Flowy watercolor trees - Discover the magic of your supplies!

1. Welcome to class! : Hello dear friends and welcome to class. I'm Elise and I'm a watercolor artist and teacher and I love lowering the threshold to get started, making it easier for you to have art and creativity as part of your everyday lives. It's not just a special occasion. I have three hours of free time, hyper-realistic lots and lots of layers, and waiting and patience so that it can be a bigger part of who you are and how you show up in the world more often than just those big occasions. For today's class, we'll be painting some beautiful flowy, splashy trees. If you've taken any of my other classes, you know that I love combining the wet-on-wet technique with a wet-on-dry. Both how that flowy, uncontrollable element where we let the paint flow in water and at the same time, balancing out, contrasting that with those sharp crisp details that we get from the wet-on-dry technique. We'll also be doing some sneaky color mixing when we mix granulating colors where the colors split in the water and create these beautiful effects. Some paints have them automatically and we can replicate it by mixing the paints that we already have. You don't have to go buy all of them like me. I'll be showing how you can mix your colors directly onto the paper, as well as using a palette just to make it even easier for you to get started and lowering that threshold again and again because if the goal is to paint more, why would we make it making more difficult than we need to? At the end of this class, you'll end up with some lovely trees, this flowy top bit and in the ground, and then the details and these little branches that we're using, the wet-on-dry technique which gives us more precision and more details and more control. To get started with this class, you will need to bring your watercolor paints, watercolor paper to paint on preferably 100 percent cotton, which I recommend for any wet-in-wet flowy technique where we're using a lot of water, water and paper are not really friends, so making sure you have the tools to accommodate for that and bringing your watercolor brushes. For this class, I'll be using two brushes. One that constantly stays clean, the clean water brush, and then one that I use for paint, that way I know that that seamless blend into the paper, the white of the paper will stay as crisp and clean and smooth and seamless as possible. I hope I'll see you in the next lesson. Go and find your watercolors supplies or wait for the supplies video to make sure you go find everything you need and I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. Class project: Welcome to your class project. In the spirit of learning by doing, at the end of this class you will have finished your own flowy watercolors classic tree and I'd love for you to share it in the project gallery below when you're finished. That way, we can all keep inspiring each other. You can see other people's projects and get feedback on your own. I always comment on all of my students projects. I love seeing them, seeing how you make them your own, see which colors you've chosen, see what mixes you've made. That way we can keep this sharing our experiences, inspire each other right back. I would love for you to share yours when you're done and also how you felt about this approach to making it easy to get started. Whether or not you have the creative habit that you'd love to do every day, every week, however often you love to sit down and put your brushes on paper. Just have mentioned this out or remind you again at the end. If you would like to share your creations on Instagram and social media, I would love it if you tagged me, just @elise.aabakken. That way I can also share them with my stories. I love seeing your version all over the social medias. I just wanted to remind you that, I consider you an artist, whether or not you ever share what you create with anyone. You can just walk away from this class with your painting and think, I'm an artist. I created this. The only reason it exists is because I made it. That feeling is so valuable and so precious that if something like, I think I have to share this on social media, I don't want anyone else to see it. If that's stopping you from creating, please let that expectation go and don't show it to anyone. Just like when you're wearing fancy underwear that makes you feel good when you don't have to show it to anyone for it to have an effect on how you feel about yourself and your creativity and who you are as an artist. That being said, if you want to share, I would love for you to tag me. Also if you wanted to share how you felt about this class. If you have a creative habit that you really like, that you've started, how are you making it easier for yourself to show up to that creative practice and how might that be translating to other areas in your life? Just like yoga will affect the body that you then walk off into the world with. I think creativity shapes our brain, shapes our problem-solving skills, and I'd love to hear from you how you feel about that as well. In the next lesson, I'll be sharing supplies I'll be using for today's class as well some suggestions. You don't have to have the same supplies as me, of course, but bring your watercolor kit. Main main thing is bringing watercolor paper that can handle all the amount of water we're putting on it, 100 percent cotton is my favorite. But use whatever you have and see how that works for you. Because one of the reasons I love working like this is because when you get to know your supplies better, when you were exploring, playing with their colors, playing with your paints, playing with your paper, you get to know how your supplies work together. No matter how many tutorials or classes you watch, the only way to really know is by doing it. Feel free to explore, play with these techniques and make them your own. I'd love to see your version of these flowy watercolor trees. 3. Supplies: First things first, watercolor paints, everyone's favorite. Here I have a selection of white nights paints and some Roman Szmal here in the middle. Some of the Roman Szmal colors have this beautiful granulating effect, which means they're already mixed with a couple of different colors. It's really clear here on this mineral violet that there's two different colors splitting and playing in that water, and this is one of the effects that we were playing with later creating this for ourselves because it's just two different pigments. This ultramarine, which has that granulating effect, that texture, and this really smooth software, an quinacridone pink. That will be a beautiful mix which we can use to replicate something like this. Bring your favorite paints that you only really need one paint for this whole class. As per usual, I love painting in monochrome and that way we don't have to worry about eye color mixing it all. But I'll show you an easy way to get started with color mixing if that's something you're interested in so that you can get even more out of the paints that you already have. When you found your watercolor paints, you want to find something to paint on, and I bought a couple of different options here. There's these postcards. I really like working on cold-pressed paper, and for this textured flowy technique, I find it easier to use something that has a bit of texture on the surface. A bit difficult to see in this light. But it's not as smooth as something like hot-pressed paper, and then we can also use something like a rough paper. Here's one of the examples from this class. You can do those sheets of papers like this if you want to make postcards, hot tip. I usually always paint on them upside down because I never checked the back of the print of the postcard. If you want to check that first, feel free to do that before you start painting on them. Then I also brought my little sketchbook here. This is also 100 percent cotton, which is my favorite kind of paper to paint on. Because it deals really well with a lot of water, and as per usual, water and paper are not really friends. When we're adding a lot of water, we want a paper that's able to hold that and spread it evenly and dry evenly so we get those smooth transitions. We had to watch that paint flow on the paper, and this is also where I'll be demonstrating some of our brushstrokes, how I will hold my brush to get the precision that I want and how to use my brushes in the most functional way. Give me some tips about that. As well as we're going through our technique practice in the beginning and then showing how I