It can be hard to find a long period of free time
to do a painting.
It can also be very tiring as well.
Sometimes we spend a whole day working
and that left us with little time or energy to paint.
Today, I want to share with you a few tips
to help you get into painting
when you are living a busy life
and starting to lose motivation to paint.
(soft music)
Hey, this is Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
If you've been watching my channel for a while,
you know that I have a day job.
I have three boys and I have this YouTube channel to run.
So it can be a bit difficult to paint consistently.
And sometimes after a day of work, dealing with three boys
and things in the life getting away,
I just feel a little bit emotionally too drained
to pick up my paintbrush and paint.
If you're having similar experiences,
I have three tips to share with you that can hopefully
help you to start painting more often and with ease.
Number one, just start doodling.
Simply starting to paint is actually the hardest part
because it requires you to initiate the motion.
Like Newton's first law,
"an object at rest will stay rested
unless an external force is applied."
And that external force is you.
But once you get it started,
it will be much easier to continue.
And also I say start doodling not start a painting,
because if you always give yourself to pressure to start
and finish a painting,
you are going to get past a lot of mental hurdles.
But if you're just going to play around
with pencil and water color, it is much easier to start.
I know you might be thinking that,
"well, I'm going to start painting.
So I want to get something out of it,"
which means a finished painting.
But if you always think that way,
it will be much harder to start.
Learn to enjoy the process.
There's something very cathartic
about feeling the brush glides through the paper
and making marks.
Try to simply enjoy that.
If a painting came out of it. Great.
If not, you still had a wonderful time painting
and that's time well-spent.
And this is much better than going onto the internet
and watching TV to get yourself upset.
Number two, paint a small painting.
Small paintings has this charm
and it shouldn't be disregarded.
I recently bought some smaller water color pads
like this one because smaller paintings are more manageable
and it takes less time and energy to finish.
Painting small is also a very good way
to practice simplifying your painting
and focus on the big shapes.
You can get a smaller watercolor pad
or just tape off a larger piece of paper
into two or even four sections and pick something simple.
The simple scenery like a simple sky,
a small portrait of a person or a pet,
it keeps painting fun and fresh.
It keeps painting fun and fresh.
If you find painting a small painting still a daunting task
for you, then let me give you something even simpler.
Number three, paint a small value study.
Let's not even worry about color,
just paint a quick value study with a single color.
You can't get any simpler than that.
I can't tell you how much I enjoy painting
a small value study.
It is quick and satisfying
because I can get resolved very quickly.
Value study is super useful to practice washers,
value shapes, composition, and even brushstrokes.
You are getting a lot out of a small value study
with a very short period of time.
Moreover, if you end up with a good value study,
this can be a huge morale boost for you
to do your final painting next time.
I can't recommend this enough.
I hope those tips were helpful for you.
Give them a try and let me know how they work out for you.
Now, I'm going to share with you the process
of this small painting that I did.
Is fun a photo that I took the other day,
one of my cats is just sitting on the window seal
and looking out.
I like delighting and a silhouette of my cat,
so I decided to paint it.
There isn't that much detailed needed for this painting
so I decided to keep it small and simple.
In like what I suggested, I did a small value study first,
and I really liked what it ended up with.
So I decided to do a color version
of the painting afterwards in another sitting.
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Let's get started.
Let's take a look at this painting.
So I didn't record a process of value study
because I was doing it just for fun,
like how I was suggested.
But I liked the result of the value study quite a bit.
So I decided to do a finished piece.
The final painting is quite small. It is 10 by seven.
So as you can see, this is quite a small painting.
My typical go-to size is 12 by 16,
because it's large enough for me to get into some details,
but also is not too big for me to get overwhelmed.
But again, a small painting has this charm,
especially for something kind of symbol like this one.
So this is a very fun little painting.
So I start off with the line drawing.
Now the tricky part for this specific painting
is that you really need to figure out the value.
The outside is where the light source is,
but outside the window, there are couple of things
like the trees and the house, and the car,
and inside is mostly in the dark value.
So how do we group that together?
That's the important question for this painting.
So in a value study, you can see that most of the light
in the middle value are outside the window,
and the light reflection on the keyboard
and the white key of course.
But the interior, and the cat, the wall,
and underneath everything underneath the keyboard,
those are in a dark value.
So value study is a good way to resolve all these
so that you can get a nice looking picture
without worrying about the colors.
So, because I like the resolve of value study,
I decided to go ahead and paint my color version.
And the first wash is the color of the light.
So I keep everything nice and wet,
and keep them quite transparent.
And because this is the first wash,
this is the lightest wash there is,
you can just simply paint over a lot of stuff
in this picture, because you can cover them up later
with darker value.
So as you can see, aside from the high lights
on the side of the roof
and a little bit of sparkle here and there
is mostly pretty much all covered up.
And I can paint over them later
when it comes to middle value and dark value.
So the light of the tree and the light on the house,
those warm sunlight on the road,
those are all part of the first wash.
Now that the first wash is dry, I can start my second wash,
which is the middle value.
So referencing from our value studied of middle value start
from the background is the trees.
So the trees, as much as you think,
those are actually darker greens relative to the cat
and the wall inside the house.
These are actually middle value.
They're a lot lighter than the cat.
So the darkest thing in this photo
is the silhouette of the cat and the keyboard stand.
So relative to that, the dark side of the tree,
they are actually much, much lighter.
So I said up before, don't paint with perception.
Just because you see a certain shadows
or a dark side of a certain things,
doesn't necessarily means that they are dark value.
You need to judge your value by squinting your eyes
and look at the whole picture.
So if you do that right now and look at the photo
with your eyes squint,
a lot of things, a lot of a dark detail around the house
and around the tree and the bushes,
they simply just disappear
and all merge into a middle value.
So that's what I'm doing right now.
So I'm painting middle value.
I will mix different color in that middle value,
but they are the same value.
And I try to connect them as much as possible.
So the tree will connect to the shadow on the house
and the car, and a driveway and so on.
So I don't really need to separate everything
that I see just because they are separate entities
and the reference.
This is actually just a background.
So keep it as the background don't get too invested in it.
You want to keep that light
and you want to have a certain amount of detail
because it serves a really nice contrast
between that and the silhouette of the cat.
But you don't want to get into too much detail
because that's not really the main focus of the painting.
So now there's a middle value on the background.
So immediately you're going to see some contrast.
So I continue to wash down and paint some reflection
on the keyboard surface went onto wet.
It's like a brush metal surface.
So it got some soft reflection
of the cat and the window frame.
You just start to paint those in.
Now I'm painting the keys on the keyboard.
I am not really counting which key,
how many keys that I am painting.
I'm just trying to paint them as shaves.
I'll merge some of it.
I would just give you some suggestions of gaps and stuff.
This is not a mechanical drawing of an actual keyboard.
So don't need to stress on making every thing very accurate.
Continue to wash down with the middle value.
So in the value study, you can see that
I decided to lose pretty much all
of the detail underneath the keyboard,
except a little bit of hint on that red box,
which I find it interesting and the keyboard stand.
So I'm doing the same thing here.
And now I'm painting the interior wall of the house,
and the window frame.
Now the window frame, there's like two layers of it.
I just keep it as one just to keep things simple.
Now, when I get to the certain layer,
which is painting the dark, the wall and the window frame,
the cat is going to be much darker.
So right now you kind of feel
that everything kind of just blend together
except a light area.
So once I get those dark end
is going to bring out some contrast.
So the background is dry.
So I can start to fill it in with a little bit of dark value
and you don't need a lot.
Don't start to paint in the window and everything,
just a few area that has really dark shadows.
But for the most part keep them as light and middle value.
But this tree right here, right outside of the window,
those I want to make them dark value
just because they're much closer to us.
Then the background house, the car and the bushes.
So that just creates a little bit more sense of depths.
So now I am making the window frame darker
and also start to paint the cat darker as well.
So as you can see, once I start to add more dark value,
the cat start to pop out from the distance.
And now we start to see the proper depths
between the cat and the background.
And I do a little bit of wet onto wet on cat's fur
when I still get a chance to.
Just to kind of give that furry feels.
She is a long hair cat so I try to hint that.
So some darks on the keyboard, buttons and stuff.
Again, I didn't count how many buttons
and stuff they're supposed to be there.
I just paint different shapes that will make it look good.
Again, this is a very enjoyable little painting,
and I really find doing this quite relaxing
and it's really fun too.
And I think because just the form factor
and a subject it just works so well together.
This little painting actually feels a little bit precious
to me.
I almost feel like it can be a greeting card
or something like that.
So I highly recommend you do some small paintings
just for fun and relaxation.
Now this specific picture is actually not that simple
because of the background, the house's card and stuff.
And then there's the keyboard, was a bunch of keys on it.
So the picture itself is not that simple per se,
but then the subject is actually quite a simple subject,
which is a cat looking out in the afternoon,
and I quite liked that.
So I'm doing the dark value on the interior wall
on the side.
And once that's in, you can feel the light a lot better.
I just make the reflection of the cat
and the window a little bit darker on the keyboard
and watercolor does dry lighter.
So you can see that though dark wash on the keyboard,
they're actually getting a little bit lighter.
So I need to go back in later after it's dry
to do a glazing.
So somewhere dark underneath the keyboard.
I flipped the papers, so the wash doesn't keep going down.
So the paint won't just gather on the bottom.
So I go over the dark value again,
just so that I can push the light
and the conscious a little bit more.
So just adding a little bit more details on the keyboard,
making things pops a little bit
and here we have it.
It's a fun little painting and I really enjoy that,
Again, sometime you don't need
to paint something magnificent like a sunset in Venice
or something, but a small painting like this
can sometimes be more personal and more precious as well.
So definitely give it a try,
find something around the house,
a little corner or something.
Just do a really simple value study and painting.
I hope you enjoyed a small painting demo
and I hope you give it a try as well.
Spent a little bit of time in a week
for a small fun painting session
can really help you feel productive and relaxing.
That's it for today's video.
I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are.
I am Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
See you next time.