(soft music)
Hey guys, welcome back to a new episode
of Art Journal Thursday,
where we get creative
every single Thursday here on this channel
and in today's episode I
wanted to challenge myself
and paint something that is
completely out of my comfort zone.
I wanted to see if I
would be able to paint
the Mona Lisa with watercolors.
I haven't painted a proper
portrait in watercolors yet
that's why I thought
let's see how this goes.
Since watercolors behave
totally different to oil
or acrylic paint, it can be pretty tricky
to create a smooth face in
terms of blending the colors
so it doesn't look too
harsh but I just wanted
to give it a go and just
experiment and see what works
and what doesn't work
so please don't judge
my techniques I'm just experimenting.
You will also see how I really
struggled at some points
because the colors were off
and the face looked just weird
and I even tried to erase some
pencil and made everything
just worst and I actually considered
quitting halfway through and thought about
what else I could paint
because painting a Mona Lisa
is so difficult I should have
gone with something easier
but then I realized that
it's again the whole problem
with us, if you feel too
intimidated by something
or when you already paint
something and you feel like
that it looks awful and we
stop painting or draw something
and you will see how
horrible the painting was
at some point and it was
pretty much this point where
I was thinking about
giving up but as in one
of my original videos I mentioned that
sometimes you just need to
just start talking to yourself
and telling yourself that
you should just keep going
what do you have to lose.
And after thinking that I realized that
it's totally okay if
something looks horrible,
we should allow ourselves
to create bad art
and it's just important not
to give up at this point
and then you can look at
your painting or drawing
and think about okay, what could be wrong,
what could I add, what should I remove.
I even took a few pictures with my phone
and look at the paintings
through the phone
to see if I can discover
something that looks off
and this is pretty much
one of the best ways
to find mistakes or things
you might want to change.
Take a picture and then look
at it through your phone
or on your computer or
you can take a mirror
and look at the picture
through the mirror.
You just really need to have another view
on the image because if you
sit in front of the painting
you kind of stop seeing
anything, especially if you paint
something for hours and it's
also great to take a break
and then just come back with fresh eyes.
Also we're at the point
where I was thinking
about giving up I just
allowed myself to create
bad art and thought just let's experiment
and just don't care about
the end result too much,
let's focus on what we'll
learn throughout the process.
It doesn't necessarily
have to do something
with painting techniques
but more about learning
about yourself, pushing
yourself and also training
yourself to not stress too much.
I constantly mention this in my videos
how we always stress about everything
and when it comes to painting a drawing
we are squared to view the end result
because of course it's
easy to feel like a failure
when you think you messed something up
and that your whole
painting is totally rubbish.
And in these times when
you think about giving up
they are the best situations
to just push yourself
to figure out a way how you can finish it.
For Mona Lisa I really
struggled to get the face right
because she has a very specific face
and I really tried to paint
it as realistic as possible
which was pretty much
something that limited myself.
At some point I was thinking again,
maybe I should just practice
painting faces first
before I paint the Mona
Lisa but then again
when I worked on this piece, I mean,
even if you totally ruin it
you still practice right.
So I went back and forth
with adding and removing
certain areas and it
was really challenging.
Especially Mona Lisa
is known for her smile
and after erasing and
repainting the nose and mouth
multiple times that even the paper
couldn't handle it anymore
I was just like well what can you do,
I will just give it another try later.
So I focused again on
the face and the hair
I took pictures to compare
it to the original painting
and after some time I saw more
and more what I could fix.
For example the face on my
painting was a bit too round
so I added more hair and shadows
I tried to contour the face more and more
and even tried to add more highlights
with white watercolor.
So it was really a difficult
and challenging process
especially I had no
idea how to paint faces
with watercolors, so I just experimented
and when it came to painting
the nose and the lips again
I didn't give up at
this point but I gave up
on the idea of just copying the art piece.
I felt so limited because I'm not DaVinci
and I don't only have the same skills
but I also use a
completely different medium
so I was like I will just use pencils
and just make this person
that is supposed to be
Mona Lisa just a pretty girl
that looks similar to her.
I mean even if you tried to paint someone
from a picture and you
really want to make it look
super realistic don't
forget that you also have
your own style, experiment with that,
add something to it, make it your own.
Don't, I mean it's great if
it looks totally the same
but just don't lose
your own personal style.
I used different colors and
just experimented again.
In the end I even added a
red lipstick to her lips
because I felt so relieved for some reason
that I was thinking why not.
As I said earlier we
usually feel discouraged
whenever we create something
that looks totally different
to the original idea we had in our mind
but this only puts so
much pressure onto us
that we don't allow
ourselves to experiment
to change things, maybe
even turning the idea
into something else.
It doesn't mean we failed as an artist,
it just shows you again that
you can't really have fun
and express yourself if you only focus
on copying the idea you have
in mind into the real world.
The concept in your head is only there
so you can work from there
and create the masterpiece
that will manage to come alive.
I just thought I would share
my thoughts about this topic
again because it's something
we always struggle with
and you need a reminder that you just have
to push through it, and if
I had quit on the painting
halfway through I wouldn't
have created this painting
and didn't remind myself
that sometimes you just need
to keep going and have fun.
I really hope you'll like the result,
I really had fun experimenting
and I might have went
overboard with my beloved white pen
but I really like her
lipstick now, so shiny.
Let me know what other
tutorials you would like to see
in the future or what other
topics you want me to talk about
you guys give me the best ideas always.
So feel free to comment down below.
Also don't forget to give
this video a thumbs up
if you enjoyed it, it
will mean a lot to me
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don't forget to subscribe
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videos in the future.
I upload on Thursdays and on Saturdays.
Thank you so much for watching guys,
have a wonderful day, and I
will see you on Saturday, bye.
