Create a Collection: Hone Your Artistic Voice & Style

1. Welcome to Class: Welcome to this class on creating a cohesive and compelling Art collection. Whether you're a seasoned artist or just getting started, creating a collection is such a great way to hone your artistic voice and develop your skills and style. Over the years, I've learned a lot from my experience creating collections for mimochai, seeing it from beginning to end and dealing with all the challenges in-between, I want to share my framework and my process for coming up with a body of work that can help you grow as a creative and reflect your personal voice and style. Throughout this class, you'll learn how to research and plan for your collection. Develop your artwork through experimentation and exploration. Unify your style and techniques so that it feels all cohesive. Put it altogether by choosing Your Format and even how to think about naming and describing your work. Please note that this is not a drawing class. That's what you're looking for it you can see my course, drawing foundations. Instead, this class is for people who already have a skill set in their chosen medium and want to learn how they can utilize creating a collection to further their voice and hone their style. Or just have the satisfaction of finishing a collection of their own. By the end of this class, you'll have a solid understanding of how to create a cohesive and compelling collection that showcases your unique perspective and style. Let's get started. 2. Find Your Theme: To get started, we're going to find overarching themes that are going to tie our collection together. Let's first get on the same page by talking about what exactly makes something a Collection. I don't think there's any hard and fast rule, but you can think of a collection as a cohesive body of work that shares of common theme, subject or style, or maybe a combination of all of these. A collection can be made up of any medium or style, from paintings and drawings to sculptures and installations. The key is that each piece in the collection has a purpose and a place within the larger body of work. Let's not overthink that at the beginning. That's just to make sure that we have an understanding of what we're starting to work towards. Right now, just start to think about what are you naturally interested in an excited about that you might want to turn into your very own collection. This might be a really meaningful message that you want to share or just something that you're curious about, diving into a little bit more and exploring for your own personal interests. Ideally, whichever approach you decide to go with, it's a theme that provides room for you to explore your vision, your voice, and your style. Now you might start to feel this pressure of coming up with this really grand message or important concept or theme or really novel idea. But at the beginning, most of the time, many creators I've talked to you just have an inkling and it's all about following the thread. It's normal to not know exactly where the final destination is going to be. Search for that start of the thread. And just know that as you go along, you're going to uncover more. You're going to reflect, you're going to adapt and you're going to evolve. Now you might already know exactly what you want to do. And there's something that you've been really wanting to explore, and that's the case. Go ahead and move forward with that. On the other hand, if you're still in that brainstorming phase, or just kinda ideating and thinking about what might possibly be a good idea for your collection. Here are some Theme ideas to help you get those ideas going. Some obvious places to start. Our, what subjects are you interested in? So I'm really interested in nature, for example, on, so here I've listed some ideas around landscapes, maybe exploring the seasons, doing different animals. Or you might consider doing some still-life such as just objects around your home, childhood memories, things that make you smile, or that you want to explore. Another theme that you might want to think about is within some sort of topic. Maybe you're really passionate about something, whether that is a certain culture, a certain time period, maybe something more along the lines of social justice issues, maybe environmentalism, sustainability, mental health. You can also think about FUN ways to explore certain topics such as pop culture. You can draw your favorite celebrities or maybe your favorite TV shows. You can really start to see that many things are possible at this point. Another thing that you might want to think about is the style. So maybe there isn't a topic that connects everything or a particular subject that you have in mind, but you want to explore a style. Maybe you want to do various color studies. Maybe you're interested in abstract Art and want to see what your version of that might look like. Or maybe you're exploring mixed media. You can also export patterns and typography. The list goes on and on. This is a course, a great way to hone in on what it is that really speaks to you. When it came to figuring out what I wanted my newest collection to be about, I started in the big picture of just everything I'm interested in right now, I considered many different topics such as travel, culture, architecture, fairy tales and folklore, spirituality and Nature and the environment. I keep notes for all of these and save them for later. But at this point I'm just putting everything on the paper, whether that's figurative or literal. And then starting to just listen in and feeling out, what is it that's exciting me the most right now. I'm also thinking about what it might look like in practice, how I might visualize them. Some of these themes are going to just lend themselves more easily to visualization and illustration. I'm keeping that practical aspect in mind as well. Overall, I was noticing that there's this through line that's connecting a lot of the things that I'm interested in. That's this relationship and the harmony between Humans, Nature and Spirit. I found myself just naturally reading about these topics all the time. And I saw that this theme really lent itself to the types of things that I'd like to draw, such as portraits, landscapes, animals, plants. And so it was this really nice fit of several things that I'm really interested in. I could start to see what it might look like. And that excited me as well. And it was all familiar topics so that in the stage where I'm trying to evolve and hone in on my voice and my style is a great way to keep some things consistent while exploring something new and summary. In this first step, we want to pick a few themes that we feel really, genuinely excited to dig into, even if we're not sure what the end result might be. Another thing that I want us all to keep in mind at this point is that this will be a FUN of playful exercise, a way for us to just do what we really want to do and hone in on our style and our Voice. Take some time right now to just add to ideate, have FUN with it. Think of all the different things that you're interested in God and explore. Look at your latest interests. What have you been watching, reading, looking at, and start to distill that into what do you want to explore in your own collection? When you're ready? I'll see you in the next section. We'll start to talk about coming up with a target purpose to develop a framework around your themes and ideas. I'll see you there. 3. Identify Your Purpose: Now that we have some ideas for our overarching theme, Let's think about our target purpose for this collection. When I talk about the target purpose of his collection or developing a context around it. What I mean is thinking about things like, where would you like this collection to go, or what is your target audience or your target format for this, this can help you really crystallize or conceptualize what exactly Your Pieces might need to look like, where they might need to fit, the size or the mood and all of these different considerations that we're going to be diving into later, identifying your target purpose is going to be important because it helps set up the Y collection. This can be something that's made up such as a dream that you have of making a book, for example, or real goals such as, I'm going to exhibit these in my local gallery at the end of this year. I really encourage you to try setting up a timeframe for yourself so that you can really commit to completing your collection. Some things that you might want to think about include the audience. So obviously you can think about whether this is where kids or adults or for a certain specific person that has a special interests. It can also just be one person such as yourself. I've heard great advice about writers or artists that had just one person in mind, usually a loved ones such as a niece or a parent, or a really good friend whose tastes that they trusted and respected. Having this kind of really focused audience can help you really distill what exactly you're trying to work towards. So if you are not sure who your target audience is, I recommend that as a starting point. Another thing you might want to think about is the format of this collection. At the end of the day, do you imagine it being in a book, for example, or a calendar? Some prints, some decor in a home, or maybe a digital display. All of these things can be considerations of how exactly you're designing into your collection. Another consideration you might think about is where is it going to be located. So related to the format and definitely tying in the audience as well. You might think about different places you would like to imagine your collection would fit in it, such as your favorite shop or your favorite hotel, a gallery, a public space that you're interested in, or a school. All of these different environments provide not only a setting, but a type of person who might be there. It's all really helpful to start to think about what exactly the purpose of your collection is. When I was thinking through all the different ideas for my next collection, I tend to really think about things in terms of space. So I love architecture, I love interior design. I love just thinking about that sense of space and how the design and everything from the lighting to the materials really helps set up that sense of what someone in that space is supposed to feel like. Also, since I'm an illustrator and I have my own webshop and they sell at Mark is already having natural built in target format, target audience that I'm thinking about. That said, I'm always pushing myself to grow. So even if my target audience used to like a certain type of look and feel, I'm allowing myself that room to evolve, to adapt and really use this opportunity to create something that I'm excited about. So that usually means some evolution in either the style or the themes that I'm exploring. I want to use this collection to create something familiar such as maybe a calendar or a zine, but also have it be a way for me to push myself into communicating something new. All of that is wrapped into my target purpose when I was thinking about coming up with this new collection. So in summary, as we start to think into our ideal audience, our target purpose for our collection. We want to think about this so that we can help focus our collection. Different contexts are going to require different approaches and considerations. The purpose of our collection can be something that's made up or a real goal. And ideally, it should provide plenty of room for you to explore and express your voice, your skills, and your style. Regardless of how grand and public your ambitions might be or how private and protected your ideas might be. Just write it down so that you can have a direction as you start to dive deeper into flushing out your theme when you feel ready, Let's meet. In the next section, we'll talk about coming up with your mood board to set a direction for your collection. I'll see you there. 4. Create A Moodboard: Now let's talk about creating a mood board for our collection. I find creating a mood board to be a really important and helpful tool as part of this process because it can help us focus our Inspiration, be somewhere returned to again and again for direction and just keep us inspired and focused as we flesh out our collection. For those of you who don't know and want some clarification on what exactly it mood board is. Moodboard is decile visualization and collection of various pieces that you collect and put together and serve as your inspiration and vision board. Now, if you already have a system that you'd like to do to collect your mood board. Go ahead and use that. But for those of you who want to know how I do it and do the same way, or just are open to different ideas. Here are the tools that I recommend. So Pinterest is the obvious first example for many of you, when you heard the word mood board, you might have thought of Pinterest is just a very easy application that can help you find and gather various pictures from all across the web and organize them into these nice boards and sub boards. Another tool that I really love to use is Figma. So any digital whiteboard Apple work. But after trying several of the ones that are out there, I've found that Figma was the best in terms of being free for my personal use and not having any lag whatsoever. And this is with me dropping pretty large images and many different images all on one whiteboard. So that was a really important aspect for me because I find that even having a little bit of leg in something that you use all the time can be really distracting to your creative flow. I love to use Figma as this play pen really where I dump all sorts of different ideas on there. Whether it's screenshots from Pinterest, photos from my camera roll, illustrations that I'm working on, finished pieces, sketches, words, outlines. I can put all of that onto Figma and just move it around however I needed to be. I use this throughout the process and highly recommend checking it out if you haven't used a digital whiteboard before. Besides that, I also really love to use Notion. So if any of you are productivity nerds out there or just like the organization aspect of things you've probably heard of Notion. For those of you who haven't, it's this productivity task all in one type application where you can put things such as databases and outlines and notes and everything all in one place. It can also organize pictures, but it's a little less flexible than Figma for sure, and a little different than Pinterest. So they still serve their separate purposes. You can think of Notion as really more of your project managers. So that's where I keep all of my to-do lists. I organize all of my data, all of my images is more of a filing cabinet for me were Figma is my play pen. The last thing that you can of course do is use a wall in your home, a bulletin board, a cork board, anything physical that you might feel more comfortable with if you don't want to learn a new digital tool or you just really liked that analog fuel. I have and inspiration shelf that I like to keep various books and Art pieces and little figurines on. I also recently started using my closet doors as a place where I can just stick some notes on quickly and look at it from a big picture point of view. But for me, a really important feature of my mood boards is that it needs to be mobile. So I want to be able to see some inspiration on a trip or when I'm out and about and quickly put it onto something or documented somewhere and look at it when I'm in the creative process. So that's why I really like to use digital apps such as Pinterest, Figma, and Notion. Now I'm just going to show you some examples of some mood boards that I've put together. These are definitely curated, distilled, and edit it to be presented in these slideshows. But it'll give you an idea of the types of things that I'm gathering as I'm coming up with a new idea or new collection and organizing my inspiration. So the first example I have here, our settings. I've been really inspired by spaces, as I've mentioned previously and lately I've been really inspired or really gravitate towards these warm, modern but still personable settings that have influences from all the different places that I like to travel to. Of course, as an illustrator, I'm also always thinking about style by collect many different illustrations, prints, Art Pieces, book covers that I like, and group them altogether in a way that makes sense to me and can provide inspiration for my next projects. Another great mood board is thinking about that target audience that we've talked about earlier. So what are they like? What do they look like or do they go, what is their style like? What are they into? Just having that visualization and all of these images or just pulled from Pinterest, help me think about the overall mood. So I don't use these images anywhere actually in my collection and nobody else needs to see these. But these just help me set up this direction and this framework and visualization of what I'm working towards. So when I was thinking specifically about Nature Spirit, I knew that I wanted it to feel calming, that I wanted to add to this ambiance that I really like in the spaces that I enjoy being. And all of those factors really lend itself to thinking about what kind of Color Palettes am I going to be gravitating towards what's the overall look and feel in terms of the styling of the illustration. And what is the kind of person that I'm thinking about when I'm designing this. So in summary, when it comes to creating a mood board for our collection, once see this as an essential part of the research and acrylic critical tool in our planning process. It can help us visualize the collection and what are inspirations are and stay focused and motivated throughout the process. When it comes to picking a tool for organizing and creating your mood board, I really recommend doing something that feels effortless and Fun for you to save ideas, take some time right now to go and make your mood boards go, find that Inspiration put together all of the photographs, the books, the poems, the writings, although words, everything that inspires you and is working towards that idea that you have for your collection and collect and organize it somewhere. When you're ready, let's meet. In the next section, we'll will start brainstorming and thumbnailing different ideas to flesh out what our collection might look like as individual pieces. I'll see you there. 5. Number of Pieces: At this point in the process, it's a good time to start to think about how many pieces might be in our collection and doesn't have to be set in stone, but it will help us shape the overall directions and ideas and concepts that we have into our final products. I think the first question most people have is how many pieces are enough to be considered a collection? I don't think there's any hard or set rules, but generally, having at least five to six pieces is a good minimum to aim for. It makes it a little bit more than just a couplet or a triplet. And you can start to really investigate either a Style or a theme, or a subject with about five to six that's set on the upper end. In my experience, it does not take more than 20 to say what needs to be set either. Of course, you can keep going if you're still having FUN with it. Just know that somewhere in that range is what your overall aiming for. For purposes of this class, even three is enough, but I would try to get to at least three. I think it's also really important to consider quality versus quantity. And this will also tie into your intended purpose with this collection. Of course, if your whole purpose is just to get in a lot of reps and to be inspired through this consistent series to get through that. But your ultimate goal is just do as many as you can suggest 108 Project then of course, quantity is the most important and there's finishing, that number is going to be your goal. On the other hand, if you're more thinking about what really makes collection fuel, that each piece is contributing something new and it doesn't feel repetitive and yet it still feels all unified. That's where you might want to think more about quality versus quantity in certain approaches to the arts and creativity. There's an idea that something is considered done, not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to take away. One way you can incorporate this type of thinking and practice into your collection process is to step back every now and then as you're creating your pieces, especially at the thumbnail stage, and ask yourself, is this piece adding something new, whether it's a new idea or a new style and look and feel that it's still within the overall framework, but it's adding this level of interests. On the other hand, if it feels redundant, then it might be worth taking out. Sometimes, less is more. When we can think about how many you might want to do is to think about what each size range is going to be best used for. Many collection of about three to seven Pieces is, of course I deal first of all, for a beginner. And it can also be great for a really specific theme or a topic that you know that you can express within three to seven pieces. You can also think of it as a subset of a larger collection. When I was working on Nature Spirit, I actually think of them in triplets, so I have a set of three in mind. There's always human and animal and some sort of fantastical tiny human in a meteor setting, sort of Composition. And that just provided me with the system that me coming up with the other three sets to create the 12th much more streamlined. A medium collection, which I define as about ten to 15 Pieces, is really great for telling a story or exploring a subject a little bit more deeply. I like to think of it somewhat like a music album, because music albums tend to have about this many songs on it, really serves many different functions, such as creating a calendar, creating a partly illustrated, partly written book, being something that you can turn into a card set, for example. And so there's many great uses for around this number of pieces in a Collection. Lastly, with a larger collection that say over 20 pieces, It's an excellent way to showcase a breadth of work and a skill set that you have. Or like I mentioned, get lots of reps. And when I was creating the alphabet adventure series, for example, it really pushed me to get more and more creative and I could see that I was getting deeper into the later letters. I was thinking more and more out of the box and getting a little bit more clever with how I was depicting things then at the beginning. So you can really see yourself grow through a larger set and series, which I think is a great benefit to. I hope just seeing some of those examples really excites you with all the possibilities that you can have with a Collection and that can be very small. Just three pieces to really endless. You can just keep adding to a certain series. If you're doing something like Joey sci-fi and superhero mashup for example. In summary, as we're thinking about the right number of pieces for our collection, it's really important to think about the theme and the target purpose and style that you're trying to explore. As an artist, I encourage you to think about quality versus quantity. Which one is going to serve you and your intended purpose and audience the best. It takes some time right now to just reflect on your purpose and your goals with this collection. Maybe think about the format that you're trying to work in and then come up with the number of pieces that you're going to aim for. Of course, that number can evolve as you move along. But it's going to be a good guidepost as we move into the next few sections of this class. When you're ready, I'll meet you in the next section where we'll talk about choosing a Style and Technique that will help make your collection fuel really cohesive. I'll see you there. 