sonnenblume

(opening music) cinnamon: hi! it's great to see you here at the easel. i'm cinnamon. i'm your art sherpa, and today, we're gonna paint the sun, moon and stars. which is this fantastic sunflower painting all inspired by van gogh. so hopefully van gogh will come join us in the studio today and give us lots of inspiration for his brush stroke. this is a two hoot difficulty. but a beginner can still really do it. it's a really fun journey for a new artist because somewhere in this painting you're gonna find your brush stroke, and that's nearly magical. i really hope that i get to hear from you, and you tell me what that was like. now, what i'm gonna start with is a sixteen by twenty blank canvas.

if you watch my doodle, you'll remember that we talked about these and how you can get these anywhere. we're gonna paint these on the horizontal. i have my cup of economically priced brushes. and they're right in the three quarter inch, half inch range. a few details, and that's really all we're gonna need for this painting. paper towels, cup of water, and of course paint. join me over at our brand new palette cam and we'll put out our paint. today we're gonna be using some cad medium (yellow), and we're gonna use and i love this, some burnt sienna. and you're like, why does it gotta be burnt? well, they got raw sienna, and then they burn some sienna, and so then we get to benefit from that. some napthol crimson. today i'm using matisse paints. matisse structure paints which i really like. you can get those at jerry's art-o-rama. i'm gonna put out some phthalo blue. believe you me. there's gonna be a lot of that. get a nice amount of that on the

palette there. you can see i put on a little more of the phthalo. another really important color that i'm gonna put, and i'm gonna put it close to the yellow because sometimes for new eyes it's hard to tell the phthalo green. woah! that made some nice little boy noises there. woohoo! and we're gonna get some titanium white. what's gonna shock you if you're new to the art store is how many types of white and how many types of black there are. and i'm gonna do some of the master's touch, just plain, permanent black. you can find permanent black in any of the... but just a little bit of that. i just need a tiny amount of that here and there in. we're not gonna use too much black. i don't really like to use a lot of black in my painting.

alright, so the other and most important thing i need, is i need a little cup of something to stay hydrated to keep my well being going. um, no judgement. any cup of whatever you need from hot cocoa to moscato is perfectly ok in the art studio. you're gonna hear my kids popping off from time to time, but they're being supervised, so no worries. i'm gonna start this painting out with my half inch angle brush. a half inch angle brush does a couple of things. if you go up and down on the flat, it gives you a half inch wide stroke. if you paint on this bottom edge right here, it's gonna give you a line.

the trick to getting that line is starting each brush stroke with the short bristles, and letting the long bristles finish. so, if i'm making a downward stroke, well, the short bristles begin that stroke- losing my happy hat here. my lalaloopsy hat. and i'm gonna go ahead and get my brush wet. and i'm gonna grab- oh! you know what? i forgot my yellow ocher. let's put that back on the palette. we want yellow ocher. see that on the palette there? never forget your yellow ocher. it's a very, very important color to just about everything we do. alright. now i'm gonna grab a little bit of my bright cad yellow. sometimes i like to look at this. this is the grey poupon, and this is the french's mustard.

and if you just said mustard to a large class of people you could always tell who had grey poupon and who had french's mustard in their home. and we're gonna come in the upper right hand corner up here and we're going to just make a nice little c. i'm gonna do this on the edge of my brush. short bristles starting the stroke, long bristles finishing. and that's how i get it. any general c, though, is gonna be absolutely fine for what you're doing. and then i'm going to

place one little dot two little dot three little dots all along the moon. this is about... oh gosh. the farthest one out is about seven inches from the edge, here. and then, i'm gonna come to this outside upper left hand edge and make a little dot. i'm gonna come down here, to the halfway point, and make another little dot.

and make another little dot. then i'm gonna rinse out my brush really well. and wipe it on the paper towel. oh, i need one more little dot, though. one more little dot down here. woooo! so far, you should be able to handle the pressure of little, tiny dots. that's all you're doing, is little tiny dots. they're not difficult. they're pretty easy. go ahead and give your brush a good rinse. now we're gonna do something kind of crazy. we're going to make a very dark brown. we're gonna make a chocolate brown. the crazy way we're gonna make a dark chocolate brown. you think, oh, take the black and mix it to the brown, but we're not. we're going to take a little of our phthalo blue and mix in into our sienna.

and we're gonna mix it tiny amounts, like cayenne pepper, and we're gonna get this deep chocolate brown. i'm gonna get that on my brush. i'm gonna take my ruler and along my diagonal edge about- i'm gonna start it at about three inches in, right. i'm gonna make a nice diagonal from point to point. and i'm gonna make about a ten inch little line along my ruler. just ten inches. a little line along my ruler. you can draw a straight line, that's not a problem. and then i'm going to make a football. that's how i'm gonna get the seed pod for this fabulous sunflower, is i'm gonna make this

fabulous little football shape. some people like to associate it with like a leaf shape. depends on how football season is going, i suppose. so you come along here. ah, it's a fabulous little football! excellent! so we've got our football. go ahead and take your paint and paint your football in. now, something i want you to look for here, when you're painting the canvas all of the white of the canvas should be disappearing. if you're getting this like this, and you're painting and it's just not covering. seeing that right there?

what's happening is, either, your brush is broken, or your paint is broken. it's never you. that's our rule here. painting is easy, and if it's not easy, teacher, brush or paint is broken. in this particular case, it's not enough paint on the brush. and sometimes, it's not enough moisture in the paint. acrylic paint can take up to about a thirty percent water mixture. or medium dilution. so if you're using a medium to dilute or you're using water you can take it up to about thirty percent. i like to just put a little bit of moisture in there so you get a good flow. i like to just think of it as flowing on like- (kids in background) yay!- flowing on like olive oil. so, if you were having that happen, you would get a little moisture on your brush. you get right back into your paint. and you go right in there. you want good coverage.

