Copy to Create: Finding Your Style Through Inspiration

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Kolbie and I'm a self-taught watercolor artists and calligrapher. What that means is, I learned how to practice my art by watching other people and practicing the techniques that I learned from other people and experimenting with them to find my own style. Over the years, I've been doing this for about four years now, I feel like I've gotten into a really good place where I can scroll through Instagram and find pieces that I'm inspired by, and see what I like about them, and then move forward and try to incorporate bits and pieces of other people into my own style. Because I feel pretty comfortable doing that, I feel really strongly about sharing that knowledge with other people because I know that if you're like me and started off as a hobby artist, just watching other people, it can be really tricky to know how to move from practice and how to move from copying other designs to truly gaining inspiration from and incorporating them into your own style. Let me tell you a secret. If you come across an artist who says that their art is completely original and that they haven't been inspired by or their art isn't directly linked to another artist's piece of art, they're probably lying to you because art doesn't exist in a vacuum, we're a really vibrant community. One of the coolest things about art is, it's just looking at the world in a different way, and because you are your own person, you're an individual with a unique perspective, nobody else looks at the world the way that you do, that means you do have a unique perspective, even if other people are doing similar things. If you want to learn how to really harness your unique perspective and still gain inspiration from other people in a way that lifts up the art community and lifts up your own creativity, then I am excited to share this class with you. First, we're going to talk about the definition of gaining inspiration from versus copying and practicing from other people. We're going to talk about the differences between those two. And we're going to talk about the pros and cons and the importance of both of them in the creative process. Then I'm going to give you a clear roadmap to moving from copying and practice through inspiration from other people into finding your own style and really being comfortable learning from other people and then sharing your unique take on the world. Then I'm going to show you how I gain inspiration from other people by going through the exact process I laid out right in front of you. Finally, for the final project, I'm going to give you one of my designs that I want you to practice what we've learned and come up with your own piece that was inspired by mind but not a direct copy. If this class, if this format sounds like it would be interesting and fun for you, then please keep watching. 2. Definitions: Welcome to my copy to create course where we talk about how to move from practice through inspiration to finding your own style. Now, as I mentioned in the intro, we're first going to go over some important definitions. First, let's talk about what it means to copy someone. This is probably the most simple definition, copying someone means to look at a design that they did, or a tutorial that they did, or just look at somebody else's creation and copy it exactly. Like paint it, or create it in exactly the same way that they created it, so that if you put the two side-by-side together, a lot of the elements are in the same place, a lot of the same colors were used, and it would be very clear that they are directly linked together. Copying, and particularly even without the end product in mind, copying is most often when you are creating by looking at somebody else's work, and doing exactly what they did. That's what copying is. But honestly, I think that sometimes the word copying can have a really negative connotation, and I think that it's a buzzword that will kind of trigger some people sometimes especially beginners, and here's why; I think it frustrates a lot of beginners. I know that it did me to feel like they're not allowed to look at other people's work and learn from them. I'm here to say that that is not true at all. As again, a self-taught artist who learned how to do art by doing that, I don't think anybody wants you to not practice what they're showing you. That the key is what I just said, copying should only be practice, and in fact, copying is an important part of practice for art. I only know this from listening to other people who did go to art school and take art lessons and whatever, but I know an important part of really learning art traditionally is going to museums, and learning the techniques, and practicing famous paintings, and looking at what your teacher is doing and learning how to do it that way. [BACKGROUND] Copying is, if you are learning by watching tutorials on Instagram or on YouTube, copying is a really vital part of the learning process because again, it's practice, it's learning all the techniques you need to learn by watching other people who know how to do them. But, practice is not creating. It's kind of creating, but it's not tapping into your truest potential as a creator. It's not delving into your well of creativity to come up with a unique perspective. It's practicing and gaining the foundational tools that you need to be able to find your style and lift up your own creativity and share your view of the world with the world. Don't mind my son squawking in the background. [LAUGHTER] He just gets really excited about creativity. If anything that you take away from this class, I want you to take away that copying is not bad, but it's not creativity. Copying is practice, and it's necessary to get to the creating part, but it's not actually the creating part, okay? Copying is practice, and now, let's talk about what it means to be inspired by something. I think that that phrase is used a lot in social media when people are learning from other people. It's very common for people to post designs that were inspired by a different artist. But one thing that I'm constantly seeing is that, when somebody says their work is inspired by somebody else, really what they mean is they copied the design, and they followed the tutorial, and they want to give credit to the artists, which is good. You should give credit to an artist if you learned from them a specific tutorial. But, if what you did was copy their design, then you weren't inspired by it. You were inspired by it, but it's still, you're posting their design, not yours. The difference between copying them and inspired by is, if you're inspired by somebody and your piece is not a copy but a form of inspiration, then what you did was look at the things in the original design from the artist that you really admire, the tutorial that you really liked, you thought about it, and you practiced the elements that you loved, and then you turned in to something new, you turned into something different. Not so different that they're not linked, it's totally okay to look at two pieces that were inspired by each other and have them be similar in some ways and not in other ways. But the key thing is that if your design is inspired by somebody else's, it's not a direct copy. It's your take on somebody else's design or on somebody else's technique. That means you have to change it a little bit, you have to infuse your style into that design. I know that it sounds easier said than done, especially if you're a beginner and you're just trying to learn. I want you to know, we're all here for you. We want you to learn, we want you to practice, and we want you to keep being inspired by everybody else because that's how we all started too. We were all inspired by everybody else. If you're thinking about, but how do I move from copying then to having my piece really being an inspiration piece? How do I move from practice to harnessing the inspiration and using it to develop my own style? That's the tricky part, and that's what the rest of this class is for. If you want to keep learning about that and you want to hear my tips and tricks and my specific techniques, then keep watching. But the next video we're going to talk about why this topic is important for a few minutes, and then I'm going to give you my road. Thank you for watching this piece where we talked about the definitions and I will see you in the next video. 3. Why does this matter?: Hi there. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're watching this class sequentially my copy to create class, then you've already seen the intro video, and you've already seen the video where we go over the definitions, and we define the difference between copying and gaining inspiration from something. Now, I just want to briefly talk about why it's important to separate those two and honestly why this topic I think is important. Like I said in the last video, copying, which I defined really as practice copying is practicing technique that you learned from somebody else by mimicking them. It's crucial to learning. You can't learn how to do art without seeing how somebody else does art, particularly this art like watercolors, visual art. You can't learn how to do it without watching somebody else because it's so visual and hands-on. Don't stop copying, keep copying, keep practicing, keep looking at tutorials that I've put out or other artists have put out, and be inspired and invigorated by the idea that you might be able to do them, to copy them. That's exactly what I want. I think one of the coolest parts about social media, and for me about being a content creator is putting a video out of a piece that I've done and having somebody come back and say, man, I bet I could do that to look at something that I've done and see art that may be once seemed out of reach. But now feels just a little bit closer. I really want that for you. Keep copying, keep practicing. But know what to do next. When you are copying, don't just blindly copy without thinking about your work. You need to be mindful and analyze the techniques that you're practicing and really learn. If you're going to use copying as a form of practice that's going to turn you into a better artist then it can't just be blindly following the steps. You need to really think about each step that you're doing and think about why the artist took that step. Think about what about that design you really love. You need to be mindful. I need to analyze the work and copy with purpose. I think that is probably the phrases that really helps me a lot when I was learning to copy with purpose, to practice with purpose. Have that purpose be to really find your own creativity and knowing that other artists out there doing really cool things, and you want to do really cool things too. You're going to learn from them with purpose, and not even the end goal in mind, but you're going to learn from them with the goal of moving into your own style and developing your own unique perspective on the world. Copying with purpose is really key to using the practice of copying to your advantage and in a healthy way that will help lift up the community. One thing that helps me with that too, is thinking about my life and my creativity as an endless well. I think there's a Maya Angelou quote that goes something like there's no end to creativity, creativity begets creativity, the more you practice it, the more you do it, the more you have. If you get stuck in the mindset of well, I can't, I can't do it. I can't think of my own style. I can't come up with something that's completely unique. I can only copy other people's designs. If I can't copy other people's designs, then that means I can't create. That in my mind is coming from a place of scarcity. Scarcity, meaning you're assuming that there's only so much creativity to go around. I think that is a wrong assumption. I think that there is an endless amount of creativity. There are endless ways to view the world and to share your ideas and to communicate your feelings about the world on paper, endless ideas on how to do that. The more you practice and copy with purpose and figure out what you like about what you're doing, the better you're going to be able to tap into your own creativity, and figure out how you can slightly shift what you're doing or channel those techniques into something that really is uniquely yours. Coming from a place of abundance, which is the opposite of scarcity, meaning there is an abundance of creativity. There's an overflowing, never-ending source, never-ending well of creativity inside you and inside everybody else. Inside this community is a really helpful mindset to have when you are practicing and learning and trying to come up with your own style. Keeping that in mind, I briefly just want to talk about why if you only copy and you only post things that are direct copies of other people. Why