Find Your Creative Perspective and Make More Consistent Art

1. Introduction: Do you want to make more consistent work and make your unique mark in the art and design world, a lot of creative practice is just trial and error. But with a few tools, you can make more consistent work that reflects your personal style. Welcome to find your creative perspective, where I will demystify the basic elements of art and design so you can easily understand them, and figure out how you want to use those elements to make your own unique work. I am Carolyn, a designer and illustrator who went to art school and is still learning about art and design every single day. I actually made my own creative catalog for myself because I found that I needed a tool to help guide me and to help define my creative style. I thought that I could use that to make a recipe or a formula for my creative work, which has really helped me focus. I can turn to my formula and that will help restrict my thoughts and really encourage me to push myself and make something interesting and unique. Throughout this class, I'll walk you through the process of finding your creative perspective and a few simple steps. We'll first learn some vocabulary to describe what you intuitively enjoy about art, but might not have words for it now. We'll learn the seven elements of art and design. Next, we'll use those elements and vocabulary to analyze artwork. Then, we'll collect references of what we like within those seven elements and take some notes in our creative catalog. Finally, you'll choose some elements of art and design to explore in a new piece of work. By the end of the class, you'll be able to harness your aesthetic intuition and transform it into a part of your own creative process. Let's get started by looking at the elements of art and design and starting your creative catalog. You'll be making more consistent work in your own unique style in no time. 2. Project: Your Creative Catalogue: In this class, your project will be to make a creative catalog that is completely unique, full of images that you want to emulate in your own work. Your catalog will consist of seven Pinterest boards that will act as a central location for you to constantly add images you're drawn to from your favorite artists, designers, pictures you've taken in your daily life and even images of your own work or sketches. Your catalog will also contain notes on why you selected your images and keywords that suggests how you can use them in your own work. Although I'll be teaching you a basic set of vocabulary to use in your creative catalog, it'll be crucial to learn from other students and expand our creative vocabulary together. Be sure to post your Pinterest boards and notes to the project gallery after every lesson. That way we'll expand our creative vocabulary together and inspire each other every step of the process. After you make your catalog, you'll make a new piece of artwork based off of three sections of your creative catalog or three elements of Art and Design. Let's get started on our creative catalog. If you don't already have a Pinterest account, get one of those because that's where we will be setting up our image portion of our creative catalog. Then download the creative catalog notes worksheet from the project resources so you can be ready to take notes on your images as we go through them. Next, we're going to start learning the elements of art and design, starting with composition. 3. Make a Thumbnail Sketch: Let's take a short break and look at how to make thumbnail sketches. So you can reference those in the notes section of your creative catalog. The visual person and sketches often mean more to me than words. If you want to create sketches like these, please do so. I would highly encourage and here are some tips on how you can make them. So when you are creating your thumbnails sketch, you really just want to start by creating a basic shape usually a rectangle, that communicates the shape of the overall piece, and then we will draw inside of that. So how does the Canvas look? Usually it's a rectangle or a square. So I would just start by either getting a ruler or just free hand. Sketching out the basic shape of the piece. Again, it does not have to be perfect by any means, and then you're going to find the subject of this and start by drawing that then, because you want to start with a little detail and then make that way bigger than it was supposed to be and mess up the whole proportion of the piece. I would just focus on the bigger lines first, and thus I'm going to divide up the canvas, similar to how it's divided up in the work itself. So I'm making this, as I'm looking at the work. In this piece is on my Texture Board in my creative catalog. In my thumbnail, I'm really just going to focus on that texture. So here we go, starting to highlight the parts that I like about this. This is a pretty complicated composition. So I'm really just simplifying for the purposes of making notes. So now that I have the main components, which would be the structure of the overall lines segmenting this composition, I'm going in and drawing those little textures that I enjoy. I think this pattern on the wall revealing the back splash of the kitchen is really interesting and has this nice movement, which is something that I could take with me. I could add a texture similar and one of my own works, and now that I've simplified it just to these little lines, I can really make it my own. This is not going to look like the original work because it shouldn't look like the original work. Now that you have your thumbnail sketch drawn out, I like to use just blacker, pretty neutral color for this. Now, you can go in with a brighter color and really make notes on what you specifically like about this. So I mentioned earlier when I started drawing this, that I liked the segment grid composition. I really noticed this aspect to the work because I drew it. When you draw something, you really understand it. I would normally make just a grid. So if it was a pretty centered composition like the subject was right in the middle, I would point that out by drawing a straight line across and then a straight line across here just to show that it's really, everything's intersecting and coming together at the middle, and the way of the composition is in the middle, or something was here, then I would make a no and a line that it was off centered. Just to again, point that out and highlight if I liked that or not. I think the good thing is also the designer brain in me coming out. I might make notes about what I like about this. So put words to these different patterns. Maybe a variety or pattern, or are overlapping textures. So thumbnails are not hard at all. You can make them whatever you want to make them, as long as you understand them and understand what you want to bring with you into your own work from works that exist. It's like taking notes in a book. So you don't want to highlight and write down the whole book because that would defeat the purpose of taking notes. You just want to pick out those lines, or phrases, or words that mean something to you. So that way when you're looking back at the book, you just remember those big concepts. So this is exactly what we want to do in the thumbnail sketches and in the notes section of your creative catalog. Next, we'll continue learning about the other elements of Art and Design. 4. Composition: Let's start making your creative catalog by dividing it into sections according to the elements of art and design. We're going to start with composition, and then learn about the other six elements in later lessons. We really want to break down each element of art and design because they're the building blocks of our InDesign. Once we get an understanding of how we can use them and how artists we admire used them, then we can take back that knowledge, make notes of what we'd like and how we want to approach that element and bring it into our own work and form a very unique creative perspective, voice or style or whatever you want to call it, and make more consistent work that really reflects how you see the art and design world. Let's learn more about composition. You might have come across these terms in your art and design classes, but it's great to just review them, and really remember the core of what makes up art and design. Composition is the arrangement of the individual elements within a work that form a unified whole. To break composition down a bit further, it's helpful to look at balance, movement, unity, variety, proportion, and alignment. Balance is the visual weight of a composition. It could be centered, for example, it could be off centered and unsettling. You really want to look at the rule of thirds, and a visual grid in your mind when looking for balance and just really looking to what your eyes first drawn to what takes up a lot of the composition. Next is movement or how the eye moves throughout the composition. Again, looking at what first