Christmas Goodies || The Social Easel

All right, we're gonna paint some— couple of Christmas ideas that I was sketching out this morning. We're not gonna do the whole painting here, but I thought you might want to join in while I'm painting a little bit. So let's see here. I think I'm going to— it's not cooperating with me. I'm gonna have to rotate my— hang on, guys. I am going to— let me see if I can do this. I don't know if it's gonna let me or not. We'll try this. The joys of painting live. All right, are we good? Sorry about that, you were crooked. Sideways. Turn this so you guys can see a little bit better. All right, how we looking there? Hey everybody! Hey Jesse! If you guys are jumping on, go ahead and hit the share button, let your friends know we're doing a little painting. I won't be able to stay on super long, uh, just because I have to take Miss Emma to an eye appointment. So you can tell what we're starting out with here. Hopefully you can see that, but I am going to go ahead and get my background on here for our little Rudolph. I finally got in Christmas mode this week. It was kind of hard to transition from painting Halloween with my online group and locally and then jumping right into Christmas. So we're here. I've got it. Got to listen to Christmas music while I do my paintings. So I think we're gonna do— if you missed it, this is the one I I finished this morning. Isn't it so cute? I love it. So you can do— you could personalize it with your name or Merry Christmas, or you could just leave it. But this snowman is my favorite part of the painting, and I may just do a big painting of just a snowman too. So tell me what you guys think about that. That could be in November, December, or January, because we can do snowmen after Christmas too. So it kind of depends on what fills up as to what else I'll be able to do before Christmas, because I believe I only have 6 to 7 dates available that I'm going to be teaching local classes here. So we'll have to kind of see how things go and what all we'll have time for. I have a new idea for a nativity scene that I want to do also. And then we've already got our Christmas truck up for the palette night, and then of course the new one I just showed you. This Rudolph is going to be a Mommy and Me class, and you don't have to have a kid to come. You can come and just paint Rudolph, but it's on an 11 by 14, so it's a little bit smaller, and everything will be traced on for the kids also. But I just think he's so stinking cute. All right, so what do you guys think? Jesse says yes to the nativity. Trying to think what else— what some of my other ideas were that I was thinking about. I have a little list where I was jotting down everything. And if you are joining me, because I know we have people from all over, so— excuse me— if you are joining me from out of town and you're not here in Springfield, Missouri, these are going to be available online as well, sold as individual tutorials. And anything like this, like Rudolph, will also come with a template. So when you purchase the tutorial, you'll— it will also come with a download where you can transfer this image onto your canvas. So these will be available, and those will be up in November, so you can buy the online courses as well. And if you guys aren't familiar with that, I have my membership group where we teach— where I teach paintings online. That is currently closed, but I had lots of requests for people to be able to buy the painting tutorials that weren't able to get into the membership. So now we have those available for sale, and it's the Social Easel Online Paint and when you go to that page, you will see some options. You can log in if you're a current member, or it'll say take me to the single painting classes, and pretty much everything, almost everything that we've done in our membership group is available as individual purchases. So I'm not sure if you guys are following me on Instagram or not, but I had posted the Monet's Garden the other day, and I had several people ask about that and if that was going to be available online. And the answer is yes, it is. And these would also make really cute and fun Christmas presents for someone. So if you're not sure what to get them and you know they're creative, you could buy them a the online tutorial, and that would be a really fun and different gift to give someone too. So kind of thinking outside the box for your Christmas presents. Hey, Marcia. Anything snowman? Sorry, I'm reading your guys's comments right now. Cynthia, I do want to do either a farmhouse or barn or something in the snow. I think I'm gonna wait until January to do like a winter scene though, because I only have so many paint nights before Christmas. Thank you, Miss Jani. I love you. Yes to the nativity. Can't wait to paint Rudolph with my granddaughter. That will be awesome, Jackie. Hang on just a second, guys. I'm gonna jump over here real quick. So, question for those of you that are local: do you think the snowman— if I do another new snowman, do you think it should be on the pallet board, or should it be on canvas. And I'm gonna show you— this is another one that I'm working on. I absolutely love this