(upbeat music) Did you know that your Rise and Shine teachers, we watched PBS when we were growing up too.

One of my favorite shows was watching Bob Ross paint a beautiful picture right in front of me.

I learned a thing or two about art and painting.

Today we're shining a spotlight on a painter, Miss Elly Bates, right here in Arkansas.

She's going to take us from canvas to creation.

Get ready.

Hi, friends.

Welcome to my art studio.

My name is Miss Elly, and I have a project for you today.

Now, I have to confess something.

There are times when I really, really, really feel like making art but have no idea what to do.

I stare at the white piece of paper and feel kind of overwhelmed.

Wow.

I've actually figured out a little trick that helps me when I'm in that situation and I want to share it with you guys today.

To get started, we're going to need a few materials.

You're going to need a white piece of paper, a pair of scissors, a glue stick, magazines.

You'll need a pencil or a drawing material of choice.

And then you'll need something to color with.

I'm going to use my watercolor colored pencils.

We're going to start our project today by looking for an image within our magazines.

You're looking for something that might be funny or maybe interesting.

I looked earlier and I found some images that were really exciting to me.

I found lots of images of people who are inspiring to me.

But the one that I think I'm going to do today is this picture of a diver.

Now that we've picked our image.

We are ready to get going.

So let's go ahead and set our magazines to the side and move our art materials.

This first part, we're just going to need our diver and our piece of paper.

So let's first glue our image to our paper.

I'm just using regular old glue stick, and I'm going to put it on the back of the magazine piece.

Okay.

Now that I have my glue, I'm going to put them into place.

The story I want to tell is about the ocean.

My diver has a camera and so obviously is seeing something pretty exciting, something exciting in the ocean.

What could that be?

Maybe a whale or a cool fish.

Maybe a mermaid.

I think that's what I'm going to do.

So I'm going to tell a story about the diver finding a mermaid.

So now I want to think about what I'll need to draw to bring that story to life.

Right.

I'm going to begin with my pencil and I'm going to think about how I can sketch out that story.

When I mean sketch, I mean, you're going to very lightly press down because we're not sure what our drawing is going to look like yet.

Right.

We want to start small so that we can build it in later.

If you start really dark, it's hard to change your mind.

Mermaids can be complicated to draw, right?

And I'm sure I'm going to make mistakes.

So that's why I like to start in lightly first.

It may take me a minute.

So I'll be back with a finished sketch.

(upbeat music) I'm all done with my sketch.

Here it is.

It doesn't look like much, I know, but when the piece is really going to come alive is when we add in the color.

So today for my color, I'm using one of my favorite art materials and they are watercolor colored pencils.

I know that most of you have used colored pencils before and a lot of you maybe have used a watercolor before.

These pencils are both.

Let me show you how they work.

I'm going to start with using my colored pencils like a colored pencil.

So I'm going to take this green here and I'm going to color in some of the seaweed shapes I made.

So you can see, like, I'm just coloring like normal.

Okay.

So you can see they're just like colored pencils.

But now what I do is I'm going to get just a cup of plain water and a paintbrush, and that's all I need to have these colored pencils turn into paint.

So using a wet paint brush with nothing but water on it, I just go ahead and paint over my colored pencil and look at the difference.

I'm going to go ahead and continue working on the color of my masterpiece and I will show you when I'm done.

(light music) So what I like about watercolor pencils is, like I said, it's two materials for one.

But also, if you want to just use them as pencils because the lead is softer, their colors are easier to get really bright and vibrant, even without water.

But then you add the water and you get that full rich color.

(jubilant music) Here it is.

It's done.

I went from having no idea what I was going to do to now having a final piece that tells a story.

And now it's your turn.

I'm excited to see what you all come up with.

Have fun creating.

Bye.