Transcripts
1. Intro: If I asked you what creative freedom represents
for you, what would you say? For me, it's that sense
of playfulness and detachment from the result
and embracing of the process. Hi everyone. Thanks so
much for being here. I'm Marina [inaudible]
I'm an artist and illustrator and also
a top teacher on Skillshare where I teach about creativity and how to
unleash it and tap into it and really get
out of your own way so that you can reveal
the creative part that lives inside you
because I really believe that every
single one of us has a wealth of creativity within us and it's just
about trying to find ways to reconnect with those parts that are inherent to each and
every one of us. In my personal work, I like to create art
that is delicate, dream-like, and sometimes has
a touch of darkness in it. I am very inspired by
nature, natural forms, anything that relates to the
natural world because I feel like it holds so much complexity and beauty within it that really encapsulates all the contradictions
of human experience. Today we're going to be
doing a class called color, creative freedom,
and all your senses. Today in our class, one of the things that I want
us to focus on is embracing the process and finding
ways to connect with your inner
playfulness through color, which is an awesome tool to do that with because who doesn't love looking at colors and
playing around with them, seeing how they match, how they don't match. I just find that color is
such an emotional language and it really reconnects
me with that sense of freedom and joy that it is to experience color and to create something that
wasn't there before. Bring out all your colors. You don't need a huge amount. Let's say 10 different colors
can be great to play with. Whatever material
it is you want, whether it's gouache or colored pencils or neo-colors
or watercolor, whatever it is that you
have and let's get started.
2. Connect With Your Intuition: In order to start this exercise, I want you to pick a color. I'm not going to ask you to
think about it too much. What I really want us
to practice here is tapping into our intuition,
our inner knowledge, which I think that we have
so much inner knowledge and we've accustomed ourselves
to not really hearing it. Sometimes it goes quiet and
it's almost only a whisper. What I really want us
to practice today is reconnecting with those
quiet little whispers that are happening inside. One of the ways that
I do that is by, if I look at an array of colors, where's my eye getting
pulled to naturally? As soon as I do a
sweep with my colors, which I have here, immediately, the one that
drew me in was this one. I actually have been practicing tapping into my intuition
for a long time. If you don't have such a
clear sense right away, don't worry, that's very normal. It will get easier
with practice. If you really have no sense of what color it is that you'd
like to start playing with, that's fine, just
take a random one. There's no ifs or buts or right or wrongs
in this exercise. But just try to keep in mind that you already have the
answers within yourself. We're going to start
with this one color, and we're going to be just
doing color explorations. I don't want you to panic. None of these drawings
that we're going to do today are going to
be finished pieces. None of them are
representative of how terrible or wonderful of an
artist that you are though, I have no doubt that you are
absolutely wonderful artist. But that's not the goal, the
goal here is really to play and to connect with
yourself through color. I'm just going to go ahead and start working with the
color that I chose. You can start with
a simple shape, with a simple line,
with a pattern. I want you to remember that the words doodling
and scribbling, which we often use in a
negative way actually are some of the most
valuable keys for really connecting with
your inner creativity. Because they really tap into this idea of
process and of play. When you're doodling,
when you're scribbling, you're not so much
thinking of the results, you're really just enjoying what it is that you're
doing at the moment. If at any point
you start to feel, I'd like to maybe just explore a different color
to go along with this. Again, there's no
right or wrong. There's no good palate
or a bad palate, it's really all just about
experimenting and finding things that you
find fun together. As I'm sitting here, I notice my eye kept being drawn to this marker
that I have up here, which is like a corally
orange pink marker. I'm not going to
question it too much. I'm like, well, maybe I'll just
try this one then. I'm going to try to place it
along with this first color. I might like it, I
might not like it. That's the fun part,
you get to find out. I have to say, I
actually quite like it. It's a bit of a
surprising color combo because this one is so bright and the other one is so muted, which means it's less vibrant, but I find the mix
really intriguing.
