Transcripts
1. Let's Play!: Creativity is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be easy, but somehow many of us lost our way, and instead it's laced with fear and unworthiness. Does this sound like you, maybe every time you sit down to create, you become overly attached to the results and feel like if you don't make something perfect, it's not worth your time, and somehow it will lower your self-worth or maybe you have a creative edge but feel like painting is only for artists. You've locked away your creative spirit feeling as if you missed the boat because you're too old or you don't have any talent. Whatever your creative issues are, this class is for you, whether you're a professional artists looking to get back into the flow state or are a complete beginner wanting to express yourself. This class is full of all kinds of fun, like boldness, passion, emotional release, or freedom and mindfulness, joy, color therapy, messiness, its fermentation, and most importantly, non judgment. Because the results that you make don't matter, you are guaranteed to have fun. I believe this class will change your creative life. I know that's lots of promise, but something really magical happens when you paint without caring about results. In this class, I will show you how to silence your inner critic, connect to your inner child and get into the flow state, these things are a magical recipe for more creativity and happiness in your life. We will not paint pretty things. In fact, most of the things you will make, especially at the beginning, will be really ugly, and that's a good thing. It means you're doing it right. We will embrace mistakes and accidents. Learn how to let go and truly express ourselves in the process. This kind of painting may seem silly, but it has boundless benefits since I have started practicing step of painting. Not only do I create more normal art, but I also have more fun, experiment more and I'm kinder to myself when I do create a piece that is considered ugly. In short, I have learned to silence and ignore my inner critic, which feels like a superpower. I also give valuable practice time in learning techniques, practice mindfulness, and explore my subconscious mind just to name a few more benefits. The great thing is these sessions can only be done in five minutes, but usually I spend around 10-15. So why not incorporate something so awesome and easy into your daily routine and reap all these benefits and more. Try this magic out for yourself and see what it does for you. So what are you waiting for? Let's play.
2. The Enemy of Creativity: Welcome to the class. I wanted to start by addressing the enemy of creativity. It's important to address him before we start painting freely, because he will definitely try to stop us from having fun, before I reveal his identity, let me tell you a story. Someone brought their daughter to a gathering. She was maybe seven-years-old, and was drawing with Crayola markers in a corner of the room. I came up to her and she excitedly drew me. I told her she did so good and one day she could be an artist if she practiced enough. At this, she got very sad, put her head down and said, "I'm not good enough, and I'll never be good enough." My daddy is much better than me. This broke my heart, and I was so confused at how she could believe this at such a young age. I told her, "You are good enough, and anyone better than you just had more practice than you." But she just shook her head and remain sad every time I tried to comfort her, or give her words of encouragement, but as I got up to talk to the adults, I looked back at her and there she was, still drawing and joy was back on her face. This story is a great illustration of the mindset that is put on us in our ego driven society. We think if we're not the best at something, we shouldn't do it. We don't see the benefits of just having fun in expressing ourselves. All we care about are the end results, and we somehow identify our success with it as human beings. We compare ourselves to others like she did with her father, who's much older than her, so it makes little sense. We do this when we compare ourselves to more experienced artists. We somehow think other people have more talent and you have to be gifted to paint, when it's really just practice. This myth is drilled into us without us even realizing, as is shown by this very young creator's view point, but notice that even though she already developed a negative inner critic that told her she'll never be good enough, she still spent time drawing. I think she drew around two hours at that party. The sadness only came when she let voices, opinions and believed it. The joy naturally returned as soon as she went back to making art. She was doing something magical, completely naturally, drawing in the moment and expressing herself, which as many of you know, it is extremely fun. She was accessing the flow state with ease. It was worth it to heart to draw, even though she didn't think she could be good enough to be an artist. She did it just for the happiness she gets from it. This story illustrates some of the biggest enemies which come from the ego in our society. They are judgment, criticism, self-doubt, pessimism, and high expectations. All these traits come together to make a master villain. Can you guess who it is? That's right, the inner critic. Critique can be very good in growing as an artist, but most people's inner critic has turned dark. A good inner critic will tell you what you did bad without emotion. It is just making note on what you can work on and improve on next time, but it does not make you feel bad for any mistakes that you have done. It's more like a robot looking for ways to improve. Emotions are attached, but they're positive ones, but when looking at mistakes, it's only logic. A good inner critic will be happy when mistakes are made, because he will say, "Oh, I have this to learn and that to learn, I noticed this," and you give yourself a pat on the back for trying and putting practice time in. A good critic treats you like a good parent would, using positive reinforcement. A bad critic, on the other hand, makes you feel insecure. It can lead to such strong emotions. If you make an ugly piece that will be hard to try again, you might even get depressed. I rarely see good inner critics in our world, even with very successful artists. They somehow never feel good enough. There's even a name for this, imposter syndrome. Your art here is probably feel like they're imposters, isn't that ridiculous? The good news is, we can retrain the bad critic into a good one. It's an easy method, but it requires persistence and mindfulness. Essentially, we're going to rebuild a bad thought habit. Every time you notice a bad thought about your work, you have to dismiss it, and then you replace it with what a good critic would say. Maybe something like, "Good thing I made that mistake because I learned something new," or "It's okay that it didn't turn out good, at least I tried and I can always try again, and I'm proud of myself for practicing." Think of your good critic as a kind and nurturing