6. Develop Your Ideas: Let's start to really flesh out some of our ideas so that we can think about what the individual pieces in our collection might look like. To do that, let's just start really big picture. Come up with as many ideas as we can, no filter and just write or sketch everything down. There are a few techniques that you can try if you're not used to this kind of big picture brainstorming and thinking. And I'll share those with you, but encourage you to experiment and explore, combine different methods and see what works best for you. At the most basic level, you can first just start with a simple word list. So I like to do this in a sketchbook that I don't have to worry about being precious about. Sometimes do that. It's just in my notes app or in Notion on my phone. Just start by creating a list of keywords and phrases that relate to your theme to help generate ideas. To take this word list one step further, you can try doing a mindmap. So what that is is just starting with the central idea and then branching them out into different subtopics and concepts. Another great way to approach this brainstorming exercise is just to do free writing. Set a timer for a short amount of time, say 10 min, and just write whatever comes to mind in this stream of consciousness approach, you will probably get a lot of junk that just comes out and you can think of that as is clearing out your brain space. Lot of times something will just come out that's unexpected or lead you to a thought that you can then put into a word list or mind-map. So it's a great exercise to try if you tend to think more in words first, I personally love to thumbnails. So a lot of times when I'm thinking of ideas, I will create word lists, but also be thumbnailing at the same time. And for those of you are not familiar with them nailing, they're just these small, messy, rough sketches that helped you visualize what you have in mind. So nobody else needs to see these. These don't end up anywhere. They can just be in your sketchbook or in Procreate as a way for you to start to flush out some of these maybe more abstract ideas that you have and think about how they might look like in an actual piece. Also, for some people, they don't think in words, they think better in pictures. So you can feel free to actually just skip the word section and then goes straight into thumbnailing. Somewhat related to the mood boards is another approach for brainstorming called image collaging. So maybe go back to your mood boards and you can use Pinterest, find more feature to come up with additional images that really start to focus in on ideas for your sketches. This is a little bit different than a mood board, because with a Moodboard, it might just be focusing on the setting or the audience, or gathering some inspiration for styles. But here you're using the images more as a jumping off point for your sketches, your thumbnails, and different subjects that you might be wanting to explore. The last idea I want to share is this collaboration. So maybe talking it through with your friend, your partner, your family member, your mentor, someone that you can trust. And it can be a casual conversation over a meal or a drink or maybe something that you actually set aside time and say, Hey, I'm working on his collection, I would love your thoughts. And let's just do a call so that can share ideas that I have and maybe you can share some ideas with me. Another more new feature that you might have heard of is to actually use AI to collaborate and brainstorm ideas with. I suggest doing this after you've come up with your own ideas and tried some of those earlier exercises. Because then you can be sure of what you really are excited about and interested in naturally. And then you can use the AI generated prompts and concepts as a way to hone in on some of those ideas or maybe jog some creative concepts that you hadn't thought of but are aligned with what you were thinking. Another way that you might think about the pieces in your collection are through frameworks. Considering our, Your Pieces going to be more realistic or more abstract. Or they're going to have a very literal message? Or are they going to be more metaphorical? What I mean by that is say your topic is Nature. Do you want to be just exploring how to do studies of various birds and plants and animals that are existing species? Or are you trying to be a little bit more metaphorical? Maybe talking about relationships with nature, maybe the spirit of nature, maybe you're drawing and earth goddess or a water Spirit. So that's one way to think about how your identity, it will be reflected in the collection that you put together. One thing that I also like to think about that you might want to consider is whether you're pieces are going to be standalone or a sequential. What that means is do you need to see the pieces and your collection in a certain order or in a certain grouping for it to all make sense, or for to show the message that you want to share. Or does each piece more or less stand alone. And they're connected through something else, such as the style, the color palette, or the through line that doesn't necessarily rely on it being seen in a particular order. The last thing that you might want to consider are whether they're, iterations are distinct. So what that means is, for example, are they iterations of one consistent theme? Maybe your series are collection is about chair design. And there's just a type of chair maybe armchair that you're doing many different iterations on And exploring either the styling or the color palette that you're using. You can think of many collection's where they look more like just different versions of the same thing versus actual deep distinct pieces. One question that might come up as you're going through this brainstorming process is just figuring out how to know what to keep or how to know when to stop. Ideally, you have many different ideas here, especially if you're using the AI as an idea generator. And the pros of that is that now we're just flooded with many different creative prompts and ideas and they're all at our fingertips. But the con of that is sometimes it can feel overwhelming of terms of well, I am pulled in so many different directions. I don't know where to start. My recommendation here is just to always keep it simple and get into that practice of knowing when there's enough checking in with yourself and listening to your gut as you read through these ideas. What is speaking to you the most? What is exciting you the most? And if you hadn't intended purpose such as honing a certain skill set, exploring a new area of growth. Which of these seems is going to help you do that the most? So always keeping your big purpose, Your Theme, and your mood boards in mind as you start to get into a little bit more of the weeds and fleshing out your idea. Just to share a little bit more of my process for Nature Spirit. This really started out with the big picture of, okay, I have this opportunity to create a new collection. I know that I want to use it to hone my style and explore what it is that I really want to share. I reflected in all of the things that I was interested in doing. And as I was starting to flush out the overarching themes of maybe it's about nature, maybe it's a ball of my culture. Maybe it's about my location and my hometown and all of these different things. I found that my just natural inclination was the most excited to explore this idea of human Nature Spirit. I was coming up with ideas very easily. I can already start to see them in my mind compared to some of the other ideas that I had. Which for some of them I thought we're gonna be really easy and really obvious, such as cultural symbols. But as I was starting to think about what I wanted to express and what I wanted to draw. I've found that that framework felt too rigid for me and didn't feel quite authentic to what I was trying to express. I felt that what I ended up with just gave me a lot of room to explore and was still in familiar territory. So it was the best of both worlds for what I needed. From there, I was starting with these ink and pencil sketches, but I quickly moved into color thumbnails for me, I like to think in Color early on, and that's also result of my experience of making a lot of illustrations, knowing the types of colors that I like to work with. And so I'm able to jump to that step. So don't feel like you need to be able to do that too, or that you should be thinking in that way is just a way for me to share. One way to approach this brainstorming process that works for me. What I like about this is I can really start to quickly get a sense of, is this looking like what I have in mind? Is this something that I can realize with the skill set and the timeframe that I have right now, am I excited to see this come to life in many ways at a very small scale. The thumbnails and my finished pieces look pretty similar. And it's all about the detailing, the textures. And of course, if you blew it up to a larger scale, they would look quite different. But I think the power of that small thumbnail to give you an overarching glimpse into what your collection might look like is really powerful and helpful. In summary, as we're starting to flush out the themes that we've picked with notes and sketches of what it might look like. Really try to visualize which set might be the best to start with. Hone in on which ideas are exciting you the most, that you can start to just visualize and imagine in your mind and feel like it will address your intended Purpose, Your Theme, and those inspirational pieces that you collected best. Take some time right now to really dig into those ideas. Like I said, feel free to play, explore. Have some word vomit, scribble like a kid. Feel free to just let everything out and write it all down. You never know where it might lead. And then you can take a step back. Think about which of these different options are speaking to you the most exciting you the most, and then go from there when you're ready. Let's meet in the next section where we'll talk about figuring out the number of pieces are collection might have. I'll see you there. 7. Pick a Style & Technique: Now let's talk about the styles and the techniques that you want to use to apply to making your collection feel cohesive. This section is all about the different dials that you can use when starting to really hone your Style and Technique for your collection. What I mean by dials or just all of the different tools that are at your disposal as you're coming up the look and feel. This can include the subjects that you're choosing to depict, coming up with different compositions, deciding how to render your image. All of these different aspects that you can really see as ways to turn up or turn down, keep consistent, or vary it up so that your collection will have interests but still feel cohesive. Let's start with talking about the subjects because I feel like that's one of the most familiar and easiest to comprehend. So we want to think about all of the different types of subjects that we might explore within the themes that we have chosen. For example, in nature, like I mentioned earlier, is a really big and broad concept and theme. And within each of those, you can think about whether you want to depict more people or animals, landscapes, or maybe flowers. Really returning to that mind-map that we did earlier. But now thinking more from a visual and Composition perspective, what exactly we want to show. So maybe with your mind-map, you decided that you want to explore flowers. And within flowers, maybe a certain type of flower. Now you want to think about what exactly all those different subjects are going to be, which flowers you're going to choose, and then start to think about the framing. Let's talk about that a little bit. When I talk about framing, I'm just talking about the layout and the composition. And almost if you think about using a camera, what is that kind of framing that you're doing for your picture? Now it might be cropped in, it might be zoomed out. You can also think about whether your subjects are to scale to each other or a little bit more fantastical or abstract. For example, in one of my pieces for Nature Spirit, I have a image of a small, tiny person standing on top of a very large orange that can also look like a little planet. So that's playing with maybe this subject of nature, humans, fruits and plants. But then thinking about how to vary it up with the framing. You can also think about whether your compositions and your layouts are more centered versus a little bit off to the side, giving it a little bit more of a dynamic feelings. So each one of these can play into your overall collection, starts to come together. That leads us into the styling. So once you have your subjects in mind, your framing in mind and all of this can start to really work together. You want to think about how your styling is going to come together within your color values, is they're going to be a lot of contrast with those colors are they're going to be a lot of contrast between the light and the shadows. So if any of these concepts are unfamiliar, you can always returned to my Drawing foundations class where I talk about each of these types of values much more in depth. You can also think about the uniformity of your pieces, whether there's a lot of consistency or whether you're going to explore with mixing a lot of things together. And so that's where I start to play with my textures, thinking about background, whether my background is going to be really full or have a lot of empty negative space and also textures. So I really wanted to experiment a lot with the textures within my pieces. And I kept pushing it a little bit more with each one as they went through. I like to think of all of these different dials as things that I can turn up and down. And I'm just at this mission control master centers and coming up with my collection. I'm really thinking about it as a whole, but also for each piece. And that might seem a little bit overwhelming or maybe a little bit abstract depending on where you are in your development of your collection. By this point, you already have your Inspiration. You have your mood board. You have some thumbnails and some word lists or mindmaps and all these different ideas that you're working with. And one thing that you can do to start to hone in to exactly which dials you want to play with, is starting to look for patterns with all of the information that you've gathered so far. Look at your thumbnails, look at your inspiration and start to connect the dots by finding patterns that can start to develop a system for you. Let's use Nature Spirit as an example. As I was starting to piece together my inspirations, my mood boards and little thumbnails that I was putting together. I started to notice that I consistently like to draw people and portraits. I like to draw plants and animals. And I like to draw something a little fantastical where it played with the scale of a small human figure in a landscape looking setting. But actually it's a plant or it's an orange for example. That wasn't necessarily something I started my collection with and said, This is definitely what I want to do. Instead, it was through this iterative process of coming up with about three almost finished pieces. And then looking at my thumbnails and looking at inspiration And realizing that this was a through line and a pattern that I was seeing. Another thing that I was new to seeing, which we'll get into more in the next section was just the overall color and the mood that I was trying to go for. I like a little more high contrast, so a really deep dark color with lighter warm colors. And I also want it to play with not just centering my images, which I had already done in alphabet adventure and play with different cropping, different formats and layouts, starting to bring a lot more texture. And then I had before. So you can see how I considered each of these dials, but not in this really rigid and scientific way, but more experimental of just trying different things and then taking a step back and looking at what's that through line, wow, can I connect these dots? And so I encourage you not to get stuck on the first piece, but just continued to explore and iterate and gradually start to see how the pattern emerges. If isn't obvious to you right away. Now I want to share some patterns that might start to come out to you just to help those of you who might be having some trouble really starting to see what types of patterns and dots that you should be looking for or want to look for. Now the first one is style, and that might be one of the more obvious ones to you. So are there any colors that are repeating themselves and coming out to you, you'll find that you'd probably gravitate towards a certain type of either palette or texture or style in either a lot of your inspirations or the pieces that you're starting to flesh out. So textures line work, how your shapes are coming if there are shapes, very obvious shapes or maybe not very obvious shapes. And of course, Composition. Do you tend to like things that a little more cropped in and zoomed in or really zoomed out and this big landscape feeling. You can also mix them up like I did, but I tended to narrow down on this consistent pattern of within each one of my mini sets to have one that's really cropped in, one that's a little bit more zoomed out when that's more centered and one that's more off centered. So all of these are different aspects that you can play with aspirin motifs. This is really tied in with the subjects that you're dealing with. This is really more to help you narrow down what those subjects might be for your specific collection pieces. And for me, like I mentioned earlier, ended up really matching this theme of having this portrait, having an animal, and then having this more fantastical blend of the two. Another thing that you might want to think about is the overall mood that you're gathering and feeling from all of these things that you're starting to collect. Are you feeling overall this kinda happier, brighter mood, or maybe something a little darker and more serious. Now one way I like to think about this, especially for beginners, is really how straightforward versus varied. I want it to be. Try not to feel overwhelmed by all of the different options and just see them as different toys that you can play with. So maybe you want to start with keeping most of the dial is really straightforward and just turning one dial and varying it up. I think that's a great way to start. For example, if your series is all about different chair designs from a certain period or across cultures, maybe you keep the chair Composition and placement really consistent. But you play with how you're going to texturize it, how you're going to play with lines and shape work to come up with those chairs. Or say you're doing a whole series on Birds of America. And you want to have the birds in all these different kinds of Composition, some far away, some close-up. But you're going to keep the color palette consistent or the other way around. This is a great way for you to start to experiment with things while keeping things feeling manageable. And you'll discover yourself which things are more interesting to you? Maybe you're not that interested in experimenting with different layouts, for example, but you love color and you want to play with how you can bring in different types of color and express it through different types of textures in line work. Or maybe it's the other way around. You love working just in black and white, but you're going to play with all of these different types of subjects. You're going to play with different layouts, and that's going to be your exploration. So that's why I think this is such a fine and exciting part of this whole process, because it really is going to help you hone in on your style and your voice. For me in my own process is coming up with this collection and with alphabet adventure and every series that I've done, It's really this back-and-forth process of putting things on my whiteboard, works in progress. Sketches, idea is finished pieces and slowly starting to see them all come together. I think it's such a great creative exercise and really challenging in a FUN way for this process where I'm trying to hone my style and my voice is really between the Procreate app and on Figma or whatever whiteboard you decide to use. I'm constantly looking for that through line of what is it that's tying all of these things together. And I really dial in my color palette, which we'll talk about more in the next section. The styles and the compositions as I go along don't get discouraged. If it's challenging along the way. That's totally normal. And I think it's really rare for anyone to come up with the first finished piece and just know exactly what you're gonna do from the beginning. It's this iterative process. It's all about exploration and play and creativity. So please Helen with it. In summary, as we're developing our style and our Technique for our collection, we really want to think about all the different dials that are at our disposal and our mission control. And think about how we want to approach them. So we have the subjects that we're going to do. We have the framework and the layouts of how to depict those. And then we have the choice of how to render that. So it's this three-step process that's really starting to synergize together. If you're having trouble figuring out exactly how you want to approach this, look for those patterns within your inspiration and your thumbnails. What are those dots that are going to be connected to create a system for yourself? And it can help you narrow down your options and clarify your collection. This part is one of the medius and most important aspects of this whole process and is not going to be like this step is done and then you move on to the next one. But take some time to really think about it. Start to connect the dots. And then when you're ready, let's me, the next section. We will talk about color. I'll see you there. 8. Build a Color Palette: Now let's talk about color. Having a cohesive color palette can really bring together almost any set of work. And besides just picking colors that you like, you can consider things like contrast and color psychology. Always go back to your original intention, your purpose, to decide what colors might be best for your collection. I honestly feel that there are no rules when it comes to color. It's all about tuning in and noticing your own reactions as you engage with the world. What colors make you feel a certain way and why? When you like something, notice its colors and see what might be some consistent patterns that are emerging in what you like. I really recommend always checking in with yourself on this and developing your color intuition than pairing it with color theory and color psychology so that you can know when you want to follow the rules and when you want to break them. Let's talk a bit about what makes color harmonious. This is mostly based on color theory and a little bit on color psychology. And I dive much deeper into this in my Drawing foundations class, but I think it's worth a refresher here. First, let's talk about color relationships. We can think about color in terms of the color wheel. Of course, there are some set relationships that tend to go well together. Of course, we can start with monochromatic, just sticking with one hue and exploring from there in terms of different values, different saturation, but more or less keeping it looking like one color. We can also think of analogous color families. So maybe orange, red, and yellow and playing with just that family of colors. On the other hand, we can also use complimentary colors. You probably know many of these, they're red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple. These colors are on the opposite sides of the color wheel. And that contrast is really brings out the vibrance of each one. You can also think of colors in triadic relationships. So similar to the complimentary color consideration, all of these colors work together to really bring out the best of each other, but they need to be used skillfully because even within each color family, depending on which hue and tone and just variation of that color it can really make or break that relationship. I also like to think a lot about color temperature. So other colors are warm or cool, but they're not exactly the primary colors that you have in mind. They're not the obvious green or they're not the obvious blue, orange, or red. I like to think about warm and cool, so I tend to offset these really warm colors, Something cool. I'm also thinking about natural colors. I'm obviously inspired by nature. So I think of my warm colors as being really pulled from earthy tones, some sunlit tones, and then my cool tones as being pulled from trees and water and just having that natural compliment harmonized together. Besides these Color Wheel relationships, we can also think about color, mood. I'm sure you have heard of or experience some sort of color psychology before, were certain colors tend to lend themselves to certain moods. To me, I really encourage you to figure this one out for yourself. You can read, of course, the general concepts and there are some obvious associations such as pink and red with love, blues and greens for calming tones. But even within those families, you can definitely think of a really energetic, bright turquoise blue, or a really calming peachy orange. So there aren't hard and set rules within each color family. I really like to think of these again and settings. Certain cultures such as Latin American cultures, reminding of these really energetic, beautiful colors that make me feel happy and make me feel excited. At the same time, I also love the color palettes that you tend to find a minimal design in Japanese or Scandinavian culture that makes me feel really calm, really grounded. And what I like to do, oftentimes is play with how can I combine these two aspects that I really love? It, Nature, Spirit, that is something that I was really intentionally thinking about. How do I create a color palette that fuels sophisticated, and fuels calming and grounding? Yet still plays with really playful colors like a bright pop of orange. And that was something that was really FUN for me to play with. The last thing that I want to talk about in this section is colored dominance. And that's just what I refer to when I think about whether when I look at a piece, is there a one dominant color that really pops out or maybe to really dominant colors? Or are there just many colors that are mixed together and you can't really quite see what one color is the most dominant. In a lot of my pieces and Nature Spirit, I thought of the background as the one dominant color, but there's this really bold dark green that I'm using and a lot of places and is contrasting bright orange. And so I varied it up between each piece, whether it's one dominant color, a couple of dominant colors, or several dominant colors. At the bottom here, I have just an example of how I tend to think about color palettes as a whole. So this is a good example of brand colors that I use. Colors that I use in my artwork you can see is very similar to the Nature Spirit palette that I used. And what I like about this is that a lot of times when you see Color Palettes, you see however many colors are Art in equal-sized circles. And I find in practice is that usually I have a dominant color or I'm playing with that dominance, setting up my color palette in this way that shows a little bit more about that dominance and that relationship between the colors helps me visualize what the final piece might look like. And that's why I also like to thumbnail and color because color relationships are just so important to me and really helped me visualize and think through things that it just makes more sense for me to have that in my first sketch phase then to deal with that later. That's just my process that I've realized through experimenting, exploring, and reflecting. So it may or may not work for you. I just wanted to show that there's other ways to think about color palettes. Let's see how that color palette might look like in action. Here are the first six pieces that I put together for Nature Spirit. The top row is the first set that I put together and the bottom row is the second set. So you can really see how I started to iterate on the second one. Looking at the first one with the first piece, I originally just had this green and beige color way. And then I added this butterfly with this pop of orange towards the end. And I really liked that contrast. I really loved how that added this vibrance to this otherwise pretty calm and neutral color palette. I continued to play with that as I went into my other pieces. So I think already had this idea of a little person standing on these oranges. That can also be little worlds. And that's where I got the idea of putting that orange into my first piece. So there's that back-and-forth and where I'm learning from another piece to apply it to an earlier piece. Then when it came to drawing the bird one, which was the third one I finished, I had the oranges idea and then I was able to turn this bird, which is technically black in color. So it's using magpies as a reference because they have this important symbology in Chinese culture. And I was able to just use this dark green instead and that really tied it together. You can see how each piece and formed the next one and allowed me to be both creative and still have a framework to limit my option. When it came to creating the second set. I want it to push that a little further. So instead of using the exact same greens and oranges, I went even a little further by having this really strong, almost neon pop of orange on the fish and on the flowers and on the goldfish. And you'll notice they're all slightly different variations of oranges as well. The goldfish is a little bit more yellow, whereas the fish are a little bit more red. And then with the greens, I kept that dark green really consistent in the leaves. But in the background of this lotus piece on the left, I used a new blue, but this blue-green color is still in that family, that overall general cool tone of the greens that I have been using. So it works together. That's the dial that I was playing with. And I definitely didn't land on this color right away. Originally, the background of this load is peace was going to be a peachy color. It kinda like the bird. But I was trying to vary it up. I wanted to experiment and I just use the hue saturation levels to get to this blue color that I ended up really liking and using in further thumbnails. I also want to point out that on the bottom right here with this girl with the stems coming out of her. Originally this image didn't have any lines in it, so it was just the girl with the flowers. I used the shape language for her body to become much more abstract. But I love that complement of the shape language with these flowy gestural lines. Then I still felt that something was missing. So I added these stems and then I experimented with the kind of color that it might be. So originally, I expect with more realistic colors like a green stem, dark green, light green. Then I found this neon color that I just felt like really popped and tied into these other strong contrast that I had in the fishes of that same set. So this is just a good example of me continuing to reflect and look at pieces that look almost done but something's missing. And then I just try many different things until I hit something that I feel like yes. Feels right, that feels like the mood I was going for, for this one, I wanted to feel calming and to feel grounded. And yet something about it feels magical and feels energetic. And these lines were perfect for that. When I was first coming up with this, said, I didn't have this color palette necessarily in mind. Of course, you can tell that I tend to use these colors a lot, the warm and cool balance, but this dark green really came out of this whole experimentation. Thinking about the theme of nature that I want it to explore. And then finding that right shade of green. Green can be really bright and really light, or it can be really dark and almost black. And I really enjoy playing with this really dark color and seeing how I can balance it with these warm, neutral tones and earthy tones that I'm using. I think color is so powerful and how it can really shift the overall message just by having a viewer look at something. I don't have to tell somebody this is what the Art is supposed to make you feel calm and grounded. Instead they can just look at it, feel the color as they're observing, and let that guide them into their own interpretation. I also want to point out that a lot of times I'll get to the end of a Collection and then go back and tweak certain colors. I have to do this less and less as I gain more experience. For those of you are just beginning. I definitely want to highlight this because you might find yourself in a similar situation. And I want to make sure you don't feel like that's wrong or you're doing something badly. Because for example, when I was creating my alphabet adventure collection, I had a pretty clear idea that again, I went to these warm and cool relationship, but by the time I got to the end, the blue has really evolved into as much richer navy blue. And same thing with actually the earth tones as well. They became richer, they became more warm and to me deep. And I had to go back to my earlier pieces and unify them with the later pieces. And I just feel like that's part of the process, that's part of the learning, that's part of the experiment. Totally normal. And I think actually a really nice outcome than just knowing right from the beginning how exactly everything is going to look. You might get there with practice as you make more and more collection's and more series. But at the beginning, let yourself make mistakes, let yourself learn and let yourself adapt. So in summary, as we're planning out the color palettes for our collection, we really want to keep in mind how it's one of the most important factors in what can make a collection or series feel connected and cohesive. And remember to keep this phon, I think such a great part of all this is being able to look at your inspiration. Going out to explore looking at Nature, looking at design, and just checking in with yourself on what about it makes you feel a certain way. You can even have a few different sets that you want to try, but eventually narrow it down to something that you can apply consistently to your pieces and vary it up within that palette so that you can have interest and contrast and still cohesive connection. When you're ready, let's meet in the next section where I'll talk about picking a format for all of your pieces. I'll see you there. 9. Determine Your Format: Let's talk a bit about the format that we want to present our collection in, because that's really going to inform how we design and create our individual pieces. The size and format that you select is really going to affect how your artwork is viewed and experienced by your audience. At this point in the process, we should be designing towards our ideal format and size. At earlier exercise we did where we came up with our target purpose and audience and format is going to come into play here. The main difference is that earlier we were thinking about in more general terms and mood boards. Whereas now we really want to figure out specific dimensions and specs so that we make sure we're working towards the right final destination. Some of you might already know exactly what kind of size and medium and format you're gonna be working in. But if you're not sure yet or you're still brainstorming, here are some of the main considerations that you're going to want to keep in mind to start, is it going to be shown physically in-person or something that you can touch or just digitally like on a web blog or on Instagram or some sort of digital websites. It can also be a combination of both, which is my experience and something else. Share a little bit more on later in this class. You'll also want to think about the size that you're working towards, especially if you're going to be printing them out or showing them in person. The next thing is material. If you're working physically, are these going to be printed on a certain type of paper or on cloth? Or maybe you're working with a different materials such as wood or metal. If you're working digitally, you'll still want to think about format. For example, are they going to be still images or are they going to be animated? If they're gonna be animated, to what extent are they going to be animated? Or if you're trying to use them in a video, in which format are they going to be in? All of these things can be imported in how you decide to set up your layers, for example, and how you want to set up your resolution, and what size of framework you're going to be working in. Having this understanding of Your Format set up right now when you're not yet Finalizing your Pieces is going to help you avoid headache down the road. As for my process when I was developing Nature Spirit, I already have my webshop, my Instagram, and the types of things that I normally create with my illustrations in mind. So I haven't established framework. Even then. Within that, there are a lot of considerations that I'm thinking through. For example, when I did the alphabet of venture collection, I knew it was going to be a picture book and shared on Instagram. So I wanted to design illustrations that worked for both. When it came to Nature Spirit, I wasn't exactly sure what format it was going to be in in terms of the final product. But I knew that it was going to be shared on Instagram. And so I took advantage of that long portrait dimension, then thought about what kind of products that would fit. It also lends itself really nicely to a pretty standard frame size and print size. Besides that, I wanted to create device cases for the first time. So that's something that I mocked up then experimented with. And I also think about different dimensions for digital wallpapers. So you can imagine that having something that works for mobile size, a tablet size, and a large desktop size is something that I have to really keep in mind as I'm developing those dimensions and creating those edges and margins and all of those things. One thing I really recommend doing from my own experience is to try it out. So if you are, say, designing an enamel pin, which I designed before, print a little paper version of that enamel pin design out to the size that you want. And just make sure it's the right size that you have in mind. Oftentimes it might be bigger or smaller than you think. Or if you're designing something like a book or a device case, there are a lot of mock-ups these days that you can find on websites such as Creative market.com that allow you to place your illustration onto them so you can see what it might look like in real life. This is really handy when it comes to things like device cases where there's a big cut-out for the phone camera. You'll want to make sure that your illustration doesn't have something really important in that corner. And things like that. Of course, you can always adapt and add something or edit it a little bit to your intended purpose at the end. But it's just going to save you a lot of time and unnecessary work. If you have some of these frameworks are ready in mind as you're working on your pieces. So all of my pieces and Nature Spirit really accommodate both Instagram sharing, printmaking, and product making. And I have a website builder where I can preview how it's going to look on this site and all of that comes together as in creating the final pieces. I'm going to share my go-to dimensions in the class materials and some other considerations that you might want to keep in mind. These aren't things that are set in stone and you can always change them at the end. In summary, as we get closer to crystallizing our collection and finalizing the format of our Pieces is really important to keep going back to our intended purpose, designed towards the correct format and size to avoid unnecessary work later on, I really encourage you to try out your envisioned format in size, in real life is possible, or at least through mockups. Because oftentimes things will feel different in-person compared to its digital design. It takes some time right now to think about your intended purpose, all the different formats that you are considering, and then try to come up with some specs. Some dimensions will work for you intend to purpose and make sure that you're working on pieces that will work for your intended format. When you're ready, let's meet in the next section we'll talk about how we can finalize our collection by zooming out for the big picture and zooming in to tweak Details. I'll see you there. 10. Finalizing the Details: Let's talk about how to finalize our pieces and really start to make our collection come together and feel cohesive. At this point in the process. It's all about unifying the Details and making sure that each piece we're adding is fitting into the whole. The more pieces that you create for your collection, the more and more clear your patterns and your elements and your system is going to be, you're going to want to consistently be keeping an eye on the big picture while working into the details to finalize your pieces. And don't be surprised if you continue to go back and forth between pieces that you've created before and pieces that you're working on now. Now, this is of course the easiest with digital pieces because you have that luxury of easily going back into files and tweaking layers and adjusting Color Palettes and doing adjustment layers. Even if you're working traditionally, however, what you can do is create smaller versions of your finished pieces and then make sure that it feels good as a cohesive whole before working into your final pieces. At this point, we might also run again into that question of when do I know when to stop? I know many creatives, including myself, can sometimes struggled to know when a piece is finished and when there's still more to do. Sometimes it feels like you can noodle or detail or tweak something forever. And at some point you need to know when to stop. This goes back to the whole exercise I've been sharing about checking in with yourself, listening to your gut, and really hearing yourself on whether you've said what you wanted to say when you set out to create this piece. This might be accomplished really quickly. And sometimes the question I have is I spend enough time on that or is this done? And sometimes it just is done. Other times there's a piece where I know other people will look at it and think that it's done and I've spent hours and hours on it. And yet something about it still doesn't feel quite right. And I still want to keep working at it until I get that final feeling of yes, I've said what I wanted to say. I would say the biggest thing I recommend against is just getting so stuck on a piece that you either give up or you're spending hours and hours not really making a lot of process. That's a good sign that you should move on to something else and then come back and visit this later on. I have Pieces in even this collection where I did the thumbnail before, many other ones that I finished but I couldn't quite figure it out at the time. How to make it work or where it fit into the story. But as I fleshed out other pieces, I could come back to it and really flesh it out. That's why I really wanted to share this collection as a work in progress with you. So you can just see that I'm not just finishing one piece at a time. There are different pieces at different levels of finish. And I really learned from future pieces to grow my older pieces. Like I mentioned earlier in the class on color. Some later Pieces informed that little missing bit that I finally figured out in an earlier piece. And that's such a satisfying feeling, really a natural part of this whole piecing together a puzzle that we've been talking about. Now, specifically with the other details besides color, I was really looking as a whole at all of the pieces put together over and over again on my whiteboard or in my Procreate or even on Instagram. I started to notice that there was this gesture that was connecting all of them like in certain configurations it looked like a circle and other lineups, It's just has this nice natural flow. And that's something that was unintentional at the beginning. But once I saw it within the first three to four pieces, It's something that I definitely wanted to carry on in the next few sets. By the end of the collection, it's something that I'm very intentionally building in. It's something that I'm tweaking my thumbnails to make sure that I accommodate for and something that just grew organically out of the process and the experimentation. But now it makes so much sense to me because this whole collection was about the harmony and the inter being and connection between human and nature and Spirit. And so of course, it makes sense that each piece would flow from each other and have this kind of unspoken connecting line. But it's not something that I could have figured out at the very beginning until I got into making it, into doing it and reflecting on it. I hope that provides some inspiration, encouragement that a lot of time, some of your favorite parts of your collection aren't going to come out until you've figured out a few pieces and allowed yourself to step back and reflect and digest and learn, and then continued to evolve and grow. So in summary, as we're really finalizing all of the pieces in our collection, we want to make sure that we're identifying those patterns, connecting those dots and honing in on the Details is starting to bring everything together. There's a lot of wiggle room with each piece in terms of trying something new. Adding another note to the song or another conversation point to the discussion. But at the end of the day, there needs to be this cohesiveness that shows that it's a grouping, whether that's through the subject matter, the color palette, the Composition and styling, or ideally a combination of everything really synergizing together. Now of course, Finalizing is going to take a lot of time and it's such an important part of finishing up your collection. So don't feel like you need to finish all of that before moving on to the rest of the class. These next few sections are going to help you think about some aspects of your collection that you're going to want to keep in mind as you're working on it. So when you're ready, let's meet in the next section, we will talk all about naming 11. Naming Your Work: An often overlooked part of making a collection is coming up with the names and the descriptions for it. I recommend not saving this for the end of the project, but have it be something integrated into your process that you're thinking about along the way. I also think that learning how to name and describe your work is an important communication skill for any creative. I think most of you can already imagine why naming is important, but it really does affect the experience that a piece can have an add another dimension to your message. Style, your voice, and what you want your audience to take away from it. You don't need to be Shakespeare in terms of writing this really beautiful descriptive language. In fact, I think the most important part is just to be yourself. I know a question might be bubbling up for a lot of visual artists are creatives that aren't used to writing. In a sense of what if writing is not my strength. What if titling something or describing something makes me feel nervous or it makes me feel like I don't know what to do. This honestly a really great skill for any person to have, whether you're even in the creative arts, are not learning how to communicate, to share your message and what it is that you want to put out into the world. Such a great privilege that we have. And so don't take this as some stressful thing that you have to get right, but more, learn to adapt, learn to observe, learn to see how other people you admire are doing it. You can totally be emulating another style at first, but learn to look for your voice and how you want to share. Do you want to come across as a little bit more elaborate and abstract in how you describe things or just really simple and really straightforward. Again, this is all part of you and your identity, your voice, what it is that you want to share through your work. I think the most important takeaway that I want you to have from this section is the belief that you can do it. There's no reason why you need to be some sort of prolific author or feel like writing was your major in college to just be able to share your voice and describe your work. Again, there's so many different ways to approach this, but here are just some considerations that you might want to have in mind as you consider the tone of how you're going to name and describe things in your collection. The first consideration we'll talk about is tone. Overall, do you want your language to be really and straightforward, or a little bit more flowery or poetic. Another way that you might want to think about it is how you want to approach it. This is especially true in describing your work. So say a little captions that might accompany your piece in a gallery or on your website, the product description. There's many areas that you might want to describe things or even a social media caption. So do you want to be really literals such as explaining more of your process and your materials and exactly what this is about. Or do you want to be a little bit more poetic and allude to what inspired you and what Your message was. And it can always, of course, be a combination of any of these things. You might also want to think about whether you want to be a little bit more abstract or punny, or just hiding the ball a little bit more. For example, is the title of your piece going to be exactly what it is? Or is it going to be something where the audience gets it once they see it, but it's not an obvious connection. So say you're painting is of a bird on a flower. And your title could be burdened flower number four. Or it could be something like neighborhood gossip. Who knows what you might come up with. But something along those lines can really help you think about whether you want to have an approach that really reflects your personality or something that is just really allowing the artwork to speak for itself and not really add to much more to it. Now, all of these tones truly come together in all of the contexts that you're sharing it through. So whether it's the title of your piece, the caption, the product descriptions, or even in an article that you might want to be sharing your work in. All of these things can synergize together. Think about how powerful words can be even in your own life. When you're observing advertising copy or reading a book or a magazine article. Just like with color palettes, you can start to notice for yourself how different words make you feel and how they're being utilized in different contexts. Go to museum galleries, go to bookstores, read Your Favorite Magazines. Really pay attention on social media and observe how people you admire are doing it. And think about which one of these matches the intended purpose of your work and start to incorporate and practice it for yourself. For my process, I do spend a lot of time thinking about words. I used to be a lawyer and I have a lot of experience and Writing But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm particularly good in or experienced in writing in the style that best communicates the tone and the mood I'm trying to share with my collection. So for me, it's been a process of reflecting on what has made me feel the