Spring Inspired Painting - Acrylic

All right. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope everybody's having a good night. I, uh, Felt like coming online tonight and doing some painting. So if you're around, you want to watch and hang out, that's cool. Feel free to comment, leave questions, say hi on there so I know you guys can hear me, and I'll check the Facebook screen every once in a while. So I don't know about you guys, but all I keep hearing all day from my son is, "Is there school tomorrow? Is there school tomorrow?" I don't know yet. I'm guessing Probably not. I don't think it's supposed to start snowing until the morning, 5 o'clock or so, but, uh, we'll see. But that's been my biggest question all day. I don't know about if you guys heard that like 100 times or not. Um, I don't know if you can see me okay. I try to set the camera up a little bit closer to the art. Usually I set it further away, so it's more important that you look at this. You guys don't need to see my pretty face. You know what I look like, right? Just in case you forgot, here I am. So, good evening, hope you're well. So tonight I'm gonna paint. I don't know what I'm painting. All I know is that I want to use the color blue. I've had a request from a friend of mine, Aneta. Aneta, if you're watching, hi. If you're not watching now and you're watching later, hi. So I'm gonna do something blue. I don't know where it's gonna go, I don't know what's gonna happen, as always, but that's what's fun about this, you you know. I did forget my special guest. Bob Ross is in the house somewhere. I gotta get him. Here he is. You guys know I like to paint with Bob, my inspiration here. So say hi, Bob. That's Bob saying hello. He's gonna hang out with us for a while tonight and probably get some paint on his head. So far he has orange and white and some blue on there, so it's alright. He likes colors. Happy little colors make for happy little paintings. So that's kind of cool. I'm just gonna check on Facebook, see if you guys can hear me okay. If you can hear me, just write something in the comments like, hey, I can hear you, or hi, or smiley face, thumbs up, something like that. And that's it. So let's, let's get going. Let's see, I think I see a couple people in the house. Jen, it looks like Jen and Jimmy. Jen, Jimmy, and Jason, the 3 J's. All right. I love it. Hey guys, thanks for watching. So I was actually thinking before I came on tonight, I wanted to try something different and just kind of put some tape randomly on the blank piece of paper. So I have some regular masking tape, and what this is going to do, wherever I put the tape, you know, the paint isn't going to cover that area. It's going to kind of leave it white underneath. And no rhyme or reason to this, I'm just going to randomly rip some pieces of tape and put it on here, and we'll see how it goes. I won't be able to take the tape off until the painting dries, which probably it won't be tonight. It'll be another one of my other painting sessions. This is kind of a good way to get your aggressions out for the day. Just take tape and just kind of rip it, pull it apart, get that frustration out, right? There you go. And there's my production assistant dancing in the bathroom. He's dancing in the background. There's no school. I guess it's official now. So he's got the new— he's got— oh, Timmy! Thank you, Timmy, for telling Noah. That's cool. All right, buddy. Awesome. So there's no school tomorrow. We got the no school happy dance going on in the house. I love it. That means I could sleep in. That's an extra bonus. Cool. So now we don't have to worry about that one. Painting for me is really, I mean, I love it. It's one of my, I call it one of my therapies. It's just a good way to clear my head, get things out from the day, find new inspiration and things. I just love doing it. It's almost become addicting to me. Um, so there we go. Maybe a couple more pieces. Are you guys enjoying me watch— watching me ripping tape and putting it on here? It's got to be exciting, right? That's cool. Let's just take a couple long ones, then I'll be done with the tape and shred this one a little bit, kind of overlap it. And again, I'm just experimenting. I don't know if this is going to do anything cool or not. We'll see, right? So I'm going to start off just by wetting the blank piece of paper with nothing but clean water on a brush. I'm going to use a bigger brush maybe. And I'm just going to wet the entire sheet of paper, and I'm doing a loose abstract painting tonight. You may have seen me do these before where I just let the randomness take over and see where it goes. Here we go. I think I got enough water on there. Um, let's see, I got some blue paint and inks out over here. I have some blue acrylics. Just going to take a couple of cups. See, I got some blue, uh, ink in here. I don't know if you can see it. Some blue in there as well. Two different shades of blue. So I'm going to dry my brush a little bit and let's just get some blue on here. I don't know, let's start with this one. You can see it on the brush. Ooh, and now it's on the floor. So I have a blue floor going. And I'm just going to run it over the page and let it drip down. I'm not going to try to coat the page evenly, I'm just going to go over it randomly. Cool. So earlier tonight I was, I was on Facebook and I was reminded that today is Mr. Rogers' 90th birthday. I put a post up about it, and I guess, you know, I grew up watching Mister Rogers like a lot of you guys probably did. If you're seeing too much of my head or back of my head, just let me know, I'll move around a little bit. But you know, I watched Mister Rogers growing up and I loved him, but now that I'm older, I just really appreciate him more on many different levels. And I guess the video I posted