you want all of that white to be disappearing right into that. now my brown's getting a little light again so i'll get a little blue. mix it in there. if you mix too much, blue in your sienna, you get kind of a graying. you don't get the deep chocolate that we're trying to get to. so it's just something to think about. get that nice and covered. i want that deep, deep color. deep deep color. oooh! that's just coming out lovely. paint that all in. all the white of the canvas is disappearing. now sometimes, again, sometimes when you're painting a canvas you'll find that the canvas almost

feels like it's resisting your paint. there are certainly, definitely, qualities of canvas in the world. when i want to get a nice, clean edge i paint on the edge, bottom edge, of my brush. bottom edge of my brush. short bristles beginning that stroke. long bristles finishing. i can even come on the flat and let the outer bristles splay out and make a nice, clean edge. a lot of it in painting, pretty much most of it in painting, is not as much what we consider to be talent as it is a skill set. just a really simple, learnable skill set. and we're gonna continually learn those skill sets. in my experience it's about five to ten paintings for people

if they come from a place of absolutely zero experience to really get a good tool set going so they can really start painting. hopefully you're gonna get to meet a bunch of people that have had that experience soon and they'll talk to you about how easy and fun that is. alright. we're gonna come in here. and we're gonna do a nice half circle. i'm gonna move my canvas a little bit forward. now, if i looked at my regular- my painting over here, i see i've got about five inches up so i just come from the diagonal. and about five inches up i make a little dot. that's good. this isn't precision.

and i'm gonna just make a nice little circle.this is my little round seed pod that's gonna be down here. my nice little round seed pod. alright. how wonderful is that? painting that in, making sure all the white's disappearing. at this point, the directionality of your brush strokes is not that important. right now learning to get a nice, even thickness of paint to cover your canvas is important. and trying not to over thicken your paint is important. we'll talk about directionality in this painting a little bit later, but right now it can just be anything. little tip or trick. you can paint the edges of these.

you can. you can just paint these edges right up. and what's nice about this is while you can always frame them, and i highly recommend framing. sixteen by twenty, there's a lot of really reasonable framing options. but if you just are feeling very creative and prolific and you're not ready to frame every single thing that you do, if you paint the edges like i showed you right there, you get what's called a gallery wrap edge, where the paint goes around the edge, and since the staples are on the back of this canvas, you don't then have to frame it if you don't feel like it. alright, let's give our brush a good wash. give our brush a nice, good wash.

wipe that on our nice paper towel to clean that off. make sure the pigment's off. and we're gonna do the fun work of, uh, putting in our background. and our background is super easy. our background is a little bit of red, mixed into our phthalo. and if you guys remember, red and blue make purple, but a small amount of red into the phthalo, makes a very deep, night time indigo kind of sky color. and we're gonna paint in the whole rest of this canvas

with this dark, dark blue. now, just generally paint around your moon. you just need to know where it is. we come back and we really define this and paint this and clean this up later. what happens to new artists, pretty much most of them, is there is, oh! a terrible terrible ugly stage in paintings, um, and that's everybody. you go on youtube here, and look around at some of these fabulous artists that are sharing their artwork. there's just a stage in everybody's paintings where, wow you really gotta have faith, if you don't know how art works, that it's gonna work out. so i can come here and i can paint this edge. paint it.

paint it, paint it. paint it and paint it and paint it. i'd love for you guys to get on my facebook page and share your results. how it came out for you. how it worked out for you. if you have questions, i'm incredibly happy to answer those questions. you know. i'm happy to help you troubleshoot, and uh, happy to help you

find whatever's going on or even give you encouragement. let you know what you did right. it's really easy for artists to know what they did wrong. (knocking) much harder for them to know what they did right. alright, let's just take a minute speed up. we're gonna speed up our film. and play a little music. (music playing) (music continues)

(music continues playing) (music) (almost finished!) >>>cinnamon: woooo! wow! painting really fast is really hard! especially on time lapse! now, a couple of things. hopefully you relaxed and allowed yourself to just paint this in. all paintings have kind of this under painting stage. and this is definitely part of that. we're gonna have to now do our work to kinda open our heart so we can access our art, and get to our brush stroke. but before we can do that

this needs to be dry. in acrylic painting drying time is almost as important as painting time. because things have to be wet on wet to work, or they need to be on the dry to work. in this particular case, i need this to be dry. so i'm gonna call my painting assistant, my three year old son, spyder, to come in here and manage the hair dryer. so, give us a little movie magic second to get that set up and we'll bring spyder in to dry. say, "hi!" spyder: hi!!!! cinnamon: hi! it's really important that we include all the members of our family into our art projects because art has just gotta be a part of our whole lives.

so little spyder here, who's three, is gonna help mommy by drying the canvas, because mommy doesn't want to wait for the canvas to dry. can we turn those buttons on? ooo! dry it! (music playing) go, spyder, go! go, spyder, go! cinnamon: are you done? can you say- oop. let's put it back in it's hole. put it back. mommy's gotta put her studio equipment back. can you say "bye" to everyone and tell them to paint? say "bye!" spyder: bye!cinnamon: should they paint? should they paint a lot?

do you paint a lot? alright, give me a hug. i love you! ok. it's important when we're being creative to have the support of the people around us. but, you know, sometimes you've gotta paint, anyways, even if they don't get it. cause sometimes saying to people, "i'm an artist," is the same as saying, "i'm an alien from outer space." (laughs) they just don't really know how to relate to it. so you've got to be able to just be like, you know, know who you are, and be true to that. speaking of, let's get it back over to the palette and add some paint because i know we went through some. i'm gonna add some more phthalo cause i'm gonna need it. over here. right there.

i'm gonna rinse out my brush and now begins the van gogh brush stroke once we mix our color. so, alright. we're rinsing the brush out, pushing on the bottom of the cup. drying on the paper towel. what i'm going to mix is my next color of blue, so i'm gonna add just a small amount of white over to my over to my blue. gonna just mix in a small amount here. i always mix from the edge of my paint.

i like to mix from the edge of my paint. the reason being is that if i go from the centers then i just lose all the paint and it gets to be real expensive and kind of a waste of my money. so, once i've got that nice, kind of, ooooh.... just- not as dark as the blue here, but just a shade or two lighter i'm gonna start the brush stroke. and here's the thing. the brush stroke can be on the wide of the brush. it can be on the edge of the brush. some people like to switch and do a teeny tiny little square brush. here's the deal. this is gonna be the whole deal on brush stroke.