put that together for our tree. Then of course we'll need some brushes, and for this technique, because we want to put down clean water first, flat flowy, splashy top of the tree. I'm going to bring some of these looser, fluffier brushes, and the general rule is the bigger the brush is, the more water it will hold. The bigger your paper is, the bigger the brush you want. For these ones, I'm not going to paint super large today. If you had a much larger paper, you might want to change your brushes to a bigger size just so we don't have to go back and forth between the water so many times. But for something like a postcard or the A5 and smaller, I would probably be using these brushes to pick up that clean water and put it on the paper. Then using that as my dedicated water brush, I would use the smaller brushes for paint, adding more precision, and these are snappy brushes. I could also get those little fine details of the branches, making sure that I have one brush that then has all the paint in it. So it doesn't contaminate that water, and I can make clean, beautiful flowing into nothing trees with that clean water on the paper. If you want to, you could also use a travel brush like this and just keep that as your clean water brush as the first thing you go in with every single time. That way, you know that you won't have any contamination because this one never touches paint. Bring the brushes that you love the most. Those are all the fun supplies and we have our technical, less exciting supplies, but equally as important. I really love using jars from a clean water. That way, I can just close them up when I'm done, leave them on my desk, and you can also use the lid as an extra palette. If I want a mixing space for my paints, for example, so I have two. This will be my dirty water as it has a bit of paint in the bottom there. When I go into rinse off my brush with paint on it, I'll erase it first in my dirty jar. Then I'll go in and pick up clean water from my clean jar, going into new paint in the not contaminating, especially for going from a darker, more painting permanent paint into a lighter pink, so say from blue to yellow, for example. Bring two jars of water, and then I always like to bring a rag, something to wipe my brush on. This one is well loved, but having something that's a light color. Say for example a black napkin would be difficult to see if you've gotten all of that color out of your brush. You'll see me using this to control the amount of water that's in my brush and also to rinse off my brush, checking that I've gotten all of the paint out of my brush before going into a new color. Then because we're doing a bit of this color and mixing magic, I've actually brought a palette today. I usually lay in it and I actually don't know this. But I'm going to show you how to mix it on the palette if you'd like to do that first. Say you want to do three different ones when you use the exact same color mix, then it would be nice to have something like this. I always love having a palette that is white and also in porcelain. It's just much easier to clean and the colors show up as they will on the white paper as opposed to if you had something like a colored palette or something that was already tinted, a different color. Not necessary, but I'm going to show you how I would use a palette for it. Or you can mix directly on the paper, which is also something really fun. But I'll show you how I do, which is how I usually do. Get your supplies ready, and I'll see you in our first video where I'll just be talking about the technique, some other brush techniques, and the vocabulary will be using the wet in wet technique, wet-on-dry, and some dry brushing as well. I'll see you then. 4. Watercolor vocabulary 101: Jumping into our painting part. This is my little sketch book that I have here and I just wanted to show you some of the different techniques that we'll be using in class. The two classic techniques of watercolor, which is the wet-in-wet. When we put water down first or even a layer of paint. Then we put wet paint into that wet layer, which allows that flow and spreading because watercolor will go wherever it's wet. We still contain it within that wetness. Sometimes or maybe tape around all the way and you'll wet your tire paper and you can work with a soft blurry background like that. Today, we're going to make a bigger space than the space we want that paint to flow into. The goal is to let that flow almost to the end. As that pink keeps flowing outward, it's going to leave pigment behind and gets lighter and lighter and lighter until there's nothing. That's how we get that seamless transition from paint into the water, on to the paper out into nothing. We don't get any hard edges around, which is not a problem. But if you want to try out this flowy technique where we can somewhat control how our paint is flowing and playing in that water. Just to show you an example of that. For this one, I've probably put water at least a couple of centimeters further out than I needed this paint to flow. Then the wet on dry technique, which is exactly what it sounds like, which is putting wet paint on dry paper. That's how I make these crisp lines. That's how you would achieve something like this line where it's clear. Where the paint is put exactly on the paper. It won't go anywhere else. It's going to stay exactly where we put it. Whereas here we lose control a little bit. It's going to keep flowing outward. The same here at the bottom where it grows downward. Then the transition into these more hard edges as they're called, where it's a clear differentiation between where the paint stops and where the plain paper begins. Getting this contrast between this beautiful flowy top of the tree that's like growth flowing outwards. I describes it just so beautiful. It's one of my favorite techniques, which is why I wanted to create this class and talk about this one today. Just to see what sometimes gets in the way of creating an effect like this is what we call a water control. Water control means controlling the amount of water in our brush and the amount of water on our paper when we're working in wet technique because since watercolor is a transparent medium, it also matters how much water we mix into our paints. If we have 50 percent water, 50 percent paint. That's going to give us a very different color than 90 percent paint and 10 percent water or the other way around. The more water we have, the lighter the pink becomes. The more transparent it becomes. Which is one of the cool beautiful effects of watercolor that we can make those transparent layer on top of each other. From one paint we get so many different colors and shades of color because we can work with a light in the dark, which is why it's so beautiful to work with watercolor in monochrome, just using one paint for an entire painting. As you'll see from this paint box that I have here, my swatches that I've made. I made them in a gradient. That at the left side, you'll see the full density of the color, as dark as I can possibly get it. Then mixing it with more and more water as I go to the right. That way I see like I can actually make this with dark bluish turquoise to almost like a pastel, super nice and light blue color. All colors have a different range. The lighter colors will have a smaller range. That arc portion of the color it's not as dark as some of these richer colors. If I took a black and white photo of this, that would show more dark grayish tone over here, whereas the darkest part of this indigo would be almost black. Exploring the range of your paints, getting to know them better. Getting to know how they flow and spread. What qualities they have as far as are they really smooth and blends really easily? Or do they have texture like this really fascinating a query as black over here, which breaks into these particles and this granulation, just a terminology for that. Some of these also do that and have that same effect. It's in these various pigments as well. Without going into too much of that, this is a way to get to know those paints even better. Getting all those qualities that they have. 5. Wet on dry - Precision and control: Just because I think it's the easiest way to start painting, just get some paint onto that paper, best going in with our wet-on-dry technique. This paper is dry. There's nothing on this yet, to get some water on my brush. Then I'm going to activate or soften because now since these watercolor paints are in pens, they're dry. If I touch them, I don't get any paint on my hands unless some of them are very