type of mood that I want in other people's work. Thinking about the books or magazines that I admire and whether this type of language fits in and just my own gut reaction when I'm reading it myself doesn't make me cringe or does it make me feel like yes, that is what I'm trying to say, is a great exercise in being creative in a different way. Coming up with the titles of the pieces, for example, has been a choice and keeping it really simple. And maybe having some double meaning and then deciding to have the descriptions be a little bit more expressive or a little bit more literal and explaining the inspiration behind each piece. Because I've thought about how Art that I really liked when I dug deeper into the symbolism and the intention of the artists behind it, it meant so much more to me. But sometimes when you experience it in a gallery with no explanation next to it, of course, there's that benefit of just applying your own meaning to it, to assigning different aspects of your own life, projecting yourself onto it. But at the same time, alleys for this collection, I really wanted to share my own investigations, research, and inspirations for it because it wasn't important part of what I wanted to share. Another thing I did with this collection was to pick a quote that I really love and pair it with each illustration. That helps me set a direction to what I wanted to share with each piece and overall harmonize all the pieces together. I already collect quotes from the reading and the research that I do. So it was this FUN additional layer of being able to bring a different side of my interests and personality into this collection. And it all really worked together. In summary, when it comes to naming, choose names, and language that reflects the intention of your collection. I really want to emphasize that even if you're not used to writing and even if you think Writing is not your strong suit, definitely use this chance and this project to practice and to hone your voice. Look to others for inspiration and think about how you'd like somebody else to describe your work. Take some time right now if you'd like to gather some inspiration of different types of writing examples that you like or maybe you already know the tone of voice that you want to use. Start practicing on the pieces that you have created to come up with names and descriptions. Of course can always edit them as you go, but it's just a great chance to start warming up and practicing when you're ready. Let's meet in the next section where I'll talk about organization. Please don't run away at this point. I promised to make it as FUN as possible. And I think it's really important for creatives to learn how to organize their work 12. Organizing Your Pieces: I like how I have a subtitle here. It's time to organize your Art. Don't put it up. It's FUN. But I really mean that I know for some of you, there's going to be a lot of excitement about organizing Your Art and for others, this is your worst nightmare. So I hope that I can strike a good middle ground of just showing you one how important organization is, which I think most of you probably know and to how it can be phon, and really a part of your creative process. So let's get into it. Organization to me is all about helping your future self. So while the stereotype is that creatives are scattered, organization is really important for all of us. By keeping your work organized, you make space for creative flow right now and you help yourself find things in the future. The most important tip that I can give you when it comes to organization is you're trying to make it as simple and enjoyable as possible for you. Let's talk about how we can see organized as creatives. Again, if it doesn't come naturally to you, I would say the first thing to do is to stop telling yourself that you're not organized. Let's start by saying, I am learning to become organized. Then set up a system that is as frictionless as possible. Let me talk a little bit more about how I organize things using the same tools that I've been mentioning throughout this class. So in Pinterest, I have made an effort to clean up my boards and keep them really organized by the types of inspiration and the types of references. And I'll use the sub board feature to create specific individual elements. And Figma, I actually keep my Figma pretty edited down, so I'll put things on there and as soon as I not using them anymore, I'll actually remove them. So my current Figma that I'm showing is a really edited down version of where it started. Have a lot of different inspirations. I had a lot more different words. But whenever I feel like I've done with a piece, I actually remove it because at least for my Figma purposes, I find that removing clutter is best for my creative flow. On the other hand, in Notion, I keep everything. This is my master file drawer and I have all of these different projects and tasks and notes. But even within those, I keep it really organized. I don't want to overwhelm you with all of my different ways that I use Notion because I happen to be someone who really likes organization and Notion, but I know that it can feel overwhelming at first. That said, I want to show you something useful that you can take away from this class. So I'll show you how I setup my organization for Nature Spirit and provide a link to a template that you can use to set up something similar for yourself. Here's my Nature Spirit Art board, and this is a project within Notion. I've recently tried to consolidate all of my Art into one database and just use different filters to show the current collection I'm working on. You can see here that each of these cards has one of my illustrations. And if you click into it, you'll see the quotes that I assigned to it when I posted it, the link to the blog post that has the illustrations and the meanings behind it, as well as the earlier thumbnail drafts that I've had. Some of them will have more than others. And I can see all of my pieces you because if 12 that I'm working on along with three potential ones that I may or may not do. So here's a sneak preview of that. When I really love about this as being able to keep track of all of the different versions that I've had. A piece. The quotes, the link to the drive of all my final working files and product files and designed files. And being able to quickly go somewhere and co looked at all of these different colorways that I tried and how it evolved from thumbnail to Final, in a few different steps. What's great is in the future. If I ever wants to say create a class about this, I will be able to easily pull up this notion. And that's exactly what I'm talking about right now. I literally just pulled this up from a database that I had already organized and I'm able to show you now how I've organized things and how this work in progress turned into the final piece. I really appreciate that and it's something that I'll be able to use in the future and just keep things really organized. I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of Notion and how to set this up. So I'll just quickly say that Notion uses these databases. You can think of them like spreadsheets in Excel or in Google Docs, google Sheets. What's great about Notion is that you can take these spreadsheets, these tables that you're familiar with and see them in different views. And I love using this gallery mode because you're able to just put your JPEG into one of your tables and then generate this card as a view. And I'm just able to better preview all of my work all at once. You can easily change your view just by right-clicking on this tab here, editing the view and then changing the layout. You have table, board, timeline, gallery list, and calendar. For our purposes, I like to use gallery. So just to keep it simple, I'm going to show that as the example and the table will be set up for that as well. Now, if all of this is starting to feel very overwhelming, because say you don't use digital apps very often, then just keep some sort of physical filing system that is going to work for you. Maybe it's a closet with big dividers if you work large and traditional, or maybe it's just a little filing cabinet with all of your sketches are clearly labeled sketchbooks. Whatever it is, take that time and make it part of your process to index and really organize your Pieces. Your future self will thank you. When I was developing Nature Spirit, first I was working into play pen of Figma. But as soon as I start to finish a few of my pieces, then I created the notion database to organize the quotes and the descriptions, the drafts and the final pieces and the working files. So that can be one approach that you use. Just be sure that at some point before you're completely done with the project that you start to set up an organization setting because once you finished the project, I move on. I know it's hard to go back and really focus on getting everything together. In summary, as you're working on your collection, makes sure that you set up your future self for success by creating an organizational system to categorize, collect all of your pieces and all of your descriptions and titles and information in one place. I like to use Notion and Figma for that. You can use, of course, whatever program you feels most comfortable with or a physical system. But at the end of the day does have something that's easy for you to manage and helpful to your future self. Make sure you set it aside time and your creative process for this organizational aspect. For now, let's meet. In the next section we'll talk about sharing your work and different strategies or approaches that you can think about this sometimes anxiety inducing aspect of being a creative. I'll see you there. 13. Sharing Your Collection (Mindfully): We're at the finish line and it's time to talk about sharing. Now, I know that's sharing can carry this burden or anxiety for a lot of people, especially these days. So let's approach this with a mindset of learning how to have this skill that will develop our responsibility as creatives. I know that it can be really a vulnerable experienced to put yourself out there and open yourself up to either criticism or rejection or even just no reaction. That's why I think is really important in this process that we ground our value in ourselves and not in external validation of our creative work. Now, before I dive any further into that, let's just talk on a high level on all the different venues that we can share on. And just think about which ones either have the audience that you want or you're ready on anyway and you like that platform or you just want to focus on. I highly recommend, especially if you're a beginner or you don't have a strong foothold in any one platform to just focus on one or maybe two at a time. Some other venues that you might be considering are, of course, social media, instagram, Pinterest, Twitter. And I'm including Art blogs and Art communities and forums that you might be a part of or are interested in joining. Those are all great places to share visual artwork. And each one has its own systems such as hashtagging or adding to certain forums, or making sure that they're formatted in the most viewable, the pleasurable way. And you'll want to just be a part of those communities. Learn what's best to see what you react to the same process of understanding what speaks to you and work from there. I've personally never followed any set advice of someone who has said, this is how I gained tens of thousands of followers. And I really honestly just listened to what speaks to me. Whether a certain type of post makes me feel like that's authentic and something I want to follow versus something that just makes me shake my head and back away. And I really find that has worked for me. Whether I have grown as quickly as I could have. I don't know, but I'm happy with the pace that I've grown up and I'm proud of the way I've approached it. And I think that's way more important to me than to gain a certain number of followers in a certain time-frame. Another venue you might want to think about are all a different kind of online platforms besides the social media ones that you can be a part of, such as Suchi Art or artsy, or selling your products on sites such as society six or creating a portfolio just for your work, not necessarily selling anything on Behance and dribble. I know for a fact that Art Directors are looking for people on these platforms. I myself have gotten client work directly from something along these lines. And so I think this is a great way to share your work in a really professional Art focus setting without necessarily feeling that pressure of likes and comments and