Shadowing Practice: Aaron Blaise Studio Tour - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hi, ah!

Hi.

Part of the studio.

Hey guys, welcome to Proko.

My name is Stan Prokopenko.

This is Aaron Blaise.

Hey, mate.

And we're here in his studio in Florida.

Yep, the land.

Scared to see.

Anyway, we're gonna be walking around his studio.

He's gonna pull out some sketchbooks and some other cool stuff.

Yeah, everybody asks me about my studio and what's look like

and it's actually really small

i have a very small room off the side of my house i keep everything packed really tight in here

and actually i cleaned up pretty good for you

so it's usually chaotic you got a haircut

i did get a haircut yeah i actually i kept my hair long for 25 years

and i'd cut it every three years and donate it and over 25 years i donated eight feet of hair

Well, this is the demo we've been recording.

We did record the whole thing, the whole two -day process, including the materials.

And he does a lion anatomy demo, talking about the motion and all the forms of the lion.

Brogan .com slash blaze, you can pre -order now.

It's amazing.

Oh, thanks.

Yeah, this is, you know, I love, my favorite medium is drawing.

I just, I love to paint.

I love to animate.

I love all that.

I have a big love of charcoal.

And so lately I've kind of pushed painting aside other than my watercolors,

but I've kind of pushed painting aside and I've just been doing these really big charcoal drawings and I like, you know,

getting right in the face of big cats and they're big

and dramatic and they're fun to create the textures and all that kind of stuff.

So this is one that you can see all the little cat prints on it

because I had it sitting on my easel and the cat was getting up and putting her paws on it,

but it's a cat with cat prints.

So there you go.

But this is one I did for a demo on a live stream, a bison that I had seen in Yellowstone.

That was a lot of fun.

That took a lot of graphite, or not graphite, but charcoal.

I got one right here.

Oh yeah.

Let's trade places.

So that's a big leopard.

This was a wild leopard that I photographed in Kenya.

It looks like you're right under it.

Yeah.

Like, did you cheat the perspective a little bit?

or no that's I because he the way he was leaning back

and looking up

and I happened to be in the Land Rover sitting back quite a ways I just had enough distance

that I didn't have to look down on him

that's my favorite one yeah

it took me the longest as well how long was this one

that's like three days three days of drawing three days at

what like five hours five hours a day cool yeah

I can't go longer than five hours some people can I can't my brain gets turned to mush.

Mushy, mushy.

This one I did, I just wanted to do something a little more experimental.

I just let the, with the charcoal and creating the grass,

I just used my eraser and just lightly pulled out all the grass with my eraser.

Excuse me while I pull this out.

That's one of the things I don't do is spray fix any of my drawings because it changes the way they look.

And so I try to get them under glass as fast as possible.

This is a lioness that I photographed in Kenya as well.

It was on the same trip, actually, as the leopard.

But this was a lot of fun to draw.

I just love doing big drawings.

Yeah, then one more.

I did this tiger.

I've got a whole bunch of them.

And I've sold quite a few of these, but this is a tiger done in charcoal.

Same thing.

I photographed this tiger, actually, in Sarasota, Florida.

It was at a big cat rescue place, and I just thought it was a beautiful animal.

If I'm not animating or not doing digital art or not doing watercolor, I'm doing these big charcoals.

I love doing big charcoals.

I've been experimenting on wood.

I just wanted to see how charcoal and the pencil would go on that.

And I did this one.

I did spray and it changed everything and I had to go back over it.

I want to get a big four by eight sheet

and just do a big charcoal drawing on this big four foot by eight foot sheet.

Do it on a big piece of plywood.

I've got stuff all over the place in here just lying around.

Lying around.

Go ahead and lead the way.

Let's see.

The rest of your.

My wolf pelt.

I got a wolf skin right here.

