Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] There's something
that happens when we just slow down and we say, what's true in this moment. You're going to find that
permission to just take the pressure off and just
create just because you can, just because you're curious,
just because you want to. My name is Morgan
Harper Nichols. I am a poet and an artist. I've been able to
collaborate with Starbucks, Targets, Atlanta. I am the author
and illustrator of the books All Along You Were Blooming and How
Far You Have Come. Across social media
over two million people follow me and what I share is daily reminders and inspiration in the form
of poetry and art. Today's class is about
creating and making mindfully. What I mean by that is creating, thinking about one
thing at a time. What I learned in that
process was stillness, how to be kind to myself. I want to invite
you to do the same. We will be working together through five creative prompts. We're going to start
with the visuals and from the visuals, we're going to look at words and look at all these
different things we can add to make art that can
connect with others, but also here so. This class is for the
creatively curious. If you've never picked
up a paintbrush, if you've only taken five
photos on your phone, but you just keep
thinking about, I wonder if I have
something I haven't tapped into yet, it's for you. So let's create something
together. [MUSIC] [LAUGHTER]
2. Discover Your Creative Curiosity: I am so glad that you're here. Mindful digital art is
a way of approaching technology and this digital
landscape with our humanness. Which when you think about
who we are as humans, we're people that we need
to be able to breathe and pace ourselves, and I have to just rush
through everything. This is important because
sometimes a lot of ways technology can seem to
be the antithesis of that. Many of us just don't have
time to slow down and think. That's where mindful digital art can really come in handy, and it can be a very beautiful, powerful tool that we can
bring into our daily lives. One of the biggest things that I have found to be
challenging in my life and also so many other
people that I talk to, not just with making art. Is feeling like you
have something to say. It's no secret that the
world is filled with talented people who
can do all things, who are great storytellers or have really
interesting lives. It can be really easy to
feel like, but me though? Am I really allowed to
enter into the space? The answer is yes. I was diagnosed with autism
at age 31-years-old. There's been a lot of times where I've really questioned
and doubted myself. I was so excited when I
discovered digital art because for the first time, I could just sit for
hours and just explore. What I learned in that
process was stillness, how to be kind to myself. I want to invite
you to do the same. Every time you open a new canvas or you try something new, you are owning that space, you are saying, yeah,
I'm allowed to be here. I just want you to think about
that as you're creating, because that is what's going
to fuel your creativity. As your skills grow,
unfortunately, that confidence doesn't always just grow automatically too. I have found myself learning
all kinds of skill. But then I'm so
questioning myself, like, am I good enough to do this
or am I wasting my time? Those questions may still come. It's important that we
are kind to ourselves when those questions rise up. We also just allow ourselves
to look in front of us and see what we're making and say, this is
a visual reminder that I have something to say. This class is an invitation
to the creatively curious. What do I mean by that? I mean someone who is
looking and is open to that child-like wonder
that is within you, that notices the butterfly, that notices the
bird that flies by. You're like, that
caught my attention. The reason why it's
creatively curious is because if you take
five different people who are curious
and you ask them, what did you observe
throughout the day, what did you see? Even if they were all in the
same room the whole day, they are going to give
you different things. They're all going to give you a different version of that,
and that's creativity. Creativity is diversity because it's people taking
different ideas, putting them all together, but every person is going
to do it in different way. I'm just naturally
very sensitive to a lot of things like
I'm sensitive to color, I'm sensitive to light, I'm sensitive to sound, I'm impacted by all of
these different things. What I have found through making art is this is a way that I can take my unique
way of being in the world and all the unique
ways I see things and turn that into
something in front of me, which is visual art
a lot of the time. Even if you don't think
about it on a regular basis, but there's a unique way
that you see the world. That's a part of
what makes you, you, and it's valuable, and it's
a part of what you make. In this class, we'll be working from five creative prompts. In the first prompt, I will be showing
you how to make your first visual art
piece using one canvas, one paintbrush, and one color. In the second prompt, we are going to be
going just outside wherever you are to take a photo that helps us
redefine landscape. We will be making art
from that piece as well. In the third prompt, we're going to be working with
layers to help us slow down and learn something
new about ourselves. The fourth prompt,
we're going to be choosing one person that we know and creating something that
can connect with them. The fifth prompt, we are
going to be reflecting and writing a letter that
helps us find beauty and meaning and story. Finally, I will be giving
you practical ideas and tips for how you
can carry this practice with you into the world. First, take a deep breath, loosen your shoulders
if you need to, crack your knuckles, wherever you need to
do to just loosen up and just remember that
there is no pressure. If you just really don't
like what you're making, you have that undo button. I will see you in
the next lesson.