sticky. To start painting with our paints, we'll get some water on our brush. I'll just go into, what colors should we choose today? Let's choose this quinacridone violet, why not? I usually don't use violet. Let's play with this one. I'm just using the tip of my brush. I'm going into that violet paint and it's moving it around. I don't need too much water. You maybe saw me wipe my brush on the edge there. This one activates rather quickly, some paints are harder than others to activate, to soften that binder, which is what holds the paints together. Then other paints are really easy to activate and you just touch your brush over and get a whole lot of paint on your brush. The easiest thing just to get started, just to get to know your brush is just putting brush to paper. That's it. That's a terrible swatch which actually gives us some other information. But just getting that brush onto some paper. As you can see, even just in the swatch like this. I have gotten the most darkness over here because my entire brush is filled with water. As I move over to the side, I leave more pigment on the paper and more water is being mixed into the paint color that I'm putting on my paper. Also you'll see at the end here that I'm starting to skip the texture of the paper getting into what we call dry brushing, which is what it sounds like, that the brush is getting so dry that it starts skipping the paper. Which can also happen if you're too fast in your painting and you just put your brush down and drag and you're not letting it get the time that it needs to really start spreading that paint onto the paper. That being said, the wet-on-dry technique is one of the more controllable techniques, just going back into what's already activated over on that violet. You might have seen that when I was doing this swatch, I was holding my brush more like an angle flatter towards the paper. This gives me more of that painting side. You'll see how that gives me a wider swatch. Whereas the more I tilt my brush upwards, the more of that point I get straight down to the paper as with a pencil. If I hold closer to the brush head as well, closer to the bristles, I get more control and I feel like I can do more precise, thinner lines in details. I'll say if you're going in painting trees, painting little branches for example this would be how I would hold my brush. Getting those really light strokes and getting both keeping control and letting it be loose and free at the same time. One of the main things I did was to tilt the back of my brush upward so that I'm using it more like a pencil. This also depends on how much water your brush is able to hold. Because some brushes will run out very quickly and some papers are really absorbent. So the moment you put your brush down, it goes, and then there's no more paint left in your brush. Knowing how your brush works together with your paint, together with your water, together with your paper is also some of that fun exploration that you can do while you're learning to paint with the tools that you have. This wet-on-dry technique is something to practice. Having not practiced this control, especially for those branches for the tree which we're going to use this technique for the trunk and for the branches to have that ability to go in almost like color in, blending those colors together. You can work in short strokes or longer strokes as well, because we're going to put water on the top and water on the bottom. This trunk right here would start blending outward and upward, and down into the water on the ground and the water for the top of the tree. Getting to know your paints like this, getting to know them for that wet-on-dry technique. This is a technique you can use for almost anything and it is a really safe place to start because your paint will go where you put it. It won't suddenly jump over to another part of the paper. It won't start flowing and dripping around unless your brush is incredibly wet. Actually, since that was mentioned, let's show that as well. If I was trying to do something like this, something like a precise little branch. But see how I'm just dipping that brush in, not letting any of the water come back out again. This brush is now very wet and it will be much harder to control because my brush is wants to let go all of that water that's in it. I'm trying. But you can see that that's ball lobby in wet and watery and might start flowing around. Whereas this up on these swatches right here is worked more is like a marker, I would say. Just knowing that the precision of how you're using your brush with the amount of water that you're using will make an impact. Also now, because there's more water in the brush, a swatch like this will maybe be lighter, number 1, because there's more water, but also probably be able to drag it a little bit further because I have more water. It takes longer for my brush to run out and start skipping the paper. You can see there's more flow. My brush let go off a lot of water there at the beginning, and then it's getting lighter and lighter. Then with this light wash that I already have in my brush, starting to layer, starting to get into that dry brushing. As you can see it's gone more transparent making layer on top of itself there. Water control in the sense of both controlling the amount of water in your paint, and the amount of water in your brush, putting that down onto the paper. Also, yes, it's going to dry a lot slower and when it dries because it's drying unevenly, this might also create what we call watercolor blooms, which is when one part of the paper dries quicker than another. We get these backgrounds, which is where the water and the pigment is pushing back into a part of the paper that's already dry, which is a cool effect to you sometimes, but not necessarily always what we want. So having some practice and controlling that, controlling a little bit of this uncontrollable medium is also a fun way to explore. Just knowing that too much water will result in less control and that the precision of the brush doesn't depend as much on the size of the brush as it does with how much water is in it and how fine you can get those details. You can also create that dry brushing effects without having to go to the end of the swatch just by dabbing your brush off on the side and then getting that side of the brush. Like we did in the beginning, holding it flatter to the page is an effect we can play with as well letting that skip. If you want bark on your tree, for example or you would like that flowy ground and then some dry brushing at the very end. That's also an option for that. Turns out I had a lot to say about dry brush technique, the wet-on-dry technique. That is something to play with, something to explore, something to investigate, and moving on, we're going to talk about our wet-on-wet technique. How to know if you have too much water, too little water, and how to get that flowy beautiful watercolor effect for this tree. We'll see you in the next one. 6. Wet in wet - Flow: Onto maybe my favorite technique, which is the wet in wet, which is my favorite technique. If you've seen any of my other classes with the splashes, that's also what that's based on. Letting the watercolor do what it does best, which is flow in water. This effect is one of the most beautiful things I know, [LAUGHTER] and it's fascinating and it's also quite easy when you have a little bit of tips and tricks to know what to do. I'm getting my clean water brush, putting it into the clean water jar, which has stayed very clean. We haven't wiped off this brush very much, which is our paint paintbrush. But still, this water is quite clean. Just moving my brush around, I push it against the side of the glass, side of the jar here. Then so that it's not too wet, I'm going to wipe it off a bit on the side of the jar here. That way I'm just controlling the amount of water that's in it. It holds a lot of water but it's not dripping off, so dripping wet. Because we're trying to control it somewhat, we want to have a sheen on the paper. The effect that we're looking for is not to have a sopping wet page where the water is moving around in its own space. We just want the sheen of the paper, and this is what we can call a controlled wet in wet technique, which is an illusion. We can't really control that [LAUGHTER] but we can control it more than nothing. Just starting from the side, I'm holding my brush in the same way as I did for our first wet and dry technique, the swatch. Holding it quite flat, that way, I'm not pushing my bristles onto the paper, and I don't really need any precision in the same way as I do with the wet on dry technique. For this one, it's getting a little bit more wet from there. I'm just dragging it alongside. This way we can go a bit back and forth, although it is recommended. If you go backwards, just be careful that you're not bending the bristles backwards, but going in the same direction saturating that paper. Cotton paper is usually very absorbent, so you might have to go back and forth a couple of times, but it's going to get that sheen there. You see how you can still see the texture of the paper, and there's not a lot of water running around. It will start drying pretty quickly. My recommendation to you is just to play with this a bit. Just getting to know your paper and your supplies. You might want to reboot and refill a bit of water on that paper. We have what we want, is just this sheen. How much water you need will also depend on how warm your house is and how wet your paint is. Going back into that violet from before, I'm just going to put it in just on the side here because this is the angle we're at right now, so the tree would usually start at the bottom. Just putting it in from the side, it will start to flow where it's wet. It won't flow outside of the wet area, but it will flow wherever there's water. This is also something that we can help encourage by giving it more of that gravitational pull by moving it. It will flow with the direction of gravity and also with the direction of the water. I like this dotting in motion, especially when I'm creating trees, and this gives us the freedom to get a little bit more paint. To also concentrate, maybe we'd like a stronger color in the middle, and more of a soft blurred out effect at the sides. Then here at the edge of the water, which is where I would be making my trunk, as you can see, maybe I'll put up a little lighter trunk than that. But this is the effect that we're looking for, is that beautiful flowing outward. Let me hold it like this instead. What we don't want is for this paint to flow all the way to the edge. That can happen either if the paint is too wet, I'm going to show that in a moment, or if we have too much water in our brush. Where this would be going is then I would start making this trunk downward the other way, and also out of this trunk creating. Again now we're doing the wet on dry, angling my brush, and making those little branches upward into that tree while the tree is still wet just so you already know what's going to happen. We can also make them darker, and make them go up into that tree using that technique, and still keeping half an eye on how far is my tree flowing, how far this leaf is flowing outwards? What's important to note about the wet in wet technique as well, is that when it's starting to dry, so you can see there's still the shine in the middle there, but those edges have dried. I can't go in and put in more wet paint there without starting to, I hesitate to say sabotage [LAUGHTER] but it wouldn't get that same soft, smooth, blurred out effect because it's starting to dry. The only place I would be safe, comfortable putting in more paint now is to just add that middle part. For this one, I will just leave it like that, and then that flowy effect. Of this going not, of this this not going to the edge of the water. The water went all the way almost until the edge of the page, and it's still getting that seamless effect flowing in, outward into nothing. That works out wonderfully for our first try. But what could happen, I'm just going to show you what happens if I put too much water down. 7. Too wet? Hard edges? NOW WHAT: As you might already have guessed, if we don't put enough water and it starts drying immediately, we won't get that outward flowy effect. But if you put down too much water, you might get the effect of adding a hard edge, the paint running all the way to the edge of the paper. Let's say the pigments is spreading and spreading and spreading and it really wants to go as far as it can and adventures paint. It comes to the edge of the water and then it stops there and it dries right now and then that edge becomes the new edge. Where it if it keeps flowing but it doesn't really quite reach the edge, and then it dries there. We get that soft blurred out effect. The edge of the water stays clean. Hopefully that makes sense. I'm going to do another very clean. I'm just going to dry it off a little bit because it will drip everywhere, but not really drying off my brush you can see that, see that big water drop underneath there, and just putting on so you can see already it's belonging up on the side there and flowing around, which means it will be very difficult to control any type of paint that we put into this, which is not going to lie, a super fun technique to play with and just exploring your sketchbook, for example. Let's say you wanted to make this fully seamless tree, this amount of water. As you can see, we can't really see the texture of the paper anymore. You can just see all that let water flowing around. That's not going to give you that same effect if that is what you would desire. So going in with the same paint. Now when I put it in, you see how that does not give the same effect. Even if I tried to drip it in, might start flowing a little bit and the when I start tilting the paper, see how that water is just going on an adventure with all my paint, going to the edges of the water. Yes, it's not going to flow to the rest of the page. But where did my tree shape go? It just disappeared? I have lost all sense of direction, all sense of control. Even if I now try to, but I wanted there to be more color here at the bottom because there's so much water. It can just flow everywhere. Of course, I'm now exaggerating it and manipulating it to move all the way outward. But I think you can tell that this would happen regardless if I let the paint flow all the way to the edge in that way too wet. Wet swatch. Fascinating to watch for sure. But also don't get that range from the darker to the lighter because now everything is mixed evenly because everything is mixing into each other and the way that it will dry is that maybe it will gather over here. This part will dry faster. This will dry slower and bloom back into the rest of the paint. Even though this one now has a couple of places where the paint didn't flow as much as they might have wanted. When it was still wet, I could have gone in with more water, started to blend that out. Whereas this one looks very delicious. That's gone over to the side and will drive very unevenly. Whereas this one has, even though I might have wanted to fix this. I might have wanted less concentrated pigment in the middle here. It still has that seamless outer edge into the white of the paper. One trick that I wanted to teach you, which is one of my favorite savior tips, is using that paintbrush. Still this is the one that has the color and I'm going to rinse it off. This is for when you have too much water. This would be difficult to create that seamless effect from unless you expanded it, which I'll show you how to do. But if you don't have more space on your paper, like here, it's too close to the edge for me to expand it into nothing. But I'm still going to show you how to potentially rescue a little bit of that excess water. This is what we call a thirsty brush. I've just rinsed it off in my water. Then I've dried it off on my cloth here and this now works as a sponge. I'm just going to touch that over to this very wet puddle here and it starts soaking up that water. Then I will just wipe that off from the clock, go back in, slurp it up. This might take some back and forthing, which is 100 percent vocabulary for this. It might also be a good idea to rinse it, wipe it, then go in, letting that soak up that excess water. Because excess water can also happen when you're working, like we saw when you're working wet-on-dry, if your brush holds too much paint and water. Then we can just use it as this sponging up that excess with the very fitting name thirsty brush like so, and then suddenly we have not too wet like this wetness, this shiny texture of the paper wetness. Now, that would actually be a good base for a wet and wet tree. That being said, if you wanted that seamless out to the edge effect. Another trick is we're troubleshooting as we go here. Another trick would be to get a very clean brush is going to rinse this first in our dirty jar, and then in our clean jar so using a clean brush, this whole brushes will clean water now and then wiping it somewhat so it's almost the same wetness as a thirsty brush and then while it's still wet, we have some opportunity to go in and use this as a bit of an eraser, as a bit of a blender. To try to manipulate that paint a little bit. Blend it outward into nothing. Now, this wasn't a perfect example. But I think you can see that this has picked up a little bit more of that, allowed it to spread into more water. We can also add more paint into this. If it just happened in one corner, for example and then this would be a way to camouflage that hard edge. When we're doing our tree later, you might see me do this, for example along the bottom where we might reach the edge of the water to avoid those hard edges as well. Those are the techniques that we'll be using for today's tree painting and I'm excited to see your version so these are all in monochrome. What I'm going to show you is going back and forth into two different colors as well so we'll first do a monochrome one, and then we're also going to do one with two different colors, mixing them together as we go as we're painting the tree, which now that you have these different techniques, you can do immediately. You can just go in and be, I wonder what happens if I mix this yellow with this blue. Probably get some green. Let's see what happens. Instead of mixing them in advance to check the color, would you also can do but you don't have to efficiency. I will see you on the next page. 8. Let's try a tree! Monochrome: Welcome back. After finishing up our technique practice, I'm going to put all that we've learned together and we're going to paint this lovely tree over onto the other side. Just to demonstrate because I want to mix these colors myself, afterwards, I'm going to go in with that mineral violet that I showed you at the beginning, this one that splits into different colors on its own because it's made with two different pigments. This quinacridone violet is famously a very smooth color where you want pigmented color and then we can also have, which I know a lot of handmade brands are doing now, and also [inaudible] some bigger brands are making these really beautiful granulating mixes of colors that split into different colors all on their own. Go has them, Daniel Smith has them and you don't have to buy all of them. Even though that's usually my tactic, apparently, you can also try to mix them yourself. But what you can do first because it's a bit time-sensitive, as you saw with cotton paper, especially the paper dries rather quickly. If we can prepare our paints first, so just going into that with my paintbrush, brush that is for paint and just activating that softening it a little bit. That way I know I have lots of pigment to play with on my brush and that's leaving that over there. I'm going in with my clean water. What you can do, you don't have to do both at the same time. You can do at the top of the tree first and then do the ground after. Or depending on how big your paper is and how fast you feel you want to be with this, you can do both at the same time of creating two spaces of wet in wet areas. I will make one bigger one up here and then a smaller one at the bottom connecting it with the trunk. I love this embolism of trees growing upward and downward at the same time. When you see a tree out in the wild, you won't be seeing the top bit but most likely there's a bottom bit that goes downward into the ground fooding, making that tree feel safe, making it able to stand so strong in the strong winds for example. It's because of those roots, those elements of that tree going downward into the ground under the surface, which I think is just a fantastic metaphor for humans as well. That well, we're growing upward and outward. Everything that we can see. There's also so much growth happening inside us going downward, inward grounding us into who we really are. That being said, I'm going to make significantly [inaudible] in page, going to make an area here. They wanted to mention that there's the brush technique. The brush that picks up that excess water is also a technique that you can use to pick up if you put too much water down for the layer of water that your wet-in-wet technique goes into. I'll do one soft-tune square shape up there first and then I'll also do a smaller shape, more of a stripe at the bottom. There's two areas. I just put my brush into the wrong jar. I'll start with the trunk and you try to aim that for the middle, that's where that's going to start going downward. I like to wiggle my brush a little bit, making that trunk a little bit wider at the bottom, letting that flow, making that ground, and then also starting to tap that brush going upward, letting it flow. As you can see, I have quite a thick pigmented amount of paint on my brush. What I'd like to do is, I can just go to that dirty jar, pick up a little bit of extra water, and go into that paint, letting it flow further. I'm still careful with it, still controlling it. But this allows for more of those pigments to play and separate and split apart so that we can get those beautiful granulating effects. I might go in and get some more paint, moving that around the middle. Maybe you're starting to see those blues coming through in the middle here and those pinks starting to travel further into our wet paint. Then I'm angling my brush again quickly going into that wet-on-dry technique, connecting some of those branches and maybe letting some of the branches not connect, going up into the rest of the tree. As you can see, the moment that wet paint touches the tree, it starts flowing outward as well. Then as you can see, there's still a lot of wetness there and there is still wet down here at the bottom. Maybe allowing and getting dirty water because why not? Because we're going into the paint letting that flow a little bit more in that bottom part as well. You see them splitting. You see the paint splitting apart. Over here, as you can see with a perfect example of that little gathering of water at the bottom there and also up here actually. For this, I'm going to go in with using my paintbrush first in dirty water than in the clean water. Then going in expanding the space, pushing a bit upward and inward, going back and forth, allowing it to spread out more. Then going down here, picking up some of that. I don't really mind here on the ground part if it flows seamlessly as much as I may end up in that top of the tree. But I can still go in carefully pick up some of that excess water and excess paint at the bottom allowing for some nice soft little dry brush strokes as well. Now, for me, this tree is looking very flat at the bottom here so wanting to go in with a bit more freedom. Wanting to go and push some of that paint around. Making it a bit more organically shaped so it doesn't look like it's in a fancy French garden. Making it a little softer around the edges, making them, allowing them to flow a bit further. You'll see that I'm holding my brush quite parallel to the paper, quite flat, and then working with brush inward, I will also say that some paints flow crazy. No matter how little water you give them, they're going to flow outward anyways. If this happens to you over here, this is already starting to make a tiny little hard edge. Just not a problem. If you want to avoid it, this could also be a time to pick up a little bit of a tissue or use your rag and just with a clean portion of your rag just stop the water blending it and allowing it to stop not letting it flow all the way to the edges. There that's beautiful splitting down here and all of this lovely pink flowing outward and then blue staying in the middle there. It's some and I've traveled a bit further than the others. I don't really mind that this bottom part has a bit of texture on the side if it'll dry brushing here. I loved the fact that it looks like these roots are crawling outward downward into the ground routing this beautiful tree, allowing it to spread outward and upward, having all these lovely branches and colors and I don't know what tree this is. This is a fantasy tree. Then of course you can add more branches if you want. If you want to add a little bit of grass here on the bottom, rock on the side, a little swaying, a little bench, whatever you like. Birds up here when you've dried your paper, of course, take it in any direction that you want but knowing that now have the techniques that you want to use to get that soft blurred-out effect and the precision and the tightness in the detail level that you'd like for those other parts of the tree. I'm getting that contrast really beautifully. [NOISE] In the spirit of testing this out, I would like to show you how you could mix a color like this. This is classic quinacridone pink and ultramarine blue mix and mixing that yourself on a palette first could be a really fun way to get this effect without having to buy a specific paint that is premixed for you. 9. Color mixing n.1 - Premix: Now that you know how to make this tree with one color, but this one color splits into two colors. You can also try to create that color with the paints that you already have. Now, classically, most watercolor palettes come with an ultramarine. It's a very classic color. A lot of people use it and it's a great mixer. I personally, don't tell anyone, I don't love it on its own, but I love it in mixes. I'm just going to take my porcelain palette. I have my clean brush and I'm going to go into that ultramarine. I'm just getting rid of that onto my palette. This may be two little puddles here, and then we can mix in that pink afterwards. Then rinsing my brush and going into that quinacridone pink, just a nice bright pink color. The moment we start mixing, you'll see that going into purple. Color mixing is much fun. It's definitely magic. This color now doesn't look like it's going to split into different colors. It just looks like a purple, but adding more water into it or when you leave it on your palette to dry, you will start to see how it starts splitting, mixing into those different shades, splitting some of the pink out from the blue. It's still having this core of purple. Then you can also do this in different ways. I'm showing how to put this on the side and then letting them meet and get a lighter purple and get more of a blue-based, darker purple. Very light, very pinky purple, depending on what you want to explore. This is one way of mixing them in advance. I see this one splitting and mixing. Beautiful. Let's do a test. Just remember, it just going into science mode. Letting that tree be on the side here. You can also note this down, say that this one is mineral violet and I'm going to make a little wet-on-wet area. Doesn't have to be the same size as the other one. Then going into our own mix over here, picking up some of that, your special mix, and then letting that play and it flow and spread into the water. See now when you start to manipulate it, it might do a similar thing. You see how that is splitting from the blue, into the purple, into the pink and allowing that to be your version of this paint. Just to show quickly how this would potentially turn it into a lovely tree. You can also add in more colors at the end. Just rinsing your brush, going into that clean water. Wet-on-wet doesn't have to happen with the wet first. You can also add more wetness afterwards. If I make a little wet space down here and then just connect upward, that paint starts flowing into that wet space at the bottom. It's so cool. Knowing that you can give your paint space to flow, then going back into your mix, maybe you want more of that blue, maybe you want to mix it back in. Adjusting as you go, playing with it while it's still wet. Seeing how you want to add these little branches again. This one seems to be very flowy pink side. As I'm seeing this flow out to the side here, doing the same thing, giving it more space, pushing inward, allowing for more play, trying to dry it. You guys understand me correctly? Just playing back and forth with your paints, with your supplies. Seeing how you like to make these. Then maybe I felt that gold has a lot of pink down here. We have some more of that blue, maybe some dry brushing. Maybe this horizon. Then suddenly you have a paint mix nobody else in the world has. How cool is that? You can see just the difference between the mixes of paint that you already had. I had this paint in this paint, and I can mix them in lots of different ways, and I can also add in more paint of the color that I feel might be missing while it's still wet. But that's not all. This one, we mix them on this palette, to begin with. There's a third way. There's a last way to do this where you mix it directly on the paper, which is what we're going to do on this tiny little square down here. I'm going to make a little baby tree, and we're going to make it directly on the paper. I'm all about making it easy, saving time, exploring, playing, learning as we go, so if you want to skip this entire part and you just wanted to go directly into this, you can. I know that seeing these rough edges, they're making my heart a little bit unhappy, that's okay. It's seamless over here, so I'm just going to scrub a little inward. Not a big deal. It's tinting the paper a bit, just making it flow all the way to the edge. It's just me being a silly perfectionist, but that's okay. We can love and accept ourselves anyways in all our silliness. Like that. It's making it a little bit smoother. Ready for the last version? Let's try that at the bottom here, and mix directly on our paper. 10. Color mixing n.2 - Mix on paper: Now that we've gone through using one paint, one color that we already have, and mixing in advance two colors that you think might work really well together especially something like this where it starts splitting, playing, we can also do our mix directly onto our paper. Being efficient and all. I'm going to try to make this very small. I'm going to be a little bit extra precise. I'm going to make a little , the technique is always the same. The steps are always the same. A little square over here. Now, because I just learned that this pink flows very far, I'm not going to make it very wet, I'm going to make it little bit extra wide to allow for some of that pink to just go wild and party in this water. Allowing that and then adding a little bit of that ground down here. I now have that wet portion at the top and at the bottom, not letting it be too wet. What I usually like to do is start with the lightest color or the less dominant color, which I believe in this occasion is the pink. Adding pink too match out the blue would be more difficult than adding blue to match out the pink. I'm going to make the trunk first, make that here in the middle. It's getting a nicely pigmented bunch. Just looks like a strange little worm, that's okay. This is where we can load up the color at the beginning, then at the bottom here and then rinse my brush in the dirty water jar, going back into that blue which was activated a little while ago. It should be quite easy to get nice pigmented amount and now mixing it directly. It's starting to push away, some of that pink starting to turn a bit purple, starting to play and flow and become friends. Then dragging some of those branches as well. What you might notice is that all of these are getting quite flat at the bottom, which is making me realize that sometimes when I do this, I don't make them flat, I make that top part as a top hat. I'm going to show that in just a moment. Just going to finish this little friend. But after going in with a bit of blue, you might realize that, oh no, I felt like this middle there's only blue. Now I want to go back in with some pink to balance that out. Maybe you want to just rumble it around, mix it directly on the paper, not being too aggressive with it as it is still paper and you still want to treat it kindly. But brushing it around, mixing it into this part. I love a bit of dry brushing for the ground. You see how that came as a completely different effect. It looks exact same colors as this. It's the exact same thing. For that bottom part, just allowing that to be a bit softer. That little bit more space to play. Just a little bit. Not too wet. It was called back in and the same with the other side. When you start putting your clean brush into paint, make sure that you go back out again, rinse it and then go back in again. Yes. I'm going to do one of the postcards next just to mix it up with a bit of another color. But as you can see, look at this magical little tree, from the unexpectedness of it, not knowing how it's going to end up entirely and how big it's going to be. Maybe it needs more space, but was using the exact same colors. See you see how fascinating this can be? Or if I'm the only one who's fascinated here, that's also fine by me. But I invite you to start playing with this, start testing it out, maybe try any combinations you would like. But these two colors will never work together. Then seeing what happens when you mix blue with a brown, for example, seeing what happens when you mix a green with a red and you get this beautiful fall color tree maybe with some brown in the middle, the splitting out into reds and greens. It's so much fun. I highly recommend trying it out, mixing your own favorite colors. Surprising yourself with what is possible with this technique. That being said, always let it be a learning process. Let it be okay that it goes to the edges. So this is why I'm also not going to do this twice and edit out the fact that some of these went to the edge and they go back in and I play in and I dry it up. That's also what sketchbooks are for, that's also what a painting practice is for, is making those mistakes and not going back and fixing them, pretending like, oh, there's nothing happened. It was perfect the whole time. I never make any mistakes. That is less likely to happen than making lots of fun, new different mistakes and knowing that you can trust yourself to fix them. Knowing that you can trust yourself to love yourself through that. This is not meant to be a perigee self help video, but do you see what I mean? Did I have fun making these? Yes, I did. Did I learn lots of different fun things? Yeah. Did I have a super fun time testing out this, going back and forth, doing some dry brushing, mixing my paints over here? Yes, I did. So am I really going to make this hard edge up top here and this little mushroom around over here? That's called ruin that for me. Can I allow it to be this knowing that going in another time, making more space for the water to flow while learning from it is so much more valuable than immediately nailing on your technique when you're learning something new. Even me, I've told these so many times and I still after having not done them for a while, after trying out a new paint on a new type of paper, knew unexpected things are going to happen anyways, and it's part of that growth. So I invite you to embrace the fact that this will not turn out exactly the way you hope it will, but it might give you something else. Cell bringing out our postcards, I just wanted to show you how you can make this with that other shape at the beginning, making sure that those trees will get that weird, very groomed park garden, square tree shape and then we'll start wrapping this up. 11. Individual tree - Monochrome: Carrying on, moving on to this postcard size, because postcards might be my favorite size of watercolor paper. It just feels like it's big enough to put up and use as a little wall art or something to decorate your desk and it's small enough to get it done in one setting, not having to wait for layers to dry, which is also why I love this kind of painting these kind of trees, because it's just one layer. It's just one, sit down, go, let it dry and it's finished. Lean onto these two, I'm going to make two different ones just to show how differently behaved different types of paints are. I'm going to do one with one color and one with a mix of these two colors. I'm going to mix them directly on the paper just to show you how you can play with that light when we're using bright lighter color and softer and more muted, darker not very muted, it's still very bright, but a darker color. Starting with this one, and I wanted to show you, instead of making that flat box shape, which makes that flat bottom tree, we'll be making more of a curved lines so that the paint can spread outward and those branches makes sense that they end up into those leaves, whatever that tree it's made of. In the spirit of exploration, let's make this one a little bit taller instead of light, we can make that other one a little bit wider just to show that there's no right or wrong way to do this, we can do all kinds of different trees and shapes and sizes. Also nature is not perfectly symmetrical all the time and perfectly squared out, spaced out. So, if your tree is a little wonky, it's just you being a realist. Making this side more of like a green, wants to say mushroom-shaped, more of a mushroom shape. Making sure that the paint has space to flow outward, we can always put more water inward into where we want our paint to flow. But we can't take it back. If me put water down, that is where there's going to be, what? For this one, I'm going to use one of my favorite paints, and the groundwork, you just do the same as before. One of my favorite paints, it's called Aquarius green, and you guessed it, it does have different pigments mixed into it already. It's this one over here is the only one that I've touched the bottom of. Again, to know where your water is, turning your paper in the light, see how that middle part is open. Going from that, and that start to flow and spread, knowing that you can always add both more paint and more water. Connecting it down into that bottom part. If you want to widen a little bit of that trunk allowing it to float outward as you wish. Then just touching a bit more water, bringing that back up again, making it a bit of a narrowly tree. Actually, I think that's super cute, I could also just leave it like this. But for the sake of demonstrating this mushroom shape, you have this outward slowly situation matching that outward motion. Keeping quite narrow but letting it descend a little bit more around the sides of the trunk so that it doesn't get that perfectly symmetrical, and perfectly straight bottom like it could. Let me just expand a bit on my trunk because it looked like it was wider on the top, which was strange to me. I'm just adding some more. I usually don't go with realistic proportions and sizing and whatnot. But it can be nice to add a bit more color underneath like a normal tree out in the woods would have one side that might be darker and more shade than the other. That's also something to play with. I want to add more paint to one side, keeping the light coming from this side than this. These branches, this side of the trunk, maybe this side of the ground has more color. These are all just options to play with. Now, you can see how this was given a lot of space to flow out, it flows in a really different way than that purple and pink did and even here at the bottom, you can see how that's splitting off into more of the yellow is running away, flowing further. Then that dark green, which is actually the same ultramarine blue that's keeping, that's staying more in place. There we have it. How fast was that? Here we go, this is what we like. This is how fitting something like a daily art practice into your normal human life doesn't need to take hours, it doesn't need to be this big, extravagant setting up for hours, immersing yourself in the painting. It doesn't have to be that to be something valuable, beautiful, something you really enjoy. That it doesn't have to be all of this pressure to work for hours, and that it can be just this. It can be just you playing with your paints, making this beautiful card. I would frame this and put it out into the world, show it to the people that you love like, hey, I created this. This didn't exist before I made it, and now it exists in the world and I created it, you are a creator. How beautiful is that? I love that idea and I encourage you to try this out, try it out with your paints, make it yours. Enjoy the fact that you're constantly learning, constantly getting new information, in the way that you move around in the world, the way that you show up for things that you find fascinating and wonderful. I want you to consider if you created a tree like this, what else can you do? What else is there for you to explore, to learn, to maybe expand into that you're like, "I've never done it before, so I don't think I can." Give it a try, see if it works, and I'd love to hear how that goes for you. We're going to do one last one, just for fun, and it's just to show you my favorite green color mix. It's beautiful, glowy other tree and we're going to do it this way, just to do a bit of a different variety, bit of a flat funky tree. Last one. 12. Individual tree - Color mixing magic: The last one, I wanted to show you what happens when we mix something that we can play with when it comes to light. When it comes to this glow of this bright, very warm, yellow, and this cool green. Now, I don't love this color on its own, but it's such a fun color mixed with this one. Just to show that there are options for how we mix our tree sketch. Just going to put those over there. I wanted to show you how to make this the other way. I almost didn't check the back. See, there we go. It's going to paint it the other side. With the same mushroom shape instead of that flat shape that we did earlier, I'm going to go in with that clean water. Just like Savannah tree is. I really should look these things up before I start talking about them on the Internet, but here we are. It was like flat, flowy asymmetrical trees been out all winter's night. My mushroom top hat situation. Do we see any sign of this paper? Yeah, a little bit. See how I've moved where the trunk would be over to one side. Then the rest of this flowy water. This is also 100 percent cotton. This over to the side, and then a bit of background as well. Just going to balance it out on paper, does not need to be proportionate. You're very welcome to make your tree anywhere you want on your paper. Just really rinsing this brush because I know I'm going into a yellow, which is famously a very tentacle color, if I had blue on my brush, for example, just going in. I'm already starting to flow a lot. There we go. I had quite a wet brush for that. That's okay. It's making some of those branches. What I'm doing with this first layer is also just laying down the initial, putting flow of it over to that side as well. Make a weird supportive branches out to the side. What I'm doing with this yellow is also just establishing, putting down a lot of that pigment so that when I go in with this emerald green that wants to mix in, I can go in with a bit of, not the turquoise. Sorry. Say that one more time. This emerald green going in with quite a thick mix, blending as I go, see how that's already changed its color a lot into that trunk. Trying to keep it wet for as long as possible. Also, down here, letting those colors mixing and blend. Now, this is going to need a little bit more encouragement. Just mixing these, letting them fall together. This is not flowing as far as I was hoping, which is fine. Then we need to manipulate a bit more, mixing it onto themselves. Adding a bit extra water, letting that flow, grow. I think I want to make this trunk a bit bigger. Making a little bit lower. See I'm constantly editing as I go. Now I feel like we've got a lot of that enrolled. Maybe lost a bit of yellow and treating this as the exploration than it is. To get curious more. Just friend of mines question which I love, which is what if? Asking what if, rather than not asking. Wonder what happens if I do this rather than limiting what's possible from the experiences you've already had, which might not be the full picture. Might be things you don't know yet. I don't know what's going to happen if I put this over here on the side. If I mix this up into that, getting it more abstract, allowing this flow to be wilder than I maybe thought it would be. Can you tell I'm also soothing myself for this moment or I don't know what's going to happen. Seeing if there's little dots of pigment that seem like they're a bit not on their own. Actually, I feel like if this tree was this far out to the side, this part of the tree would need to really sturdy. Maybe lean a bit the side. Then again, going in if you want to get that thirsty brush, if there's any way that looks too wet, it's going to try. A bit of strange shape, strange way. Allowing these paints to flow into play. Some new shapes. Easy for me to say. Not to make-merry the first idea. How very generous. Allowing it to grow into a tree that it was meant to be. Now, because this is an excellent example of this, now I see that the pigment has gone to the edge of the water up here. Just going to encourage that flow all the way to the edge of the paper. I don't have to, but then also gives the option of that water flowing back down into the tree, allowing it to be this gigantic. It's filled a very Lion King circle of life tree, allowing it to flow and be itself. With a tree that is now having a lot of wetness just here, I would probably try to let it dry at an angle, so it didn't dry. While it's drying, allow it to keep flowing upward. I probably want to let it dry, just propping it up against something, letting it dry so that the paint can flow downward because I would love that soft, seamless blend up towards the top of it, so a very different adventure. But see how this tree now doesn't resemble its roots. It doesn't resemble these two colors. They're just blending and flowing into, I feel like graffiti lives in this tree. The color mixing that we get from two colors that I probably wouldn't have picked this out as maybe the color that the tree would be if I mix these two colors together. That is also such a fun part of this whole exploration, playing with the different paints and colors that you've now created all of these different trees, all of these different shapes, all of these different versions with the same type of technique, and I already know that yours are not going to look the same as mine. Yours are not going to have the same flavor. You're going to move your brush differently. You're going to choose different paint colors. I'm really excited to see how you create these and what you discover about paints, your paper, your brushes. How you'd like to make them. How you'd like to move your paint, your brushes. How you explore this adds another thing in your toolbox that you might want to keep with you. Join me in the last video for a couple of final tips, some final tricks, some final words. Thank you so much for joining. 13. Thank you for being here!: Just like that, you've made it to the end of the class, and I'm really excited. If you want to share, to see what you've created, and how your flowy tree is different from mine, and how you've chosen the colors that you wanted to mix the monochrome paintings, maybe you've done something completely different. Maybe you've made a splash one color and a trunk a different color. Go wild. Use whatever techniques you want, use all the paints that you have. Make them bigger, make them smaller, make them something, paint bananas in your apple trees. I am so excited to see what you take from this, and how you make it your own because it's never going to be the same. It's never going to look the same as mine, which is, again, the whole point. Let me know what you got from this. I would love to see your creations, and at the same time I 100 percent respect if you do not want to share them. In my case, your art supplies can that workshop, I have a workaround for this. If you actually would like to share the fact that you did them, and the fact that you learned something, what you got away from it, you can also share your artwork from the back and say, this is a tree painting, I don't want anyone to see it, but I know that I've made it, and that's all that matters. If that's a way for you to open up a conversation about it, I would love to see that too. To summarize important things from this class, you are an artist regardless of whether or not you share your art. Number 2, I would love for you to share your art in the project gallery below if you're on Skillshare or on Instagram, if you want to tag me there, or send it in a private message. If you send me something that you've made and would like me not to share it, of course, I won't. If you want to only show it to me, feel free to reach out, and I would love to see what you made. Number 3, I would love for you to leave a review of what you've learned, what are your takeaways from the class. Has this made it easier to sit down and paint? Maybe there's another way for you to cleave that creativity, bring that into your life. Also, if you'd like to follow along, get notified for new classes, I sometimes do behind the scenes, sometimes do posts to see what classes you would be interested in, and I love hearing feedback from you as well. One final thing, at the very end. I want you to know that I don't take it for granted that you are here. I don't take it for granted that you take time for yourself to be creative, to do something that brings you joy. I know probably that you have a gigantic full life, full of things that are asking for your time, for your focus, for your engagement, and to take time to do a watercolor class, to feed your creativity, to play with your paints, is incredible to me, and I'm so grateful that you're here, and I really appreciate you for showing up for yourself like that, and through me to continue making these classes, for continuing to spread this ripple effect of joy and creativity out to you. When you create something, someone else sees it and they're like, oh maybe I could also do that, then they'll create something or they will follow one of their dreams further down the line. This ripple effect of creating more good, more joy, more creativity, more color, more of works of art in the world. Maybe this has opened up a door for you as well, be like, I didn't know I could do this. What else is possible? Leaving you with this. Thank you for being here, and until next time. What else can you do?