This is from, there's a guy that I know up in Montana who raises wolves he's got exotic animals, he's got bears,

he's got all kinds of stuff and he's been raising them for years

and so every once in a

while one of the wolves in his pack will pass away from natural causes old age

and rather than just waste it he'll use the pelt for educational purposes

and that sort of thing and so I was up there I was just up there over the winter, but I was there last summer,

and he gave that to me.

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So that was really cool.

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Yeah.

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So I use it for reference.

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I've done a couple of wolf paintings since then, and that really comes in handy.

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And so the animal, you know, he's continuing to give even after he's gone.

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This is my art bag.

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I've got a couple of them, and they're from Lilo Rosh.

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They're a couple in India that make these bags handmade made

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and every bag is custom you can tell them what you want

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and they will create it for you this one's jam -packed

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but it's got holds all of my pens and pencils

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and whatnot and uh

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and then inside here I've got you know

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I've got my pallets right here I've got my watercolor block

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I've got everything in here then we've got another pocket on the back that takes even more stuff so I've got

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My watercolors in here.

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I've got my jars of water.

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You know, it just, it holds everything.

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So I was just in Hawaii.

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I brought it with me to Hawaii, but these bags have been with me all over the world.

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You know, with our business, we do a lot of lecturing.

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And so we've hit 10 countries in the last year, just going around and lecturing.

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And I bring this with me everywhere I go and

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so I got one of the things

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I like to do I see you yeah well

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I wanted to show this on your Instagram yes see one of the things

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I like to do is I like to

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when I go to the zoo in this case I was at a farm

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and so I like to draw big I bring out like a China marker

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and when I'm drawing the animals I like to sit down

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and just draw really big and so I wanted something that I could put my

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my big newsprint pads into and so 18 by 24 18 by 24

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and so I I asked them to make me a bag like this

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but blow it up blow it up huge

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you can see how I can you know I can smuggle a child in here

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it's just huge and

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so what's great about it though is it takes these newsprint pads just perfectly I gotta stretch it out here

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but it goes in but there you go

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so it sits in there perfectly it fits perfect and

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so I can go out to the zoo

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and bring my all my drawing materials and my newsprint

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and everything else all in one bag do you put it on a board

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or something yeah I have a board too okay yeah

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it fits in there yep okay there it is like even

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if I'm doing like character drawings I like to draw big

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and on newsprint sometimes I would do this at disney like these are some just quick sketches

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i was doing of uh a real cougar this was a cat

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that was a florida panther

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but you know these are that's that's from imagination though right yeah that's from imagination

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so i like to sit down and just do these big sketches um

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of characters and this is what i would do at disney hey these are brother bear yeah yeah nice

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and this this is a little demonstration I did I'm just you know using the eraser method

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these characters I've got piles and piles of these if you guys don't know Aaron directed

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Brother Bear and he animated for Lion King Aladdin I did like in Aladdin

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and beating the beast and pocahontas

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and mulan nice yeah are those characters from no these are things

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i just did in the last couple years i was drawing for my grandkids

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and yeah my grandkids love coming over because we all draw together

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and they're still at the age where they love to draw so

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either kid grows out of it

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or they don't like we you're still at the age where you look exactly

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i know i just never grew out of it what have i got oh this is kind of cool

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obviously i don't keep things in order around here

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it's a sketchbook yeah no this isn't a sketchbook these are these are some photos

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this is from one of my last trips to alaska

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so these are wild grizzlies that i photographed up in alaska and uh just beautiful beautiful animals

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this grizzly walked right past me she was as close as you are to me

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and walked right past me with this fish.

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And I had everything, it took everything in my body not to run away.

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Because I had a ranger with me, he says, don't run, don't run, don't run.

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And she walked right past me.

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I recently did a digital painting of this guy right here.

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But it's just a beautiful, I love the way the light was hitting on this far mountain.

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It was really cool.

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I'm going to show you what I'm going to do.

