Build and Maintain a Creative Habit in Your Busy Life

1. Class Trailer: Do like creating Art. Do you struggle to find time to create the Art because there's so much to do in your daily life. If yes, you are not alone. And welcome to this class. Hi everyone. I'm Larissa. I'm a teacher, illustrator and surface designer in Melbourne, Australia. Today I'm going to show you how I build and maintain a habit of creating Art in Busy Life. Want to bring you on my journey? In this class, I will guide you through the mindset of building a creative habit that will help you stop using. I'm busy as an excuse not to create anything. I will present three exercises that can help you get started creating out on a regular basis. We will start by drawing random lines and shapes using a number of drawing materials. Then we move on to painting geometric shapes using gouache and watercolor. We will also explore the idea of illustrated journalling, where we draw our daily life into bits and pieces, cut them out and paste them into our journals. I'll show you how to do these exercises in traditional media and also in Procreate. So you can absolutely follow along using whatever tools and materials you will have. At the end, I will also give you some advice on maintaining the creative habit that you have built so you can keep going without trouble. You will have this class Guide to help you navigate the whole class. It has basic information for each exercise, a suggested list of supplies, my examples for the exercises, and a habit tracker that helps you stay on track of creating out on a regular basis. All you need to do is to gather all the, our supplies you have before taking this class. If you only have the iPad, then use the iPad, just make sure you have Procreate in it. So without further ado, let's get started. 2. Class Project: For our class project, you just into share one page of your work in the Project Gallery. Throughout the class will be doing a Mindful drawing exercise, a Mindful painting exercise, and Illustrated journalling exercise. I will demonstrate all these exercises in both traditional media and Procreate. You can pick an exercise that speaks to the most and choose your own tools and materials to do it. I look forward to seeing your work 3. Let's Talk about Mindset: Before we start, I feel is important for us to talk about the mindset we need to have when we tried to build a creative habit in our busy life. On that note, I want to share with you the reason why I created this course. So with all started last year in 2022, I was very busy in my day job and always felt tired when I got her. Use these as an excuse not to draw anything, even though I really wanted to. Months went by and I suddenly realized, not only had I created nothing during this time, but they had become harder and harder for me to start creating. Again. This is very bad because I really wanted to pursue my Art Korea. If I keep using, I'm busy as an excuse and not doing anything, I'll never get to where I want to be. For the past few months, I've been trying to figure out different ways to get myself creating on a regular basis. I have finally put together three exercises that include drawing, painting, and prompting. And I will love to share them with you. For us to go through this class, we need to have the correct mindset. So have a think about the following statements and see if any of them applies to you. I don't have time. I'm too busy. I just can't find time to create, aren't I don't know what to draw right now. I've got too much in my head already. I prefer to set aside a day to create something. I guess I can draw something today, but I'm afraid I won't be able to keep going the next day to day after and beyond. It's hard for me to balance my busy life with art-making. If you do feel any of these statements relate to you, I want you to know you're not annoying. I myself have felt all of these before. I'm sure there are other people who feel the same way. I believe many of us are not full-time artists. We have jobs and family responsibilities or other stuff that we need to attend to every day. But at the same time with love Art and are passionate about creating Art when we can. We just struggle to balance everything in our lives. I also want you to know we can actually turn these fearful feelings into positive statements. Instead of filling not having enough time to create Art, you can say, yes, I do have time. If I spend less time on social media, on Netflix, I can find 10 min everyday to draw something. We all have the same amount of time to spend every day. We just use it to do different things. So have a think about all the things that you do during the day and see if you can cut some time off on certain activities so you can use that time to draw something. For the past six months, I cut my time off on social media and I was able to draw something pretty much every day. And that allows me to put together this class. So try to find time and it's a day to create something. You might be amazed by what you're able to achieve after a while. Instead of saying our draw something later, just not right now. You can say, I'm not creating a masterpiece. I'm not even creating a finished piece. All I want is to get my creative mind running and my hand moving. Of course, I can set aside a day to create Art, but I can also get started right now. Be cautious about the idea of our do it later because more often than not, you will end up not doing it at all. That's exactly what happened to me last year. I wasn't able to create a thing in over six months because I kept telling myself I'm just too tired today and I'll do it when a half a day off. And do you know what I did when I had that day off? Nothing. I stopped creating for a long time and it became more and more difficult for me to start creating. Again. I don't want that to happen to you. So I put together this class to show you how to build and maintain a habit to create Art. But before that, you need to make up your mind and tell yourself you can do it. Lastly, instead of thinking, you're not able to create Art on a regular basis, you can say, I'm sure once I get started creating something, it will become easier for me to continue. And I can always find new ideas based on the last week I create it. Getting started is truly the most difficult part. So if you can overcome this obstacle, you can find it much easier to continue in this class, you will find three ideas that can get you started creating. And the best part is, I'll be interpreting these ideas using both traditional media and Procreate. So it doesn't matter what materials or equipment you're using. You will find something that works for you. Now that we have straightened our minds, I would like to suggest a few things for taking this class. First is when you fill a page you need to celebrate is very important to acknowledge your achievement because you manage to take time from your busy lives to draw or paint or create something. You should be proud of yourself. I suggest, whenever you have completed a page of drawings or illustrations or whatever you create, reward yourself with a nice cup of tea, a fancy piece of cake, or just do small things that make yourself happy because you deserve it. Number two is to gather your supplies and set up a corner in your place to do the exercises. You don't need fancy on supplies, just use the ones you have. And if you only have the iPad, then use the iPad. Setup a corner for yourself to create Art. So you don't need to set up and pick up all the time for whatever reasons you are not able to set up a corner. For example, you may have kids running around in your place and it's just not safe to do so, then at least make you are supplies easy to grab, do everything you can to make it easy for you to create Art. It will not be helpful if you need to make an effort to get things ready every time. The last suggestion I have is to make it font for yourself. You will see the exercises we about to do in this class are not testing your skills. In fact, they helping you develop your skills. So practice them in your own way and just enjoy the process. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the supplies and resources will be using for this class 4. Class Guide & Resources: I have put together a cost guide that walks you through everything in this class. You can find the link to it under discussions. If you're watching the class on the web browser, you can also see the class Guide as an attachment on the projects and resources. So in a Class Guide, you will find a summary on the second page. Throughout the whole class will be doing three exercises in drawing, painting, and cropped. We will also be doing the same exercise in Procreate. So you can see the difference between using traditional media and digital media. On the next two pages, there's the list of supplies that are used for this course. You don't need to have the exact same things. The reason why I used all these materials is to show you there are different ways to do the exercises. I put this list together just in case you might be interested in using some of these materials. Please remember, all you need to do is to use whatever you have. Pick the exercise that works for you and start practicing. On page five, you will find a Pinterest board that I prepared for this course. You can click on the button below to have look. It has all the examples I created for each exercise, both in traditional media and Procreate. So hopefully that will give you a bit of inspiration when you're practicing. Along the way. From page six to the end is a walk-through of all the exercises in this class. I will explain everything in detail when we do each one. Right now, just make sure you download the cost Guide and get ready for the next lesson. 5. Mindful Drawing in Traditional Media: So we will kick off a closet with a Mindful drawing exercise. The idea is you draw some random shapes across the page through the shapes with colors, and then draw some details on top of the shapes. So with a simple idea, but can lead to many possibilities. Let me show you some examples. I have made for examples here for this exercise. You can see the look totally different, but all based on the same idea. Sometimes I draw lines to divide the page into random shapes. Other times I start drawing one irregular shape and then keep going until they fill the whole page. There are no set rules on how you should do this exercise. You can totally interpret the idea the way you want is probably a good one for you to get started with. When you come home really tired and don't know what to draw. Then just draw random shapes on the page, fill them with colors, and then draw random lines and shapes on top. See where the idea takes you. For this exercise are used. These Strathmore watercolor sketchbook, quite a small size is good for getting started. I use a pencil to sketch out the shapes, and then use a kneadable eraser to soften any harsh lines. After that, I use two sets of materials to do the drawing. One is a sharpie pen and some gel pens, and the other is a micron pen and some brush pens. You can use whatever materials you have. I just wanted to show you different ways of doing this exercise. So let me show you how to draw this one first using a sharpie pen and some gel pens Next, I'm going to use brush pens and the micron pen to draw a different pace. Before we start, I want to give you a little tip on using brush pens. So what I did over here is to create a color charge of all the brush pens I have. Because if you compare the real color of the pen and the color of delete. For example, we're looking at number 19 here. You can see they don't match. So sometimes the colors of the lids are bit misleading. That's why it's better for us to make a color chart so we know exactly what colors to pick. Now, I'm going to recreate this work using brush pens to draw the shapes. And then a micron pen to draw the lines on top So you can see from these two examples here, you can use any drawing materials to interpret this idea. It's just really draw a bunch of shapes across the page and then draw some more shapes on top. You don't need to overthink it. Just start drawing. What I would like you to do next is to choose your own drawing materials and start doing this exercise in your sketchbook and see what happens. 6. Mindful Drawing in Procreate: In this lesson, we'll be doing the Mindful drawing exercise in Procreate. If you only have an iPad but nothing else, you can still do the exercise and Procreate would be like your digital sketchbook. Before we start, let me show you two examples I have created in Procreate for this exercise. Some of you have seen this one on the left with buttons and stitches. I have shared this work in a post on Skillshare before. I start by drawing random shapes across the canvas and then draw some circles on top. At the time, the idea of drawing buttons and stitches popped into my head. So I turned the circles into buttons and draw citrus along the edges of the shapes. And at the end, I draw some more shapes and stitches to fill in the blank area. So comparing to the last two examples I have demonstrated before, purely just drawing lines, shapes, and colors. And they don't look like anything. This work over here can remind you of something you see in your daily life. So once again, it's entirely up to you how you interpret the idea for this exercise. If you want to draw something you've seen your life Go for it, just presented in the form of random shapes, lines, and colors. I have also created this work on the right as an example. I start by drawing overlapping shapes across the canvas and then fill the shapes with different colors. At this point, the color palette I used for this work reminds me of the night sky. For the next step, I decide to draw these tiny little dots with alternating colors, which will look like the stars in the sky. So you can do the exercise the way you want. Give your work meanings if you like, and make it Fung for yourself. Now let me show you how to find the resources for this exercise. Go to the class Guide on page one, which is the index page. Then find page number eight, mindful Drawing, Procreate, tap on the number and you can see the resources or the brushes we use for this class are in Procreate. We just need to organize them together. You can, of course, use any brushes you like. But if you don't know what to use, you can just follow me here. Let's find the monoline brush in the calligraphy brush set. Create a new canvas in Procreate does matter what size it is. Then go to the brush library, find the calligraphy brush set and mono line is over here. Draw a line on the Canvas. Then go back to the brush library, find this reason tab at the top. And it shows the monoline brush in here. That means we have recently used this brush, swipe it to the left, tap the Pin button, then it stays in the recent tap. Let's do the same for the dry ink brush in the inking brush set. And that's how we organize the brushes we use in one place, so we don't need to go find them every time. Next, we can download the color palette for this exercise. With the two examples. You can see them in the larger view in the printer sport. Just tap on this big button and then protect you there with everything in place. Let me show you how to draw this work in Procreate Now it's your turn to do the exercise. In Procreate. You can set your canvas to any size and use any brush or colors you like. Remember what you draw doesn't have to be a thing just in draw the process 7. Mindful Painting in Traditional Media: Basics of Painting: The second exercise is about painting is a different feel from drawing. It needs a lot of setup. It would get messy, but there will also be so much fun. The idea of this exercise is to paint geometric shapes in a structured way. When doing this exercise in traditional media, the main focus is to practice using paints and loan to stay in line using a paintbrush. We're not painting anything complicated. Just enjoy the process of painting. I'll be using gouache and watercolor to do this exercise. They are arguably two of the most popular painting materials. I have some experience in using gouache, and I've been learning how to paint with watercolor recently. They are quite different, but both interesting to work with. But of course you can use your own painting materials to do this exercise. I started with the one on the left using gouache. You can see the lines are wobbly. Obviously I wasn't good at controlling the brush at the time. Then I painted the one on the right. And that got a little bit better, starting to get a hang of controlling a paintbrush. And the pink to the next one using watercolor, where I painted two different colors side-by-side in each shape just to make it fun for myself. I have also painted these two examples with gouache on the left and what color on the right. You can seek wash is pretty opaque, whereas watercolor is transparent. The way to ping with these two materials are quite different. So I'm going to show you how I do it. There are a lot of techniques involved when it comes to painting, gouache and watercolor. But for this course, we just need to know what basic thing about painting. And that is how to paint colors with different values, which is also called brightness. That means how to make the color lighter or darker. So to do this in gouache, and we'll use water to activate the paint first until you see a creamy feel to it. I'm using the color red to demonstrate here, and I'll paint this pure color in the middle of the page. To make this color a bit lighter, I just need to mix it with a bit of white. And the pink color is starting to show up. To make it even lighter. Just add more white to it and you will see a lighter pink image. On the other hand, to make the red color darker, just mix it with the color black. If you are using the same brush, make sure you wash the brush in water container before you start mixing red and black. So to make a color lighter or darker when painting gouache, theoretically we mix white to the color to make it lighter, and mix black to it to make it darker. But we can adapt this technique in different ways. Sometimes you will find yourself mixing a color with a lighter or darker color, not necessarily just white or black. So before you do the exercise and practice mixing colors a few times and see how you can handle it. To adjust the value of a color when using watercolor. It's a different story from using gouache. I'm using the color blue to demonstrate here. Activate the watercolor paint. We add some water to it, but be mindful of how much water you're adding to the color, because it makes a difference in the value of the color. I start with just adding a little bit of water to the paint to preserve its highest situation. Then I'll add a bit more water to the paint and the color will become a bit lighter. Continue to add more water, the color gets even lighter. And at the end, I'll mix plenty of water with a tiny bit of paint to create the lightest color. So that's how to adjust the value of colors when you're using watercolor. Simply by adding water to the paint. The more water you add, the lighter the color gets. Again, practice mixing colors a few times before doing the exercise. You can mix two or more colors to create a new color and then add water to adjust its value 8. Mindful Painting in Traditional Media: Supplies & Gouache Demonstration: For this exercise, I'll be using these Strathmore watercolor sketchbook a bit bigger than the last one. I'm using Winsor and Newton gouache and watercolor paints. I use these rank brushes also from Winsor and Newton also recommend these details. Brushes. They can do the job and they're much cheaper. I use this 24 While Pink Palace to lay out all my watercolor paints because they're super easy to activate with water even when they're dry. I don't recommend doing the same with gouache because depending on the quality of the Gouache paints, it's better to keep them as moist as you can once they're dry. Now for a really long time, it might be hard for you to activate them with water again. Then I use a portray to do color mixing, a water container to wash brushes, and a cloth to dry brushes. To do this exercise, we need to plan out the geometric shapes across the page using a pencil and then fill out the shapes with paints. That's the whole idea. Nothing complicated. You just need to focus on painting the shapes in different colors. Now, I'm going to demonstrate how I do this exercise using gouache and watercolor 9. Mindful Painting in Traditional Media: Watercolor Demonstration: Now it's time for you to do a bit of Painting. Choose a Painting material plane now some geometric shapes in your Sketchbook. Stop Painting. See how you feel about the comparing to the drawing exercise? 10. Mindful Painting in Procreate: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to do the painting exercise in Procreate. I do have to say it's almost impossible to experience real painting in a digital form. After all, we're not using a paintbrush to paint on the digital device. However, we can mimic the visual effects of painting when we created digitally. That means we can use Painting Brushes in Procreate. I have created these two examples in Procreate. You can see the one on the left is to mimic the look of the Gouache Painting. While the one on the right is obviously simulating watercolor. The basic steps of doing this exercise in Procreate is exactly the same as what we just did in traditional media. We plan out the geometric shapes on page and then paint on it. I have created two templates for planning out the shapes so you can just paint directly on them. I'll show you where to find the templates a bit later in this lesson. But feel free to do your own planning of the shapes if you want to. Yeah. Before we start, I want to show you how to paint up your color palette in Procreate. In my demonstration of the exercise, you will see me going back to the colors menu and picking a different color all the time, we can actually pin up the pallets so it's easier for us to pick colors. So go to the colors menu. Choose palettes down here. Make sure the palette you're using is selected. Then tap on this shot bar at the top and drag it out. Now the palate stays floating in a small window. The idea didn't come to me when I was doing the demonstration, so I just let you know beforehand. Another thing is when you are painting to shapes, try not to lift up your Apple pencil when painting each one. I'll show you what I mean. You can see I'm painting this shape here and I lift up the pencil every time I paying the stroke, distros end up overlapping each other. It's just the nature of the brush, but that's not really what we want here. If I don't lift up my pencil and pen to whole shape all at once. It looks so much better. But this issue doesn't apply to every brush. So if the brush you're using has this overlapping issue, then don't lift up your pencil when painting one shape. All I'm saying is it just seemed to find a way to paint the shapes as neatly as you can. So that's all I need to tell you before we start. Now, let's dive into the Mindful painting exercise in Procreate Now it's time for you to do the painting exercise in Procreate, see if you'll like it better comparing to doing it in traditional media 11. Illustrated Journalling in Traditional Media: Examples & Supplies: The last exercise is illustrated Journalling and we'll be using prompting materials to do it. I see it as a way to document my thoughts and my daily life. This is where you can draw or paint things like nature, objects, animals, and people. Then you can write a simple text to tell a story or explain what was your idea at the time? In the first example here, I was drawing our supplies. So what happened was I was listening to Peggy Dean interviewing Lisa Condon and they were talking about what sort of supplies they have been using. And that prompted me to draw some are supplies. Then they cut them out and paste them into my journal using washi tapes. After that, I just write some text to document my thoughts. So that's basically the whole process. The next two examples or some flowers that I draw. The first one is a type of flowers that are found online. The second one is a bunch of flowers that I saw in my front yard. The next few examples are actually some leather designs. The backstory is I was covering a lot class in a secondary school as a casual teacher, toss was designing decorative letters. So the students were asked to use the first letter of their names and come up with a number of leather designs. And then was doing the task with them at the same time. And at the end of the day, I brought her in my designs and put them in my journal. The last example is a bit different from the others. I cut out the drawings and arrange them to construct a scene. So the backstory is, I was listening to set Golden's podcast at Cambridge the other day. He was talking about OpenAI and check GPT and the impact of this highly sophisticated technology on their wives. At the time, I was actually doing some planning for this class. I had all my paintings supplies laid out and started to create some examples. I found it quite interesting that I was doing something in a traditional way while listening to people, talking about advanced technologies that could make some people obsolete. So I decided to document this moment in my journal and write my thoughts right next to it. This exercise, I'll be using this mini sized journal. Although I do recommend choosing a bigger size Journal or Sketchbook, ideally, you can lay it flat when you're doing all the pasting, taping and writing in it. It might Demonstration a bit later in this lesson, you will see me struggling to lay this Journal flat. That's why I recommend finding a journal or Sketchbook. That's easy for you to work with a fraud they started with this or just continue using it. I will also be using my drawing materials. You can do painting if you want. I think it's an interesting idea to have tiny little Painting stuck in your journal. And I will have some drawing paper, washi tapes. He says, a cutting knife, a cutting board, and the glue stick. In my demonstration, you will see me using a liquid glue. It will just easier for me to handle at the time. But it turns out is not an ideal option. The liquid glued ended up soaking the drawing paper. And part of my example work was ruined. Glue sticks out. A much better option here. Just let you know 12. Illustrated Journalling in Traditional Media: Journal Spread Demonstration: Now we have everything ready. I'll be demonstrating how to create this scene in my journal. Now it's your turn to practice illustrated Journalling in your journal or Sketchbook. Think about the things you saw or heard and try to draw something that documents a particular moment in your life and have found with all the cutting, pasting and typing 13. Illustrated Journalling in Procreate: Examples & Flower Scene Demonstration: In this lesson, we'll be doing the illustrated journaling exercise in procreate. I have recreated true of my journal spreads in Procreate. One is this group of flowers with the cutout shape and the other is the painting seem. One of the challenges about doing this exercise in Procreate is to organize the layers properly. Because there are quite a few things involved and they're stacking on top of each other. But they shouldn't be too hard once you figure out which one is on top, which one is beneath it and which one is at the far back. I will show you how I organize layers in my demonstration 14. Illustrated Journalling in Procreate: Table Scene Demonstration: Now it's your turn to create a Journal Spread in Procreate. You can just recreate the one that you did previously in your journal and see which way you prefer to do the exercise in traditional or digital 15. Traditional Media vs. Procreate: At the end of the class, I want to briefly talk about the differences between using Procreate and traditional media to create our work. Procreate is just incredibly handy. You basically have everything in one place. You don't need to set up or pick up anything. You don't need to worry about making a mess. You just grabbed your iPad and start creating in Procreate. If you made a mistake, just simply get rid of the mistake and redraw that part in your work. It's also easy to make adjustments such as changing the colors, sizes, and positions of the motifs in your work. Traditional media, on the other hand, is great to use in a different manner. The field of holding all kinds of supplies and tools in your hand to create something on paper is remarkable. It's always fun to explore different media. And because the way you work with each medium is so different, it prompts you to really think about how you can use them to bring out the best results. I don't think traditional media or Procreate is way better than each other. They both have their merits and it's up to us to decide what is appropriate to use. So our work is presented in the best way 16. Parting Thoughts & Thank You: Thank you so much for taking this class. I hope you had FUN doing all the exercises. There is one last thing I mentioned before we conclude this class. If you go to the last page of our class Guide, you will find a link to a habit tracker. You can either printed out or open it up in Procreate. The purpose of this habit tracker is to help you keep track of all the days that you are able to create Art for at least 10 min. I don't expect you to fill in all the circles in the beginning. It's impossible to build a habit. All of a sudden. However, I do want you to think about, is there a regular time in your life that you can come into creating Art? For example, if you can only Cao 2 h in the morning on Sundays to create out, then do it every Sunday morning. If you only have 15 min on Wednesday and Thursday nights, then do it every Wednesday and Thursday night. As long as you can create Art consistently, you will eventually build a habit. After awhile, you might find yourself feeling in more circles in this tracker because you are able to create Art on more days during a week. When creating Art has truly become your daily habit, you don't even need this tracker. You just have the urge to create something despite how busy you are on the day and you don't need anything to remind you to do that. So I hope this class can help you stop building a habit of creating Art in your Busy Life. If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact me here on Skillshare, me on Instagram, or simply just send me an e-mail. Thank you again and I'll see you next time.