3 Easy and Fulfilling Mini Abstract Art lessons

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Mia Temple. I've been in graphic design for over 25 years, a creative director for 15 of them and currently I own Ooze studio. A community-driven art studio, oozing inspiration for creative self-discovery. Welcome to my sculpture class. In this Skillshare class, you will awaken creative insights using three easy and fulfilling mini abstract art projects. I want you to ask yourself, when was the last time you really felt like recreating something for yourself? Have you had a yearning for something different, not so routine and maybe even just wanted to do something a little playful? I do often and even as a designer and creative director, I find that my creative hours usually spent fueling creativity for other people or my client. I was looking for ways to tap into that myself again, similar to what I did when I was a child. I really want to stress that no technical skills are needed and artists of all levels are welcome to enjoy these creative projects. Mind-wandering is definitely encouraged. According to a study at the University of Southern California, letting our minds wander is an essential mental state that helps us develop our identity, process social interactions, and it even influences our internal moral compass. I'm excited to share my Skillshare class with you. I'm also excited to share the journey that it took to get here. When I was a young girl, I dreamed of being an artist and a writer and an astronaut. After being in graphic design for 25 years and event direction for over 10, I really needed to get back to hands-on creativity. Hands-on creativity is very different from commercial art. Let's talk about creativity for a little bit. Creativity is part of the human brain. It's a human instinct. It's what sets us apart from the rest of the world. In my personal opinion, creativity is essential to all areas of life and even if it's not essential to you in all areas, it can be used in all areas of life. This class is for anyone who has trouble connecting with their own creative nature or maybe those feelings are a little bit stuck, and maybe you just need something new or if you're simply just looking to explore your imagination. 2. Tips for Gettin' Going: I had to give up my security in order to tap back into my creative freedom. That was scary, especially as a mom of three young children. I didn't know if that was going to be the right answer or not, but I became the head art docent at my children's elementary school. That volunteer experience was exactly the push that I needed in order to show myself that that is exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Giving back to the community to show them that they too can be creative has been invaluable. They have been so inspiring to me and I hope that I've been inspiring them as well. After three years of going through a creative midlife crisis, I realized that my only answer was to make sure that I did what fed my soul. [MUSIC]. Before we jump right in, I want to talk to you guys about some real-life challenges that you might be having. One of them is definitely time. I work from home full time, I got three children, two puppies, and I'm a single parent. So I get it. I get that these things are hard to do sometimes. To make it easier for you, I hope that you take these suggestions and work with them. The first one is to set your materials out ahead of time. Take a look at the materials list and have them out the day before or the week before. But however long before, it's great because you could be making dinner or working on your computer, and look over and you'll see your materials sitting there and you spark some sort of idea. Keep that in mind. Number two, is make sure you have a really nice ample workspace. You want to have room to move, and you want to have room to think. If your workspace is cluttered, it's going to clutter your mind as well. I know it seems silly but for some reason it's true, and I think it has to do with also being organized. Another tip is stay organized. If you know where everything is, then you're not going to have to stop to look for something while you're in the middle of your creative flow. Get organized, have ample workspace and try to set up the night before. That way you can just tackle the project head-on, and you don't have to worry about looking for things in the middle of it. I hope this helps. 