was a speech he had given to, I forgot, Congress or something. He was trying to get more money for the, I guess, the budgeting for public television. And he ultimately won. And the main thing I got out of that is, you know that expression, and I hate this expression, but I've taken it to heart over the years, unfortunately. And that's, that's changed recently. But the expression 'nice guys always finish last,' you know, I really hate that expression because there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a nice guy. And being a nice guy doesn't mean you have to be a pushover. I mean, just being polite, kind, courteous, you know, listening to people talk not always interrupting them, and being compassionate. There's— I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with being nice, and that expression is really— I think really ought to be— I don't know what the word is— taken out of society because it's stupid. And getting passionate about it, it's stupid. I'm not being nice now, it's dumb. But now you know what I mean. I think there's a huge place for being nice in the world, and you know, there's another expression, I guess, kill them with kindness, right? Just, it's just, it's interesting. It's just a phrase that came to mind after I watched that Mr. Rogers speech today, and I was reminded that I heard that growing up all the time, and I think it really affected me mentally. So we really We really need to get out there and just start advocating, you know, being nice again in this world. There's nothing wrong with it. I mean, I don't know what you guys think, if you agree or not, right? So I'm just putting some blue on here, letting it run down the page. I'm actually going to see if I can get a different shade of blue over here. What do I got? I'm going to make my own. Shade of blue. And sometimes what I do is I take acrylic paints and I'll put them in water and mix them up a little bit. And I don't have a clean cup on hand, so I have to improvise and use this cap I have. So I'm going to put a little bit of acrylic in here. This is, uh, I'm getting old, I have to hold things far away to read them. Just light blue, light blue acrylic. I'm gonna put a little in here and I'll add some water. But I don't know, who are some of your inspirations? You know, people that you admired in childhood, and now that you look back, you know, people that maybe you appreciate even more that you're older. I'm gonna check Facebook, see if there's any questions or comments, check in there for a second. I'll be right back. Hey everybody, hi Art Bonito if you're watching, how you doing? Carrie, if you're watching, hi, how are you? So Art Bonito, if you're watching this, I could use your expertise, you know, my production manager is not here. I have a couple lights shining on here almost, almost at a 45-degree angle. This is technical talk here. My iPad is over here. You know, I'll have to get you over here someday. Maybe you can help me actually set this studio up. So I have this acrylic paint, and I'm just going to put it on top and see, you know, see what happens. I love— I just love how the lines— how the new paint just washes down, get different patterns happening. So this blue I mixed up is— it's a little bit lighter than the other one I had on there, which is fine. I'm just— I'm really going for different shades of blue. What were those books and movies, the Fifty Shades of Grey? Well, maybe I think we're gonna go for Fifty Shades of Blue on my hand too, right? There's nothing wrong with getting paint on yourself. That means you're into your work. It means you've You're having fun, you're loving it. That's why I have a concrete floor in here. I don't care if I get paint on it, it's alright. You know, at the end of the day, my floor is going to be an artwork. So I'm also just— if you notice with the brush, I'm not just going horizontal, I'm just kind of doing some crisscrossing. I'm just, just to get some different lines and movement on the page. There we go. So I'm gonna let that dry for a second. Let's see, I have some more blue. I'm gonna mix up my shop over here— studio shop. Oh, actually, I'm gonna take some of this, but I'm gonna mix it up right in this palette. I'm gonna put some blue and down there and put a little bit of water in. See what happens. Put a little bit of water in there. And the reason I'm adding water is to thin out the acrylic paint. I don't know, this might be too thin. It's kind of watery. I think you can see it running down the page. Alright. Hey, thanks, uh, thanks Carrie, looks good to you. I appreciate your comments and your feedback. I also appreciate all your nutritional tips you put on Facebook. I don't know if Jen's still in the house, but Jen is also She's a nutritionist as well. You guys can talk to each other in the comments. But, um, you know, there are great ways and great things you can do to eat healthy, right? And I'm not perfect by any means, but, uh, it's a start. And, you know, I think everything in moderation is also key. You know, I guess it depends what extreme you want to take it to, but I definitely learned moderation for me seems to be key. Moderation and a lot of, a lot of moving. I've been doing— I do a lot of walking. Cool. I'm really kind of liking what's happening here. I can't— I'm excited to see what happens after it dries and I pull the tape off. I think it's gonna be— it's gonna be very cool. So I got a lot of different blue going on. Just thinking out loud, do I want to add a different color color. I'm trying to stick with blues. I think I'm going to let it dry for like a minute and I'll put some more of that blue ink wash on here and it'll be darker in some areas. What do you think, Bob? You like that? You agree? Oh, I got blue on Bob, on his face. Don't cry, it's okay, Bob. He says it's okay.

