I Bought Tulips and Accidentally Painted a Whole Collection

Hello! Welcome back to my studio. There she goes. Welcome back to my newly reset studio, which is feeling really great and really fresh. Unfortunately, I got sick last week, so I didn't get much painting done or get to enjoy the studio much, but I'm back. And this week I thought I could do something fun and different. I got these beautiful little tulips from a local grocery store for $9.99 in the spirit of spring and flowers. And I'm trying to think of a metaphor, but I can't think of one. New life. I thought it'd be fun to make a little series of small paintings with these tulips. Sometimes in between collections, I don't paint for a long time, and then I come to make a collection and I feel like I forget how to paint. I kind of like to have mini projects in between collections to keep my skills sharp and keep me motivated and inspired. And I just love tulips. I think they're so pretty. I think there's something so structurally beautiful about them, how they're so rigid sort of leaves. I don't know if you've ever taken the time to watch the evolution of a tulip life in a vase, but it's like they bloom and they open up and then they like droop down and then they spread out like that and then their petals fall. And I think every stage of that is so beautiful in its own way. So I thought it would be kind of fun to like paint the different evolutions of these tulips throughout the week. I have a whole bunch of canvases here that I've had in my studio closet for absolutely no reason. And some of them already have paint on them, so I'll just reuse them. They're just little 8 by 10 pieces, canvases, pieces, canvases. It would be cool to kind of do a little painting every day this week and kind of capture like every stage of the tulips. And the goal is not to like be realistic, obviously. I just want to kind of play with color and move paint around again, have fun painting in a low pressure way. And I think this is a great way to do it. So that's what we're gonna do. Let's go. Before I get to painting anything, I need to first prep my canvases. And I thought about doing the same underpainting color on all of them, but I think I'll maybe try different ones just to experiment a little bit. I have some black here, some dark purple, and some magenta. So I think I'll just do those three colors and then I can do two of each. I'm actually going to go in with black gesso instead on these two canvases because they already have some stuff on them that I want to cover up. And I think this will just have better coverage than the normal paint. I've come to realize that I like, if I'm not framing a canvas, I like to have the edge be a different color. So I might just leave that blue as like the edge of this piece. And then on the other ones, I might go in with more of a neutral color. Underpainting is such a good way of like introducing yourself to the canvas. You know, sometimes approaching a canvas is so like nerve-wracking or you start to feel like perfectionist when you just get messy and put a solid color. You kind of feel like you're, you've already ruined it in a way. Like, do you know what I mean? It's not so like precious anymore. I really love this color. It's so pretty. I found that the different color that I put as an underpainting, it does kind of make me dip paint differently. Like I'll pick different colors for the painting based on what I've put down already, which is good. Like it's good to keep, you know, keep evolving and keep your skills sharp. I used to really stay within like the same colors and through oil painting, I've learned to really push that and get curious about other colors and not be afraid of incorporating other colors. I always compare it to like when we're little kids and we're doing crafts and stuff like that. Like we just don't even hesitate to try new things and somewhere in adulthood, we start to be afraid of that. And I think it's so important to hold on to that feeling and to keep allowing yourself to be curious. And I definitely shouldn't be painting in my good clothes right now, but that's okay. So before I even get to the canvas, I'm going to take a little bit of time every day to sketch the tulips. I like to do this because it helps a lot with composition and just getting familiar with the shapes. And because my style kind of requires me to have a very confident stroke, I like to really familiarize myself with what I'm painting before I paint it. So this is my tiny sketchbook that I've shown these before. I carry these around with me. I don't have to worry about fussing with like, I don't know, you know, different materials. Like I literally just bring a pen with me when I go out. I did some sketches there of Bella sleeping in the bedroom. But yeah, I just like to do these line drawings because I tend to choose my colors anyway while I'm painting more so than plan it out before. So I'm feeling quite rusty right now. I'm not gonna lie. It's been a while since I've painted because I did an art show. I was like really ramping up for that and then need like some time off after that so I don't burn out because I've learned the hard way. Yeah, I just, I haven't been painting much. I really felt like I needed to reset my studio the other week so that's what I did and then got sick and then, you know, such is life. Here's my first sketch. I'm gonna do another one now. Here's my second sketch. I've noticed that the tulips are very bushy at this stage. Like the, there's a lot of green obviously. So let's see, first sketch here, second sketch. Hello, so it's the next day. I kind of forgot what my process is like which is why it's good to do these things but I essentially sketched on all of the canvases that I had planned for the whole week. So yeah, I think I'm just gonna keep going with like whatever is feeling inspiring I guess. I did put the tulips on this stool. Let me show you. See here? I think this looks so nice and I kind of want to paint them like this and I also have these big canvases behind me which I kind of want to paint them on the big canvases too. So I'm torn because I'm like, do I just go for it or do I hold myself back? Because sometimes when I go for it, it doesn't really work. So I think what I'm gonna do is keep sketching a little bit and I guess I had it very much in my mind like the way that I worked with illustration where I was like, okay I'll do one painting a day sort of thing but I totally forgot that that's not how I work with fine art. Like I tend to do multiple pieces at the same time and that's because I like to, you know, I get in my flow and I like to keep it loose. So I think I'm just gonna keep going with whatever's coming to me and it's not really what I had planned and I guess I shouldn't like structure my videos because I can't structure my brain so. Like don't they just look so pretty here? Do you guys see how the tulips have grown out? Like they've bloomed outward. I think that is what I love so much about them and it's inspiring me to do a big painting on them. It's funny to see how this sort of project turned into a whole collection of tulip paintings and I really didn't intend to start that way and when I started this video I thought that I would do this kind of structured, you know, daily project sort of thing and over the years I've come to realize how I just don't work very well that way. I tend to work better in waves and once I start getting my momentum I keep going. That's why I sort of had a really easy time transitioning to these larger paintings from the little studies. I knew what it was going into it because I had done those smaller pieces so. And also like the shape of the tulips themselves and how they're so kind of organic and loosely structured. It allowed me to really be sort of loose with my brushwork too and I especially liked experimenting with light and darks and I don't know just trying different things and not being so afraid of the canvas either. And like look at the juicy colors that I got. It's just so nice. I had a lot of fun with this collection. It's again not what I intended to do but it came about and that is the beauty of creativities. Well I think that the moral of the story here is if you need an inspiration or if you're feeling stuck just buy a bouquet of tulips. Solves all your problems. Started as just little studies kind of turned into a whole collection and it's great and I'm quite happy with them and I feel like I learned a lot but most importantly got back to my rhythm of painting which feels really nice and I feel like every collection I do I kind of loosen up a little bit more and refine my painting style a little bit more too which is really nice and just get clearer on like colors and patterns and things that I love and I really had fun with this. This is what was supposed to be a week-long project turned into basically a month of painting but yeah so if you want to find these pieces you can go to my website and subscribe to my newsletter and you'll get notified as soon as they're released. If you're watching this later go check out my website or my Instagram but also sign up for my newsletter if you want to be notified of other releases and yeah as always thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time and I don't know what the next video will be about but we will see maybe it'll be another collection. Bye!