* Hello there! I have a very big jar of - it's not a jar, it's not - it's a box. Hello there! I have a giant box of Michael's supplies that Michael's very very kindly has allowed me to show you today! So heavy, there's so much in that box, oh my gosh. So I'm very excited for today's video because I have a bunch of new art supplies to share with you, courtesy of my favorite art store, Michael's. I'm also going to be doing some art today with the supplies I have inside this giant box here. So Michael's very kindly got in touch with me recently and asked if I wanted to try out some of their artists-off canvases, which I have already used for years and years. Anyway, it's the canvas I always use on my channel, it's just, I really love the canvases they sell there. They have every different shape and size that you can possibly imagine. So basically, this video is gonna be me showing you canvases that I already know and love and use as well as some different art supplies as well, I just thought I would show you a few different things that I've - Michaels has kindly let me buy. So I'll be using some of these supplies today to make a painting towards the end of the video. So first of all, thank you to Michael's for sponsoring this video today and allowing me to have all of these brand new art supplies to show all of you Now, since everything has been going on recently, I have not wanted to step foot in a shop at all, I just don't want to. My mum's got a compromised immune system so I have been staying home and not doing anything that will put her at risk, therefore it makes it very difficult for me to actually get certain canvases because if you go to a certain size and shape of canvas, they can't be shipped because they're too big or awkward but luckily, thankfully Michael's has this new option where you can either pay $9.99 to get same-day delivery to your house which basically means that someone physically shops and brings it to your house as long as you're in like, the certain radius, or you can actually go to the store yourself and wait outside and an employee will bring out your supplies to your car and put it in there for you. I did the drive-up option. So I pulled up to my local Michael's, called them up, gave them my order number, opened my trunk, got back in my car, they put it in the trunk for me and I shut the lid down so I didn't have to see them, be near them, it was great. We all had our masks on, we were nowhere near each other so very safe. If you are someone with concerns or like, a compromised immune system, it would be a great option for you if you need some art supplies. Anyway, enough of me rambling, I will show you some of the supplies that I was able to get thanks to Michael's. So Artists' Loft is the main Michael's brand they sell in their store and they sell canvases, they sell paints, they sell brushes, they sell all sorts of different art and craft supplies. Their canvases come in three different levels, they have level 1, level 2 and also level 3. Now, the main difference is the thickness and quality of canvas. So level 1, the academic level is what I started off with. It's the cheapest most affordable canvas that you can purchase. It's also the thinnest one. So this is what this looks like, great canvas. I always love these ones. They also have the level 2. These are slightly thicker and also you can just feel the quality's a little bit nicer. These are artist level quality. I really like these, I mean, either of these work but I started off with 1, went up to 2 and now I use Artist Loft professional level number 3 and these are the thickest canvases. As you can tell, the quality is amazing. All of these canvases are also pre-Gessoed as well so you know that you're getting good quality. These are all 11 x 14 by the way. Oh, it's like Christmas! I'm so excited. They also do these multi packs of canvases as well. Which is, this stuff is so great, this is what I would always always buy for myself to kind of practice with my painting, but they have these value packs so you can get like, two canvases. Sometimes you can get up to like, 10 in a pack. Oh, look at this! Okay, I've got a bag. Wait. Let me show you my big one. Hang on. I also got this canvas This is an 18 x 24 so this is a much bigger size. Now, I already have about 64 of these but you can never have too many canvases. These are both 8 x 8 square professional level canvases, these are always such a nice size to have. So for example, this one was actually an 8 x 10, I believe, of the level 3 professional quality canvas. This piece I painted a little over a year ago, I actually did on the artist level 2 but this again, quality's just as great. So I bought this tote bag which is something - I don't have anything like this and I just saw it online and I thought it was a great idea, it was a great price and it's basically covered in little pockets so that you can stick in like, paints, pencils, paintbrushes... This is actually also Artists' Loft. Very well done. I do like that very much. Next up I got another bag thing. This is a little... What do you call these? Look, they're in love! How cute is that? And, oh, the inside has hearts in it! I'm easily, I'm easily amused, aren't I? Next up we have some... this is bloody huge, I don't remember buying this. It's like a broom! This is a Royal & Langnickel jumbo soft paintbrush that I thought would work well for the bigger canvases if I'm painting the backgrounds in and stuff. Next up, I got an Artists' Loft fire-enz - firenz, forenz, how do you pronounce that? It's a Filbert brush, I really like this kind of paintbrush. I also got another Firenz round brush. This is also a level 3. I also got a Artists' Loft Vienna brush and I really love these. This is a wash brush, it's half an inch and it looks like that so that's like, my second favorite brush. Next up, we have some paint! This is my favorite paint in the whole entirety of the entire world. This is Liquitex heavy body acrylic so I got some cadmium-free yellow, I also got a cerulean blue who - blue hoo? Whoo-hoo. Blue HUE. This is just one of my favorite colors to use. I love blues, I love greens and I love yellows in my paintings and it just, it's very pretty, looks like that. I think these were buy one, get one half off. I'm pretty sure I also got an ultramarine blue which looks like this. This is one of my also favorite shades of blue to use, it's a little bit darker, but quite bright still. Next up, I got a vivid lime green which looks like this and I really really love, my favorite shade of all time is actually yellow green. I also got a light emerald green, which is quite a bright green but also very pretty as you can see and lastly I got a light blue permanent because just blues and greens and yellows together, they're just so pretty and look at that! That is really nice, I like that a lot. So what I'm gonna do, in my little tote bag, I'm gonna stick my paintbrushes into my tote bag as well. This thing holds a lot of stuff. There we go. I'm off to work! I can put all four canvases, all my paints and paintbrushes in there. I also bought myself a 12 x 12 canvas, which I think is what I'm going to actually paint on today. So that's everything I had to show you today, thank you again to Michael's for allowing me to buy this stuff and also for sponsoring today's video but I think it's about time we got started painting. So let's get started. So I decided to go with a 12 x 12 canvas for this painting because it was a slightly bigger size and also square and I'm not sure if it's because it's nice and symmetrical or I have an affinity for squares, but I just like square canvases, I think they're really fun to paint on. Do you like my little paint organizer? I need to paint on the lid so I know which color is which but I was just really tired of not finding a way to nicely store my paints, just not shoved in a drawer somewhere. So I made this myself. If anyone wants the tutorial of it, let me know. Here's one of those little poisonous bag things I was scared of as a kid. So I have some golden brand Gesso. No particular reason why I wanted to use this one, I just couldn't find the other one. And I also apologize too for the terrible lighting at the moment, I noticed a few minutes into filming and spent about 15 minutes trying to fix it. I opened the gesso and it had some sort of weird skin on it and then I got my hands covered in paint before I even began painting so what's new? This is, welcome to my life. So these canvases are pre-Gessoed, but I always like to Gesso them anyway, especially if I'm gonna be selling a piece, I just like to paint them because it just makes the surface easier to paint on in my personal opinion. I also use the inside cardboard from the canvas as a palette because we're all for reusing things. Now, I started off by painting the entire canvas a deep gray color and I wanted to paint some lily pads because I just think that looks really pretty against the dark water, like a nice bright green against dark water. I also wanted to put a bear in there, but - shh! I didn't tell you that! Next task was the lily pads and this was the fun part because most lily pads are not perfect circles, so this is where my lack of circle drawing abilities has really shined. So to get the lily pad color, I mixed some of the yellow-green with some light blue to get some varying shades. I also added a little bit of red to the green to give it a little bit more of a browned look in some spots like some lily pads tend to have. *Music* I also try to give the vibe that some parts of the lilypad were actually sinking so I used a slightly lighter color than the water to make it look like that or at least I tried to make it look like that. Then it was time to add the best part: a brown lily pad. Just kidding! It's a bear. What did you expect? This is me. I've not drawn a bear in a while so I wanted to draw one in the water. I didn't have a reference picture for this particular angle of a bear, so I kind of just, I kind of winged it the best I could. I was trying to make him like a big bear but then I decided I was gonna make him a baby bear instead. So I just repainted his head a few times to try and get the size right and I have this bear character called Arthur if you didn't know that I just, I love to draw bears and his name's Arthur so that's, that's just my thing. I like, I like painting bears. I gave him a little snout - is that what you call the bear nose? Snout, I gave him a nose. His eyeballs looked a little bit weird at first cause I kind of just used them as placeholders at the time being but I ended up fixing them more towards the end. Now, I'm not sure why none of the paint drops actually filmed, but basically I wanted to have rain droplets on the water to show that it was raining and that's why the water was so dark. I fairly enjoyed painting this though because it was different to what I normally do, I actually kind of did a semi-similar piece to this a couple years back digitally but I felt this one was kind of more enjoyable than that one and definitely very fun to do. And again, if you would like to own this original piece, it will be up on my website and I'll be selling 250 limited edition signed prints of this too, so check out the link in the description because once they're gone, they will be gone. Also, yes, that's his little butt sticking out. Um, he's, he's, he's got a butt. A bear butt. Oh, that was - *Laughs* He's got a bare butt! But I just want to thank Michael's again for sponsoring this video and allowing me to buy some new canvases and paints to work with, I love Michael's a lot, I have for years and genuinely getting to work with Michael's is such a complete dream for me because I used to go there when I was like 9 and 10 years old and just wanted to buy everything so I'm really very grateful that not only do they want to work with me but they want to show me their merchandise and for me to show their merchandise... So it's just, it's always the place I go to for art supplies and film with my friends for videos and I'm just very very grateful for that. So this is how the piece turned out. I really hope that you liked it, I thoroughly enjoyed it because it was a little bit different and very very fun. So be sure to check out our print now if you like it too, before they sell out and yes. Thank you so much for watching this video, I really really hope that you enjoyed it, let me know in the comments down below what you thought and don't forget to subscribe and give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, take care of yourselves and I will see you in the next video.