3. Prepare Your Canvas: To get ready for class, you are going to need
a tablet of some kind. I'm using Apple's iPad Pro, you're also going
to need a stylus. I'm using the Apple pencil. However, if you'd like, you can even use your phone and your finger as an alternative
way of doing this as well. On my iPad, I have a screen protector that's
like paper called paper like that makes the surface of the iPad feel a bit
more like paper as you're writing on it. I will be using Adobe Fresco for this class to make
everything in this class, however, you are
free to use your favorite drawing art-making app. Just a reminder, if you've
never opened this app before, that is totally okay, I will walk you through the
step-by-step to get started. There's a lot to
learn here and I really want to just
break it down so you definitely feel like it's
something that you can do and also find your own style
and way of doing it as well. The first thing you
want to do is turn on your tablet if it's
not already turned on. Then open the app. Go over here at the
top where you can select a custom size
for your Canvas. Now, when you open this, you're going to see a lot
of different options. But I like to start with 8.5
by 11 under the print tab. It's just a basic Canvas so
you can get started with. Once you get that,
you are ready to go. The first thing that
I actually like to do whenever I'm creating something is I actually do
the very first feature which is I zoom out on the Canvas so I can
see the whole Canvas. Over here on the left you will see different
options for brushes. You have your pixel brushes, and then you have
what are called live brushes and then you have
your vector brushes. We're going to be focusing
on the live brushes. I'm super excited
about that because these brushes are just so
much fun to play with. You'll see here there are watercolor brushes
and oil brushes. We're going to click
on watercolor. We see five options. You can use any of them
but what I would like to recommend you start with is this one right here
called watercolor wash soft. The next part is
to pick our color. In this particular lesson, we're just going
to pick one color. In order to find your color, you are going to need to
go to the color wheel. The color wheel is on this
panel over here on your left, you'll see a black dot here. The way that I want you to think about picking your color is
to not really think about it. [LAUGHTER] Just find a color
that you are drawn to. Pick this little circle that's in this
left-hand corner here. Drag it over here in this
right hand corner range. Notice how I said range. You don't have to
pick the exact spot. You can just find the
range you would like. Then in this outer
circle of color, move around and see all kinds of colors that
you can choose from. Move around that
wheel a few times. If you just really can't decide just close your eyes
and just just pick one. Funny enough the one I
just slowed down to was the color I wanted to pick
any way which is blue. I have a rule that I've
just completely made up. It's just a Morgan rule and it's just like when
in doubt use blue. [LAUGHTER] Which is just like, [LAUGHTER] I don't
know where to start. I find it to be very hard
to go wrong or blue. I want to warn you, this watercolor brush acts fast. [LAUGHTER] Actually where
the default is actually set, it's actually pretty big. I'm going to show you how
you can adjust the size. Tap that number over here, so the default is set to 512. That's the biggest
this brush goes. As you move this along, that is the size of that brush. We're getting started. Somewhere around 300. I feel like that's
not too intimidating. [LAUGHTER] Now that
you've got your Canvas, you've got your brush and your color, you're
ready to paint, you're ready to
create visual art.
4. Exercise 1: Embrace Oneness: Now what we're going
to do is start at the bottom of the canvas. Our intention here is
to make a painting that has some variation in color
value using this one color. What I want you to do when you're starting at
the bottom is I want you to apply
pressure. Let's practice. Hold this like you hold
a pencil, and just begin pressing into the corner. If you can see as
you're pressing this watercolor brush, it moves. That's why they call
these live brushes, because these brushes are alive. [LAUGHTER] This right
here I can do all day, [LAUGHTER] and I actually
do spend a lot of time just watching this brush. The technology here is
just so fascinating. What you're going to do is just cover one-third of this page, so the bottom third using
that level of pressure. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm actually inching
into the middle now. It doesn't have to be a
perfect bottom third. You can even go back
in, and you'll see some areas that you may
not have fully covered in. You can go back and
color those even more and finish this
section however you like. Now, using the same
brush, the same color, the same even pixel
size of the brush, the only thing that
we're going to change here is the pressure. In changing the pressure, that's going to give us
just a little bit more of a range of color and
dynamics in this painting. Find a spot on the edge of the whole area that you just
colored and I want you to gently press your stylus over the top part of
where you've painted. I'm actually doing
a circular motion here to slow myself down a little bit and make sure
I don't press too hard. I'm actually getting lighter
and lighter as I go. Just allow yourself to fill this next third with
that lighter pressure. If you're just not
liking what you made and let's say you maybe
press a little bit too hard, you're like, no, the whole
thing's ruined, it's not. You could press Undo,
just keep going. Just like that, we
have this middle part of the canvas
painted, and we have new texture created
right before our eyes. Now, I'm going to show you another technique that I
will use to finish this. You could continue going
lighter and lighter, but I am very heavy-handed, so [LAUGHTER] I can
only go so light. What you can do is
you want to take your finger and hold down
somewhere in the canvas. What this does is it
ignites the color picker. What the color picker
does is it takes the color that's already
existing on your canvas, that you have right
in front of you, and then it helps you move
that color to your paintbrush. Now you'll be able to
paint with that color. What I like to do is go all
the way to the very top, where it's almost at the whites, but not quite and find
that lightest color. If you have a hard time with precision and really
getting that, you can just zoom in and get all the way
down into the pixels and [LAUGHTER] just find
the right light blue. This is something that I
actually do quite a bit. I spent a lot of time
getting down as close as I can to the pixels to
find just the right color. You're allowed to do
that if you'd like. Now what you're going to do is you're going to start
at the edge again. Now we're about to fill
in this top there with this lighter color and you just want to
do the same thing. Actually, a very similar motion that you did for the last third. I'm going to go back
and darken this just a little bit because I did pick a color that was too light. If you look very closely, you can see that
every single time I run into that middle color, it bleeds together and
it's not a problem. It's actually really pretty. This is just one
of the many things that I think about when
I'm creating is, wow, there's these things that
happen that where colors run together and it's
a beautiful thing and I get something that
I can't really plan. The reason why I'm taking
all that time to explain that is because me talking
through all of that, what I'm noticing, what
I'm experiencing is actually what's going to
help us round out the piece. Because I want you to
take a moment to think about what was coming to mind as you were
creating this piece. How do you feel? How does this color
make you feel? I know for me, when I look at this, originally I was thinking, it's probably going to look like an ocean landscape because I've done many abstract
ocean landscapes. But the more I look
at this, to me, it actually looks like slowly
rising over the clouds, like when you're
flying at sunrise, you see the clouds just
maybe the dark clouds are on the bottom and it gets
lighter and lighter as you go. When I look at this I feel very free in this
really calming way. That is actually how I want you to start thinking
about what this painting is about and how
you're going to name this painting and where
this painting might live. As you think about that, we're going to add just a
little bit more dimension to this just to give you a little bit of time
to think it through. [MUSIC] Now that you've
finished think about, what is the one word
that comes to mind? For me that word is free. You can come up here
to the very top. You're going to see a
little down button. Name your canvas. I'm going to name this one free. The final step
that I want you to do for this particular
piece is go up to the top right corner and
click on this option here. What this does is this creates export options and
then press Export As, we're going to select
Export and it's saved. The reason why this piece was
as simple as it was and why the final thing was
to just save it on a device that maybe
only you will see, is because that is
creating room in your creative practice for things to be created
that are just for you. Things to be created that
are about the process, because there are a lot of options here and
we're going to get into some more details and a lot more stuff that you can
do with making visual art. But this piece is all about how can I just be
with one color and find something that is reflective of my own
story, my own journey. You've done just that. In this next lesson, we are going to be
redefining landscape. We're going to be building on
the skill that we worked on in this lesson to create
an all-new piece.
