response to exposure to violence, and seems to be under the impression that human beings are naturally aggressively hostile to each other. SCP-114 is consistently unresponsive and uncooperative with researchers, and appears to be acutely wary of human interaction. Due to the difficulty of communication with SCP-114, psychological evaluations have been speculative at best. Rudimentary assessments strongly suggest psychological trauma, combat stress reaction, and or compassion fatigue have been tentatively proposed. Experiment Log 114A SCP-114 was placed in a test room with distancing protocols similar to her containment cell. Attending researchers observed through remote electronic means. Experiment 114A-1 Procedure Subjects D1269 and D8543 were placed in the test room with SCP-114. No instructions were given. Results Subjects did not attempt to interact with SCP-114. After 75 seconds of exposure, D8543 verbally requested a cigarette from D1269. D1269 responded with negative. D8543 proceeded to shove D1269 against the wall of the test room. Subjects began fighting with apparent intent to kill. Subjects ignored verbal entreaties to cease. Subjects terminated. Throughout the experiment, SCP-114 watched the proceedings, but was visibly unmoved. Experiment 114A-2 Procedure Subjects D5410 and D5699 were placed in the test room with SCP-114. A plastic screen was placed across the length of the test room so that subjects were unaware of the presence of SCP-114. Comparable to Experiment 114A-1 Subjects terminated. Experiment 114A-3 Procedure Subject D1002 was given a carving knife, stainless steel, 15 cm. Subject was placed in the test room with SCP-114, with orders to kill her. Results D1002 immediately rushed at SCP-114. SCP-114 recoiled, screaming. D1002 stopped abruptly at approximately half a meter from SCP-114 and dropped the knife. D1002 stood still for four minutes, growing visibly agitated. At five minutes, D1002 began yelling incomprehensibly and moving around the room in an unnatural ape-like fashion. After eight minutes, D1002 began banging on the walls with his head and fists. Subject was rendered unconscious. Subject terminated. Experiment 114A-4 Procedure Subject D4343 was placed in the test room with SCP-114, with orders to remain still. After four minutes, Subject was forcibly removed from the room by robotic means. Results Subjects showed signs of aggression and agitation comparable to Experiment 114A-3. Heart rate was recorded at 210 BPM. Blood tests revealed levels of cortisol and adrenaline impossible without the application of drugs. Subject returned to a normal physical and mental state after approximately 15 hours. Experiment 114A-5 Procedure Subject D7258, a native Afghan, was administered a dilute mixture of mild sedatives, anti-depressants, tetrahydrocannabinol, alpha blockers, and beta blockers intravenously. Subject was placed in the test room with SCP-114, in order to attempt normal conversation. Results D7258 addressed SCP-114. SCP-114 maintained eye contact with D7258, but did not respond. After 45 seconds, D7258 began shivering and shouting. At one and a half minutes after exposure, D7258 fell to the floor in convulsions. Subject expired after three minutes. Autopsy of the cadaver revealed massive cerebral hemorrhage. Document 114-A-898-12 A bridged eyewitness report by a former soldier in the 40th Red Army, interviewed March 23rd, 1991. Translated and transcribed.   Eight of our men killed, 15 wounded. One tank destroyed. It was dead cold, too. You think the Middle East is warm, but you go to the mountains in February. It is not so. Anyway, we were mopping up the area, going through the huts, looking for weapon caches and the like. It seemed like every doorstep had some old babushka weeping and tearing out her hair and clutching our knees. But at the end of the street was this one big hut, no babushka outside. Only there were trays of food left out, like an offering before the door. Pauses for several seconds. So six of us go in to search. It was big and empty inside, dusty and practically bare. Didn't look like anyone had been there in a long time. But soon, we hear this soft whimpering, though. And look, over in the corner, there's a little girl. It must be eight or nine curled up and all alone. Piota, he was a big softy. He goes over.  It is okay. We won't hurt you. But the girl won't budge. Then Piota stands up, all stiffly, and looks back at us funny. Constantine walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder, tells him to leave the girl alone, laughing good-naturedly.  He looks like a wild animal.  It took three of us to pull him off, and by then, Constantine was dead. Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-113, the gender switcher, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm calling this painting Gentle Breezes. Now we'll be painting with a bit of a limited palette today using a set of pastels. Well actually two. They're by the Paul Rubens Company and this is the 36th set and they also have a 40 set. Now listen to my message for a chance to win the 36th set of Paul Rubens Pastels. Hello friends, subscribers, and newcomers to Monet Café. Well I'm not only excited about this tutorial bringing you an art lesson, but also about an amazing giveaway for the very soft pastels that I used in this lesson. It's the Paul Rubens Soft Pastel set of 36 pastels. Now I not only love these pastels for their quality, but they're quite affordable. So thank you Paul Rubens for agreeing