some of you are very organized, tidy little people who have a list of things to do. and you take a lot of flack for that. i know perfectionists take the worst flack from everyone cause we just all feel like we have to live up to it. but here's the deal. you have got to be you. right? so if you're an orderly person and you're neat regardless of how i'm doing my brush stroke, you still have to be in your own painting. so, your brush stroke needs to be comfortable to you. it needs to be relaxed to you. it needs to benefit you and it's not gonna be if you're trying to be something that you're not. trying to be a fake at anything is never gonna work out. so whatever you are, it's a feature. it's the best thing about you. be it, especially in your painting. if you're a free spirit.

maybe a little bit crazy. wear funny hats. you might have a more expressive brush stroke. one is not better than the other. alright? so we're gonna do our brush stroke and our brush stroke is, i'm on the edge of my brush. and i'm coming around my objects in short, rounded strokes. there's spaces left between the strokes. and i like to think of it as a little weave. or my very favorite analogy is that these stars and these objects right? well... it's as if somebody plunked

little pebbles in a pond and these are the radiating circles coming out. now, when i've got those in, i'm gonna make a little detour. i'm gonna come down by my little half circle here. you see right down here? and i'm gonna get my little swirl in because i like my little gust of wind and how i do that is i'm just gonna come in and lay that in with this nice blue here. woooo! just a little swirl. any swirl. your swirl, my swirl. it's all perfectly good swirl. i like to widen it at the end so i know where it is. i sort of paint it in. a little bit against it's background. i strengthen it, is what i like say, but really what i'm saying is i'm adding more paint so i have a better idea of where it is.

alright, so i know where that is now. so especially when i'm going around with my van gogh inspired little brush strokes and wouldn't he be super pleased that we're all doing this today? wouldn't he just be amused that people love his work? his is the most purchased print online by a lot. for a man that didn't sell anything when he was alive, boy we sure love him a lot now. so that must be very nice to look down and see all that appreciation. so we'll send him light and love, wherever he's at. and we'll ask to be inspired and find our brush stroke today. see, so i'm just kinda coming around here. the shape of the swirl is inspiring my brush stroke.

and again, some of you will have very neat and tidy little strokes. they'll just be so organized. i've seen that. i have pictures on my facebook page of people who have done that. love it. there's no wrong way to do this. the only wrong thing is to not take time to do it. to not give yourself the time to be creative. to not give yourself the permission to be creative and to criticize the creativity that you're participating in. it's the only mistake you can make, is being unkind to yourself. i'm gonna come around here, around these stars, weaving our little first layer of brush stroke. see those little openings and how they kind of go around just like those pebbles in the water. woooo!

just coming along down now, we're gonna have petals and a lot of non-sense over this but it's still important to get it painted in. paintings are about layers. oooo, i like that. i want that to really feel like there's the wind there. and i'm gonna come around my little sunflower and i'm gonna make some little brush strokes around my sunflower. this is just really the most fun to do. so, you should have something like that. now, again, maybe it's teeny tiny little strokes

maybe it's crazy, crazy strokes. what you don't want is just like solid circles around your stars. you want to break those up. and you want to try to relax into this. if you need a deep breath, (breathes deeply, exhales) take one whenever you need it. alright, next color. palette cam. so, we're gonna mix a much lighter color here. a nice light blue. and put a nice light blue up here. and we're gonna come back. and not where we put our first brush strokes by any means.

right. not where we put those. we're gonna start putting these lighter blue brush strokes. we're gonna just start putting these nice light blue ones. weaving it in, it's a basket the color weaves in. there's a lot of layers on this sky. so you might as well just relax and do it. thus the two hoot-iness of the painting. it's a lot of fun. but it takes a little of your hoots. takes a little hoot to paint it.

so... wooooo... how ya doing back there? come on to our swirl. so what you want to do, is you want to definitely get this brush stroke going into your swirl. i'm coming along- i want to lighten this up a lot. this is the wind that has come through our sunflower field that's

picking up leaves and picking up all kinds of debri. and that's how that would look like to us, so that's how we're painting that in. we're gonna lighten it up a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot as we're painting. we know where it is now. i like to make sure it's wider at the bottom. and narrowing at the top. to give you guys an idea, it's ooh, it's three and a half inches at the bottom, but yours could be four, yours could be three. just wider. when you need to, make some more paint.

come around. painting, painting, painting. wooo. one thing i have to say i love about the three cameras. i don't have to be painting at some crazy angle all the time. which is nice. getting this in. by now you should start to see some of the energy of this amazing sky. it should be picking up some of your personality. if you don't see it. if you're not seeing your personality in your painting, run it by your friends. they will validate that it's there. that's what they're for. keep ya honest.

keep you true. if you're a very young little brush you hang in with me. we're gonna have a lot of fun doing this. oooo. look at that right there. so we've got that next we've got that next layer. right. and so now we're gonna keep layering and we're gonna keep layering. you should start to feel the painting coming together. um, if you're from home school, and you're joining us and you're doing this painting, this should be a really neat experience for you to sort of experience what it was like to be mr. van gogh.

it's really interesting artists. one of the most interesting artists on the planet. and every couple of years, new ph d candidates publish new papers that tell us new things about him, that they learned something new, so... he's definitely one of those artists that you can get into and learn a lot about. and find something in his life that you can relate to, especially if you're a teenager. he's one of those great artists to get into. alright, next color that we're gonna do, i like to throw this in, is a little bit of turquoise. ooooo! yeah! you know, if you hate turquoise, you can throw in a purple. you know, it's certainly your painting.

i take the phthalo green, and i pull some out. and then i grab a little bit of my blue and i mix some in there so i've got my phthalo green and my blue. and then i come over to my white and i very carefully add these colors in. you're gonna see that that's just a really nice turquoise. you want a little more green, you can green your turquoise up. turquoise comes in a few ranges of shades. i just like to put it in there. and i'm gonna come and i'm going to work my turquoise into the sky. now you'll see, even my moon will disappear, but i'm gonna come back in and put a lot of my moon back.

