Designing Still Life Unleashed: Freedom, Confidence & Choice

1. Class Intro: Hello. Welcome to Designing Still Life, freedom, confidence, and choice. Those are the three things I hope to instill in us through this whole still life unleashed series, freedom, confidence, and choice. Sounds great, right? In this class, we're going to step away from painting for a bit and focus on how still life works as a design process. So this is kind of the unlearning part, the design first class. And it's about loosening habits and building confidence and stepping out of the need to have something look correct before you even start painting. Have you ever noticed how quickly your brain jumps to what things are supposed to look like? This is automatic and it worries about realism, perspective or whether things make sense, even when you're trying to work more freely. So that pull toward correctness is strong, I'm sure in you, as well, and it can make still life feel tight and frustrating or for that matter, anything feel tight and frustrating. So we're going to replace it with something more useful. Choice. We will work in a sketchbook using simple shapes to explore the key decisions that build a painting. Placement, relationships, hierarchy, intent, and inspiration. So instead of focusing on accuracy, you'll start to see how these small decisions are actually what create strong expressive work. For your project, you'll create a series of quick, simple still life sketches, are not finished drawings, but thinking tools, and each one explores a different idea and we'll write the concept right on the page before you begin. So these are meant to be loose and exploratory and something you can come back to as you move forward in your painting. If you're new here, I'm Suzanne Allard, and I started painting later in life and learned through online classes just like this. And now I license my art, sell my work, and teach what I've learned along the way. Alright, so let's open up our sketchbooks and start building the structure behind a still life. 2. Design: Placement: Okay, so again, this class is not about drawing. It's about how to learn to make decisions for these paintings and what are the factors that we're looking at and the choices we get to make. So rather than relying on a photo, we're learning about four to five different areas, four really for the structure of a painting because every still life painting, no matter the style is built on a structure, although you could say that about every painting. And the structure comes from the choices that we make. So in this class, we're going to focus on five of the most important ones. R four are part of the structure, and then the last one is where our ideas come from. So I use a sketchbook like this I try to I've been pretty good about keeping this sketchbook for this kind of activity, like when I take a class or you know, I'm practicing something. But you can, of course, use any sketchbook you want. Or you can just put this on a piece of paper. But I would encourage you to put it somewhere where you can refer to it. And as far as what I grabbed some of these Tambo markers just because I love color, but you could do this all with a pencil. So the five areas we're going to look at are placement. So where we place things in the composition. Relationships, how the objects relate to each other? The hierarchy, or you can also call it emphasis. You know, what is going to be more important? The intent of our design. And then, like, I would say, these are the structure. And then inspiration is maybe, think of it as the fuel. Fuel. Okay. So we're going to look at each of these. And then in the painting classes that follow, we'll be focusing on each module each separate class will have a different focus, different intent. And I really like working that way so that I can practice a certain thing and try it on for size. So we're going to explore each of these, though, in this class in a simple, really simple sketch. And color, by the way, because you know I'm obsessed with color if you've taken any of my classes flows through all of these. It has a role in all of these, but it's not separated out for that reason. Okay. Y. So here's the important part. Nothing you do needs to be right. This is not about right and wrong. This is about making decisions and, you know, shaping the structure. Try to think in your mind, you're not fixing something, you're choosing something. So, you know, it's kind of flipping form and shadows and all that on its head and really being playful here. Playfulness is the emphasis here. But we want to have some idea of structure. So let's start with placement. I want to look at first some examples of placement decisions that artists have made. Okay, here are the placement artworks that I've pulled. And by the way, these are in my Pinterest board, which is linked to in the supply sheet. And where I could, I've identified the artist. But like here, I cannot these are from Pinterest and the Internet. I can't read what that signature is. So this artist, you know, you talk about placement, really interesting choice they made. You have lots of white space with some different visual