to this giveaway. So watch the tutorial. I'm going to give you the basic rules, but you can find everything in the description of this video. It's pretty simple. You do have to be a subscriber of Monet Café. So click that subscribe button. Also click the link. It's to my Instagram page in the description of this video. You'll have to follow me my Instagram page at Susan Jenkins Artist. Follow Paul Rubens Art, their Instagram page as well. And leave a comment in the comment section of that post, that Instagram real post. And then I'll be having the drawing and will announce the winner on August 9th. Tuesday, August 9th. So be sure you do that and you can share this. Share the link with anyone who might want to be entered into the contest. Now it does have to be US only. Paul Rubens is only shipping to US. So get excited. Let's watch this lesson. Check out all the rules in the description and at the end of the video. Alright guys, let's get started. It should be fun. So there you have it. And like I said, subscribe to this channel to get more of these free videos and to be entered into the contest along with all the other rules. Also, if you would like to become a patron of mine, it's only $5 a month on my Patreon page. And you not only support this channel, but you get extra content and you become part of my beautiful Patreon family. Well, here they are. This is the 36th set of Paul Rubens soft pastels. I'm going to be talking about these pastels as I paint. Like I said, I love them. The packaging, it's already dirty here. I had fiddled with it with my hands with pastels all over them. But their packaging is always great, very secure for shipping. And look at that. They even have a couple of purples. One real light lavender and then that other purple there. I loved the vibrancy of these colors and there's the purple right there. And I did what's called the finger test. You can pretty quickly see the quality of soft pastels by doing this. This means it has a lot of pigment if a lot of color comes off on your finger. Now this is the 40th set. I got this set first. I've actually already done a tutorial using this set and I do use a few of these for this particular pastel painting tutorial. I'll have links to both of these sets in the description of this video if you just have to buy them right now. Now, I wanted to show you real quick one of the other products they sent me. It's called the Paul Rubens sketchbook. I love the sketchbook and I'm going to be sharing more about this in future videos. The surface I'll be using is one that I love. It's called Luxe Archival. It's a sanded pastel paper and I love the fact that it is water friendly. It's also pretty resistant to buckling which I love. Now it is a sanded surface so can you hear that nice sanded surface? It allows for a lot of layering.  And the reference image is one of my own of some beautiful flowers. I don't think they're actually Queen Anne's lace. Someone told me this is more of a weed variety of them but they sure look like it to me and I just loved this reference image. If you're a patron of mine you will get a downloadable image in your Patreon post. Now I'm just using a piece of vine charcoal. The sketch is going to be super simple with this. It's just a few of the flowers that I feel is where the energy and the focal point needs to be. So it's just like a little reminder as I start to paint. And I've sped this up only slightly for this tutorial. You should be able to totally follow what I'm doing here. Now you can see somewhat most of the pastels that I'll be using of the two Paul Rubin sets. I put down one of the blues and now I'm looking for a little bit more of a turquoise color. And that's because the sky typically is more of a blue in the upper heavens, a cool blue. And then it goes gradually to a warm blue as you get down towards the horizon. That's because the sun is or it's light is closer to the horizon. So pay attention to that. Next time you're looking at a sky like on a bright sunny day, you'll see if you look straight up, the heavens are going to be a deep blue, kind of cool, like up in space. And then they get warmer gradually as you go down to the horizon line. Now here is where I am. I'm using my artistic license to make kind of like an imaginary distant tree bank. Now they're going to be far away, so I just used a really nice blue they have in this set. And you can see how I'm switching back and forth with these two sets. I really like this dark. The set has some nice darks in it as well. I really like this dark deep, almost like aquamarine deep blue, blue-green. Now I'm actually using the black. I had a question recently from someone who can't get, one of the dark colors I talk about a lot is the Terry Ludwig eggplant color. It's a dark, dark purple. It almost looks black. And she said, I'm frustrated I can't get this dark color. I'm just going to use my dark blue. And you can use black. You can literally just layer some other colors on top of it to give it a little more life. And if you're limited, you can definitely do that. So I wanted to mention too, notice how I'm just putting in little, blocking in of color. I'm not trying to really cover up all of the surface yet. I'm getting in my big shapes and my basic values and basic colors for the base of this painting. Think of it as when you're painting, you're working from the ground up. You're working from the one layer that is just going to be your general values and colors. And you're going to be layering