5. Exercise 2: Redefine Landscape: In this lesson, we are going
to be redefining landscape. What I have found
in working with visuals and making art is that there is a way to really tap into that feeling that we get when we're in
a beautiful place. Just by using a simple photo. Yeah, you heard me right. Taking a photo on your phone. This is a regular practice of mine and I want to invite
you on a journey of exploring what looks like
it could be mundane or an interesting and recognizing
the beautiful landscape that actually exists in
those simple things. What we're going to
do is we're going to go outside and we're going to take a photo that just has two elements in it or
two objects in it. Now, it can be a
leaf on a sidewalk, two sticks that are right
next to each other, or three sticks that are
right next to each other. Or it can be one of my
personal favorites, branch of a tree and the sky, that one's my favorite
because it actually creates a really interesting contrast that we'll be able
to do a lot with. I have my photo here on my phone and I just have it
right out of the camera. I'm not going to add any
effects or anything like that. I'm just going to
go ahead and just AirDrop it right to my tablet. Now that we have the
photo on our tablet here, it's just head on
over back to fresco and we're going to
create a new canvas. We're going to use
the same type of canvas that we use in
the previous lesson. You click up here and you can actually see there's a shortcut for your recent canvas so because we've used this
letter canvas here, we can just click on
that and make a new one. The next thing we're
going to do is head over to this tab, which is going to show us all of the photos that are
on this device. You have a lot of
different options. Click on "Photos" select. You might see this prompt here that says auto-create
color palettes. If you do see that, it's really cool because
what it's going to do, it's going to pull some colors from this automatically,
which is really neat. You can press "Okay" and it appears over there
now that you have this photo in your
Adobe Fresco canvas, you want to actually
just go ahead and duplicate this layer and I'm going to show
you how to do that. There are three
dots over here on the right-hand side and when you click on those three dots, you will see the option right in the middle here that
says duplicate layer. Click on that first
layer that you select here and we're just going
to hide that layer, make it non-visible by
clicking on the eye. That's just like an
extra backup layer that you have just
in case you're like, I do not like what I did
and I want to start over. Now you just have it.
It's easy to access. I do that all the time. If I weren't making art, I never would have stopped
to take this image. I see trees all the
time and that's why I love it so much
because from this, we are going to be able to look a little bit closer and see something new from
something that we might pass every single day. The next thing that I
need you to do is to convert this image
to what's called a pixel layer and the way that we do this
is we go back over to these three dots here
and we're going to press "Convert to pixel layer." What that has done
is it's given us some more flexibility
to be able to work with this image in a variety
of different ways. What I want you to do is
to pick a corner from your photo and then after
you've picked that corner, I'm going to show you
how we can then bring this corner to life in a new
way and redefine landscape, I'm going to zoom
out even more to about maybe 25 percent or so. Then we're going to go over
here to the left and there's a transform feature and when you click on that
transform feature, you'll see that it
gives you options to drag the image to
a certain degree. I'm not really
looking for any type of exact measurements here. I just know that
this general area, the bottom-right corner of this, is what caught my eye. Take a look in this area over here on the right and you can
see as you move the image, it actually shows you a
preview of what it looks like, of what that crop is
going to look like. After you have found a crop of the image that
you're satisfied with, press "Done" and just like that, it has cropped the image. The next thing we're going
to do is we're going to add another layer. It's going to give
you a little bit more cushion to be able to create without the fear of ruining your crop
and this new layer, everything you paint on this
layer is on that layer. It's not going to appear
on the previous layers. We're going to go back
up to our newest layer. Now that we have this
part of the image that we just feel drawn to
that we want to explore, we're going to start
painting over it and one thing I want
you to ask yourself is, what color stands
out to me the most? For me, it's this blue here. What I want you to
do with that color, now that you're on
this separate layer is I want you to tap on your screen and take your time here and
just explore and say, I think I like this blue. Now that we have our color, we're going to go back
to our live brushes and we're going to select that, that watercolor brush
that we used before. Over here, the second option, we're going to use a
water color wash soft. Then we're just going to paint
over here in the corner. I'm just going to paint at
the edge of that color. What we're doing
here is you're just warming up to the idea of essentially creating this [LAUGHTER] new
version of this moment. Whether you can ease into it, just go to the edge of
that color and just see where that leads
you and if you look, you'll see that I'm doing
some circular motions here. And I'm doing that just
to keep it really soft, but you can press into a
harder if you'd like to. know, I'm coming up on
some power lines here, painting over them now, I guess I didn't really have
much attachment to them. At this stage, you don't
have to go that deep. You're just thinking
aesthetically about what you
would like to see, what colors you would
like to play with. That's just one of
the cool things about digital art is that you get to explore that and it's
not a final decision. You still had that photo, you can always just go back to that photo and just look
at it if you'd like. As I'm doing this, to me, it feels like, the
skies opening up. There's something
interesting happening here. There's a lot of feeling
of openness about this. Now that I'm
thinking about that, I want you to think
about what was it like using that color.
How far did you go? Do I want to keep going without color or do I want to
add something new? For me let's add
something new face. What I'm going to do to find my next color is
zoom in, even more. Zoom in to the point that
you can barely even tell us the picture anymore and I'm going to find another color that really just
stands out to me. I like this green and I'm going to go over to the pixel
size and just bring it down a little bit, 60. I'm going to zoom out. Now I'm just going to add some
little dots in here. Just make this a very
magical row of trees here. Right now I'm just picking other little colors and you can go on and
on with this for however long you want and if you're trying to decide
how you feel about this, I want to show you
one little trick. Go back to the original
crop where we've worked, we're cropping image and hide that image and just like that, let me zoom in. You'll start to see
a little canvas unfolding [MUSIC] and actually, the more I paint this, the more it's becoming a
different landscape altogether. When I pull back
just a little bit, I actually see how this looks a little
bit like a mountain. This is all just
using one brush. Just to add a little
bit more of a touch, I will show you one
more little brush. Go back to your live brushes. Step out of water color, so press that backwards, arrow and click on "Oil." These are some fun
oil painting brushes. Click on one of these. Hold down, get your color. If you look closely, it's adding even
more texture there. Acting a little bit
like oil paint would. Just like that. We
have two options. Have this one and this one, and of course, our
original image as well. What I love about this
is that it's through taking that photo
and by zooming in and spending a little
bit more time with it, we can begin to
redefine what landscape means and begin to see
landscape as, yes, it's that beautiful
far off place that we may like to go or long
to go someday and yeah, it's also right here and we're free to explore that right here. I'm going to keep
working on this and I hope that you
can keep doing the same and we're
going to head into our next lesson where
we are going to be looking at working
with personal layers.
6. Exercise 3: Build Personal Layers: In this lesson, we are going
to be doing what I like to call building personal layers. I as an artists love layers. I love working with layers and I actually get asked a
lot about like, wow, how do you bring all of
these colors and different dynamics into your paintings
and what you create? A lot of it is layers
[LAUGHTER] I'm working with lots
and lots of layers. What I love about that even beyond just the artistic side is just how much that reflects
the human experience. We all have so many layers to who we are and what
I have found in both making art and in life is that the way that you can
really start to unpack those layers and get to know
who you are is by slowing down and just taking
time to just listen. That's what we're going to
be doing in this lesson. We're going to be making
something and taking time to slow down in the silence
and just listen as well. The first thing
we're going to do is open Adobe Fresco and we're going to pick
our 8.5 by 11 Canvas. We're going to be focusing
on creating one layer. This layer is going
to be a little bit similar to what we've already
been practicing before. However, we're going to go
just a little bit deeper. Instead of just picking a
color that you just like, I want you to think
about a color that represents how you feel. Now, if you're anything like me, sometimes answering how do
you feel it takes a minute. I'm going to show you what that process looks like for me. The first thing I'm
going to do is I'm going to go back to the watercolor brush
that we've been using. I'm going to go to the second
tab over here and I'm going to click our watercolor
wash soft brush. Now I'm going to be
looking for a color. I'm going to go back
to our color wheel here and I'm going to move this particular bit right here to the top just so I can
get a little bit of range. You don't have to necessarily
grab any particular spot but over here in the
right-hand corner range, we just gives you
something to work with. Then just move around
the color wheel. I'm moving around
the color wheel now, I'm just looking for something
that stands out to me. I like this green,
greenish-yellow color. After you've decided on color, I want you to do one more step; find a slightly darker
version of that color. What I just did there was I
just picked the color without really knowing very
clearly how I feel but now, I want to
think about that. Why was I drawn to this color? The first thing that comes to
my mind, I was like, well, this green makes me
feel very grounded. That's the color that
I'm going to pick. Just give yourself
permission to find a color that speaks to
you and go from there. I'm going to increase the
pixels of our brush here. I'm going to paint in
somewhat of a oval shape, and it doesn't have
to be a perfect oval. We're just trying to
get a circular shape in the middle of
our Canvas here. You can apply quite
a bit of pressure, allow yourself to fill in this
middle area of the Canvas. I will say the longer I look at the shape and this is
the beauty of slowing down is that I actually
see and what I've painted to almost look
like rings of a tree. Actually, if I look
at it this way, it looks like a fingerprints, fingerprints and
rings of a tree. These are things
that tell a story. There's something
interesting here, there's something unique here. That's very grounding
for me and that's what you want to experience when you're looking at
this it's like, well, I pick this color and there's something
deeper here. I want you to think about that. Then I want you to think
about how does that feeling, how does that word connect
to your environment? I don't mean just the landscape, but the people in
your environment, your community, the people
that you see and engage with. For me it's grounded. What does it mean for me to be grounded as a community member? What does it mean for
me to be grounded in my interactions with people
that I know in my life? Just let your mind roam for a minute and see
where that takes you. How does this color make
me feel relationally? Now that you've taken a
few moments to think, what we're going to
be doing is create around that idea of like
how does this color now relate to others and our connection and
relationship with other people? The first thing we're going
to do is pick that new layer. Now we're going to pick a brush. There are lots of brushes
out there but we're going to go the really simple one. We're just going to
use the pencil brush, so I'm going to show
you how to find it. You want to go up
here to the top and you're going to click on
all the pixel brushes here. Under the sketching tab, you're going to see
the pencil tab. You can see I actually have
this favorite because it's one of the most basic brushes
and I use it all the time. The final thing we're going
to do is we're going to pick a new color for this layer. There's a lot of color
theory we could get into but a general rule of thumb that I go with most of the time is either look at the color
next door to the color you're working with or the color on the opposite