every time i teach the sky, everytime i paint the sky, it's a little bit different. it just really, like, my mood affects it. how i'm interacting with the world. i'm gonna put just a little of this turquoise in my swirl. now everything affects it. so you know this is something that you can do once in your studio, and then come back and do again and you'll get something different out of it every time. a different color scheme. a different feeling. and i have students that'll come paint one of the van gogh pieces, and maybe they'll paint a van gogh city and

every time they do it, they're having a different experience. this isn't just about production. artwork is not about a product actually, it's about a process. it's about your process. how's your process today? how are you today? that's what it's really about. how are you today? because no matter how you are, here's a thought, no matter how you are, if you can get to the easel. if you can get to your painting, and if you give yourself some of that time you're gonna come out the other side of this feeling better about whatever it is. it really helps process that out. that's why we always say art's process, not product.

i mean, the things that come out during the painting, are amazing and it's nice that i get something pretty at the end, but it's it's really the experience that i'm having that that makes it for me. makes it worthwhile for me. alright, so i've got that nice little turquoise there. i'm gonna rinse out. rinsing out, rinsing out, rinsing out. if you're sky's gotten a little light, you can come back in with dark, dark, dark sky. if it's if it's exactly how you like it then you can leave it alone. i've seen people put in pink and stuff.

that looks really really good. right now i'm gonna take some just white. and tint it with just the tiniest amount of blue so it's just slightly off white with the blue. and i'm gonna come around just my stars. what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna i'm gonna focus around my stars and i'm gonna start creating that radiating light out from the stars. so imagine being in san remi with van gogh, looking out from the window and being a little more medicated than you'd like to be, seeing that night sky. and feeling the, like, buzzing in your head. and trying to represent how you felt about that sky later. and that's kinda what happened there. so, let's ask him to join us and help inspire us. in our little studios. we're gonna come in with some of the light colors here, and just around the little stars.

just around them. i'm gonna paint out a little bit. hopefully you can see that. i'm gonna paint out a little bit of this white. oh, i hope you can see this. little bit of this white. hopefully the third cam is. really bringing it home. i'm gonna come around my moon. now, around my moon i'm going to kind of center it coming down, like it's reflecting in water. and then

around this little star. we're gonna be coming back with some yellow and sort of fixing these little spots up. hopefully we can get a... do our hair drying in a minute. spyder will come back and see us. you know. but he's three, so there's no telling. it could be nap time by now. alright, now the swirl. this is wind, so i'm really gonna lighten this swirl up right now and i'm gonna do that by just putting in a large

amount, a brave amount of this white. right into my little swirl. i'm painting on the wide of my brush to get this wider stroke and also my pressure is very light. the pressure of my brush is a very light pressure. it's almost as if this canvas has a sunburn. and i'm just very gently pushing the brush over the surface of the canvas so as not to hurt it or aggravate it. so i've got this nice little wonderful gust of wind coming here and it's lightening up.

nice light pressure to to add some white to that. alright. so now i've got that and that started to lighten up and now i get to put in the golds and the reds and the oranges, and those are exciting colors. they are- a little art education point. they're contrasts. so whenever you see something on the color wheel and it's on the opposite location on the color wheel right, that makes it a contrasting color, and if you mix them together, you get some variation of a zombie gray or brown. which is fantastic for zombie painting. not so great in all the other paintings. but if you paint them next to each other, they pop. it's actually part of color theory. all those crazy paintings you see in a museum, it's like,

two colors, that's actually what a lot of that is about, is which color is pulling towards you and which color's pushing away and how those colors relate to each other. contrasts really are shocking next to each other and some of my favorite paintings are painted in contrast. so, we're gonna do that here and the first color we're gonna get. we're gonna get just our yellow ocher. just our yellow ocher. we're not even gonna mix anything into it. we're gonna kinda smooth it around here. you can see on the palette cam, get it a little thinned out. i'm gonna come in, i'm gonna see right here, i'm gonna paint in my moon a little bit better. i'm gonna use the short bristles first and let this

right, sometimes you'll get a drip. just move the drip away. it's acrylic painting. we don't get too stressed about these things. i'm gonna dab my paint off on the paper towel. if you're hating this big brush for the moon, go ahead and switch to a small brush. don't, don't don't be stressed out about it. you know. don't be weird about it. it's just not a problem. alright. get some more of that. and then we're gonna come in and dust around our little stars with a little bit of this color. this nice grey poupon mustard color, and the paint's a little wet so it's gonna mix on the canvas. let it do that.

even if you're the neat person, experiment with letting some things just happen. you know, some things just need to happen. and that's a good thing. some things just need to happen. got a little crazy with the gold there. that's ok. it happens. everyday. you see what comes out. you know, you have a plan, and then you also just relax into it. see that's starting to put that gold into the painting and put that vibrancy into the painting. i might add a little bit of this to my swirl. ooooh! (kids yelling in background)

some ferociousness happening in the background there. (kids continue yelling, cinnamon laughs) my youngest like to play monster. that's what we get sometimes. alright, a little bit of nice, slight pressure. now we've moved on to this. it's beyond a sunburn. it's a cat that's just had a bath. and we don't want to anger that cat. that's how light we put on that gold dusting. rinsing out the brush. i'm gonna take a second and just hair dry my moon here.

alright. don't tell my- don't, don't, shhhh.... don't tell my painting assistant. he takes these things very seriously. he's very serious about his jobs. you know if you have a three year old at home you know how serious they can be about their jobs take out half inch angle brush. rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse. rinse rinse rinse. ok. and i'm gonna get just a little bit of my yellow. i'm gonna grab some of my white over here and i'm gonna bring it over to my yellow and i'm gonna add some white to it.

if you're painting with one of the less expensive paints, one of the student grade paints, one of the things that you may want to do is add white sometimes to the lighter colors because the pigments can be thin, the binders can be thin, and the white will often have more in it and will help extend or improve that pigmentation. so let's do that. get my hat back on. alright. (kid says "no!" in background) no! she says. not having none of it. alright. little moon there. i'm gonna add some of this to my stars. if you can see that.

little brightening up to the stars. a little layer. and i'm gonna take..i'm gonna take this just a little bit of this color a little more white to it. just a little more white to it. yellow and white mixture. i'm gonna put that around our stars. just a little bit here and there.

a little more around this star have a little fun traveling around your stars. now, i don't take this all the way into the blue. this just radiates. this is just the light emanating from my stars. so they only come out a little bit. a couple inches. until i feel the blue. you do this, when you go to do van gogh's actual starry night then you have an easy, easy time doing it.

it's gonna be fun. very enjoyable. you like it. hopefully this new method of filming that we're doing will make it significantly easier i'm gonna pull a little bit of this yellow in here. a little bit. we're gonna come back last step with a lot of white on our little wind, so we'll be knocking that back, again with that light

angry wet cat pressure. now, my last color that i kinda what to do here is i'm gonna make some orange, and i'm gonna make some orange by taking a little bit of my red, over to my yellow and mixing it. i don't take the yellow over to my red because it would just take all of the yellow to change the red. but it takes very little of the red to change the yellow.

if it gets away from you, just get it back. you know, if you ever get a color you don't like, here's a tip. stop painting with it. it's amazing how often you'll see people, they get a color they don't like john: your mic's off. cinnamon: that background noise is my husband and our audio-visual guy. who did not turn on my mic. see. when all else, blame somebody else!

so this is all in now. we've got our nice little orange. i'm gonna rinse out my brush really really well. i'm gonna rinse out my brush really well. and the last thing i'm gonna do is i'm gonna come in with some white and i'm gonna brighten my little swirl so that when it goes off it's more wooooo! and i find that sound effects actually help so when you're painting something if it looks like it should make a noise, like, if it looks like a slide , it look like you would go "wheeee!" then my suggestion to you is that you just go ahead and go "wheeee!" so let's do the wheee, let's grab our white paint.

let's grab our white, i'm looking for a little clean spot of white. the white's getting a little thin. and i'm gonna come in here. oooooh! angry cat pressure though. i'm gonna come in with my white very light pressure. very light. and i'm gonna knock my swirl back. so, now i'm gonna restock my palette. now i'm ready to get my uh, petals in and get my seed pods in and restock my palette.

and sometimes when you're painting, you've got paint management, which is how everything works on the palette. what i want you to think about is like, just pay attention. if it's getting to be difficult, like you're just finding it so hard to get a new spot of paint, then go ahead and put some new paint out. but realize that there's always a little space to mix. so don't just be like throwing out palette papers or polystyrene plates every two seconds. you know. paint management. it's one of those artist skills that we develop along the way. it's a goal, so don't be hard on yourselves. this is the one place during the week that you should really make every effort to be forgiving, nice, loving, and kind to yourself. alright, new paint. so, i'm gonna put some new white out, because i'm having a little trouble getting to my white.

i'm gonna put it over here by my black and my brown. and.... i'm gonna put out a little bit of red. i'm ok with my yellow and my gold. i just know what's coming. i may even, at some point, need even more white than that, but that should be enough to get in my petals. now, the petals. now the petals. so the petals are, and this is the case, painting is easy, and either the brush or the paint or the canvas needs to do the work. and in this case it's gonna be the brush that's gonna do the work. i'm going to create the petals using the shape of this brush. this brush is gonna do the whole thing. i'm gonna do them in white first, and then i'm gonna come and glaze them later with their colors, and that's how i get that technique.

so i want you to remember that the short bristles are the beginning of the stroke, so if i'm making little upward petals, then the short bristles will face up, or if i'm making little downward petals, the bristles will face down. i'm gonna load up my brush with some white paint. it's fun to do. load, load, load, load, load. and i'm gonna come up here. and i'm gonna plant my brush into the thing and come up. and make this nice little petal. and i'll come here and make a little petal.

get a little more white paint. i'll make a nice little petal right here. now, i like to sort of change the directions of my petals. i don't like them all to face the same way all the time. and i'm not sometimes there's a tendency to just want to paint little individual, like, petals every time and work it all out, but the truth is, is that oh, nature is a hot mess. nature is a hot mess, and it is gonna wanna

put these petals all over the place. so you put these petals all over the place. so i'm gonna put another nice little big little petal right here. i think the next one needs to curve and sort of be long. if you go to whole foods if you're blessed enough to do that. if you're blessed enough go to whole foods and have the whole foods experience you'll know they have those gorgeous, multi-colored sunflowers- hot! they have these gorgeous, multi-colored sunflowers, and this is what inspired those. actually, i have to credit my mother-in-law, linda, for this painting. she came to me to help her with a birthday gift for a dear friend of hers, who loves van gogh, and loves sunflowers

and she's like, i need some combo of that and i just thought, well that, that probably goes together really well and then it turned into this fabulous painting that i'm now teaching you, so we have to send her light and love and say thank you. alright. on goes the hat. ah it's on now, i've got it on. i feel it planted. ok. so, i'm gonna come and i'm gonna curve that little petal in kind of like a little s-curve. maybe this one will have a nice little back curve. because these sunflowers. these whole foods all organic, namaste flowers.

you know, they've got crazy little leaves, cause they are in it's nature intended, even though they might be dyed. they have these just glorious, crazy petals. i'm gonna come here at the corner and i'm gonna curve me a little petal right off. now, i try to make my petals a little thicker at the base. right. and then thinner at the i need to put a little extra petal in there, and try not to leave big, blue gaps at the pod. you can let them cross in front of each other. they can do that.

i'll do one more down here like this. once we get into this space- there's another little one. our little petal's gonna go up. and there's one that comes down. maybe another one that comes down. these start to do a variance of going down and coming up. that's what they start to do. and then through here they're all sort of up.

all start to go up. and then as we come around here, they start to make the trip back this way. i'll just put these- oh, i covered right in front of my star. i got a little excited there. you know, this is something that'll happen. as mr. bob ross used to say, there's no mistakes, only happy accidents. now, we've invoked bob, so we know good things are gonna happen in our studio. anytime you invoke bob ross, only good, happy stuff can happen to you in the studio.

yay bob! for those of you who aren't really sure who bob ross is, he's the man with the fro, on pbs for about a million years! reminding people that art should be an every day part of our lives. and art should be an every day part of our lives. i mean, we've tried owning everything. that didn't really make anybody happy. you have all the biggest stuff in the world, it's wonderful to have, but it's not what contributes to the happiness well-being bucket that exists in our heart and souls. so art and poetry and music and expression, those are the things that

at the end of the day make us feel like we've contributed something really meaningful in our world, and that's really important. it's great to have beautiful stuff in your kitchen, but it's even better to look up at that painting in the kitchen and know you made it and everybody who comes in sees it and sees you in it, and it brings joy into your world. and it's the kind of thing that it doesn't cost a lot of money but it gives a lot back, and those are special things. i'm gonna come here with our little petal up. ooooh. get some crazy little petals going. i like to have some crazy petals on mister downward sunflower.