interest, and I just want to make sure that you, you're not seeing too much glare here. Maybe that helps you. And the objects, though, are just all kind of concentrated on this table and kind of squished together. It's just really interesting to me that the artist chose to do that this way. Um, look at where things sit. Look how much space is around them. And, you know, this is the underlying structure of this painting. They made a conscious decision. They have little bits of interest out here really interesting. I think it says Star fruit, looks almost like a child handwriting and some little sketches. This is part of what that artist does. But the structure of this is pretty clear what they decided to do. Okay, let's look at another one. This one I did say it's Pamela Hoffmeister. And she is using, again, some really interesting placement of things because you know that this is you can imagine this was not a still life setup like this that she was copying. So because you've got a plate here and maybe that's a table, maybe it isn't fruit just and flowers just floating off of here. They don't appear or they're not obviously connected to anything. Then some leaves too that are like that one scratched out, painted over, and then these wine glasses are up here and you can imagine this is a table, but maybe it isn't and it doesn't really matter because it works. The painting works. So it can be really good to look at things like this. When we're painting, or when we're about to paint, when we in our mind going, Well, that doesn't make sense, so that's not right. But that's what we're trying to do in this class, and this whole series is undo that kind of thinking so that we can be more free. Alright, let's look at one more. This is a famous artist Raul Duffey. I'm gonna see if my brightness is turned all the way up just to make sure. Yeah, it is. Okay. So here, again, the placement, I thought was really interesting in this painting. I mean, I suppose you could say he was sitting at a cafe and saw all of this right where it is. But it's kind of doubtful. And even if he were sitting there and got the inspiration, just the placement of, you know, some sketches of tables and chairs back there, then just an outlined house there and there. And then a really small salt or oil and vinegar here and this fruit bowl here. He made some design decisions. He didn't just copy the scene that he was seeing. That's the point. This one is more realistic than the others, but it's still very, very loose. His work is beautiful. Oh, and here's one more. This is a painting actually that my aunt has. I recently visited my 88-year-old aunt in Michigan, and she's an artist, but she has these she loves the artist. He's no longer with us, but ZikJankowski. He's quite well known in the New England area. And, um, his placement on this is so interesting, I think. He has these color blocks here, but then he places these three vases, this one's in the middle, but not exactly. Then there's this one over here, this one over here with another one next to it. Just really unusual placement. I think nothing is bunched together. It's also not spread out evenly. It's not centered in the canvas. It's not just on one side. It's just fascinating. Alright, so if you think about placement, let's go to my reference photos here. And these I took at Glenda'sHuse. So she had done these. She has wonderful objects on Glenda, and she had and I'll put these photos in the class downloads. The artwork photos, since they're not my artwork, I'm just going to keep them in the Pintersbard. You're welcome to go look at them under the Pintersbard called still life Art that I have. But these I will put in class downloads. So she has these beautiful objects, and we put them together, or she did, really. And then we took pictures. And then there were other like this lamp I had to have a picture of and then we got playing actually, that's a book about Zig Jankowski, the artist, and I thought, Well, that's kind of pretty. And let's put these objects around it. We went crazy. Then we got out her. She has this wonderful habit of buying, like, an interesting shaped table, and then she just spray paints the heck out of it in these colors. So I pulled this one from the garage and this one from the basement, and we were playing with these arrangements. But for this purpose, my favorite photo is this one because it allows us to just pull any of these objects from it and see them all at once. And then there's my aunt and I painting. She had a lot of golden paints. I usually use Nova Color or golden. But look at her. Isn't she a doll? She's such a wonderful artist. Okay, so let's use this to come up with just a placement sketch and just explore some ideas around placement, because, like I said, this one allows me to look at all of the things at once. So, if we're using that and we want to play with some some sketch ideas, then you might pull that photo for yourself to look at. And this is where you could, like I said, sketch and pencil sketch anything you want, Cray. But, you know, I did actually play with a composition when I was there, the one where I was painting because I was obsessed