that's not good for you, and why it's not good for the community. First of all, it's not good for you because it tampers your creativity. Like I said, if you don't allow yourself to grow and to expand and come from a place of abundance, then you are doing yourself a disservice by assuming that you don't have your own ideas or you don't have your own creativity that you can tap into. I think that it's wrong to assume that. I just think it's wrong because everybody has that creativity, and I think that it's hurting you as an artist in the long run because you have so much potential, you have so much to give. Even if the things that you have to give looks similar to somebody else, that's okay because it's still what you have to give as long as what you're creating is actually a creation that came from you that is not a direct copy. You are fully capable of moving away from directly copying other people and really harnessing techniques to share your style. I really believe that. But aside from harming you, yourself as an artist, copying can also harm the art community. A lot of people, a lot of artists like me, share their art as a form of supporting themselves. If I've had a lot of people copy my designs and try to sell them for themselves. It can be really disheartening, and sometimes especially in the age of social media where content creation is so important. Sometimes it makes me want to not make tutorials anymore. It makes me not want to share these cool techniques with you. If I think that some people are going to take advantage of my heart, of my art, and what I want to share with the world. It makes me want to close myself off a little bit, which makes me sad that it makes me want to do that. So far I haven't been so hurt by that, that I haven't closed off. But I have known artists who have been so hurt by other people's stealing their work because if you copy someone, and you don't tag them or you don't give credit to their design, and you pass it off as completely your own, that's stealing. I know that's like an uncomfortable topic. But it is if you don't credit somebody else, and you directly copied them. Especially, if you try to sell that piece of artwork, you're stealing from them. That is really harmful for the community. It's doing a disservice to yourself as an artist. I think that if we want this our community to be as vibrant and open and compassionate as it can be, if we truly want to embrace the whole community over competition mantra, then we need to learn how to copy with purpose and meaning, how to learn and practice and share our ideas, and then how to harness those ideas and turn them into our own style. That's what this class is for. Now, that I'm done chatting your ear off about why this topic is so important, let's move on to the meat of this class, which is my road map to moving from copying through being inspired by to finding your own style. Let's take a breather, and take in the importance of this idea and topic for the art community, and then let's dive right in. See you soon. 4. The Roadmap: Welcome back. We have gone through the intro, we've gone through the definitions, we've listened to me talk about why all of this is [LAUGHTER] important. Now, here is probably what you've been waiting for, my roadmap to moving from copying and practicing, through being inspired by and into really finding your own style. Before we delve into the specific steps, walk with me for a moment, pretend you're scrolling through Instagram, and you're scrolling, you're casually liking things or maybe commenting on some things, and then you stop in your tracks because you've stumbled upon a piece or a video or a tutorial that just makes your heart skip a beat because it's so beautiful or it's just mesmerizing. But more than that, you think to yourself as you're looking at this design at this tutorial, "I think I could do that. I think using the tools that I have and the tools that this artist is so generously sharing with me by sharing this tutorial on this piece of art, I bet I could learn how to do that just by watching this tutorial or just by looking at this piece." Isn't that such a cool feeling when you come across a piece or a design that maybe previously seemed a little bit out of reach. But by seeing one way that a specific artist shared it with you, it suddenly seems so attainable, like you could do it. I remember thinking to myself the first few times that happened how inspiring honestly it was to go from thinking art was this big mystery to really envisioning myself as an artist and now seeing myself as an artist professionally, it's so fun and it's so cool, and I want you to have those moments. Now we're back to; I found this piece, I really want to try it, I really think I can do it, so now what? [LAUGHTER] Now what do I do? I don't want to copy. I don't want to steal from this artist, but I also really want to practice and try this. So to this specific scenario which I guarantee you at least somebody watching this class has had before, I want to say there's an APP for that. [LAUGHTER] This is my cheesy acronym of what my roadmap is. There's an APP, A-P-P for this scenario. First A, analyze. When you find a design that you like, before you just blindly copy it, because I remember in my previous video I said if you're going to view copying as practice, then you need to copy with purpose. You need to practice with a purpose. One of those purposes is to figure out the techniques that you're learning and to figure out what you love so much about them. The first step to moving from copying to inspiration is to analyze. Think about why you love a piece, look at all of the colors that were used, look at the different tools that were used, especially if there's a video tutorial, that can be helpful to look at all of the steps, not just to learn the steps, but to think about why the artist used those steps, [NOISE] and to think about what you could do to replicate that, and to think about [BACKGROUND] why you love them, and what about those steps makes you inspired, it makes you think that you can do it. Just as important though as thinking about what you love about a piece, is to think about what you don't love about a piece, because if you're going to find your own style, then you have to figure out the pieces that you want to take and incorporate, and the pieces that you want to leave behind. That's not to say that you're going to look at a piece and think about how this artist messed up, because honestly I think that every error or failure it's just another opportunity to [BACKGROUND] learn, and especially in the art world. But if you're going to incorporate somebody else's design into your own style, then it's important to be mindful of what they're doing and why they're doing it, and what parts that you really want to practice, what parts really resonate with you. Because when you find the pieces that resonate with you and also identify the pieces that maybe don't so much, then that is what's going to help you figure out what your style is. More than anything, I promise you your body and your mind and your creativity are yearning to come out, they are yearning to help you find exactly what your style is. If you listen to that, if you listen to what your guts is telling you, "Oh, yes, this textured watercolor sky, this is exactly the thing that's getting me going. This is exactly why I want to be an artist." Then maybe if you look at a piece of mine or like this one in the background right here. If you look at a piece of mine and say, "Oh, that tree just looks so cool, and I want to learn how to paint trees like that. But the sky behind that, I could probably do with that. I think I could paint a different kind of sky." That's the kind of practice that you want to get into, is thinking about what you really want to move forward and what you want to practice about a piece, and maybe what you don't want to practice about a piece. That's the first step, is to analyze, analyze the design, analyze the tutorial, be mindful about what the artist is doing, and really think about what parts of the design are what you want to create, and what make you want to keep creating, and how to move on from there. So A is for analyze. Now P is for practice. The first P is for practice, and this is where the quote-unquote copying comes in. We're going to practice with purpose as the next step. After we've analyzed, you can practice all the techniques that you've learned. Now, that could really mean exactly copying the design that was shared with you. That's okay, if you want to practice exactly the tutorial and the technique and do all the steps exactly the way that the artist did at the first time, then you should, to practice, to really get the techniques down just to make sure that as you're practicing, you're keeping in mind the techniques that you identified earlier in the analyze step, and so that you can put them in your repertoire, and get better at them, and think about as you're practicing and putting that analysis into practice. Considering what you like and what you don't, and how you're moving your hand, and how your body is reacting, and what ways that you do it slightly differently from the other artist. [NOISE] Excuse me. As long as you are thinking about your previous analysis and practicing with purpose, then this practice step in the APP process is so important. You analyze all the steps, and then you practice with purpose, and that is what's going to help hone your skills. It's what's going to [BACKGROUND] help your mind help foster the creative process within you. We have analyzed a design that we really like and we've practiced it, whether that's the whole design or whether that's just pieces of the design. One important thing before I move on to the last one is, if you are copying someone, if you're directly copying a design, you honestly probably shouldn't post it to Instagram. I know you want to share because if you copied it and you just loved how it came out and looked, it came out so beautiful, and looked almost just like the original, it's so hard not to share. But the stuff that we share with the world, I think is [BACKGROUND] even more satisfying if it's really our own creation. I personally, I don't share things that I've copied from other people, and believe me, I still do that. [BACKGROUND] I still look at designs that other people have posted [BACKGROUND] and copy the techniques and practice them. Everyone does, all artists do that. [BACKGROUND] Again, if they say that they don't, they're lying to you. But I only post things that are my original design. By my original design, [BACKGROUND] I mean that I have taken techniques that I've learned and put them into on paper from something that came from my head, not from looking at somebody else. But if you do, you just can't help it, you really want to share, make sure that when you post it, you credit the original artist, and you say, "Original design by artist." You don't say, "Inspired by," because it's not inspired by. If you've made a direct copy, then it's not inspired by them, it's copying their design, which is fine. It's okay to practice, but you need to credit the artist the right way. If you're going to post a copy, that's okay, but say in the caption, "Original design by," and then tag the artist in the comments and in the photo. You know what will happen, I bet they're going to give you so much encouragement, and be so grateful that you tagged them in the right way because it's respecting their art and it's respecting them as an artist. Now that I have covered that little soapbox, [LAUGHTER] let's move on to the final step in this process. The final step in this process is pivot. Pivot is the hard part. It's after you've analyzed and after you've practiced, then pivoting to using those techniques that you've learned and harnessing them into your own style, is the hard part. But I really believe that you can do it. In the next video, we're going to talk about specific ways that you can pivot, and specific techniques that will help to spur that creativity within you. But for now, I'm just going to leave you with, it's important to after you've analyzed and after you've practiced and after you're thinking about where you want to go next, where you're going to pivot your work and your creativity, to pivot without judgment. To look at the work that you've done and don't say to yourself, "Man, this is just so much worse than [LAUGHTER] the person who I've been practicing from. This is just not as good as them." Because when you start comparing your work and your practice to especially if you're comparing it to the original person who honestly likely has practiced that lots and lots of times. I say that often to my students, if they're practicing trees or mountains or something, and they say to me, "Ma'am, mine just don't. Yours just looks so natural." I've painted so many trees. [LAUGHTER] It's of course, they look a little bit natural because you haven't seen all of the practice that I've put in. All of the papers that I've recycled from trees that I did not think looked very good, and all of the techniques that I throw out the window because they weren't exactly right for me. You haven't seen that, you only see the polished nice trees I like to present in my classes or my videos. But in order to get to those polished versions, one thing that was helpful and important for me was looking at my practice, looking at the designs that I copied and practiced without judgment, without saying that they were good or bad, but just being mindful of what happened, and being mindful that I created something, and figuring out what I want to create next, figuring out what part of that practice I want to move into my own project creation, into my own creativity. Practice, and then pivot without judgment. That's the most important part. Once again, there's an APP for that [LAUGHTER]. If you want to move from copying to gaining inspiration, you need to analyze, you need to practice with purpose, and you need to pivot without judgment. If you think you can do that, let's move on to the next video, and we'll talk about specific techniques that you can use to pivot if you're having a hard time moving in that area. Stay tuned. 