Creating Hydrangeas With Paints Sticks! Why I LOVE This Medium!

Hey friends! Welcome back to another video. My name is Emily Fave and a few months ago I shared this new medium that I was becoming obsessed with. They were Tempura paint sticks made for children and I did a little video on them. You guys were interested so now I want to show you more ways I like to use this medium. Let's jump in and get started. Okay friends, today I am going back to paint sticks because I feel like I haven't played with them in a while and I absolutely love this medium and I wanted to show you a full tutorial on how I like to use them. So first I'm just going to show you how I've used them so far over the past few months and if you didn't see my video when I first used them, these are paint sticks. They are basically for children. They are children's art supply. There are many different brands. The two brands that I have are this Jupiter and Shuttle art. Very, very similar. I wouldn't say one is better than the others. I have both brands only because, well, they had different colors and I wanted all of the colors. So I got two packs of I think 36 and 40 and I have a ton of them and I absolutely love them. So basically what they are, they look like a glue stick but they are Tempura paint sticks and you just kind of draw with them and the beauty of these is that you can slightly blend them together with your finger but once they're dry, they're dry. They look almost like a pastel but you can draw over top of them with markers or even pencils. Like they dry flat but they give so much texture in your work. So I've been really enjoying these. So today I wanted to show you how I like to use them. So I'm going to go through a couple of paintings in my sketchbook that I create just for myself to show you how I've used them and then we are going to create some hydrangeas because I feel like they're such a fun, bright, textured flower and these would be a perfect medium for that. So this is my Strathmore 500 series sketchbook. This is them all swatched. I showed this in the last video that I did where I introduced them. These are all of the colors I have. I really, really love them. So you can slightly blend them together but I tend to layer them more than blend them. I did this whole thing with the paint sticks and I added a little bit of acrylic marker on top which is another medium I love pairing with this because you can get some really sharp lines and it layers beautifully. I did these two landscapes kind of with them. This was inspired by an artist Katie Moody. This is kind of like a Monet water lily-ish piece fully done with the paint sticks. These are some florals I did with acrylic markers but the backgrounds, the little panels, are all paint sticks. So this is what I mean. You can draw with acrylic markers right over top or with gouache or acrylic paint and it just gives such a really cool texture in the background without compromising, you know, the surface to work on. It's really easy to draw on. I did this fun spread of just some illustrations of teddy bears and I didn't use paint sticks for these. The only thing I used it for was the snow on the trees and the snow kind of coming up around this bear but like look at the fun snowy texture you can get with them. So even just adding little bits to your work is really fun and so that's basically what I've used them for so far but I wanted to do hydrangeas with them just strictly with these. Maybe add some acrylic marker on top after. This is my other Strathmore sketchbook which I use for mixed media. This one is just florals so I have a bunch of watercolor florals in here, gouache, like everything. I did do this with just the paint sticks and I wanted to do a similar approach for the hydrangeas. So you can see it is completely dry. Another thing I love, especially if you're using them in a sketchbook, they don't transfer to the next page which if you use gelatos or pastels you have to put another piece of paper in between because then it just like transfers and it's super annoying. This doesn't do that. So we're going to do something similar to this but with hydrangeas in my floral sketchbook. So I would say pick out your colors beforehand. What I like to do is have the caps off so I can work quickly. So if I do need to blend then I have that time because it does dry really really fast. So I think I'm going to do like a couple different hydrangeas. I want to have some that have like pink. So I'm going to do a dark pink, a light pink, and then like a peachy kind of color for the top. I want to have blue. This is my favorite favorite color. None of them have colors printed on them but this color is my absolute all-time favorite. So I want that really really light blue. I need kind of like a mid-tone blue and then like a purple. I'm just going to smush all these colors together. I have this dark blue and then greens. I have like this olivey green and a darker green and really I've never done a hydrangea with these before so you're going to be seeing me do this for the first time and hoping for the best. So the first thing I like to do because you can layer them, I actually like to work dark to light with these. If you really want a pure color of the lightest color you don't necessarily want to layer on top of a dark color. It's not as vibrant so I'm going to be mindful of that. What I can actually do is maybe I'll do like just like a little outline of a hydrangea so just like a jagged ball. Turn down my light a bit. I'm going to do another one