Transcripts
1. Introduction: One of the things that I love doing is traveling vicariously through my world of beautiful things, in a way you can say that I'm manifesting all of my travel dreams, by painting them with watercolors. Hey everyone, I'm Trupti Karjinni, an artist and online educator, and creative entrepreneur from India. Founder and owner of the Blue Pine Arts, a company where we make beautiful handcrafted watercolors, sketchbooks, and other artist's art supplies for artists all around the world. I'm also the creator of Thrive With Trupti, my watercolor membership. In 2017, I started painting with watercolors on the side, but I had a job that I did not like. And today I am very fortunate to say that I own a multifaceted six-figure business and all thanks to watercolors because that's where it all began. I'm really excited for you to join me in today's live class because you and I are, for just a little while, we're going to escape to California and witness a beautiful Californian sunset through watercolors. I chose this topic because I'm an avid traveler and more than anything, I really miss traveling, especially at this time, you know, with everything that's going on in the world. For this watercolor class, I'm going to teach you how to paint a gorgeous sunset with beautiful soft colors. And we're going to do all of that in just two layers. And yeah, you heard me right, it's just two layers, and it's not going to take a lot of time. You can walk alongside with me in real-time in this class because nothing is sped up. I just wanted to show you just how easy it is to build a beautiful, glowing landscape in under an hour. It's something to know that this class was recorded live and I got to interact with the audience who attended this class. Alright, let's dive right into the class and get started on our beautiful sunset painting.
2. Watercolor as Escape: Hi, everyone. Welcome. My name is Katie. I'm a producer with Skillshare and I'll be hosting today's live session with Tripty. Tripty, welcome. Talk us through to what we're going to do today. I'm joining us from New York, you are in India, why California? What's so iconic in your mind about that space? Because I miss raveling, I'm an avid traveler and I know that there's more than one person here who misses traveling. What better way to travel to whatever place you want than painting it. I love painting places that I would love to travel to, and California is somewhere that I haven't been yet. I like fulfill my travel dreams and live vicariously through my watercolor paintings, so this is why we're going to do a Californian sunset. Who doesn't want to go to California right now? Sun, some partying maybe, or some pubs, and some dancing. Who doesn't want that? I want that energy in my life right now. I thought let's all tap into that mood in this class and that's what we're going to do with California sunset. Absolutely, I'm here for it 100 percent. What can students expect to get out of this class? Okay, two things. Of course, you're going to learn how to paint a beautiful sunset, but you're going to see how easy it is to do it. It's not complicated. You can see these three paintings and just think that, oh, it's because this artist has special talents that I do not possess, and that is why I cannot make this happen. But I'll show you how to paint all of this in just two layers, which is cool. Another thing is, in this class, I think it'll help a lot of people just loosen up and just let go and relax. Let go of control. That's one of the main things that is so necessary in watercolor is to just really enjoy this medium and create something beautiful. It's not in the control. It's in the letting go of control. Those are the two things that people are going to take away from this class and I'm very, very excited about it.