5. How to Pivot: We have gone through the app process of moving from copying to creating, which is analyze, practice, then pivot. You need to analyze what you are trying to copy, you need to analyze what you really love about this design that instead inspires you, then you need to practice the techniques that are in the design and you need to practice with purpose so that you are really being mindful about what you're practicing and why you're practicing and why you love it, why it resonates with you, and why you think it could fit in with your own style, and then the pivot is to pivot without judgment. So looking at what you've created and without comparing it to other people, figuring out what you love about it and where you want to go from there, and how you can start incorporating what you've learned into other pieces. As I mentioned in the last part of the previous video, the pivot part is I think the hardest part of this process, is figuring out, okay, I understand that I need to incorporate these techniques into my own style, but how do you do that? That's what this video is for. There are lots of different ways to pivot. There are lots of different ways to figure out how to take a technique and put it somewhere else or turn it into something else or add something to it. Remembering what we mentioned in an earlier video that if you're coming from a place of abundance, from a mindset, that there is always more creativity and there's always an infinite creative well that you can dive into and pull something out of and share with the world, then this process is I think going to be a lot more comfortable maybe is the right word and it'll help you understand why it's so important, this pivot process. But that said, if you just have no idea where to start, you just don't know how to move from practice to pivoting into your own style, then I have some techniques that have really worked well for me. I like to call them the three E's. The three E's are excel, explore, and experiment. We're going to talk through all three of those E's. The first one is excel. Excel, meaning to become a master over whatever technique that you learned from somebody else. One of my favorite ways to get my creative juices flowing is to practice something just like over and over and over again and get it so that I have it down so that I could do it basically with my eyes closed. Because I think one of the ways that you can really harness and figure out your own style is by doing something over and over and over again. In fact, that's honestly just how you get better. I think that over the years, a lot of people have looked at my page, my Instagram page, and my tutorials and have commented, I just don't think that I could ever do that. I don't think I can be as good as you and to that, I say that is absolutely not true and I practice a lot. I think that you look at an artist and just assume that they're naturally talented and whether or not that's true because I do believe that some people are born with natural talent, practice and repetition, and practicing with purpose, is far more important, far more vital than any natural talent could ever be to becoming an artist. I really believe that. If one of the ways that you're not sure how to pivot. One of the ways that I learned how to pivot is to excel at something, to really think to myself, okay, I'm going to nail this, I'm going to master how to do this and that will then help you figure out where to put techniques like that into your own style and into your own designs. Because it's just like second nature, when you think of a subject like that, that's what happened with me and trees, honestly. I saw some people paint pine trees and I tried to paint pine trees using similar methods and they did not look good. I did not like them. Often, the first time that I practice, I painted one way, and it looks awesome. I think, wow, this tutorial was great. I think I really nailed this and then I tried painting it again, and it's like a completely different person painted them. They look so bad. I specifically remember this with trees, actually, with my first line of misty trees. I saw a tutorial of someone doing it in a specific way and so I tried doing it in that way, and the first time I did it, I thought it looked pretty cool. Then the second time I did it, I couldn't really pin it down, but it just did not look that great. After some really solid practice, more and more practice, so that I was telling myself that I could excel at this, I realized the difference was my size of trees. The second time I tried it and I didn't like it, I made all the trees the same size, and that wasn't as appealing to me, as having all the trees be different sizes and varied sizes. The only way that I came to that conclusion, as strange as it is, instead of just by looking at them, was by really practicing and learning to excel at the subject that I wanted and practicing it so much that now trees really just come second nature to me, at least the specific way that I paint them. By practicing and excelling at other ways that people have taught me, I just naturally moved into a different shape and into really my own unique style. That came not from me looking at other people, but came from me practicing what other people taught me, and eventually moving into something that felt the most natural and the most comfortable for me. By mastering, by excelling at one specific technique from designs that I saw on the Internet, I was able to find my own style and incorporate that. That's why the first E in the three E's of pivoting is Excel. Because when you look at practice as a way to really excel at a technique and to master a technique so that it can help springboard you into your own techniques, I think for me that has been one of the most helpful ways that I've been able to tap into my creativity. I think it's also helpful to remember that the more you know the basics, the more you'll be able to see the basics everywhere else and be able to see and break down how every other painting is formed and that brings us right into our second E. The second E is for explore. By explore, I mean, if you like one way that an artist as a painting, for example, if you really love how I paint misty trees and you want to try those misty trees and you did and you love them, but you're not sure where to go from there. I will tell you a secret. I am not the only artist who paints misty trees. In fact, I don't even think I'm the best artist who paints misty trees. I'm sure there are hundreds or even thousands of other people who paint trees really similar to the way that I paint them. My recommendation to you is to use hashtags or use trending topics or whatever. Sometimes the Instagram algorithm will help you by suggesting different things that are similar to what you've looked at before, no matter how you find them, just look up lots of different designs for misty trees if that's the thing that you're going for. No matter what the design is, if you just love that artist and you practiced and now you want to figure out how you can incorporate one specific artist's technique into your repertoire. See how other people have done that. See how other people have taken the same subject and used it in a similar way. I think the benefit of that is you're involving the whole community in trying to help shape your style and it also can show you that there are so many ways to paint the same thing. One thing that I've actually found, as I've been involved in this community, especially since most of my work is landscape-focused. A lot of people paint the same stuff. A lot of people paint similar things because we're all so inspired by nature and we're all so inspired by what we can see. But just because we're painting a really similar subject, even honestly, if we might be using the same specific reference, if we're using the same reference photo or if we've gone to the same place, people can represent the same subject in so many different ways. If you're nervous that you're not going to be able to move away from copying. You're not going to be able to move away from one specific style and really try to figure out what your style is. All it takes is seeing how other people have done exactly that, have taken the same subject and turned it into their own style, to help you realize that you can be part of that community too. Practically if you're thinking about, well, I understand that I can be inspired by other people who are doing similar things, but how does that help me? To that I say this. Once you have really practiced with purpose and been mindful over the techniques that you're learning, you should be able to recognize them in other people's work, and also recognize what other people have done differently. By looking at dozens of examples of how people have painted similar subjects, but in slightly different ways, you just have more options to choose from of what things you want to incorporate and what things you don't want to incorporate. I think that as you pick and choose and you decide, I really love how they created the mist on this, but I want to combine that misty technique with this color palette or I want to combine that misty technique with these cool frame trees that are coming into the picture or I want to put some mountains behind that, like mountains in this picture, but I don't want specifically the mountains from this picture I want to try from this technique and so on and so forth. It's like piecing together your own style and figuring out really the way that you see the world by the help of other people. There's no shame in that. There's no shame in looking at 10 different paintings and picking and choosing what you like about each of them, and then piecing them together in a puzzle. I think that it sounds silly when you say it that way, but it's still your unique style when you do that. By picking and choosing the things that you like and that you don't like. It is just spurring your creativity to make something that didn't exist before. I looked up the definition of creativity, which led me down a rabbit hole of what it means to create, and honestly the coolest, most distinct definition that I've found was helping something and in art, helping a subject or a scene come to life that never existed before in exactly that way. If you gain inspiration from lots of other people and use social media and the Internet to help you do that, it's really easy to do that. Then you can really put something on paper that didn't exist before. Even if at first it's just piecing together that's based on parts of other people's things. That's one way that you can pivot if you excel and explore. Explore is the second one by putting yourself in the way of inspiration and figuring out what you like about certain paintings and what you don't, and seeing how everybody else does it. The final E is probably the biggest one. It's experiment. I think that it can be the trickiest and the one where you're not exactly sure what it means and so by experimenting obviously I mean, just testing the boundaries and tweaking the style a little bit, tweaking the technique a little bit with watercolor, that means try using a different brush or try using different amounts of water or different paint or different colors. Those are the first things that right off the bat come to mind when I think of experiment. I also have other specific cool methods I've learned from other people or that I've incorporated from learning by myself. There are some techniques that you can learn to experiment with. Number 1, you can try looking for the technique elsewhere. If you're learning