side of the color wheel. I'll give you an example. I'm over here
working with green. I think a good color
could be yellow. I will go over here. Then if I want a good yellow, I'm just going to slide up
a little bit to use yellow. Let's say I chose
instead to go with the color across
the way over here. Let's go back to the
green that I have. Across the way, we were
in that blue range. It doesn't have to
be exactly across the way but if you come
right around here, you get this bluish color that could go a
little bluish-green. Both of those options, yellow or that blue, would look really
well on that green. There's a lot of
options but those are just two rules that you can go with if you want to not get too overwhelmed with this stage. I actually really like
this yellow over here. I'm just going to
pick the yellow. Now I'm so thinking about that
relational aspect of like, how does this color, this green, I've looked at so
much at this point, like rings of a tree, fingerprints, grounded,
how is that relational? What does that mean? I have my yellow here and I
have my new layer. What do I feel relationally
I think of grounded? For me, I'm going to stick with
this circular motion here. When I think about grounded
relationships in my life, this is what it feels like. It feels like there's circular
thing, there's overlap, I know this person
but there's still more to them that
I'm still learning, there's still more to me
that they're still learning. It doesn't have to
be like an essay. It's just reflects
how I feel about it. What I love about this is, I don't even know how many paintings of mine
that I have out there but I have so many
little moments like that and things
that I've created that nobody else may be able to pick up on but I know it's there. That's why I gives it a layer of meaning that nobody can
take away from you. It's just such a good
mindful practice. I want to invite you to fill in that space and allow
yourself to just draw something that
really reflects how you feel with this color in
relationship to other people. Now that we have two layers, we have some texture here, we have some story here. I want to invite you to have one more final moment of silence and quiet to
think about this. How does this piece
so far make you feel in relationship to the
world, the world at large? Now that's a really
big question, so I want to break it down
for you a little bit. The reason why art
has such a power to connect us with each other
is that art does reach out. When we make things, it starts right here, it starts with our story, but at the same time it has
ripple effects in the world. That's something
I try to keep in mind and in my practice
with everything that I make is who
might encounter this somewhere beyond
me that I don't know. This is a way that
you can just take a moment to really
think about what does it look like to bring that
into this piece as well. I just want to invite you to take a few moments
to do just that. For me, one thing that came up is when I look at this piece, I'm like there's
a lot of harmony here to me and my piece
feels harmonious. That's still ties in to the original theme
of feeling grounded. When I think about that word
harmony, I'm like, wow, that's something that I
would love to see more of. What I'm actually going
to do is I'm going to figure out how I can make
this next layer musical. I am going to add
a new layer here and now we're going
to add another color. I keep picking the
colors next door. I'm going to just
stay on that path. The color next to I'm
going to pick is orange. I'm not going to literally
draw music notes. Instead, I'm going to
draw something that is reflective of
music notes to me. If you can see I'm
leaving the circle here and I'm just
going to start fueling this outer layer here
with something that to me symbolizes music notes. It's going to be very imperfect here, and
that's the point. Because as we've
already talked about, I'm thinking about
harmony but also how really difficult
harmony is and how difficult it is to create
a harmonious music. This is just the beginning
of adding personal layers. When you think about your story and you think about who you are, there are way more layers than Adobe Fresco
can even handle. If you're looking at
what you're making, you're like, I don't
know how I feel about it. That's okay. This is only the beginning working with digital
art in this way, there's still room for more. This piece is fine
as it is and for me it actually represents a lot, I feel pretty confident that
I can look at this later, especially if I named it
grounded in community. I'm going to remember
this process of thinking about it and saying, yeah, that's what
that represents. At the same time,
I can keep going. I want to encourage
you to do the same. Whatever you started working on, you can continue to
play around with this, even with just the
few brushes that we've used and the colors
we've already used. Go ahead and just
experiment a little bit, allow yourself to
explore, these themes, explore, these layers, and just get to know this piece and also get to know
yourself in a new way. Now that we've created
this layered piece, we're going to be going even
deeper into relationships in the next lesson
using another photo. Can't wait to see you
in the next lesson.
7. Exercise 4: Relate to Texture: In this lesson, we are
going to be looking at a concept called
relating to texture. Texture is something that
you can add to an image, whether it's a painting
or a photograph, to just bring a different layer, a different level of substance
to what you've created. One place that I
like to add a lot of texture is when I'm working with photos of people
and people that I know. What I'm going to be showing
you how to do is take a photo of someone
that you know, and it could be a
photo that you took of them or a photo that
they said that you can use and adding more
texture to that photo. I'm actually going to be using a selfie that me
and my sister took. I'm just going to go over to my photo tab here and I'm
going to click on "Photos". Then I'm just going to pull in the photo of me and my sister. First thing we're going to
do is duplicate this layer just so we have a backup right here ready to
go if we need it. Then we're going to go back
to the previous layer. Then we're going to
press that little I there so it's hidden. Go back to our top layer here. I'm going to zoom out just
a little bit because I like to be able to
see the whole Canvas. The next thing we're
going to do is convert this to a pixel layer. What I'm going to be
doing is removing parts of this photo so that I can focus on what I
want to focus on, which is the other
person in the photo, my sister, so not myself. What I'm going to start
doing is just erasing myself from this photo. In order to erase, you have different options. You want to click over
here to this tab. I like to use the
hard round variable. I'm going to increase the
pixels of this eraser. That makes the eraser brush a little bit bigger, about 100. There's technically
more proper ways to remove certain
things from an image. But for these purposes, I'm going to just
do it this way. The more you apply pressure, the more it expands that
pressure a little bit. Looking at this photo of