the other final touches and final colors on top. So once you kind of grasp the whole layering concept of soft pastels, it's going to change your painting world. We're not having to paint all of those greens just yet. We're getting in our values first. That just means the darks and the lights. It looks like a mess at first, right? Now, I could just use water for this. I'm going to be doing water on this because this Luxe archival is water friendly. But I have been loving the airbrush medium made by Golden. And let me tell you why. I feel that it turns the pastel more into a paint that you can just, it just flows around. It also seems to make the pastels richer in color than just water. Or sometimes you see me using alcohol, like drugstore alcohol. So I do use both water and alcohol still to blend pastels or liquefy. I like to call it in this way. But there's something about this airbrush medium that just has a bit more punch to the color and it just flows so nicely. So you can see I'm just kind of working around some of the flower shapes. Once I get this blue sky background in, I'm going to be adding some of the clouds and it doesn't even matter if you cover up your flower shape drawings. Again, it was just kind of a guideline. Now that lighter gray area I put down because that was where there was a cloud that's kind of a blue gray, not quite white. So once I get the sky in, then I start working on the darker values. I wanted to get those light ones in first. I didn't want to have to go wash my brush if I had started using the airbrush medium on the dark values first. You don't want to really contaminate the dark into the light. And now, because I want these grasses to be loose and reaching upward, oh heavens, why did I turn it upside down? Well, gravity and just the whole process of adding these strokes, if it's a little drippy, it's going to drip down, which when you turn it back over, it's reaching upward. So it's just kind of a technique I've been doing recently where I flip things upside down often when I'm doing an underpainting for trees or for grasses. So this looks like a mess, right? And it's okay. Embrace that. Your painting is going to go through an adolescent stage of just getting in, like I said, blocking in the big shapes, the values, and just some basic colors. And so now is where the fun begins. Now I had this idea of, I imagined that there was some sunlight on some of those clouds that are down at the horizon.  And so this is a little too yellow, but I know that I can layer with soft pastel. So I just wanted a hint of that yellow, and I can layer some of this lighter value on top of it, and it just gives a little feeling of warmth. Now I'm getting in some of these things early on, because I know that I'm going to be adding grasses and flowers, and I didn't want to have to try to paint the grasses and flowers first, and then carve in all of that sky clouds later in between all the little blades of grass. Sometimes I like some negative painting of carving things in, but if it's going to be a lot like that, I usually will just get something in as a base first. Now I'm getting in a little bit more of this pretty blue, like I said, a cooler blue in the upper heavens, and not getting fussy yet about filling in all of the spaces. I'm going to do a little blending trick in a minute, you'll see. I'm getting a warmer blue to some of it, just toning it down a bit, and now I'm gradually getting lighter values as I move down to the horizon line. The sky will be darker in the upper heavens, gradually get lighter down towards the horizon line, and so again, I'm not getting too fussy about the flowers or the clouds because I'm going to come back in and add those. You can see I'm getting a little warmer values, I mean with my colors, warmer would be more like a teal or turquoise. Now I'm just getting in a few more of the values for the clouds. You can see the larger cloud in the upper right, it has a little bit more, probably some rain in it, that's the darker areas, and then there's just a few other wispy little clouds coming off from it, receding into the distance, so I'm just getting in a hint of all of that, and I'll be adding the flowers again, believe it or not. I can still kind of see my marks, but it doesn't matter if you cover them up a bit. And I wanted to talk a little bit more and watch me develop these clouds, but as I'm painting, I wanted to talk about these sets a little bit more. I really love the 36 set for the vibrant, bright color. I mean look at some of those pinks and those reds, and it has more greens in it. When I did my review on the 40 set, if you want to go find that video that I did, it was a field deep at sunset. I saw it had some nice warm tones in it, and I noticed that it didn't have many greens. It has some nice, or a couple of nice neutral greens, you kind of see at the top to the left there, and really just some nice colors, but it didn't have a lot of your regular greens you would think of for grass. Now this particular 36 set has a few greens. You can see the brighter greens at the top of the set there, and there's another green. My arm just moved out of the way towards the bottom right of that lower set. That's a nice grassy green. So I did find, too, that they compliment each other well. I didn't find any duplicates. Okay, now let me mention this. I'm using some packing peanuts. These are literally what people use to protect their items when they're shipping them.  