you can tell this is going to be a good video because look i dressed up for you i wish i was
showing a little more chest for the ladies but i must say i look a little good i want to bring
you something a little different i'm going to i'm going to tell you a story of something that just
recently happened to me it's going to teach you a very strong lesson if you're an artist out there
this story is all about how i ruined a 500 painting so let's start at the beginning
i love to do art in my garage it's a bigger open space i can move around and do bigger canvases
but it also allows me to play my music a little loud leave my garage door open to where i can see
all the single moms walk by do a little peacocking and soft hard flex to show off but sometimes those
neighbors will stop by and see what i'm working on and one of my neighbors happened to do just that
so i was working on an acrylic pour and asked if i could make one for her birthday as a
commission piece and i said most definitely we decided this piece was going to go above her bed
so i had suggested let's do a nice big canvas she loved the idea her only requirement was that it
matched or complemented the colors that she had just recently painted her bedroom these colors
that she painted her bedroom was a light heather gray which was called french silver and just an
ultra pure white so white and gray essentially i had come up with a color swatch where
we had taken that heather gray with a turquoise metallic blue with a little bit of copper and then
we would surround it with that white trim doing a dutch pour so it'd be a nice negative pour that
would stand out against the gray wall she loved the idea she wanted me however to use the exact
colors because she had left over paint and i said okay which was house paint now you probably
already know where i'm going with this story but don't jump ahead just yet now i have actually made
many art pieces using household paint generally leftovers from testers that i use on my own walls
and they're actually a great little hack provided you don't get any additives in them but that's
another story so when she gave me this leftover paint i said no problem because i've worked with
it before however i've never worked with it in the way that i'm about to go into you see
household paint that you use on your very walls that you're looking around in your room right now
is designed to do a few things one it's obviously designed to change the color of your walls
and to do that it's designed to dry fairly quickly so when you go from one side of the wall to the
other side while you're painting it it's meant to dry in like literally 10 minutes so that way when
you get to minute 11 you can go back to the other side and add another coat and go across because
you may have to add two to three coats and that's how paint is designed as well as other additives
for scratch resistant odor blockers and all that other stuff but we're not talking about that
at the moment household paint is designed to dry very fast i know this i know it because
i've used it before and thus i know how to work around it so you introduce things like slow
drying mediums to slow down the process and i've done this in the past on artworks that are like
12 by 12, 12 by 16, 16 by 24 but nothing that was a three foot by four foot canvas going above a
headboard so as i start doing my acrylic pour and splashing my colors and pushing it around
i instantly notice within about the four to six minute mark that i'm starting to get ripples and
waves and the paint is not self leveling now for me self leveling is a personal choice i like it
when things are kind of even for an acrylic pour however when you start to have paint that dries
exceedingly fast and you push and move it you're gonna see these waves because
it starts shelling over on other layers that have started to dry making it not
look aesthetically pleasing at least to my taste so i have already started to ruin the painting
i've started to try to correct it by putting on more paint and nothing's working out and i have
instantly noticed that as i'm making this artwork it's not going to turn out the way that i want
and i have gone through a very expensive canvas but i also know that this commission's not going
to work out in the way that i want so what do i do i try to save the piece i decided rather than
having a self leveling piece hey let's mix it up a little bit i grabbed some cellophane wadded up
into a randomized ball and started going around my piece to add waves and peaks and cracks across
what would be the geoshape of the color coming across the entire canvas so this way it would hide
the shelling effect that was occurring from that fast drying house paint well it kind of worked in
the way that i wanted but it wasn't still coming out to where i thought it would be good enough
and this is where it leads into my lesson one of the things that i always teach people on this
very channel here is when you buy new paint or you have new paints you need to test it
for what you're going to be using it for in the end result you always need to test your
paint to see how it works when it's wet you need to test your paint so you can see how it works
when it's becoming dry you need to test your paint to see how it looks when it's finished
and dried and cured and i've done this on smaller pieces and i did this for this very painting but
i did it on a small swatch i didn't do it across a huge gigantic canvas and this is where it came
to bite me in the butt this commission right here was for five hundred dollars and i don't
feel like it's worth five hundred dollars not even close so what did i do i decided to double down
i have some loose gold leaf laying around my house that comes in different colors i got gold silver
and copper and one of the underlying tones i was using this painting was copper so i decided to go
get some mod podge which is a a craft glue that holds up very well and start putting mod podge on
top of my copper paint and then i decided to lay some gold leaf which was the copper gold leaf on
top of it and start having all these peaks and crowns to match in with what was on the outside
geo negative space white pour that so that way there was all these different peaks and valleys
and you know what it started actually coming together really really well so i did the entire
canvas in this fashion now i showed the piece to the lady that was commissioning it to me and i was
honest i told her i had an issue i don't feel like it's worth the 500 but i did something completely
different tried to save the canvas and it's way more unique than it ever was going to be before
and you know what she actually loves the piece now i still don't think it's worth what i envisioned
so i'm going to sell it for less because i don't feel like it's up to my par for what my normal art
is but i actually love it this is very unique it's still in a work in progress stage i'm going to do
an epoxy clear coat on top of it so it does self-level out but it's going to have those
peaks and valleys underneath so that way when light hits it from different angles
it's going to scatter across the entire piece having super bright specular highlights and all
these dark pits into it it's going to add this beautiful contrast and it looks so good as the
morning sun and afternoon light and evening light cascade across it because it makes it look like
a different piece every time you walk into the room it's truly unique but still i'm not fully
happy with me because even though i teach a lot of you out there it still shows that people who are
professional veterans well adverse well educated still make basic bonehead mistakes but i want you
to walk away from this lesson and long video thank you for tuning in for this whole entire thing
i want you to know that uh always prepare as much as you can it's kind of like the
old adage i guess when you're cutting wood measure twice cut once i probably should have
done some more thorough testing sat down and really thought about it because if i
didn't save the commission i would have been out a lot of money on the canvas materials the
glosses the gold leafs the epoxy all that stuff and then i got a piece of artwork that's just
sitting around and kind of mocking me from the distance hey you wasted money on me
stop looking at me i'm gonna collect so much dust just sitting here because no one will
ever buy me ever it's judging me oh yeah and don't forget you're also a bad artist
how do i know cause i'm bad art we've all been there for me personally there's nothing worse as
an artist than when you have a vision in your mind and you don't even come close to it however i need
to teach you another lesson within this story just because you fail at something doesn't mean that
you can't pick yourself back up i was encouraged enough to try something new and experiment and you
know what i'm very happy with how this copper gold leaf went on top and i played with it and it looks
beautiful i actually really really love this piece and how it comes across so don't be afraid to fail
learn from your failures use it for your next piece you can guarantee you but i'm going to test
the paints for when i have to do bigger canvases and see the drying effects across it i guarantee
you because i'm not going to waste any more money but i want you to take these lessons test your
paint don't be afraid to fail don't be afraid to experiment also be upfront with your clients and
customers because they will appreciate it trust me i'm always going to be here to help you and
i got to tell you about the wins that i do but i also importantly have to tell you about the
fails because i'm just like you i'm trying my damnedest out there to make it in the art world
by splashing a couple colors having a little bit of entertainment give you a couple laughs heck
show off to the ladies be a slightly bit naughty every now and then and have fun on this youtube
channel but more importantly i care about you progressing in the art world or progressing
you know internally so that way you can have a creative outlet because you know being creative
simply makes you feel good save your life now let's get over the emotional stuff it's
mid-afternoon it's a friday for me by the time you see this video i have no idea so hey i'm going
to start early and go get myself a whiskey you know that's what i love to do once you check the
videos over to my right hand side i'll catch y'all later and as always take care and of course peace