a technique and it's in a specific subject, for example, if you've taken my misty forest class and you know that by using water you can create a misty effect under the trees. One way to experiment is by looking to see how other people have used water in similar ways. If they've used water to paint misty mountains, or if they've used mist to make blurry scenes and other kinds of photos. That's one way that you can experiment by looking to use a technique in a slightly different way, maybe for a slightly different subject, and using the Internet to help you find that content can be helpful. You can try looking for the technique elsewhere. You can also try brainstorming other art techniques that you could combine with the new techniques that you're using. If you already know a lot of wet-on-dry techniques, but you just learned some wet-on-wet ones, then you can try mark-making. Mark-making basically is just purposefully testing out paint and making marks, literally making marks on paper, but with purpose, almost like a creative meditation with no specific end goal in mind, just paint with the goal of painting, with the goal of testing out techniques. The key here for mindful painting, for creative meditation, is to have no judgment, is to not look at something and say, that looks bad, I don't like that but to just paint and see what comes of it and see what happens when you mix two colors together and see what happens when you mix different techniques. See what happens when you use different paintbrushes. Just see what happens and notice. Then another way that I really like to experiment, especially trying to move away from copying and I learned this technique from somebody else actually is to, once you've practiced, a good way to pivot is to try the design again, but don't look at the reference photo. Just try to paint the design exactly from memory and see what happens, see what the differences are and it might push yourself if you don't have a good memory or if it's hard to remember all the specific things, you might be tempted to look at the reference photo again, but don't. Just paint the same things over again and see what your mind comes up with and I guarantee you, you're going to come up with some subtle differences that you might actually really like and that is the beginnings of your style coming into fruition. Those are some experimentation techniques that might be helpful for you. They've been helpful for me. That wraps up this pivot class. Remember the three Es are Excel, Explore, and Experiment. If you remember to excel, to master the techniques that you're learning, to explore and look for lots of other artists and people who love the same things that you love and to experiment, to push your boundaries and to test new tools and to test new mediums and to create without judgment, then I am sure pivoting your practice into your style is going to be successful. Now that we've learned these techniques. Let's move on to the real-time demonstration. 6. Demo: Analyze: Now that we have gone through all of the processes. I want to show you what they look like in person, and to show you that this is a process that I use myself. We're just going to pull up Instagram on my iPad and I'm going to go to my saved folders. I have a lot of different folders for lots of different things that I save when I'm inspired by things. For years and years I just had this big inspiration folder, and recently I've been separating them into specific categories to try to stay a little more organized. I talked a little bit more about this in my bonus video at the end of the course, there's a bonus video on how I find inspiration and where I go to look. If you're interested in that then makes sure to check it out. But for now, I'm going to pull up the illustration that inspires me that I want to give a try. This is just a little French girl illustration that Jennarainey posted, and I thought it was adorable and I really wanted to try it. I thought that it would be fun to film all of that, and show you how I would use my inspiration process to take an illustration like this and incorporate it somehow into my style. Generally I picked an easier illustration not easier in terms of complexity even though it is simple, but easier in that it already seems like it's my style of watercolor anyway. If you've taken any of my other classes before, I really enjoyed this loose style of watercolor that's not super realistic. But that uses simple techniques to capture detail and complexity, and that makes simple loose illustrations like this look really cool. If you hearken back to what we talked about earlier in the course. My process for going from copying to creating is the catchphrase, there's an app for that. APP, and a stands for analyze. In this video we're just going to analyze this illustration, I'm going to analyze this illustration. Which basically just means breaking it down to see if I can recognize the techniques and to identify the techniques that I really like, so that when I practice it myself I can make sure to practice those specific ones. First of all, I noticed the calligraphy over here that's in watercolor. This is pretty similar to the style of calligraphy that I like to use, which is just like a more modern loose calligraphy not in any specific or rigid style. It's really pretty, I'm assuming this is a word in French. I don't know what it is because I don't speak French, but I think that's a really cool add-on to help make this have a French feel. But moving on to the actual illustration, which is what drew me to this piece in the first place. I really love how this illustration uses whitespace and wet on dry as well as wet-on-wet. You can see thin strands of hair, but you can also see some blends of brown in the hair and different colors in the hair. As well as the whitespace to showcase detail without having to go into detail. The whitespaces could represent light shining on the hair, and the whitespace is also obviously make room for these little strands of hair. You can see these little lines to represent how strands of hair work, and then the wet-on-wet to look at all these different colors. Using that we have this general shape of the head, it looks like she started right here, let me use this paint brush as a pointer tool. She started right here at the top where a part might be and then probably I can even just use his paintbrush. Probably went like this with her paintbrush, started right here and then did a thin, thick, thin stroke to form the head. Probably my guess is that she did the same thing over here and just formed the head like that. I think my analysis of the boon particularly is that, it's a pretty simple style and I think that I could probably emulate that. I just have to remember to leave some whitespace both to give it some character and maybe represents some light on the hair, but also to make room for these little strands of hair that just gives this loose boon hairstyle a more complex look. Then the hair tie she has at the end is pretty straightforward, but I do notice she did it wet on wet. You know that because some of the black of the hair tie is blending right into the brown of her hair. She didn't wait for this to dry at all, she just painted the hair tie in a simple shape right when this boon was still a little bit wet. It looks like part of it had dried because there's a little dried paint line right there. But other than that, that's pretty straightforward. If I would just paint the head and then paint the hair tie, and then I really love how she did the sweater or the dress or whatever it is. [LAUGHTER] These stripes are partly what indicate that it's French. I'm not a fashion expert, but I think that horizontal stripes like this are commonly associated with French people. But I love that she didn't draw out the actual clothes or the actual body, she more broke it down into shapes. The stripes are in a triangle shape and then it's just stripes. You don't see pants, you don't see her body, but you can tell that it's a body. It forms this cute illustration, like her head is a little more shaped, has a little more form, and realistic feel to it. But then her body is deconstructed into shapes and colors and I think that's really cool. If that's my analysis the next step after analyze is to practice. Part of practicing is to copy this exactly, but then also to keep your analysis in mind as you're practicing. I will do the practice section in the next video. Again this was the analyze section of APP; analyze practice pivot, and I hope you found this helpful. Let's move on to practice where I will copy this. Remember copying is practice and I'll talk more about that in the next video. 7. Demo: Practice: Now that we have analyzed the illustration, let's go ahead and practice it. I'm pulling out my paintbrush. I'm using a number 6 round paintbrush here. I'm just going to start with the head and move down. I'm going to skip the modern calligraphy or maybe I'll do a word that I know. But I'm going to start with the head for now. It looks like she has some brown and also some yellow or orange in there. Just in general, I think it's good to start with the light colors first and then move to dark. But it also looks like these are single strokes, I doubt that she started with a sketch first because these are pretty simple. Because the hair is pretty blendy, I know that I need to use a bit of water in my paint. Before I get started when I practice if have practice paper or pieces on watercolor paper that I don't use and sometimes instead of using student-grade paper, I just cut up professional-grade paper that I've already used for practice or for scanning things or whatever that I'm not using anymore. If you've taken my winter wreath class, I painted some elements on here and scanned them. Then once I didn't need that anymore, I cut them up and I'm using the back, sometimes watercolor paper doesn't really work to use the back or it doesn't work as well. But even if it doesn't work as well, that's why I like to use it for practice. I don't use the good paper. I don't use real fresh paper for practice usually. I like to save these scraps. We know that our paint is going to be pretty watery. Especially with wet-on-wet, we want to have that watery, transparent feel. Like I said, I'm pretty sure she started in using little crescent strokes like this. But with wet-on-wet, you need to hurry and do your strokes. I'm just practicing this circle, but I know I need to leave some white space. I'm going to leave some there and looking at hers as a reference, I'm not leaving white-space in the exact same spots that she did. But that's okay. It's a circle, but then it also is a little bit elongated towards the bottom. Now I'm going to add a little more brown as I'm painting here. I'm going to leave some white space there but then fill in the rest of this. I think one thing to help, especially with this practice, is when you're copying or when you're being inspired by someone and wanting to try out a technique or an illustration that they've done before is to try not to be so worked up about doing it exactly the way that they've done it because really you should be doing it. You should be trying to figuring out, the way that you like to do it too. My white spaces aren't exactly in the same places that hers were. But she looks like she has this head with some white spaces that has some different blended colors in it. I think I'm going to add just a little bit of this scarlet, more red tone. But I do want to leave some lighter spaces, just to show that it's blended. Now I'm going to add in with my smaller brush. This is a size 1. I'm going to add in some strands like she did. Here's one strand down the middle. Hers is a little more tilted. I don't know that I like it so much. I don't know that I like mine so much that it's right down the middle. To emulate that I'm just going to maybe put a strand over here. Like that. Hers is looking way better to me right now, but that's how copying is usually in my experience. Maybe a couple still strands like that. Then I'll keep using my small paintbrush to paint this bone. She started down here. She just had one little stroke. It looks like she has just like a curly little bond like that. With some strands in the shape of a bond. Some of the hairs twisted this way and some of the hairs twisted that way. She used wines, paint strokes to indicate that. Then some of the hair she had coming out of the bun. I think that's a pretty cool move to have some of the hair coming out of the bun like that because that's often how buns are messy buns especially. Yeah, I have to say when I first started doing this, I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but I think it's turning out okay. Even though it's a little different from hers, which honestly is how it should be like my loose strands on this side, I'm still the one strand down the middle is still a little bit wonky for