These are great for blending. So I find these work good on really sanded surfaces, like this Lux Archival, whereas if I'm working on something like pastel matte or even watercolor paper, I can even use a tissue or a paper towel. But a tissue or a paper towel on this gritty sanded surface is going to just tear up on you, so I don't advise that. Now, can you see how that just blended that sky so nicely? Now, I'm using the neutrals from the 40s set. It's kind of a purpley neutral. I really like this color. It's kind of in between a brownish purple. Now, why would I be using such a dark value here on top of this sky? In our brains, we see these white flowers and we just go for the white when we're first beginning to paint. But because the sun is behind these flowers, you're going to get some shadow on the viewer side of the flowers. Also, we need something of contrast, something of a dark value to layer the lighter colors on top of, or they're just not going to show up. So these flowers reaching up into the heavens, and keep a light touch with this, by the way, because you are going to be layering some other colors on top. And we're just creating little shapes. Keep them gestural and lyrical in their movement. But you will notice later, I'll add more of the greens and a little bit lighter values on top of these flowers that are reaching up towards the sky. So just get in a few of your flower shapes, make sure they have various sizes. I mean, you can use the reference photo, of course, as a guide, but sometimes I'll change that up a bit. And make sure they're turning in different directions within reason. You don't want to flip them all over the place. Keep it consistent with the feel of the motion and the focal point. So for the next few minutes, you'll see me still kind of developing a little bit of this tree line in the back. It's just a suggestion. It's not like I'm trying to draw or paint trees individually or anything. It just gives the viewer a feeling of depth to the painting. It gives levels. I love to have reference images or create my own paintings to use my artistic license, as I say, to feel like there's different levels or a feeling of distance in the painting. And by adding this Bank of Trees, I felt like it did that. It wasn't just a big old section of grass and a sky, kind of like you see in the reference image. But again, I'm going to continue to develop the sky a little bit. I know that when I go to add the flowers I don't want to have to go back and fiddle a whole lot with adding the clouds between the flowers. So this was kind of an easier way for me to do this. And I'm keeping the clouds pretty similar to what I saw in the reference image, because I did like how they were flowing. To me, the focal energy was the flowers, of course, reaching up. And there's a few of them looking like they're celebrating or praising the Lord way up above the horizon line. And then the clouds just pulling the viewer's eye back deeper into the painting. So this was one of those photos where I got down really low on the ground. And by the way, a trick for that, if you're using a cell phone turn your camera to where the lens is on the ground. You know, a lot of times we'll hold our camera upright and we'll get down low on the ground and take a picture. Well, usually the lens is at the top of the camera. So if you flip it upside down, you're getting an even lower view and you get that feeling of really deep grasses looking up to the sky. That's just something I experimented with a while ago and was like, oh yeah, this is a better way to do it. I'm adding a little bit more of darks to the base. Now you look at the flowers in the reference image. Can you see how dark they are against the sky? Again, there is some green there. But down towards the point of the flower where it meets the stem, there's a little area that's a little darker. So just grabbing that pretty dark bluish turquoise color that's in the 40 set. And by the way, these pastels, if I had to say somebody asked me this question, if I had to say which brand they're similar to, I would say Sennelier. They're almost to me. I mean, they're so darn close to Sennelier. They feel like it. They apply like it, which is one of my favorite brands anyway. I love the size of these pastels too. They don't have full sticks or half sticks. This is just the size of the stick. So I love that. I love that. I don't have to peel off any labels. So really, I'm a big fan of these pastels. But again, I love the fact that they are affordable. Beginners can afford these sets. They're less than $50 each. And now I'm giving a little bit of that pretty lavender to those clouds. You see how that just gave a little bit of warmth and color interest to the clouds? Lavender is a great way to add some grays that have a little bit of color, a neutral color. You know, I just added it to some of the grays that were already there. And now I'm getting pretty done with the sky. A few more little areas where I want to soften some of the edges or give a little bit more color. And the painting, by the way, I've sped this up slightly. But I think it took just a little over an hour. And in comparison to everything else in the painting, I think I did spend a decent amount of time getting the sky right again, because I didn't want to have to go back and develop it after I was ready to start having fun with the flowers. So once I got the sky done and those general shapes of the flowers in, then it's time to have some fun adding some of those flower colors and those lively grasses. I've been keeping the footage zoomed out a bit so you could somewhat see the color choices I'm making, grabbing from the sets of pastels. But I'm going to zoom in a little bit right now so you can watch me develop these flowers. And this is one of the colors from the 40 set that at first glance, you wouldn't think of it as a green, but it actually is a kind of a nice neutral green. You see how it feels a little green as you apply it? And it was just such a pretty color with some of that turquoise dark blue. And I'm just lightly glazing a little bit over the darker values. You're going to see that layer of value changes in the flowers that start to really give them shape and depth. Once again I am trying to keep them full of gesture and movement and life. I don't want flowers that feel stiff or heavy. So often all you need is a little quick gestural stroke and then just let it be because if you fuss around with it too much before you know it your elements that you wanted to have life and movement are going to start feeling very heavy. So this is something that's been a constant goal of mine. I still don't think I have it totally where I want it to be, but definitely been getting better at that because I have a purposeful intention to get better at that. Now I'm adding a few little hints. These are going to be flowers that are far away. Now because they're far away, they're going to be a little lighter in value. Values will increase in the distance. It gets lighter. So I didn't use those dark colors or that dark turquoisey color for the distant flowers. Just a little bit of that pretty neutral greenish brown. This is a really pretty color. I love this color. It's from the 40 set. It's a neutral purpley mauve. Oh it's just so pretty. And at this point I'm just kind of playing with color having fun. These two sets work so well together. I think the top set has lots of nice neutrals in it. Of course it has some brights. It has some beautiful reds in it. Cool reds and warm reds. Some pretty golden colors. A nice coral color and a coral pink in that set. So really some fun colors in that set as well. But I think they work well together because the lower set, the 36 set has so many nice brights in it. So you can definitely for under $100 if you got both of these sets I'm hesitant of saying prices because you know prices change on Amazon. And this is the place the only place I've found them. Now thank you Paul Rubens. They provided the sets for me so that I could do these demos. But they're on Amazon. And if you enter the contest to get the 36 set, great. But if you can't wait, you can go ahead and buy it for like around $40. So pretty awesome price comparatively to some of the other nicer pastels. I mean you'd spend $100 each a set on these easily for some of the other brands that I won't mention their names. So I think it's pretty obvious. I'm a big fan of these pastels. And I would say one of the big reasons is because I absolutely love it when I can offer affordable quality products to beginners or people who may have even been painting a while but you just don't have the budget. And I think that's my heart because that's me. And that's definitely where I was. You know now I'm blessed to be able to have a channel and sometimes get products to do demos and things like that. But these products are expensive so it is great when I can say hey guys you can really start painting now with some quality pastels and not spend an arm and a leg on it. So you won't have to starve to be able to buy some quality soft pastels. Some of us might do that. Okay now here's that beautiful purple. Yay I was so glad there was a pretty purple in the 36 set. I've mentioned this in other videos where I demo some sets of pastels. Purple is a rare color in nature but it's a rare color in pastel sets as well. Often they are lacking good purples. It's one of my favorite colors. By the way my favorite color. But it's one of my favorite colors to add into shadows especially when it's kind of a nice neutral purple. So I thought that added some life to the painting in the reference image again if you're a patron of mine you'll get the actual reference image. You can zoom into it and see what I'm talking about. There were some brilliant blue ish flowers and often when I create those pretty royal blue flowers I add a bit of purple as well. So I think I do that a little bit at the end. And now is when it starts to get really fun. I've gotten in most of the general positioning of the flowers. I get to start adding some of the grasses, some other colors and some interesting textures. And now you'll be able to see how even though I used black it's the black from the 36 set. That's the only dark in the 36 set by the way. It's a black. I mean I know color is relative but it looks pretty much like black. There are some darks you can see in the 40 set up there. One of them is more of a bluish black and I think one is more of a brownish black. So still a couple of nice darks in the 40 set as well. But you'll be able to see how even though I used black for the basic grass value as I start adding these other colors on top it still really starts to come to life with color. So don't worry. Whomever that person was who can't get the Terry Ludwig eggplant color I think it's called V100. It is a great color. Don't worry you can use black and other dark colors and just layer some pretty colors on top. You can see here now where I'm adding it's a pretty kind of a