with this lamp. But, you know, I had to think about where to place it. And I've done a few different sketches where, let's say, you know, we put the lamp here. And, again, we're not clearly not trying to make we're trying to make quick idea sketches. And then you could play with, well, you know, this red picture, should that, you know, would I want that over here and the handle of it, you know, would I want the handle of it? So maybe I want it sort of horror over here. And we're gonna talk about relationships next, but, you know, there's overlap on these structure ideas, but this is an example of a relationship because I'm putting the vase behind this lamp. But I could have put it, you know, over here. And if I wanted the handle, uh, on this side, then I obviously could just change it. Um, so, thinking about where to place things, you know? I mean, do you put do I want a lemon, you know, down here, or do I want, you know, like we saw in some of the artworks, some sort of floating lemony things here? Um and do I want, you know, sort of an image of a tray likes in some of these photos? You know, she had this, I wanted to take it this papaya tray that she had bought art an artist painted it. I'm gonna have to paint that at some point. But, you know, is there a tray back here? Maybe, you know, with a design on it. And so you can see how we're just using the sketch to make decisions and to think about things. You know, maybe there's a bottle, a wine bottle back here. Uh, maybe there's kind of a table going here, you know, so this is just placement ideas. So when we're thinking about placement, I'm going to write it right in here. Um, in your sketchbook, still life is designed. At least this series, still life unleashed is designed not copied. And so we place things. We arrange them, you know, like almost as if you were a decorator and you're just arranging things the way you like, and we choose. So those are the things I want to sort of help us remember for placement, and we'll put placement here. So basically, I've made a spread here around the idea of placement, reminding myself that still life is designed and placement we are placing things, arranging things. And you can see that I could turn the page and do a completely different exercise around placement. So that's what you know, and, you know, you can say, Well, like, this feels crowded here, so maybe I wouldn't do that or this feels crowded. And maybe I'd rather just have some white space. I probably would and maybe some flowers coming out of here. So all of that, you can see that I'm not copying anything. And this allows you to use any photo you want because you are taking some time to figure out the structure of what you want to create. Okay, so and these are the same decisions we're gonna make in paint. So next we'll look at relationships, and that's how these shapes relate to each other. 3. Design: Relationships: Right, so now we've looked at placement, which is where things we've decided where things go, but we're also now going to look at more relationships, how they relate to each other. And as I said, they're kind of joined, but they're enough of a different concept to make sense to review them. So let's look at how some artists use relationships. I pulled some artwork, and again, these are in my Pintras board. This painting is Three Roses by Alexander Shandor, and I thought this relationship was really interesting because the look at all of the negative space. So similar to a painting in the last underplacement that I showed you where there was a lot going on around here. But, you know, there's like this little picture is hugging this. And then this bowl, this is in front of this. So this is touching, but this is by itself. And I've actually done a painting where I had a cluster of things, and I separated one out, and I realized later this being vulnerable here, but that was an expression of how I felt sometimes in social settings in certain groups where I just felt like I was on the outside. And so this isn't an extreme example because it's not that far, but let's say we're over here. Anyway, there's just some who knows what the artist intended, but I thought the relationships in this one were really interesting. This one, this is Anna Valdez, and she, you know, does very sort of meticulous detailed work, not something we're working on here, but I thought it was a good example of relationships because and I do use plants this way. If everything feels a little too disjointed, like, I don't feel like it's holding together, I will take plants and since you can do any shape with them, and I'll bring them into something to sort of almost, like, hold hands with everything in the in the composition. And I feel like that's what I don't know if she intended to do that, but that's how it feels to me because all the leaves are reaching out and touching something else. There's nothing here that isn't being touched by something else. It's all in relationship to something else. And then this I thought was interesting because it's very simple. But these are all connected to each other. You know, we've got one, two, three, four, five, maybe six cups stacked, isn't it