Free Expressionism - Painting like you just don't care 2

1. Welcome to Free Expressionism!: Hi there. I'm Christopher Clark, and welcome to my painting course Free Expressionism Painting Like I Just Don't Care. And today, we're going to work on how to be free and uninhibited and exciting and spontaneous with our painting because we just don't care what happens, that we have no result. No one's going to see this piece. It's not for sale. It's your own private little world. It's your own way to put a big pile of you onto a surface and really get a chance to see it. It's very cathartic. I'll go through the four paintings that we're going to do today. First one is a beautiful mountain scene based on a photo I just took riding my bike one day. So here's that one. These are all just gonna be done on I did them on watercolor paper. You do them on whatever materials you want. This is a fun flower scene that I did. I snapped a picture with my phone on a walk one day. Um, and, you know, just cheap watercolor paper. You can use whatever materials you want. These are done in acrylic. This is an old tree that I saw and actually was somewhere in Ireland. I can't remember. But just something a little more somber and quiet. And maybe if you feel that solitude feeling, you know, you need a different sort of mood sometimes, um, and then the last one we'll do is this was actually an afternoon scene, kind of end up looking like a little more like a nighttime moonlight, but that's okay. I had no intentions. Whatever came out came out, and that's what we're gonna work on. There's no painting style. We're not You know, you can say, Oh, this is very impressionist or whatever. I mean, that's not what we're going for. It's joined for just, um, not thinking too hard about what you're doing and not being too concerned about a result, just really using your favorite colors and grabbing whatever color is intuitively exciting for you based on a hint of what you see in your reference, how to completely depart from a reference and not stick so close to it, where you have to reproduce the picture perfectly. That's not what painting is about. And this is a really extreme version of that of just using the reference as an idea as a suggestion, you know, as a guide. And eventually, you just stop looking at it and you just focus on your own little thing, and it's really fun and freeing. Um so that's what we're going to work on. I'm using acrylic, which is a different kind of class for me. I usually teach in oils. But acrylic, that way, this class is a lot more maybe accessible to more people because I'm using big piles of cheap paint that anyone can get using old cheap brushes that everyone has. You know, don't throw away your old brushes, hang onto them because you can use them for stuff like this. And cheap surfaces. I'm just using watercolor paper. You could use cardboard. One of them, this last one, you'll see I actually used the back of the cover of the watercolor block that I was using. Because it doesn't matter. You know, no one will ever see these. And that really changes the way you paint when it's just private and for you. And it's really fun. You know, painting can be really fun and not tedious and not stressful and not like you're trying to impress somebody. You're just looking at yourself in the mirror. You know, you're painting a very spontaneous self portrait is what we're doing today. It's really gets a lot of stuff out. So with that, we'll go to the easel and get set up. 2. Painting 1, Mountains: Okay. And our first scene I've picked is just a fun sunset scene I saw riding my bike home. I live near the Rocky Mountains, and I saw this scene. It was lovely. I stopped and took a picture of it from my bike on a freeway overpass, you know? So this is just a fun little moment for my life, and we're gonna try to just throw it on a canvas and not really think about it. You know, I don't care. Whatever happens happens. This painting isn't for sale. No one's ever going to see this. I'm not gonna post it online. I'm not gonna show anybody. No one's watching me do it except for, you know, all you guys. But you know what I mean? So it should be very liberating and just relaxing. Um gonna start with a big giant brush. If you don't know where to begin on a painting, like, Where do I start? Do I do the mountains? Do I know, right now, just pick your favorite color. My favorite color is orange. I'm going to pick my favorite color orange. I just fling it on here. This is just an old Hanka watercolor paper. That I taped to a cardboard, and I hope it stays on the thing. Okay, look, there were started. And maybe I can wash that off a tiny bit. I just got a couple things of water over here. Maybe I'll jump in to, you know, I don't know, maybe it's here. I literally just don't think too hard yet or ever. Ooh. Did you see that? Some paint just flung. Wear a shirt that you don't care about. I wear an apron, too, just in case, and just use a lot of paint. Just really throw it on there. You can even, you know, fling. Do this in a place you don't really care. You make a mess because you will, and that's really fun and exciting and relieving, you know? Let's see. You know, I don't know. What's the next color that's interesting to me? Sort of this blue of these clouds, you know, orange or something. Just like, don't think too hard about it. Um, just grab your favorite color and just mix them. I have all my favorite colors. Did I have paint on my face already? Wow, I just smeared it. You know you're working hard when you get paint on your face. Well, I guess you guys get to enjoy that. Wow. I'll look at it later. You know, there's mountains and stuff here. I don't know. Is clouds that are happening. This is just acrylic paint. It's cheap paint so that I don't really have to worry about it. I'm not worried about what it's gonna look like. I can use a lot of it and not get all concerned. You know, maybe I'll use a maybe I'll use a palette knife. Just grab some whatever colors in here. Maybe at the top, it gets kind of purple. I don't know. Um, this is just a big old flat, like, Bob Ross shaped palette knife, you know? Maybe these are clouds here. And then I'll use the same one for maybe these mountains right here. I like that it's kind of orange. Palette knives, as Bob Ross has shown us many times, are perfect for making mountains. Palette knives just really fling them on there. And I love how this kind of gets, you know, darker. Well, use some brown, too. I don't know, doesn't matter. Maybe I'll get that wet. I'm going really fast, but feel free to take the time all the time that you need. To make this your own experience. Again, I'm I don't really care what's happening. I'm just flinging paint on the surface. I'm not trying to copy this picture. I'm not trying to make a finished beautiful painting. I'm just having fun. That's something that we don't give ourselves permission to do anymore. It's just have fun without a result in mind, you know, um, that's what's really great about this kind of exercises. There isn't a goal or a result. I'm just flinging paint. I have a reference, of course, because sometimes that's helpful as, like, a guide. Here, I'll put some white here where this is where our sun is. Maybe there's some clouds. Hal and abs are really fun for just, like, smearing a lot of paint onto a surface really quickly. And it gives some great chunky textures, if you want goes up like this. I love this sort of angle. There's this swoopy quality. Maybe there's, you know, a couple other little cloudy moments here. And you'll find yourself, you know, look at the reference less and less. Just kind of do whatever you want. You know, I don't know. Maybe there's some maybe there's some green over here. I was telling my friend who inspired this course. You can't paint a sunset without green. Well, here you go. I don't even know if it's in here if I see it, but it is now. Maybe it's in these mountains here now. Just grab whatever colors work. And you can get the dip your palette knife in the water and mix some watery color, just, you know, fling it on there. That's always kind of fun. And you can use your finger and blend things. This is acrylic, so it will dry fairly quickly. But you do have some time to push it around. I can blend this and make it disappear. I'm dipping my finger in the water, and I can push some stuff around. I don't want to blend everything because I love all these moments that are happening right now. I'm not thinking really hard. It's like, you know, streaming consciousness writing where you just go and you don't really pay attention. Maybe I want maybe I want it to be a little darker. How about some purple? I haven't used that yet. Maybe up here, it gets a little purply. You can hold a brush at different angles, and, you know, you can, like, smack it on there, like, just have fun. Can you take all your aggressions out or, you know, you're sighing a lot. You're just like, This is so relieving. And I don't have to I don't care what happens at all. And, you know, it's like, I almost said if it doesn't look good. That's that's not the concept at all. This This isn't about looking good. This is about getting yourself free and just throwing the paint on there. However spontaneous it happens, um, there is no looking good. That metric doesn't apply here today. Trying to make paintings look good is what's holding you back, probably. And maybe, you know, in your life in general, doing things where other people are judging you and you're afraid to really just let go and be yourself, that's holding you back. So, forget it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about looking good for anybody. Don't worry about impressing anybody. You're not impressing anyone. 'cause no one's ever gonna see this. Right now, you're just looking in a mirror. You're like, I love this color. Ooh, ooh, this is fun. I love this color. You're like a kid playing with paint. You know, I love all these colors. I'm gonna throw some even darker ones down here. In my picture, they don't get nearly that dark, but I don't care. Like, I just want some kind of trying to get to the bottom of this paper here. It's starting to, like, you know, it's just taped onto this thing. So it'll warp a little bit. I don't really care. Um, Uh, maybe we'll take some of this and add it into the clouds for some nice, really dark, stormy clouds this beautiful sunset. I'll dip it in the water, and I'll just smear some watery stuff on there. Ooh, I got a little drip, drippy drip. I can smear that around. Um, you know, who cares? Here's a fun technique that I haven't done yet today. Take, you know, whatever I'm using crummy old bristle brushes that might have ended up in the trash. Um, so I like to take some paint and get a lot of water on it, and then take another brush. Like, I use, like, the back of the handle, and I can just, like, use that to flick spots of paint everywhere. You know, it's kind of fun. And I can take some yellow, do the same thing, add some nice color. I can use what's on the handle, I can, you know, take that. This is just the handle that I just had paint splattered on. Um, you can use your finger to smush it around. Maybe I want to Ooh like that, brush gently with your finger. You know, make a mess. It's okay. You're just playing. Do this in a place where you can make a mess, and you don't mind. Um, you know, put plastic on the walls, put a drop cloth on the floor, and just go to town and wear clothes you don't care about, wear an apron. And just play and have fun. It really is liberating, just to not care what anyone else thinks at all. I don't have to worry about posting this online. A my followers gonna like it? Am I going to lose followers? Am I gonna gain more followers? Maybe someone's gonna want to buy it? You know, like, you have all these expectations, and that changes the way you paint, and it makes it, like, not nearly as fun. I like some really sharp, bright whites here. Then maybe some yellows along the edges here. I'm just maybe here or two. I don't know. I'm just taking this brush and sort of smushing it around where smush I'm just smushing Mountains, you know, carve a little more mountain out of here. It's really fun. I've picked up some of that purple. Well, I'll run with it, I guess. I don't know. Is this a mountain scene? Who cares? I'm having a good time. I'll use this, you know, I'll use another brush that had some darker on it. Clean your brush off against the wall, get some of this dark paint. Maybe you'll try to make some of this darker down here. I had some lighter stuff. Mountainy, who knows what? This is, you know, abstract impressionism, whatever you want to call it. It doesn't matter. It's really just for you. It's really just to play. And if it comes out, you know, looking pretty as far as what we'd consider a painting, great. But that's even I hate even saying that cause now you're judging it, like, Is this a good painting? I don't know. You did it so much better than me. You know, it's not about that at all. And when you hold yourself to that judgment, you're defeating the purpose of the exercise, and it is not nearly as fun anymore. It's not about Is it a pretty tainting? I don't want mud, necessarily. It's really did I enjoy myself and did I have fun? Scratching stuff on here, seeing what happens. And I'm just letting it all out. And whatever happens happens, you know? This is you're looking into a mirror right now. Whatever comes out onto this surface is you. You're painting a self portrait. I, you know, that's existential as that sounds. It's kind of true. This is a self portrait of you. And in your inner mountains that are really just wanting to be proud and stand out there and be beautiful, um cause maybe no one's acknowledged them yet, and they're just like, Hey, I'm here and I'm pretty and I'm awesome. And now you're letting them out. And you're like, you're right. Damn. Why didn't I notice you earlier? So spend some fun time with your beautiful mountains. Um and, you know, as you kind of slow down, you take some breaths, you sort of, like, you can get close and look at it and check it out and see all these really great things that have happened. Beautiful, like, intricate piles of mess that are just all your favorite colors in there. And, um, you know, I didn't know I had that inside me. It was really just this turmoil, but it's beautiful, and it can be calming. You can spend as long as you need on this. You can sit there and just, like, gently brush for hours, take a little bit, and, you know, I just using my finger, and you can just caress it gently. And, you know, you're caressing your own thoughts. You're just sort of massaging yourself. And it can be really nice. Dip your finger in the water. This is just on the palette here. I'm just massaging my own thoughts. And it feels really nice. Both tactilely, you know, to get your fingers in some paint. And, you know, emotionally, you're getting out some stuff that's been in there for a while. You can spend all the time you want on it. You know, just lose it. Just lose yourself. I got a little bit left on my finger. I don't know what's happening there. Um meditate on it. Just play and push and, you know, create your own little world that's been inside your head needs to come out and you can see it. Now you can look at it and you can now it's a conversation, you know? When it's in your head, it's this horrible, like, repeating monologue that never ends and you just stew on it forever. But when you get it out, you know, now you can actually have a conversation with yourself and figure some stuff out. It's therapy, right? Most fun therapy I've ever had. And I've had my share of therapy like everyone should. It's very good, actually. So yeah, this one might be done, I guess. When you're kind of you said everything you need to say, maybe you're done. It's really up to you, you know, when you're finished with this, throw it in a pile and don't look at it for a week. And then pull it out and look at it and go, Wow, I had all that inside me, and I had no idea. Or, you know, crumple it up and, like, tear it up in 1 million pieces and throw it away. You know, whatever you need to do to get it out of your body, that's really up to you. It's your choice. This is your experience. So you can save it can give it to a friend. Like, I made this and I thought about you and I made this or, you know, whatever. Um, or literally no one ever has to see it. I'd say burn it, but it's, you know, paint. So burning paint probably isn't the best thing for the environment. But you can save them all and put them all up on the wall, have a whole mural of all your fun, you know, spend, you know, ten or 15 minutes doing this or spend an hour or whatever. Then you collect them all and put them all and have this whole mural of you and your emotions and stuff. So Oh. That was fun. Okay, well, I'll clean up here. Spritz if you're using acrylics, which I am right now, just take a regular live spritzer bottle and sprit some with water. That's not working at the moment. And then you can clean up. If you need to clean up your palette just spray the whole thing down and take your any palette knife you've got or a paint scraper and you can scrape them all up and you can get ready for the next one. We'll do three more. Today. So this is a really super easy way to clean up. I do use a glass palette because I like I like that it's very easy to clean up. But you can use a disposable palette. You know, you can use if you use wood or it doesn't matter, really, whatever you choose. This is a real easy way to clean up and just dip it in some water. And, hey, we're ready. I can refill my paints here, and we're ready for the next one. Soho. Cool. Take a break, walk around, and we'll see you guys back here in a second. 3. Painting 2, Flowers: Okay and here we got a fun little flower scene that I took from somebody's garden just walking down the sidewalk one day, really beautiful flowers just blooming and fun little colors. And I just, you know, it's not a very good photograph at all. I just took it with my phone, but it's really inspiring. It's fun and vibrant, so we thought we'd give it a try. I don't know, when you don't know what color to start with like, there's so much going on in this painting. Just pick your favorite color, you know, just start with a color. I'm gonna start with, like, sort of an orangy. Oh, I guess it's more, you know, like an earthy, greenish yellow. Just cover the canvas with anything. Maybe it'll fade to, like, orange or something. Um, I don't know. So, okay, good. Now you've started. Now you've ruined the paper. You might as well keep going. Don't let yourself get inhibited by anything. You know, I love these. Let's put this one down and there's I'm just gonna hit red. I see this. And there's some great moments of red here. I'm just like, Oh, there's red. There's red. I don't know. Maybe these are more pink over here. I'm not drawing flowers. I'm just making fun shapes. I'm just trying like, oh, I love red. That's what you're doing right now. Ooh, squirrel, you know, like, doesn't matter. Here's my little flicky thing. I'm just flicking some red paint. All over the place. 'Cause it's fun. Dip it in the water. Andy. Just have some fun with it. Look, we've got a big pile of funness already. We haven't even hardly done anything. I got some extra paint on here. You know, maybe I can, look, I'm kind of carving into the things making some fun little shapes. I bet you've never done that before. This is just the back of the brush. This is just some crummy old little brush. Um, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm having fun. Just play. You have permission to just play, and it doesn't matter, because we don't care right now. Today, we don't care. We're just having fun. Um, you know, there is a lot of green. I'll take another brush. And, you know, there's some really great bright greens in here. Maybe I'll get a little water on there. Maybe maybe they're a little lighter than that, even. Actually, no, I think they're not. They're not that light. They're just sort of I'm just going to scratch some color on here. I'm kind of painting around the flowers. You know, there's gonna be some yellow ones here, I think, so I'm leaving those a little space. I take it back. I think the green is kind of dark in this painting, actually. So there's gonna be some white ones there. And then maybe there's some dark, like, shadowy purply moments. I'm just really smooshing the paint in here. I don't know. I'm painting like I just don't care 'cause I don't that's very liberating. Maybe I'll wash this off, maybe do a light or something right here. Alright, wow, we're at it. Just fling it on there. Who cares? And, you know, make sure you're not gonna get make sure you're not in a place where the walls are gonna get totally destroyed and messy, 'cause that's inhibiting also, right? I don't want to ruin my nice carpet or whatever, which understandable, put a drop cloth down. I've already got pain on my arms. This shirt is kind of ruined, but it's just some crummy, like, goodwill shirt that I found. There's some pretty white flowers in here with, like, yellow in them. And I'm just like, you know, uh, there's a flower. I don't know. There's a big juicy white flower right there. And here's some here. Um, I'm just playing. I'm just smooshing. And you can take all the time you need. When I'm in this mode, I'm kind of, like, really spontaneous and really exploding and it just comes out. And I don't mind letting it sort of happen like that. People will take some pure white for some of these. And maybe sometimes you just want to, like, just have fun and take a big splotch of paint, just, you know, enjoy that and enjoy every little like smoosh. Look at that and all the colors mixed together. Just do it once and just enjoy this experience. You know, it's like taking a bite into a big juicy something. That's your favorite thing. Just imagine that slowly to sink your teeth into it, There's nothing like it. And look at how much paint I've got on there. This is fairly cheap paint, so I don't care, right? That's the whole point of this exercise. And I got so much paint on this brush. You know, maybe I'll use that for later. And maybe I need some what was my greenish sort of brush. Maybe I need to fill in some of these areas with some dark to make the lighter ones pop out. I am, you know, I guess I am it being a little more specific with this reference. I am placing them, but I'm kind of moving them where I want. I'm not measuring anything. I didn't grid the thing over first, you know? I'm being pretty loose with it. I don't really care. I got my red brush here. I got a different brush for all of my, like, major colors. Maybe some of these flowers have some dark spots here. Um, who cares? I'm not really painting flowers, and it painting shapes. Painting fun, big, beautiful shapes. And I got paint all over the handle. It's getting slippery. So, remember, we don't care. We're doing this just for fun. 'Cause no one's gonna see this, right? So I don't care what it looks like. I'm painting a picture of myself right now. And right now, myself I love red, so I'm gonna put some more red on there. And, uh I'm gonna do the paint flicky thing again, 'cause it's really fun. Maybe around this red. Um, it's very freeing and liberating, when no one is ever going to see what you're doing. You're kind of hiding in your little corner and you're doing little thing and, you know, kind of giggling to yourself. I like this was fun. The paint that got on the handle from my little flicky bit, I'm going to use that and smear it around. Um, Yeah, it's fun when you're hiding and doing your own thing, and it's your own secret little world that no one can see. And it definitely means that it's it takes a lot of the pressure off. Like, is it supposed to be good or not? If you want if you want to get more specific, you know, I can just make some blue or, you know, I don't know, something. Maybe if you want to do like, Oh, look, that's the inside of a flower. If you want, if you want to just do shapes, that don't really look like anything, that's fine too. I think it's kind of fun. I'm just rolling the brush. Sometimes you can do that to roll it. So they almost look like flowers, but they really don't too. If you get close, there's just a mess. There's no flowers here. Maybe there's some stems or something. I don't know. Maybe a little tiny leaves here. If this makes you happy, then you've done it right. If you are just enjoying yourself and having fun, then you're doing it right. You know, That's what this is about. It's having fun. You're not making a perfect painting for sale. You're not making a perfect Instagram post. Oh, my God, Instagram is, like, destroying people's, like, self confidence. Really great for discovering and finding art and things. But it makes people so self conscious about everything they do care everything's under a microscope. And, boy, you can just really suck the creativity right out of you, you know? So this is just your own personal little journey. Maybe some of these flowers have orange on the tip. I love orange, and I haven't used any yet. Um, yeah, this is fun. Let's do a little flicky white action. Where's my white brush? That was is that it? I do try to, you know, keep my colors a little separate so they're not just complete mud when I want to use them. They are actually, like, you know, a nice clean, bright color. So I'm trying to keep I have different brushes for different colors, sort of my whitish brush, my reddish brush, my greenish brush. Oh, look, here's some paint that's now on here. Just so I get some nice bright vibrant colors. You know, if you use the same brush and really don't clean it really well, you might get some mud, which could be cool. Mbe you need to get all the mud out of your system. So, I don't know. And, you know, sometimes you just start to slow down. You're like, I don't know where I'm going. Maybe maybe I'm just, like, slowly kind of finishing and coming to a place where it's done. And you can step back and look at it. You know, I'd say, don't judge it too hard because this is really about just being a spontaneous adventure. It's not about making a finished painting at all. You know, you might say, Oh, yours looks so much better than mine. That's that's not the proper metric. I use that a lot you're not measuring this against anybody. This is your mind coming out. And this is your complete fun inhibited self expressing on whatever surface canvas or paper, cardboard or, you know, whatever. So there is no judgment. There is no better. Yours is beautiful. Whatever you just did, if you follow it along with me or, you know, if you watch this and did it later, whatever you did is beautiful, because, you know, you had an inspiration that was in you and you just let it come out and let it just flop all over the surface. And, you know, it's your own mind looking back at you now. And you're looking at yourself in a mirror and you can say, God, I look good. I didn't know I was this much fun. I didn't know it was this spontaneous and, like, vibrant and alive. You know, I thought I was just, you know, I thought I was asleep in there. But, man, I really I got some stuff going on that I didn't know. Look how much you know, look how much fun I just had and how much fun I am. And no one can take that from you. Um, when you make this for the idea of this has to be a perfect piece, then someone is controlling that and it takes a little bit of it from you, you know. But when it's really just you and you alone, no one can take this energy from you. You just put it out there and you experience it for yourself. Yeah, I'm slowing down on this one. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm down. This is really all I wanted to say. Now I'm just getting in here and enjoying it and looking at it. You know, maybe I could I kind of like the tip of this. I kind of like using the surface of this. Hey, let's put some purple in here. Maybe they're like, little sticks and twigs or something, get it wet. Maybe some come in front. You never thought you could use the stem stem, handle of your brush like a tool, but you totally can. It makes some really great textures that you might have spent a long time with a brush doing. You know, maybe these are some stems coming up. Or you can use a palette knife, get a little bit, and, you know, Maybe this is some grasses or something. So just pretty little plants coming up to say hi. It's almost spring. When I'm recording this right now, it's just about spring, and I can't wait to see what blooms, you know? You work hard on a garden for a long, long time. And when it finally gets to bloom, it's like Christmas. It's like you get to see the treasures that the Earth held that you helped bring to life. The Earth is thanking you. For your hard work. That's a beautiful thing. Yeah, I think this one's finished. I don't know. For the sake of my video. Oops. The Brush. Brush down. For the sake of this video, I, you know, that could be done. If you need to, you can sit there and, you know, sort of push around with your finger and just play and spend all the time you need. Get that tactile feeling of having real paint on your hands and a real surface and away from your phone or away from digital painting, you know, just like real organic experience. When you leave it all out there, and there it is. So, great. Well, let's sprit our paints. And you can clean up a little bit. You know, just take your palette knife or a scraper. And clean up. And we'll do that and we'll come back in a few minutes for I think we'll do another more of a somber number for the next piece in case you need to express that, too, because maybe you have maybe you got that going on, you know? And a lot of the pieces I'm doing in these videos are, you know, pretty simple, landscapy, flowery, whatever kind of things. I find I think if you wanted to try this with more of a complex, um, more technique sort of subject like a person, like a face or a figure. You know, that's fine. And I might explore that later, but I think if you're just that does add a lot of pressure if you're an amateur painter or if you're just getting back into this after, you know, having not done it for a while, or if you're brand new at this, it can be a little intimidating to try to paint a beautiful portrait or a figure or, you know, an animal or whatever. It is nice to keep it simple right now the landscape is very forgiving. But we might explore a more difficult piece and see how we might tackle that if I really wanted to get that out there, you know, if my emotion was a sad figure, you know, or something or somebody, you know, holding their arms up in joy or any number of poses like that. If that's what I need to express myself, um, for this course, we're just going to do simple forgiving flowers and trees and things, just to keep it simple. So anyway, go clean up your brushes and stuff, and we'll see you back here for the next painting. 4. Painting 3, Old Tree: And this one's going to be a little more of a somber piece, if that's really what mood you're in. This is just some old tree I saw on a trip somewhere once. And maybe that's how you feel, just a lonely old tree. You want to express that. I realize I didn't really go over my materials so far because it doesn't really matter that much. I'm just using, you know, cheap acrylic paint, your favorite colors, you know, yellows, oranges, reds, purples, blues, greens. Just, you know, lay them all out. I like them this order so I can really, you know, get them where I know where they are. It's organized. Um, and then I was using cheap old brushes, big old giant chip brush, you know, just cheap old bristle brushes. You can use softer ones, whatever you want. I'm trying to stick to larger brushes for these, so I can really just move the stuff around. Mbe tiny ones for little stuff at the very end. But in general, I'm trying to stick to big brushes and block in stuff quickly instead of, like, minutely, like, you know, starting with these little tiny things, just to keep it free and moving. So, this piece, let's start with something a little more somber. I'm going to just go with some purple. Big brush, you know, just adding some water to my paint. And this is just a piece of watercolor paper. You know, use whatever surface that's available that's handy. Doesn't really matter, because this is just an exercise for fun, you know, um, sure, there's some green on here. We'll make that happen. You can fling some I just love this. This is just fun. You add a lot of, like, fun texture really quickly by just literally flinging the paint on there. Maybe we'll drip it. Get a lot of greens on here and, you know, push them in and let them drip. Let them run. Doesn't matter. So we're getting somewhere. I don't know what we're doing. We're kind of just going. Maybe we'll sort of start blocking in. I can switch to a smaller brush if I want to I'm trying not to overthink it. I'm literally just trying to go stream and conscious. I'm just picking dark colors right now. Maybe my tree is, like, here. I don't know. The tree is kind of organic, fun, flowing thing. I'm not even I'm not doing meticulous branches yet. I'm just kind of, like, feeling the shape and letting it sort of just push me where it wants to go. I don't know. Um, I realize there's this, like, lighter colored path on the bottom. This is where, you know, you depart from the reference image. This is just a reference. It's an idea. It's a thing just to sort of nudge you forward, to get you moving from the, you know, if you were sitting in front of a blank canvas and trying to have a fun painting exercise, I don't know what to do. I just, you know, plain color everywhere, which can be really fun. But having a reference sometimes can just give you a little idea, a suggestion that you don't have to stick to at all. You know, you can just play and depart and do whatever you want. This doesn't look I anything like the picture so far, which is fine. But, you know, it's steering. It's a guide. And, of course, here's this fun miss I love this. It's so freeing and exciting. And there's no mistakes here. You know, there's no right or wrong. There's, you know, this one's better than mine, and that one's not as good. It doesn't work like that. It's like taking it, you know, you watch a child finger painting. Do they know what it means to make a mistake until we tell them? They don't know what that means. They're just having a good time. Oops. That happens too. Oh, here's maybe that turns into a fun little moment. I don't know. My little splotch that fell there. Who knows? Maybe I'll paint some of the light through the branches now. I have no idea what there's a light here. You know, maybe maybe you'll start to see the lights poking through. And you can approach however you want. Maybe you want to do the light stuff first and add the tree later. That's your choice. It's your playground. You know, you build it however you want. It's your little like Bob Ross says. Here he is over here. It's your world. You're the creator. You can let magic happen here. Just all it takes is practice and patience and painting is fun. Thanks, Bob. Thanks. Happy painting. And God bless my friend. Thanks, Bob. Appreciate the advice. Bob's always here to to remind me to have a good time. Just let it be free and have fun. Well, we are. Good thing Bob is here 'cause sometimes you forget that. Like, it's easy to forget, you know? There's all kinds of greenness happening back here, I think. Um, maybe there's I do kind of like how there's a little bit of the brighter sky, maybe there's, like, some bright like moments poking out here. I do kind of like that. You can change it however you want. You can design it however you want. And, you know, you can paint over it, if you don't like it. Just keep going back and forth until it's something that you like. It doesn't really matter at all. Once you realize that this painting right now doesn't matter at all, you will start to get the point, and then it'll be a lot more freeing. I'm going to go in with more of this fun yellow. It doesn't matter what brand of paint you use. Really doesn't would suggest something inexpensive so that you can use a lot of it and not feel constricted by how much paint you're using. Maybe I'm going to stop looking at the reference now and just enjoy myself. Maybe you'll do a little more light through here and you really get a see I'll glance at it now and then. And maybe I'll use the back. Maybe some of this there's some sticks and twigs and things. Hey, maybe there's sticks and twigs all coming through the tree here, and you can see them. Start to move it around. Did I have a dark brush? Yeah. I do try to keep my paints Brushes separate, so that, you know, if I want some nice bright, clean color, I've got it. It's not it's not just mud, you know, Okay, maybe can do fill in some more specifics on these branches now. Okay, you know, I'm just gonna stop looking at the reference because I'm just gonna make this tree talk to me. That's gonna tell me where it wants to go. This is a pretty fat brush for doing such little things. See how gently, I'm just holding it, you know, just letting it sort of dance around the page. Maybe it comes all the way out here. It's just stretching. Trying to find a friend. Maybe that's what this painting is teaching us. It's just reach as far as you got to go and you find a friend, 'cause the friends get you through the hard times. You know, I'm going through a hard time myself. I admit on this video to the public where people watch and are painting, you know, I lost someone very close to me recently, and I'm just trying to reach out and find some friends. That's what it's all about sometimes. Maybe I'm feeling a little dark and somber and just trying to hang on here are my roots. Maybe they're a little twisted. You know, maybe I'm a little crooked. That's okay. 'cause my friends will find me. And that's what this is all about. Just finding the voice inside you that wants to say something. Maybe I can smooth some of this, take your finger and blend. This is acrylic, and it dries fairly quickly. But, you know, if you're using a lot of paint, it should still be soft enough and alive enough where you can smear it around. I'm not gonna smush and kill the whole painting because I do like that there's brushy moments happening everywhere. Here's, you know, what could be perceived as the sky beyond this mountain or something. I don't know if I like that idea. And maybe here's some more greeny, leavy things happening. Just this poor old tree just hanging out by himself, trying to trying to figure things out, and the world is turning and turmoiling all around him or her, it could be an old two, you don't know. It's just reaching for a friend. And then here we are. We're friends with the tree. 'Cause that's what it needs. We'll do I like I always love this splashy kind of moment. I want some nice bright yellow, though. Sometimes I really want to choose To wash my brush really well and have some nice color. I love this because it's really liberating, and it's fun. And you can get some glowy things happening, too. Maybe I'll use these to make S little yellow specks that landed on the trunk. I'm going to push them around and turn them into detail, turn them into, like, bark and stuff. I didn't plan that, but it works pretty well, actually. And maybe this is glowy things happening through the branches. Look at all that bark detail I just did. I'm just using my finger with the splatteries that landed. You know, some people might think, I ruined it, but there's yellow everywhere. I'm like, No, you just made it better. You just found the one secret little moment that you didn't realize. Look at all those fun. Now, it's like, twisting up, you know? Um, and now I've got some yellow on the tip of this maybe I want to add some more scratches and little twigs. Like Bob Ross would say, just little sticks and twigs for all the critters to run and hide and play. Maybe I do want some small little guys. So take your little tiny brush that you got and just, you know, trees can be, like, super meditative. Just do this. You can spend hours just making little branches. You can get it wet if you need to. Just, like, let them noodle off into everywhere. And it'll pick up some of the paint that's back there. That's okay. Yeah, you can do this. This is fun. Just close your eyes. Watch. I'm really not looking at the painting right now. I have no idea what's going on. That was fun. I've never painted with my eyes closed before. Maybe a little tiny bits of dried stuff hanging out there. Um, maybe we'll do that. Maybe there's some little tiny, you know, golden yellow leaves still just hanging on from summer. Whatever you want to do. You can just do this, speck them in there. Just play and experiment. This painting means nothing. This is your own mind coming out here. With no mistakes. This is your inner child finger painting before you knew that mistakes were a thing. You're just having fun. Kids don't know about error or self consciousness or shame or mistakes or they don't know that stuff until we teach them. So do yourself a favor and bring yourself back there for a couple hours, you know, or in this case, this has been like 13 minutes so far. Bring yourself back to a place where you just don't care. And have fun. And No mistakes. Just fun and play. And it's very and you can leave it all out on the painting, you know? I'm gonna hit that where my whiter brush go. I do have, you know, this is acrylic, dunk them in a bucket over here, full full of lighter colour sorry full of water, lighter colored brush. So that way, I don't dry out. You can do this with oil paint, too, if you want. Um, certainly I would use cheap oil paint so that you can use a lot of it, which I do have. Maybe I'll do another class later when I'll actually use oil just to try it out. This is a new experience for me, too. This only came about after talking with a friend who wanted to get back into painting and was just very inhibited. And this has been a fun, cathartic and exploratory experience for me, as well. I mean, let's do some more dark. See, I'm just like scratching in, you know, this whole bottom section. Maybe this tree just, like, keeps turning and twisting. And maybe the roots come all the way down here. I don't know. I'm making this up. Of this, you know, suggestion of a picture that I took randomly on a walk somewhere. Um Whoa. There it goes. Hey, look, look what I just picked up. My brush landed in the lizard crimson. Hey, o I'm gonna use. Instead of cleaning it off or freaking out, like, you know, this happens to me at least once a painting session, I drop my brush. Happy little accidents. Right, Bob? Here we go. So now there's, like, flowers or something there. I don't know. We'll make it go up the tree. Look at that. It's getting harder to get off the handle. So I just turned a funny little accident into. I'm like, I like that. I want to use that, actually. Let's put some more. Didn't see that coming. Did we? But I introduced a new color to my painting on accident. That was fun. Maybe I'll just hint at it a couple other little places. Yeah, that's exciting. Maybe I can soften. See, it's already getting dry in some places. But, uh, dip my finger in the water and maybe soften a little bit. The tactile experience of just painting with your fingers and touching a real surface, you know, we're so detached nowadays on our phones and sitting in our cars and traffic, you know, or digital painting, which is great, which I do also now. And it's really powerful. But, God, it is so sterile. You know, you're holding a piece of plastic and you're sitting at a piece of plastic, and, you know, you're adjusting settings and sliders instead of, like, just dipping your finger in another color. It is a very, very different experience. And, uh I'm really happy to be able to take the time to do an organic process like this. I want to maybe make some more barky things with the leftover yellow I've got on my finger. It'll mix with some stuff that's there already. And, wow, look at this just crazy twisting, majestic tree we've got going on. It's I didn't expect this. I didn't know what to expect. And you can kind of sense yourself slowing down. You know, maybe you're just sort of feeling done. Um, you can noodle on it as long as you want, you can spend all day playing with these things cause no one's ever go to see this painting. It's not for sale. You're not going to post it online. No one's watching you do this. You're home in your own little private corner somewhere, having a good old time, and you're just playing. Takes all the pressure off of it. This is just for you and you alone. This is looking at yourself in the mirror and you love what you see because I didn't expect this. I didn't know this was inside me. But, man, it's really fun. I didn't know I was this much fun. I didn't know I had this sad old tree in me just waiting to come out, find a friend. Well, maybe he can now. Now that I can see him he's being heard. We all need to be heard, and maybe this is how you can at least hear yourself so that you can start telling other people. Hey, look how beautiful I am. But you have to know it first, you know? Okay, so we'll clean up, and we'll we'll see something fun to end the day with. Clean up and, you know, take a stretch. Take a sigh, and we'll come back in a few minutes. 5. Painting 4, Clouds: And here's a fun, bright movie cloud sort of scene that we can end the day with. As you can see, I'm proving that you can do this on any surface you want. It doesn't have to be expensive or nice. This is literally the cover for the watercolor book that I was using earlier. I just taped it on here, and I made it upside down, so at least the letters are upside down so you can't read them later. And we'll see what happens there. It doesn't matter what you do this on. I'm going to pick green for this. I might have to use more paint than usual to cover up some of this stuff, but hey, that's a fun challenge, right? We'll see if we can make this turn into something cool. Maybe I'll use some yellow 'cause there's a big bright sun up here, and I want that to shine through. Yeah, we might have to do a couple more layers of stuff happening, but that's okay. Um, maybe these little lines and letters will add a fun texture that I wasn't expecting, you know? I do like the green, though. We'll do some blue over here. Sure, why not? This is just a big giant chip brush. No idea what's going on. We'll throw some purple down here. You know, all your favorite colors, whatever you want. Um, I'm sort of filling in this space with some fun colors. Um, you know, maybe this maybe this dip some back into this yellow. Maybe it can smoosh all the way down here. Who knows? Um, let's maybe try, I don't know. There's some blues or something up here. There's some really crazy. Maybe we'll keep them kind of yellow. I'm just gonna go for it. And maybe it gets really, really bright. I'm sort of I love the brightness of this area, so I'm just gonna put the whole area with some bright happening. You know, let's do this. We'll use my plastic wrapper. And I'll paint with this for a while, just for fun. Maybe it'll make some fun cloud shapes that I wasn't expecting. I try some yellow here, too. And if I don't like any of this, I can paint over it. In fact, that's kind of the idea, especially since I'm trying to cover up the, you know, the cover this Canson watercolor paper thing. I can take this and really blend it and make this great moving quality to it. Look what we got already. Oh, my God. That is so much fun. I'm having a ball here. Um, maybe I'll go into some of the clouds to I'll use a different color brush. You know, I don't really care or know what color these clouds are. I just sort of, like, oh, there's like a purple. Um, Purple coming out here. I'm just being really free and like, I don't care. Whatever happens happens. I'm, you know, you can take your time and you can really just explore this if you want. You don't have I'm kind of just smearing. Maybe this direction of this painting seems very moving, like it's windy or exciting, you know, so that's kind of what I'm doing with my brush strokes. I'm not really holding them back. I'm just letting him kind of scratch and play all over the canvas or paper. You know, this isn't even a canvas. This is just This isn't even something you would buy to paint on. It was the cover of the watercolor thing. So you can paint on old cardboard, you know, I've seen an artist who does it on cereal boxes. The inside he likes it's, like, kind of an off like the tan color of cardboard. He paints on those, and uses them in a professional environment. Kind of funny. Maybe we'll come back to some of our lights. Maybe I want to actually wash the brush and fling it off. We'll come back to some of our really fun bright colors. Here's a sun up here. There's there's some really bright clouds happening. Um, you know, just let the brush play and dance and have a good time 'cause we're just having a good time. Put on some fun music and breathe and just, you know, really just maybe do one of these. I just love this. It's so much fun. And then you can I don't know, do that. Um, maybe there's a little some cloudies down here, just kind of dancing around, just chowing. I don't know what we're doing. They don't look like that old Canson paper anymore, does it? You can still see some of the letters and stuff up there at Dusty. It's kind of fun. Maybe somebody who looked at this, if anyone ever looked at this 'cause I don't plan on showing it. That's the concept that you're, that's the mindset you have. Something like, W Wait a minute, Is there writing under there? What What was on here before? And you're like, That's my little secret. Um, 'cause, again, you know, we're doing this under the mindset that I'm not gonna show this to anybody. This is for me and for me alone. This is my little revelation that I don't share with anyone. That is liberating, and it makes you really able to just relax and do whatever happens. And if, you know, you don't necessarily love it, you know, who cares? That's not really what this is about. This isn't about, like, I'm making a beautiful painting, and I hope it comes out right that just kills the whole process. That really makes it so you're already inhibiting yourself, you know? Um, maybe we'll make it so you can actually see some of the bottom of some of these areas here indicate some landscapes or something. I don't know. Wow, this is, you know, I don't paint like this normally, and it's really fun. And, like, I would have never expected to see something like this come out of a random little crummy photo that I took while I was driving, which I don't recommend, but sometimes you just got to do it. Just be careful. I didn't tell you that. 'cause it's really not the safest thing, but maybe we'll use a palette knife down here, 'cause I like doing that for landscape parts, scratching and pushing around. You know, this is a freeing, even tactile experience of just pushing paint around with reckless abandon. Remember, we're not we don't care. We are painting like we just don't care because we don't right now. We're just having a good time. Having a party? Uh, maybe some of this kind of I'm just making this up. This really doesn't look anything like the reference is just a reference. You know, I glance over it to see if it gives me another idea. But I'm not painting this picture at all. I'm just playing. That's just an idea. It's a place to start from. Sometimes you're staring at a blank surface, and it's like the blank canvas of death, and you just, you know, languish on it because you don't know where to start. You don't know where to go. Well, this is how you fix that. We'll put some red down here. I haven't used azarin in this one yet. The reference is just a place. It's a suggestion. You know, it's an idea. And it doesn't have to be a great photo at all. Um, if you are using a photo, you can paint just from memory and just do something fun. Just let your fun colors just happen. You know, that's exciting, too. Um, can be whatever you want. I'll make some of these clouds a little darker. I do like that that's happening there. I forget what I was saying. Must not have been important. I love the angle of these clouds. It was really beautiful. Caught my attention that day. And it makes me I remember this day now, this day is forever sort of embossed in my memory because I get to just explore it and play with it. And it's my own little my own little world. I want to make this sun really nice and bright. Really hit those hard. And maybe it's a little more glowy out here. It's not such a hard edged thing. That's fun, right? That's all we're doing is just having fun. Maybe you had these, you know, crazy, wistful clouds in you, and they just needed to come out and see if you can look at them and process them and stuff, you know? Maybe sometimes you just take a second and think sometimes you can feel yourself sort of slowing down. You can spend as much time on this as you want. You can still see some of the lines under there. It's kind of fun. Adds an extra little dimension. So, yeah, it doesn't have to be expensive material at all. Choose cheap material and cheap paints, if you got them, so you can use a lot of it and not care because that's really the point of this exercise, just to let it all out. And loosen up, you know? So maybe, you know, you can use this idea when you're doing a real painting that you're trying to work hard at, and you want it to be amazing. Well, you can make an amazing painting by just having fun and playing, and you'd be surprised at how liberating that is, even for a nice finished piece that you maybe do want to sell. I like this, the flicky painting thing. It's one of my favorite things to do. Maybe we'll take some of these other little droplets that came out and sort of smush those around. Maybe I'll do that. Same thing with I just keep grabbing new brushes. So I I try to reserve a brush for each color so I can have some nice clean, crisp color if I need. I'll flick some lazarin down here because it's pretty little specks of lazarin crimson. Um, yeah, maybe you'll discover, you know, since there's no rules here, there's no mistakes. Maybe you'll discover a technique that you love. And you would have never tried had it been like your nice normal painting setup, you know? And then you can actually expand your painting horizons because you just gave yourself permission to play and have fun, which we're so it seems like we're not allowed to do anymore, you know. Everything has to be the perfect Instagram post and make sure that, you know, everyone loves this piece and you're going to sell it or what's hot right now? Clouds are hot right now. I'm gonna do a bunch of clouds. And, you know, orange is really popular color. I'm gonna paint everything orange. Oh, forget that. Paint whatever you love and paint, whatever you're feeling. 'cause that's really what art is. That's what people want from your art anyway, you know, they want your expression. I'm not trying to copy this picture. I can just post a picture online, and there you go. There's the picture. You know, people want to see your interpretation of it. They want to see what you felt when you saw this painting or when you saw this place, this time, this moment of your life. You know, I'm not trying to copy the picture. I'm trying to emote. You know, immote in paint. So when someone else sees this, they felt what I felt when I was there. They feel what I was going through when I painted this painting. You know, it can be the crazy gestury you know, swirly clouds and wind and maybe there's a calm moment right here with this little, you know, little reflection of something. I don't know what this is. And then, you know, there's some purple moments down here. There's all these little moments, and, you know, none of these are in the picture I took. It's just not a very good picture, but it doesn't matter. It got the idea across, and I took it to a new place by letting myself just immote with it. I took it to a place no one's ever seen before, you know? All the history of the universe, no one's ever been at that exact spot at that time with me and my experiences and my loves and my fears. And then I put it out on a surface in a way that no one has ever done before. That's what somebody wants from your art. And that's what hopefully this is also teaching you how to do, how to be free and tell this story that someone else can relate to and connect with, you know? That's way more than a photograph or a photo realistic painting can do, I think. And you just stretch and look at it and let it kind of sink in. You can feel yourself start to slow down, you know, and you're done whenever you're done. So yeah, made a big mess. You know, you get messy. That's right. We can clean all this up. So yeah, I think this is all the wild painting that I can handle in a day. We'll come back here in a minute and recap all the four paintings that we did. And, you know, try this with your own random pictures that you take. If you see exciting moment, take a picture and come back later and just spend 15 minutes and bam. It just explodes out there and you get it out. Or do it from memory, or, you know, you're really just playing. You're a little kid, finger painting, and there is no mistakes. There's no right or wrong. You're just having fun. And that is like, so okay, you don't even know. Um, so cool. I keep saying that I keep wanting to, like, play with it, but I think it's done. You make sure to breathe and kind of spend some time in there looking around at your creation. Like, Wow, did I just do that? I didn't know I was capable of doing that. I didn't know I had all this turmoil in me that needed to come out. I just needed to you know, I needed to look at it and it's looking at me, and we're assessing each other, like, mm, I like where this is going. We're you're showing your own mirror what the beauty that you had inside you was that you didn't know this was in there. I didn't know this was in there. And, man, it's cool. So you got one of these in you too. You just need to let it out and then look at it and look at each other. It's the big pile of you. This is the big pile of M. Now you go make the big pile of you. Okay. We'll come back in a second, and we'll recap with all of our really exciting works we did today. 6. Summary: Okay, that was a really fun day of painting. Here we'll go through all the four pieces that we've done, as I can point it at the camera. So this is one we started with just a lovely mountainy cloud sunset scene, based on a random picture I took riding my bike one day, and nice place to start vibrant colors and, you know, a lot of sketchy, scratchy things, really exhilarating just to move the brushes and the palette knives and the things all over the canvas and, you know, this case, paper just to have fun with it. Not really any specific goal in mind, not trying to make a beautiful finished painting, just having fun to make something that's your own private little world that no one's going to see that no one has to buy, that doesn't have to be Instagram post. Just do whatever you want and just use your favorite colors and sort of let it fly. So here's the first one. Then we did a fun little flower scene from just taking a picture just on a walk one day. I don't even know what kind of flowers those are. Actually, somebody could, you know, you know, they were just pretty. I love the colors. I loved the bright reds and then the whites and yellows and things. And yeah, it was just really flowers are really fun and innocent and vibrant and, you know, you can get a lot of joy by, uh by just flinging that color on there. And, you know, I tried to indicate a little bit that they actually were flowers. You could leave it more abstract, if you want, you know, do whatever you want to do. The idea is just to get you moving and get you painting, you know? And if you don't know what color to start with, just throw your favorite color on the surface first and go from there, you know, ruin it by just throwing some color on there. Uh, already it's already tainted, and I might as well keep going rather than getting the paralyzing, you know, perfect white Canvas syndrome, whatever you want to call it. So there's that one and then we did something that, you know, started out as a little more somber. I guess is kind of interesting energetic piece. I didn't really intend it to be. I didn't know what. It was just an old, lonely tree that I thought would be a different kind of mood, you know, started with some more, you know, the somber purple color that, you know, I guess I added a lot of those bright yellows that kind of livened it up, but it's still just kind of, you know, a lonely old tree sitting there. Maybe it looks a little windswept or something. But, uh you know, just having fun with the colors. There's all kinds of purple in there, and that wasn't in the picture. I'm not trying to copy the picture. I'm not trying to, you know, the picture is just a place to help to start a little guide. You know, you can glance at it once in a while, and maybe eventually you stop looking at the picture, your reference, and you just go with what's in your mind, and whatever's in your heart, whatever needs to come out. You know, you tell your own story, you tell it your way, and you do it without caring about what happens. That's really a fun way to get moving, you know? And then here was our last one, this great cloud scene. Well, let's. There we go. That was based on a picture I took while I was driving, which, again, I don't recommend. I admit I'm guilty of doing that a lot because I see really great scenes in the car, and I just, you know, grab my phone and, you know, I try to be really careful about it, but, you know, I don't recommend it necessarily. But this one had some great angles to those clouds. I just, you know, flung some green on there and just kind of went with it. It wasn't a green scene at all, but sometimes you just throw a color on there and push it around and reach for the next color and do it intuitively, you know, like stream of consciousness, whatever occurs to you, just just go for it. Don't and think too long about what it should or shouldn't look like, but what colors belong and what colors don't in harmony and, you know, forget about theory and technique and all these things. That's not what this is for. This is just to get you moving if you're stuck or just to help you express all those things in your mind and your soul that needs to come out. That's just locked in there. So I remember, this one was done on the cover of the actual watercolor pad that I was using. I just used the cover because it was, you know, it's actually still the same kind of paper, had the printing on it, and you can't even tell. There's a couple little you can see some hints of some of the lines and some of the letters. Maybe somebody who looked up close would be able to see it. But yeah, so that was a really fun cathartic process of just moving. We can do one more. Nice, long look at each of these beautiful sunset piece mountains. And, you know, this doesn't necessarily It's very abstract. It could be, you know, it's not really even clouds in the sunset. It is, but it isn't at the same time. It's kind of fun how it's it's a complete mess, but it is still sort of reminiscent, you know, it gets the emotions, but it's not necessarily the object. Here are those flowers, which I quite like how this one came out. It was really fun and bright and exciting. A lot of paint splattering, you know, here's this lonely old tree, poor guy. He's just looking for a friend, just like Bob Boss says. Um, so maybe that's what you're feeling today, is just a lonely old tree, and you need to now that he's there, now you're his friend. So, uh, he found the friend. It was you. And then here's this nice vibrant, cloudy afternoon. That almost could be a moonscape, too, I guess, you know, I didn't intend it to be that somber, but I didn't intend it to be anything. That's the whole point, you know. So anyway, I hope this was a fun lesson for how to be more spontaneous with your artwork if you just need that exercise or if you're just stuck, and you need to get painting, you know, you need to shed that timid quality and those inhibitions for just how to move and how to just grab color and use it. And it's really liberating. And it could help your painting process in general when you're doing a real like, more precise, intentional work that you do intend to finish and show or sell or whatever. This could be a great place to start because I could take any one of these, and then I could refine them all I want. Let's say if I come to a nice place, I could sit there and noodle it all day. But just to get a running start, boom, you're there. And then I can sit there and fine tune it if I want to. Rather than fine tuning it from the beginning. That's where I think people get stuck. You know, you sit down and you get your tiniest brushes first, and you're noodling, you know, that's a very inhibiting slow, like, painful process. Do the fine tuning at the very end, and you'll have a lot more fun. So thank you so much for joining me for my class. Free Expressionism, painting like You Just Don't Care. I'm Christopher Clark, happy painting, and I'll see you next time.