STUDIO VLOG n.38: TESTING GIANT A3 MOLESKINE SKETCHBOOK

so so hey guys welcome back to bits of an artist's life this is sandy i am thrilled that you guys liked last week's art haul i heard from so many of you guys and there's a lot of you guys that are new here so i wanted to say welcome also i had a chunk of footage from last week that was supposed to be in last week's video but the video got kind of long so if i'm going to pull that out and put it in this week's video i wanted to test out that paper from the large moleskine a3 sketchbooks for you guys so i did a painting in that sketchbook and i took one of mary fedden's paintings and made it my own but i painted in that sketchbook really testing out the paper so i wanted to show that to you guys so we're going to do that in this video then at the end of the video i wanted to share a couple of exciting things that have gone on and are going to be going on but things that i wanted to tell you about okay i have heard from so many of y'all that y'all have bought the a3 jumbo sketchbook i mean so many of y'all that i'm kind of like did y'all save me any i'm glad i've got two because i have a feeling there are like none left that's okay you guys are enjoying them here's the other thing i've been hearing from a ton of you guys on that you're excited about the sketchbook but you're nervous about it because it's big i'm sure it's partly because it's big and partly also it's it's not like it's super cheap right but listen guys you cannot be fearful of that you've got to just get in there and just you've got to you've got to remember it's just a sketchbook and listen it's really well priced sketchbook for the amount of pages you get you get a ton of pages so just get in there and make a mess i mean why buy the thing if you are not going to enjoy it and have fun mary's books falling off my lap i'm gonna sit over here please guys when you get the sketchbook would you just get in there and make a mess do a couple pages where you just try out your mediums just mess it up in fact let me grab it one of the things that i've been doing is just smooshing paint all over the front like at the end of the day i'm taking a break and i've got paint all of my hands instead of smushing it all over my clothes i've been putting it on here i've been writing quotes on there just going to mess up the cover so then it already tells your brain before you get in it this is a place to make a mess and have fun let it be a place for you to practice playing moving like a child not thinking about things so that way when you go to paint on something whether it's a canvas or paper that is large that feels a little more official and maybe something you would sell you've got you've already got the place where you've played and tried things out that is the space for me where i go if i'm like i wonder i just do it i don't wonder anymore i just tried out i wonder if what it would look like if i did this and i just do it and it really doesn't matter if i mess it up because i've got another page so please don't fear the sketchbook please just get in there get into you want to have fun i mean this life is short why are we fearing a sketchbook please just enjoy it and i hope you enjoy it because i'm not going to be able to enjoy it anymore because there's not going to be any left you know i'm just joking with you guys i'm very glad that you guys are excited about them and that you're getting them and that you're going to try them out what i want to do now is jump into this footage of trying out the pages and i played around with some medium i really wanted to play i didn't get as playful as what i wanted to get it was going to be a multi-medium page and i think i used two mediums does that count as multi anyways let's jump into this footage and then at the end i want to tell you some more of my thoughts because i've had these moleskine a3 sketchbooks for a while and i have played and played i have tested them to the brink i want to fill you in a little more on [Music] that [Music] do [Music] let's get into it i'm kind of now wanting to like paint something i think what i'm going to do i think i'm going to take one of mary fedon's paintings and i've picked this one i don't know yet what medium i want to use but i basically want to use this as my inspiration and do a big version in here to try out this paper so i don't know if i'm going to do paint maybe i'll just play around doing mixed media i'm going to do that i think i'm going to first start off with some of my acrylic inks i really want this to feel like a sketch i want to get some big blocks of color down like she has and then maybe go back over with some of my other stuff i really want it to feel like what's it called like multi [Music] mixed media yeah i never do that so i'm going to try doing that better go get some big brushes and to have her book on the floor hoping that i won't ruin it i'm going to use some of my chinese brushes i would really like her book right in front of me but i don't have enough space to keep it safe i'm so excited wow i may use this whole bottle of red ink just on this this paper is definitely feeling like it can take some abuse and i am so thankful for that wow how about this red way to go mary choosing that red i want to go in with my black and get some of these big shapes that she had and i'm going to leave i think i'm going to leave that red on my brush because i think that could be interesting in fact she has some darker red i'm gonna just you mix that in that's gonna be perfect yeah and then plus i'm not trying to like you know replicate this i'm just using her painting as inspiration and i would also like never sell this because i'm that's just not oops that's not how mary did it yeah because that's not how you should do things you know like if you man you do learn a lot sorry i'm not completing a sentence i'm so enjoying this um you do learn a lot about a painting when you are trying to replicate it wow because look at this she's got this shape of a table here i didn't even realize that before wow guys i can tell i'm gonna have so much fun in the sketchbook oh one of the things that's interesting about mary fedon is she really liked to work kind of monochromatic it's really interesting because if you look at her paintings they look very colorful but there's a video that's out that you can purchase on vimeo about mary feden highly recommended i love it and you get to see her working in all the different mediums that she works in but it's in that video that i learned she really likes monochromatic kind of stuff she doesn't like using a lot of colors and she also isn't drawn to paintings with a lot of color which is mind-blowing because if you look at our paintings you think color so this is going to be really interesting because this one is very monochromatic and that is not how i work at all what's nice about kind of copying somebody's work is that you learn a lot about things that you just don't even think that you're gonna learn about but you definitely learn about value composition design scale those kinds of things now again you cannot be like selling that kind of work but it's really helpful when you are just i don't know it's just a great method of learning an artist have been doing that for for forever as a learning sorry i keep looking down because i'm looking at her book it's on the floor this is taking like forever to dry you know i as i was in here thinking about this i know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna end up doing this entire thing in this ink i am not a like multi-medium kind of person i don't know why that is i mean i want to use other things i'm just not i don't know why that's not my thing i think i'm going to start getting some of the other objects in but i do think i'm going to use this ink i don't know what should i do i'm going to use the ink okay so she's basically got like a muted like yellow and a tan she's got a purple in there right now i'm just kind of laying some shapes down that she has and she's got an interesting shape here this white meets to this corner okay i like that i love the shape that she has right here for this very good shape so you can tell as you're like looking at stuff or reproducing stuff of hers she wasn't interested like with this in the shape being accurate or like the right angle but she was interested in the shape being pleasing to the eye let's get some of these grapes this is not exactly the color i would have chosen i need to muddy it up some but let me see if i can just add some yellow to it okay she had like a tan i need to get that more tan i don't really have a tan okay well i'm just going to make it work with what i have then it'll be more my painting should often use this like tan kind of color brownie stuff that i would it's just not part of my color palette at all i gotta tell you this i was looking at this area i could tell there was some kind of something going on over here in her painting and there's a hidden fruit she does that sometimes she would have like these fruits you wouldn't even like really know about it until you've looked really close so i just love that so here's another example a lot of these were hard for me to find until i was like really really looked but here's another hidden fruit one it's interesting she's got a tangent going on there those two things touching look guys here's another hidden fruit i didn't even notice it until i was editing this video look at this fun painting i was trying to say this in my last video and i got all tongue-tied but one of the things that i'm trying to do is what mary fedon did paint from life then also play with whimsical elements i mean a zebra and a volcano in the background so she made that up and then look at how these things these elements of a corn and i think these may be cherries or something but they all look like they're kind of swimming with the fish there's just a playfulness and whimsicalness that i really love about her work and then right here we have some more hidden fruit it's not as hidden as some of the other examples but i think it's still meant to be that kind of in the background kind of thing that that's gonna be my hidden fruit right there i love it don't be afraid to get your fingers in there i've been using my fingers so much more lightly to paint it's just a really fun experience it keeps things loose and it's a nice way to just kind of smear paint around here i'm just dipping into that wet paint with my finger and then here in a second i'm going to just be taking my finger and using it straight from the paintbrush which is i don't know sometimes once you just start that it's hard to stop because it's so tactile and you realize what nice unique marks you can get okay i'm gonna bring these in i'm liking where this painting's going but so i may mess it up i'm gonna put these on the floor and grab some of them while this is still wet [Music] okay things are still drying i think i'm getting close to being done and i was going to go back in with a dark here but i think i'm going to try this neo color and see if i can get some different texture i'm probably going to shake you guys sorry about that i mean i want a really nice dark because that's what she has as my eyes adjust i'm seeing more and more i mean i feel like i could continue going it's so interesting how this very simplistic painting of hers looks so simple but there's so many layers to it anytime i do like kind of a copy of somebody's work i like to write that someplace maybe i'll put the date here and then something here [Music] so wow zuru guys that was a load of fun let's take a look at this but let's oh wow look at that it really went through okay i guess it got a little too crazy with that okay let's check this side and it went through here too but it didn't go too bad through here [Applause] okay oh i don't really understand why it went through so much right there it almost feels wet still i think it may be that maybe that's okay well there it is i'm really happy with it it was really fun to work on this big scale i'm thrilled with it so yeah i hope you like it all right guys i have tested and tested i mean i've been playing like nobody's business in this jumbo sketchbook used everything from paint to i don't know [Music] everything so do this isn't this is the second one that i [Music] bought so so i wanted to show you guys too let's see if you can see so there's the cover just down i've filled this one up about halfway and there's a tiny bit of blood buckling with these pages but i mean guys not much at all and i load up the paint the other thing i've been doing with these sketchbooks i've been playing around with my color to the water soluble ones and like you just using my fingers like painting the whole thing with my fingers and really the paper and this stuff's holding up i mean i'm just amazed at the amount of insert word whatever that means that this paper will take even though it is thin and it is gloriously smooth i love a good smooth paper if you've worked in watercolor but not use like smooth paper before you really need to try it out because it's quite an experience and the paint sits on top so you get much more vibrant colors anyways if you've been following me over on instagram you've been seeing a lot of this so make sure you follow me over there the other reason i want you to follow me over on instagram is because that is where especially in the stories area is where i announce things so i wanted to tell you about one of the things i've already announced over there and if you didn't hear i wanted to tell you about it did my second podcast interview with authentic obsessions and i asked my friend mel chadwick to join me in that interview because the interview was going to be all on sketchbooks so that's what we did mel and i talked about the things we use how we deal with other people being around and kind of the awkwardness of that or the stress of that i mean you name it when we talk about it i'm also in the future going to be doing a full video here all about sketchbooks i want to share all my thoughts all the things that i didn't necessarily get to share in that interview in a cohesive bundle for you guys but that interview is really good you get to hear about mel she she goes out in the landscape way more than i do and she's got some new videos also up on her website where she goes out so definitely go check that out i'm going to put some links below of the podcast interview and of mel's channel also the second thing i want to tell you about i've been invited to do a workshop in kentucky sometime in the fall all the details haven't been worked out yet but i'm pretty excited about it because i've been thinking about getting back into workshops well not into workshops i've taught before but i've not done workshops been thinking about that and how i want to approach it because i want it to be a little bit unique there's going to be 15 to 20 slots i know they're going to be opening it up to their like members first and then to the public over on instagram is where i will be announcing those things and announcing when like things like that open up for free to be able to sign up for so if you're interested in that kind of thing taking one of my workshops make sure to go follow me over there and i will be announcing things here it's just sometimes i feel like they're a little delayed or i don't know instagram's a little more anyways that's all i want to say about that let me know if you are enjoying your a3 moleskine and i can't think of anything else oh i know i'll see you back here next week guys i hope you've enjoyed it [Music] bye [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Sandi Hester

Views: 6,250

Rating: 4.9866443 out of 5

Keywords: art vlog, #artvlog, A3 sketchbook, #A3sketchbook, Mary Fedden, #maryfedden, Mel Chadwick, #melchadwick, #moleskine

Id: SfYVk280LEE

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021