FROM COMPLEXITY TO SIMPLICITY

1. Introduction: I'm Terry Renan, visual artist and creative encourager. And today I'm taking on a project that's pretty complicated. And I'm going to show you how I tackle these more complicated pieces. Today we're going to paint, draw, and whatever we want to use to make a river boat. And I've never done this before. I've never made a river boat, so I'll show you my process to bring this complexity of a design into a simpler representation and how I make it my own with what I add. And I'm sure you can guess there's going to be some cats in here. So, yeah, I have been playing with art and making lots of stuff for about 45 years. I worked at Hallmark for 30 years and have been running my own business since 2016. So yeah, I've been around a little while, and I know a lot about making mistakes and figuring it out and learning not to listen to the inner critic. So I hope this video, which is going to be shot in real time, will show you how I handle these twists and turns of a more complicated project. I see someone coming. This one's Riley. Come on. So hold on to your hat and keep your mind open, and let's learn something together, creating a river boat. Let's go on to the first lesson. 2. Figuring It Out: Alright. We're already here to start our river boat. I'm going to call it my River Boat Cats. I'm doing this river boat because today at the Daily Creating Group, which will be linked in the info, the prop for today was River. So I just thought, I love to make boats with cats and cars with cats and planes with cats and all kinds of things with cats. So let's try this river boat thing, even though I've never created a river boat. The way I approach these kinds of projects, when I have no clue really what they look like, I have a general idea, but it's very hazy is I'll usually use my old friend Pintrs to go through and see photos, toys, other artists representations of what a river boat looks like. And in my research, I found out, man, lots of simplification required. One of the ways that you get ideas for that kind of thing is looking at toys. Other designers have created more simple shapes than that. I'm working with a square format, which is not the shape of a river boat. They're very long and lean. So I'm going to have to compress this riverboat to get the whole thing in here. And I went in and I searched Pintr. I'm going to show you a little bit about that here. A few of the paintings or drawings or artwork. I couldn't find much artwork, but I just love the way some of these toys have been simplified, particularly this one. So I'm kind of keeping that in mind as I work here. I will share a link to this Pintres board for you, and you can find that in the info. And then, you know, while you're in there, just keep looking around, see what comes to you, what sticks out for you. And maybe this isn't a river boat. Maybe this is some other type of boat that's a little more simple. But I thought I'd go ahead and let you see how I kind of try to whittle things down so they're more manageable and try not to give up. So let's get started. Usually with a complicated design, I will do a little sketch. I'm just going to get a piece of this scrap paper. Maybe I'll move this paper off so I don't soil it. And I'm going to just do a little tiny drawing. My pencil, So we know we've got a square that we're working within with a very long shape. So I'm going to do a little square here and look at this boat. I have decided I'm going to make the boat face this way with the paddle over this direction. And I'm going to draw really quickly what this might look like. So it comes out like that. And the hole on this boat is really shallow. Since it's a river boat. They've got a primary shape on top. That kind of fits within the center. And there's all kinds of fun stuff going on inside here because we have passengers who are enjoying the ride. We all know who those passengers might be as well. So they do have one of these smoke stacks. They actually have two smoke stacks. I may or may not do two, and I kind of want to do some smoke off this, so I'm realizing this is going to have to be a little shorter to fit that format. And what else do they have? They often have a flag, which you can put on or not. Got a few things holding that. Some other doodads here and there. Okay. I'm not sure I'll put all this in because it's not necessary, and of course we need our little river shape here. Annoying me, I'll put in a few fish friends I love the fishies. It's possible a bird might show up 'cause I also love the birds. Let's see. And sometimes they have a name here saying what the boat is. I'm going to call this boat cat cruise. Actually, I'm going to make this say cat cruiser. I've used the title cat cruise before on another piece I did, so I'm mixing it up by calling a cat cruiser. Very, very inventive. And I know I'm going to have all kinds of guys and gals of the cat variety in here. Perhaps a bird or two, some people up on deck of the cat variety, you know, stuff like that. I love when there's this kind of complexity of shapes to be able to squish these cats in, it just makes it so interesting to me. And fun. So there we have it, keeping this kind of flat. And this is going to be our sort of shape. This will probably change massive amounts as I work because I don't draw on the paper. I just start painting. I kind of get an idea of where I want to start and then I go from there. So on the next video, I'm going to show you how I get started on this. And I'm sure there'll be lots of whoops moments because that's my favorite thing to say, possible kitty interruptions, which no one seems to mind, except for there's lots of cat here. Yeah, let's see what happens. We'll see you in the next session. 