There are three important elements Bill discusses in this video clip:
- Preparing to paint – Bill discusses the mindset you need to be in before you start painting. You must believe the painting you are about to do will be the best painting you have ever created. What a positive mindset that is, right? If you go into a painting depressed, or feeling bad about yourself or your painting abilities, stop right there! Don’t paint today! (Bill mentions in other videos, that if you aren’t at the top of your game, don’t paint today!)
- Bill imagines the painting already completed on the canvas. He sees the painting and all the elements of the painting in his mind from the colors and characters to the movements he wants to add to the painting. Even Bill admits to being hard on himself. He was that way because he wanted to create the best painting possible. The important takeaway from this point is to build yourself up before you start painting
- In nearly every one of Bill’s videos, he talks about Magic White™ and the importance of applying it correctly. The biggest mistake most beginning painters make is applying too much Magic White™ and then wondering why their paint slips and slides on the canvas. As Bill explains in another of his videos, the Magic White™ is absorbed into the canvas so it thickens up during the application process.
- Bill demonstrates how to rub the Magic White™ into the canvas. The canvas is really dryer than you might think. It is tacky rather than slick. Remember, the point of the Magic White™ is to help with mixing your colors on the canvas rather than on the palette. That’s why the layer of Magic White™ has to be very thin.
NOTE: Our new Magic White™ is thicker than the Magic White™ Bill is using in his video. That does not change this basic rule, though. You still apply a very small amount and “push” it into the canvas. You do the exact same fingerprint test with the new Magic White™ as with the old. And it works just the same only without the harmful solvents that were in the old Magic White™ and which remains in all of our competitor’s products.
Please watch this video to see how to apply the new Magic White™.
In the following video, Tom Anderson explains how to clean your brushes with our environmentally safe brush cleaner. There is no need to clean up with harmful thinners and dangerous solvents anymore. Paint safe with Alexander Art!
Jason says
This helped me so MUCH! i never wanted to use paint thinner because i heard that even the oderless had toxic fumes i had no idea. this mixture of vegetable oil, soap and water is really cool i’m going to try it out soon i just got the materials yesterday. i think the lemon stuff is going to work very well for getting extra paint off my brush. thank you and my brushes just came in the mail. AlexanderArt is great!
kirk parent says
Scumble
Andrew Sitton says
I’ve heard that the brush beating method of drying the brush can increase the number of particles you might breathe in because you’re spraying the fluid into the air, and this has been linked to certain illnesses, so I always use a litter bin with an old cake cooling rack in the bottom to contain it, but from now on I’ll be using Tom’s cleaner recipe aswell. No more spirits for me – thank you so much for this. (By the way, I was using spirits for cleaning only, since I started using walnut oil and safflower oil as paint thinners. Walnut is slightly yellowish and good for pale/pastel colours, while safflower is a bit more transparent so better for layering where you want to change the value but not the hue. They increase the drying time a bit but I like the results.)