Do You Miss Feeling Excited About Art Too?

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Our dopamine is that feeling you get when one idea leads to another and suddenly you don't want to stop making things. Lately, I feel like I've been missing that feeling. Welcome back. I'm Christine. This is Mike. Let's try a bunch of different painting techniques to see if we can make creativity fun again. Let's start with this marbling art kit. This is something I picked up a while ago and I keep telling myself that I'm going to do it, but I never do.

[00:00:31]This looks like the type of comb that you use to add bleach product to your hair. Ooh, lots of paint. Some toothpick thingy bobbers. Mhm. And oh my gosh, they gave us 10 pieces of paper. That's the most paper I've ever seen in an art kit. This is cute.

[00:00:50]More paper. Oh my goodness. I'm already doing this wrong. I need to wait 12 to 18 hours. I guess I'll see you guys tomorrow.

[00:01:02]Oh, okay. Yeah, we definitely have to wait for this to dissolve.

[00:01:08]>> 12 hours later.

[00:01:10]>> Finally, the fun part.

[00:01:33]Oh, I'm so scared. I hope it comes out.

[00:01:36]Okay.

[00:01:41]This is so cool. Oh, it looks like a peacock or an elephant.

[00:01:48]Mesmerized by my first attempt, I decided to keep going. But then disaster struck.

[00:01:56]Oh, my gold paint bottle exploded all over the tray. And somehow it just kept getting worse.

[00:02:09]Thankfully, paint marbling somehow looks amazing no matter what. It's still beautiful.

[00:02:16]Since the gold paint exploded all over the tray, it looks like a petri dish now. But I'm going to keep going because I'm actually having a lot of fun.

[00:02:29]Normally, I wouldn't enjoy these colors, but I kind of like it. It's interesting, isn't it?

[00:02:38]I tried to play with as many color combinations as I could because I wanted to experiment and just see what would happen.

[00:02:47]I found myself mesmerized by the way the paint interacted with the water and before I knew it, I was creating one design after another and another and another.

[00:02:58]I was relaxed and excited to see what the next design would become.

[00:03:05]Let's do some yellow and green.

[00:03:09]It turns out that everything looks good when you use this technique, even my least favorite color. It's so fun because you don't really know what it's going to look like.

[00:03:27]The more I kept creating, the more excited I was getting and I was hooked.

[00:03:37]Oh, that's cool.

[00:03:40]Oh my gosh, this looks like a planet.

[00:03:59]Oh, I love every single one. I just want to keep making them.

[00:04:08]With two pieces of paper left, I was feeling courageous, so I decided to create something that looked like flowers.

[00:04:20]Oh, so pretty.

[00:04:32]This marbling kit seemed a bit tricky at first, but once I got the hang of it, I couldn't stop. I ended up making so many that I ran out of space and I had to start laying them all over my carpet to dry.

[00:04:45]This is what art dopamine is all about.

[00:04:47]It's about finding that feeling that makes you want to create one thing after another. When you get this feeling, suddenly you're just making art out of excitement and joy.

[00:04:58]And that's the feeling that I've been looking for.

[00:05:05]I used to love acrylic paint pouring. It was one of my favorite things to make a few years ago, but somewhere along the way, I stopped doing it because I kept chasing whatever felt exciting to me, and then I forgot about it. The thing about paint pouring is that it can make creating feel easy again, and you only need a few things to get started. The two ingredients that I can't live without that you'll see me using right now are flatrol, which you can just pick up at your local hardware store, and treadmill lubricant. I like to use the flip cup technique with two colors that are on the same side of the color wheel, plus white. I don't add any silicone to the white, but I do add two drops to each color. Once everything is mixed up, I start adding all of my colors to the new cup, and I alternate between each one. Setting everything up is a little bit tedious, but it's almost as satisfying as the actual paint pouring part. So, take your time and enjoy this.

[00:06:12]Something is happening.

[00:06:17]Okay. 3 2 Oh, did I just rack it?

[00:06:23]I didn't mention it earlier, but the treadmill lubricant, which is 100% silicone, is what causes all of the gorgeous brown cells that you're seeing.

[00:06:37]Oh, that's not bad. I wanted to try using my two favorite colors, so I was ready for attempt number two.

[00:06:53]I'm just going to lift this up a little bit.