3. Watercolor Shapes: Okay, then, this time we're going to go to the paper with the paints and things and start to create something. Again, I'm doing this in real time. So I'm hoping you can keep up. If you need to pause the video, that's fine. If you need to back up to try something yourself. That is fine. Everything's fine. Also, keep in mind while you're doing this. It's okay to copy me while you're learning, and also to keep in mind that when you share what you copy from other artists, make sure to credit them for the artwork. That's always the best thing to do, the best policy, pretty much all artwork is copyrighted. So I'm going to go ahead and get started here. I use a fluid 100 watercolor paper, 100% cotton. I have all my products that I use linked in the A section. I'm going to give it an open. I'm looking at this. This very complicated drawing. And so I'm getting a feel for where all these things are going to go on this page. Again, I'm not going to use a pencil to draw it in because I prefer to paint when things are surprising me. I've decided to make the hull on this vessel red because I think it's fun. You find my brush. I have all kinds of brushes here that are completely worn out. I'm gonna be using this size ten round mimic, creative mark watercolor brush for this project, and it's a synthetic brush. So that's always good. The first thing I'm going to do is get some paint off my palette here. I got this big old palette. I didn't like to use a piece of paper to check my colors and make sure the intensity I want them to be. And then the fun begins when all the woopsing usually starts, let's see how this goes. Totally eyeballing. And you keep this boat pretty flat. We know because we're eyeballing, it's going to be a loose painting just the way we like it. I'm not worrying about the edges. It's not that I don't have anything being set in my head around this, but I'm just ignoring that because it doesn't really matter. Since I'm doing a white background on this artwork, I can't really keep the boat white without drawing it in. So I'm going to go ahead and make it a color. Not sure what color yet. This was a scarlet lake, and now I'm using a watered down Haynes gray with some turquoise in it to do the boat. I've got this drawing, and my boat is very wonky, so I'm just going to go ahead and start I can't go to hikes. I want to leave room for my smokestacks. You could tell already just how precise this boat's going to be. But isn't it refreshing that it doesn't really have to look like this type of boat because it's your art and your artist's license. I'm leaving enough room in this area here to be able to come back in and name the boat. You can tell this looks kind of like a toy boat. There's no river boat that would look like this. I want to make these round windows up here. It's great if you can move fast enough where you're not having these watercolors dry out, which I was not successful at. So sometimes what I'll do with that is I'll just wet back in as I go along. I don't know if you've watched many of my real time videos. They definitely take a lot longer. But it gives you more of a chance to actually work along rather than having to keep backing up and rewatching. I'm being very, very sloppy, which I kind of adore. If that's just the way you paint, you might as well enjoy it, right? Let's see. I got a very dark smokestack up here, so I'm going to put that in some darker. This is just pretty much straight. Paine's gray. And I use the tube watercolor of Windsor Newton for most of the paint. Well, there I just made an interesting error. So see this error. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna make that error work. I'm gonna go ahead and make this top thing dark because of a mistake. And who knows that might be the best part of this. You're seeing it here first. I think I'm just going to leave it like that, and we've got what else do we got? I'm coming in here and looking at this. I know you've got a flag. I think I'm going to do paddles the paddle wheel with the Posca pen. This is a Niaska pen. Have you watched any of my videos previously? You know, you have to shape these vigorously. Use a spare piece of paper to make sure that it's not gonna blob on your paper. This pin is almost out of commission, but I'm going to use it anyway. And we're gonna do sort of a circle here because the whole boat is wonky so we really don't have to worry