A Painter's Process - From Idea to Finished Artwork

1. Introduction: You know that you don't need to travel the world to see beautiful things. You just need to open your eyes [MUSIC] You already live in the world, and you are surrounded by beautiful and amazing things. Your job is to see them and discover them [MUSIC] Welcome, I'm Alexander Gabor, a professional art teacher and artist. In this class, I'm going to show you my process of creating a finished, polished piece of artwork. I will walk you through the journey of getting an idea, creating the concept from it, using your local surroundings as inspiration. I will show you how to do a research, and how to give your thoughts, a visual form. Because, actually, that's the hardest part. I will give you tips on using acrylic paints, but actually on the whole painting process. From initial sketches, value studies, then you can watch me painting, and finishing up. I will also give you an insight how to prepare your artwork for your portfolio like photo shooting, design, picture description, so that you can maximize the potentials of your creative process and artwork. The class is ideal for any creative, ones who is already creating, but would love to bring the creation process to the higher level. It is okay if you don't have your own artistic voice already, maybe you need this class to lose enough from the trends, and to follow your own voice, or you might already have your own voice, but, for example, you don't understand the difference between a painting and an artwork. I will go into this deeper in this class, but shortly, a painting is the picture of something, but an artwork has a clear formulated concepts behind it. You can find my paintings and artworks if you look for me as the Artmother on social media, for example, on Instagram or Facebook. You can also visit my website, www.theartmother.com, where you can find everything you need to know about me. Of course, don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare to get notified when the other classes will be out today. I hope you will enjoy the class, let's dive into it [MUSIC] 2. The Idea: In this video, I'm going to show you a sketch and a finished piece of artwork I did in 2017. It is the biggest piece I've ever done. It is called modern folks Slovakia. It is 100 and 120 centimeters big, acrylics on canvas. The whole idea started after a longer period of procrastination. I was obsessed with painting folk motifs before that. I was born and I'm living in Slovakia, and this region was part of Hungary. I belong to the Hungarian minority living here. I'm loving the Hungarian folk motifs, and I was obsessed with painting them. But I also loved painting galaxies and woodland animals and landscapes. All these visuals intimidated me. I didn't know what to paint, so I just didn't paint. One evening I just sat down and created a sketch with watercolors. I just loved it so much that I bought the biggest canvas ever, and started composing. Well, this is the result. I realized I don't know anything about Slovakian visuals. I researched and found the chihimonia and folk motifs, which fits my dark and moody painting style. I implemented them in my painting. I also thought, why do you paint any mountains if we have the High Tatras here? High Tatras are the biggest mountains of Slovakia, so I took them as a reference. I also researched for the botanicals, which can be found in the forest in High Tatras. All the little flowers in the bouquet of the brown bear is authentic. Also, the brown bear can be found here. The concept behind this painting is, I'm going to explain what is concept in the next video. But in here is universality. Even though I use the characteristic elements of Slovakia, it can be any bear, any mountain, any flowers. Even default motives have universal elements like heart and spiral. I included a galaxy sky over the mountains to notion that even though we all belong to a nation and live in a country, we all live under the same sky, which unites us. Back to the idea of the idea. I'm sure you know that feeling when you are getting inspired online when you are rolling Facebook, art pages or Pinterest, or Instagram of artists that you love, so many styles and topics and points of views, visuals, color palettes that you're overwhelmed. I want you to know that it is okay. It is a crucial part of the creative process because you are digesting the visual information. When this procrastination comes, you will just select out unnecessary things, and what remains is the idea, for example, me. Now, I'm obsessed with textures and patterns, mainly those which can be found in nature. I look for them online and also in nature and all around me. I need to put this idea on canvas. Now that I have an idea that I want to paint textures that can be found in nature, I will create a concept from it, which will help me to add a deeper context to my painting. If you don't have an idea in mind already, your job now is to go through the sources you usually get inspired from, and make a list of topics and subjects you would love to paint. You don't need to choose yet. Until you get to the painting, you will know. 3. The Concept: [MUSIC] Every artwork has three participants; the artist, the artwork, and the viewer. Now, artist