me, but I think it turned out okay. Next, we're going to do it looks like she has a black hair tie. I'm just going to start in the middle. It's blended right there. I'm going to start in the middle and actually, I changed my mind. I was going to do a little brush, but I think I'm going to go back to my number 6 brush. Her hair tie definitely has movement so it's not like I say, hair tie. It's not like a rubber band that you have on your wrist, but definitely more like a ribbon that she's left open. It's in this triangle shape, but it's not an exact triangle. It's more like a loose cloth floating in the wind. It's how I would describe that. I'm going to do the same thing on this side. Just fill that in. It's the shape is slightly different and the size is slightly different but still not too bad. Next are these stripes and this is going to be probably the easy part. I'm just going to take some blue and it looks like some of her stripes are really watery. I was going to do the sixth brush, but I'm going to go back to my size number 1. I'm picking up some really watery blue and just starting on the top here. She just gets slightly bigger as she goes down. I wonder if she drew the lines first. I don't know. There are little lines right here and I wonder if she drew those first to help give her a guideline for where the stripes are supposed to go. There's a very good chance she did that, but we are where we are now. Just painting these stripes down the line. I spaced mine out a little bit more than she spaced hers. That's okay. It's good to note and we'll talk about that when we are almost done with this. Then she had some little lines like that to give a little more definition to the dress. Finally, I'm just going to get some really watery paint here because to do calligraphy, you have to get really watery paint. I don't know what word that she did, but I'm going to do one that I do know. I don't have to copy her style of calligraphy because I already have one that I enjoy and her style isn't much different from mine. I don't mind not really paying attention to her style of calligraphy. That's one of the only words in French I know. Here's the end of my copy session. As I was talking through all the things that I noticed about what she did and how I could mimic that. This is very clearly a copy. Like if you were to hold this up to hers, even though I have a different word, even though the placements of the hair and the stripes are slightly different, you can definitely tell that one was influenced by the other. Because hers came first, obviously, and because I'm making a class about this, you obviously know that I copied hers. The copying here was for practice. The things I was practicing were using white space and these little strands of hair to make a loose watercolor bun that wasn't really time intensive. It didn't take that long for me to paint this and noticing the shapes that she did with the bun. I know in the future if I want to do like a loose style messy bun like this, then using these crescent shapes that face each other, that's a useful technique for painting this bond. Then for the stripes if I were to do this in the future, I don't know that I would use these definition lines so much or at least in the way that she did. But I could see how she would want them there to help guide her shape and give a little bit more definition to your eyesight, so it's not completely deconstructed. But basically during this session, I looked at the techniques that I thought that she was probably using, tried my best to emulate it and then reflected on what I learned. I think that I learned a lot about painting loose humans like this, or at least the back of a human head like this. Now I'm pretty confident that if I can keep practicing and figure out different things that I can do to make this more my style or find similar paintings like this and learn lots of different ways to paint it. That is where pivot comes in and that will be in the next video. We analyzed first, we looked at a painting and figured out what we liked about it, and then we practiced it. I used this as a reference photo and definitely try to practice it stroke by stroke. I did exactly what she did. Now we need to pivot. Pivot is the hard part. It's where you have to figure out exactly how to make yours different or fill in gaps where you see them. I know it can be tricky, but I also know that you can do it. In the next video, I will be pivoting and demonstrating ways that I will take this illustration and try to turn it into my style or incorporate parts of the illustration into my style. Before we move on to pivot I have one more note on practice. We already talked about this at length in the other videos, but just in case you skipped those ones. If you practice by copying like this, totally fine to practice and see if you can get the techniques down. But if you want to post your work, you need to make it very clear that this is not your design. If I were to ever post this on Instagram, which I doubt I will because this was just a practice for me. But if I were, I would post it and then I would say, so inspired by Genereni's design of this little French girl, I had to try it for myself. Here is my take on her design, on her tutorial, hers and just make it very clear that this is her design. You don't have to outright say,". Oh, I copied this." Because I know that some people don't like saying that. It sounds, I don't know. People are uncomfortable saying that, but you don't need to. But even though I said I was really inspired by her painting, I also would say this is my take on her design. Because it is. That's her design. I didn't really do anything different to this design to make it mine. The post essentially wouldn't be about me. It would be all about what I learned from her. I think that's one of the most important parts about posting a design that you've copied from somebody else, is instead of making it about you and your creativity and whatever, if you make it instead about what you've learned and focus on the actual artist that gave you the tutorial or the design that helps you learn these techniques, then it can be a tandem thing. But you need to give just as much focus to the person who originally did this design as to you. Just so that when they see it, they can feel happy that they've helped to teach as opposed to a little bit annoyed that you took their design without giving them proper credit. There's just one little note about that. I know that honestly that's what this class is for, is to help you move past copying and into creativity. But if you really are proud of the work that you've done, even if you've copied it, it's fine if you want to post it. You just need to make it very clear that this is not your design. Cool. Now let's move on to the next video for pivot. 8. Demo: Pivot, Part 1: We have analyzed the illustration that I really liked, and I copied it pretty much exactly what she did with some slight variations because we're all humans and this is handmade. But for the most part this is an exact copy. Now we're moving on to pivot, which is where you take the techniques that you've learned from copying and turn them into your own thing. As a preface to that, I've talked about it at length in other videos, but I just have to remind myself that art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Everybody is influenced by everybody and so you shouldn't be ashamed to be inspired by other people. But it's important to stretch your creativity and see where you can take those techniques to new places or at least new to you places and see if you can stretch the techniques yourself without having to rely on other people to give you all of your ideas. It can be hard, it can be tricky to learn how to do that, but that's we're going to talk a little bit about that and other ways to pivot in this video and the next pivot videos as well. First, there are going to be three pivot videos. This is the first one. I've pulled up my little notes class of my outline to just reference what I've talked about. We're going to go back to the three Es of pivot. If you remember, we talked about, you can explore the field, the first E, you can experiment, and you can excel. First, let's explore the fields and put yourself in the way of more inspiration. I stumbled upon this illustration by Jenna Rainey of this little French girl and I really loved it. I loved that style. Now, one way to pivot is for me to see if I can find more of that style. I'm just going to go to Pinterest. I thought it was over here, but I'll just search for it. I'm going to hop onto my Pinterest because Pinterest is where I get a lot of my style, and I'm going to search for French girl illustration and see what comes up. There are the stripes again that we've noticed there. One French girl illustration has a bray and this bob style, but we can still see the stripes. This is a more loose style illustration. That's really cool. One way, if you really want to document all of how you're exploring, you can create a new board. If I were to say French girl illustrations, you can have Bs secret, your own little inspiration board. Even honestly calling it that it's going to automatically search for it. I want to save that to my inspiration board, this illustration, I think it's pretty cool along with the style that I was looking for. This one is pretty cool. You can't see it very well, but because it has the simple watercolor style that I like where it has the shape and silhouette, but it's not very detailed. It looks like I could do it in one stroke that's the thing I'm looking for. Let's go back to this and if I click on one on the general search, then I scroll down, it will pull up others similar illustration so let's see if any of those are appealing to me. I'm not looking for super detailed ones like this, but this one's cool where her skirt is really just similar to this deconstruct, a geometric style. Her skirt doesn't have a whole lot of shape to it except flowers and a shape, but there's no lines holding it in his boundaries. That's cool. I'm going to go ahead and save that to my French girl illustrations. This is cool, it's the same loose hair tie that we had in the Jenna Rainey version, but it does have some loops, and it looks like it's swaying in the wind, so that's cool. That's another way to just continue to look for inspiration and put yourself in the wave. Inspiration is to see what you liked or some elements and narrow down one specific element of the illustration or a piece of art or whatever it is that you're trying to imitate and see how other people have done that one thing. This is another cool way. Instead of a bun or a bob at the shoulders, there's a little pixie cut right here or just like a short bob. I like that hairstyle too, I actually rocked a pixie cut a few years ago, too much money to upkeep. This is pretty similar to except this is more of a top naught bun, but this whole mark-making this style is pretty in line with the watercolor style that we were looking for. Now, maybe I'm going to narrow my search a little bit, and I'm going to go French girl, watercolor. This one's really pretty, and this, instead of a woman, it's like a little girl. I like that one a lot, it's pretty similar to the one that we did with the deconstructed stripes, except this one actually has a face. So that's cool. Here's the one I was talking about before, where it's like the silhouettes of the women, but it's just in watercolor. I really like that a lot. This one is another deconstructed stripes, but the hair is a little more defined and obviously there's a face, but it's not so detailed that I don't think I could give that a try. I'm really drawn to this style of the whole body and a silhouette but just different colors and different shapes and brush strokes textures, which is what we did here, with some whitespace to show where the ears are and how there's some motion and the skirt. This is really cool. I didn't even know, I wouldn't have known about any of these cool other styles if I hadn't have put myself in the way of inspiration, and gone to look for similar styles that I knew that I liked like this one. This is neat because it's the same watercolor style and that we're looking at it from the back, but the hair is down, you can see some more strands, and it's just a different pattern of sweater and this one it's not deconstructed as much. But here is a very similar style to what we do with Jenna Rainey. There's a decent chance that maybe Jenna was inspired by this one, or people just come up with the same thing. Honestly they do, but sometimes I think that ideas conflict from people to people but this one's pretty similar to one that we did. That's pretty neat. I like this braid, although I would be really nervous to attempt it, but maybe some other time, but I'm still going to save it in my French girl illustrations inspiration folder. My next search was going to be for something like this so instead of having the button below at the bottom, now it's more like a top-not I do want to save a few of those because I like that top not look as well so I'm going to save this one because it has some more flyways. But now I'm going to search for watercolor girl with bun. Yeah, that makes sense. Again, lots of different options, lots of different styles, and this is pretty. I'm going to wrap up this video because it's lingered, but this is what I do when I get inspired by something that I see on Instagram or Pinterest and I want to copy it. I sometimes copy and practice it, other times I go straight to this where I look for even more that looked like that and so now that you have gathered all of that, the next step is to go to the board that you just made or that I just made, and now is to try to paint all of these things. To try to paint all the different aspects that you pinned and or that you've found. You can also go on Instagram and search for hashtags, that's another good way to pivot and explore. I have this initial sketch that I did that was a copy from Jenna Rainey, but that now I also have lots of different ways that I can take this style. Lots of different ways that I can test out these loose abstract, geometric deconstructed illustration style. The next step would be to do the same thing that I did with Jenna Rainey but practice all of these different things and then once you've practiced them, to try putting them together. I'm going to have one video at the end of all the pivot videos where I will show you all the different illustrations and practice things that I've done. But for now this is the process for putting yourself, for exploring, for putting yourself in the way of inspiration, and finding more and more things that really motivate you to test out these new theories. That's this video and let's move on to the next pivot video, which is experiment. 