ARTIST CONFIDENCE? VAN LIFE? HAIR? ART PROCESS? IMPOSTER SYNDROME? YOUTUBE? PATREON? It's Q&A time!

so good morning i'm just on my way to the studio this morning it's about 8 30 i think and i thought i will start answering some of the questions that i've had coming in and i thought i would start with some really easy questions because i've had loads of questions about my doggies my dungarees and also my hair and my knitted gloves so i thought i'd start with a sort of clothing and hair questions because they're easy for me to answer and i can just drive along and chat away to you so let's start with my dungarees so where did i get my dungarees from i've had my dungarees for over 20 years actually and i think originally they came from a shop called h m but i can't actually remember um there was a chunk of time where i didn't wear them when i was living in the band because it i just didn't need to because i was working really small um with my artwork so i didn't need something to protect my clothing but then when i got my studio back and we kind of settled here and put some roots down again i did start wearing them again so i haven't been wearing them non-stop for that amount of time or they probably would have worn out and got holes in and things like that so even though it sounds like a long time there was a chunk of time where they weren't actually being used um but i remember painting our first van the inside of the first van and i definitely have got a photograph of myself with these on and that would have been about 2012. something like that and i've had them i kind of traced it back to houses so i've had i think i've had them over 20 years anyway so that answers that one so let's move on to hair is my hair natural and why did i and if it is why did i decide to let it go gray so those are the questions i've had around my hair my hair is natural apart from a chunk at the ends which is still growing out where i used to put hair dye on it um but the rest of it is completely natural and i decided to go gray about four years ago but then two years before that i was pondering on whether to do it or not so i thought really really carefully um because obviously it's a big change um especially for me or anyone else with really really dark hair so i've got a brother one brother and myself were born with really really dark hair almost black and then the rest of my siblings had really nice chestnut dark brown hair so still dark but i was really dark i mean my eyebrows are as dark as i was so that's how dark i was so i wasn't black or but i was really really dark brown so it was a massive change because i knew that every four or five weeks when i used to put hair color on my roots those roots were really really light um so i knew it was going to be a big difference to my my look if you like and i kind of defined myself as well my identity with my dark hair so anyway this is a whole long story which i won't go into now because i'll probably do a whole video on it if you want me to but suffice to say now it took me a good couple of years to actually decide that i wanted to do it and then once i started um the hardest part was the first five months for me and then once i passed that time um i you know started to get more excited about what was coming through but it did look a bit funny at first and i was really nervous about what i was going to get so there that was it i was very nervous um as well but i was determined and i'd made my mind up and i was really happy to go natural not have to put horrible hair dye on my hair which was burning my hair um and also putting it down into the into the water water system into mother earth so there was a lot going on in my mind and a lot of reasons and yeah yeah my hair was really long and um i didn't know quite how to transition but i just went cold turkey and i've just been trimming my hair as i've gone along i mean in lockdown i've chopped off about 12 inches um and yeah that chops off the dyed bits for me so gradually it's growing out and now it just kind of blends into the ends it almost reminds me of a feather i don't know anyway that's my hair um so yeah moving on to my my gloves my fingerless gloves i basically got given those from a lady who's local or she was local i don't think she is now and she spins her own wool merino wools and silks and dyes it all with natural dyes and then knits it so they're absolutely beautiful they've actually got holes in them now and i was given them and they were to keep my hands warm because i have raynor's disease which means that my fingers and toes go numb and it's really painful and really difficult to get on with what i need to get on with um and even though they're fingerless you might think oh it's not going to help your fingers it does actually really help so that's why i wear them and then if it's really cold that's why i've got these thick mitts on right now because once my hands and fingers get cold and start going blue and numb it's really hard for me to get them back um unless i've got like warm hot running water or a hot water bottle um so i don't have that in the studio so i could put them under the hand dryer i've done that before so that's why i wear them and they're not hand knitted but they are handmade but not by me if that makes sense okay so that's the donkey for hair and the gloves and i will come back to you maybe from the studio with a few more questions when i get in so i'm just looking up some questions on here on a sec so let's move on to a trickier question then i have been asked a couple of times um a question and it's about confidence and imposter syndrome so were you always that confident that your art is art and worth selling and if not what made you realize this and a related question i'd love to know how you navigate doubt and imposter syndrome how do you keep motivated as an artist thanks so much for sharing um this is tricky um hmm so i i'm not really familiar with the term