i like to take one and curve it down into the seed pod here. maybe i'll do two. just fun to do. and start some upward petals here. yeah, i love my upward petals. i may even come back with a back cross petal. however you want to do them. you know, you just want to have a great little collection of happy petals. cause they should be just creative. i'm gonna come about here.

i'm gonna make a little dot. just gotta make a decision. and my decision was if you have a ruler and you're feeling very, i gotta know exactly, it was eight over and four up. but sometimes in art it's just about making a decision and going with it. i'm gonna make the bell, and the bell comes around and goes flare out. and the bell comes and flares out, and then i'll just finish this off. just finish that off. finish out the bell.

so now i've got that. i'm gonna rinse my brush. i'm going to go into my collection of fabulous little brushes. and the one i'm gonna say i've got is a number six little square here. number six little square. you know, some variance in size is ok, but you want something fairly small. this is about a quarter of an inch wide, and that's what i'm gonna use. and i'm gonna come, and i'm gonna get my black and mix it into my brown.

i know. i said don't do it, but here we go. and i'm gonna make some of that up. and i'm gonna make little dots on my seed pod of these dark, dark little seeds that are in my black and brown. and they're gonna be on the outside edges here. i'm gonna even have some of them be here. we're letting our white dry there while we're putting in our little seed pods.

sometimes we need our hairdryer and sometimes we just paint somewhere else on the canvas. you never know how long the kids are gonna nap, so you gotta do time management. or somebody's gonna call with some drama. you gotta figure out what you wanna do here. oh, happy little seed pods. i'm gonna do the same down below on this seed pod. i'm gonna come in

a couple inches with little seed pods. just this little dab. you know. you neat and orderly people will have very neat and orderly little seed pods. you free spirited people with have free spirited little seed pods. but we're gonna really appreciate each others seed pods. be supportive of the different ways we choose to paint seed pods. so the dark seed pod's in. then i'm gonna come in

and get just the brown. i may need to put some more brown on my palette here. i'm letting my little petals dry. get just the brown. i'm gonna add a little layer of just the brown seed pods in. ah ha! and now my madness of putting the blue and the brown together begins to make sense, because this brown just really pops now. against that cool brown. i'm putting this little brown seed pod i'm not taking it all the way back where i took like the black and brown seed pods.

i'm pulling it more towards the center. we're coming up a couple inches. go ahead and pull this brown really far. the center of your sunflower, it's really fun. just enjoy yourself. coloring is fun. i'm leaving the centers here and i'm leaving the center here kind of open, cause i'm gonna come in with some lighter colors. and i want to be able to weave my colors together.

put maybe a little bit more there. alright. got a nice area of that. rinse my brush. now i'm gonna take my red over to my brown. that's pretty exciting. kind of brown up my red. i'm gonna take some of that into my seed pod, but it's coming up further. going up into the center and out here. sort of weaving in. i'm not trying to paint these dots on the brown dots i painted before. i'm trying to put them in new space.

in new space. the other thing i want you to do i want you to break up patterns. unless it has a very good reason, nature tries to break up patterns. if it gives you a pattern, it's messing with you just in general and just think about it. the animals that have a pattern it's like, it looks like an eye, but it's not an eye. mostly, how we do camouflage is we're trying to break up patterns. so the goal for you in spite of years of education that tell you to do pattern recognition, is to try to break up patterns, as much as you can, cause sometimes you wanna go dot, dot, dot, dot dot, dot.

and that ruins the look of what you're doing, so if you can break up the pattern you're gonna get a result that you like even better. even more. to the degree that you can resist the temptation to do it. alright i'm gonna rinse out my brush cause that was too fun. it was just too enjoyable. and i'm gonna grab my ocher. and a lot of this painting, a lot of this is gonna be done with my ocher. a lot of it's gonna be done with my ocher.

which is that grey poupon mustard. very telling. about the type of family one has, depending on mustards. are you a two mustard family? did you have french's and grey poupon? are you just a one mustard family? only this on a hot dog. no deviation. we're just really dabbing this. we're making this much stronger in the center here. and i'll even kind of imply a curve to this. because this is the beginning of the implied reflection from the moon

on our seed pod. just get in there and can order it up if you want to, or you can be random and crazy. but what you do want is the highlight of what you've got in the center. there you go. fun stuff letting that brush do the work, make that seed shape, right? let the paint mix on the canvas.

looks pretty good. now i'm gonna rinse this out. and you're just like, oh my god, is there just any more seed pods that we need to do? yeah, there's several more layers. come on, let's do them! so rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse my brush. i'm going to come over, and mix a very light yellow. a duck yellow. a baby duckling yellow. right, we all know that looks like, fuzzy yellow duckling yellow. and i'm gonna come here. i'm gonna add some of my fuzzy duckling yellow to my seed pod.

just gonna add some fun color vibrance to that, right? come up here and add some of my fuzzy duckling yellow. ooh, fuzzy duckling yellow. looks a little weird right now with the white flowers, but when you come in later these yellow blossoms will really

make a ton of sense to ya. i'm gonna rinse this out. and i've just really got a couple more things to do here. i'm gonna mix an orange. you guys remember about taking just a small amount of red over to the yellow? make a nice, warm, hot orange. i'm gonna come in and pop a little of that up here. pop a little of that hot orange up here.

again, focusing more on the center. where that reflection is. you know, now look at your seed pod. is it lacking something? i feel like mine's lacking some of the brown. i'm gonna go in and put some more brown here. work those seed pods. sometimes things are about layers. people are about layers. (kid in background) uh oh. nap time is over.