9. Demo: Pivot, Part 2: We have done our exploration of part of the pivot process, and now let's experiment. I'm just going to spend a few minutes experimenting here, you could spend hours experimenting. If you remember the Pinterest board that I created, which I could've honestly spent even more hours finding other similar styles that I really liked and compiling them so that I knew what to practice. What I would do is sit down and just try to practice all of these with experimenting. But once you've done that, again, pulling up my notes here just so you can see. There are some specific methods of experimenting that I really like to do. The first one is to try painting this, again, not in exactly the same way, maybe using some different techniques or different styles that you learned from your explorer phase. But try painting it again without looking at it as a reference. I'm not looking at the original photo as a reference, I'm not looking at my copy as a reference. I'm just going to paint how I remember painting it. As I'm doing that, I'm also going to experiment a little more with some slight differences. Maybe instead of having that blond, brown hair, I'm going to have some red hair, which would be a combination of brown and reddish here. I'm going to have this slightly different color and instead of doing the knot at the bottom, I'm going to try to do a top knot. I know that for the knot at the bottom, we started at the top and moved in crescent strokes down like that. With a top knot, I think I'm going to do the exact same process, maybe just starting from the bottom. I'm going to do my crescent strokes like that where I go from thin to thick and make sure to leave some white space. I know that where the hair comes together at the top where the bun is going to be. I want more white space right there to show how the hair is moving in different directions. I'm going to add a little bit more brown to this red I think, and maybe use a smaller brush to add in some strands that are coming up. Put them in the white space like I did right there, but then also have some coming out like that. Then I'm going to paint the bun, paint the top knot. In the same way, with two strokes facing each other on top, maybe like a third one, [inaudible] wild and crazy. But honestly, top knots can sometimes, and just using these crescent strokes to shape the hair like in the other illustration and also in the illustrations that I saw on Pinterest as well. Then I'm going to use some hairline strokes to just have some strands that are flying out maybe to shape this a little bit more. There's my red-haired, top knot bun, and using the wet-on-wet, I'm just going to add some darker places to show some contrast. This is like techniques I already knew when using the wet-on-wet technique to add darker pigment. Sorry if the light changed a little bit there, sun's going behind a cloud. Then instead of doing flowy ribbon like she did, I'm going to do more of a triangle ribbon that also has some definition after like that. What are those called? I don't know, tails in the ribbon that are floating away from the bun. I'm just going to paint a little bun like that. Even while it's still wet, some of the bun is melting, blending into the back of the head and that's okay. Then I'm just going to have two little flyaway things. I'm going to make them a little more ribbony and maybe make this one flip out like that. That's a slightly different variation of what she did and that's what we're doing with pivoting. We're taking a technique that we've learned and using the same technique, I'm just incorporating maybe elements that I like better. This top knot version and maybe adding a different style of ribbon. Now for the sweater, instead of doing stripes, I'm going to use that same triangle technique, but I'm going to see if I can paint flowers and just like loose flowers. Maybe drawing that, I'm doing this on the fly, which is how I do it. You're getting a real-life process. Maybe starting out with these guidelines is not such a bad idea. Then I'm just going to paint a lot of little roses like this. They don't have to be the same size. I'm going to leave some space because I'm going to paint some leaves also. But in general, I want them to fill out the shape of this dress that we're working on. I think the stripes probably work just a little bit better with no guidelines, but I also think that this is not looking terrible. Now, just going to paint some leaves just for the heck of it. The point, I think, with filling space with objects is to make sure that you have enough objects, enough shapes so that your eyes can still tell that it's supposed to hold a specific kind of shape if that makes sense. So that's what these leaves are for, to help fill in the space and make it look more like a triangle. The stripes were pretty easy to get that look because they're aligned shapes and so it's easier to tell, but this isn't going too bad. I think it looks okay. Maybe I'll just bring it down a little bit more. There's my version of pivoting and I did all of this without looking at a reference. I took the concepts that I learned from exploring which is I can put different shapes in here if I want, I can do different styles with the hair if I want. I can do different ribbon styles, different colors, and then using the same structure that I learned from copying, from practicing, I made my own little design. I think what's really cool about this is if I were to compare these two, they're not the same. They might look in a similar style like you might see them in the same pitch deck or in the same library, but you definitely couldn't look at this and say that I copied this because I used slightly different techniques. I changed up the colors, I changed up the composition, I pulled some techniques from other paintings that I saw and explored and put my own spin on things. This is definitely an example of being inspired by. I would say that this, I could post this and say I was inspired by [inaudible], this is inspired by this picture that I saw and that would be totally valid because it's not a copy, I didn't look at the reference photo while I did it, and I incorporated other things that I saw elsewhere in order to try this cool technique that she used. So that is my video on experimenting. Again, you can try lots of different things. For this one, just to wrap it up, I remembered the things that I explored, the different techniques that I explored, and the techniques that I really liked from my practice session, and then without looking at a reference photo, I put myself to the test and I tried to see if I could make it work. In the next video, we're going to go into Excel, and that's where I'm basically just going to show you lots of different things that I've practiced.But for the experiment things we did painting without looking at a reference, looked at lots of different things. We challenged ourselves to add new elements and there are even more ways that you can experiment. You can try using techniques like this, like using this white-space technique to paint a completely different figure. You can try painting similar to those Pinterest paintings we saw. Let's just pull this up again. This is a similar technique in using white space but it's not at all the same style, I wouldn't say. So you can try pushing yourself to see if you can create different styles and looking for techniques like this elsewhere and looking for how I used this geometric deconstructed shape but used a different shape inside. I could try using that same technique but to form something else so it doesn't have to be a dress. I can use this style to form something else. So there are lots of different ways that you can experiment. Really the key is to break away from looking at that initial reference photo, to break away from the idea that you have to do exactly what somebody else did because there's looks good and that's the only way that yours can look good, to break away from all of that and to try and try new things. You might not like all of the different practice sessions that you've done, but you'll never know if you don't try. So that is my video on experimenting as part of pivoting for finding inspiration. I will say that the more you experiment and the more you try things and the more you even push that first initial reference photo out of your mind, the more that it is going to naturally be incorporated into your style. You may take things or leave things that you used from the painting, the initial painting that you did, but the more you practice it, the more it's less of, oh, I remember this thing that I learned from [inaudible] and more of, oh, I really love using whitespace to show complexity as opposed to having to fill in all of the details. The more you practice, the more the style, and the more you push yourself while you practice, the more you will find your style starting to bloom through. Let's move on to the next video, and I'm going to go over lots of different ways that I've practiced this technique and show you all of the different ways that I could do it, which will be by no means be comprehensive. Before I film it, I'm going to sit down for probably half an hour or so and just experiment on my own, and then I'll show you the results and we'll talk about that in the next video. 