beautiful? And that's the relationship these have. Nothing is off by itself. And then I pulled another Jankowski painting picture that I had taken it on Glenda's. Again, he does so much interesting stuff with placement and relationships because look how so you've got the bench kind of bringing things together. So you've got these beautiful florals here. And I just love how it's sort of spilling over. You can't really tell where those flowers are from and who cares. And then there's these three little pieces of fruit over here. Again, like, these two are connected. These you want variety like this. You know, there's a mystery there. Like you know, how did those wind up there, or they're just a bit of color, and it's nice. So relationship. Let's turn the page and do our little sheet on that. So relationships. We'll write at first this time. And think about distance overlap. In tension tension was that idea of either lots of space like there was or something being kind of just off, you know, in a strange way somewhere else. There's lots of ways even this is a little bit of tension, the idea that, Are these gonna fall over? So let's go back to our reference photos and practice something related to relationships. I think I'm gonna use that same photo with all those objects in it. You can use any photos you have with objects that you take at a store or around your home, or you can put objects in front of you and play with those. Okay. So let's think about relationships and the space between things a little bit more. So if we have, say, this, you know, vase in here, we could have, you know, a bowl right in front of it. Or we could want, you know, the bowl way over here. We can also have a relationship with off the page, which I think is really interesting to do. You know, have, like, a picture that is going off the page on purpose or a lemon off the page. So if I were to say having these objects, and I thought, Well, I want to unify them somehow. Well, I would want maybe some more objects, too, but let's play with that idea of using flowers or plants to connect things. So let's say I have that little yellow fat picture. I love that thing. I really wanted to grab all of Glenda's cute objects and put them in a box and bring them home. And so, I've got this behind there. And so, thinking about the relationship between, like, this is not tied to anything, this is not tied to anything. So I could if I had flowers coming out of here or leaves, let's say, I could kind of have them cascading this way. And that kind of brings this together. And I could leave this guy over here and just say, you know, that's the way it's gonna be. That's the way I want it. Let's say I had a banana, some bananas in here. Um, As long as I know what they are, when I'm sketching, it doesn't much matter. Maybe I've got this coming down here. So now I've got these things tied together. Can you see that? But let's say I decided to just leave, like Jankowski did on some of those some little bits over here and look to some cherries. Like that. Maybe one's kind of touching this one or next to it. Then I think this becomes interesting without this vase. So and I use my hand a lot that way. If you've drawn in a pencil, you can just erase, but I think that composition is interesting. There's a little bit too much flowing all the way down here, so I might pull put some leaves on this one. Something like that. Yeah, I think that's a little more interesting. And then I just think this is a complication that's not needed. So distance we used and you want a variety of distance. So, if you have little cherries, let's say, these actually should be a little closer to each other and not lined up. So there's some differences. You know, don't put three cherries all the exact same distance away from each other and from the lemon. And you don't want to have everything like at this plane. It's going to be some things up higher, something's lower, and we're overlapping. So we've got, you know, this one in front of that one. This one's in front of that one. And if we wanted, we could put like let me just use a different color, so it's maybe easier for you to see. We could have, say, a table and the table doesn't have to go the whole way. Maybe the table kind of comes like this. Or remember that one artist, Pamela that we looked at? I mean, it sort of didn't even couldn't tell what table was there or not. Um yeah, or you could have, like, a different color of something over here, you know? So some lines. And then this entire tablecloth is now having a relationship with these items. And you wouldn't want the whole painting to fall off to nothing, so then you could have, let's say this picture is gone. You could have another bit of color over here, you know. So anyway, relationships. Alright. Now let's look at hierarchy. 4. Design: Hierarchy: Alright, so we've looked at placement, relationships, hierarchy is next, and I pulled some artwork for us to look at where it really the hierarchy jumped out. This is by Well, it says collage created by Joan Neki Van Mir, but this is not a collage, so you know how Pinterest is. But just in case that's the artist, I put left that in there. So the hierarchy, though, when you look at this, I mean, that white vase just jumps out to me. And there are other really interesting elements, but I think they wanted that white vase to really pop. Now, you may look at it and see something else first, but the idea of hierarchy is you can think of it as emphasis is what is most important. Where does your eye go first? W shape is in charge here? Everything else plays a smaller role. So let's look at another one. I love this artist Gordon Hopkins and it is hard sometimes to find hierarchy in his because they're all so colorful. But for me, this turquoise because it's larger, and it's also turquoise which is a bright color jumps out first. Um so that's how I mean, this bright blue really jumps out, too, but this to me is placed higher in the hierarchy. And then this one I thought was interesting. This is by Laura Grosso, and it's interesting, isn't it? Because at first, I think, Okay, the blue the ultramarine blue bottle and that blue jump out. But then look at this orange, you know, down here. I don't know, right? What jumps out first. So let's take a look, and I'm going to show you some of my artwork and some of the decisions I've made when we get through each of these, especially in the inspiration section. So hierarchy. Now, you make the hierarchy decision based on your as part of your composition. So let's go back to the reference photos, pull my favorite one again and just before we draw our hierarchy page, I'm looking at this going, Well, what if I had to choose hierarchy here? Well, this I made big, and this is equally big. So if I really wanted the lamp to be the star of the show, then I do that maybe with color, and I could subdue this with color. So color is really a tool on all of these. Hierarchy here, it depends on whether I would really fill this pot with lots more leaves, you know, maybe they're spilling over here, and that kind of is it? Or do I end up doing more florals here? I suppose I could have even made, depending on how I proceed with the fruit bowl, but I think it would probably be either this or this. Alright, so when it comes to hierarchy, um, hierarchy. It's hard to spell. I already misspelled it. That's why you can use emphasis if you want. Hierarchy creates clarity. And this is one that I would say I kind of struggle with because I tend to be more like the Gordon Hopkins where everything is, you know, emphasized. And so I really have to work on this one. So scale, that's how big something is, right? Dominance. And focus. Those are kind of the three guiding words on hierarchy. Alright, so let's intentionally, you know, work on this in a way that we're kind of paying attention to the hierarchy from the get go. So that means that I'm going to choose one shape that I'm going to make large, larger. Here's that one vase. And, you know, you can show hierarchy and focus emphasis, focal point, anything you want to call it in so many ways. We talked about color, but you can also do it with edges. Let's say that my other objects were big, but I really wanted this, and maybe I've got, you know, some really pretty designs in here. And, you know, I sometimes really get into making a beautiful piece of pottery with pattern and so forth. So let's say I really wanted this vase, not even things coming out of it, but just this vase to be the focal point. Well, I can make the edges sharper around it in the painting. You know, I can do things like that. I can use pattern. And, you know, stuff like that to really get it to be more kind of the focus. But so then we have maybe it's an egg plant here, kind of behind there. And um, we could have a bowl of lemons, kind of behind there. Maybe it's down here. I don't want to make anything too big or to take away from our emphasis here. This kind of looks like it's an extension of that, but, you know, it was an eggplant. Um, and I can have some other things here. You know, maybe it's just the wine bottle is back here, but it's behind here and it's not super prominent. And sometimes I'll take, like, a, um, like, a little little vase, you know, and have some sort of sweet little flowers coming out of it. So it's not it's not dominating, but it's still there. And then I can have some I can have a table or not. Maybe this table goes all the way across. Um, I don't want to fill this whole thing up, so let's just say this painting. This sketch ends right there. And and do I have anything in there? I don't know. You know, we could put things in there to help accentuate it. Yeah, I probably do. So you can see that this becomes about this and that these, like an actor, you know, in a movie, that this is the star of the show, and these others are supporting actors. You can even do some some old cherries for some interest down here, or sometimes I'll do, you know, a pattern in the tablecloth. But if I really wanted to emphasize this, then I would make sure to make other things, you go to the background more with color, with focus, with scale, that sort of thing. Okay, so next, we're gonna look at intent. 5. Design: Intent: Alright, we've looked at placement, relationships and hierarchy. Now we're looking at intent. This is where we get really freedom. You know, hierarchy is sort of we're thinking about how we want things to be. And same with these two, intent is really what is your intent for this particular piece? And choosing realizing that accuracy is a choice, making it look like that thing is a choice that you can make or not make. So this is about feeling some freedom in your structure and deciding how real things need to be. So let's look at some artists that push the boundaries on that, and there are many, much more that are, there's so many examples of this. But here's a few. This is Cornelia O'Donovan, and this is a still life with plants. But, you know, nothing here makes sense in the way we think of what we look at. We're looking at a table top down when the plates are top down, but the vessels are sideways, right? So, let's say this was a plate. We're looking at the plates this way, but we're looking at the flower pots this way. And then off of this table, if we were looking top down, you think you would see, like, the floor or something. But no, she's got plants, and there's even a little animal there. And so I just show you these things, and I look at them myself not to copy, but to just help us break free. Different viewpoints, and she chose design over accuracy, okay? Shapes are flattened. And lots of texture. This one is very similar in the intent, but completely different delivery, different style. But we still have the multiple perspectives. We have the plate viewed from top down. Everything else is viewed from the side, and then we just have some design elements. Maybe these things are a table maybe because there's a legs there. This is by Anna Himes beautiful artist. Accuracy is optional. That's what I want you to what I want to remind us. Here's one that I just thought it's a little more realistic realistic, but still very kind of juicy and loose. And look at all of these. They obviously had the intent. This is Shando Alexander of giving, again, a lot of negative space and having the really vibrant color here. But then look at this bright bright green here. Um lots of design ideas went into this. It wasn't overly fussy with maybe those are shadows on the wall, and this is a cloth, but it's not rendered. Nothing's rendered super accurately, which I personally love. I find that very interesting. Um, so let's play with this idea of intent. And the following the modules, the other classes that follow this on the Still Life Unleashed series, all choose a different intent for each one. And that was my whole kind of approach to this was, you know, let's do one that's modern and flat top down, and let's do another one that's more intuitive, and let's do one that's really abstract and let's do, you know, all these different ones. So but let's play with if we were doing something more flat and top down, let me write out of our clarifiers for this. It's really around intent, choosing accuracy. I don't know. Hopefully you can see the pencil choosing accuracy. And in the class downloads, I do have a cheat sheet with all of this in there, but we are reinforcing that design is greater than or more important than realism. That's what I'm teaching here. I mean, I think if you wanted to learn super realistic still life, you probably wouldn't be in this class. And that we want to feel freedom and not pressure. Okay, so we can just do a sketch that's got this sort of flat thing mixed. Let's say we have, let's just make our painting about this size. And let's say we have a plate here of some cherries. I wouldn't make them all the same size or the same distance away. Maybe they're overlapping like that. And I could have a picture here, going back to a reference photos, big old picture here and I can have maybe just some really big but simplified flower shapes here. That's face on. This is top down. I could have a fork here. It's face down. Sometimes you'll see that and maybe a knife over here. Um, I could maybe I'm sitting down for lunch, and I have also some tea. So maybe up here, I have a teapot. My spots a little weird, right? And maybe I have, like, a three colour teapot or something. And, um, well, I know where I did that 'cause I was looking at Anna's painting, so I don't want to copy that, so let's just color it and solid. And what else? Back to our reference photos, we had the tray. No, I don't want to put the tray here because I guess I could. I could make the tray. Well, I would say the papaya tray. Well, I guess it could be under here, maybe. Maybe this could be a tray that's got the, this could be a tray that has the teapot and the cup with my tea in it. Maybe even a saucer up there. And there's kind of a tray here. I could do that. Um, what else do we Oh, the lamp. We could stick the lamp in here if we wanted. Let's try that other lamp, that green one. That's so fun. Oh and these you see how I got all of these lining up? No, no. That's a no, no. So in my mind. Now, you know, I've got some relationships between these things, but you'll notice a lot of this art, sometimes the top down and flat art is there's space. Well, let me show you. Like, here, there's space between. None of these objects are touching. And that's just, again, a choice. I decision choice. But since I think I want in this one, this to be more prominent, I'm gonna make it bigger. And then Everything is not at the same spot. You can also have a place mat, if you want it, but I like the tray here. But, you know, we might have a tablecloth with little flowers. So this is just trying to play with the intent of a top down and flat still life. You can have all kinds of intents. You could do, like the Anna Valdez, where it's a lot of detail and, you know, you could do any kind of idea like that. So let's move to inspiration, and I'll show you some of the inspiration examples and then a lot of my own work and what inspired that. 6. Design: Inspiration: Okay, so for inspiration, what I want to show you is how to look at either, you know, a photo or that you've taken or something out in nature or some objects that you have or even another artist's artwork and not think about copying, but think about what decisions do I want to make about this photo? And what decisions did this artist make? And, you know, that way with inspiration, we're getting inspiration. We're getting direction, not instructions. Direction, ideas, okay? Not copying or instructions or rule books or anything like that. So think of its fuel and we are borrowing editing, translating. So let's take a look at some of the artwork that I have for this, and then also my own work. Well, I had to use another Gordon Hopkins because I so this is a perfect example of see how you can see the I think it's probably oil pastel, but he gets this wonderful textured look. So either, you know, you probably either like that or you don't love it. And so I'll study artists like this and go, I wonder how they're getting that, you know, and then maybe do some research and then play with some of those ideas. That doesn't mean I'm copying. I'm never going to get the look he gets from his process. I don't want to get his look. I want to learn about what part of this I love. That I want to learn about and play with. Here's another artist, Guy Hoyt. And she uses a lot of different things, collage and painted papers, and I love doing that sort of thing as well. There's definitely going to be a collage class in my future, but you know, studying other people's art and what they're doing and the decisions they've made, I think, is fascinating. This is another artist Hope Olson. Look at the very specific types of decisions here around color, very limited color, and very specific process. Like, you could take one idea, which is not her idea. Like, the fact that she's painted everything over this kind of off white base is not she's not the only one who does that, so you don't have to feel like, Well, I can't try that because that would be copying hope. No. I mean, if you painted this thing or anything close to it, you would be copying and that's a definite no, no. But if you said, I want to practice painting my shapes in an off white color all over my composition, or I want to practice outlining more shapes, or I want to practice bits of collage or I want to practice boil pastels. You see, you can borrow from in that way. Um so let's do let's just pick well, actually, let's pick one of mine, and I'll show you what inspired it. So this is like a Bohemian look that I did, and I follow this Mango manner on Instagram, and she's I can't remember if she lives in Florida or where, but she has these pictures of her home that she posts, reels and things. And so I was just looking at the various objects, and I kind of combined these two photos and picked what I wanted. So I thought that yellow dresser was interesting. And then I think maybe it's another photo of hers where she has, like, a lamp and there's a here's the bench, but I I changed everything. I put a pillow. There's a pillow there, but there's a straight pillow. There's a banana. And then there's another light fixture from another photo and, like, a Bohemian hand. I can't even remember what this was. Maybe a tassel. And I just had so much fun. Like this, you can see here is from that blanket, but the couch isn't even there. And so I was inspired by the photo by the whole vibe, and I just played with ideas. And I think, actually this might have been from another compilation of her pictures and things. And then this one I played with some ideas around pattern, but also leaving some of the paper blank, you know, and not painting it in and then just really moving the objects around. Um, this was a lot of fun. And then there was something funny I want to show you. Oh, I was, you know, in the nail salon and I getting a pedicure, and I thought, Well, why not try to make some sort of something from the things I see? It was just a fun exercise to do while I was there. Or here's a spread where my daughter went to Morocco, and she sends me pictures I bother her and say, send me pictures. So I sketch this from one of the pictures, and then I sketch some just different shapes of vases. Here I was playing with a new pen. But here I don't really remember what got me painting him, but I was playing here with some just this limited color palette and different compositions like that. So you can just plate. And in the painting classes, we're going to do just that and paint. We're gonna paint a lot of these. Here's when I just started. So if we use this as inspiration, let me show it to you better so you see it. It's just the first layer or two. I've always loved horses. I used to have one. And so I started just playing with my inspiration in this one was really around big objects. I'd seen an artist that used, like, just more big things. So I was like, Oh, you know, let's try some big things, like, instead of a lots of little ones. So, you know, I had this pot here. It's probably not big enough. And sometimes, like, that even in itself is a fun thing to play with. Have you seen florals that are just filling up like you only get a part of the pot and a little bit of flour because a lot of it's off, you know, so big, big things like this. And, you know, I had my horse. I was I'm go see quite possibly the worst horse sketch. But my sketch is for me to know what I'm doing there. And also, I I just want kind of a I like sort of a primitive looking style. Maybe he has a big man. And then I had a big plant coming here. And I had an even bigger branch here. So it's just fun to pick something that is inspiring to you in either in somebody's work or in that you see, you know, maybe you've been somewhere and saw the most incredible bouquet and you want to be to be part of the composition. And maybe just some dots back here. Isn't this orange beautiful? I've been into orange lately. So use inspiration for ideas and for a direction on a particular project. And we're going to do that, as well in the upcoming painting module. So to review, I hope now you have, well, one, two, three, four, five pages with each of these, placement relationships, hierarchy, and ten, and then your fuel inspiration. And you can reverse these, you know, you can start with inspiration. I didn't want to start with it because sometimes we don't know where to start and we don't feel inspired by something until we start thinking about these things. So that's why I organized it this way. But if I were gonna start painting, I would either look through my own work and find things that I like that I did. Like, I painted the front and the back of this sketchbook, actually, of a YouTube, where I did this, and I really love it. So sometimes I'll pull it out or pull out something that's in the sketchbook. I forgot about this one. I used just three colors, and I thought, Won't it be fun if there was, like, a curtain? And, you know, you can see that I'm trying something different almost on all of these, and I love using my sketchbook that way. Here, I use some wax crayon, and here I scrape through on things. Let's see if there's any more. Still lives in here. That was fun. This book is literally one spread away from being done. Can you believe that? But anyway, I would say that I hope, okay, this is a good idea for inspiration. It has nothing to do with still life. But I just she was in a catalog and I just thought, Let me try to paint her walking across in that green dress. So I hope this gives you ideas and kind of prepares you for the potential discomfort and freedom in the painting modules that follow so that you don't get as hung up on, but that's not what that looks like, or, you know, that's not what the vase looks like or that's it's bigger than that or it's smaller than that, or whatever. Let's be free and see what we see what happens. 7. Class Wrap Up: I hope you enjoyed working through these still life explorations, and I hope it got you starting to think about still life in a different way, which I hope exploded the whole genre. In this class, we focused on the before painting thinking that really is part of painting and makes painting feel more free and more confident. Instead of worrying about realism or getting things right, we practice making design decisions where things go, how shapes relate, what matters most, and when accuracy can be optional. So what I love working about this way is how much confidence it builds before you ever start painting. When you trust your decisions early on, painting feels more open and less precious and much more enjoyable. So now it's time to take those ideas into the painting classes in the Still Life Unleashed series. And those classes are where this really comes to life. You're going to take the same decisions we made, placement, relationships, hierarchy, intent, and inspiration and start using them to paint paint to create bold, expressive finished work. So, or semi finished, you know, we're learning here. But each module will explore a different way of working from loosening up and breaking habits to using pattern and rhythm to simplifying shapes into strong shapes and building graphic design driven paintings. So you're building directly on what we've already done here. As you move through into these classes, keep asking yourself, What am I choosing? What matters most? What can I let go of? That's a tough one. I'm so glad you took this class with me, and I can't wait to see what you create as you continue through the still life unleashed series. Let's take these ideas and start painting. I'll see you in the next class.