this person in our life, we're asking ourselves questions about how does this
person make us feel? To break that down a
little bit further, what I want you to
do is think about something that
this person likes, and it could just be a
color that they like. My sister here that I'm doing, you could probably
guess she likes purple. I'm already thinking
with this image, doing some purple and pink here could be a really
good direction. The next thing I'm going to do, and I want to invite
you to do the same, even if you don't
have a full crop of the person's full shoulders, both shoulders, and
all that, that's okay. Come over to the Transform tab, drag it somewhere to the middle, come back down to the
default base layer. When you first opened it, there's a layer
that appeared here. Drag it just above
our backup photo. This is going to be
our new background. The way that I want you to
find your background is by pulling from a color
that's in this photo. We're going to zoom in. I'm going to do a dark pink. Let's try this one. Then I'm going to go to our
pink bucket tool over here. Tap on the screen, make sure you're on
this layer right here. Pixel layer. There we go. Now that we have our background, click on your top layer, click on this plus sign
to create a new layer. For our textures, we're going to primarily be using one brush. I'm going to show you what's possible with the pencil brush. It's a very basic brush, I feel just a little
underrated. I love this brush. Come back up to our top position here where we can see
all of our brushes. Pick our pencil brush, it's already selected
most likely, but just in case it's not, that's where you can find it. We're going to just keep
playing with this color. You know how this is
not a perfect crop. I didn't get every single tree or everything removed
around the hair. That's okay because these are all colors that we can
work with actually, and they can find their
way into this piece. What we're essentially
going to be doing is filling in the space around this image to
just add more texture. My sister really likes color. She really likes color, she has a very energetic
personality, lots of fun. I want this image
to feel very fun. I'm going to come back
down here and I'm going to find some more colors. I really like the lavender
that's in her hair here. I'm just going to
start working with the very edge of
this photo here. I have my Apple Pencil
turned on the side, so I can get this effect here. This feels very fun to
me and I also feel like my sister would think that
these little dots are fun. That's what I want
you to think about when you're adding
different textures like I'm doing right here is
does this feel fun to me? The person I'm giving this to, will they also think it's fun? Maybe you're making
something with a friend who the two of
you like to laugh a lot. Could you put some
little funny doodles in there that are a part
of an inside joke? My sister is also an artist. She and I, we talk a lot about color and different things. I've actually even done some album covers for my
sister, she's a musician. I have a little
bit of insight as to the kind of aesthetic
that she might like. But you don't have to know what someone's aesthetic is
to be able to do this. You can just slow down and look at the shirt that
they're wearing. Maybe they're wearing a pocket t that has a little lake
on it or a mountain, and maybe I could do some little pencil mountains behind their head or
something like that. As you can see here, I'm
actually pulling from some of the green here in this image, and that's actually
why I left that there, because I was like, how cool
would that be to just add these little dots that are
maybe not as prominent? This color green
is not prominent. But because me and
my sister took this photo in front
of some trees, it works, the color works. It works with the color of
everything else in the image. It's amazing what you can do just by pulling from an image. Working with images can
be very intimidating, but the way that I come up with the texture is thinking I
just need to frame the image. Start with framing
those edges where it was cut off in a hard way. Right now, that's what
I'm thinking about with this top section
up here where I've added a different texture. What's interesting about that is that when you're
working with images of people and you're working with someone's real lived story, lived experience, it's
a really good thing to actually try to build around
what's already there. If you're feeling stuck, like I don't know
what I should do, just think of it as
literal framing. We are framing the image. As you are pulling colors and you are
working with this image, there are a few
things that I want to invite you to think about, even just take this
practice even deeper. What are the words that come to mind when you think
of this person? It could be two or three words. For me, those words
from my sister would be joyful, hilarious,
and empathetic. As I'm thinking about that, those things impact the way that I'm even
drawing simple dots. If the word that you
chose was calming, maybe your lines will look
a bit more like this. Maybe your lines would be
lines that you slowly draw. There's so many
different approaches, but these questions are helpful because when you're making art, sometimes it can become
a little bit like, oh, I don't know what to make next, I don't know what colors I
should add and all of that. Just taking time to really slow down and think about
the meaning of it can help bring you back to what creative decisions
you want to make. Finally, what I want
to invite you to think about when
you are creating this image of this person is on their best and worst days, what do you hope they
know to be true? That can be something
really simple. It can be I just hope they
know that they are loved, their personality is amazing, or that they're doing
really great work and that we see them and
that we care about them, I just want them to know that I see them and I care about them, and say these things to yourself
as you're creating them. Because what that does
is that it grounds you in the piece in a way that
technicality never will. We can learn all
the techniques in the world and learn
all the strategies, but if we lose the heart
of why we're doing it, then we can so easily just overthink it and just tell ourselves that
we need to quit. This is why I just
absolutely love to create inspired by real stories. It's the hearts of the piece that keeps me being
present to it. Looking at this image, I am very satisfied with the textures and
everything that I added. There's one more little
thing that I would love to show you that I like to add to an image that I'm creating just to
bring it together. Come over here to
this option here, click on "Brightness
and contrast", and you'll see that it
creates a new layer here. Then I'm just going to
adjust the settings here just a little bit to
make these colors come to life just
a little bit more. You can just bring
the contrast up, you can even bring the
brightness of it down. That feels good to me, and it just adds a little
bit more of a pop. Now that you have
finished this image, we're going to
stay in this space a little bit and go a little
bit deeper with words. I can't wait to see you
in the next lesson.