3. Painting with No Brushes Instructions: Now for the first project, we're going to talk about the materials. This might seem crazy to some of you, but I think you'll get it once we start doing things, so bear with me. Currently we're going to be painting without paint brushes. What does that mean? Go open your cabinets, grab some things, anything, chopsticks, forks, go outside get some branches, leaves, used sponges, rubber bands, strings, and one of my favorites, Q-tips. Get ready to use some Q-tips if you have them. Also, I suggest using paper plates or plastically, if you want to use a palette. If you want to put your paint on a palette and you can use that as well. It's up to you. I also recommend baby jars. These little babies are awesome because they rarely tip if you're careful. They rarely break and you couldn't put a lid back on top if your using for paint. Keep that in mind baby jars and Q-tips are some. We're going to get started with painting without paint brushes. Right now I'm using acrylic paints, just some [inaudible] that I got at a local store. This does not have to be fancy. You can fancy up your art as much as you want, or you can dull it down as much as you want. It's totally up to you. If you don't have paint, who cares? Go get ketchup, go get food coloring. Go get coffee, tea, wine. Who cares? There are so many things you can paint with. It doesn't have to be paint. Keep that in mind. Being resourceful is also a huge part of being creative. Don't forget to take a screenshot of this. Print it out or pause. That way you can refer back to it at any point in time. 4. Painting with No Brushes : I want you to let go of conventional thinking when you begin this process, none of this is normal. I want you to remember that whatever you gathered has some use to it. I'm using my art journal and this is watercolor paper. We want to make sure your paper is thick enough if you're using water or heavy paint. I'm going to go ahead and use a plastic fork to start with. It's a great way to reuse materials so you're friendly to the environment. What I like about forks is that you get these really cool lines. I'm just going to go ahead and start applying paint just randomly, I guess. I'm not thinking about it too much. I'm going to put some purple in there. If I want, I can even use my fingers to get those lines a little bit better. I am getting this into the paint really nice and I'm going to create a pattern, because that's for me what lines do when they're symmetrical like that. That's one way to use your materials. You can start applying with whatever other materials. If you don't have a fork, you can use something else. Remember, keep your station clean and organized, so you know where things are. But don't worry about getting your hands messy because that's inevitable, especially with fun projects like this. Then I'm going to start using this beautiful champagne cork like a stamp with these purple circles. Now, if I'd say to myself, "I wish I hadn't done that. Why did I use that? I'm not a fan". Well, don't be afraid of it. Keep building on it. You never know what might happen. That being said, I'm going to go ahead and add some color to this cup with my finger, because I don't have a big brush. I could use a Q-tip, if I don't want to be that messy. I like to feel the paint, and this is non-toxic paint I'm using. I'm going to go ahead and put this on. You probably saw that the Q-tip fell onto my page, so what do I do with that? Is this a mistake? I don't see it as mistake, I see it as an opportunity. What I like about rubber bands is it can be messy, so make sure you don't have any computers or devices near it. What I like to do though is I like to take it and hold it against the page and just slap it down. It goes a little bit everywhere, but this is fun technique if you want to get paint splattered in a different way without using brushes. You can try to control it by the direction of which you snap it. Now, I'm applying some of this paint to this row, so I'm going to use it like a stamp. I'm actually going to roll it back and forth a couple times. I'm going to come down here and do the same thing. Even though we're just enjoying the process and playing with materials, we want it to feel purposeful. That didn't do what I wanted it to do, so how do I fix that? Maybe I don't fix it, maybe I just use it. I didn't mean to do something, but I'm going to turn it into something that I didn't mean to do. I can't stress that enough. Even your signature is going to be purposeful because you want us to know who did it. I'm missing something. What have I not used yet? I'm going to get some green on this little thing. What's great about this is you never know how a branch is going to work. I'm going to try to just drag it along the page and see what it does. Didn't do much. Maybe I just break the branch. That's okay. I'm just going to use it. Actually, that might work even a little bit easier. Look, it's a cool little stamp now. Go ahead and play with your piece of art and please share what you come up with. I can't wait to see your projects, I'm very excited about it. I think this is going to be the best way for you to open things up for the next project, so make sure you don't skip this one. You get as much paint on that page as possible and use as many random techniques as you can. That's going to be the way that you teach yourself to let loose and have fun. Enjoy and make sure you wash your hands before the next project. Bye. 5. Your Imagination is Showing Part 1: How did the last project go? I hope it broke your creativity open and you are now oozing with inspiration. Let's get started on the next one. This one, I love, it's inspired by art Berg blog. It's something I've done with my kids at my art studio many times. It's an idea that can be built upon. It doesn't have to be done this way. You