Drawing Collections: Illustrating Stories through Taxonomies

1. Introduction: My name's Kate Bingaman-Burt, and I am an associate professor of graphic design at Portland State University and I'm an illustrator. The class that I'm going to be teaching today is called illustrating collections, telling stories through taxonomies. I've always been fascinated in collections and objects and why we buy the things that we buy and that's where my daily purchase drawing project was started. Zens came from it, I started a subscription service from it, I ended up doing this project for eight years and one of the things that I discovered is that I love to draw collections. I love to catalogue my experiences through objects, I love cataloging other people's experiences through objects. These are all my houseplants. I have all my shoes here. These are all the places that I eat in Portland, and it just again like once you start seeing the world in categories, you can draw the story of yourself through your objects. In this class you're going to focus on a collection that you may not even realize that you have, and how to tell a small story about you through simple illustrations of that collection. We're going to start from the paper to water color to the actual pen portion of it, to scanning and then also doing coloring in the computer and showing how you can save the file either via easy sharing online or if you want to make up for it and share it with other people in person. So, your experience with drawing super minimum. Okay. That's actually a big part of this class is that you should be really focusing on the story that you want to be telling, and this is a great class for someone that is entry-level to someone that's a very experienced illustrator. Again, refocusing on telling a really good story about you. 2. Assignment: So, today in this class, you're going to be watching me create illustrations on my own collections, and hopes that you will then be so inspired that you're going to go dig through your stuff and create illustrations of your own collections. In this class, we are going to first talk about the importance of objects and the stories that they tell about ourselves and others, and then brainstorm together about what collections you might have already started without really knowing, and how they can tell the story of you. So, once you get to the ideation and brainstorming phase, we are going to move over to the drying phase, and we are going to have two different examples of how you can execute this project in two very different ways. We're going to start from the paper, to watercolor, to the actual pen portion of it, to scanning, and then also doing coloring in the computer, and showing how you can save the file either for easy sharing online, or if you want to make a print and share it with other people in person. So, your experience with drawing super minimal. Okay? That's actually a big part of this class is that, you should be really focusing on the story that you want to be telling. This is a great class for someone that has entry-level, to someone that's a very experienced illustrator. Then also your experience with the computer, very minimal like entry-level Photoshop. Very, very basic scanning, very, very basic coloring. Again, we're focusing on telling a really good story about you. 3. Identifying Your Collections: So, let's talk about inspiration and coming up with ideas. I'm going to share with you some of my favorite book resources about people that are obsessed with collections and taxonomies. This first one is Blackstock's Collection by Gregory L. Blackstock. He is an artist who everything he draws is a collection from different types of ants, to butterflies, to spiders, to his favorite dogs, to birds that he sees. It's just these really beautiful simple drawings of all the buildings that are outside of his windows, and it's a gorgeous little book and it's just chock-full of inspiration. For me, I feel like the king of taxonomy is Ed Ruscha. He had several photo projects in the 1960s that documented the world around time through documenting all the gas stations to LA apartments, to swimming pools. He really, again, it's just it was beautiful how he saw the world and how he organized these everyday objects that he was in contact with all of the time. Then, he would create these really beautiful books that would then house all of his photos too. Then, this is a really wonderful book called Deep Storage and it is all about Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Arts, and it essentially is a wonderful archive of all different contemporary artists who deal with these topics too. So, it's completely rich with information and inspiration, and just you can see all the different ways that you can actually work with these topics outside of drawing too. Leading to doing this class, I was like, "Okay, what am I going to draw on camera?