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these are dull sheep these are white rams

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and you can see them from the valley floors

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and they're way way way up the mountains they're really interesting

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because you can see them from the ground from the valley

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and you can hike up to them this guy

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we hiked up to is a hard hike they just a little white dot up there

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and as long as you stay below them

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you can get as close as you want I was only like 15 20 feet away from this guy

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but as soon as you get above them you've got the advantage

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and they get spooked and they take off yeah

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so as long as you stay below they they're fine yeah like here

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I was up I was shooting with a long lens

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and he kept looking at me because I was way up above him

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and he was he didn't like me up there at all and moose

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and caribou this is all in Denali National Park right in central Alaska

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it's one of my favorite favorite places in the world they call it the Serengeti of the north

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because there's so much wildlife there do you still go on these trips for photographing

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and just seeing wildlife I do it for workshops no

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it's for myself I usually on these trips

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I mostly do for myself matter of fact I'm going actually this the next one's gonna be with a group

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but we're in October there's a group of artists we're going to get back to Kenya

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and we're gonna be going to the Maasai Mara how many times a year do these trips maybe once

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or twice I mean not not super maybe three times like i was just

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i was just in my yeah i am always traveling

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and i was just in montana like a month

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and a half ago photographing and yeah you know that's a guy at the guy's place

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that had the wolf pelt here what are these these are

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so these um like i just pulled out my gouache paints

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and i wanted to i hadn't done a gouache painting in a long time

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and i wanted to get my feet wet again and

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so i did a little this is a little gouache painting

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that i did the other day and then I just finished doing a watercolor course

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and so these are another gouache painting I did this as a live stream one of the rhinos

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that I'd seen but these are all watercolors

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that I did for as demos for this course

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that I I just finished and I've got piles

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and piles of them you know just talking about painting loose how to use frisket

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you know letting watercolor be watercolor how do you paint fur textures um you know all

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that kind of stuff so many people get into watercolor

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and they get so tight and they get

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so you know they it they they get so bound up

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and so i wanted to show that she can be really loose

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and let watercolor be be what it is let it you know painting skies can be super easy

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and fun and that sort of thing if you just you know attack it

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and let the watercolor do what it does best

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and that's you know let it run around

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and let it do its thing you know this is uh acadia the sketchbook

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that you saw there where we're up in a up in maine um

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i went back again uh a couple years ago with my father

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and i took him and i came back

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and this is i used one of the photographs

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and did a quick watercolor sketch those rocks there are just incredible um this is a bison

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that i saw out in the snow just a few weeks ago

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when i was up in Montana you know watercolor sketch of

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that same with this landscape this is a this one

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I was talking both of these landscapes I was talking about the abstract qualities of of landscape and how

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when you really just look at the the abstract shapes

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it's there's they're not really representational it's just our brain kind of pulling it all together

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and this is these are just quick ones

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I did out of my head just showing the use of showing their use of frisket yeah

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this one here is backlit yeah that's pretty fun

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and then let's risk it you know frisket this

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when you paint it's like latex liquid latex

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and you paint it on the paper where you take

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it off yeah you paint on the paper where you don't want the watercolor to go

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and so that's what I did here so I just painted on the clouds

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and the Sun and I did these big washes over the top

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and And then I pulled the frisket off and then finished off the clouds.

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And one of the first things I ever, I started learning watercolor when I was eight years old.

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And my stepfather, he had a degree, a bachelor's degree in interior design.

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And so a lot of the designs he would do, he'd go over them in watercolor.

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So he sat me down one night when I was eight, and he showed me how to do a wet into wet wash.

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I just remember how magical it was.

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He did a sunset.

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He says, this is, you know, this is how you do a wash.

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And I just remember being completely mesmerized by it.

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And so the very first lesson that I give in my watercolor course as a little homage to my stepfather,

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and I sat down and I did a sunset wash just to show how, you know, how the medium works.