can do it in your own way, you can change the black and white image if you want to. But for purposes of this project, we're going to go ahead and use black and white image of yourself, either thinking, or looking surprised, or something, and that is your imagination. What does your imagination look like? Have you ever asked yourself that? If you could go inside and see what your imagination look like, what would it look like? For me I know that I can be goofy, creative, silly, and colorful. Those are things that I'm going to include in my composition. But I also can be very serious, and planned, and regimented. I'm a hard worker. Those are also things that I might want to include in my imagination because they also fuel my creativity. Let's get started. Right now I'm going to go ahead and show you some things that I've already begun on, so you can get an idea of how this project is going to go. Then I'm also going to go through some of my own processes with how I "doodle" my imagination on the page. Don't forget to take a screenshot of this printed out or pause. That way you can refer back to it at any point in time. We're ready to begin our next project, which is the imagination project called your imagination is showing. First you are going to need to take a selfie or have someone take a photo of you, and then you'll need to print it out on a black and white sheet of paper, preferably in the full 8.5 by 11 size. Sorry, you're going to need to use some income on this one, but at least it's black and white. Next you're going to cut out that image of yourself, do don't worry what was in the background because it's going to completely disappear. I'm going to show you an example. This is my black and white. Sorry, but that's me. Cut your black and white paper out. Then you're going to go ahead and use any type of coloring or painting materials that you want, and any type of embellishment materials that you want. I suggest ink, acrylic, oil pastel, markers, colored pencils, Kranz, anything. Anything to get some color on the page. If you have no color in your imagination, then just use pencil, or a black pen, or a black sharpie, totally up to you. If you want to add some things and some dimension to your page, have fun with it. Get some puff balls, get some corn, gets a macaroni, gets some string. Anything will work for this project. If you're going to use any embellishments, makes sure you have a sturdy glue. I want you to also make sure that you're using a thick enough paper for this project. Remember, you can use any type of paper that will hold water or painted materials depending on what you're using to draw or paint with. Let's get started. 6. Your Imagination is Showing Part 2: As you can see, I've already applied paint to this page in certain areas. I wanted to show you that you can really use the page how ever you want. Ink and markers is what I'm mixing for this project. For me, the color was really fun to apply here, but I also have a black and white side. I have a very planned regimen inside of myself, so I'm going to go ahead and start adding some of that now. I started and I'm going to go back over this, I started with creating a bubble to help confine where my imagination went. But you can see in certain areas, I left that bubble. Maybe my imagination started oozing off the page, who knows? I want to play with that. I also accidentally had my coffee mug here when I started painting, and I want to show you that I just went around it. Instead of moving the mug to get that bubble the way I wanted to, I went all the way around it, and then back down. That was cool because it showed me that all of these things can be happy mistakes. Who cares if my coffee mug was there, I created a new composition because of it, something that I didn't think of before, and something that I really like now, so go with it. Don't feel worried or stressed if something doesn't go the way you expected. In fact, I really welcome you to just let go of any expectations with this project and have fun. This is supposed to be about doodling and letting go. Some of those black and white sections of my brain and in my imagination might feel very grid-like, so I'm going to make some lines because this is how I feel might best represent that grid in my imagination. Remember, work the composition as a whole. Don't forget about this side over here just because you're playing over here. I'm going to come over here and do something repetitive so it feels like something is more unified than it would have if I forgot about that side. I love applying ink to the page. First, you want to make sure you have a little bit of water if you're using ink, and if you're not, then go ahead and just use any type of paint. But the point is that you can draw something that maybe you think of a lot. If you have a cat, maybe you draw your cat, or if you have a friend that you miss, maybe you put their name in there. This is your piece of work, so do what you will with it. For me, I just love color, I really love color, so I'm just going to play with that right now. I'm literally just going to drop this in and see how that goes. How cool is that? Now