Alright you lot, welcome back.
Today is the first day since Inktober that I’ve had a chance to sit down and actually
create something, and when it came to making a video today, I really almost over-thought
it all; having spent a month drawing the same thing over and over, I almost forgot what
I do when I’m not drawing houses.
I wanted to come back with a bang, do something creative and impressive and just big and impactful.
But, honestly, that would just be too much work.
Too much pressure.
So I just set my camera up to record what I was already doing.
Casual, experimental sketchbook times.
I think I’ll ease back in to the bigger pieces.
So today I’m starting another 30-page sketchbook which I’m aiming to fill this month.
I think if I can do it this month, coupled with last months success, I really might be
able to solidify this as a habit and complete a sketchbook consistently very month.
That’s the hope anyway.
I’ve dedicated this sketchbook to painting coral and other sea….
things.
Sea sponges and anemone, those kinds of things.
Gorgeous stuff.
I thought that would be such a great diverse subject matter for cool shapes and, most importantly,
colours.
Following on from inktober, I’m obviously really keen to get back to creating some more
colourful work, and I also have been really itching to try the set of gouache and acryla
gouache paints I received from Holbein weeks ago- was it months ago??- and still, until
today, hadn’t had a chance to properly try out.
For this painting I’m using the acryla gouache and I plan on making a review or first impressions
video sometime this week so let me know if you have any questions you want answered about
them.
The whole thing was completely experimental, I didnt go into it with a plan or even an
idea of what I wanted the painting to look like, I just wanted to test the colours, the
opacity, the blending and the layering as well as figuring out the consistency of this
paint which I’ve obviously never used before, and my water-to-paint ratio.
So that’s all really about the painting.
What I really wanted to talk about was… y’know, what a crazy week it’s been!
So the zine release was kind of insane, it got way more attention than I had expected,
the website crashed, I was freaking out, but it was so exciting and amazing and I can’t
thank you all enough for wanting to own that little snippet of.. what was essentially my
whole life for the month of October.
Since then, it took about 3 solid days of packaging and posting them out, they are all
now off in the postal system, some have reached their new owners already, it was honestly
just such a huge weight off having them all out of my bedroom.
I vlogged that whole process so you’ll see that in a few days as well hopefully.
And again, if you have any questions about how I process and package and send out orders,
especially on that scale, leave the below and I’ll try to cover them in that video.
After all that, you might think I’d finally take a break, but I actually had to get straight
on and start working through the mountain of tasks that had built up over October that
got kind of pushed aside while I was focusing on inktober.
I understandably had quite a few emails from people with comments and questions about their
zine orders, especially with the site going down, a lot of people just wanted to confirm
their order had gone through.
For as many of those emails I had, I also had a ton of people asking for them to be
re-stocked.
Which they won’t, by the way, as I said, they were limited edition so… yeah, I get
it, I appreciate your interest but please don’t email me about that anymore!
Let’s see, I’m halfway through a batch of commissions and I also have a couple of
collaborations with companies that I kind of cheekily ended up pushing the deadlines
for, so if my next few videos are sponsored or product related, they were supposed to
be spread out but they just ended up building up.
Essentially everything that got put on the back burner while I focused on Inktober, I’m
working on it now.
So, I still haven’t watched Stranger Things, again, no spoilers please.
My popcorn and facemask are ready and waiting.
I’ve got one more little push of productivity til the end of this week and then I’m probably
gonna take a week off.
Maybe just a week off from making videos, I haven’t really decided yet.
I just wanna give myself a bit of space to not have to think about anything.
But we’ll see.
As I said, I have like 3 more videos lined up for this week so I guess I’ll keep you
updated with my plans as we go.
Thank you all again for being here, for watching these videos, for your comments and encouragement
and support.
I’m feeling good, I had a lovely painting day today, I feel like I’m close to getting
back into a normal rhythm and that in itself is really exciting and motivating.
Yeah, that’s it!
I hope you liked it, I’ll see you- I’m so used to saying I’ll see you tomorrow-
I’ll see you soon for the next one.
It probably will be tomorrow to be honest.
Okay bye!