hi friends now over the years of being
an art youtuber i have gotten
countless dms tweets private messages
comments i mean you name it
of people saying ray i really want to
get into art but i can't afford any good
supplies and it's very discouraging
and trust me i completely understand
that before i became an art youtuber a
mass majority of all of my art supplies
were stuff from walmart
stuff that i could find at the dollar
store stuff that my teachers gave me
in fact some of my very first youtube
videos were just like random dollar
store challenges because
i couldn't afford anything else you know
and so today i thought it'd be cool to
get back in touch with my roots and more
importantly hopefully i inspire some
artists out there who are in that
current position
this video goes out to you because today
i'm going to challenge myself to
recreate one of the
best and most famous pieces of artwork
ever to be created
yanez vermeer's masterpiece the girl
with the pearl earring
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and recreate it using only supplies from
the dollar store
i have no chill if you like cheap art
videos like this be sure to subscribe
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notified of every single video that i do
in real time yeah i feel like today's
video is pretty straightforward so yeah
with that being said let's roll out
autobots
so the first thing i'm gonna obviously
need is art supplies
and our first stop is the one the only
the legendary
dollar tree every time i go to a dollar
tree they're a little sketch you're like
a crying baby in the background
and a lot of the time my dollar tree
doesn't have like any of the good stuff
they're usually out of everything so i'm
hoping we'll be able to find
mostly if not everything that we need so
let's go see what they have
anyway there's a guy staring at me oh
this is so awkward i'm just gonna
pretend i'm looking at something else
this is so awkward
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as much as dollar tree is my bestie it
seems like every single time i go to
dollar tree to get something specific
they're always out of it and sadly the
one thing that i needed the absolute
most
they were running super low on and that
was paint
so i'm gonna go to the next best place
dollar general
now even though i did a video on dollar
general in the past i am absolutely
terrified of dollar general every time i
go it's completely empty
the cashiers always look like they want
to fight me and all you hear is like
that fluorescent buzz with like the
empty aisles
it is such a creepy experience but
anyway let's go see what dollar general
has to offer
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okay so it is currently the next day and
surprisingly i was able to find
almost keyword almost everything that i
need
at dollar tree now the first thing that
i'm obviously gonna need for this
project
is what is i forgot the word
canvas i'm gonna need canvas and dollar
tree does technically sell canvas
but the problem is is that their canvas
quality
isn't necessarily the best and i say
that with peace and love i don't know
why but all the canvases there were like
bent at a weird angle
all the canvas sizes were 8 by 10 or
smaller which the original painting is
actually 17
by 15.5 inches i believe so yeah trying
to compress
like an image like that into an 8x10
would just make my job a little bit
harder
and dollar tree does offer things like
sketchbooks and paper and scratchboard
and things like that but since i'm going
to be painting it it would pretty much
bleed through
all of those things instantly but
unbelievably i was able to find
this dry erase board it's 11 inches by
10 inches which
isn't too bad it's a little bit smaller
than i would prefer but not bad
and i know a dry erase board seems silly
but the real reason i bought it
is because when you turn it around it's
actually masonite on the back like you
hear that
which if you don't know masonite has
pretty much been like my number one
thing to paint on
forever i love the way it's non-porous
this thing will take a beating i can
layer as much or as little paint as i
want to it's completely flat
and yeah basically this is going to be
the perfect canvas
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so with some poster paint i'm just going
to tone that canvas
completely gray and try to get it as
completely smooth as possible
that way i'll have a nice base to begin
with
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i'm so itchy why am i itching it's like
i'm never itchy but then when i start
filming i'm like
i feel so good to scratch oh my god
so the next thing that i'm gonna need
for this project is obviously to sketch
out
the girl so this next art supply might
seem very obvious but i got some basic
number two mechanical pencils by crayola
i've used these pencils in the past and
surprisingly i actually really like them
even though i think they're made for
kids they remind me a lot of
tricon genera i can't even pronounce the
name so yeah
these are gonna be used for sketching
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now if you guys know i am not really the
biggest fan of acrylic i'm not very good
at it i personally find
oil painting much more easier which is
really weird because i know so many
artists who
hate oil painting but they love doing
acrylic paint
hello there how are you all doing it's
very strange how like everybody has
their own preferences and how
everybody's brain is different
but anyway the reason i'm bringing this
up is because when it comes to an oil
palette
usually you'll want to use a pure glass
but glass palettes they
are not cheap so when it comes to
palettes of course dollar tree has like
their regular palettes that you see
pretty much everywhere but if you want a
little bit more of like an advanced
palette something very sneaky that i've
been doing
i don't even know if you can tell what
this is so yeah basically for one dollar
i unwrap this
flip the photo around and basically for
one dollar create my own
glass palette but yeah very very sneaky
i wish i knew this technique back in
college before i
spent a butt load on palettes all the
time
this actually leads me to the next thing
the dollar tree sells that i am going to
need
brushes so i ended up buying these
crafters square brushes
in the past i've used they haven't been
the best quality they can be very flimsy
they can break very easily
the bristles will fall out of them and
so yeah to be quite honest with you as
far as like hurdles go for this
challenge
working with the brushes is definitely
going to be the biggest hurdle to get
over
so hopefully these work out in my favor
and this brings us to arguably the most
important component of this painting
the paint
vermeer's original painting is made with
oil paint
and unfortunately my dollar tree doesn't
sell oil paint
paint thinner all the stuff needed for
oil painting so for this painting
i'm going to use acrylic paint and guys
their acrylic was absolutely
wiped out literally the only four colors
available
were these ones right here and i bought
them all and these are great colors we
got the primaries but i'm missing the
two key colors that i absolutely
absolutely need for this painting white
and black
and at the dollar general i ended up
picking up some brushes which these ones
look like they're a little bit better
quality i got more full-size bottles of
acrylic paint
specifically this beige color which i
think is going gonna work out
and i mean i did get a bunch of other
random stuff just in case but i think i
should be good
so yeah with that being said let's begin
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so
okay so we have ran into the first major
hurdle with this paint
with a lot of acrylics they're mostly
very opaque like they cover up things
very easily like for example that dollar
tree blue color
it was great it was chef kissed it
layers very nicely
has a lot of pigment it's only one
dollar love that but for some reason
this beige color specifically
is kind of the worst it's so watered
down
that it's basically not layering
whatsoever it's making the painting
process very difficult because i can't
get the color on so i have two options
the first one is to make
a new skin tone out of the few paint
bottles that i have but i don't want to
do that because i only have
one small tube of white and the second
option which i'm gonna go with
is layering the paint so thick that
everybody else in the room is so
uncomfortable
and that'll be the only way that i'll be
able to get some kind of color out of
this paint
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and while the wet sections of her face
are drying i'm going to go in
and touch up her tunic i'm not really
too sure what her garment is called but
yeah i'm going to fix it up a little bit
so here's what it looks like color
blocked my plan worked it's already
looking so much better than before
now i need to figure out how to blend it
and i'm gonna be honest here my method
of blending was just quickly
morphing together two blobs of skin tone
to kind of like melt into each other
and to make things just that much harder
i noticed the dollar tree brushes were
kind of scratchy and it left a lot of
texture in the painting and when you
look up close
it definitely shows
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okay so i just got done refining the
painting and it might have been kind of
hard to see what i was doing because i
was basically doing just like
micro swipes on the painting and that's
a technique you'll see a lot with
classical painting
and this leads us to the final step
finishing up the painting
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and this one's very simple clean up the
background
add in more highlights more colors fix
any mistakes that i might have made
feather out the skin tone a little bit
more
and most importantly create the pearl
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earring
and yeah after days of hard work
planning frustrations
here is my rendition of the girl with
the pearl hearing
tell me what it is don't tell me what it
ain't they try to throw sod
it just made the pressure raise going
through a phase gotta get myself
out of it don't talk about it but they
said you gotta be about it so i be
trying to face the world head on
front seat riding so it's currently four
in the morning
if you're in a position right now where
i was all those years ago where you had
to make do with what you had or
completely start from square one
i just want to remind you to not give up
and don't doubt yourself because you're
gonna do great
i just know it and more importantly
bowie knows it
if you want to see more art challenge or
broke art videos i will leave my
playlist down below if you haven't
subscribed with notifications be sure to
do that yeah i hope this video inspired
you i hope you have a good day and i
will see you in the next one
bye