draws your eye and then where it moves next. Next is unity; different elements of the composition that are arranged so that they connect. This could be a visual connection that is literally happening in the artwork. For example, lines drawn to connect to each other, or it could be an implied connection, where, for example, your eye might move from one shape to another shape and unites the two of them. Next is variety, the opposite of unity, where different elements of the composition are arranged so that they disconnect, emphasizing those elements that are not connected. Next is proportion or scale, which is the size relationship of the elements in the composition. This could be realistic, this could be abstract and dramatic. Alignment is the positioning of elements of a composition that connects elements. This goes along with unity, where certain elements might not be literally on top of one another or next to one another, but because they form that implied line, they connect to each other. Now that we've covered some core concepts of composition, let's start the composition section of your catalog. Start by collecting images that illustrate how you want to use composition in your own work. Here's some tips on how to pick images for composition. Search your favorite artist and notice how they use composition or turn to the masters of composition like Caravaggio, Renoir, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Degas. Remember to always credit the artists. When you find an artist who like maybe google them and read their Wikipedia page or read their website in history. That way you can really understand maybe something that influenced their idea of composition or the element of art design. For example, was Degas was one of the first artists who started working with photography, so that really gave him an interesting perspective on composition. You might find something interesting about the way that the artist you like approaches that element, and maybe you can keep a similar mindset. Search for those genres you would like. Look up artworks and the genres you're interested, like painting or landscape painting or landscape photography. From there you can see how other artist in the genres you like are treating composition. After you have some images on your Pinterest board, we'll take it to the next stop and analyze them or dissect them, and take notes about how you want to use composition. 5. Analyze Composition: Here's some things to consider when analyzing your images for composition. One, where is your eye first drawn. Two, how are the elements place to unite, emphasize, or create movement. Three, are the elements balanced? Let's look at an example and analyze an image together, using our core concepts from previous lesson and our questions. This is a painting by one of my favorite artists Degas. I think it's really interesting in composition because it's almost split in half, and it focuses on a weird angle that you wouldn't normally see. Where is our eye first drawn, my eye as probably first drawn to be heads because they're so dark and they're taking up so much space on the bottom half the composition, but also the light ballerina and her dress above them draws my eye. How are the elements place to unite, emphasized, or create movement? Like I said, the composition is divided in, almost middle of the composition, and it's the stage line that's dividing it, so that really emphasizes the men in the orchestra because they're so large, especially compared to the ballerinas, and the ballerinas, well, one of them is looking down almost at the orchestra pit, but the men's faces at the bottom are just so large, like almost as large as the whole body of the whole ballerina compared to her smaller head. That seems a little less important, and she's more focus on depicting the orchestra. Are the elements are balanced? I would say they're fairly balanced. Like I said before, the composition is split in half, so they do balance each other out, but the man in the orchestra at the bottom are so dark and so heavy, it feels right that there at the bottom of the composition, but it still is pretty heavy and takes up a lot of visual weight, so I would say it's maybe a little heavier on the bottom than on the top. Now that we've looked at that example piece, here are some images from my creative catalog, and I'll run through how more intuitively analyze these images as I find them and as I'm making notes about them. Something in addition to the Pinterest board, I personally like to do just to be more visual as make thumbnail sketches so that I can draw them and figure out really what it is that I like about this specific piece. Let's dissect a couple of my images. Let's first piece by 100 and t is of this woman who is sitting up a lot of the composition and first drawn to her face, and then there's this really nice swirl movement, and up and down her back, and then up and around her arm, so there's this swirl movement that you got and that's probably my favorite part of this piece is dynamic movement, just in the composition alone. I like that it's fairly centered, but it is a little bit top heavy. If we break it up into this rule of thirds grid, and then there's a little more weight on this right side just because of the color, so overall it's pretty balanced and realistic proportions and the staggered, and if you really squint and look, you see these lovely shaped form, which is another element of our design that we'll talk about later, but these elements are never isolated, they always work together, so the shapes do a really good job of communicating this dynamic squarely composition. Let's look at an illustration by Mayor Coleman that's part of her girls on the lawn series, so at first, I really recognizes these legs that are almost on a Y shape with this body, and you might not recognize that it's a girl at birth, because you can't see your face or anything, so I like that it's a really dynamic and unique perspective of a figure, and it's pretty centered and the composition as well, which is something that I also like. Here is a really interesting, almost storytelling cinematic approach to composition. Here we have this frame that fades away and really presents this figure who's in the center of the composition. My eyes first drawn to him, and then I looked down and imagine his line of sight, and then I move up looking around his broom, noticing he likes her. He has a nice fire place in a nice apartment maybe, and then he has a cat, so we really learn about him through this composition, and then we notice, these nice patterns that are just really subtle that make up this window frame for us to look into. This is a very balanced, very centered composition that's very strong and really just steps back and sets the stage to tell the story. Now we have a composition that is a little unbalanced, so we have this girl or boy, and they are, you will assume with a parent, but the parent is actually cropped out. The focus is really on the child, and then they're looking, of course, at the pastries in this window. Again with tracing the line of sight. Your eye first moves from the child up to the window. Let's look at how centered this is. Again, I really think the composition as a little heavier on the right side, but it is pretty balanced overall, but really leaning towards right side, and then we have a poster by Toulouse Lautrec. I loved the dynamic diagonal movement in this. My first thing that I look at is again, a face. As humans, I think we're programmed to immediately spot faces, and then my eye moves to these darker elements, and I really enjoy again this diagonal motion and the composition, so the figure, the subject herself is on the diagonal, and then the type is mimicking her diagonal direction, and then its hands are all pointing at her in this dynamic way. There's this amazing movement of like maybe she's moving away from the hands and the hands are approaching her, and then there are other confetti details in the background that fade away, but maybe give a sense of where they are, and if we're looking at how this is broken up into the rule of thirds, we see her face is pretty centered, but a little bit off, and then these hands are really on this left side, but they do end up balancing out with the figure who's just on this right side, so it's a pretty balanced composition, but I think it's a little more bottom heavy and right side heavy, but it creates this amazing movement for your eye, that ends up being very interesting, and tells a story. Now, that we've looked at a few images related to composition and some examples. I am going to pull out my creative catalog note section worksheet and write down some notes, now that I've looked through some images. Putting words to your catalogs, images will really help you define how you want to use them in your own work. So as I talked about my images, broke them down, analyze them, took notes with my thumbnail sketches. I am going make some notes about what I like. In these images. Maybe a consistent theme all of these are centered, all of these are diagonal, that thing, and that way I can note that later when I'm actually making work, and that will guide me on how to make my own artwork. I said I like centered composition, maybe a little off centered. I also liked a story telling movement, so these can be words or they can be phrases, I mean anything as long as you recognize what they mean and you can make sense of them later once you're actually working. Now I can use these keywords in my work later. Next, we'll continue learning about the other elements of our design. 