about it being a perfect circle. So much fun to make a mess while we're painting. You know what? If you wanted to, you could do this over and over again to get it to a place where you feel like, I don't know, that's getting better or not. I kind of like it when it's pretty rustic like that. I want this to be a little thicker black. I think this is a little thicker or ooh, it's new, so I'm going to go ahead and use this and I'm going to turn my paper. Turning the paper is not cheating. I am going to need these special glasses, though. Whatever you can do to make it easier for yourself is highly recommended. So I could have used that same pen to do this, but this one is just going to be a little faster. Okay, there we go. Technically correct. I just spilled on my hand. Now, see? These are the awesome things that happen while we're working, and we can let this ruin our day or make us want to throw our painting out. I've got some posca pen, acrylic marker on my hand, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to wipe that off. And I'm going to show leave those there. That's just motion and drips. Maybe I'll add a few more. There. And I think there are some more little doodads up here, but I am going to just keep it the way it is. Next up, more spills. I got this stuff everywhere, 'cause this is a brand new pasca pen, so it really gave me the juice without much work. I'm going to start adding just a few details. Not too many for now because I don't know exactly how many details I want. I think I'll stop there for now. And we all know what time it is now. It is time to start adding the really fun part, which, for me, is the kiddies. First things first, I am going to add a flagpole. For here, and I almost left enough room for that smoke to come out the top. I must be getting close to dinner time. I'm going to add just a few more details here. I like these little little red and you can tell that this doesn't come off clean because I'm painting over a darker color, and this is a transparent color. So you get to do what you want to do. And I'm really showing you pushing to the edge here of sloppy and fun instead of being technical. So I'm going to get started on my kitties and birds and whatever else is going to show up. As we know, it is usually a lot of different kinds of animals. So we got this little friend, I usually start with ears when I do a cat, as you may be aware. Sometimes they have a fat head. Sometimes they have a skinny head. When I get to the edge like this, I usually turn it around, so I'm getting a better angle on the brush. Well, I've got this color, and I like it. I'm going to make one more kitty with some color like that. But this one's got a white muzzle. Maybe one with a little bit more yellow. I'm picking up a bunch of cat hair, of course, over here on the side. This one's going to be a little different shape, a little more yellow. It's gonna be a skinnier kitty I like to use a lot of variety in my work. That's what I do to keep it interesting. Maybe this one's going to be a little calico. See, I'm planning ahead here because I know I'm going to put other colors in. How about the classic tabby, gray brown kitty? Let's see. This was the scarlet lake with a little bit of the yellow winds are yellow. This was winds are yellow. That was the scarlet lake and winds are yellow. Winds are yellow. And now I'm using a little bit of the red oxide mixed with a little bit of Paine's gray for the brown one. Keeping the chest white on this one. Variety. Sometimes I have to go back with my finger to grab up the paint that isn't going where I want it. And I'm seeing messiness here, and I just don't care. Another sort of dark kitty. This is actually Payne's gray, too, as well. This kitty, you can't see the whole kitty that window is so tiny. Let me see who is next. You know, you could come in and do all kinds of different colored cats. Mix up the shapes, make a different boat, all kinds of different things you can do. Well, I've got this little bit of blue here. I'm going to give myself some river. And I think this is all dry now. Yes, it is. Good to know. And if you just overlap the boat a little with this, it'll look like it's sitting in the water. Keep it sort of parallel. Like, I'm not doing that right now, and that might be a little confusing. My red is picking up because I've gone over it a few times. I'm going to leave it alone now. And I seem to be having a little bit of trouble with the black picking up, too. Okay, continuing on. It's a good idea to mix up enough of the color you want before you start painting it down that way you're not panicking to try to make some more color in the similar variety, although that would be fine, too. I got that in back on the kiddies. It's black kiddy time. You notice I'm not talking when I'm painting, and that's because I'm sort of concentrating. Even when I've done something 150,000 times, I still kind of got to concentrate. I don't work to music or anything like that. I just can't concentrate when I've got stuff distracting me. And that's why when a cat comes by, I usually get