(kid in background) (whispers) oh, nap time, shhh. dad's taking care of it. we hope dad's gonna get her. dad may not be getting her. just taking that adding some to it. making sure it's got good texture. little of the black and the brown again. a little black and the brown, come back in. really make them good.

get in there and find little spots for your color. find a little placement. i may have to alright, now i'm gonna take a little green add a little yellow to it. and add a little of this white to it. and then i think i'm gonna even add a little blue. i'm gonna try to make kind of this- yeah, right here. this minty almost this new 2014 pantone hemlock color.

and i'm going to (laughs, waves) i'm going to add some of this surprising color into my seed pod here and there. this is that kind of touch that's what we refer to as painterly, these little decisions that we make about how we're gonna do things. woooo! through that! the petals are the most fun, i think, in this painting to do after the sky, and they're really good

growth piece for you, for you as an artist because you have to kind of get control but you also have to let go at the same time, and that's kind of a good lesson on the canvas and it's a good lesson in life. to have control, but also allow things to be, and see how they work out. so, we're gonna do a marbled paint on our brush, and then we're gonna let it mix on these petals, and we're gonna keep getting new colors. and we're only gonna rinse when it just becomes muddy and a problem we don't like it anymore and we wanna brighten it back up again. so i'm gonna start out and my first color i'm gonna do i'm gonna do a little bit of my yellow

mixed into my white. it's just yellow and white, and you can see here, i've just kind of not mixed them all that perfectly. i'm gonna come right up here to, say, this petal. and i'm gonna just go over it. then i'm gonna do this next petal. maybe the next one i'm gonna grab just pure white. do that to get a lighter color. and now i'm gonna come over and get some of this orange that i've got mixed over here. and then i'm gonna grab some of this ocher.

i'm not rinsing. see, i'm not rinsing, i'm just grabbing a little color. get a little red. grab a little of this. hit this petal- ah, and there we go. there's that whole foods crazy. get a little more red on the next one. oooh. now i'm gonna grab some brown. didn't see that coming, did ya? and then i'm gonna do this petal. and now we're pretty much

so far in the fall colors. right. then i'm gonna rinse a little bit. i'm gonna add a little more white to my palette. so it's easy to do this. and i'm gonna add a little more brown to my palette so that it's easy to do this. i've got a good amount of red. alright, rinse, rinse, rinse, rinse, rinse. and again i'm gonna grab just a titch of this yellow and come over and mix it into this white and get this very light marble-y color, and i'm gonna come right here.

tracing right over this petal. coloring it right in. and this next one. now i'm gonna wipe on the paper towel and i'm gonna grab some just pure yellow. just some pure yellow. alright. we've got that just pure yellow, and see how it's just, i'm letting the paint do my work. and in art, wherever you can let your paint do your work this starts to become the kind of hobby you can do all the time for relaxation on vacation. alright, now

i'm gonna add a little bit of red in there, in that mix. get this little peeking petal here. and i'm gonna come right in front create that implied leveling. and i'm gonna get a little more red now. go back and get some white and yellow. ooh. that's a pretty petal. i'm gonna try to coat that petal in there.

i'm gonna grab some just gold. i haven't even rinsed yet. and the trick to this is when do i need to rinse? i think i need to put some yellow in there. get some pure yellow. i think it has a little spot of green in it, but i'm not gonna worry about it. come back with some more yellow on that one. i just wanna brighten that up. we're just getting it. pretty good. rinsing. i'm gonna start out with just some yellow.

some white. and up we go. now i'll grab some more just yellow. up up. just yellow right here. grab a little of the red. some more yellow. a little of the red.

maybe get some of these with that red and yellow mixture. wipe it off on the paper towel, grab some more yellow. that's pretty nice. grab some white. haven't rinsed the brush in a while. just enjoying that. get some of this gold. some of the gold.

then get some of that red. throw that in there. that's a surprise, right? back to the just pure yellow. aright. so there you have the beginning of your garden. your flower has color in it. you didn't work very hard for it, and you just got to enjoy it. and there were surprises for you, and that's kinda fun in art, where you can let there be surprises, like you might not know that color's coming. you know, you can go in now and touch up any little white spots that you missed.

just come in and do a little touch up wherever you feel like you might need to. we'll come in with a little detail brush later. we get to go down here now. i'm gonna come in with just straight yellow. and this one will be all- and you can make a decision like your bottom one might be more yellow than your top. i'm gonna put a little red in there. alright. follow this really fun

petal down. get a little more red. go right back into that pure yellow. get some more of that just pure yellow. maybe some white and some pure yellow. so now your bottom sunflower is starting to take shape. and you just gotta throw your bell in. my bell i do in yellows and this first layer i do in a mixture of light duck yellow, which we are familiar with. just a little of that. see, this is fun. you just look for little spots on the canvas and you find a little spot.

and you mix it. paint management. i'm gonna come and short bristles facing down. paint in. see. there it is. it's taking shape. and then i'm gonna come in with another layer of just this pure yellow. i'm gonna kind of make some more defining petals, that are shorter than the light ones. and then i might add.

a little of my gold here. just create some more petaling. and interestingly enough, i might even grab some brown and put it in. and that gives us some layers on those petals. wooooo! it's starting to look like something! you're not having to visualize anymore. you're not having to use your inner eye as much. but it's good to use your inner eye. so it's a good exercise. i'm gonna get my little brush out.

my little square. and i'm gonna put in my stems. and the reason i put in my stems last, is i found that when i had students, when they do this, they have just their own way of doing it. and sometimes they have a lot of petals that go down and sometimes they're with me and their petals go up. and depending on how your petals go, you have to sort of make adjustments for your stems. there isn't really a one stem fits all sunflowers solution here. so the solution is, if all of your petals are facing up

then you can do what we have right here and have this kind of cluster attachment that the sunflower has. but if all of your petals are fluffy and facing downward and i really want you to look at that. are they down? i'm there with you but i can't be there with you, so, unless you want to like email me a picture, uh, we're gonna have to just be psychic right now. if these are all down, then you're gonna have to just do stem simple, which is just a candy cane shape. (whispers) there's my daughter, she's nine. which is just a candy cane shape coming down, and then this candy cane shape coming down.

well, this is actually more of an s. it's gonna come and kinda curve down like this. so, i'm going to get my phthalo green. yay, phthalo green! and i'm gonna mix a little brown into it. getting a very deep, dark green. i'm gonna come in with some brighter, more cheerful greens. and i'm gonna come right here. i'm gonna come right to this space. and i'm gonna make a dot. i'm gonna say my stem is here. and i know it's gotta weave here.