Great.

I'm gonna check the comments here while that dries for a second. 52. So while that's drying, so I think today, today is actually the first day of spring, right? The 20th. This has been a long winter. It's been Snow's been beautiful, looks pretty. I know there are huge fans of snow out there, and I like the snow, but you know what, I'm tired of— getting a little bit tired of it. I kind of looking forward to getting more outside in the fresh air, and I want to start doing painting outside and sketching and stuff outdoors. But it'll happen when it's supposed to happen, you know. So I don't know if you can see this, This is actually dry up here, which is good. So I think I'm going to take some more of that blue ink and do a wash on the page. Let's see. And again, I'm just randomly going to do it in some places on here. I don't want the whole sheet to be covered and look the same. So I'm being sloppy. That's another reason I love doing this— it's just a good excuse to be messy. In general, I hate being messy, although if you saw my room here, it's a mess. But this is a good excuse just to kind of let it out and just, just be messy. Let the paint fly. I'm just doing— I'm doing almost like a wave-like kind of motion here, just again, just to break things up a little bit. You can kind of— I'll do an exaggerated one, you can kind of see. It doesn't always have to be straight, you know, up and down, or up and down, or, you know, sideways. I really like what's happening up in this area here. It's just— it's the way it's drying. It's really— it's cool. It's just leaving very cool patterns up in that area here. I've never done a painting with just, you know, using basically one, one color in it. So unless we count the white, we're And that would be two colors, but it'll be fun. It'll be interesting to see what turns out, you know? So I'm gonna let that dry for a second and put these down here. You too. Hey, have a great night. Thanks for watching. Thank you very much. You need to have patience. So sometimes, actually, here's a tip. Sometimes while I'm waiting for the painting to dry before I do more work on it, I will actually work on a smaller project down here. So I have— this is actually a scrap of piece of paper that I have some painting and stuff on. I'm just gonna work on this for a little bit. We'll use the same colors I have out. Use some of this blue. So it's almost like you're doing two projects at the same time, right? So, you know, back to Mr. Rogers again, and I'm thinking about PBS in general. You know, I grew up watching Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, what else? The Electric Company, Reading Rainbow. What was the other one, the Spanish one? Village Alegria or something like that? The Magic Garden? I don't know if that was PBS or not. But I remember the Magic Garden. Yeah, I don't even know if there are shows out now that compare to those shows. I mean, there was Blue's Clues. That was a long time ago though. Sesame Street is still on, I believe, but I think it's on HBO now, if I remember. It's just, you know, it's different. It's so different now. And the values, I think, have changed a lot too over time. So I think the shows, you know, have to change to keep up with that. It's all good, but, you know, I guess I'm just nostalgic and I really, I really love those shows that I grew up with, you know, my age. Yeah, right? Hello? Who's back there? Who's back there in studio land? I hear people back there talking. I'm hearing— I'm hearing voices. So what I'm going to do is I actually want to take the painting and I'm going to rotate it around, and it'll let the paint kind of flow in a different direction. We'll see what happens. Flip it this way. Just kind of let it run back this way. You can see what's happening up in here, right? The paint's just bleeding back down, and it's kind of— it's, it's getting darker where it's running back the other way. Great. It's actually looking pretty cool. You digging it, Bob? Oh, I was talking about PBS, right? I'm on public television. I forgot to mention this guy, Bob Ross. I mean, he was on It was like on, I don't know, Channel 8, New Jersey network or something when I was growing up. So, I mean, I watched Bob Ross on public television, so maybe it's a bad thing. Maybe I'm promoting public television too much because you can end up like me, all the shows I watched. So maybe I shouldn't be promoting it. Just kidding, Bob. You did good. You did a good teaching me about stuff. Cool. So that's, that's drying. So the paint— the paper is really wet, so you might see some bubbling or some rippling on the paint. As the paper dries, it'll tend to flatten out. It might not flatten out all the way, but that's the reason that I tape the paper to the background, to the, the board I have here. That way, when it dries, paper dries, it will help to keep it flat. So that's, that's a good tip. Sometimes though, you do have to be careful when you're tearing the tape off the painting when you're done. I've had, I've had some times where I've ripped the paper, but I guess, you know, you could use that to your advantage and, you know, make it part of the look of the painting or something like that. Also on this board, I just want to print this out here. These are actually the pieces of the tape, pieces of tape that I've peeled off paintings. And what I'm doing is, is as I peel them off the painting, I'm taping them down on this board. So eventually I'm going to have this whole board covered with these painted pieces of tape. So this board will actually end up being in our piece when it's done. So it's kind of coming out kind of cool. Just moving Bob Ross here. There you go, Bob.

Thanks.

I'm going to look to see if I have some other shades of blue I can put on this. I want to darken it up, I think, in some areas. What else do we got here? I'm looking at my magic In this box I have watercolor paints.

Let's see.

I have some watercolor paints here I'm trying to open up. This is a cool handy Waterboxx travel palette. So if you open it up, this comes out actually here. This opens like this, and I think this goes go on either side. But so basically you have the paint palette, the paint colors here. You have a mixing palette, another mixing palette, a place where you can put some water, and there's a place that holds the paintbrush. And this is kind of like a thumb, thumb rest area. Comes in handy. I probably would put the paint palette on this side since I'm lefty and it's easier to get to that the water. So this, I think you can get these like at Michaels craft store, get them online. The company that makes this one is called Winsor Newton, and they make a lot of good products. But there's some blue in here. I'm going to pull out some of the blue paint. Let me get a bigger paintbrush. Let's try this one. So I got some blue in here. Let's just, just put some on the canvas. We'll see. That's, that's basically the same shade as the other one. There's another blue in here. There you go, that one's darker. So I'm not good at remembering the names of paints, so I just kind of go— a lot of times I go by feel and I just look at it and I pick the one I feel like I should be using at that point point in time. That way I'm not so set on a name of it. A good thing to do when you're painting something that's more detailed is you might actually want to create your own paint. Like a sheet of paper with different colors of paint on it that you're going to use in the painting and just label them. So you know, you know, as a reference guide. So if you want to go back to it, you know which color to use. But for something like this, it's— I have no problem just going right to the paint palette and dipping my brush in. And this is good because I wanted to get a darker, darker blue on here. So I'm just going to put some paint on here, then I'm going to come back with a bigger brush, I think, and spread it out a little bit more. I can't, I can't fit a big paintbrush on this, so I'm just putting it in small areas.

There we go.

Let me take a bigger brush, which is down here. Oh, where we Put some water on it, and then let's just— just want to go on. I don't want to go too crazy. I just want just to tap it a little bit so that the water runs down the page.

Cool.

Actually, I could use this brush in here, I think. Let's see. Yeah, it works. So I'm just going from my paint palette onto the paper, or I'm going into the water just to thin it out a little bit more. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll, I'll just keep going back in the same area and tapping it, and And you see the trail just follows the same line. So I'll add some more, you'll see what happens. It's just going down the same path. Cool. I'm going to let that dry for a second and let me check the, uh, Facebook posts over there, see if I can join the conversation, if anybody's talking in there or not, or answer questions. Aneta, yes, you see blue. This is a blue. You inspired me. Thank you. I'm painting this blue, as you can see. Well, I don't know how it's gonna end up, but we'll see. Well, you know, this is just the first round. I'll come back to it again probably tomorrow. Jill and Judy, if you're on, hi, how are you guys? Good to see you. Thanks for joining. We have a lot of J's in the house before. We have, we have Jill, Judy. Who else do we have? Jimmy before. Oh, we had another J, I can't remember who it was. I'm sorry, Jen, Jennifer. It's like, it's like all the J's in the house tonight. Hey, I just Stupid joke, I just, you know, blue, jays, blue jays. I don't know, might be something to that. Right, Bob? What do you think, Bob? Oh, right. As we all know, Bob Ross loves nature, so I'm sure he's on board with anything blue jay or bird related. Thanks for your vote of confidence, Bob. So we have an official snow day here tomorrow. This— the news is out, which I guess— I guess that means Noah will now be staying up later. I remember we, we used to never get like the snow day calls until I guess it was that morning, right? The morning of school. I think I remember, you know, being up and ready for school before we even got the snow day call. They do it differently now, which I guess is good, right? It doesn't leave everybody hanging until the last minute to figure out what's gonna happen, especially if they have to make plans to cover for the kids or, you know, get to work. And social media too. So I think Facebook and email is really helpful for things like that. I know our town is pretty good about posting the OEM, Office of Emergency Management, they're pretty good at posting things on there, you know, traffic accidents and road closures and things. So it's definitely, social media definitely could have its positive advantages and negative, as we all know. Depends on how you want to use it. And hopefully this is— you find this as a positive use, watching some dude paint, right, Bob?