“ So, the way that I started concepting this out was just writing list, different objects that are important to me, different things that I was inspired by, different objects that I would never get rid of, maybe objects that I wanted to get rid of, just trying to figure out like what I was going to tell the best story. That process led me to my records, which I absolutely, this is just one of my favorite collections of all time and I feel like a person's record collection really can tell the story of who they are. So, then I decided I was going to go through my records and go chronological order from when I was a little kid until now, which records represent me. This process took for ever. But then I decided, maybe that's too big of a project for a Skillshare class because I got really into it, really obsessed about it, and I'm realizing that's not very quick. So, this is going to be something for the future, which is great. Because when you're brainstorming, you want to come up with a bunch of different ideas. You might not execute them all at the same time. That doesn't mean that those ideas are failures, that just means that you've got stuff to tap into for another future project, which is really exciting. What I'm going to be drawing today, it's collection of the things that I'm throwing away. Yeah. For eight years, I drew every single thing, well, not every single thing. I drew one thing that I purchased every single day. Now I'm in the process of drawing things that I'm throwing away. So, it's kind of untied to the daily purchase project. But still, the objects that you throw away still tell a story about you. Then, I'm also going to do a quicker one where I have kind of an insane button pin brooch collection, and I just grabbed a handful of those and I'm going to be drawing those too. It's another portrait of myself but through accessories, I guess. Another way to kick this project off if you're trying to think of like, "Oh, I don't really collect anything. I don't really feel like I have anything that's going to work for this." Well, number 1 you're wrong because you actually do have a collection with you and it's in your pocket inside your wallet. It's all of the papers, the ephemera of the spending and experiences that you have already had probably this week. A really great way to just like get geared up and into the drawing process and practice, is just to start drawing stuff that's in your wallet. Because, yeah, these scraps of paper actually tell the story of your week or last couple of weeks. For example, here, I just got back from the airport. I was in LA. So that was my luggage tag, and then here's my boarding pass, and then I went shopping. So there is a tag from shopping. I got chicken teriyaki last night from my favorite teriyaki place in Portland. So, that's in here too. Then, I went and watched a movie with a couple of friends. So that just is in my wallet. Again, that kind of through the ephemera of your week roughs out a story of what you did that week too. So, you do have a collection and it's in your wallet. So, if you are having a hard time thinking about what you're going to be drawing, draw the stuff that you carry with you all the time. So, yeah, it's a really quick way to get this project going. 4. Drawing Collection #1: Things I Am Throwing Away: Okay. So, for the first project, the first collection, that we are going to be working with, is the collection of things that I am going to be getting rid of, or giving back to their original owners, or just getting out of my life, because sometimes stuff is exhausting. So, I'm going to show you a couple of the illustrations that I've already made in this series. This is an Agatha Christie murder novel that I borrowed from my friend Lisa years ago, and I just have never returned this to her, and it's time to get this back to her. Then, this is a funny 20-sided dye that I found in our attic from a previous owner. This is a broken mug that I don't need anymore. This is my boss, he's an asshole, and I've commented that the asshole is me because I am my own boss. This necklace is great. But again, it's just like whenever I wear it, it was just that it was just too loud, too heavy. It was exhausting. So, that was just going away too. You'll notice too that on these drawings, I have little commentary about these objects, which I encourage you to add your own commentary to it, because that's just another way to tell the story. It's not like you're writing paragraphs about these objects, but it's just a little peek into your mind about why you might be either including them in the collection, or in this case, why you're giving them away. This is a tote bag. Because really, everyone has probably way too many tote bags. So, this one says, "So many totes, not sure where this one even came from. Did I borrow it from you?" This is a necklace I got at a thrift store, which I really liked but it just too small. I felt like it was choking me. Then, this happens to be a Diet Coke can which I'm throwing away. So, and some of the things again, it could be things that you kept in your life for a long time, and some of the things can be things that you've kept in your life for a very short time that you're getting rid of too. What I'm going to be drawing today is going to be this skirt. Okay. So, I've had this skirt since 2004. I purchased this during the world's longest yard sale in Alabama, which is really, it's literally called the world's longest yard sale, and it was a quarter, and I love the skirt. So, I'm going to draw it