Emily 2.0

Brand new on my YouTube channel: it's another speed-painting video of my sister Emily, a.k.a. Poof! Three years ago, I painted this portrait of her:

And just for fun, Jeff and I attempted to make a video of me painting her face for about an hour. Our technology was not that great: my workspace is small, and the only way we could get a camera in there and have any kind of light was to position it sideways. There were focus problems at the beginning. But, whatever, we sped up the video, popped it up on my mostly-unused YouTube channel, showed it to friends, and let it sit there for three years.

 

And that crazy thing proceeded to accummulate almost half a million views!

I liked the small amount of ad revenue that started to trickle in (don't get too excited; this makes me a dollar a day at the very most), but I felt bad that the quality of the video was barely acceptable.

Three years later, Jeff and I have rebooted the channel, named it Art Food Kitty, and improved the technology--as inexpensively as humanly possible, with lots of MacGuyver stuff going on. After warming up with some how-to videos (see my last few posts), I'm finally ready to post a new Poof video: Emily 2.0!

This is a collaboration with Emily's Beauty Broadcast channel--and I'm so glad she wanted to do this because, um, she's basically a YouTube superstar. She's been a big help in the development of my channel, too. We've been talking about it a lot since I had the idea to create Art Food Kitty earlier this year, and we thought it would be great to introduce her fans to my channel via a collaboration.

So here is my speed-painting video of a quick portrait I made of Poof last week. She came up with a speed-makeup video, and I painted her based on some selfies she took immediately after she shot her video.

 

As I mentioned in the video, this has been sped up ten times, and it is also me painting at my absolute fastest. Most portraits like this take me a day to a day and a half to complete. The reason I hurried to complete it in a couple of hours was simple: our camera can only store so much video, and I didn't want to make a 30-minute video or speed it up to the point where my hand became an absolute blur. So two hours was about my limit.

And here is Emily's speed makeup video!

 

By the way, that thing I'm doing with my mouth at the beginning of my video? I don't know what that is, I find it impossible to control, and I'm working on it. I assume this is just the way I talk either all the time (I hope not!) or when I am nervous (please?). If you don't know what I'm talking about, please disregard this and don't go back up there looking for it.

I've never felt comfortable on camera, ever, and that was one reason why I've shied away from YouTube all these years. People massacre my sister in comments and on message boards on a regular basis, and she's so much more capable than I am. Poof does her best to learn from constructive criticism and ignore abuse, but she's been making videos for almost eight years, and every once in a while someone will say something that will get to her. She's a human being! It's simply an occupational hazard at this point, and I'll have to get used to it, too. So far people have been very nice to me on YouTube, and that's terrific, but it's not going to last.

So yeah, you guys, I get it: my mouth does that sideways thing, I am very pale, I am old, my clothes are not interesting, my hair is black and I don't do anything cool with it, my makeup is always the same, I have several moles on my arms, my voice is weird and I talk like some kind of stoner robot, my palette is a mess, I am a crazy cat lady, I'm not a size 0, my paintbrushes suck, I don't have children and what's that all about?, I like to bake things that are not good for me, my fingernail polish is wrong in some way, my paintings are too realistic, my paintings are not realistic enough, I'm taking all the joy out of watercolor, I'm obviously just trying to make a buck, I'm a lousy teacher, I have no business being on YouTube, and I'm not uploading mockable new content quickly enough.

WAY AHEAD OF YOU!

Sorry. I'm nervous. I just checked my mouth and it's doing that sideways thing. So yeah. Please try to enjoy these videos by my sister and me. Please subscribe to my channel. I'll be in my safe room.

Oh yes: prints! They are here.

Comments

[Caroline]

I LOVE your stoner robot voice, never ever change. Who are these jerks who say anything about you OR Emily? I can't even think of what those things would be.

[Kelly]

Oh Caroline, the jerks, the jerks! It's just your garden-variety, anonymous YT awfulness. People feel like they can say absolutely anything there. Message boards also exist where small clusters of people (presumably young women) talk about makeup gurus and sometimes tear them to shreds. Emily is wise enough to ignore them, but out of a perverse sense of lioness-ness, for lack of a better word, I used to monitor them. I guess this was in case people got way out of hand or were threatening. But mostly it was just gossip, speculation about her marriage/career, complaints about her makeup techniques, petty remarks about Poof's appearance and fashion sense, stuff like that. But I'm done with the message boards now that I'm fair game too, I suppose. I guess that paragraph up there was a preemptive strike, and I tried to at least make it kind of funny.

You're the greatest, C.

[Caroline]

The feminist part of my brain (so . . . All of it) has forcibly shut down the YouTube-comments-reading sector.

I loled a little at "lioness-ness" though.

[Juliana]

I love this video, and all of your videos. You are truly talented and I love your voice and how you explain what you do in your videos. I look forward to watching more of your videos and looking at your newest works of art! Keep up the hard work, we all appreciate it!

[Jovana]

Thank you so very much for making these videos, they really are very helpful and fun to watch.
I laughed so hard at that "stoner robot" part, mainly because of the fact that I like your voice so much.
All the best and keep up the good work!

[GraceUnderFire]

Wow, your work is quite moving! Um, the one with Emily getting ready is actually making me cry....like I do when I watch Hallmark Movies. Caught me by surprise,actually! lol! Anyway, these of your sister are so sweet and the true essence of her, as I "know" her anyway, shines right through. What a blessing to have such gifts and to have each other! You girls are amazing!

[Charlotte]

Your voice is cool, and I like the thought of a stoner robot ;)You are beautiful and look absolutely stunning on all of your videos. Anyone that says nasty things about you or your videos is just hating themselves. They get off on being mean and want to make people feel as badly as they do.

I hope that you post a ton more videos, I love watching them. oh...love the nails too.

You are fabulous!