Santa. I don't know if you guys— some of you may have not been following me last year on Facebook, but my husband built me— cut out and built me this huge Santa that stands about 4 feet tall that sits on my front porch, and this is what his face looks like. And so I thought, why not turn this into a palette board painting? So I am so excited about this Santa. He's going to be so adorable. Um, but I would love to do a snowman on a palette board like this too. And how cute would those be, like, next to each other? So you could do one on each side of your fireplace Sorry if we froze up for a little bit there. I think, I think getting a phone call froze my, froze my screen up. Jani, no, I do not know what you're talking about, but I love earrings, you know that. Give them a little bump here in the middle. I'm gonna get a little of my black and kind of tone this down a little bit. So if you guys are new to acrylic painting, just a couple tips while I have you on here. You'll, you'll notice while I'm painting, or you may not be able to if it's too too far away, but, um, this is not super thick right now and it's not covering all the way. So that is a normal thing for craft paint, but when you're painting, you want to make sure that you're not layering wet paint on wet paint and getting it really thick and gloppy. So the trick is to just go ahead and put one coat on, ignore the streaks that you see that I know are bothering you, especially if you are a little OCD. So you're just going to ignore this because when you go back with your second coat— it looks like hair coming down over his eyes right now— when you go back with your second coat, it will cover that up. I may come back and tweak the shape of my ears a little bit. I can't decide if I like those or not. We'll see. So I'm just going to jump down here, start filling in this bottom part. All right, let's see. I'm gonna leave a little section here for his tummy underneath. So I think I showed you guys— you may have seen earlier I posted the sketch for these two ideas that I had come up with. But I'm going to show you again. So after I showed you guys, then I decided how cute would he be with some little lights all up in his antlers. So I'm going to add those in as well. He's just going to be so adorable. And then on the inside here, I'm going to come in with kind of a, like, a lighter tan, just to lighten it up just a little. So you can see them start coming together. Now, and you'll notice I did not rinse my brush while I was doing this, so it still had a little bit of that brown in there. But see how that just gives it some shading and the brush does the work for you? So you can use the colors in your brush to an advantage if they're complementary and you know you want them to kind of blend a little, leave a little bit of the other color in your brush while you do it, and the brush does the work for you. Thank you, guys. Jesse, I'm not sure about a children's nativity, but it would probably be a simple enough class if you had a younger one that they would be able to come to it. And I'm probably only gonna do one Mommy and Me Christmas class, again, just because I only have so many dates on the calendar. And I'm going to stick to my calendar this year. Last year and the year before, I always cave and and I end up adding more paint nights to my schedule because the demand is so high and the classes sell out. And then I end up stressed out at Christmas and mad at myself again because I didn't take enough time with my family. So I am making that commitment to myself that I am not going to do that this year. And once my dates are on the calendar, that is all that is going to be on the calendar. So I'm sticking to that this year. I want to be able to do all the fun stuff with my kids at Christmas and not be stressed out. I just wish they were out of school earlier than they were so we had more time to do stuff. So these antlers, you can make them kind of like whatever. They don't have to be identical. And again, this is something I may come back and tweak a little bit after I jump off here with you guys. This is the fun thing about acrylic paint. So again, if you haven't painted before, maybe you're new to it, or just haven't done it a lot, So what I'm doing right now, and, and this is pretty much how I create my paintings, I just go for it, and then if there's something I don't like or I want to change something, I just let the paint dry, and then I can come back and edit it and get it finalized the way that I want it before I share it with you guys. So if I need to come back in and change the shape of something, sometimes it takes me several stepping back and looking at it from a different vantage point to see if there's something I want to change. Hey, Miss Becky, I was just thinking you've been quiet lately. It was weird because normally I do all my— what am I looking for? I do all my painting classes in my online group live, and this month and actually the next 2 months we might do a couple more live. They wanted the paintings earlier in the month so they could go ahead and get them hung up on their walls for the holidays, but I'm used to painting with my group and talking to them