distracted. Because they have a lot to say about themselves. What other color? How about reddish brown? This is the red oxide with a little yellow. It's a little too red, so I'm going to add a little black to it. Quiet again, 'cause I'm trying to not mess up too much. I mean, it's okay to mess up. But this brush tip has got a little bit of a bend in it. So that's not helping. Get back into this calico, kitty. Finish it off. Keep sticking my hand in the river water. Oh, my. One left. What shall we do? Let's try just another brown, Katie. Kitties around here are brown and gray with tabby yumminess. I'm thinking a little bit right now about coming in with some poska pens to hit these reds and make it a little bit cleaner, but not because I have to. I'm going to have one kitty on deck, and I think that kitty is going to be a gray color. Got to get the paint watered down enough. Whoops. Got here. Do I want this kitty lying down? No, I'm gonna put it sitting up. If you use a little bit of a better tipped brush, you'll have a little more luck getting those pointy ears. But you don't have to have pointy ears. Somebody here who's going to be here. I think yellow Katy Yellow kitty's friend, other yellow cutie. And maybe this yellow cutie is going to be lying down. So we have just barely enough room for that. It's going to be a very strange kitty shape, as are they all. I just picked up some of the blocks, as you can see, and we always have to have the tail. I always like it when there's some wet on wet going on. It just there's something some depth there with that. Now we need a flag. I think I'll make the flag red because why not keep the color palette. Nice and simple? So birds. Maybe one of these little turquoise birds that I love turquoise, so this one will be up front here. And who else? Maybe we'll have one back here as well. So I'm just sort of filling in the story as I go. I don't know what's next. I mean, I didn't really draw any characters in here. I'm just going with the flow, so to speak. Maybe somebody's up here. Who could that be? Some sort of gray blue kitty. Because we do have the blue kiddies out there that we love so much, too. And I think there's room for somebody else to show up, and we haven't had sign of a red bird yet, so this red biird I think I put it up here. 'Cause someone needs to ride on a kitty's ear. They come in right now with a little bit of that blue, that light blue I used for the water and just make a few marks to indicate water. Okay, I'm going to end this section now because I've got the primary shapes in, and next section, I'm going to start working on the details, which is always so much fun. A place to add a lot of variety, a lot of your own personality. All of this is an opportunity to add your own personality and just know your personality will show up as you go along. So I'm looking forward to that next part, and I'll see you in a minute. 4. Details: Okay, it's the extra fun time when we get to add all these details. I may still come back in with more watercolor. I'm pretty much certain I will. I know I will. And I'll be using Posks pens and some colored pencils. I usually use prisma colored pencils. I don't know what else is going to happen. Ink, for sure ink, and we'll see. Let's get started. Okay. We got a good start here with these cats. They look pretty simple to me. We can make them super complex, if we want, because there's a lot going on on these riverboat steamboat things. And yeah, glasses back on. I think I'm going to now do my cat cruise across here, and I don't do a lot of levetering, so whether the spacing will be right on this is unknown until I do it. I'm going to give this a shake, pasca pen. Actually, this one is This is a mole tau acrylic marker. And you see what I just did there? Before that gets completely dry, I'm gonna see what I can get. Some of it came up. That's why we don't hold the pen over the page when we are messing with our pen. Anyway, giving it a shake. Here's a bunch of colors I was trying yesterday with pasca. This, again, is a molotoUltra fine line. You know what? I don't trust this pen, so I'm going to put that over there and see what happens. Not opaque yet, so I'm given a little tap, and it seems pretty opaque. I always have to go over the white twice because it seems to pick up just a little bit of the color from the watercolor behind characters. I'm gonna vary my eye shapes because, you know, variation is magical. I'm going over there and tapping this a little bit as I go along to make sure it's still flowing, but not onto my artwork, as was seen before. You can see how this paint has come up through there because it's not completely opaque yet. I'm over here doing this thing some more, make sure I don't spill. Oftentimes, when you're using the pen as you go along, it will get a little more shook up and that really helps. M. Different shapes. Sometimes these sizes will dictate to you as you go, which isn't the way I plan it, but it's what happens. Some of these look sinister, not intentionally. Squinny. I'm leaving a few because I like to do closed eyes on