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and uh just having fun with that

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and then this was just a little uh prismacolor sketch

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and uh you know on hot press paper smooth watercolor paper

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and um and doing watercolor washes over the top of

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that how you can tint drawings and that sort of thing so these are all part of the course

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and i got a pile there and i've got i think i've got more this is this is just a

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that was just a crappy drawing this one here

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I've got piles of stuff around here that's a cool one yeah

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that was that was just a made -up lion I just wanted to do some kind of character

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but that's once again it's ink and watercolor

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and then I threw a little bit of gouache over the top you know for the light areas

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and then over the summer I was in Montana again

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and photographed among other animals i photographed this pronghorn

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and then went back to my hotel room that night

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and did a little pen water that's a a ballpoint pen sketch with watercolor over the top

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so lots of stuff like

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that yeah this is a little watercolor about oh i got damaged but this is a watercolor of a uh

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polar bear that i just did recently um i'm doing an animated short called snow bear

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And so I got onto a polar bear kick and so this is a ballpoint pen and watercolor sketch that I did

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But you can see how I don't

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Put pen in there.

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Yeah, yeah a little.

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Yep.

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Exactly delicate like yeah, that's how it's that's one of the things I love about ballpoint is you can get super delicate with it

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But stupid me I treat my stuff badly and I've got cat hair on it and all kinds of stuff

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Oh, this is cool.

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This is uh, I did I did a show a while back I did a show a while back,

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it was on cats, and so they asked me if I would participate, and it was all paintings and things like that,

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but I wanted to see if I could do something animation related, so I did these two panels, each panel had four drawings of a cat,

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the walk cycle of a cat, and then I took those drawings and I put them in a little thing, this.

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I put them in this, and this accompanied the show.

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So the people could look at the images on the wall, but then they could flip this and they could see how the animation worked.

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So that was kind of cool.

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And it was really cool that they let me do it.

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You know, the guy that was running the show was really kind of forward thinking,

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and he wanted to try something that they hadn't really done before.

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And it turned out to be a really popular attraction for the show kids loved

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it that's a real monkey skull that I picked up in Nepal

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when I was there and it's the skull is underneath all

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that jewel and silver and all that kind of stuff yeah what's

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that right next to it to the left

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that anatomical skull yeah what is that thing from Proko oh wow wow look at

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that there it is have you ever shown them before no well

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I haven't I haven't released them yet they'll probably be really yeah by the time

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this video comes it'll probably be released but this is so awesome so my good friend stan prokopenko gave me this

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so here it is the unboxing yeah

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so you can the other cool thing is that's got a tripod mount right here

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you can screw it mount it on a tripod and put it at different angles

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and the jaw is magnetic look at this how cool is that it's a beautiful print

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these are so nice i highly highly recommend it thank you

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and i just got it i just got it

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so i haven't figured out where to put it yet put

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it on a mini tripod well oh that's a that's a perfect idea.

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I've got a mini tripod in amongst all this junk somewhere.

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Yeah, somewhere.

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Onto the cool stuff now.

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Well, actually, this table.

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Oh yeah, this desk.

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Yeah, this desk.

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This is my original Disney desk.

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So I jumped around on different desks while I was there, but this one, once I got on it,

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I stayed with it, and it moved with me every time I'd move offices.

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So I've had this desk since Beauty and the Beast, and the day you can see a little carving right here, it's all scratched in.

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I scratched it in with an X -Acto knife, but what I did was I rubbed in graphite as much as I could into the table,

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and I sat down with an X -Acto knife and scratched out this lion portrait on the day that I started

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The Lion King.

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and it says right here 1292 so that's when i started that's

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when i sketched it and then uh i was on the movie for about a year

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and i spray fixed it

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so that's how it survived all these years

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it's been spray fixed yeah kind of cool lots of lots of history with this desk

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and so when i left disney um they they let me buy it oh you have to buy oh

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so this was like the desk at the studio yeah

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this is just at the studio where I actually worked every day

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and animated yeah this is everyone had the same yeah

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we all had the same desk oh that's cool yeah they were awesome yeah

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and I they were great I mean they it's a you know it's a $5 ,000 desk

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but they I bought

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it for twelve hundred bucks what are you working on this is um some hand animation

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I did I was doing a demonstration on how to do a take

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so these are these are the drawings

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that I did for the demonstration

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I also wanted to show you how I wanted to show the viewers how distorted

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we could get here's here the character is going from this

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squished scrunchy face up to this big look right here as they go

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changing expression with a big smile coming down there's that the circles are my keys.

