Finishing & Starting Paintings (Painting + Sketchbook Time) 🧚🏻‍♀️

Now, do I have plans for this big one? Yes, however, we cannot start a new one until we are done with, first of all, the commissions. I'm very comfortable painting in my small sizes, but I think it does make a big change. But I love big paintings, I think they're gorgeous, I just feel like I don't have the capacity to make such big paintings. And honestly, every time that I talk to my friend Jess or that I see her paintings in person, they're just, they're to die for. I absolutely adore her and love her artwork so much. There's just so much to fill, there's like a lot of space to fill. So anyway, so in the meantime, I recently finished this piece, which I called Ida's Dream, and I really like how it turned out. Something that I really want to achieve with paintings is to try and paint a state of mind or a state of emotion. I need to expand my color now because I feel like I'm always painting in green, but I just really like it. Maybe it's my green face, who knows? I used to have my pink face. The panel, I did it on my own and I missed the measurements for the tiniest bits, so I have to cut a little bit, but I'm kind of debating whether I should cut it from the top or from the bottom, like the tiniest bit. And now, how do we cut it? Well, just praying to the gods that we don't mess up. You know how some pieces, they come super effortlessly together and then you have others where you just gotta plan a ton, but I honestly love, love, love the process of gathering inspiration, almost just as much as painting. And I take this from like everywhere, from my everyday life, the artists that I admire, from my friends, flipping through my favorite art books, which I show maybe way too much, but I don't think it's way too much, honestly. I'm constantly going back to them. Translating all that inspiration into a finished piece, it just takes a lot of focus. And this is where Opera Air has been perfect for me. I'm constantly on my laptop because of work. I'm editing videos, or answering emails, or gathering reference images, and finding a balanced work-life is not always easy. That's why I really love Opera Air's light, clutter-free design, and it feels super intuitive. But one of my favorite features are the boosts, specifically the creativity boost. It just plays these really nice lo-fi soundscapes. I play it when I'm answering emails, or when I'm browsing, but I also do the take a breath feature, because it just gently reminds you to pause, take a break, and even do a little bit of a stretch, so you don't get stuck in front of the screen for way too long, which happens too often. And lastly, right at the bottom, there's a really cute feature where every day it shows a different inspirational quote, and I thought it was really cute. I loved it. If you are looking for a browser that actually supports your creative process, you can download Opera Air right now from the link in my description box. Thank you so much to Opera for supporting this channel and for improving my well-being while browsing. So this was a sketch that I did, which I've probably shown you already, and I really, really love this idea of having something semi-circular. I adore this painting by Alexander White, it's called Repose, and I actually saw it recently in New York. Seeing paintings in real life is something that I feel like I forget. We're just so used to seeing things online, and I love the composition of it, because that's purely what it is. It is the movement, the composition. I'm always trying to add that into my paintings, I'm always trying to add some sort of movement, something that... it just doesn't look too stiff. I didn't want to wing it, so what I'm going to do is, I'm going to search for some inspiration. I know that I for sure want to add golden stars in the back. Yeah, some just gold motifs, gold moods, you know the drill. Of course. Oh, this is beautiful. Oh my gosh, we are not looking for room decor, although I'm going to save it in home. Ah, this is gorgeous. Oh my gosh, I love these colors. I think that arches, obviously, they frame things so beautifully and so nicely. That's probably why I like them so much. Oh, this is very nice too. Oh, Ruth. Love her. I absolutely love everything she does. See, this is my problem, is that I just... I fall in love with so many pieces. Concentrate here, concentrate. I don't know if you can see, but I started to... well, I tried to add some of the little stars that I drew in the initial sketch. These stars will tie everything together with the ones in the background. But my question, which I'm asking honestly, I guess myself at this point, should I paint them with like oil or... because this is what I have here, is I have some gold leaf that I bought, I don't know how many years ago, for my taste. It's just a little bit cold, like it's not as warm as I would like it to be, but I think it would be like a nice try. I'm fighting the urge to make some arches, but that's not what we're gonna do, because that was not the initial design that we thought of, and we're trying to follow somewhat of a plan.