6. Space: Now that we've looked at our first element of our InDesign composition. Let's move on to our second, space. Space is the distances or areas around, between and within components of a piece. When we look at pieces of work for space, it's good to review a few different terms such as positive versus negative space, closed versus open space, depth and dimension. Positive space is the main focus or subject in the work. While negative space is the empty space around the subject. Open space in three-dimensional art is the open or relatively empty parts of the work. Closed space in 3D art is the filled or solid areas of the work. When we talk about depth in relation to space, we're talking about the apparent distance from the front to the back or near to far in an artwork. This is often described as the background versus foreground relationship or depth of field in photography. You can have a wide depth of field, which means it looks like there's a lot of distance between what's closest to you, the foreground, and what's furthest from you, the background. You can also have a shallow depth of field, which means that it looks like there's not a lot of distance between that foreground and background. We can think about dimension in space as a measure of spatial extent in a direction, height, width, or depth. Two-dimension can be a way of describing a piece of work. That means that it only has the dimensions of height and width, so it's flat. Or we can call a work three-dimensional, having dimensions of height, width and depth. Now that we've covered some core concepts for space, let's start the space section of your creative catalog. Start by collecting images that illustrate how you want to use space in your own work. Here are some tips on where you can get started. Turn to the masters of space, like M. C. Escher, Saul Bass, Salvador Dali, Thomas Cole, Ansel Adams, David Turnley, and Henry Moore. You can also search for art fields and movements that you like. Look at specific fields of art like painting or photography and look at specific movements of art like surrealism or modernism. After you have some images on your Pinterest board, we'll take the next step and analyze them or dissect them to use in your work later. Here's some things to consider when analyzing images for space. One, identify the positive and negative spaces. Does one overpower the other? Two, is the depth and dimension realistic, wide or 3D, or abstract, shallow in 2D? Three, does the space suggest movement or an additional meaning to the work? Let's analyze an image together using our questions and core concepts of space. You've probably seen this famous, M. C. Escher work. It's a really interesting look at positive and negative space. Let's start there, identify the positive and negative spaces. This piece is really interesting because the negative and positive spaces almost change. At first you can see the positive space is the birds flying, they're black, and then the sky behind them is white. That would be the negative space. Once you get halfway to the bottom, it switches and the fish are in that white space. That becomes the positive space and the black behind the fish becomes the negative space. It's a really clever play on negative, positive space and just how different people interpret the positive negatives or how it can change over time. Does one overpower the other? I would say, no, they're very balanced and they do change depending on where you're looking in the piece or how your eye is moving through it. Is the depth and dimension realistic or abstract? I would say the depth and dimension is very abstract. The fish and the birds are very flat. They have a little bit of shading on them, but it definitely doesn't look like a 3D fish that you can hold in your hand. The background is also, just plain white or plain black. There's no indication that there's actually water below the fish, or there's actually a sky with clouds on it behind the birds. Does this space suggests movement or add meaning? As I mentioned before, I think there is a nice movement here because it's a very predictable pattern that, the fish and the birds are moving in. It's really a fun discovery when your eye moves from the top to the bottom and the space switches. Here are some images from my catalog and I'll go through really quickly how I more intuitively analyze this in my own practice. In this illustration, I really like the flatness of it. Everything appears very shallow in the depth. These trees are all on the same level. There's no something disappearing off in the distance. They do have a variation in size, but it's not consistent enough to where this one tree in the background might be really small compared to a huge tree in the foreground, everything is splayed out in this pattern of trees that are all, a big tree here, a small tree here. It doesn't really make sense spatially that this is a realistic depiction of a landscape. The white space in the background is clearly the negative space, while the trees are in the foreground and represent the positive space. I think overall there's little movements spatially throughout this piece. Just because as I mentioned before, there's not a movement from the foreground to the background with your eye. Everything's on that same field. That allows your eye to really focus in on the trees. The background is just white. There's nothing to look out there. You can notice all of these really sweet little tree illustrations. The next piece that I chose to add to my spaceboard was this really interesting illustration called leftovers and has this extreme flatness. Like I mentioned in the last work, there's this clear negative space that's white or whitespace and that allows the colored elements of the space to really move forward until the foreground. But there's this really interesting depth that comes into play with these different shaded elements. There are a few primary colors that are used that really pop out into the foreground of this painting but they blur sometimes. There can be this white but in between they're really light, and they are really dark areas, there's this gray that comes out and that adds to the depth, that adds dimension. You can tell that these darker areas are supposed to represent a shadow. These wider areas of her body and her hat are supposed to represent a subject that's coming up into the foreground. The third piece that I chose is red room. It has obvious flatness to it, similar to the previous two pieces that I've looked at. It really doesn't offer much dimension because like what I mentioned with the trees, there's no movement really telling you anything about this being a real room that you can move in, that you can go back into because these elements are all presented so flatly. The colors also really blend together, especially in the wall and the table that it brings out that flatness, for example, this wall, if it were really in a room, should probably have a darker color because it's further back in space. Or it could have a lighter color, but it would definitely be more different than the color of the table and that's a little confusing spatially but it brings together this really nice abstractness that I really like personally. Then that causes your eye to focus more on these elements rather than the fact that this might or might not be a real room. Your eye can move freely. Nothing is really more important than the other thing. You can spend some time just evenly exploring the elements of this composition. I think again, this is a really interesting job of the positive space coming in with the negative space to communicate something stronger. Immediately I see what's taking up the most room of the composition, these cars. That is going to be our positive space. Then this white area of the background is obviously our negative space. The white background comes in to break up the positive space at certain spots. I think this is really indicative to the type of printing they might have been using back at this time. Maybe they are on a tight budget, for example, and they can only print one color. This use of positive and negative space would be really important to make up almost a third color with just your color, that's your paper, and then your color that's your subject. There's almost this third color here. But anyway, so that maybe is why this negative space eats into