I'm going to play with it. Then I'm going to drop a little silver in, and just see how that goes too. See, that happened, and that's okay. No expectations. Remember, there's no mistakes, because now it looks purposeful. I'm going to actually add some of that color over here because I remember I don't want to think about just one spot. Don't get stuck. That's also a part of letting go, I think, is that you don't want to get stuck in one section. This is my dirty water. I'm using dirty water, and then I have a clean water. Then I'm going to go ahead and use my paper towel to soak up some of this paint because maybe it's too much. If it's not and I want more, I can always add to it. Remember, it's easier to add to something than it is to remove something, so keep that in mind. I'm needing a break from this ink, so I'm going to go back and forth, and that's okay. This feels whimsical and silly to me. It also reminds me of the ocean, which I love. Make this personal, make this something that you want to make about you. Make this something that you want to tuck away or hang up in your bedroom. Put some love into it, and just have fun. This is all about just doodling, and being aware, and being resourceful, and being purposeful. 7. Paper Play Instructions: [MUSIC] Now that you've completed one of my favorite projects, it's time to do our last mini art lesson. This one's called Paper play. It's going to push you a little bit, and it's going to also involve a little bit of problem solving. So don't be scared though we're going to walk through it together. Right now let's talk about materials. You're going to need any type of coloring material. I'm actually just going to be using a black sharpie for this and a ruler to make some grid-like marks on a single sheet of paper. You can use anything though, markers, crayons, colored pencils, oil pastels, chalk pastels, totally up to you. We're also going to be using magazines if you like. This is going to depend on what you do with your paper project. It's up to you. The interpretation of this project is completely up to you, you're the artist, you are the creative in the room, so, go ahead and use whatever magazines you can find around the house, if you're using magazines. If you're using paper, I suggest paper of all different types of textures and weights. So these are a little bit thicker, for instance, than normal paper. You can use construction paper, you can use printer paper. Again, totally up to you. The more variety that you have, the more juxtaposition that's going to happen. So keep that in mind. How minimal or maximal is your creativity going to be in this project. Other things that you're going to be needing are Artist's tape, scissors definitely, clear tape, glue, or staples, cardboard, or anything else that you can think of to adhere to this project. I'm actually going to be showing you some different artists today that will hopefully inspire you. I don't want you to think of it as competition, I don't want you to try to mimic them necessarily, but I do want you to pull some inspiration from what they're doing. This artist's name is Frank Stella. He currently lives and works in New York City. He was born in 1936 and is an American painter, sculptor, and print maker. He's noted for his work in the areas of minimalism. They also evolved his work into maximum prism. What I think is super cool about this project is that, we can take it from both levels, both minimal to maximum. He started shaping his own canvases, that were not the traditional rectangle or square. So I encourage you to also shape your composition and to something that is not a rectangle or square. Try to cut the corners off, try to make irregular shapes, try to think about getting out of that box, literally get off that box shape and then do something more organic. It's what we're going to be doing today. If you're basing your project on Frank Stella, I want you to really think about the organic shapes versus the geometric shapes. I encourage you to get outside, check out some Sculpture Gardens, maybe in a nearby city, or even in a downtown area where you can find sculptures. I love these sculptures by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, one of my favorite artists, and also Leno Tagliapietra, who was an Italian glass maker. The materials used in these sculptures is not a huge deal because we're going to be simulating them with paper. So don't worry that these were made out of glass, metal, or various other materials. [MUSIC] If you decide to do something different with your paper play, that's fine, you can pick anything you want. I, for instance, made an African inspired necklace out of a paper plate, macaroni and magazines. This project was so much fun, I had to tell myself to put it down. So I hope you have that same problem too. I encourage you to think differently and I want to see where you take your project. This can be anything, you can create a fashion piece, a sculpture, a collage, anything you want as long as you're playing with paper. Don't forget to take a screenshot of this, printed out or pause. That way you can refer back to it at any. 8. Paper Play Part 1: Any point in time, I want you to think how you're going to take these different designs I'm showing you, and interpret them into how you'll use them with paper. What can you do to get those lines? What can you do to create those patterns? Has a little bit of a challenge, but that's the point. I am giving you this challenge because I know you'll find creative solutions in order to make your project really speak to you and remember, there's nothing unique in art ever, every idea is taken from something. The only thing in this world that is truly unique is you. I'm going to use this as my base because this paper is really thick. I could use a cardboard piece as well. On the backside, I could tape it on there, or glue it on there to make it even more sturdy. So keep that in mind. How sturdy do you want this to be? Are you going to be hanging it? Is it going to be standing erect on your table? Those are things that you want to ask yourself because you're going to need to come up with different solutions on how you create it. If okay, now that I have my organic sheet of paper from an old painting, I'm going to go ahead and add to that and if I put something on the back to make it more sturdy, then that will help me, depending on how I want to present it either standing up like a picture frame, or post it on a wall so it really sticks on there. Now I took this purple sheet of paper and I made a cone out of it. I drew some grid marks on it because I want to give that geometric feel that's going to pop against this organic field, so I've created a cone out of it and I just put some clear tape on the back. It's as simple as that. I'm going to add it onto this piece and I picked these papers on purpose as well. I wanted to have it be a little bit monotone and sometimes I'll do that and sometimes I'll create different pops. Depending on how I feel that day, that's what ends up happening, and that's okay. You can switch things up whenever you feel like it. Now I'm going to go ahead and make some more lines because I want to unify this project. What does that mean? That means I'm going to work this side of the project just as much as I'm looking at this side of the project and that's going to help tie in the whole composition. Even though I'm not working on a rectangular surface, you still need to think about the composition as a whole. I'm going to go ahead and create some more lines here and I got some of my painting, but that's okay because I might cover that piece up. Remember, it's always easier to add to something than it is to take away, so me getting black marks on this painting is no big deal, because I can always cover it up with something else that I do and who knows? That could be a totally cool, happy accident that I never would have thought of before. Maybe I wouldn't have covered up that spot before, if I hadn't put that black mark there. Now I have my geometric piece of paper. What can I do with this? Let's try to figure that out. Maybe I fold it. You can be creative with how you use your tools, not just which tools you're using. I'm also going to play with the straight edge and build on that as well and I have to really think, this is part of my problems solving right now, which way is this going to hang? 9. Paper Play Part 2: If you're not into the whole paper sculpture side of things and you can do something completely different, and you can use your paper to create some fashion statement, or something else of your liking, whatever, as long as you create something that is playful, I encourage you to play your paper in any way to get my inspiration from other cultures. So today I'm going to be showing you some African fashion. What's great about these fashion pieces is that they're combining black and white with old pops of color. They're combining different patterns that you never thought would go together. How cool is that? But they did it purposely. I know I've said this over and over again in this class, but when you're purposeful with something, especially in your art, you can make anything work, which is what's so cool about this. I encourage you to also look at other cultures. If African fashion isn't speaking to you, then find something else. Maybe tap into your own roots. This could be something really cool, like maybe this becomes a yellow centerpiece for a necklace that I might create. The reason why I like paper projects so much is because the options are endless with what you can do with the paper. 