3. Connect With Your Sensations: As we've been working
with these two colors, we've been experiencing
something visually. What is this color that
I'm placing on the page? What is it doing to me? How do I feel about it? What emotion or mood is
emanating from that color? It's a very visual experience. Like I said, that's one of
the beauties about color, is that even just by placing
one color on a page, you can already engage
your visual sense and your sense of that this
color even exists. Remember that not everybody is able to even see
all the colors. There are people
who are colorblind. If you are colorblind,
that's cool too. That means that you have your own personal
experience of color. I'd actually argue that we all have a subjective
experience of color. What is that
experience that you're having with your visual sense? How are these
colors engaging you in a playful, process
oriented manner? I want us now to focus
on another aspect, which is the aspect of touch. The reason I want to do
this is because we think of visual arts as being
a visual language, obviously which it is, and that it's forms and shapes and colors and
textures on a page, but it's also so
much more than that. I really believe that an artistic practice is
a bodily experience, just as much as it is
a visual experience. But I think that's
something that's not often talked about when you're working
on artistic pieces. We're not thinking
about our body, we're thinking about what it is that we're making on the page. Today, I'd like to bring you along this
journey of finding ways of connecting your
body and your art. One of the ways that I
love doing that is through focusing on how my tool feels. There are two ways that we're
going to go about this. One of them is, what is the touch of that specific
tool on your page? This marker has a
resistance to it. But if I compare that
to my colored pencil, it's a very, very
different feel. The vibration of your
tool on the page transmits itself into your
hand and thus into your body. I find that when
I'm able to really tap into the physicality
of my tools, the process becomes
so much more fun. It's one of the reasons that I'm always drawn to analog work. I love the tactility of it, the sensation of it. The fun thing about it is that
it's really something that you can come back
to every time and still discover something new. It's a way of awakening
your curiosity, the curiosity of your touch. That's the first way
that we're going to start engaging our senses, is by feeling different
tools on our page. Maybe some tools you will hate the way they
feel on the page. That's great information.
Then you'll know, okay, well, maybe I won't
use this right now. Maybe I'll come back
to it in the future and see if I still hate it or if my opinion has changed
and now I'm able to embrace that feel
or that texture. Then other times there are certain other textures that
you're going to really enjoy. Each one of your tools transmits something
different to your body. The second way that
we're going to tap into our tactile sense is the feel
of the tool in your hand. No longer the feel of how that tool moves
across your page, but how are you
holding your tool? How is that sensation? How is your arm placed
against the page? Or if you're on an easel, how is your hand being
engaged in the process? I know that for these three, there's a very
different feel between each one of these tools, whether it's the marker, the colored pencil,
the neo color. I also brought along
my Stabilo Woody, which are actually kids art
tools, but I love them. Because they're super
chunky, super fun, and they just give
me this sense of playfulness and
freedom and big lines. You can just go and have
so much fun with them. Plus it's cool. Total aside, but you
can make them wet and then they become watercolor, which is so fun. There are these two ways. One, the feel of your
tool on the page. How it also reacts to
different kinds of paper, because different
kinds of paper have different kinds
of feels to them. How your hand is holding the tool and perhaps
how you can vary it. What if you held your tool
very lightly and played with that very delicate,
subtle sensation. How is your arm engaged? How is your body feeling
at this very moment? Do you feel relaxed? Have you gotten all tensed
because you're getting nervous about what it is
that you're creating? If that's the case, step back, give yourself a
nice loving breath and relax into your seat. I really think that
the way that we engage our bodies when
we're creating art makes a huge difference
in terms of how we're experiencing that process. I know that when, for example, I get nervous about a
piece that I'm making, I unconsciously hold my breath
and I grip everything in. It's a very normal bodily
reaction to stress. But so gaining awareness of where you're at in
terms of your body, in terms of your breath, means that you can very
gently start shifting it and tapping into a sense of peacefulness and calm
and playfulness. Sometimes if I've been drawing for too long or I'm
doing stuff that's super detailed I'll realize
at some point that I'm like this and I'm all crunched
over [LAUGHTER] and my back, it just doesn't feel good. When that's also the case, then why not give yourself
a little stretch? Actually, the best thing that I would recommend
is to get up out of your chair especially
because nowadays we sit in our chairs
for way too long. I remember reading
a study actually that said that for
two people who spend the exact same number of
hours sitting in a chair, there's a huge
difference in back pain between the person
who sits continuously in their chair and the person who gets up every half-hour
or every 20 minutes. I don't remember
what the amount was. But someone who regularly gets up maybe to grab
a glass of water, maybe just to walk around your apartment and come
back to your seat, just these tiny little things just so that we remember that our art practice and
our body are linked. So if you're not
tending to your body, then you're probably not really tending to your art
practice in a way that is wholesome and holistic in terms
of your experience of it.
4. A Gentle Invitation: As you can see, I
decided to go into a tunnel route where
I'm working with colors that are all of the same family. Pink and orange in
various levels of vibrancy and different textures. Once you feel like you've had enough fun with this
first little exploration, why don't we move
to another one? I'm going to do the
same thing that I did earlier where I'm
just going to loosely look over my tools
and see if there's one that's pulling me in
more than the others. Sometimes actually it won't
necessarily even be a color, sometimes it'll be a texture
that you're looking for. For example, some days I will show up in front of my
sketchbook and I'll be like, I really want something
like graphite. Or I really want something
like a soft pastel, and I can shift it every moment. If it's more of a
texture, let's say, I guess I'm feeling more maybe my new colors is a texture that I would
love to have fun with. Then I'm going to start
diving into, okay, well, now that I know the texture, which color I'm I
going to choose? I don't have a
very strong sense, but I have a small sense
that this one would be fun. This is just a gray color,
but I really like it. I'm going to go in
with that one and continue our
exploratory journey. You can play with patterns, big shapes, small shapes, lines, and all the
while remembering the engagement with the body
and how you can change it and become curious with how
it feels in different ways. When you're focusing
on the sensation, I want to make one thing clear because I find
that it's actually a very similar sensation to the one that I get
when I meditate, or that feeling that you get when you're
about to fall asleep. When I started
trying to meditate, I remember trying to concentrate really
hard on my breath. I was trying so hard that it was tense and took
me awhile to figure out that actually it's
less of an intensity of a concentration and
rather a gentle leaning in. That's one of the
things that I want you to keep in mind for all of the parts of our exercise today, is that these are
all invitations. Gently invite an
awareness into your body, gently invite an awareness
into the colors. Just like when you're
trying to go to sleep, if you try too hard,
it doesn't work. If you don't try it all, it also doesn't work. It's that floaty in-between motion of leaning in, allowing.
5. Connect With your Hearing: I'm changing tools
at a certain rate, but if you want to
change colors or tools at a different
rate, please do. For me, the important thing is that you're starting to tap into what it is that you
want to create today. Sometimes you'll
just enjoy one color and stay with that one
color for an hour. Sometimes you'll be switching
colors every minute. All of those are
beautiful experiences. I'm going to mix in maybe some orange
or yellow into this. I just broke my new
color, I always do that. Just going to put this here
because I can reuse that. I have to say for example, this is a color mix
that I don't like. I don't know why I'm not
a fan of this orange next to these colors. That's fine. What
I'm I going to do? I'm just going to change colors. See if maybe by
adding another color, I might like it a
little bit more. We've looked at our visual sense and we've also tapped
into our tactile sense. Now I'd like to invite you
to tap into your hearing, which is also one of your
senses that I think we don't think about enough
when we're working with art. Obviously, it might
be a little bit more difficult because
I'm here talking to you and so you're
not able to necessarily completely engage
with that sense. But I'd like to invite you to hear how your tool
sounds on the page. Sometimes I like to
draw with music, and that's another way of
engaging your hearing sense. But also, there's something
quite beautiful and precious about
drawing in silence. It's really just you, the tool in front of you and
how it sounds on the page. When I'm able to really
access the flow state, which is that state
where you lose track of time and are completely immersed in what it
is that you're doing, I find that all of
these senses that I've been talking
about really come together and I'm connected to all of them at the same time. But again, that
doesn't really work if you're trying too hard and it's really about that
allowing in the practicing.
6. Color Proportion & All Your Senses: With this added dark red, I like it a little bit better, still not a huge fan of this mix in particular. That's fine. What I'm going to do
is I'm just going to try to add a few other colors to see whether my
opinion of it shifts. Sometimes, it might be the proportion of colors
that you're not liking. It's not necessarily the
mix, but it's like, oh, I would prefer if
there was more of this color than the other
colors in my piece. Also you can, of course, always go back to a color
that you've already used if that feels right. I do want to remind you though, that these are all just
explorations, experiments, and an opportunity to
engage with yourself, with your artistic tools, and with your senses. As for taste, I wouldn't really recommend
tasting your art materials, [LAUGHTER] sometimes
they can be toxic. That's going to be
one of the senses that we're maybe not going to be engaging with during
our artistic practice. Though, if you have
a little tea or coffee to drink while
you're making your art, that's one way of
engaging that one. Of course, I haven't
mentioned it, but there's our sense of smell. Again, maybe this is
one that is maybe less relevant to our
artistic practice, but sometimes you'd
be surprised. I have a few handmade watercolor
sets and some people, when they make
their watercolors, they use cloves as like one of the things to protect
it from mold, I think. When I open those tins
of handmade watercolors, there's this beautiful smell
of cloves that comes out. That's also one way
that you can start engaging that sense is if you do have some art tools or even they used to
have those markers, they were like scented
markers for kids. Who says that we can't
appreciate that now? That could be another way
of engaging that one. I'm liking this balance of colors better than
I did earlier. Sometimes it's not
going to work, sometimes you're not going
to find a way to like it better, and that's fine. Remember that's not the most important
thing here really, we're just exploring colors, trying to see if
there may be mixes of colors that you've
not tried before, that you'd like
to maybe continue exploring or certain
mixes that you're like, I'm not a huge fan of that one. It's all important information. This color is calling
to me very loudly, very clearly, so I'm going
to continue with that color. We're slowly finishing
up on this exercise, but I still want to
give you this reminder of the different senses that
we've tried to engage today. Our sense of touch of the tool, of how it's held in our hands, of the paper, of how the
tools react with the paper, of our bodies, how tense
or how relaxed it is. Actually speaking of that, I did want to
mention something is sometimes if I'm sitting in front of my desk
for a long time, since my body will get stiff, sometimes I'll actually get up while I'm drawing and just draw while standing up or I'll put a pillow on the floor and I'll kneel in front of my desk, or I might stand up
and use my easel. That's also a different
way of engaging my body. Try to become curious about
different ways that you can tap into your body
and also respect it. Then we've also talked
about our visual sense, of course, how are these
different mixes of colors? Do you like them? What don't you like about them? Are there certain
mixes that you're finding more appealing
than others? It's the same color, I wanted something that
is more. Maybe this one. Your sense of sound, your sense of hearing. How can you engage with that? Sometimes your sense of smell, and pretty much never your
sense of taste. [LAUGHTER]
7. Become an Investigator: One of the things as
I'm making this one, I realized I really like the mix of this color
with this color. One thing I could also
do is I've isolated that thing that
really engages me, so I might try another one, where I just use maybe
those two colors. What if I change the
proportion and I put more of this gray-blue
than of that red? Become curious about what it is that you're pulled towards. What if I take that same mix and I add one more color to it? What if I add this
initial one that I chose? See, now I'm discovering
something interesting. As I was making this,
I was realizing, oh, really not a fan of that
color palette either. Not quite sure why. Again, it doesn't always matter. You don't always need
to find an explanation, but it can be helpful to
then see, okay, well, what are the things that
I might like in there, and then how can I
push it further? If I take just
these three colors which were present in here, I really like this mix. What that means is that gives
me information about this. Maybe the colors that I
didn't like in here are these dark gray one or one of
these orange or pink ones. It's really about putting
in an investigator hat. I mean that about every
single part of the process. Become your own investigator. Investigate how you feel, how your tools feel, what colors are pulling
you towards them, what mixes are you
shying away from, which ones are leaving a trail of breadcrumbs
for you to follow, and how can you lean in and
follow them with your heart.
8. Thoughts to Take With You: We're going to stop
there but I hope that you've managed to tap into a little bit of
this playfulness, this curiosity that I believe is at the root
of creative freedom. I truly believe that
showing up in front of our sketchbooks each day with our little investigator hat but also this deep relationship
to our self and our body and our sensors will really enrich and deepen your
artistic practice. The reason that we do
art is for ourselves, first and foremost and I really, I know that's not the reason
that everybody does that, but [LAUGHTER] really
I think that if we all did art with that in mind, that it is first and
foremost for ourselves to discover ourselves that we'd have a lot more fun
with the process and we'd also make some beautiful discoveries
along the way. If you'd like to continue
the journey with me, you can also find me on Patreon where I do live drawing
sessions every month. Also, sketchbook challenges,
sketchbook tours, and give you a glimpse
of behind the scenes more personal vlogs
and thoughts that go into my artistic
process, art and life, how those are connected, and how your
artistic process can really help you infuse
a little bit more joy, a little bit more creativity, and a little bit more wholeness, an acceptance of all
the different parts of you into your life. Of course, you can also
find me on Instagram so if you want to be
Insta friends there, I share my daily
little explorations, finished drawings, and
everything in-between. Thanks so much for
joining in today, and I can't wait to
see you soon. Bye.
Marie-Noëlle Wurm, Artist, illustrator, HSP