Right.

Yeah, it's looking good. I think I want to let it dry for a little bit. I don't, you know, if I keep putting stuff on there while it's wet, it's gonna just all bleed together and it might look kind of messy. I want to leave some distinct areas or shapes on there. Actually, I do want to— I just want to— I want to bleed these down a little bit. Maybe we'll do, uh, this is a little Bob Ross technique. Bob would do his little crisscross strokes on the canvas. So I'm just lightly tapping my brush on here, basically doing like an X kind of shape. The only reason I'm really doing this is just to create a little bit of interest. Not that there isn't any on here, but just create a little bit more, just some line work on here, some movement, some excitement.

Excitement.

Do I sound excited? Because I'm excited. I could get really excited and start shouting. Oh, I like this actually. I'm kind of just blending, blending this area here just really lightly. This is almost hypnotic. Doing this. I know I'm weird, I know. I could spend all night just doing this, like that, and enjoying it. We all have our quirks though, right? That's what makes us unique. Embrace your quirkiness. That's my motto tonight. Embrace, embrace your quirkiness. I'm gonna get a t-shirt that says that. 'Embrace your quirkiness.' Maybe bumper stickers too, and posters. Maybe I'll even get like an electronic billboard. All right, no, now I'm getting crazy. Let that dry for a minute. I'm going to get a drink of water. Got to keep hydrated, right? Oh, Scott McKinley, if you're on, hi Scott! Let's I see your name on there. That's another cool thing about doing this kind of stuff. You know, it's connecting with people I know, but it's also connecting with people I haven't seen in a long time. I know Scott from back in the days working at the mall. Hi, Dina.

Hi.

And I have to thank Scott because Scott hired Dina at Brentano's Bookstores. And I was working there, and if Scott didn't hire Dina, right? He hired you, right? Yeah. Scott, if you didn't hire Dina, I wouldn't have been married to her. So who knew? See the magic you worked way back then? Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate that. Another positive thing of social media, right? Another— this Facebook thing, there's so many positive things we can use this for. You know, I can't stand all the political nonsense and back and forth on Facebook. I block it, I don't read it, I'm not into it. There's a lot of hateful stuff back and forth. It's ridiculous, totally ridiculous. You know, let's embrace this technology for good stuff and good purposes. And if you just got a close-up of the side of my head, I'm sorry about that. So this is really— this is cool. So it's drying on here a little bit. I think I'm gonna break out— I love breaking these things out. I've used these a few times before. These are my— um, time now for a commercial break. Tonight's show is sponsored by Neocolor II water-soluble crayons. Isn't that— they didn't really sponsor me, but maybe they will if they see the video. So these are made by— hopefully I say this— I think it's French. Oh, I'm so stupid. It says right here, look, I say it's French. It says Swiss made. So how do you say this? Caran d'Ache. Sounds French. Caran d'Ache. Swiss made. New color 2 water-soluble Wax Pastels. There we go. That's my plug for those. These are awesome. They look like crayons. And we got a couple different shades of blue in here. And let's pull this one out just because I like the way it looks. And we're just gonna do a little bit of drawing on here. I don't know. Let's just do some fun squigglies and swiggles. Swirly marks. I don't know if you guys have been watching, but during lunchtime I do these quick, you know, 8 to 10 minute drawings at the most. I call them med ink-tations. And really it's like, it's a lunchtime meditation technique for me where it just gets my mind from work into a different, more relaxed state of mind or creative state of mind. And the reason I'm mentioning those, I have— oh, I can grab one and show you. But I do a lot of— I do swirly lines in here on those sketches. So if you're ever on Facebook anytime around between 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, sometimes 1:30, you know, I might be on. You might be able to catch me doing one of those med ink tape— med ink tape, it's hard to say— med ink Inktaishun drawings. Yeah, so tune in and check those out. I'm also— I am working on putting together an online course, and one of the parts of the course is going to be a little bit more information on how to do those sketches and give some techniques for that. I'm hoping that I can get that course done by the end of the month. I'm working on it. I'm working on my outline. Right now. So you saw me put down that— the Caran d'Ache Neocolor— I'm gonna call them crayons. You saw me put this crayon here. I'm gonna take a wet paintbrush where I put the crayon. Actually, I want to take a thinner brush. Oh no, Bob fell down! Sorry, Bob. You all right? All right, good. He's a tough guy. So I'm just going to go over a little bit where I put the, the crayon, and I'm just kind of highlighting the areas I did.