10. Demo: Pivot, Part 3: I have done my own experimenting. I spent about half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, looking through the Pinterest board that I made and practicing some things that I saw in there, tweaking some other things. I spent some time with this little bob haircut facing forward, not really drawing in the face, because you can see over here, I'm bad at faces. I even tried this little side braid that was harder than I thought, but it was fun to look. I'm not quite super happy with the result, but it wasn't something I was intending to practice, but like if you watched the previous video where I was exploring, when I was looking through Pinterest to find more examples of this little loose French girl that I really liked, I came across a watercolor side braid and I thought I wanted to give that a shot. Anyway, this is just a compilation of 30 to 40 minutes of me basically messing around and practicing lots of other subjects in the style of this little French girl that I found. Just for reference, here's the original, that I saw just as I was scrolling through Instagram, so we went through me looking at the original, then making a copy to practice and practicing the techniques myself and then not looking at the original and not looking at my copy and this is the version that I made, not looking at any reference photo and making some slight tweaks and then as I moved on from that, I experimented with a few more subjects, that are in this style. The braid, the bands, I did this like side bob style with a barret. I thought this little girl was cute that I drew with the balloon. Then I even ventured into pants a little bit to see [LAUGHTER] if I could get those stripes to be vertical and make these loose style pants and it turned out okay and I tried that like watercolor silhouette. This didn't turn out quite as well as the other things that I did, but it was still fun to practice and to stretch my skills and see what I like and what I don't like. That is all about excel. The third E in the pivot category. Once we have analyzed the original and practiced via copying, or even if you don't copy directly, even if it's just you really honing in on exactly what they're doing in the original and figuring it out for yourself and then pivoting is exploring lots of different subjects in that style, because I can guarantee you, that there are a lot other more paintings. That was difficult for me to say. [LAUGHTER] There are more designs that are similar to the one that inspired you out there. Because like I've said multiple times, art does not exist in a vacuum, people are inspired by each other and so put yourself in the way of that inspiration and find even more examples of the style that you really like and experiment with it, tinker around with the composition of the things that you're making, try putting different things together and then just practice, practice, practice. If you really want to incorporate it and make it part of your style and you want to excel at that specific style, at these techniques that you're learning. The only way to get better at it, is to practice a lot. That is my final recommendation for the last step in the gathering inspiration, learning a new technique process which is, pivoting and making it your own. I mentioned this in the previous video, but the more you practice and the more you try to recognize these techniques elsewhere, like this deconstruction technique for example are using white space, the more you practice, the easier it will be to see these techniques in other spaces. Then the easier it will be for you to practice even more techniques. One other thing that I touched on when I was doing this French braid, the more you practice and you look for more designs that are similar to the one that inspired you, but slightly different to, it's so fun to go down like a rabbit hole of inspiration and you may come across things that you didn't expect that you want to try out. For example, that's how I started painting these pants, that's how I started trying to paint the polka dots. It might not turn out like you want it to. At first I tried to paint the polka dots in like a scarf right here, I tried to sketch out the scarf and then I've decided I want to try that a different day instead of doing it now, doing it here, so I moved on. But, as I was painting this little figurine, which is like the composition we were doing both sideways and with more of a pixie cut design. This was posted to be like a coat, but then, the more I looked at it, the more it looked like a scarf and so I turned it into a scarf with a striped shirt. My point with all of this rambling is, it's really scary to try something new and I get it, I really do. But the reason that we practice and we copy, is so that we can be comfortable doing the techniques and the more you practice that, the more you can actually stretch your own techniques and try new things. Copying definitely has its purpose, but it's really not doing yourself a favor only staying in that lane, because real creativity in your own style comes through, once you stretch a little bit and reach for something else, even if you fail at it, even if it's not as good as you want it to be, the more you practice it, the better it will be. The three E's of pivoting, explore, experiment, excel and as you do this whole process that brings us really to the close of this whole finding inspiration and finding your style process, as you analyze the designs that inspire you and practice the techniques that make up those designs and then pivot and make it your own through exploring, experimenting and excelling at the techniques that you're learning. I am confident you will truly be able to find a style and set of techniques that just feel like your own, without having to look at what other people are doing. It'll just flow out of you and you'll be able to look at objects that might not have inspired you before and turn them into your own artwork and it's pretty cool. I hope that you enjoyed learning about this with me and if you stick with me through the rest of the next couple of videos, we'll talk about what the final project is for this class and where we go from here, so see you soon. 11. Final Project: Now that we have gone through the whole process and you've watched me go through the whole process, I want you to go through this finding your inspiration process as well. You can choose whatever piece you want to take through this process. It doesn't have to be one of mine. But for your final project, it doesn't have to be art or illustration necessarily, it can be lettering or it can be any other kind of creative thing, the process really is the same. But since I focus mostly on illustration, that's what I'm going to be talking about. If you are a little overwhelmed by searching through things or you don't have a reference photo off hand, then I provided a couple examples for you. First, you can go through a very similar process to what I did and instead of using the reference photo that I used with the lower bun and all of the other differences, you can use mine as a reference photo and try to copy this design and then through that process, through practicing and exploring and experimenting, come up with your own version of this messy bun or just loose interpretation of a cute little woman girl illustration. You can use this as a reference photo, or if you've taken a bunch of my landscape classes, I pulled out this design that I painted a few weeks ago and I thought that this could be a really good reference photo to jump off of as well, especially if you've taken a few of my classes because it has a bunch of the loose pines, it has some sunset clouds that we talked about in my Sunset class. It's made up of these mountains with trees and this mountain in the background which actually, this probably would be a good design because I don't have a Skillshare class on this specific mountain technique. You can look at it and see if you can figure it out, which is what we talked about. These are the two reference photos that if you're looking for something and you don't want to have to look elsewhere for a way to try this technique, then feel free to use these designs and to practice them and go through the whole journey of trying to incorporate these styles into your own style. With that, let's move on to the recap and the bonus videos. 12. Recap: Thank you so much for joining me in my copy to create course all about learning how to find your own style through inspiration from others, and how to move from copying and using reference photos for practice to incorporating different techniques from all artists into your own unique perspective. I had such a fun time creating this course and I think it's such an important technique to master because honestly that's how all artists come into their own. All artists look at everybody else and figure out what they like and what they don't like, and how they can stretch and tweak and challenge themselves and challenge the medium and the styles that they're in. That happens by being influenced by other people. I hope that by watching this course you feel a little bit more confident and comfortable looking at reference photos, copying from other people, but then moving past copying and into developing your own style by mastering techniques and exploring and being inspired by everybody else around you. If you watched this whole class, you know that I started by copying this little illustration from a post I saw on Instagram. I practiced the techniques that I learned from looking at this in order to create my own little stylized piece that is similar but not the same. From there, it just bloomed into a practice of all different styles in the same general area illustration. It really helped to expand my repertoire and make me feel more comfortable doing a different illustration. That's exactly what I want for you. If you watched the last video, the final project video, I gave you two examples of paintings that you could copy and practice from me and then turn into your own style. I can't wait to see what you do with them. If you really loved this class and really loved this process and are proud of the results that you came up with, I would love to see your projects, so please post them to the project gallery on Skillshare. If you want to post your work and your progress on Instagram, you have my full permission to post even your practice versions and your copies, and then as you progress and explore more and develop your own style to see the pieces that were inspired by my pieces as opposed to the direct copies. I would love to see all of that. Just make sure to tag me on Instagram. My handle is thiswritingdesk. Make sure to properly credit that you learned about these techniques through this course. As long as you follow those guidelines with any artist, I just think we're such an open and supportive community. We want you to learn and we want to learn from each other. As long as we follow just basic decency and kindness by giving credit where credit is due, you can make a lot of friends and build a big community and just be part of this big awesome world that is the creative community. That got super cheesy, but I'm going to end this now. Thanks again for joining me. It was a pleasure to film and create this class for you and I hope to see you next time. 13. Bonus Video: How to find inspiration: Now that we have gone through all of the class and looked at the final project, you are on your way to finding inspiration through practice and other people's work. I want to prep this bonus video because I thought it might be helpful. In case you, maybe interested in learning about how I find inspiration. First I'm going to pull up Instagram. I like you I'm an avid Instagram scroller, and I follow a lot of different people, and they're not all artists. I don't know if that would surprise you or not. Oh my gosh. It's a Photoshop. [LAUGHTER] It's Jonathan Van Ness with the Great British Baking Show people. I follow a lot of artists for sure, but I also follow a lot of hashtags. That's one way that you can find inspiration. Instagram allows you to follow hashtags. I follow botanical line drawing. If you're ever feeling the need to be inspired by a specific topic, then following hashtags is a good way to do it. If I just click on the #botanicallinedrawing, then I can scroll through all of these different posts that have this hashtag. I can do the same thing if I'm searching for say, illustration. This is pretty general, so probably a bunch of stuff is going to pop up on here. But there's all things to be inspired by. It looks like there's some watercolor, some sketching, lots of digital illustration, a lot of work that I don't really do, but that doesn't mean I can't be inspired by. Hashtags are a really good way to do that. Especially if there's a hashtag you know that you use a lot or that you find you are more drawn to, then I would definitely try checking it out. Right now I'm going to type in watercolor illustration and see what pops up. Lots of really cool things. This is super cool. This sketch spread with the color palette from the sketch in a big blendy mess on one side and then the sketch on the other. I'm going to save that. That brings me to my other thing about Instagram, which I'll go to in just a second. Hashtags are always a really cool thing to follow. I find a lot of artists that I hadn't found previously that way by looking at hashtags and then looking at artists. I just found one right now. This artist has some really beautiful work that I'd be interested in having in my feed. Whenever I follow someone new, I always like to like a bunch of their posts as a way to say hi, if that makes sense. Because I think most often when someone sees the same person liking a lot of their stuff, then it might pique their interest and they might be interested in going to the other person's board and making friends. This is how I've made a lot of friends on Instagram. Also, commenting. Liking is a really mindless way to engage. This is not supposed to turn into a 101 on social media community building, but here are some free tips for you. Liking is a really mindless way to engage. Commenting is way more likely to get someone to notice you. There are lots of people who follow me. I'm going to go ahead and follow this person because I think I really like their stuff. A lot of people who follow me that I have come to know and be friends with because I've seen them comment on my stuff all the time. I read all of my comments and I try to respond, in case you're wondering about my