here. Jagged ball and then do I want to do I think I just want to do some leaves so these big kind of leaves. I typically don't draw the outline for my pieces like this before I use paint sticks. I just go in but just to show you kind of my idea this is what I think I'm going to do. Anyway okay let's start with the pinky peach one. So I'm going to lay down actually I'm going to grab this peach too. Oh there's a lighter one. A lighter one. Okay I'm going to start just creating these loose blobs like literally blobs. I'm starting with my mid-tone here like that. I'm gonna move to some of this lighter peachy color. It's so weird it feels like you're painting with a glue stick. Now you can see the pencil mark underneath so I don't necessarily recommend it. It's all good. Okay so I have some lighter bits. I'm going to go back in with this mid-tone just add some of that on top. You just want it to be really textured. I'm not even drawing the actual flowers. I'm going to move into this like medium pink. You can kind of carve out flowers after and if you want to do hydrated flowers just draw like four circles kind of going around. Okay I'm going bring some of that pink up a bit. Then I'm going to go in with my darker pink the base here. I'm really just kind of filling it in. Now these are all very vibrant colors. If I wanted to mute a color so it's not super super vibrant just like tone it down um this is where like you can't really mix colors but you can kind of layer colors to get some more muted tones but I don't want it be too I'm going to add a little bit of purple in here to act as kind of like a shadow underneath and then I'm going to go on top see how it kind of blends and creates a new color while it's still wet and that creates a little bit of a shadow. Okay just a little bit of that and like I said you can use your finger while it's still kind of wet to blend. This is like the weird ugly uncertain stage where you're like I don't think I'm doing this right just trust the process. So here I'm going to start layering some of the lighter colors on top of this dark area but see how it's not super super light because we're going over dark it's still somewhat subdued like that. Yeah I think I might go back in with some acrylic marker after and like carve out some actually I want a lighter pink some um petals just for fun I'm gonna add some lighter pink up here like that uh I might add I wonder I wonder just because if I wanted to mute a color with say like a traditional paint I would add it's complementary or contrasting color so I wonder if I layer like green first and then pink those are contrasting colors see it makes like a shadowy color and that's how you can do it. So just a little bit though I'm learning a little bit of green like that blend it out and we get kind of a nice shadow there. Okay I'm gonna leave that one let's work on the bluish one um I do want to hold on I'm gonna bring this down a bit because I want this to be more of a bubble hold on I need a little bit of shadow there blend it out okay I want this to be like a really bright purpley blue one so I'm gonna go in first with this bright blue because I love this color and I want it to be as fresh on the paper as possible not really overlapping any colors like look at that color I am gonna layer over top of this after a bit too but to get its shape okay there is my blue I'm gonna go in with this medium blue which is quite dark in comparison I'm gonna add some purple in there to kind of layer it while it's still wet and mix it like that I'm gonna go back in with that light one kind of blend out where they to the two of them meet and then I can even just use my finger oh look at that blend so pretty sorry I get excited I've it's funny green is my favorite color but lately like a purpley blue has had my heart like I'm just obsessed okay more purple down here a bit more blue so this is why I have the caps off so I can work quickly to get those blends okay and then I'm gonna go on with this deep kind of navyish blue I'm gonna mix it a bit with some purple like that it's just a blob and now I'm gonna start to make this blob like see how these have like little bumps of like the flower petals coming off I'm gonna start doing that so just like little jagged edges we're doing like the little four petal flowers okay I'm just doing one two three four like that I'm gonna do the same thing with my purple overlapping some of those again trust the process I know it doesn't look the best just yet I'm trusting the process I'm telling you but really I'm also telling myself like Emma should you re-film this it's looking a little busted okay there's our light blue on top just we need some texture okay we need a little bit more here we need more purple we need some darkness up there which I might do with the acrylic markers I feel like this pink one is just so vibrant I kind of want to tone it down a little bit I'm just going to do some lighter pinks like that and then again I'm just going to grab that dark blue to get some of that shadow in there okay so looks a little crazy but we are going to go in with some leaves now to really kind of carve it out I am going to use this olive green gonna kind of outline it make a jagged leaf like so I'm gonna go in to where the shadowy parts are with this green then I'm gonna move to a medium kind of green like this see if I can blend these together like that I know it doesn't look the greatest yet and then a really light green there and then I want to go back in with this like dark cooler