the positive space. It also just really effectively communicates this object or these two cars going back into space. While this is a pretty flat image overall, there's just that one color, and everything that's this one color is on the same field. There is this aspect of dimension and depth that comes in because everything moves towards this upper corner. Because it shrinks, that suggests that it's going back into space like what I mentioned with the trees earlier. Whatever's in the back would be smaller than whatever's in the front. The type is included on this, which is something I really personally like. This whole composition moves together and I think that's really smart. Now that we've looked at some images, let's move onto our next step and write notes in our notes worksheet. I've been consistent in all of my drawings, illustrations, paintings that I looked at was this flatness, which also created an abstractness. I'm going to make notes to both of those, I did a dynamic foreground, background or positive, negative space relationship. Suggestions of depth. I don't think overall I like a lot of depth. I don't like it to be super realistic or I don't want to at least focus on that depth and realism. I want to focus more on things like color, so I should maintain this flatness in order to focus on other things and elevate those other things and almost forget about the space. We've learned the core concepts of space. We've collected and analyzed images for space. We took some notes in a notes worksheets. Let's move on to our next lesson, which will cover shape. 7. Shape: Now that we've covered our first two elements, composition and space, let's go to our third shape. The form or condition in which an object exists or appears is the shape. Which sounds very technical. Let's break it down into a few more simplified terms. We have geometric shape, organic shape, dimension, and form to consider while we are analyzing for shape. Geometric shape is defined in mathematics and have common names. For example, circles or squares, and the opposite of geometric would be organic shapes, so shapes without names, without defining angles nor standards. That suggests nature. Dimension in relation to shape talks about how a shape can be 2-dimensional, only showing length and width or it could be 3-dimensional with highlights and shadows that show more depth. Form is a shape in 3-dimension. Now that we've covered some core concepts for shape, let's start the shapes section of your catalog. Collect the images that illustrate how you want use shape in your own work. Here are some tips on how to collect images if you need a starting point. See how your favorite artists use shape or turn to the masters like Mondrian, Le Corbusier, Kandinsky, Gauguin, Kara Walker, Claes Oldenburg, and Paul Klee. You can also simply search for your favorite shapes that you already enjoy and works. After you've collected some images on your Pinterest board, we'll go to the next step which is analyzing those images to pull out what it is you want to take with you in your own process. Here are some things to consider when analyzing images for shape. One, identify the major shapes. Are they geometric or organic? Two, are the shape's boundaries defined by lines, values, colors, or textures? Three, are the shapes realistic or expressive? Complex or simplified? Let's analyze an image together using our questions and core concepts, because these are really fun image of a cake and pieces of cake. Let's talk about the shapes and identify them. At first we see a bunch of circles in the cake and in the plates evenly distributed. Then there are a bunch of triangles and rectangular prism in the slices. Overall the shapes are pretty geometric. How are the shapes boundaries defined? There are some little bits of outlines, but there are also shadows. It's a pretty realistic looking depiction of cake. Are the shapes realistic or expressive, complex or simplified? I think overall the tone of this piece is pretty simplified, but regarding the shape, I think it's pretty realistic. It looks like what you would picture a cake and its slices looking like. I don't think anything is too abstract here, but overall it does look pretty simplified. The shapes are just repeated throughout the composition that creates this nice rhythm. I really like that rhythm and I think that's a technique that I could maybe use in my own work. Here are some images from my catalog and I'll talk through how I more intuitively analyze these in my own creative process. This first illustration by Paul Rand, is a very abstract looking depiction of a few animals. Right away, I recognize that this is probably cat and that maybe this is a dog. But this is not actually how a cat or a dog look in real life. They're very squared off. They're very geometric in shape. Well, just something that I like and that brings a playful abstract quality to learn. The shapes are very flat and are just simply color blocks, which again represents that simplicity and abstraction that I like. Next we have an illustration of milk. I love the mix of the more geometric shapes with the more organic cartons of the milk. Again, this exemplifies the abstraction and simplification. You see the shadows are just shapes. In reality there would be more depths represented in this. There would be more of a clear shading, for example. Then this is just one simplified shape. I like that it is just this simplified shape and you don't need all of this extra information. Then the shapes just emphasize the shape of the overall milk cartons. There are just so many little shapes within the bigger shape, broken up by the sudden rectangle almost in the middle of the composition. Next is this wonderful drawing of a vase. That's again super simplified. It's really just this organic shaped vase with of course these organic shape leaves. Then there's this round table and round circles and a round fruit that all emphasize the circle or like round quality. I love it when different shapes echo the other shapes within the composition. This is a really fun concept illustration of a castle. This of course, has those little shapes within the shapes within the shapes within the shapes. That could just continue on and on. This super organic, super playful. None of these lines and shapes are perfect. I love this super simple, but really playful and fun interpretation of the castle. Then last we have these illustrations of women who are in bathing suits. Again, this is realistic enough to where it's like a woman's body. Just like we do, there were no car ends, but they are abstracted and super simplified. This one is really less about the filled and shapes, really only their bathing suits are filled in. It's really about these lines coming together to make an oval or make a triangle. Just this simplification is something that I really love and I know that I really want to emulate in my own work. I think these few images that I picked out did a really good job of illustrating a few different ways for me to do that. Now that we've looked at some images, let's turn again to our worksheet. I definitely said a million times that I like imperfect shape. Shapes within shapes is something that I just said a lot. Simplified. You can tell too that this is the third time that I'm writing in my notes section, and I've definitely said something along the lines of simplified, imperfect and abstracts a million times. I already know that that should be the direction that I go in my own style. I'm going to write obvious. Because sometimes in real life, you don't immediately see shapes within shapes when you look at an object. But in my artwork, I really want to pull out and have fun with those shapes interacting, maybe just within one object. We've covered the core concepts of shape, collected and analyzed images, and wrote some notes about shape and how we want to use in our own work. Let's move on to our next lesson line. 8. Line: Now we're ready for the next element of Art and Design, which is line. Let's go over what line means and some terms that relate to it that will help us describe line to use at our own work. Line is an identifiable path created by a point moving in space. Here are some words that you can describe line with, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, curved, line quality and outline. On a basic level, lines can be horizontal, which suggests landscape or space or rest. There can also be vertical lines which suggest height, spirituality, or power. There can also be diagonal lines which suggest movement, and a piece of work. There are curved lines, which suggest an energy or maybe a calmness or softness, or nature, similar to organic shapes. Line quality can be used to describe the nature of a line created by a tool or a technique. Line quality can be described as thin, thick, varied, straight, curvy, zigzag, short, long, intersecting or dashed, among many others. Outline is the apparent edge of an object. Outline does not usually exist in the real world, but is often how people interpret objects in art. Now that we've covered some core concepts for line, let's start the line section of your catalog. Start to collect images that illustrate how you want to use line. If you're not sure, here are some tips on how to pick images for your line section of your creative catalog. One of the easiest things you can do is search famous artists that are known for their great use of line. Leonardo Da Vinci, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and ink wash painting or Chinese art are all great examples of unique ways of using line. You can also search for the tools and media that you know you like. Look up art that uses the tools and media that create the type of line that you like. If you like pencil drawing, for example, then lookup pencil artwork, or if you know you like paint, then look up, paintings. After you've gathered a few images on your line, Pinterest board for your creative catalog, we're going to take the next step and analyze those images so we can dissect them and figure out how we want to use those in our own work. Here's some things to consider when you're looking at your images for line. One, identify the lines, what is their direction and quality? Two, does the line lead your eye around the composition? Do the lines make a shape or add meaning? Three, is the line obvious, suggesting simplicity and playfulness, or are the lines subtle suggesting reality? Let's analyze an image together to review those questions and see how we can use our core concepts to describe an image. Here we have a really powerful image by Pablo Picasso. Let's identify the lines and talk about what their direction is and what their quality is. This is a very dynamic painting with actually a lot of lines. They're mostly, I would describe them as like an outline. They're pretty solid and dark for the most part. Their direction is all over the place, which is what makes this painting so interesting and dynamic. There are lines that move together and organically down the page in this woman's hair. But there are also very geometric and jarring triangles in the middle of her face, which is upsetting because you know that there aren't random triangles and weird geometric shapes in the middle of your face. You know that this is an abstract piece. You know that it's a little unsettling. Does the line leader your eye around the composition? Do the lines make a shape or add meaning? As we were just saying, there is this really dynamic movement around the whole composition because the solid bold line takes you all around the composition. It's like this roller coaster of a line, and that creates that really dynamic movement. Like I mentioned before, the jarring geometric shapes that are in the middle of the face add a meaning or a story that something is clearly not right here. If we even look at the title of the piece, 'The Weeping Woman', that use of geometric line in the middle of the organic phase really emphasizes that she's weeping, there is something wrong and also the viewer should maybe feel upset as well. Is the line obvious suggesting simplicity and playfulness? Or is the line subtle, suggesting reality? As I pointed out almost immediately, this line is clearly an outline. It's not meant to be realistic and it's definitely not subtle. I wouldn't call it playful in this instance, but I think it's very obvious and emphasizes the destruction and the face. Now that we've analyzed the Picasso together, once you have a few images, I want you to ask yourself those questions and use our core concepts to describe your own images. I'm going to show you some examples of images in my creative catalog that I will go through my analysis of and how I more intuitively pick out what I want to write down in my creative catalog. These lines are really expressive and curvy and organic throughout the whole piece, which is something that I really like. There's a lot of movement throughout the piece because there's such a variation in all of these lines that easily move you throughout the plants, and even down into the vase. Really all the action is happening in the flowers and the plants, because the outline of the vase is just that, an outline. This bottom half is super simplified and not very interesting to look at. I love the playful quality of this and just the sketchy quality of the lines. This next piece, I love because of the outlines of this woman, of her face. Again, imperfect quality of the figure. I love how the subject, the woman in the middle is super organic and curvy in her lines and what she's sitting on and this greenery in the background, emphasizes her curviness. There is very little geometric or straight horizontal lines in this piece. But I do like how there is a subtle use of this grid in the background, which appears a little more geometric and man-made while she's just sits in front of it. I love how the curviness of the elements around her emphasizes the curviness of this subject or the woman. Our next piece is a really beautiful concept illustration. I picked this one out for Line because it has so much line in it. There are these subtle lines in the background, breaking up the space and dividing the different figures in the foreground. There's also a nice use of line in the clothing of the figures. Then there's a different, more subtle use of Line in the background, with these dancers swooshing around. These lines are a little more diagonal. Then there are really tight lines in darker areas. Then there are more swirly lines, to represent different instruments and different components of the composition. I think there's a really good variety of line work in this. In each of these lines are communicating a different thing and think that makes the piece very playful overall. These lines also add a really nice amount of texture to the peace and communicate a nice dimensionality. This sketch of some figs is really nice and expressive. I love how hurried these lines look. It really looks handmade and is not perfect again, but communicates what it's supposed to communicate. It's very playful and has lots of movement. You can almost picture the artists, scribbling their pen to make this, which is really fun. Then our last image is a really abstract fun depiction of a face. I love how the line is pretty straight. But then all of a sudden there are these really nice curves that help move you around, and almost bring the whole thing together so you can tell that it's a face. This is really playful and a little more geometric and simplified than the other pieces that I've shown you. But I think it's a really simple, nice use of Line to communicate exactly what you want to communicate with little information. Now that we've looked at a handful of images, let's go back to our notes worksheet to complete the last step in this section of our catalog, which is to write notes. Overall I really liked variation in the line work. I like the lines to communicate something. Then I do like the use of outline, which again goes back to that abstract concepts that I like. I think outline represents simplification. I do like line work that creates a shape. Like that concept piece with a bunch of figures in it I think that was a really nice use of line, creating things like an instrument or like somebody's hair. That is a little more interesting than just having a shape there. We're all done going over the basic concepts, definitions, and analysis of line. Let's move on to our next section, which is color. 9. Color: Let's talk about our fifth element of art and design, color. Color is the perceived hue of an object. We can describe color in a few different terms, hue, value, saturation, contrast, color scheme of a piece of work, or the mood and the meaning that comes with color within a piece of work. Hue is the color, for example, red. Some basic categories of hues are primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors. Value of color is the lightness or darkness. For example, pink is a lighter version of red whereas maroon is a darker version of red. Saturation is the intensity of the color, for example, pastels which are lighter in intensity, and primary colors which are super intense. Contrast is the value separation between two or more colors. For example, if yellow, which is lighter in value, is next to blue, which is darker in value, that's going to appear very separate. Color scheme is the combination of colors used in a work. There are a bunch of different kinds of color schemes that we can talk about, but I'll just mention the main color schemes that are commonly discussed, monochromatic, analogous, complimentary, split-complementary, triadic, neutral, pastel, muted, warm, cool, light, and dark. You can use any of these terms to help you describe what you like in a color scheme. Then, there's mood and meaning, when a color evokes an emotion and or cultural associations within a work. For example, dark colors can often feel unsettling, white can often represent innocence