[00:06:56]Oh wow, look at all those cells.

[00:07:05]I quickly remembered that the trickiest part about spreading the paint is trying not to lose everything that you loved about the original pore.

[00:07:13]As you stretch the paint, the cells grow and shift. And sometimes the final piece turns into something completely different than what you expected.

[00:07:27]This looks so different, but I just want to try it again. I'm going to try to use three colors this time.

[00:07:39]Oh no, all of the teal disappeared.

[00:07:55]I was so disappointed that the teal disappeared, so I tried to add more, but I ended up making it worse.

[00:08:02]I watched as the paint unevenly dripped off the canvas and I just hoped for the best.

[00:08:10]Okay, that's kind of cool.

[00:08:15]I don't know.

[00:08:17]I want the teal to show up this time.

[00:08:20]So, I'm trying something different, but I don't know if this is going to work.

[00:08:29]The scariest thing about paint pouring is the feeling that you might waste paint. But if you ask me, the only wasted art supply is the one that sits unused.

[00:08:41]And even though acrylic paint pouring takes practice, it stops feeling like practice pretty quickly because every pour feels more exciting than the last one.

[00:08:51]Plus, if you're feeling courageous, once the paintings dry, you can paint on top of them and turn them into something completely new all over again.

[00:09:01]And before you know it, you're hooked because one idea keeps leading to another.

[00:09:09]It kind of has me thinking, maybe that's what art dopamine really is.

[00:09:14]It isn't about finding something new to chase. It's about reconnecting with the parts of creativity that already made you happy once before. Sometimes revisiting something you once loved can feel just as exciting as discovering it for the very first time.

[00:09:32]Give this video a like, a hype. It lets the robots know that you want to see a real person making art and not the AI slop that's on the internet right now. I also want to mention that I am listing all of the originals that you see in today's video on my website. I have a shop drop coming soon, but more of that at the end of the video because it's a big surprise. I think you'll love it. By this point, my excitement was growing because that's the funny thing about art dopamine. It starts small and then it builds. And the more I experimented, the more I kept thinking about a stack of paintings I made over a year ago. This one was a splatter art technique. This one was another splatter art technique because there were bumps and lumps in these. I didn't think that anyone would want to buy them. Now I'm learning that everyone has bumps and lumps, even art.

[00:10:23]And the bumps and lumps are a part of the journey. Just because this art was unloved at one point, doesn't mean that it's unworthy of being loved by someone who sees it differently, who appreciates it, not for just what's on the surface, but for the emotion and the story underneath. These are the kind of paintings that you make and enjoy for a while and then eventually stop seeing them the way that everyone else does.

[00:10:47]Well, it turns out that some of these paintings that I didn't appreciate were hiding something. The entire background of this is glowing. I noticed that a couple of them glowed under black light.

[00:11:01]It turned out that I accidentally used fluorescent UV paint when I was making some of these, and I had no idea.

[00:11:09]There's not enough UV paint to be intentional, but it's just enough to make me wonder what would happen if I pushed it further. And this was the perfect time to try it out.

[00:11:21]And I decided it was time to see what these paintings could become.

[00:11:25]The thing that fascinated me the most about UV painting wasn't actually the glow.

[00:11:32]It's the idea that an artwork could have a hidden layer, something you wouldn't notice until you looked a little closer.

[00:11:39]And this is an exact representation about how I was feeling about this old art. I couldn't see what made it special. We all have things that live beneath the surface, ideas we're afraid to try, stories we haven't told yet, parts of ourselves we're still discovering. So instead of just making these paintings glow, I wanted to use this technique to explore what might be hiding underneath something special that no one was able to see before until I brought it out.

[00:12:12]And maybe this is the biggest surprise that I found while making this art dopamine video. I started this video looking for excitement and looking for that feeling. But what I really found was curiosity. curiosity about what else art can be and what other stories might be hiding beneath the surface.

[00:12:33]If you made it to the end of this video, let me know in the comments below what type of art and what type of medium gives you that feeling, that art dopamine rush that makes you want to keep creating.

[00:12:45]Because the next time you see me, I'll be painting this huge canvas and using a little bit of monster magic to reveal the ending of the snow leopard and tiger story. I'll also have a mini shop launch waiting for you. But in the meantime, check out the video on the screen and I'll see you there.