Shadowing Practice: A Quiet Artist Vlog - Learn English Speaking with Video

I know There's nothing here to hear about Is that sound better? Is that sound better?

Okay, so I've got my afternoon coffee.

Actually, I just finished it, so it's more of a prop, but let's get into what I did this week.

If you did not watch my last video,

what I'm doing is learning from the art and work and life of one of my favorite artists,

Edouard Huillard, who was a French painter around the beginning of the 20th century.

So this week what I focused on a lot was color.

I feel like you can hear my dog.

My dog's collar.

I think I'm starting to I'm gonna let him out.

Be right back.

I'm gonna try to make it look like I'm holding him.

So I'm gonna put up on the screen some of the Ruyach pieces

that have been inspiring me the most over the past week.

Something that I love about his work and especially these pieces is just how much he leans into simplicity.

He's not shying away from keeping things simple and sometimes having just areas where you really only see one to two colors.

And I think that's something that I struggle with because I always want to put so much information in there.

And sometimes I feel like if I leave it too simple then it looks unfinished

or just like maybe it's not impressive enough I don't know

so that is something that I want to lean into more is just keeping things simple

and seeing how much I can take away from a composition

or a color palette before it starts to look like it's lacking

because I think I I tend toward putting too much

I feel like I'm starting to see color in a different way just

because of these exercises I've been doing I think I'm breaking some habits

that I've had for many years when it comes to color there are certain things

that I just always go for and that's not necessarily a bad thing

but I think I'm really broadening my capabilities and just my understanding of color palettes and color mixing so that's really exciting

right That's

uh, Blades Bold.

Oh yeah.

Which is another reason why I think the Blades name for a kid would be really, really cool.

Oh, true, true, true.

He's one of my favorite songwriters ever.

Yeah, I love that song.

So I've been sitting outside for a while painting.

I think I finished the thumbnail version of the painting of my parents

that I'm planning to do multiple multiple versions of and this time I went for a way more neutral color palette.

I'll flip the camera around and show you what I have.

So this is what I ended up doing.

I wanted to go for a more neutral palette this time.

I know in my first version the chartreuse which was my background.

I just did a wash of it.

That showed through a lot and I really like that, but I wanted to try something a little different with this one and keep it very neutral.

And I really leaned into that really pretty like blue green color.

So I'm happy with this, but I am wondering if it is not quite interesting enough.

I'm not sure.

So when I do the full size piece, we'll see if I end up changing it at all.

I probably will.

It's the last bar closer

I'm

going to

go to the next one so Okay,

so just to pause and let you in on my decision making for this piece, what I'm seeing here is

that the color I mixed for the walls of the house is a lot closer

or reading a lot closer to this brighter blue green that I wanted for out the window.

However, I am really liking it.

Like, I'm really liking this color,

and I'm almost wondering if it would be more interesting to lighten up the value of what's out the window,

because that's how it is in this one, and that's how it is in the original photo.

Of course, the value in the window is much lighter and I didn't do that at all in this mini sketch.

So I think I'm going to revert back to that

and maybe also make it a more neutral color so

that it just gets pushed back into the background and I'm going to minimize the amount of contrast as well, kind of how I did here,

just so that it reads as being through the window and it's not competing for your attention with the figures it

okay let's see what we can find

that is still life material okay this is what i grabbed from inside

so i got this pink vase the little wooden bowl I put the petals in there and these are some dried daffodils.

Is that what that's called?

Yeah.

And then I thought the contrast of the blue book under the yellow would be nice

so I'm going to do a little sketch of this in my sketchbook.

the palette is so dirty right now

and i'm honestly just too lazy to go wash the paper so we're working with it okay it'll be fine

I'm going

to go to the next slide.

so I thought I would show you guys where I'm at on this piece this is it currently

and the bubblegum pink layer that I laid down first is really influencing the colors

that I'm veering towards it's just crazy how like I thought

I was spot on this is my color study I thought I was spot on with

that pink but no I was not I was way off which is fine because I also really like this

but I had a much warmer toned color scheme going on here

and then this more like cool toned bubble gummy pink made

me really lean into a more blue like there's turquoise I'm seeing I'm reading all of this as turquoise

which is just interesting because I never go for that color

but something about the pink was making me want to lean in that direction.

So anyway, this is it so far.

And to see the finished piece, watch my next video because I will definitely show it.

And yeah, I'm excited to see where I'm gonna take this because I feel like it could go multiple different directions.

I was playing around a lot with colors in this shirt and kind of adding a bit of a yellowish hue here, which I like.

But definitely it's unfinished, so I thought I would show you that.

Okay, I think right here I'm going to insert a clip that I took like a week ago.

It was, I was traveling, I was in Virginia, and it was right after I saw the first comments on my last video,

which I thought had like zero views.

So I just kind of sat down and recorded my reaction to that.

And then I also went through and showed you some of my sketchbook pages and stuff I'd been working on.