brownish color. And often even though I love really pretty vibrant colors sometimes I'm really drawn to images that have just a really neutral dulled out color palette and you just splash a few other colors in there. I love that look. And by the way next month well it is next month now by the time I post this video the month of August where you're seeing this we're going to focus in my Patreon group and on the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook on neutrals a neutral palette and the power of a neutral palette. We've talked about this a little before but I don't think I've ever devoted a whole month to it. So and by the way guys I learn from while I'm providing these lessons because trust me I researched so much stuff before I give it to you guys and so I always say I started Monet Cafe when I started learning a few things I wanted to share it and I just always said I'm learning and sharing it and bringing you guys along for the ride so I'm always appreciative to those of you who are understanding that I am a self-taught artist only learning pastel painting from the internet so I'm just like a lot of you guys I haven't had any formal training in pastel I had one in person workshop that was awesome but other than that you know just a life that hasn't allowed me to do a lot of that so I know a lot of you can relate to that look at some of these pretty tealish colors that I'm sneaking in here and the colors are really I was really happy with that kind of neutrally browns almost like a topi color in some of the flowers and then gradually I'll start to add some life with some greens coming along I'm just doing a little more blending with my little packing peanut they're called and the sky still looks nice and loose and I'm zooming in again here for you to see me using that pretty green that's in the that one I think was too light it's the other green that's in the 36 set and this is where I start adding some of my pretty green colors to this and bringing it to life just a little bit I don't want to get those flowers that are contrasted against the sky too awfully light I noticed that the particular flowers they had a few of them up top they weren't quite open yet this type of flowers they have all these little long filaments or they almost look like spider legs where they are reaching up and curling in before the flower actually opens and they have a lot of little curly areas on there so I was having fun just trying to suggest some of those shapes and textures I used a few of the greens that neutral green I just had and this brighter green from the 36 set I was using before to also just suggest some of the flowers that were deeper within the grasses because when you're especially when you're down at a level like this taking a photo or just this vantage point many of the flowers they're not floating on top they're buried deep within the grasses and hidden behind certain blades of grass here's where I'm using one of the vibrant blues is this one from this blue might be from the 40 set actually I wish I could have zoomed out further to show you both of the sets in full but then the painting would have been just too far away for you to even see what I'm doing see now how I'm adding a little bit of purple to those little blue flowers there just a little bit to give it a little life and color interest let's see where I put that one blue when I put it back up maybe I'll be able to tell where I put it yep it was back up in the 40 set so that's a nice blue really pretty for some I love painting blue flowers and I would definitely use that color for some of the blue flowers I love to create alright a few more these are little little tidbits of things often I'll just look for a shape of some of the grasses or some sort of little weed that's growing and I'll just incorporate that little shape in a few areas of interest now this is that pretty light green from the 36 set and it added some contrast with the flowers kind of in in front of those background trees now I'm using this really pretty neutral pale blue it's like a gray blue and I noticed that the flowers in this image our brain says they're white Queen Anne's lace but they weren't really all that dark in this particular image again I was on the shadow side of the flowers the sun was shining behind them in the instance where I used anything other than the Paul Rubin's two sets of pastels it's a Prismacolor new pastel these are long rectangular sticks of pastel that are harder and they're great for making stems and grasses so I just used it to give some suggestion to stems also I noticed some little interesting textures of weedy type of grasses growing up I gave them a few interesting shapes keep your focal point in mind when you're doing this don't add things that will compete with your focal energy for me that energy was these flowers just reaching up into the sky like they're saying praise the lord so everything else is just like a supporting character I've only got about three minutes to go in this tutorial so I'm zooming in here so you can see a little better I'm adding some music for your enjoyment but be sure to listen to the end I'm going to go over those rules again to win this set the 36th set of the Paul Rubin soft pastels by the way of course if you're seeing this video after the first week of August 2022 obviously the contest is over so this is just for when this video first airs alright guys enjoy the music I'll be back in just a few minutes there was a really pretty