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So I hear the cat's looking up and then doing a take and getting really excited.

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And you can see as the head comes up, the jaw catches up.

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And this is one here.

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I thumbnail everything.

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You know, I make sure that my thumbnail, thumbnailing is, you know, doing like pre -sketches, trying to figure it all out ahead of time.

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So these are some thumbnails that I did for a character.

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This is a character I designed for one of my acting for animation courses

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so these are all sketches i did as i was trying to figure out his design

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and uh he's just this big burly guy kind of a marine looking dude and uh

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and i did this little thing where i had him turning around this is him turning around just a simple turn around.

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But I did it so I could figure out the way he's built.

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You can see him just turning around, the eyebrow going up.

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He's not a nice guy, he's mean.

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He's a hard ass, this guy.

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so these are these are thumbnails for another little shot

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that I was animating with him and

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so you know here he is then he comes forward

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I can't remember what he was saying um this is for a course

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he did yeah these didn't make it into the course I didn't end up using these

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but I saved the drawings and uh there's a scene there's a scene in Beauty and the Beast where she,

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Belle is saying something to him trying to plead for him to let her father go and he goes,

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well he shouldn't have trespassed here and he comes right in the camera

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and he shouldn't have trespassed here and I animated

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that in the movie so I wanted to do something similar with this character

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he starts here and he does a take you can see him scrunch up see that scrunch and then he jumps forward

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so it's fun stuff to do you still map out though yeah

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so these are the charts yeah

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so these are how the in -betweens go all the in -between drawings if I had done them but I didn't

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because this is like drawing one that's drawing nine

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so there's a whole bunch of drawings I have to go in between

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because but it's such a subtle movement I don't want to have to do all those drawings

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so there's three more drawings that go in between there so that's that

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and what else we got so this is my digital setup over here

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and with three monitors you have three monitors well this monitor

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because I use this one mainly for Dustin my son

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because he when we do our live streams depending on

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if I'm sitting at this desk or this desk he sits in the opposite chair

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and he uses that monitor to monitor

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and to monitor what's going on with our live with our with our chat yeah yeah

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and then i use these this is my reference monitor

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when i'm you know when i have reference to use i put it up here

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and then this is where my big cintiq this is a 32

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that i do all of my all of my work on

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and then the stand i built the stands for it this stand right here and It was very recent, right, that you built this stand?

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Yeah, this one I built...

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breeze it because i just got this one i had a different setup i had a 24 or 27

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on the last one and i had a different setup uh

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but this one i just we just threw it together really fast

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and then this this rotates i can move it around you know put it

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and you don't want to just buy an arm no why i like building i like building stuff

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so yeah i'm going to paint them all black eventually

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so they'll blend together I kind of like the wood I do too actually

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oh my skull well this is my favorite this is right here yeah

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this is a rat it's a freaking giraffe it's a giraffe yeah

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and it's real that's a real skull um this one uh yeah

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I think it was hunted unfortunately uh I went into a taxidermy shop in uh uh in Texas

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and they had it for sale

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and I just didn't want it to go to waste

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I didn't want its death to be you know in vain

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so I bought it and i've used it as reference i've used it for teaching

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so it's really cool these are casts right here all four of these are casts

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so i have a whole line of animal drawing courses on my website

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and so anytime i pick a new animal to do a course on i order the skull for

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that animal so here i just i did a course on bears

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and so i ordered a grizzly bear skull

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and a polar bear skull plus i ordered polar bear skull

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because i'm doing the an animated short called snow bear and

