Artful Inspiration: Easy Painting Prompts to Overcome Creative Block

1. Introduction: If you are out of ideas, feeling overwhelmed or stuck in a creative rat, waiting for inspiration won't help. But taking 10 minutes every day to do a small exercise will. Hi, I'm Celia, a mixed media artist with a background in advertising. I know the pressure of having to be creative on demand. And for me, pressure and creativity don't go together and often result in creative blocks. In this course, I'll help you release these blocks through clearly defined painting prongs that help you to just focus on the process. And it really doesn't take a lot of time. I've also created printable prompt cards to have on hand whenever you need a little inspiration. This class isn't just for painters, but for anyone who needs a jump start to get their creativity flow again, and you will walk away with a wealth of exercises that will not only help to get you out of the creative wrap, but also expand your skills with a range of painting techniques. So let's get you painting one prompt at a time. See you in class. 2. Class Project: The painting prompts in this class are designed to be entry points into the creative process, and they are divided in five categories. Let's play easy techniques, line in shape, color and texture, and mini projects. Each prompt should not take longer than 10 minutes, but once you got started, you might want to keep going longer. For the class project, I would like for you to pick five exercises five prompts, and upload pictures to the student gallery. You can choose one prompt from each category or you can combine them in any way you want. Of course, you can do all the prompts as well. I always love to see your work, and I'd love to be your accountability partner. Speaking of accountability, We want to practice that getting started again and again and really getting into that creative flow very easily, and that comes with practice. Don't wait until you have done all the pronts to start a class project, give yourself some accountability by starting a class project right after you have done the first pront and setting an intention of what you want to achieve. This can be anything from I want to do these five prompts over the next five days, or I want to create prompt ABCD EP, whatever, over the next ten days, or I want to do all the prompts over the next month. The more specific you are, the more likely you are going to achieve it, and the more likely you're going to come back and actually do the work, which will give you the results, the progress, over time, starting and getting into that creative flow will get easier and easier. To make this a little bit more fun. I have created a set of cards to print out and you can then pick and choose even with closed eyes and do whatever the card says. Now, let's take a look at the materials you need. 3. Overcoming Creative Block: When it comes to overcoming creative blocks, it usually boils down to moving past that inner resistance to getting started. That initial resistance is often caused by either lack of time, overwhelm or perfectionism. Let's tackle these from the start. Let's be honest. Here sometimes once you create something and you are just too busy and keep postponing it. This often has to do with a real lack of time. I get it. But sometimes it's also a perceived lack of time, and you will probably have heard it 100 times before. You just have to make time for it, right? Yeah, easier said than that. But when it comes to making time, it helps to reconsider what is a successful painting session for you, a successful creative session. Because a couple of years ago, I still had the misconception that I needed an uninterrupted chunk of two to 3 hours so that it's worth get all my add materials out and get started. Honestly, now that I'm a professional artist, I still am a mom of two and I have other responsibilities, and these extended sessions don't happen on a daily basis. They are sometimes quite unrealistic. While I still value having such large chunks of time to really dive into the process and make a mass in my studio. I have also come to value small exercises that I can do from the dinner table, from my laundry room, wherever I have a little space to create, and they keep me in the creative process, even if I just have a couple of minutes. This is why I've created the painting proms, which are designed to be completed in under 10 minutes. And doing this gives you the opportunity to exercise your creativity to grow your creativity just like a muscle, and it will, and you will make progress if you keep taking those little steps, and not only that, taking the time to sit down for just a few minutes to just do something with your hands. We'll leave you with such an amazing sense of accomplishment and calm and happiness. And new inspiration with every session. Let's look at the second thing that sometimes happens. You have taken the time, you're sitting in front of your computer, your canvas, your piece of paper, whatever your medium, and your mind goes blank. You have all the possibilities of the world, but you just can't think of anything in particular that you want to do and create right now. I know that from my times in advertising, I need a good brief. I hated these moments when we had some spare time, and I was told to think of an award winning idea in any medium like TV or ads or whatever. For any of the clients that we have and I'm like, D, that's too broad. I mean, Oh my gosh, I can't think of anything. Where should I even start? You go and you make yourself your own boundary. In a broader sense, Creativity is not about creating something beautiful, like a beautiful painting, but it's about problem solving. Without a problem and a clear problem definition, there's nothing to solve. This is why the painting puns are helpful. They give you a framework within which you can be creative. It's not so restricted, but it narrows it down and that really helps you to get started and to be more creative. The last thing that shows up is, I want this to be amazing. I want to create this beautiful painting, this thoughtful illustration, this award winning design. And that can really block you. It's a very goal oriented outcome, focused mindset. That is not helpful to get your creativity flowing. It puts so much pressure on you that you shut down. In the beginning, it's all about being playful, about allowing everything and only later you can bring this to a focus again. That is why the painting prompts are these quick, simple exercises designed to stimulate your creativity without focusing on the end result. So let's sum this up shortly. The main hurdles to getting started are time overwhelm and perfectionism. If you struggle with time issues, it helps to break things down into small easy steps. Give yourself a clear, achievable time frame. Let's say, I will make something for 10 minutes and to create some kind of accountability like Sherry class project and posting images of your exercises. If you struggle with overwhelm, it helps to do easy exercises. Tackle things step by step and set restrictions and boundaries, such as materials, subject matter, or time. If you struggle with actionism, concentrate on simply getting started and focus on the process, not the result. 4. The Materials You'll Need: For this class, you don't need any specialized art materials. But just some basic things that you very likely have at home already, paper, paints, drawing tools, and some everyday objects. While many proms can also be done digitally in tools such as procreate, using actual materials and having the tactile experience with real materials will stimulate your brain and your creativity in a multi sensory way. If you can give it a try. Now let's take a look at what you will need. When it comes to paper, really don't overthink it. We're not going to create final artworks, so you can try with whatever you have in hand. I primarily work on white paper in this case, but you can also work on colored paper. You can use printed paper, you can use mixed media paper, you can use affordable color paper, packaging papers, magazine pages, whatever you can find, envelopes, anything goes. As for paints, you can use acrylic, gas, inks or watercolor. I just wouldn't use oil paints because they take longer to dry and we're focusing on quick drying techniques. When it comes to drawing materials, you can use anything that you have on hand. We'll be using markers, we'll be using pens, fine liners. You can use colored pencils or regular pencils. You can use crayons, either water soluble or non water soluble. You can use charcoal or pigment. This's not a pigment stick border like a pigment block. Whatever you have on hand, just just use it. Also gather some basic items such as scissors, acoustic, a ruler, a container for water, and a few sheets of kitchen paper to wipe the brushes. We will also clot different brush techniques. Together a couple of brushes that you can find in your home. They don't have to be specialized art brushes, but can be just regular paint brushes from the hardware store, calligraphy brushes, whatever you have, it can be synthetic hair or bristol brushes, sponge brushes. It's just about having a variety. We'll also use a palette knife or a painting knife. If you don't have that find an credit card, old plastic card that will work as well. We will also incorporate various household objects and packaging materials. Having things like cotton swaps, cling wrap or a thin plastic bags, fruit nets, bubble wrap or some packaging materials, kitchen sponges, or old toothbrushes and old comps will actually come in useful. For one prompt, we'll also use a white candle, but you could also use a white crayon. But make sure that it's non water soluble because that is important for the technique and for the last, we'll need a needle and thread and a paper clamp. But the best thing is actually to take a look at the materials list and download it because probably I've forgotten something and I will make sure that you find all the materials for each prompt in the materials list so that you have the possibility to get everything ready in advance. The goal is to make the creative process as easily accessible as possible. You just have to do whatever works best for you. There are a couple of options. You can watch all the videos, go through the materials list, gather everything, put it on a table or in a box so that it's very easily accessible, and you don't have to go into the trouble of putting it away and getting it out again. But you could also just like, take one prompt, gather the things you need from this one prompt and do that. It really is about making this as easy for you as possible so that it's just about sitting down and doing the work. And you don't have to think about anything else. So let's get started on this creative journey together, one painting prompt at a time. 5. Turn the Music On: This prompt is called turn the music on. We're going to explore how music can influence your mark making and what you create. All you need is a couple of papers, like a marker or a pen, and some music. Pick two to three pieces that are quite different different music styles. And then start mark making, and you can observe how the music will influence that if it influences it and you can do a continuous line or you can make pick up the pen and go down again. It's really up to you. It's a really interesting thing to explore, and it's not about creating something finished. It's just about letting loose and getting into motion. So now it's your turn. Pick some music and just start creating. It really doesn't matter what it looks like. It's just pro fan, and I've also used different papers. This is like a more smooth paper. This is not that smooth. This is transparent paper. So I was just trying how that would influence how the pen would glide over the paper. 6. Go Back to Kindergarten: This prompt is called go back to kindergarten. And it's all about using your hands, letting out your inner child, letting it play and feeling really loose. I have already put out some acrylic paints, and I've prepared some gloves because like I want to get really tile and sensory with the paints. So it's not the ideal situation to have them all over your fingers. And I have a roll of kitchen paper in case I need to clean up some mes, and I have also collected some papers, like normal printer paper. This is a piece of inexpensive watercolor paper that I've already used for exercise, and this is a sketch book. I have something to choose from. These are the paints that I've used. They are cadmium orange hue, cadmium yellow light hue, and fluorescent pink. But it really doesn't matter which paints you choose. These are just like some colors that speak to me at the moment. I feel they energize me, so I want to paint with them. Without further ado, let's get started. First, I want to explore, like, different marks I can make. I mean, this would be much more fun to do with your actual hands, but I don't have any finger paints on hand, and I really I really don't want to get my hands full of acrylic paints. So what I've done now, basically is just making prints with my fingers. And it's actually funny with these gloves, you get kind of like greased prints from all these folds. And now I can take a second piece of paper. And I can introduce movement. So now I will go in and I will not only make a pri but I will also move So this gives me a different feel and a different mark. So I can really now start to blend the colors, and this is really fun. I really enjoy that circular movement right now, so I'm just leaning into it. Of course, you could make this more dynamic. I'm just putting a piece of paper below so that I can go over the edge. You can already see how these different techniques get a different feeling. Here it's like a swirly thing, and here's a more expressive of explosion. I feel that you get And as long as the pains are not dry, you can kind of blend them together. But with acrylic pains, it usually doesn't take long for them to dry, so you have to work kind of fast. If you really want to blend. But in this case, we're just exploring, just just exploring, making soft blends, making