green blend it out a bit might add a little bit of yellow for some more fun highlights I mean this piece is pretty bright like so then we're gonna do the other one here this one's gonna be a little bit darker because it's behind I'm gonna start with this dark green color going around some of those petals actually gonna use some of that navy that dark dark blue to really get in there and add that shadow we're gonna blend it out bring it up a bit get a little bit of that olive green and then our medium green it's just all about the blending like that okay I feel like it needs to be a bit darker in here add those highlights in a second all right add some lighter and I just have to say like this is just so much fun I actually love using these because of how fun it is so even if your painting doesn't turn out like absolutely perfect the way you wanted it to there's something so freeing about using this it like I definitely suggest people try it okay so there we go now I want to do a couple more leaves I don't think I want to do leave or um a leaf up here I want to do another hydrangea to be honest maybe like a lighter pink one or something I haven't decided I feel like this is a little too vibrant but we're just gonna go with it we're just gonna go with it okay I'm gonna do a peak of a leaf out here I just want it a little bit darker and then one back here too just to kind of balance it just the tips like that go in the base of a little bit more darker blue and then just a little bit yellow at the edge and like all this blending and my finger only looks like this it's not that bad actually like it doesn't you don't risk contaminating the new blends when you switch things I don't know like I don't know if that makes sense to you okay we're gonna do one more I want to do one that's like more pinky purple I think so this is the really light one I'm gonna start with this color do I have another pink I have another pink here let's see what color is this is kind of like a medium pink I'm gonna go over here like this okay I'm gonna add a little bit of purple in here after I just said that didn't I just say that you don't have to switch blending fingers okay well I lied okay yeah purple and our pink again that's what I like they layer they layer so nice I'm gonna quickly just like rinse off my finger and just wipe it on a piece of paper towel comes off so easily let's do a bit of a darker pink here because it does need a shadow behind these two so it stands out more then add a little bit of white up here maybe we can blend here's a lighter pink into the jagged edges of the hydrangea try and go over this again to get rid of that muddy look okay I'm going to what am I going to do I do want to do like a bit of shadow here so I'm going to add that green like we did before over here mix it with a bit of pink to get a bit of that shadow in there kind of move it up a bit do little like tiny bits of green there behind this one so it kind of hides behind it there we go blend it out that green is strong I gotta use less we can layer over it though it's all good that's what I keep telling myself it's all good get the lighter pink okay there see that with a little bit of a blue tint to it and now these are falling everywhere I think I want a peach a little hint of the peach over here too like that a little bit of white make it lighter like that okay so I think I've got my base of what I want um I'm going to make sure it is completely dry and then I'm going to go back in with some acrylic marker just to add a little bit of detail and we'll see what happens while some of these are dry I'm just adding some of the lighter flowers on top like that might do the same thing with some of these a little bit of white maybe okay and we'll wait for it to dry okay so now I have my acrylic marker set from Artex I love using these with paint sticks and I'm not going to do too much detail on this I just want to have some things kind of pop out so I'm going to take a pink here and I'm just going to like draw some of the hydrangea individual flowers and it's just like little rounded petals excuse me and I'm not even really doing them or well I'm going to switch colors get like peaches just for fun might add this darker pink or you can even go like around hydrangea shapes you know what I mean like the petals so here I'm taking this darker pink and I'm going around some of those petals that I just did to just paint in the shadows but this is very loose and almost like abstract right it's not supposed to be realistic by any means just adding in some shadows okay get some like lighter pinks add some highlights very very loose I'm gonna add some dots of where maybe some of the centers of the hydrangeas would be the each individual flowers it just kind of makes it look like there's actual flowers there I did have a white I can't find where my white went maybe just a little bit of lighter highlights for some extra pops of color and there we go there is our hydrangeas painted with paint sticks so I hope you guys enjoyed that honestly I love this kind of painterly textured look for my art especially recently it's just so much fun to do it's so freeing and loose and almost kid-like and that is something I really enjoy so let me know in the comments below what you guys think and I hope you guys enjoyed it thank you all so much for watching I really hope you enjoyed it and I hope you learned something don't forget to subscribe to this channel and follow me on all my other platforms for tons more content have a great day guys bye