because I'm getting rid of it. The way that I'm going to execute this drawing is going to be a combination of watercolor and pen, and maybe a little bit of China marker, depending on how I want to do the dots after it's all done. So, were going to start. So, what I'm going to do here, I know that the end result is going to have to be scanned. So, the paper that I'm drawing on is way larger than my scanner bed. So, always keep that into consideration whenever you are starting out on your composition. Just keep in mind that you probably want to draw within what your scanner bed can take. If you do want to scan this. So, I'm going to lay down some navy blue. Then again, just like I know that my skirt is essentially, it's this kind of weird triangle at the top taken off of it. I usually just draw the outline. Again, this whole watercolor thing is completely as you can tell. It's a new thing for me, but I have always just enjoyed this process, and I didn't really let the fact that I didn't know what I was doing stop me from using that in my work. Don't feel like you have to take all of these really professional watercolor or drawing classes before you start drawing. You should just start, and then you'll get better with each drawing that you make. Okay. So, this is just a light wash, and I like the little bit of droopiness and I like how it's not completely totally a consistent opaque color here. So, I'm going to let this dry a little bit, and actually dries pretty quickly. But while I'm letting this dry, and usually this is what happens with the other projects too. I think about how I'm going to like, "What are the aspects of this object that I really want to highlight?" Like, "What are some of the weird inconsistencies that make this piece not that perfect?" So, what's crazy about this is that this elastic band, it looks like the band from like some old man's underwear, which I think is so strange because this skirt is obviously handmade. I'm like, "Is this elastic band from her husband's underwear?" That's gross. But it's actually kind of interesting. Then, the elastic is blown, so I feel like I'm probably going to be with my black pen afterwards. Showing the lines of where the elastic is blown, and maybe we're like some of the panels don't necessarily match up because, I don't know, I just try to look for the imperfections in the things that I draw. Because again, I think of the imperfections that make the objects really interesting. I'm going to try to see if the white can go on the blue, but I don't want to immediately just start with this China marker going on to the blue. So, I'm going to do a little quick test to see how the China marker is going to work with the blue paints. I can also did that to the side too, because this won't be scanned, because I don't care about actually testing on the page that you're doing either. But if you want to keep your composition completely pristine, you might just want to have your own tester page off to the side where you can experiment a little bit. So, while that's drying, I'm going to put some pen detail on this. So, I'm going to draw the funky waistband, and the weird little creases. Again, sometimes I just accentuate areas that I want people to focus on a little bit more. For this, again, it's going to be the waistbands, so I probably spend some time making additional marks in the waistband. Then, I think I want to show a little bit of dimension, so I'm going to add an upper layer here, so it's like the inside of the skirt, so I can draw that red line of what's actually happening inside of the skirt. Then, I'm going to draw some of the panels that are coming down from it too because they're sown. It's really, again, for me, sometimes I outline the watercolor, sometimes I don't. It just depends on how I feel. But I want to give this indication that there's this red line that's happening there. Now, in this dry? I'm going to see if this is going to test, if it's going to work. No, it's not. The white won't work. So, it works, but it's going to take a little bit. So again, that's not like a point of crisis. The white dots aren't actually going to work right now on the skirts. So, guess what? I'm going to turn the white dots into black dots, and it's no big deal. There you go. I think this needs a hem at the bottom. Okay. Then, I'm going to fill in a little bit of gray in here, just so it feels like that's the inside of the skirt to give it a little bit of dimension. I think we're at the point where I'm going to caption this dude, and add it to the collection of things that I'm throwing away. Then, sometimes with these drawings of things that I'm getting rid of, if I know when I purchased it, where like I try to like just like hit the highlights of its point of origin, I guess, and I'll include that too. So, I know I got this in Hoover, Alabama. If I remember the price, I'll write down the price. It was $0.25. I think I picked up a couple other skirts too. That was a deal. Twenty-five-cents at world's longest yard sale. Okay. So, that one's done. What I do after this drawing is on to scan bed. 5. Digitizing Collection #1: So, this is just my scanning process which I'm sure is not entirely correct, but it's the way I do it, and