followers. Of course, you have a lot of options for in-person depending on where you live. But most major cities, as long as you live close to one or in one, will offer you some various combination of these or all of these. One is that you can reach out to galleries to see if they'll represent you. Of course, your skill level needs to be at a certain level, but just start to go to different openings that they're hosting. Make those relationships, see which one of them have audience that you would like and just start to reach out and ask for feedback. If you think that you're not ready yet. You can also think about selling into certain boutique shops. I have my books carried in many different independent boutique shops all over the world and that's one of my favorite ways of sharing my work with a wider audience. There's also in-person markets. So for a long time I would do pop-ups at local craft fairs such as renegade and unique, and exposed my work to a different subset of people. And I also just enjoyed that in-person interaction. Can also think of artists are creative co-ops or different communities that might be hosting events like this. So get creative. This is another way for you to be creative. Think about where you naturally like to show up. The craft fairs that I participate in are the ones that I liked to go to before I started pursuing Art. And so it's just this natural goal of mine to be a part of it and lent itself to, of course, a natural fit and audience. You'll notice that my common trend or approach to things throughout this class and how I think about various things is really listening to yourself. Learning to hear what is authentic to you and at same time challenge yourself without overwhelming yourself. That's how I've always continued to grow in a sustainable way and in a way that I can feel happy about. Now, I want to talk a little bit about creative courage here and recommend a book that I really love on this whole concept and this whole topic. So the main thing is that when we share our work with ourselves, I know that we are giving them a piece of ourselves and inviting them to connect with us on a deeper level. This can feel very vulnerable and I want to identify just upfront that it takes courage. And I hope that it can be inspiring rather than frightening or overwhelming. But for those of us, and I know there's many of us in the creative world where it does not come naturally. This just takes practice. It might seem like it comes so easily for me now and it's so easy for me to talk about my work and share my work, even develop the class around it. Because, because I've had years of practice now, at the very beginning, I was buoyed honestly by a lot of naivete which helped. And then there was definitely a period where I started to realize, Oh, there's some parts of me that feel really uncomfortable with this. I feel anxious about it. And I had to learn how to overcome those feelings and uses as an opportunity to practice mindfulness, practice my own sense of self-identity and self-worth. Why I'm doing this and just channel that energy into way that was sustainable and made sense because creativity should be PFK-1. It should be challenging, but it should be PFK-1. It's a joy. And sharing the same way at the end of the day be a joy. But I know that's easier said than done. I recently read a book called The creative act by Rick Rubin. And I just love and resonate with everything that he says. It's really aligned with my philosophies and my approach to life and creative work. And there are a couple of things that really jumped out at me and addressed some of these feelings that I would like to share it with you. Rick Rubin is a very famous, very prolific and successful music producer who has worked with some of the most famous artists in the world. And he wrote this book that is really about applying this Eastern philosophy of flow and harmony and the way to the creative process, because we're a part of nature and nature is creative and therefore we are creative. When we think about our creative process, if we can think about it from the perspective of nature and harmony, actually a lot of things can start to make sense. Specifically for this sharing section of the class, he talks about how sharing is a responsibility of the creative. And that's something that I hadn't necessarily thought of in that specific way before. But actually really inspired me and empowered me to think about things in that way. So one quote that I want to share is he says, while the artist's goal is Greatness, It's also to move forward in service to the next project. We finished the current one. In service to the current project, we finish it so that it can be set free into the world. Sharing Art is the price of making it. Exposing your vulnerability is the fee. Out of this experience comes regeneration, finding freshness within yourself for the next project and all the ones to follow. I really love how that ties into everything we've been talking about in this class. From identifying what drives us, what interests us, learning how to listen to ourselves, to distill it, creating something and making decisions on it and moving forward, allowing our learnings to help us adapt, to grow and evolve. And then now we're at the point where we need to put it out into the world. We need to share it to build up that muscle of courage within us and to just release it so we can move on to the next thing. He also says in the book, one of the greatest rewards of making Art is our ability to share it. Even if there's no audience to receive it, we build the muscle of making something and putting it out into the world. Finishing our work is a good habit to develop. Boosts confidence. Despite our insecurities, the more times we can bring ourselves to release our work, the less weight insecurity has. And so if insecurity is holding you back from sharing your work, try to incorporate some of these mindsets into your process. Maybe you need to take baby steps, but take steps because just know that at the end of this journey, the more that you practice this easier it's going to get, the more opportunities you'll have to communicate with others and to connect with others, which is really one of the greatest joys in our creative work. I think a very important aspect of all of this is just to keep in mind that it's about the connection and not the validation. I've mentioned already about how you can learn to ground yourself in your own self-worth That's not tied to your creative work. And I think it's also important to remember that not everyone is going to like our work and that's okay. I think a lot about how not everybody likes chocolates and not even everybody likes dogs. If they can't please everyone, there's no way that I'm going to please everyone. For a long time. I was always focused on the people who don't care about my work. I don't want to share my work because I'm worried about bothering somebody who doesn't care about it. But I learned to shift my attention to all these people who said that they like my work and they're inspired or they feel better when they look at it. And so just shifting that attention to the people who do matter And who do care about the work has also helped bolster my courage and my purpose and intention of why I want to share. Now going back to my own process, I've shared a lot about my mental approach. But in terms of the actual practical outcome of how I share my work, basically I share on Instagram, I have an e-mail newsletter, connect it to my website where I share to my subscribers. I share through classes like this on Skillshare and teach the process behind it, which is another aspect of sharing that I really love. So you can see that there all these different ways to share, whether it's from making physical products and selling them in-person, online or in markets. Just posting them to social media sites or online portfolio sites, or creating a class, sharing what you've learned through these experiences and how you can help others do the same. These are just the ways that I do it and there's so many other ways to do it for yourself. Think about what it is that you love to do naturally. What communities you're already a part of and feel comfortable in or would like to be a part of and just start to bring all of it together, synergize it with your creative work and remember that even if it doesn't come naturally to you, can always challenge yourself to grow and to become more and more courageous in your creative work. So in summary, when it comes to sharing, learn to reframe sharing in your mind, your self-worth should not be attached to the outcome of your sharing. It's really a form of love of communication and connection with others. Try out different venues to see what works best for you. Your vision and your ideal audience were actually blessed to have so many different ways to share our work with all sorts of people all across the world. So let's take advantage of this time and this opportunity. Not let our own mental constructs get in the way and just be free to both explore our own creativity inside and share it with the outside world. 14. Summary & Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope that I provided a framework for you that you can return to again and again. And just this whole mindset of how a collection is such a great way to learn how to hone your voice, your style, and just dive into what excites and interests you. Let's just do a quick recap of the big picture of what we learned together. Remember to work big to small, let's identify our intended purpose and work within a framework and a system so that we can learn how to narrow down our options and make decisions and explore all of the tools and the dials that you have. Style, color, Technique, format so that you can create all sorts of different collection's exploring all sorts of different themes and continue to have FUN expressing yourself in discovering your own creativity. There are a lot of recurring mindset tips throughout this class that I feel like I was repeating over and over again. I want to collect them here so that you can have them at the top of your mind whenever you run into any of these blocks are challenges. First, learned to have an anchor and a direction. This is the exercise of us putting together our intended purpose or theme, our Y, and remembering to return to it again and again as we get deeper into the process so that we don't lose the forest for the trees. The next tip was to let things unfold naturally. This came up whenever we were brainstorming and being creative or coming up with parameters for our collection. We want to have a system. We want to have a framework and some guide posts, but we don't want to be so rigid that as we go along and evolve and realize something new that we can go back or change course and just head towards the direction that we really want to be on. The third thing is to learn to be okay with making mistakes, with failing, or really just calling it learning. There's going to be so many challenges along the way of creating a collection that you really fall in love with because it's all part of growth. If you feel that growing is uncomfortable or that learning something new unveils these insecurities within you. That's something to work on. That's something that you can practice through making a collection, just learning to be okay and have FUN with this whole aspect of learning, failing and then making something grow. That leads me into the fourth tip, which is to always remember to find joy in the process. Creativity is intelligence, having FUN. That is a famous quote by none other than Albert Einstein. And I think it's so true. I know that sometimes as creatives we can start to take our work so seriously that we take the joy out of it. We come so caught up in just whether we're good enough, whether they're doing the right thing, that we forget that this is all supposed to be PFK-1. So let's start to find that joy in it and learn to make that a practice of our creative process. And lastly, that leads me to just remembering what this is all about. We as creatives are able to express ourselves and our own unique way, the way that we want to see the world and the way we want to share it with others. It's a blessing and a privilege to be able to do that. We can see it from that perspective. We're going to have such a better time. Being creatives have so much FUN creating a collection. And I can't wait to see what you come up with. If you enjoyed this class, I welcome you to check out all of my other classes and resources available, uh, provide them in the class materials and hopefully you know where to find me already Until next time. Happy creating