pink in the 36th set and often I like to add just a pop of interesting color at the end so here is the final really soft and lyrical and also too I'm going to give you a quick recap of the contest rules if you're watching this video during the contest period as a recap here is how to enter to win the 36th set of Paul Rubin soft pastels of course subscribe to this YouTube channel that's easy just click the subscribe button click the Instagram link that's in the description of this video yes that does mean that it's an Instagram account comment on the Instagram post that it will lead you to that describes the contest just say hey I want to win whatever you want to say and be sure to follow my Instagram page at Susan Jenkins artist also follow Paul Rubin's art on Instagram that's it and the winner will be announced on August 9th 2022 it is us only alright guys good luck happy painting God bless and I hope you learned a lot


One of the things that I've been really concerned by is that there seems to be a real rebirth and renewal of the platforming of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, and I feel that while we have been quite effectively demolishing their arguments about how trans women aren't women and how trans women present a danger to cisgender women everywhere, and I think that there's been a lot of really great and useful work done demolishing it, there's not been that much time spent on thinking about how and why this kind of revived platforming of these figures like Jermaine Greer or Julie Bindle is happening. And this was bigger over the weekend, right? And this was really bigger over the weekend. It was all over the papers. Because he had Janice Turner's heinous article saying children sacrificed to appease the trans lobby, which is just classic scare mongering. Front page of the sun as well, no? Yeah, front page of the sun today, which was the skirt and the drag queen go swish, swish, swish. Terrible scanning, doesn't even go that well with the wheels and the bus, but I digress. And I think that we can see a lot of parallels between this kind of confected moral panic about trans people corrupting our children and taking over our schools. We can see a lot of parallels with the kind of Section 28 hysteria of the 1980s, where we can see a lot of parallels with a kind of homophobic authoritarian populism, which came to power, I think, with Thatcher. And I think because we can see those parallels, weirdly, this should give us a little bit of hope because that was a really effective political strategy when it was able to present itself as a counter hegemony. So the Thatcherite narrative went that I'm going to come and make schools teach common sense curriculum values again, like the three R's and no more hippie teachers promoting homosexuality. And people were able to look at it and go, yeah, that sounds about right. Whereas actually that kind of orthodoxy is no longer a counter hegemony. It's just hegemony. And what's more, that is completely at odds with the general movement of pop culture. Now, I'm not saying that life is not made often intensely unbearable for in particular trans youth and trans people of color in this country. Almost half of all trans youth in this country have attempted suicide. Eighty-four percent have self-harmed and those are deeply alarming statistics. However, the Kardashians are trans inclusive now. Can you Western trans inclusive now? Pop culture is going in one direction and it is in a more inclusive and pathetic and accepting one. And that's not the mood of our popular press. So that should lead us on to our second question, which is how can these figures like Julie Bindo, like what's her name, Bert Chil, right? Like Jermaine Greer, how can they find friends in the right wing tabloid press? Because let's be real, these were the feminists who were getting smeared as lesbians separatists, as bad mothers and all the rest of it in these very rags not that long ago. And I was giving it some thought and I was thinking about the fact that trans exclusionary radical feminists aren't radical at all because what they've done is they've looked at the foundational feminist premise, which is that gender is a set of social norms constructed to dominate women as a class and that women's emancipation is based on the deconstruction and the dismantling of these norms and gone, well, we can't take that too far. We will at some point rely on a biological ascensionism. And what they've done is essentially respond to the death of modernity and the kind of utopian potentials of, you know, modernist meta narratives and kind of accept the conditions of post-modernity that real change isn't really possible and it's not desirable, which is the exact position of these right wing tabloid rags. They don't want change. They don't want political participation. The reason why you're able to see this kind of dovetailing of ideologically divergent political interests is because they both want the same thing, which is stasis. So when people say that identity politics are splitting the left and it's going to interrupt a program of social and economic transformation, I kind of present this counterpoint, which is no, these things are deeply connected. Trans rights are human rights. They are our rights. They are political rights. And us as cis people need to ride or die for our trans siblings. And I think we need to get a lot better at rejecting the framing of mainstream debate and push it onto politically useful territory.