and culture, and red can be associated with the brand Coca-Cola. Now that we've covered some core concepts and basic descriptors of color, let's start the color section of your catalog. Collect images that illustrate how you want to use color in your own work. Here are a few tips on how to start collecting your images for color. If an image doesn't immediately jump to your mind for your board, you can always turn to the masters. Search artists like Henri Matisse, Cezanne, Monet, look at Pop Art, look at Picasso's Blue Period, look for Mark Rothko's work, or Helen Frankenthaler, or Josef Albers was really big in color theory. If you know what colors you're drawn to and you gravitate towards, the look up colors are color combinations that create the type of art you like. Adobe Color is a great resource. It's an app and a website. You can make your own color schemes, or if you need some inspiration, you can search their library of color schemes. After you collect some images on your Pinterest board, we're going to move into the analysis step and extract what it is about those images that you want to take with you into your own work. Some of the questions that you can consider while looking at your images and analyzing them for color is: One, what colors or hues do you see? Two, how would you describe the colors and color scheme in the work of art? Three, what mood does the color scheme evoke? Do the colors add meaning? Let's quickly analyze just one image together before we start on your own creative catalog. This is a beautiful bright image by Henri Matisse. We'll start with what colors or hues do you see. I definitely see a variety of hues. Using our core concepts that we learned earlier, I see a muted bluish purple color, there's definitely red, there is very saturated yellow, there's this light pink color on her dress, there's orange, and then there's also a pretty saturated green color. How would you describe the colors and color scheme? I would describe this as a very saturated color scheme. There is that muted purply blue color, but generally the reds, the yellows, the oranges, and even the green are very saturated. I think, overall, it's a pretty balanced color scheme. It might even lean a little towards warm, but I think the green does a nice job of balancing out the warmer colors. I wouldn't say it's light or dark. It's, again, balanced with some of the darker colors in the background and the lighter colors in the foreground. The figure is pretty light and then the base is pretty light. What mood does the color scheme evoke? Do the colors add meaning? To me, the colors evoke this playful quality. We know that, realistically, the room in the scene probably doesn't look that bright and that colorful, but the artist took some liberties and made this rainbow painting. I don't know if this really evokes a meaning, but I might interpret it as a dreamlike scenario. Once you have a few images on your Pinterest board for color, I would highly encourage you to use these questions and our core concepts to analyze the images. I'll talk through my process of how I extract and dissects the images for color. This first one is just a super simple painting in a sketchbook, but I love how it is so simple and just color blocks. The colors are pretty muted overall, but there is this really fun variety in colors. I can see that there is black, blue, this salmon color, a darker pink, a lighter pink, an olive color, a teal color, a darker purple color, and then an orangey rusty-looking color, which makes it more fun and playful. This next image I really like because it's so bright and colorful. The colors here are all very saturated. It looks like somebody maybe just used the colors right out of the crayon box, and they didn't dilute them at all, so they're super bright and saturated. We have this pinky red color that takes up a majority of the composition and creates a face, which is really stunning, and obviously not her actual hair color or skin color, but it's really fun and expressive. Then we have her holding some blue and green flowers or plants, which is a really nice contrast to the red color and almost this complimentary color. Then, her hand has really great mix of both the blue, that's communicating almost a shadow, and the pinkness, which is communicating her skin. This next illustration of a lion is really fun because it's really just two colors, yellow and blue, but they overlap in the printing process, so they create a green where they overlap, which is really fun, and expressive, and playful. This really beautiful painting of a woman has so many colors in it and it's almost like a rainbow. They are pretty saturated though little toned-down and muted. They are obviously not a realistic expression of what this woman looks like in real life, but it's a really beautiful representation of the woman and super expressive. This melon I really like because it only has a couple of colors, the purple, the yellow, the dark blue, and then some pinks and purples coming together on the inside of the melon. Again, this is super simplified and really only has a couple of colors, but they do mix together at certain spots, which is really beautiful. Instead of being their own separate purple stripe or pink circle, they do come together a little bit sublime. Now that we've looked at a handful of images, it is time for you to look at your images, see what you want to pull out and use in your own creative work. We can do that easily by taking our next step in this section of our catalog, which is to write down some notes in our notes worksheet. Saturated. Then, I noticed I really gravitated towards color schemes that included maybe four colors at the least, three or four colors, I guess I would say, and then up to maybe 10 colors. That's, again, going to help guide my color scheme making decisions when I go to paint or drawn in the future. Overlapping, mixing colors like in the fruit, overlapping like in the lion, how you can really just use two colors, but you can mix them together in different ways to create subtle different colors that will all work together because it's really just the two colors. I'm going to add abstract here again, just because I had a few portraits that were super colorful and didn't necessarily realistically represent the women who are being portrayed. I guess I don't really gravitate towards a specific color, but I could write down red here or orange. Now that we're done with our core concepts, our analysis, and our note section of color, let's move on to our next section of our creative catalog, which is texture. 10. Texture: Let's talk about texture or sixth element of art and design. Texture is the visual feel of a piece. This texture can be real or implied. You want to think about the materials, the tools and the techniques that are all behind that texture. When we talk about materials in relation to texture, we're talking about the visual field created by the materials used to make the work. For example, a canvas or metal. When we think about tools in relation to texture. We're talking about the visual field that's created by the tools used to make the work. For example, a flat brush or a fan brush in painting. You can also think about the techniques. The visual feel created by techniques or processes used to make the work. For example, a dry brush type technique or a cross-hatching technique and these all create different textures. Now that we've covered the core concepts of texture, let's start gathering images that illustrate how you want to use texture in your creative catalog. Start your Pinterest board and start searching for any images that reflect the way you might want to use texture in your own work. Here are some tips to get you started on picking out images for your texture board. Turn to the masters. Some artists who are known for their use of texture are Vincent van Gogh, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Goldsworthy and artists of the Realism movement. Also search for the media you enjoy. Look up the materials, processes and tools that create the type of art that you like. After you've collected a few images, you're going to go into the next step which is analysis of your texture board. Some things to consider when analyzing your images for texture are one; describe how the piece of work feels, two, what materials, tools and techniques do you think contribute to the texture? Also you might know what tools, materials and techniques the artists use if you do some more research on the image. Three, is the texture suggestive of something in the world, a time period or a culture? Is there more contexts behind the work and the texture that you could incorporate into your own process? Here's an example image that we are going to analyze together to reiterate our core concepts and show how you can take these core concepts with you into your own process. I'm sure everybody is familiar with this painting, Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. One, describe how