and i'm gonna paint on my wide. and i'm gonna come down and i'm gonna land my stem right here. now, here's something you need to know about your stem. your stem will be the thickest at the bottom of the canvas where it's coming up and the thinnest where it joins. cause plant life is ever diminishing. if you look at a tree each branch is smaller than the branch it's attached to, the branches are smaller than the trunk, and eventually it's little twiggly bits. everything gets smaller and smaller and smaller, and this is true of these particular stems, too. so come in and just paint this in real well. give this a nice coat

so it's covering the canvas underneath. and then i'm gonna do the candy cane which is gonna start right here. bloop. and i know that i'm gonna want it to come up and come off the canvas here. it's just a decision that i made. you may make a different decision. it's your time. it's your painting. absolutely welcome to just do it your own way.

alright, so now i've got my two stems in. now, in my particular case, i have upward facing petals, so i'm going to do the full stem attachment. make this dark green color again. i'm gonna come here. and i'm gonna make this little series of fun petals. oh. clustering off this way. alright. nice little collection of fun little...

so that's a nice big thing. so if you look at the bottom of that sunflower it's got that big crazy attachment. and i'm gonna do a similar thing on my bell, just a little bit. there's some nice sort of donna dewberry style paint mixing on the canvas there. i'm gonna paint on the bottom edge of my brush, which will give me a very thin line. most of these brushes, if they're square or whatever, if you paint with a light pressure, sunburn pressure, angry wet cat pressure, you know where you're like, "ah, i don't want to touch it," then you're gonna get a thinner line. pressure and the thickness and thinness of your lines are really directly connected. um, if you need to wipe off excess paint on your paper towel, go ahead and do that.

i'm gonna make a little leaf coming up this way this time. there, you got a little leaf this time. and just do a little thing your time. alright, so we've got that. that's pretty awesome. now, i want the next things to really show on my painting. i don't want them to just disappear and blend in, so i'm gonna dry uh, my painting. we've lost my painting assistant, spyder. he's having a little nap. so, (chuckles) our star will not be able to appear again until he wakes up. but, for the purposes of this,

hairdryer. (kid in background) cinnamon: uh-oh. (whispers) uh-oh. shhh. uh-oh. the two year old wants a snack. daddy's saying no to some particular snack. it's never received well. i'm gonna add a little yellow to my green. uh-oh. yeah, she says no. add a little white to that.

i'm gonna get this very bright color here. you see here. very bright color. i'm gonna come in. i'm gonna add just little bits of this very bright color. you can see how i'm just dusting things. this again is that light pressure, edge of the brush. light pressure, edge of the brush. you can always practice brush strokes on a piece of paper if you're like, not sure you're gonna get a nice thin line. when i teach camp i always have the kids practice thick and thin lines.

when my mom teaches, she has the kids practice thick and thin lines. it makes a real difference. if you're new to painting just get a piece of paper out and go, "how think can i make that line? how thin can i make that line?" and you'll very quickly figure out the nuances of your tool. and you'll be like, "wow!" i can totally do this! i'm gonna come down here. i'm gonna add a little highlight to my green stem. and again, light, light pressure.

light, light, sunburn-y pressure. i'm gonna add, on the right hand side of my leaf, i'm gonna add a little bit of this light color. on the stem, a titch. i'm gonna come up. adding some highlight to the stem. now, i really feel like i need a third color, so i've got this green and brown over here that i've made. alright. then we come and make this nice green and brown. and i'm gonna just add some white to that. and it's gonna give me an interesting third

color. i'm gonna come in with this nice, sort of soft, gray-green color. zombie green. and i didn't even do it with contrasting colors. that's fun. and i'm gonna add just a little bit more. here and there. to everything. a little bit to that. rinse it off. i'm gonna come back.

look at where i think it's just not strong, where it's just not working, and add a little bit of my dark green to it. mix it up where i've gotta mix it up. make that stem look better. (sighs) now, the last part is really just about you doing some fine tuning. i really want you to look deeply at your canvas. and then i want you to trust your gut. at this point your right brain has sort of come on line, and it's starting to have opinions. you're hearing those opinions and you're having trouble trusting them and this is that

"open your heart to access your art" toolset we keep talking about. which is i sort of want you to trust your gut here. i want you to trust your heart. you're seeing things in your painting that are kind of tweaking at you. i want you to go ahead and fiddle with them just a little bit. there is absolutely a point where you can over work a painting. but there is a lot of room between where you're at and overworking it. so, let's adjust some of our petals. let's make some arrangements around our canvas where we think things should be lighter, or brighter, or more defined, til we're personally happy with it. so we'll call this our personal adjustment time. i'm gonna take a little of my orange paint that i like so much.

and i'm gonna come in and define some of my petals here. i'm gonna come... bottom, defining some petals. you don't have to do this everywhere. you can just do this some places. just wherever you feel like you need some more thought or consideration to what you've got going. maybe you're happy though. maybe you're like, "it's done, it's good." and that's completely acceptable. you know. just look around. see what it is that you're feeling. what are you feeling? what do you feel good about? what's bugging ya?

you know? you can look at your life like that too. what are ya feeling good about? what's bugging you? make some adjustments. there's some adjustments. there's a little extra highlight. my seed pods with a much lighter ducky yellow because it was just bugging me. that's the kind of thing that you'll see when you're painting on something. you'll be like, "oh, i want to put some color here." i want to make some adjustments there. that's important. it's an important part of the painting.

alright! i am pretty happy with this. i hope you're looking at yours and you're pretty happy with yours. i am always available to you. you can post your pictures on my feed. on hart party on facebook. there should be a link on my channel here. and i'm happy to answer questions. you can show me what you're doing in your own lives and i am literally here to support and encourage you. i like to say, don't throw any shade. i am the sun, and i'm just here to shine light on the glory and wonder that is you. so feel confident and comfortable in sharing what you're doing in your life with me.

i hope your week is happy. i hope your week is fun. i hope you don't mind your clean up. and i want to see you (laughs) at this easel soon! ba-bye! (closing music)

Subscribe to receive free email updates: