Little Library for Art // Sat Chat 8-30-25

Hi there, Lindsay here, the Frugal Crafter. It is Sat Chat time. I hope you're having a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Doesn't it seem like the summer is ending when it's Labor Day and it's like how? Why? Where? Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? Where did the summer go? Oh, that's how I feel. That's how I feel. Oh, because it is a big...and I noticed that there was a holiday this weekend because I can't believe it's already Labor Day, but because I noticed it before filming Sat Chat, I decided to do a Labor Day weekend sale. You can save 40% off it on all classes in my Teachable School using the coupon code LD2025. I'll put all that in the video description so that you can either just click...well, you'll have to type in the coupon code, so when you add a class to your cart and you go to pay, there's a little place that says add coupon. You click on that, then type in LD2025 so that, again, I will put the coupon code in the video description so you can copy and paste it, but that will give you 40% off. Any class you want, you can use it as many times as you want. This weekend, the sale will be over on Tuesday, right? Tuesday because Monday is Labor Day, so we'll give you till Tuesday. We'll give you all of Monday, account for time zones and everything. So if you've had your eyes on a class, go ahead and snag it now. That'll be fun. It's always fun to get a deal, isn't it? I love to get a deal. I love to get a deal. I love to invest in myself and learn something new, and I love to teach, so I think that's just best of both worlds. So I hope you're having a wonderful Labor Day weekend and you have either something fun to do planned or maybe you just got some, hopefully, some time to not labor, some time to enjoy. And up here in New England, I think the weather's supposed to be pretty good. It's always nice. This is, for a lot of people, it's the weekend that everybody gets ready to go back to school, whether it's grade school like K through 12 or it's college. I always feel like it's a renewal time because, you know, it's the time when growing up, it's the time you're back to school, usually the day after Labor Day. I've noticed that over the past, I think probably about the time I was in high school, which was in the 90s, that they started going back to school a few days before Labor Day, like usually the ones before. And that's what the school down the road did. I noticed when I was walking the dog this week that their driveway was awful of cars, the school buses are going, so the kids are back in school. And I think they do that so they kind of ease the kids in with like a three-day week and then they have a four-day week because of Labor Day being on Monday, then they go into the full-day week. I think it kind of eases the kids in and I think that's kind of nice. And plus it, because we're up here in the northeast where we get a lot of snow, it helps bake in a few snow days so that they're not in school like till the end of June. And I think, I don't know, they probably start, maybe they would start later. I don't know what they do in parts of the country where it's really hot. You can let me know in the comments below. If you live in the south, do they start you earlier so that you can get out earlier? Or do they start you later because it's too hot right now to be in school? Of course, I guess if you're in the south, you probably have air conditioning in your schools. The schools up here typically don't have air conditioning, so it's not great to have the kids in if it's really hot. I think we tend to be hotter in June than we do in August. In August you start to cool down at night quite a bit. It's starting to feel like fall here and the days get shorter and whatnot, so I think that's why they do it that way up here. But I'm really curious to hear how it goes in other parts of the country. So tomorrow, I'm actually filming this on Thursday, tomorrow I'm going to drive down to Port Clyde to pick up my daughter who's been working on Monhegan Island this summer and bring her home. And today, probably about the time I'm done filming this, my other daughter will be up from the Portland area to visit for a couple of days before she starts her final year. They're in their final years, they're in their final years, which is just their final year, their final year. That is just wild to me that that I have kids old enough to be graduating college. Oh my gosh, my gosh. So last week I was a little like, ah, because my son told me he wanted to go to school to learn HVAC, which I'm so excited for. But you know, whenever I think of like, it seems like whenever I get news, I don't know what this is. I don't feel like I have a negative bias. I feel like I'm a pretty optimistic person. But whenever I am like faced with something, like whether it be somebody who needs an operation, somebody needs tuition, somebody, we have a big expense here at the house, like septic system needs to be reworked, something like that. And we need a new furnace, whatever it is. When something happens like that, my first reaction is to kind of like, think about like, the worst case scenario, like the most it's possibly going to cost. And then how am I going to make that money? You know? So I don't know why that is. That's just kind of the way that I tackle, that I tackle stuff. I think probably it comes from like, thinking if somebody close to me has to have an operation, I don't want to think about the like, the actual real stuff about somebody getting hurt. I want to think about like the solution. And I think that's a distraction. And I think also thinking about like, freaking out about college tuition is a more practical place for my mind to go rather than missing my dad who passed away a couple weeks ago. So I think that's also part of like the way that I deal with anxieties. I kind of like dive in to the worst case scenario of a situation that I can kind of control. You know what I mean? I don't know. I'm sure that if I ever went to therapy, I'd get some really pithy explanation to why. Why this. Why this is the way it is. But I think that's it. I like to self-analyze. Hey, I got YouTube, right? I get the therapist of YouTube. But I'm doing pretty good this week. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty productive. There are still spots left in the Grease Retreat for 2026 if you want to check it out. I think there's, there's a, it's only going to be 16 students and we have 11 spots left. So if you're, if you're interested, go check it out. There's lots of options as far as if you want a room by yourself or if you want to share a room, you know, there's lots of different options there. It's going to be a really fun, relaxing, painting filled week. I think it's gonna be really great. So go check that out if you're interested. Of course, there's no pressure, but you know, have a look. Something I was working on this week that was kind of, actually, um, so, okay, so I gotta tell you this week, this, it's so funny the way this week went. Okay, so you saw me last week's chat chat. I was a little unhinged. What's new, right? Um, so Monday, oh, oh, oh my gosh, I was gonna go back in the comments and get the, the, the viewer's name. Um, but one of you dear sweet viewers, actually a few of you have recommended the show to me, but one left a link and I clicked the link and I got socked into this show. Oh my word. It's called Portrait Artist of the Year and it's from the UK. Um, and a few people have recommended it to me in the past, but, but this wonderful person left a link and I clicked on it and I was just mesmerized. It was so inspiring. It's this competition and something about like British reality shows, they're so much nicer and more civil than American reality shows. I don't like American reality shows. It's just like, oh my gosh, did you just pull out the dregs of society and like pit them into some Thunderdome sort of competition? And it's so dramatic and so stressful. These British ones are just lovely, like the Great Padre Throwdown and the baking ones that they do. Um, but anyway, so this, this Portrait Artist of the Year, like, and I'm not really that into portraiture, so I'm surprised at how much it sucked me in, but these, this, it was just so cool to watch these artists work and whatnot. So anyway, I watched, I clicked the link and I watched that, that episode, then I watched another episode, then I watched another episode. And I think it's for, on the Tubi, uh, streaming service, which is a free streaming service. And I should just go there rather than YouTube because I can watch them all in order. Cause I'm just watching random ones right now. And, but it's just so easy to slip into any episode and just watch these wonderful people doing what they do. Some of the judges can be a little snitty in my opinion, but, um, but the, just the contestants are just so lovely. They're just like likable, nice people. And you just room for them for a while cause they're just all so great. Um, so I hope it stays like that. I hope it doesn't like you get into later seasons and then the people are nasty, but these people are just delightful. And the celebrities that come to pose are just delightful. It's a delightful show. So that's been my comfort. That's my, my comfort watch, uh, for the week. So anyway, I was watching that last weekend. I don't want to tell you how much, uh, how much, how many episodes I watched of that. Uh, but I was definitely in a, I think like I had burnt out all my adrenal systems or something. Cause I'm just like, I was a bit, I just was vegging and watching. Um, I didn't have my art cart in the living room because when I went to Maryland to do the Derwent, um, uh, to demo for Derwent, my husband had tidied up and he had rolled my art cart into the office for a few days. So, you know, that place would be tidier and I just haven't had the heart to pull it back out again. It's not that messy, but you know, it is still visual clutter. Uh, and I've been busy down here and haven't really been sitting in the living room too much, but, uh, I just vegged and watched and didn't really do much anything else. Um, maybe a little scrolling on my phone, but, um, but it was just delightful. And so while I was watching that, I was noticing that these artists were, they, they were, were, you know, working from the model sitting in front of them, but they would take a photo with like their phone or their tablet, usually a tablet, and they would work from that too sometimes so that if the model moved or whatever, they'd have it on their tablet. And I was noticing on their tablets, there was a grid over the tablet, like over the photo. And I'm like, huh, I wonder what they, what they use for that. So I Googled what do the artists on the, um, the portrait artists of the year show use on their, on their tablet to put the grid over their photos. And it turns out there's all these grid apps and I'm sure you can do it in different photo softwares and whatnot, but I just downloaded the first one I saw basically. Um, and it was free. You do have to watch an ad to, in order to do anything. So that's kind of a drag, but I'm like, I'm going to try that. That just looks interesting. It looks fun. I'm curious about it. I like to try things I'm curious about. And I have not used the grid method because the grid method, if you don't know what it is, you'd have like a photo, right? And you would draw a grid over it, like square grid. And then on your drawing paper, you would draw a grid larger generally. However you want to, you want to make like that small picture bigger. So you have a photo that's like four by four and you want to draw it eight by eight or 10 by 10 or whatever. You would just make a grid that was larger and you would scale it up. So maybe the grid on your photo is like half inch, um, squares and the grid on your paper is two inch squares or whatever. It's just kind of like an old scaling up technique. Um, it's helped you like draw realistically and get everything in proportion and whatnot. And I've never used that too much just because I love to draw freehand. I've been drawing since I was so young that I don't really need too many aids to do it, but I would use it if I was, um, doing like a mural or something and I had to take a sketch and I had to, um, put it on a wall and I wanted to be accurate because it's really easy to get things skewed when you're really big like that. Um, so like I'm going to give that a try. That looks like fun and I've been like just kind of hankering to do some portraits because I did some portraits, um, for the Derwent thing I did. I loved how these came out, especially the two men. Hopefully there's not, there's probably too much glare for that. I'll just tip it. Uh, I really, especially that guy down the bottom, I loved using the Derwent pencils, doing that. This is on Derwent drawing paper and I also did some of the, um, with the Derwent drawing pencils, which are their toned earthy pencils and I just enjoyed that so much. I was like, well, I'm going to do, I want to use a graphite. I want to use a grid. I was going to use this paper, but then I'm like, oh, you know, I've got this mixed media paper that's up back there. I have this mixed media paper and it's, I think it's smooth enough. It was not smooth enough for graphite, but anyway, I'm like, it's smooth enough. And so I draw the grid. I'm like, ah, I'm going to use like the, I'm going to use like a four or six H pencil. Maybe not. I just use one of the really light, hard pencils. I'm like, I'm going to use a really light touch. So I don't dump the paper and then I'll be able to erase it so easily. I generally don't use hard pencils. So I didn't realize how hard the hard pencil is and how much it was going to dent that paper, even though it was hardly using any pressure. So after I gridded it and I sketched it, like I'm going to erase that grid on the areas that I don't think I'm going to shade over. And it was not erasing, but all my good lines were erasing. First of all, I do not like the going grid by grid. It's like too mathy and analytical. It's like plotting parts on a chart. I actually have a video of a time-lapse of that on YouTube. Plus I have that, that was in Critique Club. I put that up. I had to have that second one for the month because that's part of the deal. I put two tutorials up a month and I know people would totally cut me some slack this month with everything that was going on, but I still, I don't feel right shortchanging my customers. So, and plus I think knowing how to use a grid is an important tool even if the outcome, even if the product of my lesson wasn't great. I feel like the process of it was good and the explanation on how to make a grid and do a gridded artwork was worthwhile, so I put that up. But anyway, so I'm gridding this. As I'm doing this, I don't like doing this. I don't, this is not how I like to draw. I like to start with a basic shape and kind of flesh out the volume, then get the features in, you know, that's how I like to do it. But, but also I do think it's important to try different techniques because it can sharpen areas that you may overlook, right? It may sharpen some of those areas that you just kind of gloss over, or maybe you, with experience, you found ways to kind of get around doing certain things you don't like, so forcing yourself to do those techniques, those things you don't like, make other types of art easier. So I struggled, I struggled all day on this project. I went to do some shading on that. The dent lines from the grid that I made, like my, my soft pencil was skipping over all of those where I drew the grid, and like I didn't even press. Why am I getting lines here? I was so frustrated, and so, and in my dark, I couldn't get my dark dark enough on that paper because it was just so, it was just too rough. I thought that it was smooth enough, it was not smooth enough, so finally I'm about to chuck in the trash. I'm like, I'm gonna grab some, I'm like, I'm gonna take some ink or watercolor, something transparent, and just kind of like tint it with that. So I did that, then I'm like, oh I got some pastels I need to review. I'm gonna use those pastels on top because what have I got to lose? I'm about to throw this away anyway, and that's what you see there. Not great, but it's fine, and also she was smoking a cigarette and I turned it into a lip gloss. She was a flapper smoking a cigarette, now she's like a disco queen putting on her red lipstick, so had a little switcheroo in there. It's not great, but then playing with those pastels, I was like, oh yeah, maybe I'll work with these a little bit tomorrow. So Monday, total wash, struggle all the way, struggle boss all day. It was not great. The next day though, I'm like, I'm just gonna sit down and do a little sketch. I had a bunch of ripe tomatoes on my windowsill that I wanted to eat, but I wanted to do a still life with them before I ate them. So I grabbed like three tomatoes, I grabbed a salt shaker and a pepper grinder, brought them down here, set up a still life with a little fabric, being fancy, being all artsy, and I painted that. And in 25 minutes, real time, this tutorial will be up next week, I think. Yeah, I think I'll post it next week because September, I always feel like I want to do pastels in September, so September will be pastel month, I guess. So anyway, so I painted that real time, 25 minutes, easy as pie. I did some, I filmed like two other videos too on Tuesday. Everything went so smooth and easy, and it's like I had to have strife and struggle on Monday so I could strive on Tuesday, I think. And I think sometimes you just need to have a day like that where everything is hard and a struggle so that you can appreciate when it goes easy, or you just put more tools in your toolbox, you've built more skills, and you don't even realize that you've built these skills, but then the next day you go to do something else and it's like, oh, I feel like I'm skateboarding downhill today, this is great, you know? So I thought that was really interesting, so it did kind of further commit that, okay, it was good that I did that grid drawing, it was good that I pushed myself to do a technique that I don't enjoy, and also that technique may be just the thing for especially adult drawing learners, I think it's a very different approach teaching a child to draw versus teaching an adult to draw, and learning as a child, where you don't have hangups in your head like anything, when you're a kid, anything is as easy to draw as anything else, you just draw, right? When you get older you think, this is harder, that is harder, that is easier, when really that's not the case, it's just we perceive some things to be easier and some things to be harder, but that really isn't the case, it's kind of like the level of detail is what's going to make it more challenging, I think. You can say a landscape is easy because, well, we can put our trees wherever, we can keep it loose and it's still going to look like a landscape, but if you're going to paint it with the same level of detail you paint an animal or portrait or whatever, it's still going to be that same level of difficulty, it's just, you know, we get in our head about certain subjects being more difficult than other subjects, so that time lapse is up on on my YouTube channel and the real time is up in Critique Club, and I also did a quick, oh it's in here, I did a loose watercolor real-time demo in, let's see if I can find that, yeah, right here, this, that bouquet, 13-minute real-time painting tutorial, I posted that on Wednesday, I didn't have some, a few people asked if I had a tutorial for that, I don't, I painted that on location in Halliwell last summer when some friends and I had gone out to paint, but that sketchbook's finished and I'll have a flip through of that coming up soon, maybe in a week or two, I'm not sure, I scheduled it out but I don't necessarily remember when I scheduled it for because I've been, I tried to get, what I'm aiming to do is I try to get a few weeks ahead on videos, especially before I'm going to film a course, a new course, and then also if I have like I'll be doing that retreat at the end of, the Italy retreat at the end of October, I've got to have content to go on YouTube when I'm away, so I try to get ahead of time, but also one of the reasons I really like to be ahead of time on videos is because then I don't feel pressured that I have to get something out, I can be like, if I feel like, oh I want to mess around and do this today, oh I have an idea, I want to try this right now, I don't have to put it on the back burner and forget about it, I can actually jump right in and do what I feel like doing at the videos happen when it's kind of like, oh I got an idea, let's see if it works, you know, and if it doesn't work, no big deal because I'm not, I don't need that video, and I mean it's not like I really necessarily need to post three or four times a week like I do, but it is a business and you need frequency in order for it to work, that's just the, that's just the, that's just the truth of it, if you don't have frequency and you go too long between uploads, then YouTube thinks people are no longer interested in your content and it stops promoting your videos, even your older ones, but if you're constantly producing new stuff, YouTube will even dredge up some of the older videos and pump those out too, so, and this is my job, this is what I do for a living, so I know every, I mean you guys are awesome, if you were in the algorithm, everything would be smooth sailing, but sadly you don't, anyway, oh this cool thing, this cool thing, this, our, the Bangor Public Library has this, I think it's maybe like an old newspaper machine, not machine, what would you call it, you know, I think they still have them like in, in cities on the sidewalk, you'll often see, it's like a metal box and it will have today's newspaper on the front window of it and you, I think you probably put in your money, I don't, I've never purchased a newspaper from one of these machines, but I think you put your money in and then you can open it up and take out a newspaper and close it back up again, it's almost like an honor system thing, I think, so I, this is what I what they've used, but at a couple places in Bangor, the library being one of them, they have a free art exchange, so you can leave a piece of art and take a piece of art, and so I have these little magnets right here, and I also have, these are little canvas magnets, so they're canvas and there's a magnet on the back, and I also have some just mini magnets on easels, and I was thinking it would be a fun project to take some acrylic markers and just do little paintings on them and leaving one in there and taking one, or maybe even leaving a few and just taking one just for fun, because I don't know, they might need to see, you know, it's a pretty new thing, so I don't know how much artwork they have in there yet, but it's like a little library basically for art, and I thought that was so fun, and I'm always looking for things to do with my art, I mean, I love sketchbooks because I don't have to really think about framing them or selling them or anything like that, but something like that I think would be really fun and cute and community-spirited, so I'll probably just put my YouTube channel or something in the back so that people can look me up online if they want to, it might be kind of fun and quirky, but I just thought there'd be something kind of fun to do, and then it would also be a fun tutorial, I think, kind of like kindness rocks, right? I haven't painted rocks, well, I probably have at some point, but I love rocks just in their natural state, and I worry about microplastics getting like kind of chipped off of them if you just leave them out there, it's probably just, it's, I know, it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of everything we're doing to the planet, and it does have a very cheerful, uplifting message and spirit that it puts out there, so I'm not harsh on that craft in general, but for me, I feel weird about doing that, because it's like, it's a perfectly beautiful, natural thing as it is, and to cover it with paint that's going to chip off, I have a little weirdness about that, but then again, our houses have paint on them that chip off all the time, because that's otherwise, if they didn't chip off, then we'd have to repaint them, and wouldn't that be great? But we do, so obviously there's microplastics happening there. Anyway, I just thought this would be kind of nice, because then you're, you know, I'm using up some of my stash, I have so much stuff, I'm using up some stuff, and I'm putting it in a place where somebody can take it that appreciates art, and they're choosing to take it, I don't know, I just thought that was really cool, it's kind of like the people that have taken the cigarette machines, do you remember cigarette machines? So for young people out there, they used to be able to buy cigarettes and vending machines, and it's before my time, but I remember being a little kid, being like 10 at a hotel, I think it was probably like in New Hampshire, Vermont or something, and just in the lobby, they had this like machine, and you would put your money in, and then you would just pull out the thing, and the pack of cigarettes would fall down, there was like nobody minding the machine, anybody could have bought cigarettes, these machines, this is back in the wild west of like the, you know, 70s and 80s, but there's companies that take these cigarette machines and they turn them into little art vending machines, so basically you make art that fits in a box, it's like the same size as a cigarette box, and people get a random, I don't think you get to pick, I think you just get a random piece of art, and I think they're called Art-O-Matics, and I don't know how many there are, and I think you have to like apply to the national company, the Art-O-Matic company, and then I think you have to commit to making so many things, so many pieces, I don't think, I think it's probably volunteer, I think they sell for like three or four dollars, it's not, because that's what those cigarette machines would have taken, I would imagine would have been, I don't know what a pack of cigarettes costs now, let alone what a pack of cigarettes cost back in the 70s, but it's probably like a nickel, I don't know, I don't know, everybody smoked back then, so it had to be I guess, but I thought that was kind of a cool idea, but I also like this one, I assume upcycling newspaper vending boxes, because you don't, I don't know, those still, those must be still around, people still read the paper, it's just not as much, I love a Sunday paper, I love a weekend paper, we don't have a Sunday paper up here, we get the Bangor Day, well we don't get the Bangor Daily News, but sometimes I'll buy the weekend edition, which comes out on Saturday mornings, especially it's fun to buy the weekend Bangor Daily News when it's like Black Friday time, which is crazy, because I don't go Black Friday shopping, but for some reason I love to see what's on sale, I don't know what it is, probably because when I was a kid I loved to look at the weekend paper and see what was on sale, but that's kind of fun, but I haven't done that in years, oh it's nothing like a Sunday morning, a cup of coffee and big thick weekend paper, they're not thick anymore, they're just so spindly and skinny, they're so skinny now, but that was the thing man, nice cup of coffee, maybe a pastry or some homemade bread, you're just lounging around reading the paper, man the young people are never going to know that, they're they're lounging around with their cell phones, scrolling whatever they scroll, scrolling TikTok, that's depressing, a paper, a very, a very awkward to open read, yeah you know what, maybe the good old days weren't so good, because reading a newspaper, could they find a more awkward size for it, the newspapers are like this big, they're huge, they they're and they start, they start a story on page one and then you gotta flip to like halfway through the paper to find the next column for the story, it was like a choose your own adventure, it's like you never know if you're reading, you know, the the the second part of the council meeting or a serial killer trial or what, it's like you have to, it's like it's a maze to find where your story starts and where it ends, and yeah, no it wasn't that great actually, but I did like it, I did like it, I think fondly back to leisurely Sunday mornings with coffee in a newspaper, you know, those were the days, those were the days, oh my goodness, what are you guys up to, oh something I want to mention, I don't know if anybody cares about this, but if you ever took my class, which actually you can get for 40% off now, alcohol marker workshop, I recommended a set of markers by the company Sanjoki, because if you didn't have any markers, you can use what you have, but if you didn't have any, this was a $40 set of markers, had brush tips and chisel tips, great selection of colors, and it was, it came in a carry bag with storage, it was just such a deal, and a lot of my students bought, a lot of them just bought it to do the class with, because they wanted the same colors I was using for the class, and that was great, but then about two years after I released the class, they sold out of markers, and they didn't get them back, but they were reformulating the markers, and they have come out with a brand new set with 40% more ink in the markers, and I'll show you the difference in size here, so if you look at the markers like side by side, like side on, they look the same, but if you turn the new marker around, the new marker is wider, so it's 40% more ink in this, they have stickers that you color and put on the markers, so you have a really accurate depiction of the color, they come with a swatch chart, they come with paper, the paper's okay, I just, other paper I like better, but, and this carry bag, and I think they only raised the price to like $50, but for 40% more ink, I think that is just a heck of a deal, and I can recommend these to the class as well, so if you are looking for a budget marker option, these are great, they use, actually they use the same nibs as the Ohuhu ones, so if you do fray a nib, you can flip it around, it's reversible, or you could buy replacement nibs from Ohuhu, Ohuhu has probably the biggest range of markers right now, but they are more expensive, I do recommend them, but they are more expensive, and this for a beginner set or a spare set to take with you when you're traveling, it's just great, it's just great. Now I do have some criticisms, my criticism being that, and I'll have a review coming out on this probably Monday, so I've already filmed it, but this is, oh gosh, what's, this is the old chart, old chart on top, new chart on the bottom, there are some colors that are very similar, where it's like, why didn't you just step those colors out a little bit, like there's a couple, there's a couple reds that are really similar, it's like, why didn't you just like go up or down on one of those colors, so you have a greater blending range, and there's a couple greens that are like that, there's a couple blues that are like that, but overall I think it's, I think it's a pretty good range, I wish instead of doing green grays and blue grays, they just did a straight cool gray, they have a really good warm gray range in there, but I mean for the price you really can't beat it, and I was really excited to see that back in stock and see that the quality was still good and had gone up and not down, which that does not happen that often, so anyway I want to thank you so much for watching Sat Chat today, please let me know what you're up to in the comments below, don't forget the sale on my classes, link in the video description, thanks for watching, until next time, happy crafting, bye!