3. Class Materials: Before we begin painting, let me walk you through all the materials separately for today's class. I have three brushes here, but really, you're only going to need two brushes, which are these. These are my Princeton brushes. This is a size 6 Princeton Heritage round brush, and this is what it looks like. It's not a big brush. This is a size 2 Princeton Velvetouch, you can see the name here. Let me see if I can get this in focus. This is a size 2 brush. What I really like is because it's made of synthetic hair, it has the snap, which is going to let us paint our palm trees really effortlessly. This brush is also by Princeton but I just have it so I can quickly wet my paper and not have to struggle with the small brush in wetting my paper. These are the three brushes that I'm going to be using today. Speaking about colors, I am going to be using my Blue Pine Arts watercolors. It's my very own handcrafted paints. In this, we are going to be using a warm yellow, a nice cherry kind of a red. This is colored [inaudible] gold or some kind of brown yellow. Then this is [inaudible] and then this is dioxazine purple or dioxazine [inaudible] and aquamarine blue. Then this here is cobalt turquoise. This is what we are going to use for this color over here. For this very sunny looking sky, just [inaudible] sunset, this is what we are going to use and that's it. I don't think we're going to use any more colors. For the palette, I'm using this really cute cat paw for the palette, which I really love. What I really like about this is because there's four wells where I can mix my color, and then another one over here where I can mix some more colors. It's really cute and I love this palette. It's named after my cat, [inaudible]. We're going to use that. For papers, I am going to be using this one here. This is Fabriano Artistico,100 percent cotton, cold pressed paper. This is the artist create paper. The reason why I use this paper because it's just so effortless to work with watercolors on a paper like this. I'm going to be using this, but I already took a sheet out of this and then I put it on this whiteboard so I can stick it, so my paper won't curl or won't buckle. I just taped it with really just some ordinary masking tape that looks like this. Then of course, you're going to need a jar of water. Have a big jar of water, guys don't get little cups of water because it gets very frustrating to paint with them. Then of course, some [inaudible] of paper towels to just get some extra color off of my brush, that sort of stuff. That's all we're going to be using today. I also am going to be using my sketchbook. This is my Blue Pine Art sketchbook. It's made of the same paper as Fabriano Artistico. I'm just going to demonstrate some of the techniques. I'm going to do some practice stuff here and then this is going to be our final [inaudible].
4. Practicing Color Blending: First, we're going to practice the red in red color blending technique that we're going to use to build the background for the sky of this painting. I'm going keep my palette here just so I can show you some of the color mixtures. Very quickly, I'll just wash out the colors that I'm using. I remember what this yellow is. This is Nickel Azo Yellow. It's a beautiful, warm, very transparent yellow. This is colored by this, so very cherry red, beautiful red color. A warm red color. This is Quin Gulaal or Quinacridone Rose. This is my Dioxazine Purple which looks black here on the camera, but it's very intense. Then, of course, we have our ultramarine blue, then we have our cobalt turquoise. This is a very nice, like a summer sky color, really soft on the paper. I love using this color in my paintings. This the blue that we are going to use. Just a few colors, just six of them, but all together, they're going to work together really well and create a beautiful painting. Let's just go ahead and practice the first layer that we're going to be using, which is creating the sky. This is just something that spooks most watercolor artists out because how are you going to get this effortless blend between the yellows and the pink and the blue? Let's just go ahead and just make it really easy. You can see just how easy it is to be doing that. What I'm going to do is take my big brush and get some clean water. Just lay a patch of clear water. I know you can't see the clear water but it's there. What's important to remember is you don't want the paper to be soppy wet, you don't your water to make a puddle on the paper. You want a nice sheen. You'd want a polished sheen on the paper. I think you can see it actually, you can see it. You can. It's made up, the light is. Trupti, what brand of colors are you using there? All of these are my Blue Pine Arts watercolors. These are artists create, the ones that we make in our studio. These are the colors that I'm using. I'm going to turn the AC off because the air conditioning will dry my paper much quicker than I want it to dry. You can see me just putting more and more water on this paper. But the great thing about coating paper is that it also absorbs some of the color. Let's go ahead and get some. Here, what I really wanted to practice is just dilute this yellow down. This is why this is included in a practice part of the class because I know that most people are going to be so afraid of laying down more water. It's almost invisible, you see that? You can barely even see it. Most watercolor artists usually just question that. They're like, "Well, if I'm not going to see that color, why should I even do it in the first place?" This is why it's really important to really dilute your colors. Test it on the side. Don't be afraid of testing your colors. Then just start laying the colors on the paper. First, we're going to lay down some yellow, and because this is a very watery mix, it's going to add to the water that's already there on paper. You have to remember, you're adding more water. Although you have some color on it, you are going to add some more water to the paper. Be very careful of how much color you put on it. You don't want to just dump a lot of watery color in it because then you have it all swimming around on your paper. Next up, I'm going to bring some quinacridone rose. This is a beautiful, beautiful color. What I'm going to do is get this rose tested. You can see just how pretty that is, even though you're diluting it; very pretty. Then we're going to bring that and then start gently mixing it with the yellow on the paper. Observe what I'm doing here, I'm not