it's the way that I have been doing it for years, and it works for me. So again, like I tell people where it's like you just need to figure out a process that's going to work best for you and feels the most comfortable for you. There might be lots of different ways to get to that end result. So, I am going to place this dude onto the scanner bed now. I usually scan in a pretty high dpi too because I'm paranoid. A lot of the way that I deal with technology is because I'm paranoid. So, I'm scanning in at 600 dpi because I'm paranoid. So, overview scan. So after this finishes scanning through Image Capture, I am going to open this sucker up in Photoshop, we're going to clean it because it's just dulled down. It's just, it's so dull, like nothing that comes directly from a scanner, especially when it's just a pretty low budget scanner, is going to be the perfect scan. As you can tell already, there is dirt on my screen. That's from my scanner too. So, I'm just cleaning up the spots that are on my dirty scan bed. Hopefully, your scan bed will be cleaner than mine. With this composition right here, I know that I'm going to want to knock out this background. So, I'm just going to get my magic wand tool. It's always defaulted for me to be the tolerance at 32. So, I just click on it to see if it's going to, and that's actually a little bit too much. So because it's picking up some of the blue on the skirt, so I'm just going to lower the tolerance down to about 20, and then select, none, it's perfect. So then, I do a select, grow and it will get some of the other things that didn't quite pick up on that one. If I still, I want to get the counters in the type knocked out too so I'm going to do a select similar because that's a bigger grab. See here, it grabbed actually some parts of the illustration, but sometimes that doesn't bother me if that gets knocked out. So, I'm actually going to delete this and see what that looks like because sometimes, it's nice to have this bright white, also be related to some of the bright white that might be knocked out in your original illustration. It compliments each other. But we'll see what that looks like. That almost, I'm going to leave it. I like having the wash where it knocked it out, so I'm leaving it. Then at this stage, I go to denser image adjustment, brightness and contrast, be very basic with this. I get the brightness a little bit, bump the contrast a little more because I'm a fan of having really dark darks. But I don't want to wash it out entirely, but I want that black to be black, and then, OK. So from this point, this drawing is actually going to join a couple of other drawings. But if you're at the stage where you just want to maybe just share this online, and let's say that your chosen platform to share this online is Instagram. Well, think about the shape of Instagram, it's square. So, if I just wanted to share this online right away, I would select all and then copy it, make a new document. Then I would have the new document be square. So, I'm going to switch this to square and then paste that in and then flatten the image, save it, and then I text it to myself and then I upload it to Instagram. So, that's like the immediate share system. If however, you want to make a print because, again, we're talking about collections now. So, if you want to add this image with your collections, the other ones that you've already done, I'll show you what you do here. So, I've got a folder already that has these drawings on it. So, I'm going to save this. I have all the drawings for this collection. It's going to be in the good buy stuff folder? So, I'll do a new document and I'll make it 11 by 17. Then this blue skirt actually, copy, and then I start making things smaller. So I just transform that down, put that up here, and now, I'm going to open up the other documents, the other objects that I want to be showcasing. So this one is expensive lipstick, bad shade, and then a roll of pink raffle tickets that I have kept with me for years for some reason. So I'm just basically, you'll see these are all actually set up to be shown individually online, but for this case, when your collections together, it's nice for me to this is where I like to work. Instead of having this really big sheet of paper and you draw your entire collection on this huge sheet of paper, I like to do byte size amounts for multiple reasons. Number one, if you did this huge sheet of paper, it would be hard to scan it all in because, again, you're dealing with a really small scanner. If you did this huge sheet of paper, I think just sometimes mentally, that's a lot of ground to cover. When you're trying to be like, "Oh my god, I have to start and finish this really elaborate collection that I'm drawing for myself, and I really only have like a little bit of time." That's going to yield to an unfinished project. I think if you approach this assignment in byte-size chunks by doing like a one thing at a time to your own speed, it's going to yield you finishing the project which makes everybody happy. Doing these smaller quick drawings a little bit every single day really adds up to a lot. But I am now just going to copy and paste into the main document. So what I would do to with the objects that you have here, name your layers because it's going to get confusing because you're going to want to rearrange things, you're going to want to move things and if your layers aren't named, you're going to go crazy. It's a very simple thing that you can do to save you a lot of sanity. So, this is the lipstick layer and layer one is the skirt layer. Then you can get an idea too as you're importing the different drawings you've been doing over the last week or two or month. You can figure out how you want to be arranging them on the paper. I can tell I'm like, okay, so I'm going to have to start making things be a little bit smaller. Then also while you're here too, just because of the way Photoshop is, knock out that white background, so things can overlap as well, because you don't want to limit yourself to where your things can fit. Because what's fun about actually getting your collections together, these objects together, you start putting them next to other things that they normally wouldn't be next to, and so, I don't know, that's always an exciting thing for me because I'm a dork. So, I'm going to put that dude down here and then I'm knocking out the background on this guy. Then this red too, you can, if you want to, they can all be about the same size or if you want to focus on one versus another, those are just some of the design decisions that you can make on the fly as you are placing in your images. Because this is another thing that's fun. It's really fun. This is really fun. Promise. This isn't really going to fit, so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to, because we're digital, I'm going to manipulate what the original drawing was so it fits the overall composition better. So, I just move that Ikea dog tail wall hook down underneath the book that I'm throwing away. Then you just do like different, fit everything into the composition here. Then this is going to get moved down a little bit, and then I'm like, "Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. I think I just made an 11 by 17 print about all the stuff that I'm going to be giving away." So from this point, again, this is me being paranoid. You want to save a version of this as not flat because you might want to change things around. So, it's like okay, junk, and my titling is really cool. So, it's junk not flat. It's pretty professional. Then I'm going to flatten it and then save it as junk flat. I know. I think you're catching on to my system here, and that is ready to print. So now, you have a print of collection of things that you're going to throw away. Again, it's just again, these little things are just different aspects of your personality, but through drawing. 6. Drawing Collection #2: Buttons: Okay. So, for this collection drying, we are going to go through one start to finish. This is one where you can possibly do it in an hour if you wanted to, where we actually going to be doing the coloring on the computer. The initial drawing is, all of the objects are going to be on one sheet, and it's just going to black outline, and then we'll scan, and then will add the color. This one is going to be focused on a small collection, okay? So, it's kind of makes sense that the paper that I'm using is seven by seven, because what I'm going to be driving are, it's a handful of my buttons, and badges, and broaches, and pins, and all of that stuff that, it's a collection, it's a mega collection. I wear these guys all the time because again, all of these pens kind of tell a different story. Again, I'm just kind of like arranging the possible composition that I might draw here, and so this composition is actually the size of the paper, too. So, I'm almost doing like a one to one drawing here, too. Let's go. This middle of this first pen that I'm doing is, I had a friend in grads school. His name was Richard Schwartz who was wonderful. He was this amazing ceramicist, and he also happened to work. He worked at TGIF Fridays, where you had to have like lots of flair. At the time I was doing work with, just like I was making buttons. I got my first button maker, and he saw that I was doing stuff with buttons, and he came to my studio and had this big box with him and said, "Okay, I have something for you that I want you to have. I want you to have all of my flair." I was just like, "Oh, my God. I get all of your flair?" And it was just like it was his suspenders, and there was buttons all over the place, and I seriously don't know what happened to the suspenders and all the other buttons. The only button that I have remaining from the incredible gift of all of Richard Schwartz's flair is this truly amazing Elvis Costello button which I love. Now, I'm going to draw Elvis Costello. So, what a great gift. I picked this to be the focal point of the drawing, just because, well, it's a face. So, to have that be the center image, just kind of makes a little bit of sense. Again, like we were talking and what the other print like, perfection isn't what we're going after here. It's just figuring out the best way to tell a story, exploring marks and lines, and just kind of having fun with it. So, all of this is basically done. This has left the building. Okay, that was really stupid. The next thing I'm going to do is, this really simple pen that I've had for years and years that actually glows in the dark, and it just has hand says "Okay" on it. I was teaching in a workshop in Savannah, Georgia and a printmaking student made this, and she gave it to me after the workshop, and I just had such a fun experience there. I love this pen, and the student was really rad, I don't know. It just reminds me of good teaching experiences. Then, also, I just really like the sentiment behind it, too, or it just kind of like, "Okay." So, we've got "okay." That was easy, done, quick. Again, the first round that we did, you can take a little bit longer, you can kind of do more bite size grinds, and then this process for drawing collections that can also be a quicker one sit down experience, too. This pen says hotdogger on it, and my friend Nicole gave it to me, and she had picked it up at a thrift store, and I just love it. Number one, it's a hotdog. Who doesn't like hotdogs? The next thing I'm doing is this, "stay Pozzi" pen which my friend Alex gave me. It's a good sentiment that I try to adhere to. But a lot of times, I'm not successful, but it's a good reminder to stay positive, stay Pozzi. Then, I have a thing for pretzels. I've kind of always love pretzels, that kind of thing. Soft pretzels or hard pretzels are the perfect food. Pretzel time. So, this is a button from one of my favorite shops here in Portland called Reading Frenzy, and I picked this up. I think right when I first moved to Portland. So, this button was just kind of a little bit of a momento of, I just like the excitement that I felt when I first moved to Portland several years ago. Plus, I like the sentiment on it, where it just says "shut up and read." Okay. Then, this is a shrinky dink actually that was made by one of my colleagues, Tia Factor at Portland State University, and she just gave it to me out of the blue one day, which I thought was really, really sweet. Okay. So, I've almost got all of the objects drawn. Now, this is where I decide if I want to add any additional commentary to it, and I probably will, just a little bit. So, I'm just going to write a couple words again. You don't have to do this again, but this is just what I'm going to do. It could be stuff that's obvious to the viewer, or it could be just like internal dialogue that you want to put down on the paper, too. Okay. So, I think I'm really done with this at this point, and now I'm going to be scanning this in and coloring it on the computer. 7. Digitizing & Coloring Collection #2: So now, we are back to the scanner, and again, I'm keeping that 600 dpi again. But this time because it's black and white, you can switch from scanning in color to scanning in black and white. Now I actually do a little bit of editing within Image Capture before I print it over into Photoshop too, just because you're dealing with black and white. We don't have to worry about size of paper because we were drawing on something that's already going to fit on a scan bed too. The only thing I'm doing a little bit of image correction within Image Capture is just, again, adjusting the brightness and contrast, which you can do from just None to Manual, and so, it's just very minimal, but it's going to reduce some of the cleaning that we'll have to do once it opens up into Photoshop. Also, you can leave your drawing black and white too, if you want to. That's totally fine. Trust me. I drew them black and white for years and it's completely okay. This is just going to show you how you can easily add minimal color in Photoshop and turn it into a print. Let's open this up in Photoshop. Now, it's just going to be pretty basic. I mean you can bring in your own color swatches, make your own app if you want to. I'm just going to pick color based off of the default swatches that are already in Photoshop. I think the point right now is just to kind of show how you can do simple coloring. Then once you're going to get comfortable with that then you can pick out palettes and it get a little bit more nerdy and focused on that aspect once you feel comfortable with the process of selecting and coloring. Again, for this, I'm going to stick close to the colors that the pins actually use, but I'm not going to worry about it too much. So, I might change some of the colors as well. For starters though, what's going to go on here is I'm going to make sure that all my lines are as dark as I want them to be and all the white is as white as I want it to be. So, I am going to select all of the white and then go back into Similar again and then just hit Delete and get some white happening. Then I'm going to go into the adjustments and Brightness and Contrast and just kick up the Contrast just so I can have those darker lines that I want. I like dark lines quite a bit. Then what I also want to do here is, because remember, we scanned this in as black and white, so it's going to open up into Photoshop as grayscale. You're going to want to convert your image to RGB, so let's see here. Also, one more thing too, I don't think I want it to print just like this. I want it to be more of a perfect square. So, now, I'm also going to adjust the size of the art board