8. Exercise 5: Reflect and Letter: When it comes to expressing
and finding beauty and meaning in the
work that you do, words can really
help bring a message or the heart of a
message to life. I like to write a lot and
I get asked a whole lot about how do you find the inspiration and
motivation to write. I'm going to be
showing you a practice that I use all the
time to help me write and help create a meaningful
message with words, and one way that I love to do that is by using some template. These are all templates
that I make myself. I'm actually going to
be offering one to you to be able to use and you can find it
in the resource tab. We're going to be taking
that template to really write a meaningful
relational message. After you have already
downloaded the image onto your tablet or whatever
device you're creating on, is open a new document. We're going to use
our 8 1/2 by 11. I want you to import
that template. I'm going to grab a
template here from photos. Just like we've done
in previous lessons, we're going to just
duplicate this layer, just to have an
extra layer there, and then we're going to
convert this to a pixel layer. Click on these three dots, "Convert to Pixel Layer", and now we're good to go. What we have here is a
template to help you write a letter to someone who is meaningful to you
or special to you. I will recommend you
pick someone that you do see or talk to
you on a regular basis. Once you have that person
selected in your mind, we're going to write, dear so-and-so whoever
their name is at the top. I am writing to Leah,
and there you go. Dear Leah, I just
wanted to take a moment and write you a letter
to let you know how much I appreciate you. For all the time
I have known you, I have known you to be, thinking about
what you would say if you were actually
talking to them. I've always known you
to be really kind or really optimistic,
really hilarious or funny, or always to be the
person I can count on to send me funny
memes, whatever it is. It doesn't have to be
deep and profound and it's a very casual, informal,
just-in-the-moment letter. I've always known Leah to
be kind, understanding. It's okay if the lettering doesn't really look
perfect or anything. Even with tons of practice, I'm still not lining up
all my letters correctly, and that's okay, and generous. There we go. I have three
different words here, and I actually want
to redo this u here. You have your eraser
tool over here. You can just erase
and write it again. Now we're onto. This has been such a
great example for me because in my own life, maybe you have been wanting to learn how to be more
laid back yourself. Like maybe if you said that
they're really laid back or you could say this has been such a great example for me because of my own life
I also want to be, repeat the same words,
kind, understanding, and generous, whatever it is that you feel that can
answer this question. For me, this has been such a great example for
me because of my own life, I have been growing
in this area. Then the next sentence
is, from you, I have learned to be
present to the moment. It's okay if you go a
little bit over the lines or it's not perfect because
we're not done yet. Then finally the sentence, and through it all, I hope you can continue to be
the kind soul that you are. The final thing I want
you to do in this section is write your name at the bottom and give yourself just
a little bit of space. Now that we've done this, I'm going to show
you how I would clean this up just a little bit. The reason why I separate
these processes is because whenever you're
making something, it can be hard at
times to have to fight that urge to edit yourself
while you're creating. I just wanted to give you
permission to not worry about making sure it
all fits exactly right, and you say all the right
words the right way. I just wanted to give you
permission to write because especially when we're working
with these digital tools, we have a little
bit of flexibility. If you would like
to clean this up a little bit and make
everything fit on the lines, while you're in this still
there, that's very important. You want to make sure you
are still on the layer that you would like to clean up. Head over to this
button right here, we're going to use the
Lasso selection tool. What this is going to give us the chance to do is clean
this up a little bit. I want to get these
words back on this line. I'm just going to use the Lasso
tool to select this mine, click the transform tool, and then you can drag
it down like this, and you can also do this. I do this all the time. In order to keep that
in place where it is, you want to press "Done", and there you go. The last thing you want to
do is press "Deselect". Now, that has been permanently
moved to that location. Do that once again right here. This right here, this
process that I just did, it is a little bit messy, but that is intentional. Right now, we're focusing
on getting the words out and giving ourselves
something to work with. Take a little bit
of time to further customize this letter
and make it your own. I want you to read this again. Find a word that
you would change, a word that you would change
to make this your own. Let's say that you want to
change the word how much I appreciate you to how much
I am grateful for you. You could erase the
word appreciate here on that template layer
here then write, I'm grateful for you. You can go on and on with this. Let's say you wanted to keep some of the words that I have, but you just want to write
it in your handwriting. Let's say you wanted to
erase for all the time. You could just erase that and then write it
in your handwriting and you just keep doing that. Then eventually, just like that, you have a whole hand-lettered
letter that speaks to you and it's meaningful and
it's your handwriting and it's even formatted
in a certain way, and that's the wonders of
working with the template. If you'd like to just
take it even further, create another layer and add some images to
it, add some doodles. I would love to add some
flowers to this piece. Slowly but surely you can just begin to make this your own, however, you would like
to add to this letter, add a little sun, some of those little birds that are shaped in the letter V. Just like that, you began the process
of creating this letter with your writing voice for
someone that you care about. There is some format here. There is some story. If you would like to just keep some of the letters
I already had, maybe you can just erase
some of the lines. Just make it fun. There's no rules. It doesn't have to
look a certain way. In life, there are
a lot of rules, but this is one of those places
where it's not like that, and there's freedom for you
to explore what's possible, how you can make something
your own and make something that will cause
someone to just slow down and really look at it and say, I can tell this person took
a moment to think about me, and that's really special. If this letter doesn't
quite feel like you, and there are some adjustments
that you want to make, I just want to invite you
to spend time adjusting, spend time editing, erasing, writing words in different ways to really make it your own. Now that you have
created these letters, we are going to be moving
into our final lesson which is called
continuing your practice. We're going to be looking at all the many ways that you can take the skills that you
have learned here today, to continue nurturing
them and growing them, and I cannot wait for you
to join me in that lesson.
9. Continue Your Practice: We've acquired some
skills in this class and I want to show
you how you can take the whole practice
that you've been working on and then just expand
that loop a little bit. One of the ways that
you can do that is to continue to find ways
to prompt yourself. I've actually created
more prompts that you can download in the
resource section so that you can use this
mindful digital art that you've been creating and your daily life and in the way that you see the
world and respond to things. I want to encourage you to
really think outside of just the canvas itself and continue your practice
just by being you. The reason why it's so important to make art and make these
visuals around things that are important to you is because those are
going to be the things that propel you and energize you and motivate you to actually
share what you've created. As a professional artist, I get asked all the time, how do you get over
the fear or the doubt or the pressure just around
sharing what you do? My answer is that I
don't get over it. Instead, I have to find a
way to push through it, and the way that I push
through it is by saying, hey, I know what's backing
me up is conviction, it's something I believe in, and that's what's motivating me, that's what's pushing me to press publish and to share it. I want to challenge
you to figure out what does that
look like for you? What does it look like for you to press publish in
some way in your life? A lot of times it
is social media but that's not the only way. There are a lot of different
ways that we can say, here's me pressing publish, here's me going just
a little bit further than what's comfortable but I want to challenge you
to figure out what that is. One way that you can start
is with a time frame. Maybe you're like,
okay, once a week, I'm going to commit
to making something that I send in my
group text of friends who will let me send them some art that I make and say, "Hey you all, this is
just me making a thing and putting it out there because I've never done this, I just need somewhere
to put it." That's a small way that
you could do that, or you could say, you know what, I want to crank it up a notch. I want to do that. I'm going to start a blog. Start with time, once a month, once a week, once a day, whatever works for you and just figure
out what you can do that allows you to
continue your practice. I want to take a
moment to talk about what continuing your practice and sharing looks like as
a professional artist. The first thing that I want
to highlight is Pinterest. Pinterest is a platform
that I've been using for many years to share my
artwork and my poetry, and it was actually the launching pad for a
lot of what I do today. It was actually a
very personal poem that I shared on
Pinterest back in 2016 that ended up getting
repinned over 100,000 times. Till this day, I have no
idea how that happened, and I'm still mystified by it. It really just caught my
attention as a platform because it's a space
where you can upload and it takes time for people
to find what you've created. A lot of other platforms, there's a lot of
instance gratification, and my experience with
Pinterest has been, I'll share something and then I'll leave it alone like
I did with that one poem. I left it alone for months. That to me is really good to have something like that
in your creative practice. You're forced to
wait a little bit. You're forced to say, "Okay. It's out there. I don't know how I
really feel about it, I don't know how other
people feel about it." You have to wait and you have to really be mindful
about it and say, "Okay. Yeah, this is just a
part of the process." That's just something
that I really love having as a part of
my creative practice. Another thing that I
really recommend trying or just giving it a try if you want to
continue your process, especially if you're interested
in sharing what you do, it's figuring out a way
to share your process. Inviting people into the
fold of how you think, why you use the
colors that you use, why you're exploring
certain motifs, just inviting people into that. I recognize that
might sound really intimidating but here is a easy, practical way that
you can do that. You can get like a
basic tripod that has a way that you can attach
your phone to the tripod. If you're willing to do
it or you want to try it, you can do a live stream on social media to
show people, hey, here's me exploring how
to paint on my iPad and that's just a prompt
that you can start with. Here's me exploring. If you're not comfortable
or aren't able to or don't want to do live
stream, that's totally fine. You can just film yourself, just recording, take a
little clip of that, share that on social media, and just say, yeah, this is me just continuing my practice, trying something new, and that is more than enough. I've talked a bit about
how you can continue your practice by
sharing publicly, and I want to take a
moment to talk about how you can share with yourself. Here's what I mean by that. The more you're making art, I want to encourage
you to save your art and send it to your phone and then your favorite
ones, favorite them. You can actually favorite
your favorite photos and put them in an album. From there, you just
allow yourself to look at this collection of
artwork that you've made, that's just special to you. Return to it every
once in a while, when you need inspiration. A lot of times we may
go to the Internet when we're looking
for inspiration. Well, try creating
an album of stuff that you've already made
and say, all right, I'm going to go to this album and see what was it that I liked about these pieces that I made. Maybe I can continue down
that path using that color, using those textures that I use and just keep returning to that. You can really just
experiment with that, but I just want to
encourage you to find some way offline to say, here's me making this art and
I'm making a space for it, and you can do that digitally,
right on your phone. The biggest thing that I hope that you can remember
when it comes to creating this mindful
digital art and continuing your creative
practice is that there is a lot of
room for creativity and for you to find
the version of this that works for you. The way that I've
been able to find what really works for me is by getting very,
very, very specific. Here is a challenge and
it just has three Ws. The first is when, so when are you
going to post this? Are you going to do
this Sunday evenings? Are you able to say, okay, I'm going to share something
on Sunday and Wednesdays, seven days a week
for a whole month, so that's 30 days? What is that that time? When are you doing this? The second is, where. Say it's going to
be on this website. Maybe you already
have a website, maybe you have a website
for something else, and you can make a
separate blog page that's often the
corner somewhere and say, "All right. Here it is. I'm committing. Over here on this URL, that's where I'm going to be." Then the final thing is, what. What are you going
to be sharing there? This is where I want
you to think about that space where you're sharing. If it's a blog post spot, if it's a Instagram post that you're having
to scroll through, I want you to think
about that space. It's like, what is
the bare minimum that I can do to challenge
myself to say, "Okay. I'm going to go through here, I'm going to get the thing, and I'm going to post it." I want to encourage
you to keep it simple. Be specific but keep it simple. Let this be your
challenge to just decide when and where and what
you're going to be sharing. By now I hope that you
have been inspired and motivated to come
up with some new ideas, to try some new things. Go ahead and start
looking at the images that you've already
been creating, the things that you've
already been saving and even if you don't
feel like they're perfect or they're right exactly
where you want them to be, you're going to find
that that's okay. I'm sharing something
honest and true and that's all I need
to be able to connect with other people who are
doing the same thing. I want to invite you into that and I want to invite
you to start sharing. Start sharing some
of what you've been creating in the project gallery and let that be a space where you're just able
to take a deep breath and say, yeah, this is
the area of my life where I'm doing that. I'm just allowing myself
to just breathe deep and create and try new things.
10. Final Thoughts: We did it. We have made it to the
end of this class. I just hope this can be
the beginning of exploring some new things creatively and also figuring out your
unique way of sharing and continuing your practice. One way that you
could do that is by using the prompts
that I have provided and they're in the resource tab. I want to encourage you to share what you've created right
here in this space. Upload the art that you
save to the project gallery even if you don't feel like
they're just right yet or they're exactly what
you want them to be, I promise you, you're right where you need to
be in your process. It's worth sharing right now. Thank you so much for
joining me with this class, I've really enjoyed
being able to share what I've been learning. I hope it inspires
you to keep learning and growing in your
own journey as well.
Morgan Harper Nichols, Artist, Designer, Writer