mixing the colors in my palette. I'm actually bringing this down a little bit and making this diluted peachy color over here. Then I'm going to bring some of this cobalt turquoise. Just start adding it here on the top. This one, it's okay if I don't mix it too much, but observe just how I nimble my hands are. I'm not just going there and just rubbing the paper with my brush. Just very gently bring this color down. You can see just how light and diluted this layer is. This is what is very important for us to get a hang of. I can add some more pink if I want. Now very quickly, we get some pink. But this time a bit of the stronger pink and I will get some ultramarine blue in here and make a gorgeous portrait. Before we do that, let me get some more paint here on the side. A touch of this yellow, then we give this a darker peachy color, almost red. Just get a little bit of that, not too much. If you have too much water on your brush, take your paper towel and just tap some of the excess off because you don't want a lot of color on this. Then we are going to just drop that in this place here. You're just going to drop teeny tiny drops and just make these curly kind of shapes and then gently [inaudible]. Again, this is a lot of color and my brush is dripping full of paint. I don't want to do that because you want to see what happens when you do that? Boom, too much color. You see how strong it is? You don't want it to be that strong. Just get it outside, just dilute it a little bit if you want, then get that extra paint off on your paper. Let me go back in and start adding this turquoise here. When I go up, I'm going to add a tad bit more ultramarine blue over here to this purple to make it more bluish purple. Then I'm going to add some more [inaudible]. Can you see what's happening? Once I lay the layer of just a very diluted yellow followed by diluted pink followed by this cobalt turquoise and then even the clouds are in the gradient. Over here, down here the clouds are more peachy. Then I can just add in a bit more purple to this, make it a bit darker, and then just bring some of that down here. Then it becomes more bluer. This purple is more bluer than this color. When you come here, it's a little bit more blue. But observe the shape in which I have laid down the clouds. This is where the beauty of water comes in. Do you see this boost of color happening over here? I can still remember when I first painted with watercolors, this is what happened and it was love at first sight. This is where without even having to do anything, you're going to get these effortless wispy cloud shapes. Are you seeing that in the camera? You don't need to do any efforts. You don't need to paint the clouds. You know what I mean? You just need to drop the colors in a way that it looks like the clouds and that my friends is the secret of effortlessly painting any subject. Don't try to paint the thing itself, try to make blobs and marks that look like them. I'm going to show you, especially when we're going to make the palm trees.
5. Practicing Palm Trees: Next, let's practice the palm trees that's going to build the foreground of our painting. Palm trees, guys, really simple. I already have this mix over here. What I'm going to do is, get some red. Observe how I'm not being too precious with my mixes. I'm like, "Oh, but you know, it's mixing with the previous colors." It does not matter, guys, just get your color like it. What I did is I got red, so this cherry red that I first showed you, this one and I'm mixing it with a bit of the Dioxazine purple. That purple is really strong. What we want is, when I'm painting the palm trees, right away what people will do is, they are going to get some black paint and they're going to start painting. If something is in a silhouette, most people make the mistake of just using a strong black color but what you want to do is use colors that you're already using in your paintings. I'm using a purple, I'm using a pinkish red, so I'm going to use this to make my palm trees. Let's test it out. It is like a rusty red color and that is exactly what I want when I'm painting my palm trees. Because when you use these colors for your silhouette, that's when your silhouette looks natural and it's a part of your painting. Because all these sunset colors are falling on your trees and they're bouncing off of the trees and the color in your trees are a pinkish reddish hue. You need to remember that that's how it looks in real life. Quickly, what I'm going to do is get some good mixture of this red and purple and using my size 6 brush, this is how I'm going to paint the tree. Watch. I'm going to press the brush, just drag it up, making it wonky a little bit because palm tree trunks are not [inaudible] straight. Then for the leaves, I'm going to [inaudible] let's paint one more here because I covered it. Let's paint one over here. Press your brush down, wiggle it, wiggle it and move it back up. Just do it like that. Then using my size 2 brush, here's how I'm going to paint the leaves of the palm trees. This is very [inaudible]. What do you want at this point is not a lot of paint on your brush. You just want the paint to be very thick, not watery and then I'm just going to use the dry brushing technique. You see this broken effect that you're having. [inaudible] closer. Because of the cold press texture of the watercolor paper, you're going to use these brush marks, you'll paint these palm tree branches. You're not painting each and every leaf, each and every tree trunk, what you're doing is just fumbling the brush on the paper and then just painting a few branches. For the birds, just very quick last little technique, I'm just going to get the Dioxazine purple. Mix it again with the same mixture that I have here. I just got some a bit more purple, I want this purple to be really dark. This purple does go dark. When you just paint out like straight up and the color of this is almost black. For the birds, using my teeny-tiny little brush, I am going to press it and then just let it go. You see how easy it is, how effortless it is to paint birds. Let's do one more. Let's do this one here and let's give it a tiny tail, because these little details. That's just how you paint little birds. I do have videos, close-up of how to paint these little birds in two of my classes. I think one is the first class where I talk about the [inaudible] class. The other one is probably in the lake reflections. You can just go and see a detailed more lengthier technique on how to paint the little birds.
6. Painting Your Sunset Background: Now I can start the actual painting with the beautifully blended colors that make our sunset background. Really quick, really effortless, we're just going to do the same thing. If you think you got really strong colors in the first layer, just now you know just how light [inaudible]. That's why we do it on the practice piece. Let's go ahead and wet the paper and let's get right into it. But wait before we wet the paper, what we need to do is make sure that we have enough color on our palette. Because when your paper is dry you don't want to go back and forth between colors and then you just running around and your paper is going to dry and you're going to get bleeds, all that stuff will happen. Let's just mix our colors here. We have quite a bit of color. I love using ceramic palettes for my paintings because the colors don't bleed out and this is my [inaudible] ceramics palette. You can just quite clearly see what colors are there in your palette and it doesn't bleed out like the plastic. I'm going ahead and wetting my paper. Make sure you get the corners because you think you've wet your paper but then some corner could be [inaudible] dry and you get a patchy color effect. Make sure you wet it nice and well. Take a big deep breath. Nobody's asking you to have your painting all perfect, you got to relax, this is not the end of the world. It's just watercolor then you can re-watch this class later and then do it as many times as you want. Paper is wet, go ahead and start putting the colors, easy peasy. What's the saying? Easy peasy something something. I'm getting my yellow up only until here because I want it halfway white. I'm always checking my color skies. My sketchbook is right next to me and I'm always testing my colors to see if it's the right consistency, the right saturation. I think, I feel like a lot of artists just get really tensed and freaked out and watercolors are like these animals that can sense fear. Watercolors can and will sense your fear [inaudible] , now it will reflect in your work when you're really tight, your shoulders are all tight, and your jaw is all clenched up. No, just let go of the tension in your jaw. Just relax and just lean into this, lean into the magic that's happening into the water. When you do the transparent base with just the water, is that the way you start most of your painting? Yeah, because I'm using the wet-on-wet technique where your surface is wet and then you put in the paint in it. This is wet-on-wet. Quite frankly, I think this is most watercolor artists' favorite technique because you don't need to control anything. The water and the paint does the job for you. You don't need to control anything, just let it do the work for you. Then the clouds, this also is wet-on-wet. Let me wipe away, another thing that you can do with ceramic palettes which is [inaudible]. Then I'm going to bring in back peachy color. Remember the peachy color here, and then we make it a bit more blue, a bit more blue, and then more blue. I'm going to do that over here. A couple of people said that when they're doing a wet-in-wet technique, their paper tends to curl. I guess it's saturated. Is there some certain brands that you recommend? Or I could see you purposely taped yours down too, that must help. Yeah, this is exactly that's what it's for. Because my paper is still buckled. Do you see this depth that happened here? It's going to happen. It's always going to happen. You just work with it and then you take your paper down to correct the buckling of that. Right. The only thing is that if I had a puddle of water sitting here, this dent would have affected it because it would have just collected the pool of water. But we don't want that to happen, which is why that sheen of waters were necessary, because even if your paper curls and stuff like that happens, you're not going to have a puddle, and then it's not going to affect your painting, right? Right. Let's dry with this towel. Dab, dab, dab get the excess paint off. Check the color, make sure it's right. Then I'm going to start putting little clouds here at the bottom. There's really no set formula that you just need to follow. You can just place your clouds wherever you want. It has to be in a certain place, which is maybe these blobs. Then mix some more blue in this. [inaudible] I'm just dropping a bit of this darker purple here just to give shadowing colors. Really, the only reason I like playing this much is because my paper's still too wet. If my paper is starting to dry like here, it's starting to dry here at the bottom, I'm not going to go ahead and mess about with the skies. You need to know when to stop. If it's starting to dry, just stop messing around, just stop working it. I still catch myself doing it. I caught myself doing it just now. It's something that you always need to do, just keep a pause on your painting. Be aware, because it's very easy to just get a tunnel vision and just, "Let me just do this one thing and I just want the cloud to be wonky a little bit over here." No. In this class, we're just going to sit back and relax and just accept whatever the work is to us. This is the first layer and now I'm going to mute myself so you're not blasted with the sound of the hairdryer. I'm going to dry this layer off and then we'll paint the pine trees. Is the hairdryer the best way to get this done or is it just for speed you're doing that? Could you blotch it with some paper towel or is it best to just let it air dry if you have that time? It's best to let it air dry if you have that time because obviously, because I didn't use a hairdryer, the colors just naturally spread out. But if you have a pool of water and you use hairdryer, it's going to blow the water across, and obviously, it's going to muck things up. Only use a hairdryer if you're confident that it's a sheen of water. I use hair dryers all the time. If you hold it too close and just blast too much heat, it dulls your colors down a little bit. But I don't have the patience, so I just take my hairdryer and I just hold it in a distance and just dry it off because too many paintings to paint. I don't have the time to just air dry each layer. I mean some of the paintings are just so big, can you imagine the time it takes for it to just air dry then go to each layer?
7. Painting the Palm Trees: Now, we can go ahead and paint the palm trees on top of our sunset background. For the palm trees, the reason why I've painted this palm tree in this progression here is to give it a sense of perspective. Because your viewer, when they look at your painting, they're going to be like, oh, yeah, look, palm trees are receding in the distance which means there is space in here. Arranging your palm trees is obviously just without even looking at the bottom of the painting, you can tell this is near on a driveway on a Californian road because you can see the trees lining up. The viewer can tell that these palm trees are at the side of a walkway or a road just by looking at this. So it gives this depth to your painting, and it's always nice to have that extra element just to make your paintings interesting. Not only that, the birds, I have them flying off in this corner. This also just moves the viewer's eyes. They look at the palm trees, their eyes are going to go down, go down, and it's a very pleasing effect for the human brain. For the birds, once that happens, the eye also moves like this. These are all compositional elements. Then I've also got a palm tree just peeking over here. For this, I could have painted the full palm tree, but I didn't because I want to give an impression that this is a slice into an actual view in California. I just have some leaves just peeking here, but you just know if I could extend this view, then this whole palm tree is going to come into view. Some of the things that you can keep in mind, like even this palm tree is not straight, it's not in the frame, but it's peeking out. All of these arrangement and this irregularity in your painting is just going to make it so beautiful to look at and so pleasing for your viewer's eye. But let's go ahead and paint the palm trees now. I'm going to get some of this shade. Look how dark and juicy that color looks, and some of this purple. Nikki, can you recap again because somebody had an issue with their palm trees being too watery. Oh, you just mix a tick of paint. Don't put a lot of water in this because obviously if it's watery, it's because there's too much water in there, and you need to adjust it and add more pigment to it. You need to add more paint. This is the consistency of honey, you can see. There are different consistencies. Like this here is a tea consistency, and this is a really good analogy or a metaphor to understand what a glue consistency is. This is a tea consistency, next you have milk, you have coffee. In your mind, you can imagine just how thick it is. You can relate to this. This is like a honey consistency. It's very pasty. You can always test, if you think it's too watery, you can see just how it is. It's not watery and you don't want it to be watery because then it's very hard to get a dry brushing effect. Just get a reddish, brownish, purplish, I don't even know what this color is but it's very pretty, and just get a bit of this mixed in. Here's another thought, guys, always mix more color than you think is necessary. Please, please have an abundant artist mindset, don't be precious with your art supplies. I recently spoke about this on my Instagram. You need to use your art supplies quite prolifically. Let's go ahead and paint the palm tree. I'm going to paint the first one here and this is going to be my biggest palm tree. I'm only going to bring it here because I don't want it to come till here and ruin the space because look at this painting, there's still a lot of space left here. You need blank spaces in your paintings, do not over cover it. For this big tree, I think I can use my size 6 brush because it's just going to make my job easy. When I'm painting, guys, I'm like one of the laziest people ever and my line of thought is how can I make something easy and just quickly finish this? There is nothing wrong in this, you guys. You see how I'm able to use the dry brushing technique and just make these abstract brush strokes. Let's make some smaller branches here as well. Because this is a 3D object, it's not a flat cut out of a tree that just lays flatly. It's a 3D object which means there's a branch over here that's probably big, but it was leaning the other way so to us it looks just like a smaller branch here. Then let's paint another one, just there like that. Over here you can just leave this space up. We're going to have one that's just bended like this. You see how swift my brush strokes are. How do I put it? They're not calculated. They're not strategically placed. You know what I mean? I'm not trying to control it too much, but of course, this does come with some practice and confidence. So practice it, get your sketch. This is how you use sketch books. Practice it, make sure you have nailed down the technique, make sure you're well-acquainted with the subject which is here the palm trees, and then just something you need. Now, I want to paint the one that's leaning in. Let's bring that in. You can paint all your masking tape if it helps you with continuity. In fact, we're using a masking tape and I'll actually switch to a smaller brush now. First, I'm going to paint the heavy part of the trunk of palm trees, you know what I mean? That comes right about here. We're going to paint that and then we're going to start painting the branches. Now, let's paint the trees that are further away. I'm going to use this brush for the tree trunks because remember, if you want to give the effect of perspective, you have to make sure that your tree trunks are getting thinner first of all and you're not putting too much details in trees or any element that goes further into your painting. Because the closer the object is to your face, the more details there is, but then these tiny far-away objects, not many details, and also look how pencil-thin they are. The further away the object goes, the less details, less [inaudible]. I also explain that when you're painting atmospheric paintings, I explain in my sketching class how this would actually works. Since we're painting the silhouette, you don't need to worry about changing the colors. But if you're painting real life paintings, mystic paintings, copy paintings, then your color principles change. You can catch all of that on my other sketching classes. See, not a lot of details, not too many branches as this one. Are you able to see the difference between these two? Then we go ahead with this one. Let's paint a little bit thinner, but it's really, really close to this one, but it's too far away. Same thing just use less details. This is a good way guys to just practice not putting in a lot of details because if you can get an effect of something with less work, why not do that. I think I've learned many life lessons also because of all the colors. Don't struggle, there's no need to struggle. Make things easy for yourself. I feel like we are all taught as we grow up like work hard, put in a lot of work, and hustle and do this and do that, but no, there's no need of that. If you need to give yourself permission to just chill and relax and make things easy for you, just go ahead and do it. Make things easy for you. If you think just one brush stroke can show what a pine tree looks like, why the hell not. Now, I'm going to show you how I paint these really far-off trees which is really funny. I found it really funny, guys, when I figured out how to paint them. I'm going to get some more purple in this and observe. I'll take my paint and let me tilt it with a light [inaudible]. See what a pool of water this is, but here it's just pasty. You need this consistency. For the power of paintings, with the tip of your brush and this is where you need a good brush with a good tip because we're going to just start these faint, thin lines. Look how easy this is. One stroke up, one stroke to the side, one stroke to the side. That's it. That's your palm tree that's far away from you. That's all the details that you need to put. We can probably put another one here. Just little marks of the brush. Really not that complicated, we can make one more that's a bit taller. I love using dry brush techniques because it's the texture that makes a lot of difference. Guys, if you have a cold pressed paper, a cold pressed paper is something that has texture to it. Then we can just finish this painting off by painting this side thing. Guys, we're done with the painting, you saw how easy it was.
8. Finishing Touches: I can go ahead and add a bird and do everything we need to finish this beautiful piece up. I'm just going to get some straight up Dioxazine purple or Dioxazine jamun as we call it. It's named after this beautiful fruit that has a purple flesh in India. I'm just going to paint some birds, I'm going to add some birds here. The thing about painting birds is, you do not want to paint them in a predictable pattern, guys. Except for probably geese, random birds just don't fly in like this group, like a gangster group, they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, let's do this in this formation." It doesn't happen. Just make sure that you stagger your boards, make it look natural because the way to make anything look natural in nature is to show the chaos. Because what do you call it, there's a method to nature's madness. There's symmetry but there's also unpredictability. That's it. Not too many birds and now that you have finished your painting, I have one last, extremely important step for you to do, that is, sign your paintings. You guys, you have to own your identity as an artist. If you're painting something, if you feel creative, you are an artist, you don't have to have a business like me. You don't have to have an Instagram account. You don't have to be famous. If you have made something beautiful, you have to sign your work and something that is very powerful, an act of affirmation, an act of pure power is to own your identity as an artist and this is something that I believe in a lot. This is what I teach my members inside the truth is own your identity, sign your artworks. Artists always sign their paintings. If you're making a painting with me right now, even if you're watching the recording, please, please, sign your artwork. If you can't do it with a brush, take a pencil, a pencil will work fine, or a waterproof archival pen and sign your name on this. I love that. Whether or not 100 people believe in you as an artist or nobody believes in you as an artist, it does not matter. You believe you're an artist, you're an artist, and that's it. [inaudible] The satisfactory part of [inaudible] is peeling your masking tape. I have some very important tips, you guys. I get a ton of questions, even to this day I've been teaching watercolors for two and a half years now and people still ask me, "My masking tape rips my paper off, what do I do, how do I get it off?" First things first, you can blast some heat on this, take a hairdryer and just run it along on the masking tape. What that does is, it loosens the glue that's holding onto your paper, and then you can easily peel it off. If you don't have a hairdryer, hold the masking tape like this and pull it at an angle. Don't pull it like this, pull it at an angle. Of course, if you have it with masking tape and if you have a good paper, it's of course going to be in your advantage. See, look at the angle that I'm pulling it in. Great. I also get a 1,000 questions about what brand masking tape you use? Because everyone assumes that because it works so perfectly, I just use some kind of expensive, fancy brand. This is 3M. You can see the brand tape and I just buy whatever I get in a hardware store. You can find masking tape in a hardware store. If you have wall painters come to your home, they're going to be using the same stuff that I'm going to be using, but also washi tape works.
9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much you guys for joining me and spending some time with me. I hope you felt the breeze of California just waving through the palm tree and maybe even your hair. I hope you enjoyed this class. I hope it helped you relax and just really own your identity as an artist because you have infinite potential inside of you. You have a lot of magic. If watercolors is the way you bring your magic out because the world needs to magic. I really want you to know that if you want to be an artist, nothing is holding you back. If I can do it, you can do it. When I first started painting with watercolors I had no idea that this future of being independent and abundance, and just a beautiful life of a thriving artist and [inaudible] for me. Don't give up on your odd dream. Paint with watercolors because you never know what gifts this medium is going to bring you. I've actually written a beautiful e-book called The Thriving Artist Roadmap. This is your blueprint, you'll have a successful, sustainable really it's just an amazing through the practice. What I've done is I've outlined the exact five stages of creative growth and it's equal. Using this guide, you can find out exactly where you are right now in your creative journey. The best thing is you can even find out the exact steps you need to evolve to the next stages. You can download my e-book in the link below. Please go ahead and share your work with me because nothing lights me up more than seeing my students' beautiful works. Thank you so much for joining me in this class today, and you can find out more about me and the rest of my classes on my [inaudible] profile.
Trupti Karjinni, Artist, Paintmaker, Entrepreneur