imposter syndrome so i looked it up um when i think of the word imposter i think of those like old silly movies like the count of monte cristo you know like it's an imposter but i get it um and the self-doubt thing is always going to be there i think for for us because we're human beings and it's part of being human um to have that self-doubt um usually most of us not everybody obviously but everybody i've ever met has experienced self-doubt self-criticism i certainly do um how did i know that my art was art um that's a really really tricky question i guess from being really really young i've always drawn and painted um i started off usually doing cute little girls like the um holly hobbies um that's why i think i like the little cute faces um and a couple of other betsy old cots and kate green away and people like that um and i was really really interested in japanese art as well as a child geisha girls i used to draw a lot of geishas um and so i guess i've always felt um i'm an artist um so i've always been lucky i guess to feel that now does that mean that um i love everything that i create no i don't i have got a pile of really really rubbish paintings right there staring at me every day but i know that without going through that process i wouldn't end up with things that i do like so it's all part of my process for me um and i try not to be super critical when things aren't going my way i just take a break and that's partly why i take so long to complete a painting as well so i give it time to breathe and to percolate so that my creative process is actually quite slow um i think the best piece of advice about impostor syndrome which i i know works is to just be yourself and then how can you possibly be an imposter and if you do um have successes in your life um perhaps instead of saying oh i was just lucky uh or it's just down to that situation or this situation you can actually say well that was just me being me and no one else could have possibly done it like that um and then therefore you can never be an imposter because you're just being used so i guess the process of learning to be you more you than you are now if you're not feeling like yourself other people have an opinion of of us and we have an opinion of ourselves and then we have the person that we wish we were um perhaps we don't behave in ways that we love every single time and we wish we'd behaved in a different way and things like that so there's all these levels of self um i could get very psychological here so i won't get too deep but i think you know what i mean when i'm talking about like really center in yourself and find out who you are what your natural born gifts are so for example for me i've always been a good communicator um so this is the perfect thing for me having a youtube channel and i've always been a natural teacher as well because i've always been quite bossy um as a child i was very bossy and so that's obviously a useful skill when you are teaching um so yeah things that you are born naturally with and really get in touch with yourself and again i'll bring up the journaling because that for me really helped me while i was traveling to really dive really deep into who i was what my gifts were and and how i wanted to shine them out into into the world so i hope that makes sense so staying on the topic of art then do you believe you would have become a different in your expression of art and more capable skilled than when you would have not studied it um hmm so i studied 1993 to 96 i did my art degree and the year before that i did my art foundation um do i feel more capable and skilled i guess i learned things on my degree that i wouldn't have learned just studying it on my own at that time i think that now we've got youtube and lots of artists on patreon and things like that so there are artists sharing their process um so i think you can easily be a professional artist without a degree um without any shadow of a doubt um back in 93 to 96 um i think it really helped me to be on a sort of quite loosely structured course i also had some fantastic tutors um and also a couple of really really bad ones that i didn't get on with at all um and i didn't agree with their critiques as well so that really helped push me forward um so yes i do think it helped me and i do think it helped me learn more formal elements about art art making and it also gave me the opportunity to work side by side with lots of other artists in quite a small studio situation and working side by side these creatives every day that were going through similar challenges to me i learned just as much from being around them and watching and learning and talking and sharing with with them as i did um from my tutors so yeah it was a it was a good process for me but um if you are a self-taught artist or you are planning to do art you don't want to do a qualification i think these days you don't need to if that makes sense you can always research things online look on youtube and find inspiring artists that you love and learn from them so another question here is about how i choose my projects um how and why did you choose the art nouveau project could you please tell us more about the project finding process how do you choose your projects um so i choose projects that i want to do basically and i was running an art class before the whole lockdown show started and i'd been running the art class for just over a year here twice a week i did like an evening class and i did a day class um and it was quite a small class and i got to know the people really really well i absolutely loved it and every six to eight weeks or so i would change projects so that we didn't become stale and just kind of get on with what we were doing um i'd inject a new um project into the class and so that's how i started sort of building projects but i think before that even when i didn't run a class i used to set myself projects anyway i think that's a really good way to um