some to keep this one for the closed eyes, This is where the personality starts coming in. With the eyes and the features, I'm going to come back in and hit that again once it dries a bit, and I know I'm going to need some legs on these little birds, a beak. I won't add any pupils in the eyes until that white gets dried enough. And I'm going to use this pen for the nose and mouth as well. In a bigger painting, I'll use a black posca pen for this part because it's blacker than this. That might have been better than a light color. I don't know. I might come back and fix that. This is a permanent lumac color pen. It's ink, and it's permanent, so you can paint on top of it and it will not run that's always nice because we like to come back in and paint on top of things. Got your happy cat on the top. What else do I want with this black pen while I've got it? Do a little stripe on this flag. I'm going to get the cat here off my art and go get some more collar to give some of these cats some extra details with their markings. This one is going to be a little tabby. I chose this darker color and tabby for this kitty because the tail was sort of getting lost. It was a little light. So now this is going to keep it jumping off the page. And this one is also going to get some red in some markings. That's not red. That's orange. What else is happening here? You can definitely do some tabby stripes on those tabby looking critters. I'm getting just a darker version of what they were to begin with. I got quite a bit darker, and I'm just going to love it. This guy needs some legs. Who else needs legs? Really nobody. I could put some on that, but, you know, you have to laugh at things when you do that, okay? Got to laugh. And I realize that I don't have anybody in these windows, which is kind of sad. Maybe this is where our mouse friends show up. Let's see if that's what wants to happen here. I really could use a better point on this brush, but I'm going to make do with what I have. Mouse friend one. Is there another mouse friend here somewhere? I guess I'll do another mouse over here. Maybe this mouse is looking backwards. Starting with the nose, making a little bit of a head shape, little body, little ears. Not caring if it kind of goes over other parts of the painting. Then who else is gonna be here, though? We got to put somebody else in there. How about more cats? Surprising, I know. You are gonna be squished in their cats. So good there's artist's license going on here. This cat could actually come through this window too. Maybe part of its tail is here and it's going to come up around like that. You don't have a lot of tails in here. You think another orange kitty here. Concentration again with that Katy's tail here. Right here, I'm sticking my finger in paint and then bringing it back in. I think my white eyes are dry, so I'm gonna come back in with this Poska pin. Give it a shake. Give it a try. See that? You don't want that on the painting like I've done already. Oh and a double coat. Some of these eyes are pretty opaque, so I'm not going to bother with them. Others, not so much like this first one I did. The birds look pretty good. Got to wait on these cats to do the first coat. I might use this white Poska for that wet? No, maybe this cat's got white paws. Maybe this cat's got some white on his chest. So is this one. I think this one can also have a little white stripe for its nose, little white stripe here. What is everybody doing now? Let's see. We got So fur hash marks. We love our hash marks. Variations on a theme with these kitties. Let's see. We got This kind of stuff is not necessary. But if you like to do details as I do, then why not? I think I'm going to use colored pencils to do the inside of their ears. Also, I can start adding mouths, and I'm going to use a thinner. Well, this is a number three in what is this a unipin fine line. Water and fade proof, it says. So let's see what this is like. And this will also be used for the whiskers because we need to have whiskers on our kitties. Doing some different expressions. This one is sort of sleeping, so it looks grumpy. I'm going to come back in with a lighter color on these two to do the features. These guys like to have their little hair pieces. I'm going to start on my whiskers now. I could have done the bird legs with this thinner line. But I didn't. This pen is not behaving perfectly. It's kind of skipping on the page. Lots of turning of the paper. Still trying to run my fingers through paint. I noticed when I was over here that I need a little more white in this kitty's eyes. And we can start adding some eyeballs to these other new characters that came in a little later. That dry? No, I'm glad I tested it. Not dry. Some of these actually, I don't know if these were dry either, but we are going for it. Now I'm going to move to some colored pencil. I'm going to get the noses on these darker kitties. I'm not sure this is going to work. I'm going to erase that up a little bit. Which color pencils aren't perfect at erasing. You know what? I'm gonna come back with Black again