too. I also want more white around the borders too, so I'm just going to Select All, Copy, New. Again, you want to be sure to watch your resolution because this defaulted to 72 and you don't want it to default to 72 because you scanned in something that was much higher than that. So, always watch your resolution because Photoshop will try to trick you on that. Again, this is probably too much, but I don't care. I'm going to make this a square. So, that size, I need to make that a little bit bigger. I'm just going. So, again, I'm just using the default swatches. It's actually very easy. So, it's, okay, Elvis Costello's suit jacket. I am going to use the Selection tool, and I want it to be a light brown and I'm going to paint bucket it to be brown. Then once I'm in here, I'm, "Okay, I've selected brown. Is there anything else I wanted to be brown?" I think about it. Maybe one of the elements here to be brown too. I'm a big fan of, if you use a color once in a composition, I like to use it again. So, it feels like it's intentional and it's not just all hanging out there by itself. It gives it a little bit more balance, and again, it just feels like it's a little bit more intentional. So, I'm going to make one of these guys brown too. Then I just do Select. Now I'm like, "Let's color the LOL, and let's make that a fun bright blue." Then I think again just in order to keep that balance, one of those guys is going to have a little bit of blue too. Then I'll zoom out and see how it's looking. Yeah, it's looking okay so far. Let's get this cat. Let's bring in some green, I don't want a light green. Again, these are just the default swatches that Photoshop gives to you. It's not a lot of color science happening here. Let's make, again, one of these guys be green. Okay, let's do this pretzel. The pretzel is brown too and I feel like I got a lot of brown going on, so sometimes pretzels can be orange. So, I'm going to make this guy orange just because I think it's going to pop a little bit more too. Even though pretzels aren't technically orange, they're in that family, and that's okay. Then, because this is what I've been doing, we're going to make one of these leaves orange too. Then I'm going to leave some of the elements just open and white too because I think if you use too many colors, that everything is colored, it takes away from the collection that you're trying to showcase too. So, if you just want to keep to minimal coloring, it's okay. If you want to let some of that white space to be white, that's great. Then, I want to have a little bit of color on his face. So, I want to see what that's going to look like if he has blue eyes, but not the pupils of course, the outside because that's creepy. Let's see. Let us do an experiment, this might not work, but that's okay. I like it, I'm keeping it. Then just to kind of tie in that blue a little bit more, we'll make his tie blue, and then I'm feeling like we might be done with this guy because I mean I didn't really feel the need to fill the rest of it in. Again, it's letting that white space also act as a color, I think it's actually pretty effective when you're thinking about what this composition is going to be. Now you have a really quick collection, an almost finished project that is ready to go to print and, yeah, this is it. This is a really quick collection example for this project. 8. Wrapping Up & More Exercises: Okay. So, we just went through two different ways to document your personal collections. Again, your personal collections as an autobiography of you. The two different ways that we went over are just two of many different ways that you can be documenting your personal collections. Again, don't feel like you have to do it all at one sitting. Just like the very first collection that we went through, those were drawings from several weeks. Then, that's when you want to just be doing a little bits at a time. Again, that little bit adds up to a lot. Then, the very last one that we showcased was done in one sitting, which is fun to kick it off, just to prove to yourself that you can start a project, start to finish, just within under an hour. Which is always, that always makes you feel pretty good. Again, don't overthink the topic, the concept of your collection. Again, you can have a collection based off of the receipts that are in your wallet right now. That tells a story of you. This project is good for small and it's good for big and hopefully, this will get you going to not do this one time, but two times, three times, four times, about yourself. Then also, don't forget to turn the lens on to your friends and your family, and document their collections as well. Simple objects really tell an interesting story about the people that own those objects and this is such an excellent way to preserve and to talk about that story. I can't wait to see the collections that you're going to be drawing, and I can't wait for you to upload what it is that you're thinking about and working on to the project gallery. Also, don't be afraid to ask questions. I'm always happy to respond and help work through ideas, too. If you're stuck as well. So, looking forward to seeing what you're going to make and hopefully, talk to you soon.