So I'll insert that clip here.

okay so this is weird

because in my last video I didn't feel like I was talking to anyone

100

because I honestly didn't think anybody would watch it I thought maybe like 10 people I know would watch it

101

and I saw a message on my Instagram from somebody who watched the last video saying

102

that she really loved it and was glad

103

that it came up in her home feed so I went

104

and looked at the video which I thought had like 10 views max

105

and it had like 800 and a lot of likes

106

and like really nice comments that honestly shocked me

107

because I felt like making any kind of content was like just shouting to avoid like

108

when I share my art on Instagram or I share it very seldom

109

because it doesn't seem like anybody sees it or like very few people see it and it can just be discouraging.

110

I don't feel entitled to having feedback.

111

Um, I don't use social media that much and I don't want other people to be on it all the time,

112

just like giving me praise.

113

So yeah, it's kind of complicated.

114

It's like, I want, I want to connect with people, but I'm aware that social media is not an ideal way to do so.

115

So when I post something and I get no feedback, I don't usually take it hard or take it personally.

116

It's just, I've kind of come to accept that that's how it is.

117

But all that to say

118

that getting 10 sincere comments from people actually responding to what I was saying in the last video

119

and like sharing their experience and responding to different things I said, that was so amazing.

120

And that was way more than I expected.

121

I think making that video.

122

I really felt like I wanted to share

123

and I had somewhat high hopes but really low expectations

124

and my expectations have already just been so exceeded by the response that I got.

125

So thank you.

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If you watched my last video, if you left a comment, thank you so much.

127

I'm going to read and respond to all of them thoughtfully

128

because I was just scrolling through and I'm amazed

129

that people I'm just so it's so heartening

130

that people are using YouTube to connect

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and to have real conversations I don't usually comment on videos

132

because I always feel like it doesn't matter

133

and now I realize commenting on somebody's video something sincere can really make their day

134

and so I would like to do that more myself

135

because there's so many people that I've found on here

136

that have had such an impact on me

137

and yeah I don't usually let them know that

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so anybody to anybody who commented on the last video thank you you're teaching me

139

that something like that can actually mean a lot and I just really appreciate that you took the time to do that.

140

So I am like I said in Virginia across the country from where I live

141

and I recently discovered that you can just like bring art supplies through airport security.

142

I don't know why I thought you couldn't

143

but I never brought acrylics anywhere until more recently and now I've been bringing them with me whenever I go somewhere.

144

so I'll show you what I've been working on.

145

One of my biggest YouTube inspirations in the world is Sandy Hester.

146

I love her videos and hers is one of the channels

147

that made me feel like I really should share my art because I love, love watching what she shares.

148

So I was watching an old video of hers before leaving

149

and she had printed out just black and white photocopies of some family photos

150

and I've been working for family photos a lot as well so I figured that was a good idea.

151

There's this photo of my brother holding a chicken

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and I really want to do a painting of this

153

so I brought that and then there's also this one of my niece

154

picking up rocks and then there's this photo of my sister, brother-in-law, and my niece.

155

So these are three that I wanted to sketch and experiment with creating compositions based on those photos.

156

So I showed this briefly in the last video.

157

This is a little still life of a lemon and the blue muscari plant that I have at home.

158

This is a little painting I did while I was at the river, the same place that I showed last time.

159

Except, well, we went to a different area near the river and, oops, gotta move that.

160

Um, yeah, this was with my sister and my niece

161

and my brother-in-law and my sister just sat out this picnic blanket

162

and they were sitting on it and there was like a charcuterie board.

163

It was like too much going on.

164

I wasn't going to try to paint all of it.

165

So I just did the little corner of the blanket and the ducks in the river behind it.

166

okay

167

so I got these markers I was really wanting to experiment

168

with mapping out the values in a composition before starting on it

169

and I thought a cool way of doing

170

that would be to get just like three different values of marker

171

which I did so I picked up this Faber-Castell one because I I'm really picky about grays.

172

I hate cool grays typically.

173

Like I do like bluey bluey grays.

174

Not bluey the show.

175

I like bluish gray but if it's just just like a gray

176

that seems bluish I don't like it if that makes sense at all.

177

I like warmer tones in my grays so I'll show you this.

178

oh wow this is awkward look at

179

that nice warm toned gray it's just like there's just something subtly warm about it

180

and that I really like

181

and then this brand didn't have at least at my art supply store they didn't have any other gray scales

182

so I went for what is this tombow marker and I got that one for the next darker.

183

And then I got this one for the darkest.

184

So I'm seeing a lot of like mauve undertones.

185

I'm almost seeing a little green, greenish mauve in here.

186

And I've been working a lot with the mixture of red

187

and green to get my neutrals so that's why I went for these gray markers

188

because even though I'm not planning on making any finished work with these I'm sketching out these little thumbnails

189

and I have to look at them and I want them to look nice

190

so these have been cool it is not what I'm used to

191

so I'm not used to working with markers at all ever.

192

So we'll see if I get the hang of it and if I end up really liking that.

193

This is a little painting that I did of, we collect our compost and we usually just put it in the green bin,

194

but we have it in a bucket before we take it out to the green bin.

195

And I looked in the bucket and it was just like this beautiful array of eggshells, orange peel, and beet, like the bottoms of beets

196

so I thought it was too pretty to just check out

197

so I put them on this blue little plate that I have

198

and created a little still life

199

and I think it's pretty lovely I like the colors yeah

200

I just kind of wanted to train my eye to see

201

what it was like to work with these kinds of colors

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when I'm working from life this one also was really good for practicing my colors

203

because typically when I'm painting from life I go way too true to color like green is green

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and it ends up too bright too green

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so I really liked this painting

206

and this painting for helping me lean into those neutrals and to color combinations that I wouldn't normally reach for

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okay this is the this is a little gray scale of my brother with the chicken

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and then this is me beginning to block it out with my acrylics

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so I started this this morning I'll probably continue to work on this some more now

210

and then the only other art that I've done on this trip

211

so far is it was desperation art because I was

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so bored we flew standby and I'm sandwiched between these two guys

213

and we're in the emergency exit row so I can't like keep my backpack under my seat.

214

So I didn't have any of my drawing supplies

215

and I've been into like doodling on flights so I was just like going crazy a little bit.

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It was only four and a half hours but I swear I was going crazy.

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This is a French like mystery novel I've been slowly

218

but surely working on um trying to keep my French skills sharp

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so I brought this on the trip and I I doodled on the front page

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so February 28th doodles and doodles in the dark on a plane

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and then I've also been reading Confessions by St. Augustine

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which I thought was gonna be so hard to read

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and hard to understand but shockingly it's absolutely not um I've been really loving it

224

and I drew that too

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so I was just like copying the cover with my little pen drawing

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that was nice that was fun and honestly i think it looks really cool

227

he's not up there right now oh yeah he is Thank you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “A Quiet Artist Vlog”. This video has 227 sentences and 2827 words to shadow. The speech runs for 22:42. The speaker talks at a steady 125 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
lean verb	/ˈliːn/	To incline, deviate, or bend, from a vertical position; to be in a position thus inclining or deviating.
neutral adjective	/ˈnuː.tɹəl/	Not taking sides in a conflict such as war; nonaligned.
palette noun	/ˈpælɪt/	A thin board on which a painter lays and mixes colours.
marker noun	/ˈmɑː(ɹ)kə(ɹ)/	A felt-tipped pen, a marker pen.
doodle noun	/ˈdud(ə)l/	A small mindless sketch, etc.
sketch noun	/ˈskɛt͡ʃ/	A rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not intended as a finished work, often consisting of a multitude of overlapping lines.
bluey noun	/ˈbluː.i/	The metal lead.
niece noun	/nis/	A daughter of one’s sibling, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law; either the daughter of one's brother ("fraternal niece"), or of one's sister ("sororal niece").
acrylic adjective	/əˈkɹɪl.ɪk/	Derived from acrylic acid or acrylonitrile.
beet noun	/biːt/	Beta vulgaris, a plant with a swollen root which is eaten or used to make sugar.
bluish adjective	/ˈbluːɪʃ/	Having a tint or hue similar to the colour blue.
mauve noun	/məʊv/	A pale purple or violet colour, like the colour of the dye after it has faded.
sketchbook noun	/ˈskɛt͡ʃˌbʊk/	A book or pad with blank pages for sketching; a sketch pad.
thumbnail noun	/ˈθʌm.neɪl/	The fingernail on the thumb.
turquoise noun	/ˈtɝ.k(w)ɔɪz/	A sky-blue, greenish-blue, or greenish-gray semi-precious gemstone.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
pick up verb	To lift; to grasp and raise.
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
lay down verb	To give up, surrender, or yield (e.g. a weapon), usually by placing it on the ground.
play around verb	To behave in a silly, childish, or irresponsible way.
print out verb	To print (a computer document).
sit down verb	To assume a sitting position from a standing position.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

He's one of my favorite songwriters ever.
Is that what that's called?
I don't feel entitled to having feedback.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	have been inspiring · I've been doing · I've been sitting
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have already just been · I've found · have been
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	chartreuse which was · off which is · somebody who watched
Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past	was making · was playing · was traveling

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 96 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thumbnail /ˈθʌm.neɪl/, thoughtfully /ˈθɔtfəli/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: bluish /ˈbluːɪʃ/, unfinished /ʌnˈfɪnɪʃt/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, charcuterie /ʃɑɹˈkutəɹi/, chartreuse /ʃɑɹˈtɹuːz/
Long words — get the stress right: expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, charcuterie /ʃɑɹˈkutəɹi/, photocopy /ˈfəʊtəˌkɒpi/, desperation /ˌdɛspəˈɹeɪʃən/, simplicity /sɪmˈplɪsɪti/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like lean, neutral, palette.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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