Instagram life. That one's a really cool one. Hashtags is definitely, I've already liked this one, is one way to find things that inspire you. Once you use hashtags and you discover that you want to save a lot of these inspirational things, make sure to utilize this bookmark tool that Instagram has. I am going to show you my saved folders. For years and years, I just had this big Inspiration folder where I would save all of the things that inspired me. Sometimes they were art videos, a lot of landscape photography, some illustration things from mediums that I don't really use that much. This is one from, I think pastels. Yeah. I just think it's so pretty, even though I don't use that medium very much. But anything that really just strikes a nerve. If you have ever been moved by art, sometimes you can't really put words to it. But here's the reference photo I used for this class. You can't really put words to it, but something that just makes you feel breathless at the idea that so much beauty can exist in the world. I save a lot of water pictures, especially because I am trying to learn how to paint water. I save a lot of really cool photography things. Often I don't paint all of them obviously. Sometimes I save art in forms I don't really do, like this abstract geometric kind. It's not really my style, but it's still really cool and gives me a lot of inspiration, and maybe it could be someday. I think this is really cool when people illustrate on top of photos, probably via Procreate, or something else, the app. That's something I'm interested in pursuing one day. For years I had this giant Inspiration folder where I saved everything. But recently, I made a bunch of different folders for lots of different categories. Because I was trying to be more organized and it's been really helpful. I would recommend having different folders with the different categories of things that inspire you, and knowing that you don't necessarily have to create or try all of them. But sometimes it's helpful to just pull up some posts that move you and try to figure out why they move you. Maybe you like them for their color palettes, or maybe you like them for their subject matter. Either way, just having them at hand so that you can soak in all of that beauty can be really helpful. I also recently made this Try It folder. This is where I save things that I do want to try as opposed to other posts that maybe just fill me up artistically, I guess. These are ones I looked at and thought to myself, "I bet that I could paint that since I'm an illustrator and a hand-letterer." Mostly here, these are pictures, where knowing what skills that I have, I could learn to paint them. A lot of them are photos. Some of them are illustrations though that I want to try myself. I often come back to this to gain inspiration. Sometimes I use a photo to paint directly. One note about painting from reference photos is always target the photographer if you are painting exactly from a reference photo if you're just going to post it. But if you want to sell a painting that's from a reference photo, you need to get the photographer's permission and likely pay them for the usage rights. But just talk to them about it first. That's one note about that. That's Instagram. Now let's go back to Pinterest. We went through the way that I gain inspiration from Pinterest during the other videos. But let's go back to that folder that I created. I made this a secret board, which meant that nobody can see it. I'm okay if people see it, but sometimes I like boards just to be for me. I really like Pinterest because you can tap on a photo and if you scroll down from that photo, then it'll bring up a bunch of other pictures that are like that. This one's cool. It's that same vibe but with cactuses. Here's that same watercolor vibe but with an umbrella. I really like that. This one's really neat with the stripes for the shirt but just a different angle of the body. I really like Pinterest for that reason. You can also zoom in with your fingers, and hold right there, and let go, and then Pinterest will bring up a more like this tab, and it will bring up more pictures in basically this style. With the umbrella, the prints, you can feel they've really improved the software over the years to help you as you go down this inspiration rabbit hole of finding all these things that you really like. This is really cool. See even now as I'm doing this, I find things that I didn't really intend to find, but that I want to save and remember. Similar to me having a lot of folders on my Instagram for bookmarks, I have so many Pinterest boards, and I often refer back to them whenever I am looking for inspiration. Anyway, this is neat. This combines what we were talking about before. That is my bonus video on ways to find inspiration. Now let's move on to the other bonus video. 14. Bonus Video: Thoughts on when someone copies you: This is bonus video number 2. I really wanted to talk just a little bit about what happens when you aren't the one copying anymore but you find that somebody else has copied [LAUGHTER] your painting on Instagram or your piece or your creation or whatever, you find the somebody on the Internet took something that you very clearly made, a template that was very clearly yours and put it on the Internet. What do you do? I have had this happen to me lots of times. Sometimes people who are maybe a little malicious about it and purposefully don't tag me at all. Then other people who follow me and are part of my community on Instagram, they tell me about it. Sometimes it's people who definitely weren't malicious and just didn't know the proper way to credit the pieces that they were taking for me. If I just posted a painting, it wasn't a tutorial or anything and then somebody decided they really wanted to try that painting. They posted it and then tag me at the bottom. But say inspired by this writing desk. As we talked about earlier in the class, really the correct way to credit the artist in that case, if you directly copy them is to say original designed by at this writing desk because it's not an inspiration piece it's a direct copy. When that happens to you, it can be so easy to get really indignant and really mad [LAUGHTER] and really want to correct people. One way that I have found to indicate that this is my design, you have copied from my design, this wasn't like you're looking at my design and then creating a piece that had elements and so it was inspired by it. What I do usually is I just say, great work. It looks great. I'm glad you enjoyed re-creating my design. Basically in my comment, I say probably what they should've done in the first place by indicating very clearly that they didn't come up with their own spin. They just recreated my design, which is fine. But it's even more fine and even more supportive of the artist if you make sure to credit them. That's what I would say. I do say, you are welcome to take that if this ever happens to you, is you just comment on their thing and you say, wow, it looks great or your re-creation of my design looks great or something like that. That makes it very clear to them that you know that [LAUGHTER] they copied your design. That's what to do if they weren't intending to. That's what to do if they copied you but didn't really know the correct way to credit you. But now what do you do if someone is actually being malicious about it and not crediting you or not tagging you on purpose or even worse, trying to sell your design? The first thing that you should do is contact them and you should say, hey, note that this is copyrighted because, I don't know the correct legal definitions, but your work is automatically copyrighted if you create it yourself. Getting illegally copyrighted by going through that process is just like an extra step that makes it a little more firm. But if you've posted something and there's dates and data to indicate that you definitely posted it before this person, whatever then you hold the copyright to that thing. You can just nicely message them and say, can you please credit me in your design. More often than not they'll apologize and say, of course, and credit you in the caption. But if they don't then sometimes they might not answer you and if that's the case, then like worse comes to worst you could send a cease and desist letter to have them take down your thing, to have them take down that piece. Or especially if they're trying to sell it, to have them take down whatever listing that they're trying to sell it from. Those are your options there. I know that they're not great ones and it definitely doesn't feel good to have your stuff stolen. That's why I created this class because I think that so many people don't intend to cause ill will. write many people just want to be part of the community and want to be great at the skill that they're trying to develop. That's why you need to learn from other people. But these are just some quick tips in case something like that ever does happen to you and do definitely, I know there have been lots of spam accounts or accounts where people have stolen Instagram pictures and basically just stolen art from people and try to cast it off as their own. If you ever find accounts like that definitely report them to Instagram, definitely tell the original artist. I just think as artists, we need to keep taking care of each other. As long as we take care of each other and support each other and give credit where credit is due then this community can continue to be a vibrant and open one. If you're ever worried that something that you are doing is copying if you're ever worried about stepping on someone's toes and you don't want to infringe on their intellectual property, on their creative property then really you should ask them whether it's a photographer or whether it's an artist or whether it's if you are referencing somebody else's work and you're nervous that it's not quite different enough or that it might be infringing on their copyright then just go ahead and ask what they think about it and ask if you can post it and ask if they can credit you and ask. There's just no harm in asking the artists that in fact, I think I like it when people do ask me my opinion on whether or not it's okay for them to post something or whether or not they should credit me or whether or not whatever. Honestly, if you're debating whether or not you showed credit someone then you probably should [LAUGHTER]. You should just err on the side of spreading the love. If honestly, you were so inspired by somebody else's work that you wanted to try it yourself then it's probably worth telling other people about anyway. There's no harm in attaching something that you've done and practiced to somebody else's name, even if you know in your heart that is not a direct copy, but it still spreads goodwill and if you are still influenced by someone, it's always good to give them a nod to where your influence and where your inspiration came from. That's just one thing I have to say about that. Don't be afraid to ask. As for you as an artist, it's always good to have guidelines to have terms of use in your bio. I've seen a lot more people doing this lately where maybe they have one of the links in their bio. A lot of people have, you can only have one link in your Instagram bio but then you can link that to a big list that links to other things. One of the links that you have is a terms of use for your social media posts that could be good for you to clearly list how you would like to be credited and what the conditions are of using your post. That's something that, for example, someone wants to re-post one of your things, one of your pictures, one of your posts, then one thing you could say is you feel free to re-post on Instagram with proper credits for non-commercial use only or for personal use only or something like that. That's one thing that you should definitely do and layout in case people want to use it for a sponsored post or an ad or something. Sometimes that happens [LAUGHTER]. You want to make sure that you cover your bases by saying only allowed for personal use only or non-commercial use only. Then lay out exactly how you would want to be credited. Those are some ways that you can get ahead of this whole lot of players on Instagram and figuring out how to manage your intellectual property and your creative property on the Internet because it is definitely the Wild West out there [LAUGHTER]. But it's becoming more and more regulated. But it's important to stay ahead of the game and make it clear for others what you prefer and that you're willing to share as long as people follow your rules and your boundaries. That's about it for that. Anyway, this was just a quick little spiel, more like a word-vomiting a bunch of thoughts, I guess. [LAUGHTER]. But I hope it was helpful. Thanks again for joining the class and I will see you next time. 15. Bonus Video: Illustration Timelapse: