Transcripts
1. Why You Should Take This Class: Hi, there. My name is Rich Armstrong. In this class, I'm going to show you how to play and experiment with an iPad app called Paper. It's not a drawing or art class, and it's certainly not about perfection. It's more a class on creativity, having fun, and loosening up. I'm going to show you how I go about fostering creativity, to creating abstract and organic doodles, which has become a style I've developed over the past few years. The thing is, I'm actually a product designer. I make apps and websites, but I love doodling and creating stuff that isn't related to products. This kind of play and experimentation is fun. It makes me more creative and helps me design better. We're going to jump straight into playing, making, and experimenting from the very first lesson. I'll show you how I work and introduce different exercises in-between showing you how the Paper app works, how to work with color, how some of the tools work, and chatting about what, when, and how to create best. By the end of the class, you'll have a framework you can use to play, experiment, and boost your creativity worth. You'll also have created a bunch of your own pieces in the Paper iPad app. So, if all of that sounded awesome, then, take the class. I'll see you in the next video.
2. Download Paper: So, if you don't already have the paper app downloaded, here's the URL. When it's done downloading, open it up and go to the next video.
3. Exercise: Jump Right In: Okay. Let's jump straight into paper. So you've got the paper up, let's open it up and now you're going to an existing journal or create a new one. Once you got a journal you can rename it pretty easily by tapping on the name and just inputting a name. I'm going to leave it as it is for now. So let's open it up, let's open up a page and now what I want you to do is to drag a new color as a background onto your page. So if we want to go for blue we just hold on color and drag it in. I'm going to go for a really stock whites. There we go. The next thing I want you to do is to select your paint roller tool, we'll be using this as well as the fountain pen tool exclusively in this class. Okay. Now, select a foreground color perhaps it's a blue, a yellow, have a look at what other colors you have on offer. I'm going to go for a red and once you've got your foreground color selected you're ready for this exercise. Let's drop this tool panel here and here are the rules for this exercise. The first rule is you can only use one foreground color. The second rule is that your shapes cannot touch each other. Two pretty simple rules, right. So we'll be covering why we set these rules later on but all you need to know right now is that these rules are super important for play and experimentation. So let's get going. Start creating shapes, any kind of shapes, just don't let them touch. Don't think too hard about it. Just create AdWords, see what comes out, they can be anything. You can do some pretty cool things with paper. You can do some inverse shapes if you wanted to, like that. Almost looks like an ampersand but we've made use of some negative space really, really cool. You can also zoom in and you can create at a larger scale, this helps me a lot. So do this for about two minutes or so. You can carry on, you can do this for ten minutes, an hour, whatever you want. You may be feeling, this looks like a bunch of rubbish and that's perfectly okay, that's part of the process. So, if you do want to start again, just close this up and go to a new page or if you like, this may be cool but I'm a bit scared of mess it up now or just duplicate the page. If you have any questions or want to show your work, you can post them in the community area of this class at any time. You can also post your work in your project galleries so other students can have a look. We'll be covering sharing at the end of the class, but if you can't wait to share your stuff on social media and you want to mention me, I'm @taptapkaboom. You can also use the #taptapkaboomstudent. All righty, I'll see you in the next video.
4. Why The Paper App?: Okay, so why this paper app? Well, because it's frikken awesome. It has a really sweet mix of analog and digital worlds, it does stuff that you cannot do in real life, and it does stuff that would take super long to do in real life too. It has a small set of powerful tools that are super easy to use and they require no configuration or advanced comprehension, it's amazing. There's not a lot of options and there's not a lot of features, but it feels familiar, it looks beautiful and it's a delight to use. So, for the purpose of playing, for the purpose of experimenting, and having fun especially when it comes to playing with organic and abstract shapes, it's perfect, it's amazing, it's the best. If you really love and want to use another app like Procreate or Photoshop or if you'd prefer to use analog paper with analog tools, or if you don't even have an iPad, that's totally cool, you can still take the class and apply most of what we'll cover.
5. Exercise: Overlapping: Okay, so this is exercise number two. Let's go to a new page, and let's go into it. Were the rules for this exercise, you got to choose one foreground color, only one foreground color. Then the next rule is that every single shape that you create with a paint roller too it has to overlay an overlap with another shape. Let's choose a background color, so perhaps you can choose something like this red color. All right, so what are we going to go for here? I'm going to try this yellow color on top of this red color, I've never used these colors like this before so may look disgusting, and may look pretty cool, who knows, let's try it out. So we'll start creating. Yeah, that looks pretty cool the colors work nicely and now let's overlay. When you zoom in here, you can see there's a really nice multiplier effects happening, really super cool. But we got to keep on overlaying, this counts as an overlay? Yeah, really cool, and if you overlay it again, it gets even darker. Maybe even darker, not sure if you can see that. All right, so let's carry on, and if at any point you do find that you know you make a little mistake here and you don't overlay it, just undo or perhaps you can just join it up again. Sometimes you get quite absent minded and you make mistakes, and that's perfectly okay. Again don't think too hard when you're creating, just create what feels right. Do this for about two minutes and when you're happy, perhaps start again or perhaps you would like to duplicate it. So, if you want to come out of this, you can duplicate this pretty easily by tapping on these three dots and then going duplicate, and this way, you can save your progress from one page to the other page, and from here, we can just carry on creating, which is really cool. All ready, so that introduces you to the overlay effect, it's really really cool and by duplicating your page, it makes it really easy to branch off from a base piece of work or make several versions and play and experiment without the fear of missing out something that you thought was amazing. So onto the next video.
6. Set Your Rules & Boundaries: The point is always to have fun with these exercises, but I also want you to try different things that you're not used to. I want you to stick with and work within the bounds in front of you and I want you to create some rules to experiment with. I find this really fun and I've suddenly become fond of some of the styles of doodling that have developed because of the rules and boundaries I've set. What exactly am I talking about? Let me give you some examples by working in the Paper app you're already working with a set of boundaries. You're using a limited set of tools. You've got a page that is the size of your iPad. Maybe you've got an iPad Mini, maybe it's really slow and messed up like my iPad Mini. Maybe you're using your finger. These are boundaries, you can change them but they're almost like the cards you've been dealt. Try to create within them. Stick with iPad Mini rather than selling your kidney to get an iPad Pro. Stick with a Paper app rather than going to something more comfortable or more configurable. You'll see your creativity start to explode when you create within the boundaries. Those are boundaries. The next things are rules. Rules are self-imposed structures and limits. Here are some examples. Not using the undo feature does makes it feel more like analog paper and it leads to genuine mistakes which leads to interesting results and workarounds. Not using the eraser tool. This also may lead to cool workarounds. Using one or two tools. We'll be doing this all the time in this class. Using a limited color palette, we'll be doing this a lot. This is a great way to get better at understanding color. Using your left hand or your right hand if you're left-handed. This may feel a bit weird first. Hey, you can even use your feet if you want. Drawing without lifting your hand, this is really fun. We'll be doing this later in the class too. Starting each doodle with a template that you've created. You can make a set of rules for 10 minutes a week a month whatever. See what works for you. When you limit your tools and create within boundaries, your brain will work harder to compensate, and when your brain's on fire, it feels awesome. Also remember that rules are fun to break especially if you've been following them for a little while.
7. Exercise: Two Colors: Okay. So, the next exercise, let's go to new page and go into it. Let's perhaps drag, maybe let's strike this yellow color onto the background. Fantastic. Now, the rules for this exercise. First rule, you should use two colors for your foreground colors and you can interchange between these two colors at anytime. The next rule is that you have to use your paint roller. Pretty cool, right? Now, the one thing that we have lapsed upon or relaxed. Is that you don't have to overlay your shapes. Pretty cool. It may feel like, "Ooh, this is bit easier." But now you got two colors to worry about, and you're still using your one roller. Okay. So, what color am I going to go for? It's a good question. Something else a bit daring maybe. What about this color? Almost like an olive gray green. Let's try it out. Yeah, looks pretty good. It's got a really nice like overlay effect there, fantastic. Now you see i do not have to overlay right now, but I can if I want. Now, let's go for a second color. How about, that color could work quite nicely. Let's be a bit more daring. Let's go for this pink. I don't know if it's going to work with this yellow, but hey, let's see. That was quite nice. Not quite so sure about this color as it overlays the darker color. A dark on a dark, blending together, not so sure. But on top of each other, they make a real potent red. I like it. Sometimes you find a bunch colors you absolutely love, like I think I could work with these. These are pretty cool. Other times I've found colors that absolutely sucked. They are terrible, they are not good together. But, that's okay you learn this way and you may even be able to use your awesome brain and your creativity to work with these terrible colors to create something amazing. To have fun and produce something cool. Already, I think I quite like the look of that. You can see with just three colors in this paper up with this paint roller to how many different colors there actually are. So, you can see how I bend the rules with a paint roller tool. Only one tool to make a bunch of different shapes, a bunch of different colors, as looking pretty sweet.
8. Know Your Tools: I'm not going to show you how all the tools in the paper app work. You can figure that out, they're pretty easy to learn. What I am going to show you though, is how the two tools I'll be using during this class work, and how they interact with each other. You can use more tools if you like, but remember what I said about rules and boundaries. The first tool is the roller. I wish there was something like this in real life. Imagine just drawing a shape on a piece of paper and having it magically fill-in the color of your choice. Each color that gets painted on, gets painted on with a slight transparency, much like a first coat of war paint. When you overlay two or more coats of roller paints, the lens will blend with each other. It's really nice and it's pretty lifelike. We don't typically think of painting large amounts of space when someone says doodling. But that's because it's not generally available in real life, but this is my favorite kind of doodling. One of my favorite things about the paper app, is that when you paint with the roller it has these little flecks and rough edges. With the roller, you can also create negative space which is impossible in real life especially with a paint roller. The next tool is the fountain pen. This one may seem a little bit boring, but the fountain pen is one of those tools that reacts to pressure, it's pretty cool. If all you've got is a finger, then work with that. The fountain pen is slightly transparent but it's nothing like the roller tool, and it will always appear on top of the roller shapes, even if you use the roller after you use the fountain pen. Don't get frustrated with this, work with it, work around it, be creative. The last thing is a quick note about layers. In paper, there are no official layers except for the fact that some layers always appear on the top of others, like the fountain pen always appearing on top of the paint roller. I enjoy this. It feels a lot more analog. So again, this might frustrate you but work with it, be creative, work within these boundaries that this app sets for you.
9. Exercise: Single Line Doodle: Welcome to the next exercise, the rules for this one are pretty straightforward and a little bit different, okay? You're only allowed to use one foreground color, you have to use a fountain pen tool, and you have to draw it without lifting your pencil or finger from the page, that means one single line. Friendly warning, don't rotate your iPad while you're doing it, you may lose all your progress, so don't just scribble when you're doing this, but make marks, make shapes, forms, characters, all things that you can think of. It can be organic and abstract but it can also be full of interesting things. I really like putting characters inside of my drawings like this. All right, so let's get started, let's go to a new page and let's go into it. Let's select the background color, so perhaps let's go for one of these pinks. Yeah, that looks pretty good and then something on top of this, could be a blue, it could be a black. Maybe, I'll go for something like this grey. Let's go for the fountain pen. All right, you'll see that this responds to pressure really nicely, and now you can just keep on doodling and make all shapes, so sometimes you can make clouds, sometimes you can make really funny characters with eyes, like that. Just do whatever you want, make your hand flow rarely freely. If you can even join up to the original line to make it seem like a continuous line from front to back. Then, at some point you may be like, "Okay, I think I'm ready to stop".
10. Selecting Your Colors: Let's chat about colors and paper now. If we go to a new page and go into it, you'll see that there's a bunch of colors that we have by default, fantastic. But now, how do we get more colors? One of the simplest ways to get a new colors, to tap on one of these colors, and then what you can do is just drag it into your color mixer over there. From here, what you can do is select another color, and then if you rotate this, it actually mixes it like in a painter's palette. You can also mix it back, back to the white color and forward all the way through to their red color. This is really cool. Once you found a color that you like you can simply drag and drop it onto a color holder. With paper pro you get even more color holders which is fantastic. Another way to change the color, is simply to tap that color in your color mixer and then you can adjust its values. Pretty easy right? Pretty cool. So from here, I will just drag and drop and then I've got a new color. The next way is to import a photo, a screenshot from your library. You can also take photos or choose from a template. I've got this great screenshot that I took awhile ago, Will say and I want to select some colors from here, so, I select my color mixer and I click on the eye dropper tool, and I can move this around fairly easily. So, if I wanted that color over there, tap that now is in my mixer over here. So, if want to drag that and save it for later we can do it just like that. So, that's how to work with color in the app. But now on two more important points, what colors are you going to use? Remember, we want to limit ourselves in work within self-determined boundaries. So, what I'd like to do is choose three to six colors to work with. I'll often start with just one color, and then choose an extra color or two per day until I think I've reached a good color palette. I'll tweak it over the course of a few days and then I'll stick to it for a couple of days or weeks, this way I really get to learn how these colors work together, and how to create focus or emphasis with color. Limited colors makes it super fun it removes the pressure to make things look realistic. You can also generate color palettes online from websites like coolors.co, color.adobe.com or colourlovers.com or you can grab some from a photo or piece of reference you like. Or you can just roll your own colors star with one and experiment with other colors to see what works. This is a great intuitive way of learning, what colors work well with each other, and you may even pick up a bit of color theory all by myself. My absolute favorite thing to look at and reference at the moment are sneakers. Colors on sneakers are super crazy. Have a look at the textures the patterns and the use of color. The next time you see an eye-popping pair of sneakers. I also keep a Pinterest board with images of colors alike. Colors in my opinion are quite important and I find that being intuitive about them and referencing colors to be really important.
11. Exercise: Go Wild: For this exercise, we're going to allow ourselves to go a little bit wild. The rules for this exercise are simple. You're allowed to use three foreground colors and you have to use the roller and fountain pen tools. Have fun, go wild, and do it quickly. Remember, you can create new pages and duplicate existing ones when you need to. Overlay shapes and colors, use a fountain pen on top and make use of the pressure sensitivity on your pencil, if you're using one. Having all these options to choose from now, maybe a bit overwhelming after being super boxed in by the rules we created earlier, or you may be like,''Whoooooo! Freedom.'' So let me choose my background color first here, I'm going to go for a dark blue, it's one of my favorite colors and then I want to go for pink color, this pink color. Let's start off with a paint roller, and we're going to use a white color, perhaps I can go for super pure white, and use a fountain pen now. This is really cool when you start mixing these tools together So now I'm going to go for a third color, let's go for a lighter pink here. We're ready, that's looking pretty good, I'm satisfied with that. I'll see in the next video.
12. What To Doodle?: You may be staring at a blank canvas and wondering what the heck should I be doing? Before you ask yourself where to start you've got to know why you're doodling in the first place. Is to loosen up? Is to practice using different colors? Is it to get the creative powers rumbling? Knowing why you're creating more change, how and what you're creating. For me I tend to want to loosen up and someday just explore and play around with shapes and colors, seeing what I like and what works. So with that in mind here are a few places to start. I often just create one shape really quickly and let my brain try and work out what this thing could be. Sometimes I start creating random shapes without knowing where they will lead to. After a while my shape adding becomes more deliberate. I try adding something that will make the composition interesting. But I also add things that may not work. I like to see what works and what doesn't and then try to figure out why it does or doesn't work. Another thing I love doing is using a process I created called the Random Word Doodle. I get a bunch of words and choose one to doodle except I don't doodle them in a traditional way. I use the roller and the fountain pen along with weird colors to create my doodles. Checkout taptapkaboom.com to download the random word doodle app, it's free. Other times I've started with the templates I've created and either created characters based on the templates or created something totally different each time. This is really fun because you get to see how diverse your imagination and creativity can be, and it's even fun to do with other people. Another thing I do is doodle a bunch of lines and scribbles really quickly then I have a good look at it and imagine what it could be. My imagination starts to think of all kinds of things, then I start filling in the gaps and make it into something I imagined. Also, because I'm fond of organic and abstract content, I usually have a few shapes that I go to when I'm stuck. We had circles, leave, squiggles, triangles, flowy hair, these droplets type things. So maybe you have some of these shapes or some piece of content that you just find rarely easy to draw or you really like drawing. Go to these when you feel stuck. So see what works for you but don't get too comfortable on any particular method.
13. Exercise: Blobby Text: In this exercise, what I wanted to do is choose a word or phrase and paint it with the roller to be expressive or try to be neat, embellish it if you like, add more colors and random elements around it if you like to. So, I'm going to start by just changing my background color to a stalk whites and I really liked this paint that we were working with earlier. There we go and I've got my ruler tool selected. I'm going for go for the word awesome. Maybe you're like, "What the heck is going on here?" Check this out. It's an A. Yeah. Awesome. It's kind of a weird E, right? So, what I can do now is just start embellishing it a little bit, you can zoom in to each letter. This is a nice little tip or trick that picked up to make whole letters without doing any overlaying. Already. Yeah, that looks pretty awesome. Boom, see you in the next video.
14. Exercise: Random Background & Foreground: What I wanted to do for this exercise is, choose a background color, and then use the roller to to make a bunch of random shapes with same color as the background color. You won't be able to see what you're doing, but this is precisely the points. Then use the fountain pen to do the same thing. You also won't to be able to see what you're doing. After that, start using different colors with the roller tool on top. You'll come up with some really interesting, random and surprising results. Okay, so you can see that the results is really interesting. The color probably, aren't the best, and if you get yourself in this situation, that's also okay. Ask yourself, why are these scholars not working? Try figure it out. So, have fun with this technique, it's like shooting in the dark, it's pretty fun.
15. Exercise: Abstract & Content Layers: The rules for the next exercise are to use the roller for an organic and abstract background, and then to use the fountain pen for a top layer but make that top layer full with content like trees, lines, hippos, words, planets, rivers, houses, whatever else you'd like to add. Try create quickly and intuitively. Don't worry about how it looks. Or if you want to create a version where you use the reality pane content and the fountain pen to create organic and abstract shapes, you could do that too. Okay. Let's get going here. So, I'm going to use this green color as my roller shape maker, and I can actually use another color if I wanted to, so let's go for a pink. All ready. I'll now use a different color or maybe in the same color but use a fountain pen for your content. This is what we call a shongololo in South Africa, it's like a pill millipede. So, this is something that I haven't shown you guys. You can actually rub out a few of the tools, the pen tool is one of them, or maybe not rub out, more like smudge. It works really nicely, you don't have to use an eraser and you don't have to use the undo tool, you just smudge it. That's all with one color, so maybe let's use, let's come here, just to add a little bit of random elements. All righty. So, what we've really done here is we've combined two different types of methods of doodling. One is very organic and abstract and the other is really like content heavy, we're actually drawing creatures, shapes and real kind of things. But what's really important is that we do it fast, we do it from our heart, almost like intuitively. So, you may really enjoy this, you may not. Cool, see you in the next video.
16. When To Doodle?: When is the best time to Doodle and play around for you? I like doing it before I start working in the morning. Doing it daily is important to me, almost as important as eating healthy, or staying active. Other super great times for doodling, and playing, and creating is while you're listening to music, or listening to a podcast, or perhaps while you're watching TV, or commuting. Also, if you're taking notes in a conference or in a meeting, being able to create at this level while you're taking notes on the same page can be incredibly fun and powerful. Some people find that it helps them listen, but you'll have to try this for yourself. You can also do it when you're not feeling super creative. So, if you're stuck or you've got a problem that you're facing or you could try for 100 day project, or do a daily as part of your creative practice.
17. Exercise: The Other Hand: Okay. For this exercise, I want you to use your other hand to draw with. Or you could use your toes, or perhaps you want to even try draw with your eyes shut. So, carry on making use of only the roller and only the fountain pen. Just try something else besides your normal drawing hand. I'm going to create a new page, let's go in here, perhaps, we can go for, I don't know, really dark kind of a background, and left hand now. This is going to be weird. Okay. So, this is my color, let's go for the paint roller. Definitely doesn't feel as natural, I can tell you that. Now, you can see I'm just trying to repeat some basic shapes on marks that I've made with my left hand. Resist the urge to go back to your normal hand. Okay. So, even if you're feeling super uncomfortable, just try and make it through like two minutes or something like that. It's really good for your creativity, so persevere, and my result wasn't too bad.
18. Play First Perfect Later: Paper is fantastic for quick creation, and iteration. If you find yourself diving into final, and polished versions of illustrations right away, then take a step back and do some playing first. Use real paper, or this Paper App to play, and create some prototypes. Then polish and perfect using Procreate, or Photoshop, or Illustrator. One of the best things you can do if you find yourself trying to jump into final versions, is to get out of that perfection-inducing environment by using a different app with a limited set of tools.
19. Your Project: Okay. So now it's project time. We've actually been working on your project throughout the class so far. So what I want you to do now is to share some pieces you've made, share them and your project gallery, and tell us what your boundaries were and what rules you put in place. Let us know what you use, what tools you try it out, let us know what was difficult, and what was easy and tell us what you plane and experimented with. Now, I'm looking forward to seeing what you share with us.
20. Sharing With Others: So what we've been doing, doodles, pieces of play, fun makings, experiments call them what you want. But they can also be seen as final pieces of arts rough, playful and organic. You may want to share them with others. You can share them on social media or by printing them and giving them away or you could even sell your pieces. There are two things to consider when it comes to sharing your work with others that I think are really important. The first is that sharing your play work and experiments is often awesome especially if they aren't perfect. It can break the pressure we feel to always produce and share perfect stuff. Sometimes imperfect stuff is exactly what we wanted in the first place. The second thing is that if you find yourself creating content for the purpose of likes, shares, popularity and you feel pressured to carry on, perhaps take some time off of social media, or simply make time to make stuff that cannot be judged. Make it for your non-judgmental eyes only and don't share it. Play and experimentation on too important to sacrifice for likes and followers. So, if you do want to share your work on social media and you want my attention, you can mention me, I'm @taptapkaboom, or you can hashtag your work with #taptapkaboomstudents.
21. The End: So, that's it for this class. I hope you had fun. I'm looking forward to seeing what you make. Keep on playing keep on experimenting and try these principles in other apps and creative processes. To keep in touch with me, there's a taptapkaboom.com. Remember you can ask questions and show your work in the community area of this class at any time. Then as a bonus I've included a bunch of sped-up timelapse videos after this final video for you to enjoy. Okay, bye for now.
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Rich From TapTapKaboom, Multi-hyphenate Artist