more expressive strokes. These are the two pages that I've created. On by just making prints without moving my hands, just putting them down. The other one by moving in different motions, and you can create a lot of different effects with just your hands as you can see in these examples. Yours can look completely different. You can also if you feel like, you can do a pattern, you can do this more orderly. This is really personal to you. It's your expression. Whatever comes out of your hands flows out of you is okay. So it's all about having fun, and now it's your turn. 7. Create Blob Monsters: The next pmt is called blob monsters. This can be super fun, but it can also be super overwhelming when when your perfectionist kicks in and you want to create some three dimensional fancy monsters. I will just use black paint. I've used pages from magazine, when I put this on top, make the blobs. Larger and see what I get. Okay. Now I will have to leave this try, and then we can add a couple of features. My blob monsters have tried overnight and are ready to turn into little creatures. This can be quite a challenge. Now you have this blob, what to do. I struggled myself on the first page and I didn't have that many ideas, and I was a little bit hesitant when it came to putting in the features. This really shows that it takes a while to get into a process. At the beginning, you don't really know what to do, but then when you get more used to it, you can become more playful. On the second page, it went a lot better. I mainly focused on bringing in differences. Differences in number, in size, in shape, like in the length of the arms and all the different features. So I found the more you do this exercise, the more you get into it and the more ideas you will generate because creativity is really a muscle that you can and have to train. So if you're doing this for the first time, please take it easy. There's no shame in having to look up features, like some facial features, just google it or take inspiration from what I've done to get your side into this process. And now it's your turn. 8. Write Secret Messages: A. This prompt is called write secret messages. If you've ever done that as a child, this will remind you. What you need is a candle, ideally a white one because we're using a white page. But if you don't have a white one, you can use any color. It's just that we are creating areas that resist the paint where the paper doesn't take the paint. I will use watercolors, as you know, when you have used watercolors before, if you have pants, you need to drop a little bit of water in them or spray them so that the color activates. But you can also use thinned out acrylic paints. They have to be really fluid just like as if they were watercolor, or you could also use gage paints. But again, it has to be really fluid the moment it's not fluid enough, the resist technique will not work. What we are now doing is we are just making marks. You can write something, of course, like a real message to you. I could try to write something. And also make some marks. You have to press fairly hard so that paper is really like the pores of the paper really closed. Again, this is not about creating a super sophisticated design. It's just about having fun and experimenting with this because again, you cannot really control it. Who can draw really perfectly with a candle. Also you can hardly see what you do. You can look from side and it has a little bit of a scene, but you cannot really see it very exactly. So let's just see what I have written. I will take a brush and pick up some paint. You can mix them or you can use them right out of pen. Now we'll just go over this. I think now this brush is okay for picking up the paint out of the pens. It's a little bit too small for spreading it. We'll use this one. And and reveal my *** to. That's it. If you want to, you can leave this to dry and then when it's dry, you can repeat the process actually again and again. You can take the candle again, cover some of the errors that are now a blue or blue green, and then add another layer of paint in a different color on top. And that way, you create different colors because you preserve all the colors that are below the wax that are protected from the paint. And this technique is called a resist technique and is also very useful in painting or in illustration. And now I would see your turn, have fun. 9. Connect Your Brain Sides: This prompt is called connect your brain sides. And what we're doing is we are painting bilaterally that is worth both hands, and not only that, but we're doing that simultaneously. So at the same time, and theses version that I like that I find eases and more relaxing is to mirror your making with your hands. So you can fold the piece of paper in half and imagine that in the middle is like the line where it's mirrored. But you don't have to hold it. You can just do it without. I'm using regular printed paper, but this would also be a good idea if you use watercolor, that you use watercolor paper, but I will just use the regular paper. And It feels the best if you have two brushes that are exactly the same because then you have the same feeling on both hands. If you have different brushes that react differently, it feels a little bit more I feels a little bit weird, but it's also fun to experiment. If you don't have the same brush twice, just use two different ones and just cry. I want to wet my brushes. Of course, you can use different colors for each brush. I will start with using the same color on each brush, and I will start with Watercolor. I'm not trying to create anything realistic here. I'm just like concentrating on making my strokes and letting loose. Okay. And also what I want to do now, I almost forgot. I will take my paper to the table because since I use both hands, I don't have a hand to hold it down. And you can do this with music or without, you can do like one continuous line, at least as long as you have paint in your brush, and then you start a new or you can do a lot of lines. It's really up to you. It always tends to look like after a while, like an animal face, and you can go with that or not. I feel a lot more awkward at sing my left hand. And it feels more natural to get from the inside out and go from the outside in. But I will challenge myself to do this a bit. We'll also try to hold the brushes in a different way. See how that fs. And I think I will use up some of that glass pink that I still have here. All right, so I really was getting into flow state with this. It's so calming and relaxing if you don't put yourself under pressure of creating something. Like just go with the flow. It feels a little bit weird if you're doing this for the first time, but it's a really cool challenge for your brain coordination, and also the results are really fun to look at. So now it's your turn. Ohh 10. Draw With Closed Eyes: Oh. This prompt is called draw with closed eyes. It's really a good practice. If you have a hard time letting lose and you really want to be in control of what you make. You can do this different ways. You can just doodle something abstract, just make movements, or you can try to draw something from your memory, but also with closed eyes, not looking at what do you draw. I will try to do both on this page. I have taken a piece of great tissue paper. That I had lying around, so I don't feel precious about it. But I also feel maybe I can use this later on as a collage piece or for another project. You can do this on regular copy paper, on packaging paper, like I have on my table, like the brand one, anything that comes into your hands, it can be used papers, it can be new paper, whatever you want to do. You can use any drying tool. I will use a pencil and I also have a a new color oil pastel here. So I might switch my tools for some additional interests, but you can use whatever you have. If you have colored pencils, you can use that, you can use pens, you can use markers, whatever feels good to you. You can also do a couple of pages because it will really not take that long so that you can compare different results. One more thing that I will do before I start is I will use a little bit of washi tape and just like tape it down to my table so that it doesn't slide around. So I don't have to worry about it moving around and I can really concentrate on the marks on it. Okay, let's get started. I'll close my eyes, grab my pencil, first, I will try to draw a paint tube like the one that I saw standing in front of maybe before. And this is really hard. It's a really easy object. You shouldn't if you want to try that, you shouldn't pick anything that's very u That's very complicated. So, I don't know what I've done. You can already see I can. So I will just go on and now will just make marks. That's really strange. I feels a little bit strange. L if I will get dizzy. Now I will experiment with holding my pencil in a different way. I can hold it from above. I can hold it more to the end. This is a rather short one. I don't have that much control over what I do, and I can make all kind of movement with my hands. It's really about leaning in on a feeling. Of the material, listening to the paper and the scratch on the paper. This can be really meditative. And you can do this as slow as you want. You could also do this as fast as you. It's really about, you can go through some emotions and try to let them out. Well now try to get my other pet tool and see what I can do there. I feel like I want to do a few circles, and maybe do something more dese here. Maybe I'll switch my hands, and go with my non dominant hand, which is also fun. You can do this as long as feels good to you, but it can also be just like you can do it just for one or 2 minutes and put yourself a time and then stop. I think I will stop now. It does feel different depending on which hand I take. Here, I will it doesn't feel so natural to make circles. It feels more tentative. Okay. So I'll just open my eyes and see what I've done. Oh, f. I thought I would have been all over the place. This is really fun. If you feel that this is not like enough, you can close your hands again and continue working on it, or you'll just leave it the way it is, pick a new page, do this magazines or wherever you want to. Now, it's your turn, have fun. 11. Explore Blot Art: This prompt is called Explore Blot art. This technique is fun for all ages, and it's so easy. Maybe you've done it before. All you need is paint, and this is a great way to use up leftover paint, but it's also really fun to explore test on its own. You can use test regular paper, or in this case, I've got packaging paper, some colored packaging paper that I thought would look nice. The first thing you want to do is you want to fold the paper in half. Now you need to apply the paint either on one side on both sides or just in the fold. This is really up to you, and I need to put something down here so that it doesn't roll up. I will use up my paint and I will just put it down here. You want to make sure that there is really a blob of paint on the page so that you can spread it by squeezing or pressing on your paper. So let's see how this turns are. Now you want to fold this together. You can just fold it like that and open it up again. But it's a lot of fun. If you just do a little bit of pressing down and moving around so that the paint is allowed to spread. If you've ever heard about the Rosack test, that's the same. This is an psychological test where you are supposed like to see different things. One thing you want to make sure and I've almost taken too long is that when you use acrylic paints, especially, but I think this is true for all paints. When they are very thin, they very fast, so the paper tends to stick together. So you don't want to leave it closed for too long. So this is sticking a little bit, so I'm really opening it very slowly. Doesn't this look cool? Looks like a big, colorful moth or a butterfly. So I didn't expect that, and this can give you so many cool ideas and make such cool patterns like shapes, and it's really fun to explore. So now is your turn. Oh. 12. Brush Exploration: This prompt is called brush exploration. It's all about finding out what unique marks you can make with different brushes. It doesn't have to be the art supply fancy art making brush that you use sometimes like those two brushes from the hardware store are also great and you don't need to feel precious about them. I've just picked a couple of my brushes. These are two synthetic brushes, around one and flat one. I have one. It's some kind of a painter brush from the hardware store. It's a foam brush, and this again is something from the hardware store, not super expensive, but interesting in terms of ma making. I'm also using black acrylic paint. This is soft body acrylic from liquid tax. It's a professional grade paint, so it has really good um pigmentation, which is really important for black because there's nothing more frustrating than having a black that doesn't cover up. Usually, I don't have super expensive paints that for some colors like for white and for black, it's really valuable if you have the really good stuff. Because it's just more fun. Here, I also have a little bit more gah pain from the previous prompt, but I just don't care, it doesn't matter if it's still there. What we now want to experiment with is using the brush and making marks. You can use a brush like this and you can lift it up, make thinner marks. You can press it down harder and make. Again, a lot of different marks. Can be very careful with it. Can make straight lines, can use the small side and make thin lines with a flat brush, can press it down hard, and use it to make marks like that. Again, now we can see when we dilute the paint. We'll make different marks again. Well this one. Just turning it around, letting it swivele With acrylics, you always want to wash out your brushes immediately, and keep them wet until you want to clean them properly. Let's try the foam brush. The foam brush makes a little bit different marks. More rough marks depending on how much pain I have on it. Of course, I can go back and forth. And I can also do this in a liquid way. I think I will leave it in the water. Then with a round brush like this, you can use it to step down. Could be really bad to your brush because it's just like cheap one. I wouldn't do that with a expensive watercolor brush, but with a cheap one, you can make really expressive strokes. Really put some pressure in it and express yourself. The same with this, well, obviously, if you have a large pressure. It's pretty cool. You can make very cool rough marks. Again, you can stamp on down, see what kind of marks you can make running out of space already. When you have more space, you need to have a new page. So just see because there's very little paint on it. I can make some really cool marks with it. As you can see, I really hold them in a lot of different ways, just as I want to express, but usually when you have a very small and fresh brush, you hold it more like a pen or a pencil, and then you get more deliberate marks, but when you have something larger, I, I couldn't even hold it like that. It's just so heavy. Alone through the act of holding it differently, you will get different results. Just play around with it, hold it differently, hold it really close to the front, hold it very far to the back, move it fast, move it slow. Like put it down with a lot of pressure with a lot of pain, with a little pain, with a thick pain, with bin pain. There is a lot of combinations to try, and it's really fun. It's an ICO turn. 13. Palette Knife Adventures: This prompt is called palette knife adventures. Palette knifes are also called painting knifes. They are not only for mixing paint on your palette, but also for painting. They come in various shapes and sizes. I think the most common is this diamond shaped form. I actually like them the. Normally, they should be clean, so you should write them off with a piece of paper like every time you use them because it's not super cool if there's a thick layer of paint on it that has dried. But honestly, I often forget to do that. I've tried this one. This is a very cheap one, and it's very, very stiff. I I don't yet know if I enjoy that. Actually, I enjoy the more flexible ones more. You just have to experiment a little bit and you can use them in different ways. I've put out two acrylic colors, and this one is called turquoise green, and this one is called cadmium red deep ue. Just in case you're interested. Now let's just strike what marks we can make with a pet knife. So I will just pick up the paint as it is right out of the tube. Now when you apply it, you want to hold the knife from above. And you want to have it in about 45 degree angle, and you can just slide it across the surface. You can do this slowly and you can do it fast. When you do it fast, you might come to the point where it doesn't take the paint or it makes a more loose edge faster. If you move it slowly, you might have more control, but it also depends on how much paint you have. Here I was slowly tilting my pelt knife towards the paper because the pain was already almost gone. You can also make circles. When the pressure is a little bit differently, you have different amounts of paint depending on where it is on the knife. Here I have more pressure. There's a thinner layer and it creates a ridge at the edge. You can also just stab it down. There's a little bit paint, but depending on how much paint you have, you can use it for mark making. Use the edge. It also depends like how thick the paint is, if if you have thinner paint, it will obviously be hard to have it on your knife. But you could like experiment with that as well, O. You can use it to blend colors into each other. Yeah, you might want to wipe it off in between. Okay. So you get kind of a transition, but a very wild look or not a very smooth transition. But something that's very typical for a painting knife, and you can do a whole painting with just a painting knife, even like the way you put it down and lift it up, so I lift it up like that, I will create a ridge. I want to if I lift it up like an aeroplane, it ends like this. As you can see, there are different ways to use a pellet knife. You can explore the amount of paint that you put on top, the viscosity, the speed with which you apply it, the pressure with which you apply it. You can make some plans, you can make some kind of stamping marks. You can experiment with how you lift it up. If you lift it up like that, or if you lift it up in a, like, curvy motion. So it's really fun doing that with a palette knife and now it's your turn. 14. Splattering Fun: This prompt is called splattering fun. This can be really a lot of fun, but please take care to protect your surface and your surroundings because splatters can get everywhere. What you need is like brushes, a bristle brush, a tooth brush, or an old com. I will use gush paints for this purpose because I will use my fingers to tech paint and why I also do that with acrylic paints and inks. I don't want to get too dirty on my fingers today, so I will use glosh, which is not waterproof went dry. I also need a little bit of water because splashes are really depending on the pain consistency. This is a really high quality gh and it's highly pigmented, so gives a really strong color even when I diluted. Now, I have the paint pre fluid on my brush. Now one technique that I can do to create splashes is to just tap the brush on my finger. I start very lightly and then when it doesn't work, I do it a little bit harder. But you want to build up the intensity because if you go like that for the first time, your slides might like appear in places where they are not. Not intended to be. So just go like this. You can see, but they also go upwards and then downwards, sometimes they just go where they want. Depending on how much pain you have in your brush and how fluid the pain is, the drops are smaller or bigger. Here the pain was a little bit more fluid. The drops were a little bit larger. So now I will try to dry off the brush and find a consistency. That's a little bit thicker. See if I can get even smaller ones. Those are even smaller ones. The size depends a little bit on the paint consistency. Now you can also experiment with other ways to do this. You can also run your finger across the bristles. In this case, I get a very fine mist. When I have more paint in the brush, probably will also be a little bit larger. This is a little bit easier to control. Because all the paint only goes downwards, while with tapping it may also go upwards. You can do the same thing with a tooth brush. You also want to run your finger across it and just straight down and the same with a comm. You want to use brush to fill up the spaces in between with liquid. Then when there's enough, it should come out when you run your fingers across. This makes a little bit wilder slashes goes in all directions. You can of course also use a bristle brush which has stiffer bristles than these synthetic brushes. This is also a great way to do it. L et's try this one with the tapping. See how it does. Not so well because bristles don't move. So see out to tap really hard on my finger, get out some splashes. So this really is a very very cool way to bring some additional interest in your paintings. Of course, you usually wouldn't make a whole painting just out of splashes. But add them as some points of interest, you can also cover up areas so that they don't get everywhere, but just in places that you want them to do. Just have fun and explore this, and now it's your turn. 15. Go with the Flow: This prompt is called go with flow, we're exploring fluid paints. You can do this with acrylic paints, like diluted acrylic paints, or you can take acrylic inks, which are more liquid acrylics. You can use watercolor, you can use squash, but also highly diluted. It has to be when you use anything but inks or watercolor. You have to use paints that have a certain quality. You need some pigment load in the paints. If there is not enough pigment, this will not work as beautifully. We'll first start by painting some water circles like just any shape, it could be any shape. You want to experiment with how much water you put on the page. This here, you can see because my water is not super clean anymore. Here, I have a whole pool of water and it's really shiny. This might be a little bit too much water already. Let's not wet it again, just use the remaining water in the sprash and make a drier circle and make a third one. That is even with less water. When you drop in your paints, it will depend on the water level, like how well it can spread. And not only on the water level, but also, like if you add more water, this will need to spread more. I'll add a little bit of ink. Usually ink spreads really well. So I'll add a little bit of white ink. Now we can just leave this to do its thing and we can move on to circle touch, which is also a really fun thing to do. Create a circle. I have too much water in here, so I wipe up my brush and now I have a thirsty brush and it really picks up the water and we'll just make it touch very lightly. S. And now I will put in the ink on this side, and let's see what they do. Look at that. The ink is a stronger one. I goes upwards. Now, when you're in a stage that it's almost dry, what you can try to do is drop a little bit of water in and see it's too dry, nothing will happen. But if it's not yet completely dry, it might push the pigments a bit the way. You can of course go in and make it wet again, see what happens if you don't like the result. But of course, the acrylic ink when it has dried, it is waterproof. It will not activate in all areas. Let's try to drop in a little bit of the white here. I think I will make it wet again here so that the water color has a chance to at least layer over this. You can just play around with this forever or until it dries. If you have areas like this where you have pulled paint, can make bridges and connect those together. So this has already dried. But I will just go over it again. As I said, the ink will not reactivate so much like here it's not dry, but here there, the white one is a little bit thick. So it's not spreading just pulling this ad. And now I can pull it over here. As you can see, you can get really lost in this process and as we are not aiming for something specific, we're just observing how the paints react with each other and this can be different from pigment to pigment. Also this is already mixed media because I've used acrylic ink with watercolor, but you can use just one medium or you can use three different ones. You can use drawing ins, liquid watercolors, anything that you come up with. I just wanted to show you the dr version of this piece because here a lot of things happen in the drying process and it's fan to see the final products. When you have a lot of polling border, it will create these blooms that where the pigments get to the sides, and you get some really interesting effects, and you actually only see the final result when it's completely dry. So as long as it's not completely dry, things might move around and change. A nice turn. 16. Mixed Media Magic: This prompt is called mixed media magic, and I really love mixed media, it basically means that you mix all kind of things together. You're not sticking to conventions. You're not doing watercolor where it's not like you're not supposed to use like gas or white. You're just supposed to use the paper white. With mixed media, it's fun. You're just experimenting. I mean, if you get a combination that doesn't work. For example, if you use oil pastels and you use them very thick and then you paint acrylics on top, it can peel. Acrylics don't stick to ly stuff. There are some things to keep in mind, but apart from that, you could just try it. And as you can see, it doesn't stick. Now, what happens if I add a little bit of the gold watercolor into this mix? Add in a little bit like that. Let's see what the ink it does. This is pressed pigment, it's water soluble. We can just draw with it. Then when you make it wet, it will start to dissolve. Also the watercolor reacts to the spray obviously. Let's put in a bit more of the ink. Adding a bit of acrylic paint. How does it react when it comes into wet? Paint. See I can go over the oil sells, but when it's not too thick, it will stay, but I can scrape it off again. I can show you later. I do have the tumbo brush markers. I don't want to go into the acrylic because that would ruin the marker. But I think I'm just going to add some lines here maybe. Go into the water color. And then when I add water, let's see. I don't think it's waterproof, yet. It's not. Adding a little bit of charcoal here. Smearing this around. They can get the charcoal to stick with the oil pastel. I've never done that before. Try it again. This is fun. You see where I have the cell it really darkens it. That's something that I've never done before, for example. This is really fun and exciting. I think I can maybe move a little bit of that pigment. No, not really. In connection here. Letting that flow over there. Let's try what the marker will do. Let's see what happens when we drop water into it. This is water resistant, nothing happens. I think I have a little bit more guage paint, so I can use that, put it in here. I diluted. Should maybe spread a little bit in here. That's gage with tumbo as a combination I've never done before. You can see that the oil pastel still repels the paint. Here, I think I have acrylics, but I can mix it with gash and here I have watercolor. This also mixes very well with gash. I am making this a little bit more wet because I want to try one more time to drop in a little bit of that acrylic ink. I think I will also add some more of the tumbo here and just use it as pigment to spread. Just leave it at that. I think I've put everything in this that I had on my table. Yeah, it's just an experiment. It's just a way of trying things. I think I've mentioned that we can scrape it off. So some things don't stick like on oly stuff. You have to be a little bit careful because when you go over it again, you can see that in the areas where the marks were, you can scrape off the acrylic or gh or whatever it is. So you don't want to have a huge area of that o surface and then paint on top because that will not adhere. But otherwise, all the dry and wet mediums are able to be combined. It's really fun to just experiment and find out what works and what doesn't. Now it's your turn. 17. Building Your Toolbox: Now, let's explore some different painting tools to add to your atestic toolbox. We're going to use a palette knife or painting knife. If you don't have that, you can use a plastic card like an old credit card. We'll use a brush. You can use any brush. This is a bristle brush, but you can also use a synthetic brush, which has softer bristles. I will also use a sponge. This is from some packaging, but you can use a kitchen sponge as well. And I will also use my fingers. I have just regular printed paper here, and I'm going to divide the page roughly into four sections and now I want to compare like how how the different tools interact when applying paint. Let's get started with the palette knife. When I want to fill the whole thing with a color with the palette knife, I get a fairly thick coverage. If I want to cover everything, I have either to apply a lot of paint or I have to go over the errors for a couple of times. I can also go in a different direction. I realize it's fairly easy to make a halfway straight line and yet. I feel very clumsy when I use my non diminan ten. All right. So with a pallet knife, you always want to wipe it off when you're done with it. So now let's use the brush. If I use it rather dry and I don't like it was humid, but it wasn't really wet, and I don't dilute my paint. I can see the brush marks. So now I will use a sponge. And depending on how much paint you have on the sponge, you will make different marks. This is actually pretty cool because it's round, makes almost a scale from a fish, scale like pattern. But of course, the I go over it, the more I will get even coverage. Here, it is fairly impossible to make a straight edge. Okay. And then I will always use my finger or so it's almost my finger. That's it. Let's take a closer look. So it's still shiny as you can see with the pallet knife because you have a lot of paint on the surface, and here you can see the brush strokes from the brush, which are parallel lines with the sponge, you obviously get this fuzzy feel, and you also get a little bit of a three dimensional structure from the sponge. This was the the finger or the glove. It's a little bit similar to the brush, but more irregular. Brush has more of the bristle lines in it, and here it's just without those lines. When you use your hands, at least I tend to go more in circle motion, and when I use a brush, I usually go more in linear motion. This is something really nice to explore so that you get a feel for what you like and how each tool influences the outcome. Now it's your turn. A. 18. Explore Line Variety: For the next prompt, we are going to explore different drawing or painting tools to outline shapes. This prompt is called explore line variety. We're trying all these different things and see how the line, the character of the line changes. We're drawing a very simple shape like a circle, triangle, any organic shape, and we're repeating it. But what we can play with in addition to different materials is a size. We try to make as much variation as we can within these parameters. Let's get started. I think I will start with my dry materials. I have a piece of charcoal here and I'm going to make this almond shape. And then this is something similar. It feels a little bit different. This is an oil pastel. This water soluble oil pastel. Very similar to the charcoal. Now, I have a pencil. In pen. Parent marker. Now, that is different. Brush pen. Irregular brush and acrylic paint. Okay. So that is really different. And I also have ink. And the round brush this time. Now, I have made a lot of different lines, but actually I haven't varied so much when it comes to size, so I will just go ahead and add more different sizes. Let's see how each tool might differ when it comes to different sizes. I can also go over the edge. Oh, I could also use the dropper for my acryl. That also makes a different line. Actually a very interesting one. Make an one here. And a tiny one here. I think I could use this actually on the side. I would make it really large mark. I can also use this one on the side. I'm just adding a few more. So I think those make at it. More interest in this. So this is what we're doing. You can also do this in different colors. And as you can see, like in the process of doing it, you learn how to make more different shapes and apply the materials differently because at first I was like applying it just like a pencil. But all those materials that have alongside can also be applied side ways and make a very wide mark. You can see that with different sizes, you will get di a different feel from each tool. You can see how overlapping the different things look nice. You can recognize some line quality that you may be like because like this is a little bit wonky and the line width varies a lot. This was the this is really something that you can then take on to other projects, or it just helps you to really get your creative thinking into flow, to get it going and really start thinking about it. You can go on as long as you want to or as short as you want to, there are no roofs, and now it's your turn. O. 19. Explore Shape Variety: L et's explore shape variety. Not exactly like variety in the form, like the shape of the shape, but in the way the shape is filled. We're not making outlines, but we're making a filled shape. In different ways. You can do this in so many ways and I will probably not think of all of them. Let's get started. You can do this with paint with drawing materials and with collage. I will start with collage because, when I have wet paint on my page, I don't really want to clue something on top, let's start with that. I will create test squares, and I will use different kind of things. I will use a book page, an old book page. I have a magazine page. In this case, I'm also playing with typography in different sizes and different type of typographis, and different skills. You can also use un colored papers. You can use patterned papers. You can also make your own pattern papers like just making a pattern on a piece of. Any other paper? Now, I will just use a glut to glue some of that down. I'm going to do that here. Like having the glue stick on your page might make the paint here differently, Now we have explored one way. This could be a prompt in itself because you can really get last in collage. Oh my gosh. I really love collage. Let's just go ahead and see how else we can make a filled in shape. Of course, we can use paint. I can use paint. I can use a maker and draw a shape like that. I can use my ink to do the same. I really like to use this as an outline. If your patient can also use this to create an interesting fill for a shape. It doesn't have to be 100% solid, but it should be considered a shape and not just an outline. You also have those markers, maybe a gray one. I can use a soft pestil. This is a neo pestil from cent dash. It's a very soft one and it's not water soluble. Now, I will cut out a kind of a stanfill from this now. And now I can use that as a way to draw in a pattern that really does go over the edges. I don't have to worry about the edges just creating a shape with a pattern. Now, this will also read as a shape. We can also make a smaller one. Can you also use charcoal or a pigment stick to create a shape? I can also create a transparent shape when I water this down. Make this more transparent. I've created a lot of shapes from these things, and of course, you can also create a shape through the negative form like this. I create also a shape when I glue this down, here I would also create shape in the negative. That is also another option. Now it's your trust. 20. Expressive Lines & Scale: This prompt is called expressive lines and scale. We're using one type of paint like I'm using acrylic paint, and I'm in the beginning, I'm using just one brush, and we're exploring how to make expressive lines and what happens when we scale. Let's start out by just picking up some pain. I have a fairly dry brush, and I'm making some lines. The dry and the brush, the more rough the lines get. Here they look okay on this page. Now what happens when I do that on a larger scale? Well, here it still looked cool because the lines were way large, but here is already looking very stripy. What do you want to do when you scale up, you actually also want to scale your tools. In this case, to get the same effect, I would use a larger brush for this one, and I would use an even larger brush for this one. That way you can scale and still get that bold effect because otherwise, you get a more stripy effect in this case. But that not only has to do with stripes. I'm just using stripes to demonstrate this. But it's a thing. When you make something small and use a big tool, it would be even cooler. If I have a very small format, and I use a very large tool. I mean, that's, that's bold. Okay. So that's really bold. But Like the larger the tool the ball if this is. So here it still looks kind of k, but that would be really bold. Then this is not ball at all. This is just stripes. So you have to keep that in mind. When you go larger, you have to enlarger tools, you have to make larger marks, you don't have to, but if you go for that expressive ball effect, then it's really helpful to scale up. So now it's your turn, have fun. Oh. 21. Meditative Parallel Lines: So the next prompt is called meditative parallel lines. This is a great exercise to calm you down and to relax because it is not very easy but also not hard. It requires you to concentrate on the process that you are doing, because when you want to make them parallel or almost parallel and maybe even focus on them not touching, you really have to be in a moment and watch what you're doing. And also this repetitive movement is really calming. What you can do is you can use fine liners like any pens that you have this is a brush pen, scripting quill. You can use any of those together with ink or liquid watercolor, whatever you have. Here, I've done a similar project where I have done all these lines, and this obviously takes longer than 10 minutes, but you don't have to do it in one go. And I've allowed myself I've allowed the lines to touch slow. I was making a few lines, and then I was filling them in and making it denser and denser. I've also used two colors, obviously. So you can do this in whatever way you want to. And in whatever size you want to, the larger it gets, the longer it will take. Without further ado, let's just get started. So I have this mixed media paper, which is fairly smooth, so I think that will work fine. And I think I will tape off the edges just to have a smaller area and also to have a white frame around my piece. So I will use black acrylic ink and liquid watercolor for this and I will use a writing quill just because I don't use that very often and it's a fun challenge for me to do that. Now, you will have to find out what works better for you, going towards your body or going from left to right. But you can try that. This is about 10 centimeters wide, but it's already too wide. You just do this out of your wrist. You want to move your whole arm with it either to your body or from left to right. You could also do this maybe in an angle. You just have to try what feels good for you. You can do them a little bit wider and then try to fill it in, which is an extra challenge. I'm going to leave a wider space here and fill that in with the gold. As you can see, I'm getting faster already because getting more used to this. I thought that was a good movement for me. Let's try it again upset from the top to the bottom. I also feels good. Let's try to make them even closer. So as you can see, this is not really about perfection, so they are obviously not completely parallel. They are wonky lines, but this also makes the charmer this. And if you feel like you need to shake out your hands in between, that's okay. So I'm kind of really concentrated and I'm gripping it a little bit hard. So just, like, shaking out my wrist and trying to take it a little bit more easy. So I actually don't have to grip it that hard. I'm like, almost squishing it. That was a straight one. It's also a really good exercise in brain hand coordination. I think now I will wipe it off because I want to use gold as well. Let's see. This feels a little bit thick. The thing is, I don't want to smear this. Probably just turn it around because this is more dry. See how it works. I don't know if you can see this, but it's a very slight color. Let's try another one. This is a liquid watercolor ink. It's a lot more fluid. Just use that. I thought it would have been so nice with the gold. It just doesn't want to flow like I want. So, the closer you get, the more you will obviously, like, go over some lines and create some thicker ones. But you can keep going if you want to, to create some areas of dense, more dense areas. When you remove the tape, do it slowly and pull it to the outside, not towards your piece, but away from it at an angle like 45 degree angle. And if it sticks, use a hair dryer to heat it up while you pull it off. So if you have a glued paper pad, use a butter knife or a palette knife, it should be clean here on the edge. Otherwise, you will maybe get a little bit of dirt on your next page, and then you just slide it across the edges. To remove your piece. Alright, so this is the final piece, and you really can go as long or short on this as you want to. I have gone longer than 10 minutes, to be honest, because I just couldn't stop. When I get into making those lines, it's really meditative for me, and I hope you feel that as well. This one, for example, I've not done in one sitting. I had it sitting on my table, and every time I felt like I needed to do something with my hands. I needed a short break from some computer work. I added a few lines and over the course of a couple of days, this page was built. If you use a pen to do this, you don't even have to have water or any other tools, have your office supplies and add a few lines and just use this to relax to zone out a little bit and have fun. Now it's your turn. 22. Pattern Play: Let's play a little bit with pattern. Pattern is something really fun to do, at least for me. For this, we will do three iterations. So you need three sheets of paper. We don't need any special paper. I'm just using regular printed paper. I will also use your brush and acrylic paint, but you can also do this with crayons, markers, whatever you have around. Let's start by randomly painting or drawing different shapes like triangles, circles, lines, dots, squiggles, whatever. But we're doing them all in one color and approximately the same size. So let's get started. So that's about it. That's my first draft. Let's do another one. And now we're bringing in different colors. For the purpose of making this easier, I will use a second brush so that I don't have to wash it out in between. So let's get started. I'll just start with a few circles. Then I'll go ahead and just mix in a little bit of the red into the orange into the yellow to make an orange. Then I'll make the squibbles. This color, and now I think I will use my red brush for the last one, maybe even add some red into this mix. Okay, and then I'll just make my triangles. Okay, so that's the next step. Now we have added more variety. We have not changed a lot, but we have changed quite a bit. We have changed the colors. In our next iteration, we will again use different colors, but we will also change the size of the elements. So I will start with the triangles now. All right, so here we have our three exercise sheets. And what this exercise demonstrates is bringing in variety and difference. First, we do have a difference in shape, but only in shape because we have used the same color and approximately the same size. Then we introduced the difference of color, and then we went further and also introduced the difference of size, and I could even take this further, now that when I make the red circles so small, they are not really circles, but they are more dots. I could also use a different tool, a different brush size and bring in a difference in line quality. This is really a great way to not only build patterns, but to think about whatever you make that bringing in variety, bringing in differences will usually improve your outcome. So now it's your turn. 23. Get Inspired by Nature: So the next prompt is called Get Inspired by Nature. And inspiration is really all around you. You just have to look for it. So I would love for you to go on a walk and pick up some things that, like, spark your interest. This could be leaves, flowers, stones, twigs, whatever you find that I would like to take with you, take it with you to your studio, to your home, and just play with it. All we need for this is some kind of paint. Paper, I will use this packaging paper and maybe a brush to mix and apply the paint. So let's get started. I will use acrylic paint, but a very good paint for this is also quash, but you can try whatever you have on hand. And one way to do it is to just apply the paint to your object. And you could even, like, go over the edges like that on your surface. Because then already you have made a negative shape like with a stencil, which is cool in itself. So I will then put this down somewhere else. And maybe I'll take your second sheet of paper to just help me press this down without breaking the leaf. Right. So I'll put this away, and I'll just take another one. I'll just dip this one in the paint and, like, just make some marks with it like that. Then use the stone. And also use the other side. Mm. That's cool. Okay. I also have these. Let's try them with the pink. Now for the flour, I think I will make this a little bit more fluid. Spread it out. A As you can see, there are a lot of things that you can do with found natural objects. You can stamp them. You can use them as stencils. You can use them as stamps. You can roll them. You can use them like a brush or like a pen. And it's really fun to experiment with that. So have fun, and now it's your turn. 24. Everyday Objects: I love painting with everyday objects because it's so freeing. I just helps you to get rid of all those preconceptions that you have when you pick up a brush because when you pick up a brush, usually you tend to hold it like a pen and you feel really that you have to follow the rules. You don't want to ruin the brush, and there's all these things that come with it. But when you use everyday objects, like an old toothbrush or a comp, it really challenges you to explore the tool to observe what marks you can make and to be really free and creative in your approach. So let's try a few of these. So let's start with the toothbrush. The toothbrush is pretty close to a regular brush, but you don't have to be precious about it because you would have thrown it in the trash, right? So you can just, like, pick up paint and you can splatter, which I will not show now because I don't want to get my hands black. But you can also use it like a really cool brush. Can be really, really mean to it. See what you can do with it. You can also use a con and see what you can do with that. You can make lines. If you make the painful fluid, you can actually really make longer lines. Got to try that. You could use cotton buds. Just experiment with different ways to use them. You can stamp them. You can roll them. You can use such things from medical packaging as a stamp. Just put it into the paint and then stamp it onto your pet. You can use all credit cards or any plastic card. Make lines, can slide them, put them down like that to just stamp and you can also use sponges. Can use sponges to stamp, of course. You can also use them and smear, make really cool marks. Like that. All right, so just go around your house and pick a few items that can get dirty. Like when you do this with acrylic paint, you of course, have to make sure that it's either something that you would throw away anyways, or you will clean it up immediately if you want to reuse it because acrylic paint will dry permanent, and then the com would be ruined for future use because like the small things would stick together. And it would not work. So you can also do this with gouache paint, for example. I really like to do that with gouache usually. With watercolor, yeah, you can try it. The more fluid the paint, for some things, maybe for the stamping, it will not work so well, but you could try or for the credit card, it has to adhere somehow to your item. But please feel free to try all the different things that you find and really have fun experimenting. Now it's your turn. O. 25. Color Therapy: This prompt is called color therapy because colors can evoke moods and memories. Like, think of that beautiful turquoise that just brings you back that wonderful vacation at the sea or that lush, yellowish, spring green of fresh leaves that just gives you the spring feeling that is just that uplifting feeling after the long dreary winter. We're just going to mix some colors and then find a color that speaks to us and cover a whole page with it just to immerse ourselves into that color. The easiest thing to do is in the beginning to just use two colors, like, for example, yellow and turquoise or yellow and magenta and add white because that will give you a more reliable effect because the more colors you mix, the more likely you will get muted colors and muddy colors, grays browns, which are beautiful in itself, but like if you want to have more pure colors, like vibrant colors, it's easier at first to start mixing just two colors. So let's just do that. I'll just mix that turquoise and that yellow to apply that my palette knife. And then let's add a little bit of white. And you can also do this with a brush, of course, but I really like to do that with a pallet knife. We getting stuck here. So now I'm adding no white and no turquoise. Okay. So this is not properly mixed. Man, I will also try this with macenta and yellow. Let's see. So when you don't want to get a very reddish color, you want to have more yellow in it because macenta is really stronger than the yellow. And I think I will want to have more white in this. This is not very much lighter, but just a little bit. Now I want to make some more pinkish colour. Now I will go into the Magenta and blue combination, see what I will get here. I'm a beautiful blue. Let's see. Let's add white. Alright. So all these colors I've just mixed by mixing two colors and white. So they are all very well fitting together. And now I will just pick one that I really enjoy. And that really feels what I need today. And I think, although there are many cool colors, I think it's this turquoise green that I really like the most. So I will just try to recreate that on a separate piece. And because I still remember, like, the colors that I've used, which is, in this case, very useful, it's easy for me to recreate that again. So it was just a turquoise with a little bit of yellow that maybe was already too much. Let's see. Mix it through. I think that's too green. No, maybe not. And I think I've added just a tiny bit of white. I want you to have a little bit more turquoise. Let's compare it. Yes, I think that's approximately the color that I had. And now I'll just fill my whole page with it. I'm going to use my palette knife to transfer the paint onto the page. So, of course, now you can use a palette knife to just spread it around and you can make this just like a random thing, or you can also use a brush to spread it. Okay, so just spread it on page. I'll make a whole green page. Feel this is really coming, and I'm doing this fast, but you can do this as slowly and as accurately as you really like, feel when you want to. So what this exercise is doing for you is it's helping you mix colors that really resonate with you. Sometimes you have to see that and then you can say, Oh, I like that. It is really hard to imagine a color in your mind and then paint it. So thinking it in advance, like how this would look is really hard. And especially how this would look if it was really big, if it was really large, it's hard to imagine. And when you see it in front of you, you can say, Wow, that color really resonates. That gives me a good feeling that feels like me at the moment. And then you can use that. And what we've done here is just a start. You can work on this. Of course, you can take a canvas and paint it just in one color and put it on your wall. It's like a bold statement, and that would look pretty cool. But you can also continue painting on it. The next time you feel like doing something creative, you don't have to start form a blank page. You can react to the color that's already there. For me, color is one of the biggest inspiration that I have when I start to work. It's really the first choice that I make is the color and I pick it intuitively. Around what I like what speaks to me, what I feel like. I don't really think like, Oh, I'm feeling so calm, so I will pick blue. So it doesn't have to do anything with color psychology. It's just like I go through my studio and then I say, Okay, I will paint I will start the painting with this and this and this color, and then I just start and then I will go from there. So I hope you have fun with this exercise, and now it's your turn. Oh. 26. Fun With Swatches: In our next exercise, we are going to create color swatches. So what I like to do is I like to use inexpensive watercolor paper, but you could also use mixed media paper or card stock. I like this size, which is eight times 10 centimeters. And I usually divide my my paper just with a line so that I can color in the top part, and in the bottom part, I write down the colors that I've used. You can start by just swatching out all the colors you have all the premixed tubes that you have. But then you can also start mixing. When you start mixing, you want to take note of which colors you use to create that color. Of course, you don't know the exact proportions, but when you know the ingredient you are more likely to be able to remix it later on. This exercise is not just fun to do because you learn a lot about color mixing and you create all these beautiful colors. But later on, when you're working on a project and this can be any project from a painting to an illustration to decorating your room, you can pick up those colors watches and you can play with combinations and find a color palette that you like. So without further ado, let's get started. What I like to do is when I have some leftover paint, I like to use that up and paint a color swatch with it. In this case for the green, I maybe have a little too low. I don't have enough paint, basically. So you usually want to have a very even coverage. But of course, some paints are more transparent than others, and then you will get this a little bit splotchy, but you want to have a good impression of how the color looks in a solid state. You don't need to be super exact in this. So when you are finished, I usually go over them just in one direction so that I'm not distracted by any texture, and then I would write down the colors that I have used. So in this case, I'm not quite sure if I have some like what colors I have in this mix. I know for sure that I have this blue and I have this yellow. But I think from my mixing experience, I probably also have a little bit of that neon pink in it. And yeah, maybe because my brush was dirty, I also have maybe a little bit of black in it. Then you can just switch those colors out like that or you can actually write down the names of the paints. Okay. And then I would write down this is cadmium yellow, deep, plus fluorescent pink. Over time, you can build up a whole library of swatches and these can come in really useful. But it's also just a good exercise to just acquaint yourself with the paints, if you have a YouTube of paints or if you are not very experienced in color mixing, you can just play around, start mixing the colors, start with just mixing two in the beginning. That is a lot easier. Then slowly bring in white, black or like a third color. And yeah, I hope you're fun. Now it's your turn. 27. Color Blocking: So the next prompt is called color blocking. And for this, I'm again using a piece of mixed media paper, not too large because we want to have this done in a short amount of time. And I've already put out some acrylic paint. You can do this with any paints that you have. I will just use acrylics because that's what I use the most. Use whatever brush you have, I like to use a flat synthetic brush. But if you have an old bristle brush from school or you have a round brush, if you use watercolor, it just doesn't matter. Like, some brushes might be easier to do than with others, but it's not about perfection, it's about having fun. And what we want to do is we want to draw a grid on and then create tints and shades from this color. So we're going to take just one color, like one hue. And mix it with white and black and see how many different tones we can get. First of all, let's get started by drawing a grid with a pencil. You don't really have to draw a grid, but yeah, I'm just doing one, and you can do this as neat and as wonky as you want to. It's really not about perfection. I think I'm just doing this a little bit lopsided and a little bit irregular. So that it just looks interesting. I'm going to paint each of the squares with a different mix of these three paints. I can also combine some sections if I feel like it. Let's just get started. And if you feel like you want to go into a darker color again, just wipe off your brush, make it wet, wipe it off again. Don't have to clean it out completely because we're mixing everything. Anyways. This is basically it. Another option for this would be to start with just one color black and white and fill in a couple of those areas. When you have brought down some variations that you can get on the colors that you have here, you can bring in another color. I bring in the blue and I'm just mixing it into what I already have here on my pad. And you can always decide to go over some areas that you have already painted, is also quite interesting. Alright, so this is a variation of the first one that gives you more variety in terms of color because now we've been using pink and blue and the white and the black. And I have started with just using like one color, and then later after coloring in a couple of areas, I have extended my palette, but you can extend it right from the start. But I think it's a good idea to start with your colors and then go further and explore more. So now it's your turn. 28. Lifting Paint Texture: This prompt is called lifting paint texture, and it's an easy painting technique that you can experiment with, and it's really fun. It depends a little bit on what you work on, what pens you use, how it will react. But you can try with all the different paints you have. What I wouldn't expect to work is inks on paper because they immediately say in the paper fibers, so that might not work. So what I've done is I've taken a sheet of mixed media paper, and I have painted one side with acrylic paint and one I've left open just as the paper comes. And what we now want to do is we want to cover the whole surface with paint, and then we'll sprinkle on water and leave it to dry like that. So here I've got gouache paint, and gouache paint dries really fast. So we have to be quite quick to do this. And I will also use some more acrylic paint for this. So this is almost dry. So now I have to be a little bit quick. Just spritting it with water. I will try to hold it up and see if I can tilt it in a way that you can see the drops. And yeah, now it just has to sit like that. For a few seconds, a couple of minutes, it really depends on the surrounding paint. You want the surrounding paint to dry. And obviously, in places we have the water, it will take longer to dry. So we'll use that to create an interesting effect. So this has now been sitting for, I guess, around 2 minutes. It could be taking a little bit longer, but just for demonstration purposes, I think, it's also interesting to see what happens if not everything is completely dry. Either you can take a paper towel or you can take like tissues. They are good because they don't have the texture, you will see that texture maybe in when lifting up the paint. So because this is also small enough, I will just put my um, tissue on top and you can already see there are these spot like marks, and that's because here the paint couldn't dry. I'm pressing it down, letting it soak up the liquid. And then I'm pulling it up. Okay. You can already see that it works a lot better when you already have a coat of acrylic because it seals the surface. Acrylic is plastifying the paper, so it doesn't pick up the pigments and here it soaks into the paper immediately. So we can again do this from the other side. I'm just rolling this over now because I don't want to get all the dots on my fingers. And you can do this a second time to pick up the rest of the pigment or even a third time when you feel there is some area where you could still lift up some pain. Yeah, this is basically it. So here you can see how well it picked up, like, all those spots, and it worked really well. It was acrylic on acrylic. So that's really the best combination. This was Guag on acrylic. And this was like on paper, acrylic and gouache on paper. So it has a slight effect as well. But it's not as pronounced as it is when you have sealed the paper first. What you can see here a little bit is that like there's around the spots, it lifted up the paint as well because it was not completely dry. So when the paint around the water droplets is not completely dry, it will just lift up a little bit as well. If you don't want that, you just have to watch out for the sheen to disappear, and then you're ready to do this lifting technique. And this is really fun to do and can give you great effects. And of course, you cannot only do splashes, but you can actually, paint like circles or any shapes into the wet paint with your brush and make it a little bit wetter there, and then you can lift that up as well. So now it's your turn, have fun. 29. Overnight Texture: The next prompt is called overnight texture. What we'll need for this is some kind of thin plastic that is flexible, so it shouldn't be stiff. And I have some eco plastic fruit bags here that I have from the supermarket. And I also have some, like, more sturdy, not really very sturdy, but, like, harder than this one. Foil. I think it was the packaging of a canvas. And I've cut this a little bit smaller, like these two pieces because, yeah, I just don't have so much space. So you don't need to cut them exactly to the size of your paper, but approximately, like, just don't have a whole trash bag because it will be just a little bit inconvenient. For this, I use a mixed media pad. That is glue on the sides, which comes in handy as it keeps the paper flat. But if you don't have that, you can also tape any paper to a piece of corrugated cardboard like those boxes that you get in the mail. Can also use washing tape to do that. And this just helps to it doesn't really prevent buckling. If the paper is thin, it will buckle, but it helps to dry flat again. I will use a mixture of different paint you can use. All kinds of paints I have here, acrylics. I have gouache. I have watercolor, and I have liquid watercolor, and I have a spray bottle with water, which just helps me to humify my paper. And also, I will just use it to dilute the paint a little bit because I don't have clean water in my water char at the moment. So I'm just adding a little bit of water here to my paint. And now that you've seen them, I think I will put those away. You can now wet your page with a brush or you can do this like this if you have a spray bottle. We want to have the page pretty wet. You don't have to wet it all. You could wet just patches of it. But then you will have edges. If you apply the paint in the pure state, it will not really, like, move. You will have the spot here, and it also depends on the quality of the paint. If it will bleed out. This is a very high quality gouache and it has a high pigment load, so it tends to spread like watercolor. But what you want to do, in fact, is to dilute it on the palette first and then bring it to your page in an already diluted state. Same here with the acrylic. When it's not diluted enough and also the paper is not wet enough, it just will not spread. This is not really about the spreading, but we want the paint to be able to move around, so we really need to have this pretty wet. You can also dilute the paint right on the page. Okay. When it dries in some areas, you just add water again. And we want to create some variation. First, I will add a little bit of gold. This would also have to be diluted in advance because it's so thick, but I will just do it on the page. So we want to have this so wet because we want to give the pigment the ability to move around on the page. So my whole paper pad has warped a little bit because I've used it before. And now the paint is kind of pulling here. But it is really very wet. Let me show you real quick. So there's a lot of water on it. And if some spots are already dry, so just in case I will just spray on it so that I have everything wet, and then I will put on my my plastic. You can just put it down and leave it the way it falls, but you can also make some kind of wrinkles. You can twist them a little bit. So this second one will give us a different texture because it has a different stiffness, so it doesn't wrinkle in such small wrinkles, but rather enlarge ones. I feel that I could add a little bit more color here, lift it up again. As long as it's wet, you can add paint. But you see the moment I lifted it up, the texture that was here, it disappears. So you really want to leave this sitting until it's completely dry. So let's reveal the overnight texture. Everything has dried properly, and now I can peel off the plastic. Wow, look at that. Doesn't it look beautiful, like all those lines. And yeah, there's a different texture depending on the plastic. And here, the paint was a little bit thick, so it kind of has a three dimensional effect now. But it's really beautiful. And there was another example. Now it's your turn. 30. Texture From Packaging: So this prompt is called texture from packaging materials, and packaging materials are really fun to use, and they are easily attainable, like you have them everywhere. You have bubble wrap. There are different kinds of bubble wrap. We usually have this size around here, but I've seen larger ones, smaller ones. So they are really fun to experiment. You can use, like, bags from, I think this is called burlap in English, where there were some fruits in it, and you can use all kinds of nets. We have at least around here, we have these fabric nets for potatoes, oranges and lemons. So these are really fun to use. Can also use shelf liners and plastic bags, for example, sometimes you might want to have a piece of cardboard where you want to wrap that piece of fabric or the shelf liner around so that you have better grip, and you're kind of creating a stamp. In other cases, you can also do that with nets, but you can also just try to press it down and print it, but have an extra sheet of paper next to you so that you can press it down without getting all of the paint on your fingers. So let's just experiment a little bit with these. So I still have a hot mess of paint here on my palette. I will just mix this all up a little bit. And now I will show you, this is a burlap stamp that I've used before. Like, just use the backside now. You want to paint it and just try how much paint you need. I'm not sure if this will print at all. Let's just try it. Oh, yes, it will. So depending on how much paint and water you put on top, you will obviously get a different results. So I've now added more water here, so we'll probably get a splotch, but we'll see. No, I did not get a splotch, but it was, like, more pronounced. So it's really fun to experiment with the different materials and see how they print and what kind of texture you can create with them. You can also put your materials right onto your palette. Just pick up the paint, put it down again, and just create a print. So with the next, it's a little bit more tricky. We'll just see if we can pick up some paint like that. I tend to soak them in the in fluid paint. Okay. So I've picked up some paint, and I will have to press it down. Right. Cool. So what else have we got? Yeah, we also have the plastic bags and you can use them, put them over wet media and leave it to dry like that. But you can also use them in another way, when you crumple them a little bit, then try to pick up some paint that don't have so much paint here right now. Just do it like that. I think I need a little bit more water on my palette. That's a really weird color. Okay, so you can get all those wrinkles. Well, let's see if this kind of plastic gets more stiff. We'll get different results. Yeah, so this is more stiff. I can't actually really get just more lines line like textures. And the harder you press, obviously, the more plot you get. And if you press just very lightly, you just get where the paint is on sitting on the on the riches. So that's it. It's really easy. You just go and look what you have and you can use all those materials and just try how they will print, how they will stamp, what kind of texture you can grade with them. Experiment a little bit with the viscosity of the paint, like the thickness of the paint, having it read out of the tube versus having it a little bit more fluid. So this is really a lot to try and have fun with, and now it's your turn. 31. Masking Tape Magic: This brand is called masking tape magic, and it's a lot of fun. I have a pretty large sheet of watercolor paper that is glued on the edges. But you can do this any size you want. Obviously, if you want to do this larger, it can take a little bit more time, or you have to use, like, larger brushes, and then it goes pretty fast as well. So what you need for this is some kind of atrsive tape. This is masking tape that's used for painting walls, and this one is well. This is called a sensitive one. It's a little bit less sticky. And easier to remove from your page, but you could also use washi tape. We're going to create some kind of a grid, some kind of segments with the tape, and then we're going to paint the whole thing. If you don't have a paper pad that is glued on the sides, just go over the edges with your tape and just hold it down on your surface so that it doesn't slide around. And also if you work with rather wet media like watercolor or ink, it will buckle, so having the tape go over the edges will help to hold it down. You could also tape it around the edges and stick it to a piece of corrugated cardboard or a piece of wood, if you want to do that. Okay, so let's get started with just putting down the tape. And you can go crisscross. You can go all the way across. And just for demonstrations sake, I will also use RotinaO so I will have different whoop, thickness of lines. So let's see where I can put this one now. But you can do this also in a very regular pattern all the same size. This will also look super neat. What I'm looking out for just a little bit is that I want to have the angles, not either I want to have them parallel, or I want to have them definitely a different angle, not just like having it almost parallel. So I feel that's a little bit weird. If you make it different, make it really different. One more thing that I look for is that I have different sizes of segments. Okay, and I think we will leave it just like that. There's no need to overthink. Either paint each segment in one color, just make this unique color, like make this yellow, this blue, this red, whatever you want to. This looks super neat. My daughter has recently done one like that, but you can also, paint over the whole surface as if there was no tip. You can do this with acrylic paints, with gouache, with watercolor, with ink. I'm going to use these watercolor inks. So don't ask me how they differ from liquid water color. I feel they are more permanent. I think I'm just going to wet this a little bit before, but you don't have to do that. This is just because I want to have something that's pretty loose that spreads around. The brush I'm using is actually a calligraphy brush. It's very useful because it holds a lot of water. So if you want to cover areas with water, a pretty fast, that's a cool thing. You can use a dropper to get out the paint, but at the moment, I don't have one here, so I'll just do it that way. As I said, you could just color in this one in this color and the next one in another color. And do it like that, or you just go around and paint this as if there was no tape. Now, before I go into the yo, I will wash out my brush. I'm not super precious about them. This is saying that the only way to waste out materials is to not use them, and I'm definitely guilty of wasting out materials in that way because I have so many at home that some feel a little bit precious and I'm waiting for a perfect time to use them, and then I don't use them at all. So Okay, now there was too much water in the brush. It didn't pick up any color. When I mix in red into the green, Oh, this is not red. I think it's magenta, but it could be a complimentary. So I might get a little bit of dirty colors you see. Like when you mix the complimentaries, you create mud. Let's see how that one works. Oh, that one's a little bit thick already. So it will not spread. Okay, you can just play around. Oops. But if you make splashes, they will go everywhere. I think I will just use the acrylic ink. Okay. I also have these very old and can dash. They still exist, but this is the one that I have sil firm. I think elementary is cool. Just going to make a few lines in here. You can draw with them in water, like in wet media, but you can also draw with them on that dry page first and then paint over it, they tend to dissolve. I'm dropping in some water in some areas, see if I can get maybe some interesting blooming effect like where the water pushes the pigment away, can also tilt this little bit. I do have a lot of colorful colors here. This is pretty cool. I think I will add a little bit more of white just to have a little bit more neutrals and also a little bit of value contrast, that is the contrast between dark and light areas. Now, I will leave this to dry. This has to dry completely in the case of watercolor. When you use acrylics, for example, and you use the pretty thick, you will want to pull off the tape before it's completely dry because when it goes over the tape, then you will have to cut through that plastic film to remove the tape. But as long as it's still a little bit wet, you can remove the tape immediately. But in our case, I will just leave it to dry completely as it is. Very often you feel that you can just pull off the tape and everything is okay. But sometimes it's not, and it will tear the paper. So when you feel that it sticks too hard, one really neat trick is to use a hair dryer and heat it up just a little bit. And while you heat it up, you pull it off. So I will just start without the hair dryer and see how it feels. Here it does have that feeling of ripping the paper, so we'll just use the hair dryer. So that's our final mini project piece, and you can leave it like that. You can cut it up in small areas. You can continue painting on it, hang it like that on a wall, make green cards out of it, whatever you want to or repurpose it in any other way. And I hope you have fun. And now it's your turn. 32. Finger Painted Artwork: Let's do a finger painted artwork. So, when was the last time that you have painted with your fingers? Probably a long time ago. And actually, I sometimes use my fingers like when I'm in the process and I have to fix something really quickly, I just use my fingers. But usually, I don't paint the whole artwork with just my fingers, but I've seen it done, and I think it's a good thing to challenge you a little bit, and also to take out the pressure because using your fingers is like, you cannot really be very precise and exact. Pick something rather simple like just a flower, maybe, or you could try to do a port word, but, of course, keep in mind that it will be looking very childlike because you cannot put in a lot of detail, or you could pick a simple landscape. I will just try to do this pot with this. I don't know. It's not a bonsai. It's some kind of plant, whatever. And I will just take this as an inspiration very roughly. First of all, I need to mix my paint, and I'm like, not sure if I actually want to do that with my fingers. I will probably use my palette knife just to mix my paint, and I will try to mix some kind of a rather neutral color. Neutral colors are mixed by mixing all three primaries. I don't have very exact primaries here on palette, but like approximately the primaries. So I already see I've started a little bit too far on the top, like, to get in this whole thing. But yeah, it's really not about that. It's just an inspiration. So that's my pot. And I will mix some kind of a green with the blue and the yellow. And I also need a little bit darker of a gray. I'm not sure if I can get that with these neon colors. Probably not so we'll just use a little bit of black. All right. So I'll just bring in this tree like structure here, and it's already a lot of fun. Really love it. It's making me really loose because, you know, I really can't influence it a lot. So now I'm taking a different finger, just adding some of those leaves. Actually go from outside in like if I want to replicate the form of these type of leaves. So this was just learning that I had when you go from the outside in, you have a round kind of leaf shape. It's actually a pretty cool way to paint leaves. Use your fingers. I think that's already almost enough. Add a few more here, make this a little bit more dense here. And then I will again, use a different finger, maybe my left hand. Who do is scary. I'm not really used to using my left hand like that. Just like dabbing these in. Not really worrying about what the original shape of these flowers was. And I see they will have some white in them. I want to do that and a little bit of white. See if you want to go in again. Right. So what else do we want to do? Maybe add a little bit more of that white in the in this branch thingy Also bringing more of color into this vessel. I'm kind of losing the screen color that I have before the greenish gray, bringing it in again. Give me something to sit on. M darks. Adding a little bit more of a different green here. Enough yellow. Adding that a little bit into my pot here. All right. I'll just leave it like that. I think it looks fun. It was a really interesting process. I actually haven't done it in that way because I usually paint abstract and not realistic. But I found this really interesting to take some inspiration from a photo from something realistic and then abstracting it a little bit by limiting the way like your ability to make this exact by having to work with your tool like your fingers in this case. So now it's your turn. Have fun. 33. Segment Exploration: So the next prompt is called segment Exploration. And I have here a piece of printer paper. I think it's for color printing. It's a little bit a smoother one. I took this just because I want to use my copic markers, which are alcohol ink markers that I still have from my time as a graphic designer. I will fold the paper in half so that it's not as large. So what we want to do is we want to explore value, so different lightness and darkness, so different shades of gray basically. I have a couple of different markers that are from very light to black. You can do this with any kind of paints. You could also do this with a pencil or charcoal or something. But it takes a lot of effort if you just cross hatch or use a pencil. So what we're going to do, we're going to divide the page and how are we going to do this. I'm just giving myself a rule that I want to follow so that I don't have to overthink it. How will create these segments. So what I want to do is I want to go from left to right, from top to bottom in different ways. I want to make one straight line. I want to make one curved line. I want to make one sixeggi line. And I want to make one like snaky line. Okay, and now I have my segments. And you can make this as complex as you want to. Of course, you can make more lines. Now, I will take my different shades of gray and I will color this in. And if I want to, I can also, like, combine the different shapes. I think I will start with my darks, so I just use this side, and I think it will make this shape, the dark shape, so I'm just going to color it in. And with markers, you can see the more you go over them, the darker they get, so you don't really get even covering, but that's okay. So now you can decide if you need more different shades. This is now almost the same like the white. Connect that more with the darks. It's almost as dark as the others, which creates a large shape. Actually, I still don't like that. So I think I will make that even more like the others so that this groups is one shape. This is a very good exercise in composition, actually, which is approaching it in a very playful way and by doing these lines in the beginning, getting our brains out of this and just like getting started with making these studies kind of these images. And then you just color it in. You try, how can I arrange the elements, the darks, and the lights so that they alternate, and then you see you. Maybe it doesn't really work to alternate them. I want to pull some areas together. I want to bring in more shades of gray. I want to connect things so that they don't have that much of a value difference. So it's really fun to play, and then you end up with this interesting piece and you can turn it around and see what you like best. And, in the beginning, it also makes sense maybe to make this even smaller so that you can do this repeatedly and be really fast. I hope you're fun with it, and now it's your turn. 34. Black & White Patterns: So for this prompt, which is called black and white pattern, we're doing a mini project. It's going to be a card with our design on the front. I'm using a five mixed media paper and I fold it in half and I will also tape off a section on the front where our design will then sit. If your tape is rather sticky, you can stick it on your cloth and remove it again a couple of times so that it loses that stickiness and then you put it down on your paper. So I think I will just use those overlaps to stick it down here. And now what I want to do is I want to segment this in any random segment. So I will just take a pencil and go for this in one continuous line. I will then later on erase these again so I can already do it now. This is just for us to feel loose and not think so much about the lines. And I do have some very small segments here, so I think I will combine a few of those and not make a different pattern in each of them. Right now you can use any pen that you have like this is a tumbo brush pen. This will obviously be a little bit too large, but I also have this micromaker markers, fine liners. And I think they are good, but can also use those rollerball pens. And now you can go ahead and start filling in patterns into these sections, and I will start up here, and I will make a line pattern here. This can be super meditative. I think I will make circle pattern here. Okay, now my waves are getting even larger. Instead of making more waves, I'm just making them larger. Yeah, but that's okay. Just going with the flow. I will make a pretty dark one here. Doesn't look dark right now, but I think I'm doing negative shapes. So I leave those squares white, and I will now fill in the surroundings. So what you can learn from this is you can create really dark areas and you can create really light areas. And I can also do really large ones. Like imagine there was this large doughnut, like shape going on in this pattern here, and maybe those doughnut shapes have stripes in them. Now we can remove the tape. If the tape sticks a little bit too hard, you can use a hair dryer and heat it up. Well I think I'll be fine. So now let's take a close look at our finished card. So there are some pencil lines still here, and you can erase those, but I would wait for the ink to really dry thoroughly before you do that because it might smear otherwise. So here you go. You have your finished card, and now it's your turn. 35. Observe Negative Space: This prompt is called Explore negative space. So the negative space is the space around an object. So if I would be the object, everything around me would be the negative space. So you can take a picture and look at it. I could try to draw the chair just as it is, but I could also draw the background. So this is really hard to do, actually, and it takes a lot of practice and a lot of doing. So I would draw in the inside here under the arm. Then I can see that here, the next shape is here, goes with an angle. Here I have an oops, here I have another angle like this. Here I have a small triangle. Then here. It goes like this and here it goes like this, and it will be a pretty wonky chair. But I'm just focusing on the outside. Because this helps to abstract it and to look more closely because when you look at the chair, you're like, oh, or your brain is like, I know what a chair looks like. It has four legs. It has something to sit on. But when you just focus on the negative space, it could be that you are more accurate even. So I was just drawing the negative space. Now this is negative space here. Everywhere around here is the negative space. This can be quite interesting to do when you do this also with natural items like leaves. It can give you cool abstract compositions and a good starting point, and then you could zoom in and just take a section of this and see what you like. So it's a cool way to start a composition. If you don't want to do this freehand, you can also just put a piece of transparent paper on top that would be my object, and it gets the feeling of a chair, but in itself, when I would not know that this is a chair, this would look maybe a little bit abstract. So this is a great way to form, find shape for your creations, for any designs that you want to make, but just looking at the negative space and then using the negative space as the main subject of your work. So now that I have these abstracted lines and shapes, I can continue working on this and forget that this was a chair. It was just a starting point for me to get going. And now I can, like, do whatever I want to All right. And this is just how you could continue playing with this. It's just one option. You can do whatever you want. I have just used a photo as an inspiration to jump start the creative process and then go into playing with paint. So now it's your turn. 36. Create a Mosaic Collage: This prompt is called create a mosaic collage, and it's basically about deconstructing and reconstructing an image. I've taken an image from a catalog that we got in the mail and I also have a piece of paper. I have picked a black one because this picture is so dark, but you can also use white or differently colored paper. What you also need is a bluestick and your hands. So first, we'll start by carrying this up in a random way. So I think this was here. So we are kind of finding out way as we go. This really forces you to look at what you see. And it's kind of a puddle. Obviously, I could put this together exactly as it was. But that's not the point of it. So it's a little bit a challenge to how I can put this together in a way that is interesting in a way that creates a cool effect. What I want to try is I want to have some kind of an outline, like a straight edge. This is not the one that's fitting here, but I do like that there's a line that kind of speaks to this form to the shape. And also have a round from here. I will continue it over here. I So I think it will add the lettering in here just for the fun of it. It says summer 2024. I think I will add more red here just to have that repeat a little bit more up here. Maybe a tiny, tiny segment. My even have a sharp edge here so that kind of reminds us of how this all started as square image. Alright. So I have not used up all of my iba scraps, but I've used up most of them. And now it looks like some like fun collage that um reminds me of the summer where everything was so lush and growing so much that it grew over my head. So it was, like, almost a mess in my vegetable garden. And this could represent that feeling and that of that abundance and that jungle vegetable jungle, so to speak. Of course, you can try to put it together, like, almost the same as it was before, just with these little lines in between, the stairs in between. But you can also mix it up completely and give it a completely different look and feel. So now your turn. 37. Start Your Art Journal: So this prompt is called Start your Art Journal. It's kind of a mixture of a diary and a sketchbook. So you put all these things inside that interests you that you play with. It's basically a creative playground for you. There are no rules on how you can create in an art journal. It's just a book where you can really explore some stuff where you can just stick stuff in, like, staple it in, draw it in, write ideas inside, paint inside, draw inside, whatever you want to do. And if you have done a few of the prompts already, you might have amassed some papers. We will now use these papers to create our own art journals because doing them ourselves makes them feel less precious, like, less precious than when you buy an expensive sketchbook. But even if you get, like an like an inexpensive sketchbook, it has all these blank white pages, and sometimes this feels a little bit hard to get started. And when you use already papers that you have made yourself that you have painted on and drawn on and printed on, whatever it is, there is already something here to respond to. I'm going to use a selection of papers that I have created in the process of these prompts to create my own art journal. What you need for this is ideally a cutting mat. You need some kind of a utility knife or a cutter, some yarn, like this is just cotton yarn. You can also use waxed thread or stitching yarn, something that's a little bit more sturdy and doesn't drip. And you need a needle that has a pointed tip and is large enough for you to thread the thread. I think that's how you say it. You just have a dull pointed stitching needle. If you have something some other item that has a sharp tip. This is called in bookbinding O, AWL. This is actually from a sewing machine. I don't know, maybe it's used to make some holes into the fabric for buttons or whatever. If you have a bone fold, there you fold, that's good. If you don't have, you have your fingernails, that's all you need. Yeah, without further ado, let's get started. So first of all, you want to have your papers in approximately the same size. This one's a little bit larger than A four, that's the usual size here. So when you want to use this for a cover, it would be fine. I think I will use this one for a cover because it doesn't have any dry media on it that can smear, that this has something that can smear. So what I want to do is I want to fold this in half. Can use bone folder as I set to make you get more crisp, but you can also use, like a plastic card, a ruler, or just your fingernails. So I'm just using this piece of transparent paper as a stencil to get the size because I need to make these smaller. Now, I will cut the thin paper with scissors. I find it a little bit hard cutting tissue paper with a utility knife. It really tends to rip on the edges, so So once you have your papers in approximately the same size and fold it, you can just fold them into each other. And you can overthink this, but you shouldn't. So I will have this as my cover. So let's open this up. And then there's just one thing for the most inside piece, you will also want a more stirty paper, not maybe so I wouldn't take the tissue paper as the inside spread. Now, I have these larger ones that I haven't cut to shape, so I'll just try to center the smaller papers. And as I said, you don't need to have them all in the same size, but you want to have an area where all of the papers are so you get all of them. If you have some kind of paper clip that would come in handy, so you can clip it anywhere where it grips all the pages, and I think I'll need a little bit longer thread than this. No, actually, that is fine. So now we need to bind it together with a piece of thread. And you can do this two ways. One way you have the knot and some thread outside, and the other way you have that in the middle fold in the center fold. Okay? And you can cut those a little bit shorter if you want to, but you have this double knot here, so you don't want to have it super short unless it might open. When you have it outside, you start outside. When you want to have it inside, you start on the inside. So I think I will start on the inside. And now you can measure this to have approximately the same or exactly the same distance. But I will just eyeball it. So for the first one, I will just make sure that everything is really centered into the snuck into the fold. And then I will just put this in the middle parallel to my surface, and then I will close it and I will try to, like, stitch through it. In a straight way. Let's see if it works. So it's a little bit hard, but it works. Oh, it's hard on my fingers. You can do this in advance for each piece of paper. But when you do it in advance, you really want to have the holes in exactly the same size, and I also want to cut the paper to exactly the same size so that then everything fits together. I will also make a second and a third one a little bit above and below. Here's my second one. I could actually use this tool, see if it works better than needle. There's this maximum amount that you can go through and I will make approximately the same distance here. Now I want to have my not in the middle. What I want to do is I stitch from the inside out in my pre stitched hole. Make sure you leave some thread inside. Then you go back through an outside hole, either one. Now you go right to the other outside hole. Whoops. I pulled too hard. Hopefully, it's still enough here. Then you go back through the middle. Now, ideally you want to come back on the other side of this thread that goes from top to bottom. But if you don't, it doesn't matter, you just have to end up with one piece of thread on each side. If you end up like this, you just go over there. So it's no big deal. Then you just pull it tight. You don't need the needle anymore, and now you make a double knot over this middle one. Okay. Now you can trim the thread like you want to have it like the same size. And remove the paper clip, and your tunnel stands. So if you want to, you can cut, like, just use the ruler and put it down, press hard and really cut the edges, make it all the same length, or you can just leave it like that to have like different sizes, which is also cool. Because look at that. What how cool is that effect of having that frame? And it doesn't matter if you have some ribbed pages because this is also some kind of interest that you can work with. If this looks really cool now, it's actually not the best thing to happen because then you again feel pressured to keep working on it. So really don't overthink what you do and take this as a starting point and then you can work in this. Sometimes you have you have some leftover pieces from the pages that you have used. And then you could go ahead already and start to glue those in wherever you feel like it. Like, for example, I might glue it in here. And I would do that with glue stick because at the moment you get wet media into this paper, which is not especially made for wet media. I will all start to buckle. So for collage, I would rather just use the glue stick. Then, of course, when you have it all over the place, when you didn't use an extra sheet, while you apply the glue, you obviously have to be a little bit careful now when you close it. And yeah, you could just, like, go ahead and add some bits and pieces here and there to get started into this process of towing. And this really is a whole a whole big thing, the whole thing where you can really experiment. Basically, you're just making this notebook, this sketchbook for yourself from your own practice sheets, and then you can keep practicing in it and making some really cool stuff by adding whatever you want. You can also put in photos. Like as I said, you can write something or you can just make some marks as if you would write something, really, really, really feel loose and not precious by this thing. It's just a place to experiment. So I hope you have fun with this, and now it's your turn. 38. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on completing this class. If there's just one thing that I want you to take away from this class is that it's all about getting into motion. If you manage to get started and to keep a playful approach, you will surely gain momentum and everything else will follow. Once you have completed the prompt, you have the tools to get yourself out of a creative slump and get your ideas flowing again. You will also have the mindset and knowledge of how to craft your own prompts or expand on the ones given. Don't forget to download the prompt cards because they are a powerful tool whenever you feel stuck or uninspired if you haven't created a class project yet. Now is the time to do it. If any questions come up, you can ask them in your class project or in the discussion section and I'll be happy to help. If you have enjoyed the class, I would highly appreciate if you take the time to leave a review. This is not only valuable feedback for myself, but it also helps other students find out if the class is right for them. Lastly, I want to invite you to take a look at my profile and check out my other classes here on skill share. It that follow button if you want to be notified whenever I release a new class, have an exciting announcement, or run a giveaway. Overcoming creative blocks involves addressing issues of time, overwhelm and perfectionism, breaking tasks down into small steps, setting yourself a clear time frame, and focusing on the process rather than the result. Lastly, use the painting prompts regularly to strengthen your creative muscle and boost your creativity. Thank you for watching and participating, and I'll see you next time.