10. Paper Play Part 3: Remember you cannot take yourself too seriously. I'm creating a headdress that's inspired by African fashion. I really want to have some fun with this, and that's okay. It's okay to have fun, it's okay to be silly. Remember, we talked about this in the beginning. I'm going to go ahead and add to this. This is my form. I have staples on the back which I'm going to cover up with other pieces of paper that I cut out from my magazines. I want you to understand that these are not items that are going to be going into a gallery. These are items that are supposed to make you feel good. It's the process of creating them that is why we are here. We're going to tap into our creativity and hone it by enjoying that process. Because it's when we enjoy that process and we enjoy the ambiguity instead of being scared of it, that we are able to really let loose with our creativity and become innovative, progressive, productive, excited about life. Keep that in mind while you're creating these projects and don't take yourself too seriously. As you can see, I've already started putting some strips of my magazine down onto my headdress. I had to undo my headdress on one side to make sure that it was flat. It's definitely easier to apply things to a flat surface than to a curved surface, so keep that in mind. You might want to make sure after you're done cutting out your pieces that you keep the item flat, test it of course, but keep it flat while you're working on it and then piece it together afterwards. I'm going to go ahead and use some of the paper from my previous paper project that I was doing for the Frank Stella's sculptures. I'm just going to add that to one side and maybe I go over here. Remember, work the whole composition. I don't really need it to be perfect, so I'm going to not use my ruler here. I don't even know if you'll be able to see that because it might go behind my head, but either way, I'm thinking of all sides. I'm going to go ahead and continue gluing some of these fun shapes on that were from my umbrellas that I cut out, and who knows. Maybe I just layer things. Layers are cool because they create a lot of visual interest and intrigue. I want you to take a step back from what you're creating right now. I want you to think to yourself, how can I make this different? Because maybe you've got stuck on one area or maybe it's not turning out the way that you're envisioning it. What can you do to stop that? You want to stop, put it down, walk away, go get a drink, go get a little snack, come back to it refreshed because that's going to help you see it from a different perspective. For instance, my headdress is feeling a little too collagey for my taste. What can I do? I walked away for a minute and I saw that maybe it needs to just be simplified. I'm going to do just that. I'm also going to add a little bit of dimension to it with some other materials because right now it's feeling very flat. Even though it's going to be curved, it still feels flat. I'm cutting out some white pieces of paper because what's more simple than white? I'm going to go ahead and add this white onto this headdress to make it more simple and to hopefully clean it up a little bit. Remember, it's always easier to add than take away. Even though I'm taking away from some of this clutter, I'm adding to it in order to do so. It's may seem counter-intuitive, but you'll see when I'm done. My plan is working and I am definitely creating some solutions here for the challenges that I had for myself. What I'm doing now is, I'm working all these different sides. You can see how cool it starting to look. I think it's cool. I'm going to go ahead and start doing some of the same things on this side as I did on the other side and on the top. Right now, I'm seeing this little thing was hiding under the other white strips. I don't really want it to hide. Instead, I'm going to actually accentuate it a little bit. Really just taking a sharpie or a pencil or pen or chopstick or anything you have that will work for this. I'm curling the piece of paper around it. Doodling for me is the best way of letting go because it just opens up your mind. It's that whole mind-wandering thing that we talked about in the beginning of class. I really enjoy doodling and I try to incorporate it into a lot of my projects. Which is why we did the first two the way we did and then now I'm even incorporating some doodling onto my headdress piece that I'm creating for myself. I hope you don't walk away from the challenges that you may have created for yourself and instead you tackle them head on and you find a way that you can let loose. Sometimes we get frustrated with our own work and our own problems that we've created through that work. It's up to us to find a solution. If there is no solution, then who cares, just start over. But I want you walking away feeling like you had a great time and that you actually were able to tap into your imagination for a minute. Thank you so much for playing with me and creating with me. I hope you guys have really learned some valuable lessons that you cannot just carry into your artwork, but into the rest of your life. 11. Key Takeaways / Words to Create By: Exploring and processing your relationship with art and your own instinctual way is the best way to get in touch with your imagination and awaking with Beethoven sites. Discovering the solutions that are within ourselves to create something new is true self-discovery. For instance, where did you find your inspiration? How did you use color, materials and place your compositions together? How did you personalize it? Creativity is in you, not in what you are taught, not even in these lessons, but it is in what you do with the lesson and where you take it. Most things can be taught to us. But it is creativity that helps us imagine our own ideas.