I—

the reason I'm doing this is I'm just trying to soften the line a little bit. Doesn't have to be perfect. I'm not going to get every, every single part of that squiggly line. Some down here. I think I'm going to do some more Do some more. I'm gonna do, I don't know, let's do, let's just do one here, right? I have some music going in the background here and I'm just kind of listening to it as I'm doing the line and just moving with the music a little bit. Excellent, excellent. Let me check in over here in the comments. Feel free to comment on there, questions, say hello. I love looking at the chat scroll when these things are done. I'm more than happy to pitch in where I can. Don't be shy, you can talk to each other, it's okay, right, Bob? Right. Cool. I'm gonna let— I want to let this dry for another minute or so. You can actually see some of the tape coming off on this section. You know, maybe if I let it dry for a few minutes, I can pull some of that tape off. It's hard to be patient. I'm excited to see what it looks like. I can't wait. Who else is on there? Faith! Hey Faith, if you're watching, how you doing? Faith is a fellow artist. She's very creative. If you need anybody for doing face painting and other cool crafty kind of works, Faith is awesome for sure. I appreciate you watching. So if you— whoever is joining tonight, just joining me now, in case— actually, I'm gonna actually make you guys guess. What do you think the theme of tonight's painting is? Now if you already know, don't answer. Just type it in the comments. What do you think the theme is? Just look at that. I'm not going to say anything. I'll let you, I'll let you, uh, come up with some suggestions out there. Blue. Yeah, blue. Mm-hmm. So the theme of the night is blue. I am doing a blue painting thanks to Aneta, who one day saw me at a basketball game, and I think she asked me about something about blue paintings, or if I have ever done a blue painting. So guess what? I'm doing a blue painting. Woohoo! It's fun. I've never, I've never tried doing a painting with just, you know, different tones or shades or hues. I don't know if I'm using the right art terms, but basically blue, different versions of blue, right? Speaking of which, I have other blue crayons. Now, am I going to break the rules? What is this one here? It's not blue, is it? Oh, it says it's Ultramarine, which is a blue, right? It is now. If it wasn't before, it is now, my friends. You can break the rules in art. It's blue. It's looking blue. I'm just drawing some like flower kind of shapes in here. I think I have spring on the brain. Happy first day of spring, everybody! This is my tribute to the first day of spring right here. Some, some flower shapes. Where else? Where else? We'll put one here, making just different sizes, and definitely not trying to make them all look the same. Same, just being random with them. There we go. Let's take my brush and let's add a little bit of water to those, see what happens. Actually, I just had a different idea. I'm gonna kind of wet the area where I did those flowers, and I want to run down some of that ink I was using before, just over on top of that. Let's see, there we go. And the reason I wanted to do that is trying to create a contrast of colors from the outline, the shape, to the inside of the shape, just so it pulls it out a little bit. And that is the stem of a flower. There you go. It is now, right? You can kind of see where I did those flower outlines and added the dark color on. It's popping out a little bit. I'm going to stand back and take a look at it. This is interesting. As I look at the painting through my camera, which I'm using as my iPad— hey, John and Tim, if you guys are on, hi! As I look through at the painting through the camera, The tape marks are looking almost yellowish, and it's actually looking very cool. I might end up doing some yellow on here. It might not all be a blue painting at the end of the day. We'll see. You know, I'm not trying to finish the whole painting tonight. I'm gonna do— I like to work in layers, so I'll do a little bit more tonight, let it dry. Since we have a snow day tomorrow, I'll probably come back tomorrow and afternoon after I get some office work done, and maybe I'll work on it a little bit more. I'll post something up there if you guys are around. Anybody wants to tune in, feel free. I always post the videos afterwards too, so you can always come back and watch them. I'd love if you, if you share the videos with your friends. That's awesome to do. I'd appreciate it. I'm just, I'm just touching touching this a little bit, touching it up a little bit here. Just want to darken the outline a little bit more. Yeah, I have blue paint on my hands. I am turning into a Smurf right before your very eyes, right here. You've seen it here first. What's the headline going to be? Man turns into Smurf while painting. News at 11. I guess that means you have to keep cats away from me and people named, uh, what's that guy's name? Garga? What was that guy's name? Gargamel? Dina's my Smurf consultant back there. Gargamel, yes. Keep Gargamel away from me. Thank you, Dina. It's always nice to have a Smurf consultant in the house. How lucky am I? I had my snow day consultant pop in before earlier with his snow day dance. That was cool. And now I have a Smurf consultant in the house. And of course I have the ultimate art consultant right here. The ultimate cool, calm, and collected consultant, my friend Bob. And I have all you guys out there. This is— it can't get much better than this unless I was holding Ben Jerry's in my hand. You know I had to work that in somewhere. Cool. I'm gonna let— I want to let that dry for a little bit here. Put this over there. Let me get another paper towel. I'm like, I'm like, do I have to announce? I'm like announcing everything. You guys really care when I get a paper towel? And now I got the paper towel. Now I crumple the other one up and I throw threw it in the trash. And I made a basket. Now that would have been cool to get on tape right there. That's 2 points. 2 points right there in the basket. Nice.

I'm gonna grab some water.

I'm gonna write a comment in the comments. I'm gonna write hi in the comments.

Cool.

I'm back. I left my paper towel over here. Got it. Now if I had a hair dryer in here, I could dry this quicker. I was actually thinking I'm gonna get a hair dryer. I'll be right back in a second. If you tune away, be sure to come back or go grab a snack. I'll be back in like 30 seconds with a hair dryer. Hopefully I don't blow a fuse. I'm back. I'm gonna plug this in. Let's, let's hope a fuse doesn't blow here with all my high-tech lighting. I hope Art Bonito would be proud of me for my lighting, my attempt at lighting tonight. I'm trying, Art, I'm trying. So I wasn't planning on doing my hair tonight. Whoa, look at that, I just turned the lights off. Now they're back on. I wasn't planning on doing my hair tonight, but since I have the hair dryer here, you never know. Let's see what happens. Alright, I have a hair dryer, so sorry about the noise.

I'm going to do Bob's hair too.

Gotta keep his afro looking afro-y. Did you guys think you'd be watching a person using a hair dryer on a drawing tonight? On a painting? This is like an added bonus for viewing. There you go. Stephanie, help her. Another—

do it for a few more seconds here. Done!

Sorry for that noise. It definitely helped to dry it a little bit. I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually peel some of this tape off, see what it looks like. This one's actually coming off a little bit, so you can see wherever I had the tape It's just leaving these white areas on the sheet of paper. By the way, the paper I'm using is watercolor paper. 18 by 24 is the size of it. Let me get my X-Acto knife here so I can peel the tape off easier. Thank you, Art, you're proud of me. Thank you. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. For those of you guys that don't know Art, he is Mr. Jefferson Highlights. He's done the— Art, if I'm wrong, I'm sure you'll correct me online there. Feel free to comment. He's done, you know, Jefferson Highlights video show for I don't know how many years now, many, many years. He's the man that created the amphitheater over at Camp Jefferson, the Arpinito Amphitheater, you know, Jefferson Highlights Amphitheater where summer concerts happened. I don't have to give them your whole resume, do I? Because I'll be here the whole night if I give them your entire resume. I'll let you tell the Woody Allen story. You can tell that. And I forgot to mention NBC, 40+ years at NBC. So thank you, Art. You're a great friend and I appreciate any advice you have for me. And if you want to tell your Woody Allen story online, feel free. But don't steal the show from me. This is my show tonight. This is fun! So I have an X-Acto knife. I'm just trying to peel off some of the tape without cutting my fingers. There you go. Now it's okay. You see where I pulled the tape off, some of the paint got through underneath. That's alright. I like the way it looks. This is all about randomness right now. I was actually, I was actually thinking of leaving some of the tape on too. There's also a product you can use, it's, I think it's called masking fluid, and basically it's almost like a rubber, it dries almost like rubber cement. You paint the areas like where I have the tape You would paint that with the liquid masking fluid. Hi, Red Bull! Red Bull's in, my cat, he's visiting. You would paint those areas and after they dry, you just kind of rub over it with your finger and it's like rubber cement, it kind of, it'll just pull apart and it'll leave the white underneath. So if you want to do like more controlled lines where you want to keep the white areas, that's a good product to use. I have some here somewhere I can I remember, I'll pull it out in a little bit. I think it's important when on a piece, on actually any piece I do, I always like to leave— I try to leave some areas of white. I think it helps draw your eye throughout a paint— throughout paintings a little bit more. So although I'm still toying with the idea in my head here, I might end up painting— I don't know, I might be adding color in here. I keep thinking yellow. So I wouldn't do that though until this is completely dry, so I don't— that probably wouldn't happen tonight, but that's just where my gut is telling me right now. Maybe this has to do with Jeff being Jefferson and the yellow and gold, you know, that's like the town colors, that's the Jefferson Falcon colors. Maybe that's why I'm thinking yellow on here. I have no idea. You know, when you, when you see the same thing all the time, it just becomes— it's in your subconscious mind, right? I can— I actually kind of like what's happening with these lines. I almost wish I had done more up in this area here. I mean, you could always come back on a painting like this and add some white after it's all dried, add white acrylic paint in areas if you want to highlight some things, or do— I don't know if it'd be as clean as this kind of white, but you can— it's a technique you dry. Some small pieces in here. Now if I had torn these up a little more carefully, I could have added them to my— the board I was talking about earlier, how these are pieces of tape from other paintings I peeled off. I'm making an art piece here as well, but I didn't— I wasn't thinking when I was pulling it, peeling these off. They're kind of wet, I don't they would stick anyway. I think one more, right? This the last one? Yeah, I think I got them all. Let me just take a step back here and take a look at it. Looking kind of cool. So I'm just looking here, I see Ruby. Hi Ruby, if you're watching, nice to see you. Oh, Regina, how are you? I haven't seen you in a long time. I hope things are well. Glad you're watching. Like I said before, this is one of the positive things about social media and Facebook is using it, you know, to bring people together and not to butt heads and fight. I mean, we're entitled to freedom of speech, of course, but that's not the game I'm playing on Facebook. I'm on the, you know, we were talking about Mr. Rogers before. I'm on like the nice committee. I'm here to— I want to bring people together doing this stuff. That's what it's about. So it's great to see so many of you guys, and I really appreciate your time, taking some time out of your schedule. So that's looking pretty good so far. What else? I don't know how much more I'm gonna do tonight. Um, probably, I'll probably spend a few more minutes on it. I'm not gonna add any color. I was thinking about yellow, but I'm gonna wait. If I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna wait for this to dry completely before I start adding that kind of color on here. It's dry. I really like the way it's drying here. It's looking pretty cool. Just for fun, I'm gonna— one of the things I like to do when I'm doing these abstract paintings is I'll take the painting and I'll just flip it in different directions just to get a different perspective on it. So I'm going to turn this— I'll turn it 90 degrees, move some stuff out of the way. So if you guys are just joining me, this tonight I'm doing a painting that's blue. I had a request to do blue, so this is the first time I'm just trying to keep the painting all to basically one color if I can. I might add something, we'll see. We'll see what wins out on that one. So let's flip this around a little bit. You get a glimpse of my messy— my mess back there, my computer. Here we go. So I don't know if you're just watching it, I mean, now that I flipped it, do you kind of— it looks different, right? It looks totally different. I'll often do this when I'm working on paintings. I'll leave them one way for a day, maybe a couple days, then I'll flip it around. I mean, I'll look at it again for another day or two. And then I'll ultimately end up which way I want to leave it. Some paintings I leave so that they could be turned however, you know, the person wants to turn them that owns them. You could flip them in any direction. Sometimes if I flip them in certain ways, I'll see shapes or objects or things I'll pull out of the painting. So right now we're at the point where, you know, the first stage, I'm not really set on which way it's going to go yet. But I will let it dry. I'm really, I'm really liking this. I think it's— I'm really glad I put that tape on there. That was fun. Very, very cool. You check the comments, get a drink of water, and we'll probably wrap this up in 5, you know, a few minutes or so. Oh, and I just, and I just kicked the paint bucket on the floor, the water bucket. That's okay. Like I said before, you gotta make a mess. Maxine, if you're watching, hey, how are you? I'm doing a live art class here. You know, I gotta get back down to Chester and do some more classes down there for sure, but this is fun. I've been doing these Facebook Live paintings, a few of them, and I just— this is a great way to connect, and I just love hanging out with you guys. So thanks, thanks for tuning in. If I missed anybody on there— who else? Uh, Cheryl. Hey Cheryl, how are you? I don't know, are you down, uh, you home back down in Georgia? Hopefully the weather is nice down there. You're not getting snow, are you? No, that's a joke. So I'm gonna let that dry for a minute and I'm gonna do— what else do I want to do in here for tonight? Thinking, I'm thinking. Oh, I got poor Bob Ross. I got blue paint. Looks like he's crying, doesn't it? That's so sad. I'm sorry, Bob. Don't cry. We'll make it better. All good. See, he's all better now. Yeah, it's fun. I like having him around here. He's fun. He's, uh, I just keep him around. He's, you know, for inspiration. Coloration. So I'm going to add some— what do I got over here? I'm going to look over in my— on my table. What do I want to bring out and use? Some more blue stuff. I have these. Let's try this. This is a— it's called a— it's a— time for another commercial. Tonight's show is sponsored by Liquitex. Liquitex paint markers. I wish they sponsored it. Liquitex, if you're watching this, you want to sponsor my shows, let me know. I would love it. So this is a Liquitex paint marker. You kind of shake it like a, uh, spray paint can. I guess it helps to mix up the paint inside. You can hear it shaking up. Got a nice view there, right? You can see pretty good. So, and there's a tip on here. Let me get a scrap piece of paper I had out before. So there's a tip, and what you do is you take that tip and you kind of depress it down a few times to get the paint started. And you could see it, right? So you can draw with it. So I don't know how much is left in here, but let's, let's try this on our painting over there and see what happens. I don't know what— ooh, it stinks! It's water-based acrylic, so it's an acrylic paint, and it's permanent. Does that mean I better not get any on me? I'm gonna start wearing smocks. Do people still wear smocks? Remember in elementary school we had to wear smocks? I don't think I've worn one since since then. All right, let's— I don't know, I don't know where I'm going to do it. Let's, let's just, let's just do it, see what happens. So the slower you go with this brush, I'm noticing, or this pen, the more solid the line is. If So I'm going fast, you see less of the ink, or less of the paint is coming out. So if you go slow, you can get more solid lines on it. So hopefully the camera's picking this up, you can see the line work I was doing with this. Let's add some more. I kind of like the jagged edge I'm putting on there, so let's do some more jagged lines. We'll call them Mick Jagged lines. That was a joke. That was a Mick Jagger joke. Mick Jagged lines. Bob, that must mean it's getting late. I'm making really bad jokes, right? Yeah, I know. I appreciate it. I probably just lost 100 viewers from that one. Got to have fun, right? That's what it's out. If you're not having fun doing what you love to do, then I guess you wouldn't love doing it. I gotta think about that. If you're not having fun— did that make sense? I don't even remember what I just said, but I hope it made sense. It felt like it did. I'm gonna outline these little flower shapes I kind of had on here before, just bring them to life. Let's spring them to life on this first day of spring. So we're going to give these flowers some life here. I'm trying to think, are there any blue flowers in nature? I'm trying to think. I can't think off the top of my head of what are some blue flowers that we have. If you guys know of any blue flowers, just put them in the comments. I'm curious. Chrysanthemums, are they blue? Don't ask me to spell chrysanthemum. That's, that's not happening. But, um, yeah, if you know of any blue flowers, write it in the comments. I'm just curious. I want to say violets are blue, but they would be violet, wouldn't they? And a rose would obviously not be blue. So I'm not picking the blue flowers, am I? But this is our world. This is our happy little world, our piece of paper. We can make any kind of flowers you want. Right, Bob? This is my Bob influence. We can make anything we want on this piece of paper. This is, this is our world. So there are no wrong answers. Answers. That's for sure. It's a great way just to use your imagination to escape, escape for a little while, create your own, your own place, your own world, your own experience. And a big part about painting for me isn't the end result, but just the actual doing. It's It's the process of painting. It's being in that moment, that moment of where you get lost and something inside you takes over and just— it, I can't explain it. It just takes control of, you know, takes control of your hand and the colors and it just goes where it wants to go. And that for me, that's really, that's the beauty of doing this kind of work. It's awesome. I just, I love doing it. Cool. Whoa, I just kicked the camera. I think it's time for a— Dino, what do you think? It's time for an addition. I got to add on to my studio. First I have to make— first I have to start making money before I can add on to my studio. Idea. What? You can talk? I don't know, I have no idea. I will— I'm an architect, I'll figure it out. We'll put it somewhere. What do you think? Yeah, really? All right. No, we don't need more space. What I like about using this pen is it has some control to it, meaning I can have more control. It's easier to control a pen for me than a paintbrush, so if I wanted to do some really fine line work or something, I could. You know, it's easier for me to do lines like that with, with this paint pen than a paintbrush. I don't know if I'm in the way there. If I am, sorry. So as it— as the tip of the pen starts to dry out, you just have to kind of depress it again. Press it like it's depressing. You're not depressing, pen, trust me. You're inspiring. Um, kind of depress the tip down just to get the paint running through it again. There we go. You can kind of see how it's coming out now. There we go. Nice. Let me get a drink of water. Check to see if there's any questions, comments. Feel free to put them on the, uh, in the comment section. I do read them. Merci. If you're still watching, say hello out there so I know you're still online. And gonna wrap— 2 more minutes, we're gonna wrap up for the night. Dos minutos. I think it's almost 10:30, right? Wow, I think I started like at 9:15-ish or something. Where did that time go? That's crazy. So that's another thing about, you know, you know you're doing something you really like to do when the time just, it just escapes you, right? You get lost in it. I can't believe it's 10:30. Holy cow. Where'd I put the cap for this? I don't know where the cap is. I don't know. So I'm going to step back. We'll take a final look at it for now. It's weird, every time I come and I look at this on camera, all these white areas look yellow. It must be my lighting. And I like the way— I like the way it's looking yellow on here for sure. Let's see, I want to do— I do want to do one more thing on here. I actually want to take— I'm going to take some acrylic paint. Let me find my brush. Which one do I want to use? Uh, I have a square brush I like to use. I'd like to use if I could find it. Where did you go? SpongeBob SquareBrush. He's hiding. There he is. SpongeBob SquareBrush. We'll call him SpongeBob SquareBrush. So I'm going to just take some acrylic paint. I'm going to put it right on the brush, and I'm just going to add some acrylic right on the— right on the paper, canvas paper. It's okay, you guys, but you can call it whatever you want. And I'm doing this, I just want to give some texture, so I'm leaving it kind of thick. I'll, I'll do a close-up of the picture before I sign out later, and you can see some of the texture I have going on there. If you kind of notice, I'm kind of dabbing the brush on the page. I'm not doing like a brush stroke. And the reason I'm dabbing it is I'm trying to keep some, some ridges or some edges on that acrylic. Not everywhere, but in some places you'll see. I'm being too careful. I want to— I'm meaning I'm focusing too much. I want to be a little bit more loose in this, so I'm just going to kind of, like I was saying before, just let the paintbrush take over and see where it goes. So let's see, I just actually just had another thought of something I want to do some more on here, then I'll come back and do that. What I actually want to do is the paint I just put down, I'm actually not digging it too much the way I have it on there. Do people still say digging it? I'm not digging it the way it's looking, so I want to just take a— take this brush here. This one's a— this is a 1-inch brush. I want to dry it off. I want it fairly dry. I'm going to lightly brush over the acrylic paint I just put on there. Yeah, I like that. And what I'm— why I'm doing this is it's creating— by brushing lightly on it, it's creating some texture on the page. Right in here, I don't know if you can pick that up, but there's some texture. You can kind of see the bristles of the brush a little bit on there. I didn't like the way that what I was doing before was too fussy. I wanted to be more loose. Again, this is just kind of like a first layer. I'll come back probably tomorrow after this dries and I'll do some more stuff on top of it. But this is creating a little bit of texture in here, which I'm liking this better than what I had before. Again, this is all about being playful, experimenting, trying different things. Listen to your gut. You know, if your gut's telling you to try something and just do it. You can't go wrong. I think the only way you can go wrong is by not doing it. There's always a way to make it work. I did a— just as an example, I'll show you this. This is a— this was an illustration that I was working on last week. I call it Scarecrow. There's a scarecrow in the middle. I actually— this was actually inspired while I was listening to John Mellencamp's song Scarecrow. But anyways, I just wanted to show you this house. When I was working on it, I really hated— or just, that's a strong word, isn't it, Bob? Hated. I know I could say it. I really hated, I really disliked what it— hold it here, I'll back— is it actually better there? Maybe. I didn't like— I had used a black Sharpie pen and I hated the way it looked. So later I kind of figured a way to come back and soften the edges and make it blend in a little bit more. So I'm much happier with the way it is now. So I really, you know, I really thought I messed up when I was working on this, but in the end when you're working on paintings or drawings, you could always make it work out. I mean, that's, that's not a problem. So don't be afraid to try it. Don't forget, don't be afraid to just do it. Cool. So I'm going to brush this up a little bit more, and I think that's it for the painting tonight. I think we're going to wrap up with this. So this is just stage 1. I'm going to bring the camera a little closer and you can get a closer peek at some of it. I'll kind of pan it around. So I hope you guys are enjoying these Facebook Live paintings I'm doing. I'm really having a blast doing it, and as you can see, I'm actually doing them more and more often. It's just, it's so much fun. Just want you guys to kind of see in this area here, you can, you know, right in there you can kind of see some of the texture I was talking about. You know, you can see the acrylic, it gives a little depth to it. You can go crazy with it and add a lot of depth to paintings, a lot of texture if you want. So that's a close-up of it. Put this back here, and me and Bob are gonna sign out for the night, right, Bob? So if you watch tonight, if you're watching now, or if you're watching this later and we're not live— well, if we're not live on Facebook and you're watching it, yeah, something like that. I hope you had a good time. I hope you enjoyed it. You know, you guys, they're awesome. I appreciate your time very much. You know, you inspire me to keep doing this stuff, and I'll be bringing you more and more Facebook paintings. Be sure to check out my website if you want, JasonJNicholas.com. You can see my posts on there, you can see paintings on there. I'm starting to do like tips and thoughts and ideas on there as well. You could sign up for a newsletter. This is the part where I'm doing some plugging, um, because I really want to give this a go. I really— if I can start making a living doing this, I'm gonna do it. So I'm really putting my all into this. So feel free to check that out. I'm gonna be doing— having an online course coming coming up soon that I'm working on, so I'll let you know more about that. And really, yeah, I mean, what else could I say? Just thank you so much. I think the theme of the night is— well, I always like to have a theme. We're gonna go back to when I was talking about Mr. Rogers. I think it's not necessarily a painting theme, but I think, you know, I was talking about that expression, nice guys finish last, and how much that needs to be erased from our vocabulary, from whatever you want to call it. It's just not true. We need more nice people in the world to do nice things, be better listeners. And when I say nice, I'm not talking about being a pushover. That's not nice. Nice— you can be nice and firm, but be respectful to each other. Communicate, listen, you know. We're in this together. If we're going to sit here and not be together and just go back and forth, and I'm particularly referring to things I see in social media on Facebook, you know, I don't participate in that stuff and I've actually turned off some people literally and not follow what they say. Let's just be nice. Nice guys don't finish last. Nice girls, guys. I gotta be PC here. Nice people. Nice animals. Um, you know, go back to Mr. Rogers when I was talking about— watch the video I posted on my Facebook before. You know, how he was able to, you know, get his funding he needed for public television. Um, yeah, so happy birthday to Mr. Rogers. He was the ultimate neighbor. You guys are my ultimate neighbor, and thanks for watching. I'll be back. Peace out. Takes me a long time to sign out, doesn't it? You probably left already. But, uh, as I always like to say when I leave these things is, uh, you know, peace and live creatively. Thanks a lot. I'll talk to you soon. From me and Bob, good night.