to keep improving and keep pushing yourself as an artist is to set yourself little challenges and projects so i've been doing that the whole time yeah i sort of when i set up the art class i created a massive list of projects i'd like to dip into and bring into the art class so i had quite a long list um the art nouveau came about because i love art nouveau i love the whole movement and i love to lose latrek if you've seen other videos you'll know i really love to lose the trek um and yeah so it just sort of blossoms out of my own inspiration wherever i'm excited um if you like so if something excites me and i want to explore something deeper then i create a project around it um and because i am an artist and i'm a teacher um it seemed the natural way to go really to start teaching the projects that i was i was doing myself um and and just giving it a go and seeing if people enjoyed that um and obviously if you don't try things you don't know and it worked really well i absolutely loved it and i met some wonderful people as well so i hope that answers that question i'm curious to know if you have any daily creative practices that you use often in your life thank you so much for creating these wonderful videos oh that's really nice tiffany um i do have daily um creative practices yes um i do have a video called sacred art rituals or something like that i'll link that somewhere and that shares with you my creative practice i like to use my my oracle cards i like crystals i like a morning drink i like nice aromas so i use aromatherapy and incense fairy lights set the scene um when i was in my home studio i made sure that my that my desk and my space was neat because that was part of um coming in in the morning and being really inspired into this lovely space i like to have lots of plants around me um yeah so yes there are things i do and there is that video that goes into it a little bit more so again if you if you haven't seen that that might be um interesting for you but i do i do other things in my in my morning as well that really work for me like my morning yoga um really stretching out my body so that i feel awake and alive um is really really important to me um and yeah getting out into nature and fresh air and things like that so so well-being and health is a big part of my process um and working towards bettering my well-being and health routines is really important to me and that obviously has an impact on my entire life so whether it's making art or doing other things it's obviously how good you feel if you're feeling good then everything else sort of feels good even the bad stuff doesn't feel so bad if that makes sense so moving on to printing i've had quite a few questions about where i get my prints done um why i don't outsource why i don't have my own printer how i make my stickers i've only just started making stickers so i'm no expert on stickers that's for sure but i will tell you what i've been doing um and also where i post my work for my etsy shop to give my work exposure um so what machine did you use to cut those stickers do you print out your own prints and if so which printer do you use so i didn't print my own stickers and i didn't cut them out myself i outsourced them online and basically i do the same with my prints so i use a local printing company that i can go and visit or at least i could before lockdowns and actually talk to them touch the papers get some test prints and things like that it's a long process or it has been for me getting my prints right but that way i create a relationship where i've actually met and talked to somebody and i can actually touch the paper which is really important to me as well um and also it supports local businesses so it feels like a win-win for me why don't i have my own printer the honest answer to that is i can't afford a really really good printer that would give me the quality i want um maybe one day i will um but for now i think you know i'm the painter and then that's my area of expertise but i'm not an expert at printing so i'll leave that to the experts at that if that makes sense and then that way i get a really professional result that i'm happy with um and i'm supporting local businesses so yeah that's the way i do it um how do i get my images um my partner james i'm so lucky he's got an amazing camera and he's a really good photographer and he sets up and does all the colour balancing and things like that as well because he's a whiz on photoshop so he gets them looking really really nice and then we get test prints done um so he sends the file to the printers and we get test prints done and then we review them and then come back to the printer etc so there's a bit of coming and going in in that process so asks what is your process in creating art and i've got another similar question um how how did it how long did it take you to find your style so my process for making art is getting inspired so finding some inspiration whether it be online pinterest um images i've gathered on unsplash.com or things that have just come out of my head um often i'll sketch just out of my imagination and then for the more formal elements i might look up source material for bodies and let limbs and feet and hands and things like that or i might take a photograph of my hands in certain positions to get what i want and then i do a drawing or several drawings i'm going through this process in the art nouveau project so at the moment we've just done some drawings and then the next step is some color studies so putting some color combinations down and seeing if they work and things like that i also like to photograph my work and sometimes i work on it on procreate to um have a look at what certain things would look like without me um doing it on the painting itself um and then i so on the top of my drawing i think after that i use watercolors so i put some light layers down and maybe some collage and then i use my prismacolor pencils