NEW SATISFYING WATERCOLORS. And trying to win $15000! Are they any good?

Duration: 14:08 2011 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The video begins with the creator unboxing a new set of opaque watercolors featuring a vibrant range of pastel shades, particularly focusing on warm skin tones and pinks. She notes that while these paints are similar to gouache in their opacity, they feel slightly denser and offers a fresh review of the medium after previously working with standard transparent watercolors. Alongside testing the new pigments, she introduces a new sketchbook with very thin paper, highlighting its unique texture as a key feature for her artistic process. She emphasizes the importance of starting dates in her journals to track progress and shares her enthusiasm for the specific qualities of this particular paper, which allows for interesting textural effects despite its delicacy. The main focus of the video shifts to a creative competition hosted by Liberty, a prestigious London department store known for its Tudor-style architecture and famous floral fabrics. The challenge invites artists to design an advent calendar cover that incorporates the iconic building facade, with a prize pool of £15,000 available for the winner. Although the creator is initially skeptical about competitions that might seek free labor, she decides to participate because the contest provides high-quality materials and offers a legitimate opportunity to win significant money. She plans to create a design that differs from last year's entries by utilizing a soft, pastel color palette inspired by Liberty's signature fabrics, aiming to blend the architectural elements with a cute, beauty-product aesthetic suitable for an advent calendar. Throughout the creation process, the artist sketches her ideas and experiments with techniques such as using a kneaded eraser to remove pencil lines before applying watercolor washes, ensuring a clean final image suitable for high-DPI scanning and printing. She provides practical advice for other participants, reminding them to work in CMYK color mode if they intend to print their designs and to scan their work at a high resolution to avoid scaling issues later. As she blocks in the colors, she discusses her strategy of keeping the initial lines loose to allow the watercolor to flow naturally, considering whether to add details later with watercolor pencils. She expresses satisfaction with how the loose watercolor style captures the essence of Liberty's floral patterns while maintaining the structural integrity of the building template. In the final segment, the creator presents her completed illustration, which features a soft pink and blue palette that evokes a gentle, festive atmosphere rather than a traditional red-and-green Christmas look. She admits that the piece might need some darkening of the sky to better convey a holiday mood but remains very happy with the overall result and the quality of the new paints she tested. While she humorously doubts her chances of winning the competition given the high caliber of other entries, she views the project as a relaxing and enjoyable way to try out new art supplies. She concludes by promising to share the final version on her Instagram later, regardless of whether she wins, and invites viewers to share their thoughts on the paints and the design approach before signing off.

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Hello, welcome back to the average. Let's unbox this stuff. These paints have been made again, but in different colors. So, of course, I reached out to my whom whom you tell me how to say that. I reached out to these guys and I said, "Can I have a couple of those paints, please?" And they said, "Yes, of course. You can trust them out." They got a whole new range of colors. We have these beautiful colors that I'm very excited about. These kind of pastel I mean, they were pastel before. Like I'll one of the things cuz I've messed up my nails, but but again, look at these colors. That is crazy times. They are beautiful. Some specs, but whatever. I believe these are like skin tone or just like a warm set. Not sure. Let's open it up. Yeah, some nice colors. I think a lot of like skin tones as well with a lot of pinks. So, kind of just vibrant warm undertone colors, I guess, more than anything. So, we're going to try these out and let's 3 2 1 it. Let's go. I don't know why I said 3 2 1 and then didn't do anything, but let's watch these. 3 2 1 go. Here are the colors and I think they look really nice. They are opaque watercolors. Now, in the past, I've said that that's kind of the same as gouache and I think it is, but I think it's a little bit more dense than gouache. But you guys let me know if I'm getting that wrong because I haven't really worked with opaque watercolor before. I don't know if it's just another term for gouache. I'm starting a new sketchbook today, which I'm very excited about. I'm trying to keep the cover of this one a little cleaner than the last, but I need to put in Okay, crazily, today is the 20th of July. Let's start cuz last time I didn't put the start date in my sketchbook and I regretted it cuz I was like, "When did I actually start this?" I guess I got it in around May, the sketchbook, but watch it just smudge completely now. I like that these sketchbooks lay flat. The good thing about this paper, well, mhm, not the good thing, but it a thing about this paper is that it's very thin. And I really like the textures you can get with this paper, which I probably said a thousand times. So, if [music] you're new here, that's a new fact for you. But, if you're an old school person, probably, maybe, then that is not new information. All right, guys. So, basically, I found this competition online and I don't know if you've heard of the Liberty store, but it's this really fancy shop in London, great big shop, and it has like Tudor-esque style building on the outside. So, they are doing a competition that I saw, which I thought was very cool, where you get to illustrate the cover. And usually, I'm a bit dubious about competitions where they're like, "You can illustrate for us." And it's like, "Mhm, are you just trying to get like free labor and use us for later?" But, it seems like a legit competition because what they do is they will let you have, you know, the product and they will give you 15,000 pounds if you win, which is a whole lot of money cuz they are quite a um rich company. They're kind of like Harrods, I guess. And they're very famous for like their flowery fabrics. Um I know them mostly from that because [music] my mom uses them. She loves to use the fabrics to make smock dresses and things like that. And yeah, so their competition is design this advent calendar that looks the same as their building. So, they have a template. I'll link all the stuff down below of the competition if you want to check it out cuz it probably would be fun to do for you to do anyway. And to have my stuff printed on a giant advent calendar full of like beauty products and stuff, like good beauty products. I'm not an advert, by the way. >> [snorts] >> I just saw this competition and I was like, "That is a really fun competition." I thought I would just test out trying to do some designs for it and see how far I come. But, I'm trying to do something a bit different than the last one. I'll post what the last one is here. So, that's the the the old one and I guess you don't really want to do the same thing, but they do want the building featured cuz that is part of the template which I'll show here. So, the template is basically just that building. So, I'm going to figure out some ideas for that first and maybe use this kind of color palette because it's very different from the one previously used. This is obviously my rough sketch of template, but it kind of looks like this and that's all they really give you. They don't really give you any mock-ups of anything, but they give you this free tier which is kind of the iconic style of the building. Um so, I'll just roughly mock that up here. It doesn't need to be necessarily the colors of the brown and white that you see here because I think in the last one the illustrator obviously played on that a lot. So, [music] I think we can do something a bit different. I think they will probably want something a bit different. So, maybe we can do [music] like something with these pinks as the instead of a brown just to really like play on their their floral designs that they have a lot of which I know from my mom making her smock dresses, [music] I've been around the sort of fabric that they use a lot and I think it's very >> [music] >> beautiful and it would be fun to do a sort of style like that using like some sort [music] of loose watercolors to indicate this. Something that would be very pretty and then maybe like a light blue instead of the white. Cuz you still have that iconic looking building and you you read it as that, but then it's just something a little bit different, a little bit more unique. And especially if it's beauty products, then it would be very cute-sy to have it in this sort of pastel color. I know it's an advent calendar, so we have to [music] have some sort of Christmas-y aspect into it, but maybe we can just do like some Christmas trees outside and some mistletoe hanging down. You know what I mean? Like I think that would be very cute. So, I need to consider what other ideas might work. So fun. Yeah, I think this would be very sweet actually, especially this kind of loose watercolor style. I think it would be very different from what they had last year as well, which is something I'm [music] aiming for. Yeah, I think that's the one I'm going to go with. I'm going to try another design down here. All right, so I kind of refined this sketch a little bit and I do like it. I think definitely like the ideas of using [music] this palette for this color concept. I think it would be just pretty [music] and pink and perfect cuz who doesn't love pink? >> Now I was wanted dead. Now you want me to go. No matter what you feel, we're ending up alone. I never count all those tears. I got to fight your heart tonight. Finally done. Somebody drift in the breeze. I won't let you fade. And I want you to breathe in the light we made. I never asked for your fears. I won't let them haunt those more, no more, no more. So, what are you waiting for? So, what are you waiting for? Finally. All I need. >> Somebody moves in my dreams. I can't let you stray. And I want you to hear what I couldn't say. I never come for those tears. I won't let them fall again, again, again. What are you waiting for? >> What are you waiting for? >> Natalie All I need is the same that you need. What are you waiting for? Natalie All I need is the same that you need. >> They keep on talking like they know, but there are still places you could go cuz whenever you stop the whole world stops. They keep on talking like it's true, but they don't see the things that you could do. And whenever you move the light comes through. What you waiting for? >> What are you waiting for? Natalie All I need is the same that you need. What are you waiting for? Natalie All I need is the same that you need. >> I sketched out most of the lines and I realized that I'm going to go in with my kneadable eraser and just dot away the lines and try to sort of keep it so I don't get the pencil lines underneath the water colors, which is kind of difficult, but we're trying out here. I'm just going to roughly paint in these colors and block them out and I'm not sure if I want to keep it lineless or if I'm going to sketch on top with some watercolor pencils, but I'm going to see how it goes. I'll first do like lineless and then I'll scan it and then I think I'll go in with the pencils. If you guys are going to do this competition, remember [music] to if you want to scan and stuff, scan it at a high DPI so then you can be [music] able to scale it up for print. Just a a little heads up there. >> [music] >> Also, if you working with it on Photoshop, you want to do um CMYK color so if you're printing. So, I hope that helps you if you are taking part in this competition because sometimes these are little things that we don't know about, especially if you're just starting out. But yeah, this is going to be fun. This is a fun little little competition that I'm doing and I'm just trying these paints out and I think I really like the quality of them. I really like the the paper that I have cuz it's so thin and I always go on about this but it's just it's nice textures and I think that is something that I really like in artwork. So, like it, I guess. Let me know at the end. I probably won't finish the final final piece. Maybe that's against the rules, I'm not sure, but and then I'll probably post [music] them the final thing on my Instagram later on to say that I didn't win. >> [laughter] >> Cuz I doubt this is going to win, but it's very it's just a nice relaxing thing to do. Here is basically where I ended up with this [music] illustration um slash painting. I definitely want to finish it off, but I just wanted to show you guys how it was looking so far and I'm really happy with it. I don't think it screams Christmas yet. So, I might darken up the sky a little [music] bit to make it more Christmasy and the light a bit better. In the end, I really love the paints. I think these are really really cool, and I really like the quality and texture you get with them. And so, that's kind of the final review of these paints. Let me [music] know what you guys think, and I'll see you next time. Bye.