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so i wanted to have this and uh

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so you can see they're they're significantly different and yet significantly the same

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but like polar grizzly bears have this forehead

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they have a dish whereas polar bears are really flat from their top of their head to their snout

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and they're much longer it's a longer head

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but you can see too they're a lot more robust

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they're it's a bigger animal polar bears are bigger than grizzlies they they're the biggest carnivore on earth

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and then a horse skull right here yeah that's a horse skull

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and a lot of people don't realize horses have canines right here yeah not all of them do

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but a lot of them do why do they have such

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big gaps between their like just for the grinding further

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and then there's nothing yeah I know no there's nothing there they they clip clip the grass with their front

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and they grind it with their back

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and what do they do with the canine the the the it's mostly males that'll have them

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and they they'll use them for fighting oh yeah

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when they're fighting other males this is a lion skull

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and i did a course on big cats i just love

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this thing you can see how robust how big it first of all how big a lion's head is

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and uh but this is all i was almost the size of your head almost

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almost the size of my big fat head.

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But I'm always on the lookout for skulls.

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You know, like I said, I did a course on big cats, and so I ordered these, and these are all cats.

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There's a lion, and this is a leopard, so you can see that a leopard is significantly smaller.

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But I'm always on the lookout for new skulls, and sometimes I find them.

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Like, I have an otter skull that I have in storage from an otter

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that I found on the side of the road,

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and I kind of hid it off in the bushes and went back later and got the skull.

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But this one's real, and I can't live in Florida without having an alligator skull. Is this one real?

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Yeah, this is real.

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This is a real skull.

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I picked this one up at a swap meet.

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So, yeah, I think I paid like 30 bucks for it, too.

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Oh, my God.

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Yeah, but it's an awesome skull.

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this is a big gator this is about a probably 10 foot gator

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so he's a big one so all the skulls on this shelf right here

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that they look like the same skull just did they get

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smaller like i don't know anything about cats are they all cats no

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they're not what's interesting is these three are the same

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and these three are the same so these three are cats so this is a leopard okay

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this is a mountain lion or cougar puma

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and then this is a bobcat okay so you can see

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that they basically all have the same structure it just gets more

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and more delicate yeah and then here you have a fox okay

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and then a coyote and then a wolf right here okay yeah

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and this is a big gray wolf it's a big animal

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so it's dogs and cats dogs and cats right they got dogs

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and cats on they look they're so sour i know

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but we all i mean it's really i mean you could look at our skull

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and just reshape it

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and it's we've got all the same parts reshape it yeah except

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they're horrible you know we except we we you know this bone connects whereas on the other animals they don't connect

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for those of you that are disney people this is you know the original artists

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that worked with walt disney were the nine old men they were the original animators

460

and probably my favorite artist out of the nine old men was milk call

461

and um melt animated cheer khan and all kinds of really cool animation

462

but this is one of his drawings that a friend of mine gave me

463

and uh it's like one of my most prized possessions

464

and then this is about one fifth of all my books too

465

so i've got piles and piles and piles of books

466

and they're mostly art they're either art books

467

or nature books um this book here this is one of the first

468

when i was a young kid this came out in 1980 i believe

469

so i was i was 12 in 1980

470

and i remember getting this book

471

and um guy koliak uh guy koliak is he's pushing 90 now

472

so you can see how young he was in the photograph there but mr bean yeah

473

But the images in here, these are all his paintings.

474

And I was just, I would copy these drawings and paintings.

475

He drew so, or he draws so well.

476

And, you know, and really a wide variety of mediums too.

477

And that really influenced me.

478

There's acrylic paintings in here.

479

There's watercolor paintings.

480

There's oil paintings.

481

And I always loved this book.

482

So I've had a version of this book.

483

Because the first one I had when I was 12, we actually our house burnt down and i lost all my books

484

but i've over the years i've kind of re redone them

485

so this one i was able to find again in another store i've got all kinds of stuff

486

so yeah hey see your youtube play button yeah

487

i have a hundred thousand yeah yeah what's in these little uh oh what's all

488

this stuff is this materials okay so i got my acrylic paints in there.