has to have an idea which he puts on the canvas, and the viewer sees it. Let's say I want to paint a galaxy. I paint it on a canvas, and the viewer sees it. Concept is something deeper. I add deeper meaning to the galaxy. I can manipulate the idea with colors, shapes, brushstrokes to communicate this concept and I can also give a hint in the title of the artwork. Let's say I'm painting a galaxy into an iris of an eye. It is not a simple galaxy anymore and the viewer not just sees it but feels it. This is a difference between a painting and an artwork. Like I said already, an artwork is not just the picture of something, but it has deeper meaning behind it. For example, there can be a simple still-life of a pair but if you add a concept to it, like deeper thought that it is a late afternoon moon dominating the picture and it is symbolizing the forthcoming end of the day. It becomes an artwork. It is enough for the artists to have this concept in mind when creating. Of course, it is good if the viewer gets the message, but it really depends on him. What having a concept in mind when creating does, is that it helps you to visualize and formulate your idea and to add a deeper context to it. Just think about the famous painters like Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, or Ad Reinhardt. They all get away with the easy stuff by having a concept. Let's just take a look on the work of Piet Mondrian. If he didn't have the concept, he would have just painted squares and rectangles in primary colors. But he has a very good website, theartstory.org, where you can just find these artists and see the key ideas and biography and artworks. Piet Mondrian believed that art reflected the underlying spirituality of nature. He simplified the subjects of his paintings down to the most basic elements in order to reveal the essence of the mystical energy and the balance of forces that govern nature and the universe. Here's Barnett Newman. I'm sure you now his zips works where he painted giant canvas with ultramarine blue, and put this white line into the mule. He created a symbol, the zip, which might reach out and invoke the viewer standing before it. The viewer fired with the spark of life. Ad Reinhardt [LAUGHTER], he painted black canvas. Yes, here is his idea of this. As an artist, I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much. For black, is interesting, not as a color, but as non-color and as the absence of color. These all are concepts which help these artists to create their artworks. In this class, my idea is simple. I want to paint textures that can be found in nature. Let's make a concept from this idea. What is happening in nature now that I'm shooting this class? It is a time of the year when we're harvesting wheat. Have you ever thought about what is harvesting? If we take it as symbol to life, it is a time when we are enjoying the results of our hard work. The work we put in growing plants, nurturing relationships or putting huge effort to your job. What do we get is tomatoes, well-behaved kids, and higher salary. But even though it was our goal to get these things, they won't last, mainly if we don't put the hard work into them again. The trick to life is to enjoy the process, the journey, the hard work, and to accept that our goals will pass and just let them go. We can enjoy them. They will give us energy to continue the hard work. Do you know the feeling of emptiness after you reach your goals? Like for example, you always wanted to travel to somewhere and you just get there and it is satisfying, but have you asked the question that, and now what? [LAUGHTER] My father used to tell me a story that he always wanted to swim across the Danube. When he did, he was bored. He realized okay, I really need to swim [LAUGHTER]. I also have a story on this. Once I jumped out of a plane, and it was crazy amazing. But when we were landing, I just saw it okay nice land. Nice land again and again. Let's land already. Also, what's left after harvesting? Empty lands, and hard work is needed again to fill them. It is a cyclical thing that can be found in our lives and in nature because these two are closely related. So deep thoughts [LAUGHTER]. This is the concept I want to put on Canvas. I'm going to look for natural textures, which represent harvesting. To do that, I'm going to visit a farm which is the center of all this hard work. Hopefully, it will give me inspiration. In order to make a concept from your idea, ask questions. What does this topic or subject mean to me? What does it mean to others? Is it a symbol of something? Ask any question that pops up in your mind. What I've done in this lecture is that I asked and answered questions, and arrived from the idea of natural textures to the concept of harvesting. 4. On the Farm: [MUSIC] Now, I'm visiting the farm and I'm just going to look for textures and I will just include the shots of the things I find interesting in this video. I'm not going to comment on them just summarize my thoughts at the end of the video, so just hang on. [MUSIC] I've seen amazing things which inspired me and I have seen several things that I could use for my concept. I really loved the texture on the wheels of the tractor, but it just seems to be too harsh and destroying. Then I loved the hills of the wheat seeds but the winner is actually the texture that the close up of the wheat seeds gives me. 5. Research Online: [MUSIC] Now that I have chosen my subject, the wheat seeds, I'm just going to do a little research because I don't want to paint something that has already been painted, but I want to see how other artists have done the same topic. I will research harvesting and wheat seeds as my keywords. Let's start on Google. Our first keyword is harvesting and let's put painting here. Harvesting painting. Let's look at the images. We have some paintings about working people on the fields, a lot of landscapes. Let's write wheat or harvesting wheat painting. Again, here was Van Gogh painting and lots of Van Gogh paintings. Actually, I didn't realize how many paintings he has about harvesting and field works. Let's look at wheat painting. Here are some wheat stalks, they look amazing, these ones. This is interesting. Let's write now wheat seed painting. This is interesting, this is a stylized grain. If I can see correctly. It is really interesting distortion. I'm just going to see if there are more stylized wheat seed painting. Wow, this is great. Look at this one. How good is this? It looks amazing. There's wheat stocks, with this pointed edge. Well, these shapes are really interesting, I love them. These are vectors, but this is interesting that if you noticed the wheat seeds are like this oval shapes rather, and when stylized, they're mostly painted with this edge, a pointy end. It's great. I love that. Let's take a look on Pinterest. I'll write the same keywords like harvesting painting. Not what I wanted. Harvesting wheat. Similar ones, and then something stylized, landscapes, wheat stalks. I'm really interested in wheat seeds themselves, so I don't really want to paint wheat stalk or landscape. I'm really interested in the textures or patterns, as I said already. This looks good, this ones here. I will just put wheat seeds painting or stylized seeds. Not what I wanted but what I got from these pictures is that I'm interested in this stylized wheat seeds. Let's just make some sketches and see where it takes us. In summary, after the real inspiration and online research, I arrived to the stylized wheat seeds as the visual representation of my concept. To find your visual representation of your concept, visit real places, talk to people, research keywords online, and follow the roads which appeal to you. It doesn't matter if it takes you away from your initial idea. It will simply take you out of your comfort zone. 6. Brainstorming: [MUSIC] In this video, I'm going to just brainstorm some ideas how my painting could look like. At first I wanted to paint realistic wheat seeds. But through the inspiration process, I realized that they can be wearing nicely stylized, so I'm just going to just write the points I need to stick to. My main subject is going to be wheat seeds. I want them to create texture or pattern. I want them to be stylized and I want them to be recognizable that they are the wheat seeds. I want there to be a circle somewhere which we presence the cyclical things of life I was talking about. How can I do this? Let's just look at the shapes of the seeds. How does it look like? I want them to be recognizable. Maybe I should just paint in the shapes of maybe wheat stock. Maybe I can create a pattern for wheat stocks so that these stylized shapes are just recognizable. It is important because the title of the painting will be harvesting. I wanted to viewer to get that yes, they are wheat seeds. I'm obsessed with painting back black bubbles. I usually put these black bubbles to places where I think that there should be notion that. Here is [LAUGHTER] a deeper thought. That's just my thing. I love how they look like they are really declarative. I want to implement it into the paintings. I don't need to organize the wheat seeds into circle because there will be the circle somehow on the painting. The dimensions of the canvas I'm going to use is 50 cm and 70 cm, so approximately like this. My initial idea was to paint the wheat seeds as in random all around the Canvas. I wanted to put the black bubble in the middle of this painting. And this would be interesting, dramatic. What is the black bubble doing at the center. What does it mean? What are these? Maybe I'll stick to this, but let's see, what else can we do? We are talking about the wheat stocks. I don't really want the line, only the organization of the seeds around the stock. Maybe I could do something like a [NOISE] pattern. But I really don't want to forget that I want a texture like not just simply a pattern as it would be on a textile design or something because it wouldn't be a real artwork, it would be just a design somehow to place these seeds into these shapes. This is a art or design. I also thought like painting one big stock and to somehow paint patterns into these stocks, for example, more seeds. This is great because it would make the seed look as it has holes in it which can notion the emptiness I was talking about. What fun? I love these brainstorming activities because I always discover something interesting. I could do the same around the bubble somehow. I will have the bubble at the middle, at the center of the painting [NOISE] it says, the painting. Looks like in the younger now [LAUGHTER]. Here's my black bubble. This look like a flover, I don't like it. No, I don't like this one. I love this one and this one. Somehow, I need to mix them up. Any thing else [NOISE]? I also thought I really loved the patterns of these oriental rocks or textiles, like just a mask or how is it called? I also saw some inspirative things on Pinterest. I also thought that what if I would just make an outline of this week's stock somehow? Not like this, but you know what I mean? Just create a pattern with it and I don't know. The thing is, I don't know what I'm going to do, so I'm just going to sleep on it. It always helps you to look fresher your ideas. I will leave this paper on his desk and just return to it tomorrow and I will see just what comes out of it. 7. Sketching: [MUSIC] I just slapped on it and I just realized that this tribal wheat seed is stylized with these wheat seeds inside the wheat seeds. I already painted this. This is a synchronicity. What is a synchronicity? Are these funny accidents you have in life and you just say, wow, [LAUGHTER] this is just puzzles that fit in together. For example when you think of a person he just calls from nothing and or you meet him on the street. Or for example when you think of an action that is going to happen or should happen or could happen and it just happens. In this case, the synchronicity is that I've already painted a shape of this weed seed with similar effect. When I was obsessed with painting folk motives, I painted the center of this tulip similarly. The synchronicity tells me that this is the way I need to go. I'm just going to apply this on my painting. I'm just going to roughly sketch the canvas again. It is not going to be perfect and I'm just going to place the wheat seeds in the shape of the wheat stock so that that is recognizable that that's a wheat seed. It is stylized but still. I'm not going to draw the wheat stock, only the sticks. I'm going to do that in big. I'm not going to draw like lots of wheat seeds like that. Only one big. This is what having a concept does. It helps you to place your idea into a deeper context or guide you to a place where you can visualize your ideas. I really like this one. I think that this part of the wheat seed is empty and I'm going to paint some easy more tips down here and I'm going to paint it in gold. This is my idea. You will see in the next video how I'm going to choose my colors. I told you that I want to place my bubble somewhere. One of my ideas, I'm just going to show you, was that I'm going to place it between the seeds. I'm not sure if it will go in to look good. I don't know. The second one to place this bubble down here. I think I will just paint this a little bit smaller and just place the bubble down here. I don't want to interrupt this pattern. As you see, I didn't paint actually a texture I wanted to. But my initial idea led me to arrive at this point and I'm very happy with it because if I would have just painted the widget texture. It wouldn't be part of my artistic voice but this design is. It totally fits my style and everything. This is how I'm going to paint my picture. Now what I want to do is to analyze a little bit each wheat seed, not each but one of them. How will that look like with detail? Because I want this to be a detailed painting. I don't want the wheat seed to be flat. I want it to pop to have a little bit of dimension. I'm just going to do a while you study on my computer. Basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the photographs. I've taken out the form, put it into Photoshop and to desaturate and to see where the shadows are which helped me to make the wheat seed pop. Now we are in Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop you can do it in any editor where you can desaturate your picture. I will click ''Edit''. No, picture. Image adjustments. Desaturate. Yes, I have black and white image adjustments, contrasts. I'm just going to put the contrast up a little bit play with this one. I'm just going to zoom in to some of the seeds to look where the shadows are. Let's take for example this seed, the shadow is here in the middle but I'm not going to add that one. Maybe I will add shadows in this part of these holes, I'm going to paint into it. Basically this is enough for me now because I'm not going for realism. But this is a good tip for you. That if you paint a subject and you are not sure how to get the shadows well-used right, just open a picture editor, desaturate, put the contrast up, and observe. 8. Watercolor Study: [MUSIC] What I did is, I sketched the design here and put masking fluid on the places I don't want to paint on, so that I want them to stay white. The first thing I'm going to try is the seed itself. What color will the seed be? I will make a little color palette here. In my Artist Statement, I have that I love to use black and I will use black in the background. The idea I had is to make the background galaxy so that it is not boring, simple Joe's black, but something's happening behind it because these holes in these seed will show through that galaxy and I think it will be really cool. I will have black here. Yes. Somehow I need to manage that. This black bubble somehow pops out of that galaxy background. I will just put some colors down here, but now let's just focus on the seed. What color does this seed have? It has beige, yellowish, brownish, a faded color, which is a bit uninteresting for me. What I am going to do is, to grab my helpful color palette I have here. I think raw umber has the color I need now, maybe I'll add a little bit of white. Well, let's just try raw umber, I use this chart because it helps me to identify my paints on my paint set. Here is the raw umber and I'm going to just start one. I don't want it to be too too just to have that beige or I don't know, brownish color. What looks good with beige. What a trending colors which we can use. I really love mint green, or teal. I will go for teal. I will add a little bit of turkey's here and a bit of sap green. If you look differently with acrylics because they are different medium and you can blend the colors together more easily. Now, I'm doing this to see if it looks good. It will not look as good as it will look good with acrylics. Well, that was a hard sentence. My idea is not to create the shadows with adding more pigment layer here, but to add a bit of color. Definitely I'm going to use teal not just because it's my favorite color, but because it's trending, looks good and it really makes this seed life. I will wait until it's dry. My anxiety idea was to add a little bit of lilac. What is a lilac? It's a bit of mauve or how is it called? Here this color. I think it looks really great. But I will not add this to the seed. My initial idea was to add this also to the seed to add some variety. But I will use it in the background in the galaxy. I will now just create a bit of, what is this lamp? Black, lamp black, here's the lamp black. Just make one layer of this lamp black here. [BACKGROUND] There's also a different way to paint a galaxy with acrylic sound with watercolors, because watercolors really require a lot of water. I'm just going to wait until this part dries. I will just art the mauve here. I don't know how to pronounce it. So I'm sorry if I pronounce it wrongly. It's kind of a magenta. This is going to be my color palette. My rule for painting is not to use too many colors. Usually I use three colors plus black and white. That's my maximum. I don't use more. Now I have the rosiena here, the tail and the mauve or magenta and black. Of course, I will create highlights with white. These are going to be the colors I'm going to use in this painting. I have this kind of brush. It is very good for creating the sprinkles allo word in my galaxy, I'm sprinkling. I will just show you the Ph Martin's hydrous white watercolors, concentrated watercolors. This is going to be my galaxy palette. To tell that far away. I'm just going to add a little bit more shadows just to play around. What I had in mind to add the gold, I have this pallet of gold paints. I'm just going to add them to my palette. I don't consider gold as a color, but as an additional decorative elements. I'm just going to put the gold to my palette. I think it looks amazing. This is my initial idea for the painting. I will just try to do it on this one to see the whole how does it look like and then approach my canvas. I'm just going to speed this up. [MUSIC]. This is the final sketch of the idea. I really love it. I think it just looks amazing and it will be even more amazing on the canvas. I will just keep this as a reference. It will be a really great to have a reference to what to pay attention at, what colors to use, how to play with the shadows and also to compare these catch with the final art work. This is the most rewarding part of this process. Let's just get to canvas and accurate paints and move to the actual real painting. 9. Supplies: In this video, I would love to address the supplies I use, so let's talk about the canvas. Most of the canvas you can buy are pre-gessoed, but I almost always could use one more layer of gesso. It makes the painting process easier. However, I'm now going to use a higher-quality canvas, and I'm going to paint the galaxy at first, so I will use lots of black paint. Now I will not waste my time, and supplies with adding more gesso. I'm using the size 50 and 70 cm range, which is my favorite size because it is small enough to keep me engaged while painting and big enough to look good on the wall. As for sketching on the canvas, I'm going to simply use a 2B pencil because it is soft enough to show on the Canvas and on the pre painted galaxy, because that will be the first thing I'm going to paint. Then, we all need brushes. I have so many brushes, but I just got this art brushes. I didn't use them and I just love them so much. They look so good. [NOISE]. I need to try them out. If they don't work, I will just return to my original nylon brushes because most of the times I use nylon brushes. Of course I will use my favorite brushes. This is my favorite brush and this are brush and all the other brushes I will need [NOISE]. For acrylic painting, you of course, need water and appellant, which I cleaned for you now. But I'm just going to show you how much paint did I took off of it. It's like this much, it just looks so gross [LAUGHTER] but it's just so fun. This is my acrylic pellet. The difference is, the watercolor palettes have these little things because you use lots of water. But with acrylics, you don't really use too much water. This is my palette. Of course, we need acrylic paints. I have so many acrylic paints. I'm not going to show you just this, this is the Liquitex basics, 36 tubes. I just got this because I always love to try out new brands. I used it. I tried out on this piece. Really nice paints. I will just use them and try them out. Of course, when you are painting and you are painting a lot with white and black, always have an extra tube, four of them. I have tons of white and black acrylic painting. We will use acrylic varnish. I don't have the bottle here because I'm vanishing outside, because it's smelly. Here's a recap of the supplies I listed for you and which are simply essentials for acrylic painting. 10. The Painting Process: [MUSIC] I don't want you to watch my whole painting process because it can be really boring and it takes time like three days. Rather, I will just give you some tips for acrylic painting. Tip 1. Acrylic paints are water-soluble, which means that you can loosen them up with water and get consistency you need. But after they dry, they will become waterproof. Always clean your brushes with water well so that you don't ruin them. Tip 2. As acrylic paints dry fast, it is good to wet them on your palette several times so that they don't dry out. Also, always put only those colors on your palette that you are using. Tip 3. When you are painting with acrylics, opposingly lead watercolors, you work from dark to light. I always start with adding pure colors and then adding white to them to lighten them and get the dimension affects right away. Tip 4. This is going to be rather a general painting rule. As I already mentioned, I don't use too many colors. I mostly stick to using three colors maximum and try to keep dominance, using one as a main color then a supporting color and an accent. Tip 5. Always sleep on it. Sometimes you cannot decide whether your artwork is finished or you could work on it a little more, so just go and sleep on it. With fresh eyes in the morning, you will know what to do. Now watch little spot-up painting moments I cashed in the painting process. Enjoy. [MUSIC] 11. Get Your Artwork Ready for Your Portfolio: In this video, I'm going to give you some tips for getting the most out of the potential of your creative process and final artwork. What I do it first is the photoshooting. I love to make a composition where I also participate with the painting. Social media just loves these pictures because they can give face to an artwork. I have a giant canvas painted black and made a little chalkboard effect on it by adding a layer of chalk. I don't spend money on professional photo shooting, just simply use my background, a tripod, and just make automatic pictures. I also love to make compositions with accessories. Now I will just put some real wheat seeds around it and make some photos with it. Make sure you make enough photos and also some compositions which will fit the square format, which you will be able to use on Instagram. Now let's get to the portfolio. It is good if you have a consistence in your brand, and it is true also for the fonts you are using on your pictures on social media or website. If you have noticed, I also use the same fonts in my videos. I love the American Typewriter font. It is the font I use the most. I'm just going to use it again on the picture I create for social media campaign and in my portfolio. This is just a sample portfolio I'm showing you. Here is the American Typewriter. It's included in Mac. I think and I'm sure you can download font similar to this on the Internet, and also buy it, yes, because you need license. I'm just going to write portfolio here. Make it to the center, and 24 would be good, bigger, 36. If you want to digitize an artwork that is on canvas, the best way to do it is to find a scanning service around which can scan bigger sizes and simply use this service. If there isn't this kind of service around, you will need a DSLR. Start the camera to shoot in RAW and make photos of the artwork. You can include this process in the photo shooting part. Shoot in a place where there is a lot of natural light and try to find the perfect angle. Then take this file to Photoshop and play around with the settings to make it lighter, set a bit of contrast and clarity and brightness and crop it, and then place this photo into your portfolio. This is what I'm going to do now. I can click Insert, Pictures, Picture from File, and I saved it to my desktop named Harvesting. Here it is. I usually set it Wrap Text, Behind Text because this way I can just pull around the picture, I'm going to just make it smaller, like this, let's see. You can also use this file if you would love to make art prints from your artwork. But I recommend you to do a little retouching in Photoshop to your artwork. Because in portfolio you have smaller size, but on print, on demand sites, you don't know, like you can control what size your artwork will be printed, just make sure it looks good. First thing is to give a title to your artwork. I'm not a fan of naming my paintings like in series like unnamed painting 1 or painting 2. I also