Hi everyone, I'm staying in front of a dip tick. It's a 48 by 96 inch currently acrylic and collage on wooden panel. And I brought it out of storage, I'm in my new studio and one of the things I love about the new studio is that it has a lot more like wall space that's uninterrupted by free standing walls and all kinds of other things because what I moved here, I wanted to have more of a clear view from one side of the studio to the other. And at the same time, as I'll show you in another video, clip, I'd like to have finished work and work that's in progress and you know work that's almost finished all together so that they can all inform one another and I can decide whether you know I'm working toward a solo show. And if I want cohesion, then it's kind of important that I have this cross pollination happening between work that's finished, work that's in progress, like early stage, late stage, the final touches, you know, because it's really not that hard to have cohesion, but you kind of need to have a reference point. And so the way that I've arranged my studio right now is to have this kind of combination of works that I feel really good about that are finished and that's the direction I want to go. At the same time, I have other work in my sketchbook that's kind of going off, shooting off into this very different direction and I'm excited about it. But that is our creativity, our creativity wants to go in 10 directions at one time. The piece behind me can very well become part of this show, but I need to keep in mind the things that I've been most interested in and the other works that are intended for the show. So as I've talked with other pro members right now, the main things I'm interested in for this body of work are shapes that are really different and usual and interesting colors that are sophisticated. In other words, they're not just straight out of the bottle or tube. They've been mixed, tensed tones and shades. And usually I'm using a limited palette for the most part. I found that that is a very nice way to achieve harmony and it avoids so many potential problems on the road. And for those of you in my pro masterclasses, you know why a limited palette is just so, it's got so much versatility, so much diversity and potential for that. But it saves all the headaches and frustrations that, you know, if you're using every color that you possibly could use, it prevents that frustration that can happen if you don't know how to get harmony. Cohesion factors, they can bring a very diverse body of work together simply by repetition with variation. For this painting, we've talked about the two different kinds of texture that you can have in an artwork in my pro membership. And one of those things is physical texture. Physical texture is something you can actually feel with your hand. It's kind of like if you were to close your eyes, you know, you feel the ups and downs of the surface, you feel the edges of collage paper and things like that. Whereas visual texture is like it's if you're looking at a photograph of this painting, obviously a photograph is, let's say it's glossy. Well, there is no physical texture to it, but there's lights and darks and mid tones and that all creates visual texture. And so what I'm going to do with this one is I brought it out of storage. I'm looking at it again. And I've decided that the physical texture is something that I just don't really want right now. So I'm going to put pouring medium made by liquid text over the top. And I might even have to apply two coats and the number of coats depends on how lumpy and bumpy it is. So the more lumpy and bumpy it is, if you really want it super smooth, you might need more than one application. But it's a pretty simple process. And you want to let it dry if you're going to do multiple coats, you let it dry in between. So I let it cure overnight. And then when it's at the smoothness that I want, it will be hyper glossy. But I don't really care because this is just an intermediary step. And what I'll do after it's completely dry is I'm going to move into some color. But I'm going to be using a very limited palette, I think. So I'm going to be putting on my liquid text pouring medium right now. And I'll show you that process. All right, so I'm just spreading this pouring medium over the surface here. And I've got this squeegee that helps me go faster and really push that pouring medium around. And the point about this stuff is that it will self level. But I do have it, you know, you want it to be level though. Like it has to be flat. If it's tilted, then, you know, all the pouring mediums going to go off the edge. And then I've got this other sponge tool again, an adapted tool on a dull rod here where I can actually spread it around a bit more. So between these two tools, hopefully I can get it distributed rather quickly. You do have to work kind of quickly just because, well, the minute that you work with acrylic anyone who's worked with acrylic knows that it does start to set up. You can see where it's a lot thicker and get those edges. Sure comes off the edge. I decided to put them both on the floor and try and do two at the same time or in the same time period because then when I come into moral and I do let these set overnight. They'll both be ready. Now I'm wiping off the edge. There are drips and what I'm doing is I'm just catching them. With the sponge tool, typically it will be thinner at the edge because we try not to waste it and then we end up not getting the edge very well. That's why it's better just to let it come off the edge. And you don't lose that much. A few drips in here and there. You can see from the way the light is hitting this that I probably could have gone a little thicker with the pouring medium. But this is kind of what it looks like when it's wet. You can see the drips around the perimeter and it will dry perfectly clear and it'll be really super glossy. One, it's all dry. But this highlights the physical texture. So where it's thicker, there are some actual physical texture to this because of my collage paper. That it's really much more noticeable, say, over here too. Where it's thicker and pooling, that's where it's filling in. And I don't mind it visually but I don't want it physically. And so that's what I've done here and spread it as evenly as I could. And the rest of the time that it's drying, it does a bit of self-leveling but I think I'll need a second coat. Turns out I did need a second coat. And I just wanted to back up here so you could see that. I found that just balancing these panels on trash cans works really well. They're not perfectly level. I did put a level on top of the panels and they're not completely 100% level. But they're flat enough so that the pouring medium, the second layer of pouring medium, you know, it didn't pull or fall off the edge of the panel because it was tipped too far. So that was a good solution. I'm pretty happy with that because it was hard when the panels were on the floor. And the tools that I was using in the other video with that sponge tool and everything, it's like it worked. But it just, I didn't have the degree of ability to see how even the layer is. And that's really important. So now that it's on the garbage cans, I put actually more pouring medium on the top and then I tipped the board and then I kind of moved it around with my master master. And it is a much better second layer here. I think partially because there was so much texture on the surface. I did need, I kind of knew that I would need a second coat. But I just wanted to back up and show you that this is the setup. I've got my garbage cans. Then I've got brown paper and then underneath that is just a sheet of plastic. Because, and I'll show you the mess underneath, you know, it could have been a lot more pouring medium that I had wasted. But actually this is not bad. And you should expect some waste. If you try to prevent the waste, you're going to actually end up having an uneven layer of the pouring medium. And it's really important that you be willing to lose a little bit. And you get that when you push it off the edge and you really need to push it off the edge with a brush or a tool to ensure that the edges also get the pouring medium. Because if you try and prevent losing some of that medium, you might miss the edges. And then you're going to have to redo the edges anyway. That's just a tip that I've learned over time is that a little bit of waste is worth it because it's going to save you a lot of time in the long run. Okay, I hope that's helpful. If you decide to use pouring medium by liquid text on such large panels, you do need to work rather quickly. And you have a really good dedicated brush for this sort of thing. If it's a final layer, if it's not a final layer, you can use a squeegee tool or a messer master to really spread it around.