489

What have I got in here?

490

I've got pallets in there and clips.

491

Oh, there's the clips.

492

I knew I had clips.

493

Doggone it.

494

I was using those bread clips on there before.

495

And the last big charcoal drawing I did, I went out and bought clips and I forgot that I bought clips.

496

I have the same thing where I'll have like drawers and drawers of stuff.

497

Yeah.

498

And I'll just go buy it again.

499

Exactly.

500

And you end up with piles of the same stuff so here's more uh acrylics just different brands these are

501

those marshmallows no those are sponges and closed dyes and markers sharpie markers and

502

charcoal so everything's everything's got its place yeah more pens

503

so i've got piles of piles oh I think

504

this is paintbrushes piles of paintbrushes what is this is a Dundee Hollywood best man no my kids picked

505

this up in LA and one of the little gift shops in Hollywood okay

506

and bought it for me best man yeah yeah

507

it was the best thing they could find it closest thing they could find a best dad that's man yeah

508

and this is nick nick birch my business partner i i live in this cabinet yeah he just walked out

509

so yeah i mean i've got piles more

510

but we'd be here for hours oh that moose antler up there i found

511

that under a tree uh in my first trip to alaska back in 1993.

512

you brought it back

513

and i brought it back i wrapped up yep i checked

514

it yeah i wrapped it put all the i meet you all

515

All the points were covered in cardboard, and then I wrapped the whole thing in bubble wrap and checked it.

516

That's funny.

517

Cool.

518

Well, thank you so much.

519

Yeah, man.

520

Great studios.

521

Yeah.

522

I'm sure people, when they see your work and they see all the stuff you do,

523

these courses you make, they don't think your studio is this little box.

524

It's tiny.

525

Yeah, it's just a tiny little room.

526

I've had big studios and I've had little ones.

527

This is probably the most efficient studio I've had because everything's got its place

528

And, you know, we do all of our live streaming in here.

529

We do all of our, we record all of our courses in here.

530

Yeah.

531

Nice.

532

So it works out great.

533

Yeah.

534

You used to live on an island, right?

535

In a big, big house.

536

How big was your studio in there?

537

It was, it took, it was a whole floor.

538

It was a whole floor.

539

So it was.

540

It's like five times bigger than this?

541

Yeah.

542

Oh yeah.

543

Absolutely.

544

And then when I was in California, I had another one that was, I had a whole building.

545

That was my studio.

546

And that was, that was awesome.

547

The whole Disney studio.

548

Yeah.

549

Well, but it was i had i had three different buildings on my on my property

550

and one of them was just a studio

551

that i miss i do i did like that

552

so you prefer the bigger yes yeah i definitely especially

553

if i want to do some big paintings and things like

554

that you know doing the charcoal drawings it gets kind of cramped

555

and it's tight and

556

if you had a bigger studio would you draw even bigger i'd go bigger oh i definitely go bigger

557

so this is so you're being held back by the studio yeah right

558

Oh man, when are you creating?

559

Well, we'll see.

560

I'm currently looking for property and a bigger house because my family grew.

561

Yeah.

562

Yeah.

563

So we've got more people here.

564

This house I used to live in alone, but my girlfriend moved in and three daughters. So, yeah.

565

So we've really expanded in size.

566

So I've got to get a bigger place.

567

And actually, that's one of the things we'd like to do, too, is we're doing a lot of workshops nowadays days

568

and I'd love to get a place where I could have people come to me

569

and we can just teach oh yeah have like a little art ranch

570

and just eat right there yeah I think I'd be like a week -long workshop yeah yeah

571

so we have a little school little building in the back where we could have digital classes traditional classes all

572

that so it's kind of one of our long -term goals for our business

573

that's it cool thank you very much guys yeah where did they find your stuff oh

574

so you can see

575

if you're on social media all of my stuff is Aaron blaze art that's all on twitter

576

and youtube and instagram and then my website is creature art teacher yeah

577

so a lot of good courses yeah lots of yeah lots

578

of courses animation a lot of animal drawing animal drawing courses

579

animation character design storyboard story writing yeah um some painting courses in there

580

so there's a you know just go check it out it's really cool

581

and it's really cheap yes yeah it is cheap well go check them out

582

and if you want to watch that lion demo

583

It's at proko .com slash blaze.

584

Yeah, it's going to be cool.

585

Check it out.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Aaron Blaise Studio Tour”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Stan, Aaron, drawing. This video has 109 sentences and 6845 words to shadow. The speech runs for 36:12. The speaker talks fast, about 189 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 77% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding. 51 of its 109 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
pile noun	/paɪl/	A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
lion noun	/ˈlaɪən/	A big cat, Panthera leo, native to Africa, India and formerly much of Europe.
charcoal noun	/ˈt͡ʃɑɹ.koʊl/	impure carbon obtained by destructive distillation of wood or other organic matter, that is, heating it in the absence of oxygen.
desk noun	/dɛsk/	A table, frame, or case, in past centuries usually with a sloping top but now usually with a flat top, for the use of writers and readers. It often has a…
photograph noun	/ˈfoʊ.təˌɡɹæf/	A picture created by projecting an image onto a photosensitive surface such as a chemically treated plate or film, CCD receptor, 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.
wolf noun	/wʊlf/	Canis lupus; the largest wild member of the canine subfamily.
clip noun	/klɪp/	Something which clips or grasps; a device for attaching one object to another.
monitor noun	/ˈmɑ.nɪ.tɚ/	Someone who watches over something; a person in charge of something or someone.
animation noun	/ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/	The act of animating, or giving life or spirit.
polar adjective	/ˈpoʊlɚ/	Of, relating to, measured from, or referred to a geographic pole (the North Pole or South Pole); within the Arctic or Antarctic circles.
leopard noun	/ˈlɛp.ɚd/	A large wild cat with a spotted coat native to Africa and Asia (Panthera pardus).
spray noun	/spɹeɪ/	A fine, gentle, dispersed mist of liquid.
demo noun	/ˈdɛm.oʊ/	A demonstration or visual explanation.
grass noun	/ɡɹɑːs/	Any plant of the family Poaceae, characterized by leaves that arise from nodes in the stem and leaf bases that wrap around the stem, especially those grown as…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
turn around verb		To physically rotate (usually around a vertical axis) for a half turn (180 degrees), a whole turn (360 degrees), or an indefinite amount.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
grow out of verb		To emerge from (something); to take a particular shape as a result of (something); to come to exist from (an origin).
look up verb	/ˌlʊk ˈʌp/	To have better prospects.
pull out verb		To withdraw; especially of military forces; to retreat.
sit down verb		To assume a sitting position from a standing position.
wash over verb		To pass (one) unnoticed so that one is unaffected by it.

Sentences worth repeating

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

I've got piles and piles of these.
Obviously, I don't keep things in order around here.
Have you ever shown them before?
What have I gotten here?
Where did they find your stuff?

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	we've been recording · I've just been doing · I've been experimenting
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to live
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've sold · I've done · have been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is let · being completely mesmerized · be released

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 160 contractions and reduced forms, such as I've, they're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, thumbnail /ˈθʌm.neɪl/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, workshop /ˈwɝk.ʃɑp/, demonstration /dɛmənˈstɹeɪʃən/, wash /wɑʃ/, sheet /ʃit/
Long words — get the stress right: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, demonstration /dɛmənˈstɹeɪʃən/, imagination /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/, participate /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/, experimental /ɪkspɛɹəˈmɛntəl/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like pile, lion, charcoal.

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 →

Shadowing Practice: Aaron Blaise Studio Tour - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?