because I don't think it's gonna stand out in that any color of there. You sort of know what it's doing. This one, too. Forgot some moles. Did I forget anything else? I know that people audience always find things that I have forgotten, but it's okay if you forget stuff. A few details on these smokestacks. This is ARGN acrylic marker. I don't necessarily recommend them. They're not really super opaque, but I'm going to try this because I think this red is a little lighter than the pasca red, and I could be wrong, and it definitely does not go on as opaque. I'm just trying to help out my red here. Might end up coming in with the posca. I'll come back to that. Where else do we want some red? Oh, I know where I wanted to go right here. You can see it's not opaque, which is why I'm not in love with these pens. We're just going to set this one aside and go back to the posca pen in red. Back to the PoskaPen, let's see. Let's see. Yes, more opaque. So there's the conclusion to that experiment. Stay with PoskaPens. If you're wanting to tighten up things a little bit, you can come in with PoskaO you can leave it loose cause that is completely fine. Loose is good. You may remember that from my loose watercolor glasses. I've done in the past. This is still feeling very loose. I'm going to use the same color for that wing because it's a little darker. This one definitely needs a nosy mouth in a lighter color. So ears, filling in the details. This is where I usually forget something. Let's see where I can find now. Like, this one's a dark umber. I'm almost out of black. I also have this gris chod CHAUD, all can laugh at me for not knowing how to pronounce that. This is a gris one, too, but way lighter. You could also check out your colors before touching the paper on these side bits. Look at what happened there. That is Posca pen off my hand. We'll see. I could come on top of that with Posca, white Poska and see if I can get it to cover. If not, it's the way it is. So ear centers. All these things are completely not mandatory. Some things are mandatory with the cats I make like eyes, now, sometimes they have a mouth, sometimes they have a nose. Definitely need some ears of some sort. I'm going to be lazy and just use the same color for all these ears. If I wasn't lazy, I could come in and use different colors or paint them in. But I don't want this video to be 7 hours long. Lots of inner critic about how sloppy I'm being continuing on. Since I have this pencil, I may use it for a few more bits of hair on these cats. It might be the only place I want it. Apparently. These birds need some wings. Maybe I'll try this blue paskat might be not dark enough, and it's definitely not opaque enough. Oh, I guess I'll just paint the wings on. Just take a little bit darker color, maybe a little ultramarine, darker color of blue. Since this is pasta, I really can't come back and pick it up with water and one of these this little hard bristle brush. You can sometimes get watercolors up that are stubborn with this. Just don't rub too much because you'll lose your surface. Try some more white pasta on the lettering. This pasta pen is a spiller. Wever says PoskaPins are easy to use must know a lot more about Posca pens than I do. So this has got a sign on it that says cat cat Cruiser. I know cat is three letters. Cruiser is a lot of letters. I'm just gonna wing. Let me make sure I spell this correctly. I'm notorious for doing it incorrectly. And I have too much room, so there'll be a little kitty head logo here. I'll come back in with another coat on that when it dries. Who else needs something? Getting close. We do need some fish. Mixing up some dark bluish color, blackish bluish color, painting in the fish. My fish are very simple. That's a little dark. Nothing has to be complicated. These guys are riding along, but this one's going to be going the other way just because somebody has to be going the other way. Of You know, these shapes are really simple. Everything I do pretty much is pretty simple except for once in a while I do something and it makes people gasp because they don't know I work that way. I can work really tight if I want to, and I just don't enjoy it as much as this. This is more like playing for me. How about a little tiny one? So everybody's there. And now I'm going give this another shot of white on that lettering. A little sloppy, a lot sloppy. See, I just ran my hand through these. Goodness, Terry. I'm really glad this is happening because you get to see other ways to respond besides throwing things in the trash. I could pick up a little bit more of this if I wanted to because it's still pretty wet or maybe it won't work at all, which has been known to happen. Yeah, that may not work. I might put a few little blue splatters. To show movement. And this little wheel. That might be a bit much, but like we say, it's okay. More white. More white somewhere. Got to finish these cat eyes. And fish like to breathe out bubbles, so that's always a good little extra bit you can do. I'm going to come over here and cheat this out of here with this white pascapen you will probably have to go over that again, stubborn stains. Something's needed, and I think it will be the black staler that I'll use for this. Little definition to use windows. Yes you could just keep going on these things. 90% of the time. I do figure out when to stop, but that did not used to happen back in the day. Lots of overworking. This may be overworked. I don't know. Whoops. Oh, well, see, there's that whoops. I love that whoops. It just jumps out. What else, Terry? You need some noses. And some lips. Smiley face on these little mice 'cause they're enjoying being on the cruise. Yes, this another paska we're going to get these kiddies some pupils. This has got a lot of ink coming out right now as can be seen here. You got to be very careful. You know what? That's my fatter one. That's why. So I will set that over there. Use my thinner one. Okay. Okay. Oh ups. Dang. Okay, you got to see this. This is the things that happen. This is the nib for this Posca pen. I'm going to see if I can get it back in there, but I also spilled over here with it. Oh, well, and yeah, let's do this. See if this will work. That was a first. I'm actually being more messy this time than I've been in the past. All for your entertainment. And I think that mouse will look at this bird. We're getting pretty small here with these details, so because you know the variety and all I think I'll start from over here so I'm not running my hand through it. But one of the other things that is not necessary with painting cats that seem to show up with my work because I'm kind of fond of certain routines, as you can see, is cheeks. You got to have cheeks. These guys also need some details. Here we go. Everybody's got an eyeball. Okay. So back to the cheek thing. I just for me, I feel like it just is that little cuteness that we all love. And if you don't love it, don't do it. This pink is a prisma color, and it's PC 929 Rose. I bought a lot of different pencils in pink to try to find the one I wanted, and this is the one I like. This guy's really goofy. I always like the goofiest ones. He also needs a little help with his eyeball pupil. Is happy cats with happy cheeks. That guys getting lost over there. He's still happy. This one doesn't know if it's happy. It might be getting seasick or river sick because this is a river cruise. This color will not show up on that red, so I usually get a little darker. There's a particular one here. It's a prismic color, and it is called Carmine red, nine I'm sorry, WC 2926. Sometimes this will show up, not so much. On this orange, too, you might want to use it because it makes it show up a little bit better. All right. Looking around looking around I made a blob of white on here, I want to run a posca pen over just to clean it up a tiny bit. Not necessary, as is all of what I'm doing. Here, I need another coat of white on this lob I did. Okay, I'm at that point where I'm looking at the painting, and I'm asking myself, is this done? It could have been done about 12 times already, and I'm just going to give it one more glance over and just see what I think or feel or whatever. That kind of tells me. I'll be right back. Let's see. Oh, I do need something else. I need some of my pupils on these. Thank you very much. They also need their cheeks. Everybody's got their own place to look. Maybe a little smile 'cause the fish are happy, too. Oops, be happy fish. That's gonna make them happier to have the cheek. So you can make everything as messy as you want. It helped me figure out my style when I started loosening up to make things more messy. I just started enjoying doing art more. I remember now this last thing is the smoke coming over here because that's why we moved this all down. This is going to be a little more difficult because we got the bird and the flag and a cat and all that, but we're not going to let it daunt us. A very light, grayish brown. Let's see. I guess I could leave it at that. I'm going to lighten up this end. So it looks as though it's fading off into the distance. I just took a tissue and did that. I can come in and fix these dots with this posca pen. There's nobody who would have any nails except for this guy, but we need to add them in because that's also something critical to cats. My pencil was not sharp enough. I'm going to bring a little bit of a light colored pencil here to define this little face a little bit. Lending it in. You might want to do or you may just leave it 'cause it's quirky and quirky is good. So I'm going to stop now. I think we've moved along. Everybody's got eyeballs. Everybody's got cheeks. Everybody's got whiskers. Well, the fish don't have whiskers. Maybe not the birds, but they have the head whisker. Yeah. So, let's move on to the next padium. 