the piece of work feels. To me, this work feels bumpy maybe and swirly. An implied texture would be this worldliness because we know that the paint isn't actually swirling. It's just the effects that you get from the motion in the lines and the shape. Then the real texture looks like the paint might actually be built up on the surface of the Canvas, so that is a real bumpy texture. What materials, tools, and techniques do you think contribute to the texture? This is an oil painting. We know for a fact that Van Gogh used this impasto technique, so that's why it looks bumpy. He built up the paint on the surface of the Canvas to achieve a layered look. I'm assuming with impasto, he probably used like a pallet knife or something as well on a Canvas, so if I wanted to create a work that looked like this, I would keep that in the back of my mind, the impasto technique, Canvas, oil paint. Is the texture suggestive of something in the world, a time period or a culture? This is definitely suggestive of something in the world. It's what it's titled, a starry night. But it is a little abstracted because a starry night doesn't exactly look like that. There's some room for interpretation that van Gogh used. Then we also know because we know the date when this piece was created, that this was part of the Post-Impressionism movement in modern art. Again, if we're interested in creating a work like this, we might research more on modern artist or Post-Impressionism Art. Now I'll go through some examples of pieces of work that I have in my own creative catalog for texture. I'm looking at this wonderful piece with maybe a mother and her son. Maybe it's a print or just a digital piece of work. It looks pretty smooth overall, but I love the use of the many textures throughout this piece. There's a little bit of line texture in the sky, overall the sky looks pretty smooth and flat. But then that background looks farther away than this background because they're separated by these two different textures created by these lines moving throughout. Then these lines hit this shape, which has yet another texture with even more of these lines, but they're more filled in creating a different texture. Then there's this checkered texture that comes in creating yet another element in the piece. Then there's this flat bench, which is a little not interesting and just a simple shape. Then there are all these just flat leaves that come in that are flat like the bunch and not super interesting, but they do a really good job of breaking up all of these other textures. Then you have little details like the stripes on their legs. I think this is really interesting to me because there is a variation of textures just created with these simple shapes and this piece. Next piece is already marked up a little bit. But this is linocut print. Again, there's just one color here and it's just one ink. You really have to create depth and dimension in a piece when you just have one color ink through different textures. There are several different techniques used here. I'm not a screen printer, so I don't know the technical terms for them, but there's this really nice texture we got here in the background from a lot of these shapes coming together. Then there's this whispier, looser texture down here in the cabinet. Then there's another checks texture in this towel separating from the oven that is darker and more filled in down here. Then there're the different kitchen tools that are separated by their own textures. The lines get looser at some parts like down here on the cabinet and then tighter other parts up here on the corner and that communicates the different shapes and different objects that are in this one composition. I really like this variety of textures using the texture to communicate depth and tell a story within this composition. Next we have this crazy scratchy cat. It looks like this was created with ink. At times it can look pretty smooth when the ink is more evenly distributed and more fully distributed on these darker parts mostly and then it looks scratchier when it's falling off the outlines that were created. It looks as if somebody created this outline of the cat and then they wanted to express this anger on the cat's face and really push that anger and expression of feeling by going crazy with this ink. I think this is a really cool job of communicating this cat's mood and maybe anger. Maybe there was a dry brush technique used to create these scratches and look so little unpolished and unfinished, but that does a really good job of communicating a deeper meaning. This next image of scissors feels really rough and almost cram like. I love how sketchy and open and moves it feels. Maybe this was a texture created by a crayon. It feels really scribbly, which is fun. You can still tell what it is. It's obviously a pair of scissors and a hand, but simplified. It's really just pointing out the basic outline of the shape of the hand and the biggest shape of the scissors, but communicating that shape in a really expressive way with the quickness of the marks. Those marks suggests movement and you can again feel the crayon moving and watch it. After taking a minute to look at all my images or maybe just my favorite images. I'm going to move on to the last step in this section of our creative catalog by writing down notes or building my creative formula in my notes worksheet. I'm going to say varied, because I like that variety in textures to tell a story and help separate objects. I'm also going to write that separate objects slash components. I'm going to write decorative, because a lot of the works that I just showed the texture didn't really communicate much. For example, it was a scratchy texture communicating bark on a tree. It was like that quick movement, expressing anger or just scribbles to make up a pair of scissors. I should say simplified and tools and materials because it wasn't a really mixed media than I was pulling out in my catalog. It was just a linocut. It was one medium, one tool and material used to create that, but within that one tool or material, there was a variety of texture just created by that one simple tool or material. Now that we've covered some core concepts and definitions of texture, collected some of our images in our texture section of our creative catalog, analyze them and took some notes, it's time to move on to our last section, which is subject matter. 11. Subject Matter: Just like that, we are on our last element of art and design, subject matter. Subject matter isn't actually technically an element of art and design, but I really like to have it as a section in my creative catalog because, subject matter is huge, it's what you draw, it's what you photograph. Subject matter is the visual or narrative focus of a work of art. Figure out what you want to communicate through your work, because that's going to be the heart of your work. So now it's time for you to gather some images for your subject matter Pinterest board and then write down some notes in the last section of your notes worksheet. What do you like to draw, shoot, film, paint, design, embroider, whatever it is you do. How are other artists portraying those subjects or narratives? That'll help you move forward and craft your own story. What do you want to say with your art? It's really important to have a clear message in your art. You don't want people to not understand what you're trying to say or think that you're saying the opposite. You need to use your visual tools to be able to clearly communicate with your audience. Now, let's look at some examples of what's in my subject matter Pinterest board. So I have this really fun portrait of this woman, I love just the overall composition of this, and how it's not just this face in a typical outfit, it's this really fun out of it with a bunch of these bubbles on it, and then, on top of her head, is these flowers for summary zone, and maybe she just really likes flowers and I thought that, that was a really fun playful way to maybe communicate something about her. Maybe she is a gardener and these are her flowers, and they're just on her head for some reason. I have another abstract color blocked, cool shaped painting of two women in bathing suits. I love how abstract but simple this is. I love how there are these little shapes within the shapes. It's almost like a puzzle coming together, and I just love how the women are at the center of the puzzle. They don't look like typical women, they're more abstract, but also maybe more realistic, they're not just stick figures. They're maybe even are more realistic representation of women than magazines. This wonderful piece that, I think it's a poster actually, but it just shows the alphabet and different people interacting with the letters, I just think it's so fun and playful, and the colors are really bright, it just overall makes you really happy, and I am a designer, so, I love letters and watering, so, I appreciate this mix of lettering with illustration. Then