while I'm painting, so it feels like it's been quiet inside our inner tribe lately compared to what it normally is. Hi, Miss Deborah. So these are just his little paws. It's kind of like he's looking out the window. He's got his paws up on the window looking out. So who else is ready for Christmas paintings, or who is still wanting to decorate for the fall. I got some super cute fall paintings coming up next week, so if you have people coming over for Thanksgiving, or if you just love fall decor, there's some really nice ones coming up next week. The Fall Chapel is one of my new favorite ones, and that one's done on a palette board also. I love it. All right, we're gonna give him a little collar here. Trying to decide what color I want to make that though. We'll start with black, and I may come back and change my mind on that. And he needs his little eyes. He's so adorable. Give him his little eyebrows, even though I know I'm gonna come back over this again. I kind of just want them on there so I can see his face. He's just too cute. And I think the thing that really makes the paintings like this is when you go back and add the black outlines around everything. Oh, I was going to go in and put my second coat of red for his nose. So you guys can probably see how much stronger that looks with the second coat. And again, you just always let that first coat dry first. and then come back with the second one, and it makes such a big difference. And if you want to add a little shading or tinting to this, just grab a little bit of white. You can mix that in with your red. And it gives just a little bit of a highlight there. I think it's those little details that make paintings pop. So let's see, I think I'm going to— I'm gonna let him dry, and then I'm gonna jump over and show you guys my Santa that I'm working on also. So we're just gonna set him right over here, and I've got just a few minutes to show you guys kind of the start of this one. And then I've got to jump off here because I have an appointment I've got to run to. Hey, Lisa. So here's my Santa. You can see I got a little bit of his— I had to get his mustache on there. If you haven't painted on pallet board before, or wood in general, it doesn't have to be palette board. I would highly recommend it if you've only painted on canvas, because the paint is accepted— it's just taken so much differently on wood, and it's a whole new experience to paint on. I think it glides on a lot smoother, so it's very fun, and I personally like the rustic look of the wood. I am a craft showgirl, so I love all the rustic Santas and snowmen and all that kind of stuff, and I think they look even better on wood than they do on canvas. Thank you guys. I'll have to post a picture later of the one that Corey built me for my front porch. Last year I had people asking if we were gonna sell them, and That was one of the most— it was probably one of the most complicated pieces that he ever built for me. And that was a solid no on selling those because I don't think anyone would want to pay the price that we would have to charge in order for him to make more of them. But so this is the next best thing. This is the same cute Santa face that's on the one that he built me, except it's on pallet board. So if you can't have the standing one, you can at least have this guy on pallet board instead. Alright, so I'm gonna jump down here and add a little bit of white, and I'm picking up— because this is again kind of a more folk arty crafty kind of Santa. I'm getting a little bit of like a mustard color and kind of mixing that in with my yellow, mostly around the edges because it gives it some contrast instead of just being plain white. And it may seem a little bold at first, but then once we blend it in with our white a little bit, see how that goes away? And it just gives you that nice edge on there. So we'll do a little bit more around this side, and I may even come back in with a little brown in there as well. Again, this will have a little bit of age to it, and I'm thinking what I'm gonna do for the background on this is— so like all this extra wood around here, we're gonna do one of like my fake stains. So if you guys haven't seen that, I'll give you a little taste of it real quick. So this is something you can use on any wood project you don't want to mess with stain because it's a pain in the booty. You can do this instead. This is just acrylic paint, and I'm just going to paint this on here. And I've got water mixed with it so it's nice and light, not too heavy. And you could make this background whatever color you want. You can do this with any color. I just am using brown and it looks like a stain. So I've got it painted on there, and then I am going to Take a paper towel and I'm just gonna wipe it down. Can you guys see that? Then you get this stained wood look without having to mess with stain. So that's my, that's my trick for you. So I hope you guys enjoyed that. I will probably jump back on tomorrow and paint with you guys again, finish these guys up, let you see the finished products, maybe start another new one. So I'm going to jump off for today. Hope you guys enjoyed it and I will talk to you soon. Bye.