5. Adjustments: So I need to remember in the future, not to ask the cats for advice about how to spell things. They're not great at telling me the truth. And although I do think using a Z in Cruz is funny. I'm going to go ahead and show you what I can do to fix that and show you how to if you want to spell this correctly, you can repair it. So let's go ahead and start now. Yes, here it is. C. So I have decided I'm going to go ahead and come in and see what I can do to make that B with an S. Couple of things. One is you could just replace that letter with a piece of paper over it. Let's see. So that's a little bit too black. I know you understand that this does not have to be perfect. Too dark. Yeah, it needs a little blue. I think that's close enough. I'm going to go ahead and just paint this paper to have enough to use to do this little spelling spelling fix. This isn't exactly the same color, but we don't care. And I am painting on a cheaper paper here, so it's going to this bending thing, whooping thing. I'm going to go ahead and give this a hair dry and you don't have to watch that. Okay. So it's a little lighter than this particular background. So I do think I'm going to darken it up because I want to be able to see the lettering on there, the white lettering. Although it can be a different color, I want to stick with the white. Drying it again. Okay. I think that's a little closer. So I'm going to go ahead and cut out a little square to use. That'll work. There's this possibility of gluing that on, or I can cover the whole thing with a new piece of paper and re letter the whole thing. I'm guessing here on the size. So there's that or I could do this. So that's a personal decision that you'll need to make. Let me see. Let me try one more time on that cutting. So, yeah, this would look a little more natural to cover the whole thing. With that. You can also use just a small piece of the painted paper over that one letter. So you decide, I personally think I'm going to do the full piece, and I'm going to grab my pasta pen again. And we all know what we need to do with a Posca pen before adding it to artwork. One of the good things about this is I can follow this lettering to place my letters so I don't have to guess. In which direction do I want this? Let's see. Give it a little trim. Some of you may be sad to see the Z go away. I'm sorry. I might actually leave this little cath head out, too. But you can do whatever you want. You could actually also do this to begin with and not have to worry about messing up on your artwork. If you spell it wrong, like these kitties advised. You can just replace the paper with a new one. Tucker's trying to advise me to do a Z right there, but I'm not gonna do what he says. So I've got that. I'm going to give it another coat. Make sure you can see it. Trying to keep from running my finger through the wet paska paint. That's a little funkier than the original, but it is going to work. Now, to make the length correct, I am going to just mark this paper centering this. With where to cut it off. Yes, that's where it's going to go. Far from perfect, but it works. And I'm going to get a piece of paper to glue on because I don't want to get glue everywhere. Grab my extra strength glue stick by Elmers There we go. That's your work, grabbing the lettering and sort of carefully setting it in place before pressing it down to the surface. I usually will burnish these things down with a piece of paper over them, so I don't dirty them with my fingers. Walla. Again, not perfect, but, you know, we're now spelling it correctly, and I actually kind of like that there's not a catead down here because I was sort of reading that cat head as a why. You know, I'm not really going to blame the cats. I was never a good speller in school, and sometimes I just get into the shapes of things and forget what the letters are. So that's what really happened. I'm really sorry, Tucker to accuse you. And now it's fixed. So now you have a little extra something to help you with any kind of mistakes, opportunities, whatever they are, to play with your art, to continue with your art, even when it feels like all is lost. So let's move on to the next section. 6. Final Thoughts: Well, this has been a fun way to spend the afternoon hanging out with all of you, painting this cat cruiser. My first paddle boat, and I might make them another one sometime because I like to repeat my motifs and change things up, and that's a good way to keep ideas rolling. Also, I may want to do it just to try it again. I highly recommend trying things over and over again and not listening if you hear stuff come up around how messy it is or the whoops, or there's stuff you can do, and if not, it's okay. We're playing here. This is Art is fun, Art's for fun. I would love to see your projects if you want to share them in the project section. You also could tag me at Terry Runyon on social media. And I would love to see what you created. Oh, my gosh. You almost thought you were gonna get away without seeing Tucker. You didn't see a sister earlier who had a little bit of trouble with her claws. This one is pretty good with his claws, although he does get his claws cut by me. Say hello to everybody, Ducky. Let's see if Tucker likes the painting. You like the painting, Tucki? Anyway, it's been fantastic spending this time with you, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.