this last piece I just think is really cute and sweet and fun. It's this girl eating a humongous stack of pancakes. Though pancakes are really just scribbles, which is really fun and playful, I like that, it's super simple, it's just this one chair, and then this other chair, and the girls on it. There's this little clue again that these are pancakes because there's maple syrup off to the side, and then she look so overwhelmed by all these pancakes on top buffer. I love that this is a story even though it's just a scene, but I love the shape of the chairs, and then the playfulness of her face, and her outfit, and her feet coming into each other. Let's pull out my worksheet to fill out the last section. One of my keywords is going to be women, letters, body slash figures came up a lot and just that handful of images we looked at, playfulness, so, not only is it important that there are women and letters may be involved in one of my pieces, an element of playfulness should probably be involved. Then of course, abstraction comes up again and again. Honest, I guess is the word that I'm looking for, so, it's honest and truthful to how I see the world. I really like that list. Once you have a few phrases and ideas for your subject matter part of your worksheet, why don't you pick out one or two of those and really narrow it down so you can create your new piece of work based off of your choice of subject matter in your creative catalog, and then we will next make a new piece of work that's completely based off of your notes from your creative catalog. 12. Use Your Catalogue: One Element: Let's transition from talking about other people's work and focusing on you and your style. I know we've spent a lot of time learning about the elements of our InDesign, and hopefully by now you have an idea of how you want to approach each of those elements, and use them in your own creative style. So we've gone through all of the elements of art and design and made your creative catalog for you to reference. Now let's put that creative catalog into use and make something. In this lesson, I am just going to quickly show you how you can focus on one element of our InDesign and create with that in mind. Then we will move on to our actual project for the class, which will involve combining a few different elements and using your creative catalog to inspire that new work of art. I picked our composition to start with, and I'm going to be painting these lovely flowers I have next to me on. But first I wanted to pull out a few notes from my creative catalog. I want this work to be centered, focused, and simple. Those are two other words that I've taken from my catalog. As I mentioned earlier, these words you can think of as a recipe or a formula for your creative work. In this case, this is my recipe centered, focused, simple. Those are the main three things that I'm going to think about when I'm making these flowers. I have a little thumbnail sketch here that I did really quickly, just so I can make a note of how exactly I want to frame this composition. That way I'm not going in blind when I get to my blank sheet. I think focusing on just one or two elements at first is great just to get in the habit of writing out your formula and referencing that, and seeing how to incorporate that into your creative process. But it's also nice to just experiment with things. For example, I have this centered composition written in my notes, but maybe I try this and maybe I'll try a few more too and I just end up not really being not interested in us under composition. I can remove that from my creative catalog and I never have to think about it again. Making these quick little pieces, just studying one or two elements of our InDesign will really help you with your trial and error in finding your voice and your style quickly and easily. Now that we've started with that little practice piece, let's move on to our actual final piece of work based off of your creative catalog. 13. Use Multiple Elements: Now that we've started with that little practice piece, let's move on to our actual final piece of work based off of your creative catalog. You should already have your medium in mind. Then you should have already also picked out a subject matter that you'd like to explore. With those in mind, pick out three different elements of art and design that we've discussed. Look back at your notes, look back at your Pinterest boards and give yourself a direction of where you want to go with this new piece of work. For my final piece of artwork, I'm going to make a painting based off of the concept artwork from Mary Blair that's in my catalog and then a picture that I took of a greenhouse in a garden. To help me make my artwork consistent, I'm going to pick my three elements to focus on; composition, shape and color. Subject here, I put playful and abstract greenhouse in a garden because that's literally what I am making and focusing on. It's not really its own element, but I put it on there just so I can stay focused. It's helpful to write down about two different words or phrases for each of your three chosen elements of art to create your creative formula. Looking back at my catalog for composition, I pulled centered storytelling. Shape, I picked imperfect shapes within shapes. Color, saturated and overlapping with a question mark because I might want to explore that or I might not want to. I'll refer back to this when I'm making my piece and obviously make decisions as I'm creating. Your formula is not your finished rule book. It is a guide that you can experiment with and adjust your words while you're working at anytime. Using all of these key words, I'm going to push this off to the side as I'm creating for inspiration and returned to them whenever I'm feeling lost or I need some more direction or guidance. These will also help me to limit my train of thought when I'm making, so that way I'm not too overwhelmed, like should I use pastel colors? No, I refer back to the sheet. I'm using saturated colors. I've already decided it. Now I can just focus on making my work. When I first sketched out my painting. I really wanted to focus on that centered composition that I wrote down and so I literally just centered the greenhouse and started to make it really abstract. Then with my shape elements, I said that I wanted to have shapes within shapes. I really tried to push that and then push it even further with the plant garden theme and make the shapes leaf shapes or flower shapes. I didn't really end up overlapping the colors that much, but the colors look overlapping in the way that I mixed them. For example, I used the brighter blue in the background and then toned that blue down in the somewhat darker, less saturated blue within the house. I think the floral, natural, organic shapes within the house really lend that storytelling element. After I painted my basic shapes and really focused on nailing my composition, shape and color which were the three elements that I picked, I thought that I could refer back to other elements of design like line and add those extra details that will emphasize my storytelling word that I picked out for my formula to enhance the final piece. Congratulations, we've made your own creative formula based off of your creative catalog and a completely new piece of artwork. Post your new piece of work and the formula you used to make it to the project gallery to show how you've developed your creative catalog into something that you can use in your process every time you're making. Let's wrap up with some final takeaways. 14. Takeaways: Congratulations on making your creative catalog and learning another technique that you can use in your own creative process. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a really useful tool that you can reference throughout your creative process to make really consistent work that's in your own unique style. One really important takeaway from this class is, you have everything you need to express your own unique voice, perspective, style, whatever you want to call it, you just need to make notes and keep track of what those things are that make up your style and your perspective. Together, we've learned the basic elements of our design, how to recognize them in art, and use them in your own creative work, how to develop a tool to make more consistent artwork that's uniquely yours, your creative catalog, and we've learned that finding your creative perspective, style, voice, whatever you want to call it, is really easier than you think if you just break it down into steps and create tools for yourself to help you easily make work that reflects your style. You should upload your creative catalog along with your notes and your new piece of work to the Project Gallery. I'm so excited to see what images you guys picked out, what notes you guys have that make up your formula, and how you put that all together in a new piece. Be sure to leave reviews and please follow me for future classes. Thank you.