don't like too descriptive titles like, women harvesting wheat on the field in late afternoon in 1893, this is crazy. Let's just be concrete and simple and name the painting Harvesting. For every artist, it is very important to have a portfolio. The best is if it is comprehensive. I could work on this, but the main point is to give attention to your artworks, give them a right title, sign it, digitize it, and place it into your portfolio with a descriptive text describing the concept. The first thing to write is the title of the artwork. Then let's write the size, so it is 50 and 70 centimeters. Also the technique, like it is acrylic on canvas. Also the year it was painted in. I could write 2018 here or write in the title, I don't like to write it in the title. I'm just going to make this bigger. Some artists write the year also on the painting right after the signature under that, but I also don't like that. I will just sign the artwork with my full name at the back of the canvas and write the year there, and also to my portfolio like this. To summarize the concept, I need all my creative writing skills. Let's start with a topic sentence, then continue with a supporting sentence. Let's just be short you don't need to write a novel, only a paragraph. What a topic sentence is, is a sentence which describes the whole paragraph. It is a general idea, so what I'm going to write is, then my supporting sentence is something explaining this topic sentence. What I'm going to write is, harvesting is the time when we enjoy the results of our hard work, and when applied to life, the time reaching our goals, ambitions, and destinations. After this descriptive sentence supporting the topic sentence, let's just say something more about the symbols we used in this painting and the motives, and maybe we can talk about the colors. I'm not going to go too deep in this. Really, this is just a general idea about the painting so that the viewer or the person looking at the painting and seeing this portfolio just understands what we had in mind when creating the painting. Let's just read the whole, the artwork represents the symbol of harvesting to life. Harvesting is the time when we enjoy the results of our hand work and when applied to life, the time reaching our goals, ambitions, and destinations. The wheat seeds with tribal motifs and holes symbolize the ancient and universal character of the cycle and notions to emptiness after harvesting. After I write this text, I can of course play with everything like design the whole portfolio as if you would like design a book. But let's just save this file, because it is good to create a digital file or book if we can call it like that, in which you have a collection of your main artworks. You don't need to include every sketch or illustration you do, but do include artworks. That's how clear concepts are that you consider to be crucial when you need to describe your painting style to someone, for example for applying a creative job or for a grant or a competition or gallery. It is good if you have all things on your website and social media. But just keep in mind that having this kind of portfolio will be very useful and you will be able to return to it anytime. Let's say you see a competition, you need to describe the work you are uploading there. You don't need to think of new ways of describing your artwork, you just open the file on your computer and just copy the text and put it there, and it will be great. It saves you time and you will be consistent also in description of the artwork you have created. Always include an artist statement in your portfolio, so this is just a sample. I have an artist statement on my website on my portfolio. The artist statement is actually the description of your work and painting style. I decided to go visual to describe my voice and made a pictogram. This is my website. I included an Instagram feed right at the homepage so that I have actual works here because I don't update my website. It is actually new and my portfolio isn't finished, but I just want to show you this artist statement. In my artist statement, I have that I love to use black and gold and vibrant colors, and that I make digital illustrations and that the characteristic of my work is that it is decorative, so decorative painting style, I could say. I'm summarizing my artworks to topics like illustration, product design, acrylic painting. But I really need to update this website. I just have too much work. [LAUGHTER] In summary, just make sure you include this part in your creative process, because it will just give a dot to the end of the sentence. 12. Final Thoughts: Well, we have arrived to the end of the class. I hope that you enjoyed it and that it was beneficial for you. As for the class project, I want you to get an idea, make a concept from it, and get it at least to the sketching phase. Sketch it down, add watercolors to it and just write a description of your concepts next to it. Then upload it into the project gallery and if you are serious about this painting or concept, or composition, make a real painting from it and share it also with us. Don't forget to follow me on social media and here on Skillshare too and I really do hope to see you in my other classes too. [MUSIC]