Hello, everybody. I got a microphone, so hopefully the sound quality will be better. And thanks to all of you out there who let me know that the sound wasn't so good. I'm still experimenting with the whole video thing. They're not perfect, but I hope you're enjoying the few that I've posted so far. I've been talking a lot about working large, and I just want you to know that I don't always work on very large scale panels and things like that. It's really fun to kind of mix things up, not only size, but format. And when I say format, although I really enjoy working in a square format, I also find it challenging to then switch over to something more rectangular or really tall and skinny. One thing that I just thought I'd show you today is something that I do a lot in workshops or in my own studio. I like to work on, say, four paintings at a time. The four paintings at a time are small. Each one is about five by seven inches, and I work on arched oil paper. And I'm going to show you that in just a minute. I'm going to show you how I prepare it. I'm going to show you how I protect the back to keep it clean. And the reason for that is so that when you take that tape and the backing off, it's clean, and you can mount it on a wooden panel. If you're going to frame it behind glass, you don't have to worry so much about keeping the back clean. So one of the reasons to, say, work on these four paintings at one time, it automatically is a series. You've got four paintings going on, and most likely, if you set up your paints ahead of time, you can dedicate, say, one set of four paintings to various color schemes. Maybe you want to have blue, black and white. That would be a monochromatic color scheme. Or maybe the next four you want to do red and green. That would be a complementary color scheme. And what happens when you do that is you're limiting your palette. You're not going to pull every single paint color you have. You're just going to limit it. And that allows you to really get to know that an individual color, because every color, every pigment that you have has this personality. Some colors are opaque, some are transparent, and some are semi-transparent. I like to show you how I set up these pieces of paper in four sections that are all five by seven. So here we are. This is my workspace. I'm just going to do a quick scan. What it looks like is a mess. Yep, this is how it looks. Anyways, so these are the Arches Oil Paper, four square prepared sections that I wanted to show you. And the overall size of these is 13 and a quarter by 17 and a quarter inches. And they can be cut from, can get two of these from a 22 by 30 sheet of Arches Oil Paper. And the reason that I cut them exactly to 13 and a quarter by 17 and a quarter is when you put this one inch tape down the middle vertically and horizontally, as well as around the edges. As you can see here, you get four five by seven rectangles. And it's really nice to work in a series that way. This is freezer paper that I put on the backs to keep the backs clean. You can kind of see that there. I attach it with the same, you know, artist tape. You can also use painter's tape. It's blue, but the white is kind of nice. I keep the back clean so that when you take it off, you then have a really pristine backing to four little paintings. And then if you wanted to mount these paintings on a panel, you could do that. Whereas if they're really full of paint, they're not going to adhere as well. So when you prepare these, you can have several going on at one time. You could have, you know, five sheets all in a row, kind of like what I've done here. I've got several. This one I started yesterday. That's kind of what it looks like when the paint is, painting has started. And you can see that I've used a limited palette, just experimenting with various colors. And you can tape them into place with a little bit of blue tape, like I've done here. Keep them from moving around. Now I'm going to show you what it's like to take the tape off at the very end. So scanning over here. I've got four paintings that I've been working on for a while. And I'm not saying that they're done, but I just want to show you what it's like when you take that tape off because it's kind of, it's kind of fun. You can see that there is a lot of paint on the tape, and I use blue tape. So it's not only messy, but it's blue. And it's really distracting. I have a really hard time analyzing a painting when, you know, it has this blue messiness around it. So I'm just going to show you what it's like to the fun part is taking this tape off. Okay, here we go. It can be a little tricky taking this tape off. You have to figure out, you know, what flap is down first. I've got some collage paper on these two. So that could be a little tricky. In that case, I think what I need to do is get up my exacto knife and be a little careful here. Cutting this. I'm guessing where the borders are. Go slowly. If you go too fast, you could possibly tear some of that white arches paper. I'm just going to go slowly. And again, I take this tape off, not necessarily because I think it's finished, it's closed. I mean, I don't want to take it off too early, but I do expect that I'll have to do a little bit, you know, finishing on it. But the main thing is that I just want to be able to see the composition without this distracting messy tape in the way. This is where I have the collage paper. I didn't exactly cut through it all the way, but it's okay. Plus the paint is still wet. There we go. And keep checking your hands to make sure that they're clean. You just don't want to get paint on the borders if you can possibly help it. Again, this paint is still pretty wet in some areas and on some of the paintings, not all of them. I can't exactly remember where I put collage paper, so it's a little bit hit or miss. We'll see. Here. That is definitely better. I can now actually see what's going on. So with that, I guess this would be what I would have considered right side up. And there it is. I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you for watching. See you later. You You