over the top of that and then i go in with acrylic or gouache paint sometimes i've been using a bit of oils as well recently and then i just continue with my layering process until i'm happy with the result so let's show you an example for example i don't know if you can see that very well let's put that down there yeah so you can see here um there's collage bits and then painted and prisma colors lots and lots of layers so i work quite slowly particularly towards the end of the painting where i have lots of thinking time and i step back and give myself a breathing space from the painting and sit and have a cup of tea with her and see what she requires before finishing and i think finishing a painting for me and also a lot of other artists it's it's definitely the hardest part because that's where you're making the final decisions um and obviously once it's down it's down so you can overwork something and i have frequently that's happened to me i've overworked something and it just it's really hard to get to get back that freshness um so finishing a painting for me is the most challenging part so let me know if you feel the same way about finishing your pieces as well so i'll show you another couple of paintings as well so you can see there are collage-y bits can you see that i like to incorporate words and some writing so around her there is some really faint writing in pencil and see what else i've got here sometimes i use like dripping um see some collage elements here so it's the case after my early layers basically i just keep going with the same materials and until i'm happy um so i'm playing push pushing back certain things and pulling forward other things and then changing that and building contrast into it as well um and then sometimes i'm quite subtle so she looks quite nice subtle so i left her without too much contrast um yeah and most of these paintings are completely out of my imagination i didn't have source material for them um but then like i said a minute ago i do dip back into figures if i need to be more precise with my drawing so the other thing that i've been asked quite a lot as well is how did i find my style that's a really interesting question um just by creating i think um and i don't even feel like i've finalized my style now even though i look at my work and it and it looks like it's from the same person and it feels like me and it's come from me um and it is my style but at the same time i'm also a huge huge abstract painter as well and when i did my degree my degree was in abstract painting i did tons and tons of massive oil paints abstract and i absolutely love them and quite recently the last couple of months i've been really really drawn to going back into abstract so i'll be giving that a try um at some point in the future um dipping back into abstract and seeing how that goes for me and maybe bringing elements of the figurative work i've been doing for the last 10 years or so maybe 11 or 12 years so yeah i've been figurative for about that long but i do from time to time do abstract pieces especially in my journals and i really enjoy them so i'm thinking i might do some abstract painting some larger ones um and see how they go so yeah look out for that but i i really don't think that there is that defining moment where we find our style oh that's it i've got it i feel like it's a constant work in progress and a constant evolution and a constant exploration and it's a curiosity to like dive deeper into what what really excites you and i think that's where you find it and the other thing that comes into that which is really important is regular practice because if you're not making art or creating whatever it is you create you're not going to find your style you have to do it regularly and then things will emerge and you will start to see it and you'll start to notice what excites you um i think one of the best pieces of advice i ever got about finding style was to look around at other artists that you like so for me maybe artists on instagram or pinterest or prince or photographers or the art nouveau project i love klimt i love to lose latrek i love picasso i love matisse so all the artists that i love and then pull out the things that you love about that particular artist so oh i love matisse's boldness i love picasso's um loose expressive lines i love klimp's use of gold and black and pattern and texture and pull out the things that you love and make a list and then have a look at the list because that list contains your style your identity as a creator as an artist if you like so yeah that that's probably where i'd start or you can do that process at any point in your creative journey so emma says i'd love to know more about when you ran away and lived in a van if that's possible how did you manage to do your art then and how it might have inspired your art or the way you do things well it definitely did change the way i did things because obviously i've got a lot less space so where to start here then um basically i was living with james in a house that we bought it was a lovely lovely house and we were both um full-time employed i was teaching and i began to get disillusioned with my life basically so i probably hit about 40 41 42 and i felt very dissatisfied with what i was doing um i love love teaching and i take my hats off to all the teachers out there it's such an overwhelmingly um busy job um i will be honest i began to burn out i didn't have the energy or the the capacity to bring myself 100 in the classroom for those children and it didn't feel like it was worth doing if i couldn't do that there was so much pressure so many inspections internal inspections ofsted inspections pressure to do jobs outside the classroom that really took your focus off the classroom you know hours and hours of marking when you got home hours and hours of paperwork hours and hours of planning and assessments um late parents evenings all of it um it was really a two-man job for a one for one person and it was getting worse and worse and i don't know what it's like now for people but i do take take absolutely take my hats off to all the teachers out there because it's a really really challenging job exhausting job so that's why i left the teaching and then i began making art again i began painting i began art journaling um i'd never art journal before so that was around 2010 i started doing that writing and collaging and painting in a journal and loving that and then we both began to feel instead of feeling like really secure and safe having this house we both began to feel really trapped um so whether it was midlife crisis um uranus return at that time of our lives um i don't know i don't know what it was but we both began to feel the same about this urge to run away um and we found a van a really small van and it was half kitted out there was like a bed in it and stuff and james put in a little tiny teeny tiny kitchen and we painted it and um made it into a little cosy space and we started going to festivals in it loved it had a little awning outside and little picnic rug on the floor with some cushions and just absolutely adored the outdoor living um and so that sort of built the idea up for running away in it so that's what we did we sold our house i think we had a fixed-rate mortgage for five years so we were kind of stuck in that mortgage for five years and as soon as that period of time ended we put the house on the market and it sold within six days because it was such a lovely house it was um yeah my dream house so it was really hard to let go of but at the same time i knew i didn't want to stay so it was probably one of the hardest decisions of my life to actually leave that house but once i let go of it um i started decorating it cleaning it decluttering it and preparing for our grand journey um yeah once i'd let go of it i felt really um good about that decision so i knew i'd made the right decision so i could probably talk a lot more about um running away in the van but i i guess it's enough to briefly stay here we didn't have a plan we didn't know where we were going our first stop was paris that's all we knew and we were going to head towards warmer climates because it was october november time of 2013 i believe and we ended up in the beautiful island of crete and that was an amazing amazing six months living in crete um but yeah that's maybe a video and some stories for another video so i'm going to take a little break now because i'm really really thirsty and i'm going to have my orange juice and i've got to get on with some of my art projects as well um and get filming for that so yeah hopefully i've answered these questions okay um and i've not wendy waffle too much i'm not sure how long this video is going to be um but just um yeah having a little break now so good morning it's now wednesday morning i'm just on my way into the studio now i thought i'd um continue with the q a on the way in and i missed part of a question yesterday where it was the last question and it was like two parts and there was a the second part was how had my art changed and how did i manage to do art while we were traveling in a van um it wasn't easy especially because i'm mixed media so i'm not just like pencils or watercolors or something like that i like a lot of different art supplies um so the first set of travels because basically we went away from for the first year um and i think i had another question about what we did with our stuff we sold over 50 of our stuff and stored the rest for the first year so the first time we went away we were in quite a small van and i had a teeny tiny little vanity vintage suitcase and i filled that with my art supplies and that's all i took but very quickly that became the suitcase and another box um so it doubled very quickly but i stashed it away under the bed in the van and then got it out when i needed to um to create and it also gave me like a little table to work on as well so i could sit on the on the bed in the van and work on there um it had like a lift up desk a lift up lid sorry and a pocket so i used to put my pencils and things i was using and i didn't really use a lot of wet media for glue i was using um just a glue stitch so i simplified um my art supplies and i had a very small um set of collage uh materials as well i really really struggled to select my collage materials for the travels so then we came back to the uk after a year to mot the van and also to get rid of most of our stuff so we decided that we didn't want to keep our stuff so we went through it all and and skinned it down again and um and this time we bought a bigger van that was he was called big vic and james kitted him out um and i took a vintage suitcase the next size up if you like full of art supplies and that felt really really luxurious because i knew i'd have a little table to work at in that van so we had a little dinette and a little kitchen and even a little private toilet in that van so it felt a real step up in in the world if you like of van life um and it was easier in that van but obviously i still had to pack away everything at the end of an art session because then i'd be cooking dinner or whatever and i couldn't leave anything out in the morning so it was always a case of right i want to create art i've got to get all my stuff out and then i've got to put all my stuff away after the session and it did prevent excuse me it did prevent me from um creating sometimes have to be honest sometimes i just couldn't be bothered so on days where i really couldn't be bothered i had a little um sketchbook and my pencil with a rubber on the end a mechanical pencil and i used that and i simplified and i did um some drawings um so that made it really easy and i also had um a tray just a normal tray quite a large one and so i could put all my art supplies pencils and things like that on that and i could work on the bed and then very quickly stash that away somewhere and then put it away properly when we were when we were traveling when we were moving around so a tray became my best friend as well and then we did do some um house sitting as well so we did longer term house sits in between our van travels in europe and when we had a house sit i tended to use my yoga mat as my studio so i keep my yoga mat out so i've had something to sit on often in europe the floors are tiled and hard so you need something to sit on so i put my yoga mat down and maybe one of my bed pillows and then i would use that to spread out all my stuff and have a little studio on the floor if you like yeah so that's how i kind of managed it when we upgraded our van again we got um a 25 26 year old vintage heimer and he was called helmut so the first van we had was called don and the second band we had was called big vic and then we had helmut now helmut was a real stack up in the world um super duper kitties out central heating systems you know a shower um everything so so so much more luxury and helmet had this amazing front and when we were stationary and not traveling i would use the whole of the front cabin as my studio and it was this amazing it was like a big desk so i'd sit in the passenger seat and i could leave that stuff out now that was life-changing um and then at one point james actually went away he went to holland for a weekend and i had the van to myself and that that was really good because i could leave my stuff out even if it was on the table because i could use half the table for my art stuff and then use it for and use the other half of the table for for eating and things like that so yeah i managed i improvised and compromised a lot but what i did find um the conclusion of all that was i art journaled my way through a self-transformational process that was absolutely mind-blowing and life-changing and and that's why i truly believe in the art journaling process and journaling process as a way to support our well-being mental health and to further our self-improvement there's always there's always things we can do to improve there's always things we can do to change there's always things we can do to move in a direction of joy and our happiness and so right from being when i was back in the house and i began my journaling journey that's not easy to say um yeah that supported me through letting go of my house through the massive change through the difficulties of traveling um because it was a very unsettling time for me as well as fun and adventurous perhaps i can do a video about that if you guys are interested i can do um i haven't got any video footage but i do have a lot of photographs so i could do like a little story of that in another video um at the time i wasn't vlogging i was blogging so there is a blog i think it's taken down now in fact it is but i could access the blog and i'm thinking of making like a a book out of it one day um to to tell the story of my travels but but yeah the the art journaling journey was a massive part of that and because it wasn't creating these finished paintings there wasn't any pressure on me while i was creating while i was traveling um so that's it really i i could talk about that a lot more i'm sure you could believe that i could so that gives you a brief overview of my of my process while we were traveling and it was fun and it was tough at times but it was also the biggest adventure and i wouldn't change it for the world and i got to know james so well and he got to know me so well and yeah it brought us very very close um not just in terms of space but also um closeness um to each other so it was a beautiful experience um yeah maybe i'll go into that another time all right gonna get to the studio now and i will catch up when we get there so i'm just looking now to see what questions there are um i was trying to get them in kind of categories but i think i've missed a few so i might be jumping around a little bit and i won't be able to answer them all i'm really sorry so i'll just answer a few more um otherwise this video is going to be hours long with me waffling and it's going to be really boring so um i wonder this is deborah i wondered what inspired you to do your youtube as you started in 2017 and stopped when did you start again what do you think it has done for you and why do you think it's grown so quickly how did that happen um i have no idea i really don't know and to answer the first part of the question then why did i start in 2017 i was originally going to start my youtube channel in 2017 so three years ago in the summer and i was house sitting with james in land dude no and i don't know why but i just decided i wanted to take everything online i was still in the traveling mode even though we were house sitting we hadn't landed anywhere yet and yeah i decided that i wanted to start making videos i started my freedom journaling group on facebook and i started posting videos in there and that was growing um slowly and then i thought i could do some youtube as well and i did put a few a couple of videos up just little ones there's one of me still up reading a poem that i wrote while i was in london no and the reason i stopped doing youtube then um i think i only uploaded three videos was because i got shy basically i wasn't ready so i just stopped and went back into my cocoon and then thought well if i'm ready again i can do it again and if not i won't um and the idea back then was to set up a youtube start a patreon page but again i just you know i felt too shy too nervous i felt the fear of jumping out there of showing myself if you like um so that that's why i didn't do the youtube at that time and then i started again during lockdown so end of june beginning of july is when i did my first proper youtube video um i did three or four other uploads in lockdown before that that were just like three two or three minute little clips um but it was at the end of june or beginning of july um i did my first proper upload i think it was a 10 minute video um and then after that i've just been uploading every week onto youtube and i'm really loving it and enjoying it and part of the reason i started doing the youtube in lockdown was because i had set up my patreon page right at the beginning of lockdown so because i've been teaching an in-person class before lockdown i had a number of people to contact to say would you like to join my patreon i'm going to do the class online while the lock down is going on i obviously needed to maintain an income i couldn't work at the shop i'd been working at because all the shops were closed so i lost all my income so i had to sort of pick myself up quite quickly and think what can i do to adapt um and so i had quite a number of students that i'd had in my in person art class in my patreon and i ran it like that and because i've been making videos in there since the march time um i i learned how to edit a little bit and i'd learn how to video a little bit not brilliantly i was still really on a steep learning curve and there was a lot to learn but i had enough confidence with my skills by that point um by july to to set up the youtube and it wasn't really a plan i hadn't planned to do the youtube um why do i think it's grown so quickly i really don't know i have no idea um i don't understand algorithm or anything like that i haven't done anything behind the scenes to you know push my videos in any way um i'm not even sure there is a way to do that but yeah it has grown really fast and i'm absolutely enjoying the journey with communicating with all of you and the way that you communicate with each other as well so that is a big joy for me which is unexpected and um yeah really exciting so thank you um how old are you i'm 50. i'm 50 years old i turned 50 milestone birthday uh during lockdown um had the best birthday of my life to date we were going to go to granada for 10 days and we booked it all before lockdown obviously we couldn't go um but the joyful part for me was that my daughter and son-in-law were staying with us so i had the most amazing amazing birthday and i've got a question from sweden and i had to google um one of the words so they didn't know what it was but it was can you recommend a table staphylie i've said that completely wrong i know there's yours in the background and basically it's an easel so it's this easel i think that you're talking about um and i don't know what kind it is let's have a look whether it's got a name on it that i can read uh i don't see one there's so much paint on it no but it this is it it's kind of like this design it has pivots so that you can lean it forwards and back and and this goes up and down and this goes up and down and i have two of these because if i'm doing a long landscape type painting that's quite big i can lay like i think you've seen the mermaid um on laid across the two um but the main thing i use as an easel is these boards behind me so basically it's like a a wall with a with a table um at the front and i use that as my easel basically i prefer it to an easel because i've got more wall space to just put my stuff up and also splash and make a mess because as i've said in previous videos i am quite a messy worker so that's what i use um for my easel this is a good one is your green smoothie awful or do you like it how do you do it no my green smoothie is not awful i really love it and i keep my recipe really simple my recipe is in another of the videos i basically simplified my um my recipe about two years ago but i generally put mineral water some greens so that could be kale it could be spinach it's good to mix up your greens and change them around a little bit um and bananas are a big staple of mine because they're nice and calorific so it keeps you full um and spirulina maca and that's often it in there sometimes i put some frozen strawberries in as well because that makes them really sweet and even a bit of almond essence as well i've been putting in sometimes a bit of ginger it's very good for us so yeah really simple and just put it all in the blender and blend it up so not very exciting in the smoothie department really but i find it delicious um yeah when you went to create a page on patreon did you pick podcasts or videos and then other things i'm just trying to decide myself i'm an artist i have been slow as i've just been getting over my fear of myself and the internet lots of tech to figure out um when i decided to set the patreon up um so yeah as i've explained a minute ago it wasn't really just to set the patreon up to as a support me artist page it was actually set up originally as um a more traditional art class that i had been teaching in person it has evolved into a little bit of both where i do you know obviously behind the scenes private vlog type things as well and just kind of make art with me quite casually and it's um it's a bit more intimate and a lot more laid back um and obviously i share my art making process in more detail over on the patreon and answer questions and things like that because that's how i'm making a living that's how i'm earning my money to pay my bills so obviously it's a little bit different for me in the sense i didn't just set the patreon page up as an artist to support pledging system and then what happened a lot of my attendees in the patreon they went back to work when the lockdown finished so they dropped out and as that was happening um i was thinking maybe i i stopped the patreon page but then it started to pick up again with people who i didn't know because i'm connecting with people on social media and here on youtube so that started to pick that up how i decided whether to do podcasts and videos i sat down and thought for for many weeks to be honest to set it up and it has evolved and it's continuing to evolve where yeah where now i can talk to the people who are on the patreon page um so example on monday i did a poll and said you know what kind of content would you like to see and then they get to vote on it and things like that so for me my patron and i'm not experienced because i've only been on there a little while so i don't feel qualified to advise anyone about patreon i personally like the platform because it allows people to dip in and out there's no tie-in time and it allows you to create little offerings for quite good value so maybe you'd get more for your money than if you went to a traditional class or you bought a course it allows you to peek in to see if you like it it allows you to support the artist when you haven't got much funding yourself because there's always like a little low tier uh often on artist page and creators pages um and so i really like the platform and i think it's quite simple for for both the patrons and the creator to use so yeah personally i like it but um yeah it may not be for everybody um it depends i think there's other ways you can do it now as well but yeah i liked it because it was simple for me to be able to upload whatever content i decided whether it was podcast or video so i haven't waffled about that too much anyway um did the mermaid tell i didn't see her in the last studio tour no she's over there i had to demote her because my packing table was needed uh for packing orders so i had to clear all the painty stuff off and move her at the moment and i still haven't had time to order my oil paints um so she's not she's not going to be moving forward anytime soon and as i say i'm not in a rush with finishing my paintings anyway but she's not soldiers don't there so random question then am i going to be making any of more of my earrings i think she means these ones they're all sold out at the moment because the shop went crazy and i am going to be making more earrings yes um but i'm not sure when and i don't think it's going to be for christmas it's probably going to be after because i thought i'm so busy right now um but yeah i will i will make some more jewelry i've got to make some more cabochons and i've got to make some more earrings as well and i'll probably do some more feather earrings as well because i really like working with feathers and is there anything that you don't like about having a youtube channel um i guess there's always going to be positives and negatives with things i really love having my youtube channel i feel that i can really express myself it's a really unique way for me to connect with you guys that obviously i haven't tried before so it's really new to me and i'm really enjoying it it's a fantastic way to express yourself um and i love editing and i love creating videos and adding music and all that kind of stuff that's a real um creative process for me and i love all that it's almost like i think about it in layers like i do my paintings and and that's really unexpected because i wasn't expecting to really enjoy making the videos and edit and editing etc sometimes the editing becomes a bit boring so that can be a bit of a negative but most of the time i can kind of get through those little bits and then get get excited about each video because i do put my heart and soul into them and i think that's probably why my channel's grown so much because i really do put a lot into my videos um so maybe that's why i don't really know um so negative aspects then um i haven't had any nasty comments or anything like that i've had i've had a few people trying to advertise their channels in the comments um you know when someone makes a comment because they want other people to go to their channel and subscribe and that kind of thing um so i don't really love that um but it's not really a negative comment or anyone having a go at me so that's been good um i guess now and again there may be um i don't know trolls uh trolling my channel or they might leave some nasty comments um i shall just delete and block i shall try not to take it to heart so we'll face that bridge when we come to it if we come to it um anything else i don't like the youtube um no i can't think of anything else that i don't like about doing the youtube so i think that's about it on the questions um and i don't want to make this video too long and waffle too much so i will leave it there for now but if i didn't answer your question i'm really really sorry i will do another q a at some point and so then you can always ask me then um and yeah if you've got anything that you'd like me to make a video on after hearing the answers to my questions something that you maybe would like to me to expand on um then do please leave me a comment and ask me down below this video and i'll see what i can do i'll put it on my video making list whether it's van life or hair or anything really to do with um yeah what we've been talking about so it's been really fun chatting to you and opening up a little bit more about you know some of the things that perhaps you have been wondering about and some of the things perhaps a little bit more personal to me so i hope you feel you've got to know me a little bit better and i've had a lot of fun making this video and i will see you in the next one have a really great week try and keep your light bright and your joy high and i will see you in the next one bye for now so you

Channel: The Unexpected Gypsy

Views: 56,188

Rating: 4.9793386 out of 5

Keywords: art tutorials, mixed media art, art for mental health, mixed media layers, art for self care, mixed media art journals, mixedmediapainting, lockdownart, new youtubers 2020, art journaling, moleskine sketchbook, sketchbook journals, art rituals, patreon, artist studio, self care, artist confidence, imposter syndrome, do i need to go to art school, grey hair transition, how do i print my artwork, how do i find my style as an artist, van life, pros and cons of youtube channel

Id: geon2_Z-wxE

Length: 54min 27sec (3267 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020