friend, or creativity cheerleader. If you're not sure what to say, imagine that your work is actually been painted by a friend or your spouse, or your daughter or son, or a loved one, or anyone other than you, and then say what you would say to them. I guarantee it would be much kinder than what you would think to yourself about your own work. We need to learn self-compassion and freely give it to ourselves without guilt, which can be challenging in our society, but it's much needed. You can also try reframing what your mistakes are in your mind. Instead of thinking of them as mistakes or problems, think of them as precious jewels, because they are valuable learning tools. If you don't make mistakes, you don't grow or improve, period. If you're painting just for fun, so you don't really care about improvement because this is just a fun hobby and you're not going to share your work, you can just tell your inner critic to be quiet. That it doesn't matter because you're having fun expressing yourself. If you're painting just for fun, naturally it will be more quiet, but if it's still makes itself known, anything bad the critic throws at you can be rebuked with this, "I'm just having fun," because the goal of our paintings will be for the process, not results. It'll be for the emotions you feel while painting, not what it will look like at the end. Over time, you will retrain how your brain thinks, and before you know it, you'll have a cheerleader cheering you on in your head, and this will hopefully carry over to other parts of your life. There are three more things you might deal with, fear, procrastination and perfectionism. The good news is, if you work on changing your inner critic, all three will naturally be slain. They all come from the same place. Fear naturally develops after years of abusing yourself when you make a mistake, which leads to procrastination, because you don't want to deal with the emotions that come up, and then perfectionism also lies in fear. You might think that if it's not perfect, it's not good enough, so this feeds procrastination, because it's so terrifying to make mistakes you don't even want to start. All of these issues tie in together and come from the core issue of caring about results and not the process, and being overly hard on yourself and letting the bad critic run rampant. As you can see, the cure is just to be kind to yourself, and to love yourself and your art. It's that easy, but even though it sounds easy, it is harder than you think, because you have to break the bad habit of negative thinking, and that takes conscious effort and time. You have to put the effort in, but it is so worth you doing. You will see how I paint in later lessons and tell the inner critic to be quiet, but the way you deal with your inner critic is up to you. Whatever works for you, works for you. Just remember you can always reframe what it says, or remind yourself that it's just about the process and not the results, or practice more mindfulness and quiet your mind more. If you do these things before you know it, you will paint with a quiet mind full of joy, in the flow state and in the present moment. It is so, so worth it my friends. Please give it a try and don't give up no matter what. Even if it takes you a month to get it or a year to get it, just try and try, and try, but hopefully, you'll get the hang of this in a few sessions. There are so many benefits to this. Most importantly is accessing the flow state. Let's learn more about the flow state and your inner child in the next lesson.
3. Your Inner Child & Flow State: When we quiet down to inner critic and create just for fun with no rules, something magical happens. We reconnect to our inner child, do you remember how care for you were as a kid? How you just cared about the present moment and truly enjoy things. It was so easy for you. You were relaxed and didn't care about all the things adults have floating around their minds at all times. You were not stressed, you could express yourself freely. If you were lucky enough to create art as a child, as most kids do, even if they don't want to be artists when they grow up, you probably remember time flying by and being lost in what you were doing. This is called the flow state, or as you may know it, being in the zone. It's the feeling of being so immersed in what you're doing that you forget about everything else and time seems to slow down, but somehow it passes by really quickly. You also experienced an addicting and hard to describe feeling of peaceful happiness. Creative work is best done in this state, because it will create the best results for many reasons, but if it's hard to access this state, and you get stressed every time you paint, your work will suffer for it. The Way of painting that I will show you will get you into the flow state easily, so if you're an artist, you'll practice being in the flow state, when doing this unplanned paintings and you can easily transition to doing real pieces right after, because these intuitive paintings can be easily done as quick warm-ups. They can take as little as five minutes or even 30 seconds if you wanted, but I recommend at least five minutes, and the more you access the flow state, the easier it'll be to access it in the future, it's like a skill that you practice. You probably have experienced that before, even if you're not aware of it, you may have felt so when they actually enjoyed cleaning, and did it mindfully, and in the moment, and before you knew it, you are done and you actually had fun. Usually the flow state is associated with skill sets like basketball, writing or painting, but it can be experienced anytime you're immersed in something like when you're studying or even jogging. The more you access it, the easier it will be to access and the good news is you will live a life in the present moment and full of joy if you do. The style of intuitive inner child painting makes me access it every single time, but at first, I had to learn how to quiet my inner critic and let go. This does take time, but it is so worth it. You might have to work at it a little bit more if you don't know the basics of watercolors, or whatever painting medium you're using, but once you learn how to truly let go and enjoy, magic will happen. There are so many benefits to being in the state from mindfulness, which has so many on its own, to improve performance faster skill development, increased joy, and most importantly, distressing from our hectic world. The secret to accessing the state is connecting to your inner child. This isn't anything fancy, it's just going back to your fun, open, imaginative, and carefree nature. Your inner child is still there no matter how dormant It feels, so don't worry, we'll gently nudge him or her out with a promise of fun. Now that we know who our enemy is, and what the flow state is, and who are inner child is, let's get inspired by learning what intuitive painting is.
4. What is Intuitive Painting?: While we discuss what intuitive painting is, I will show you my various work done in this way. I am freely showing you my more good-looking pieces with the ones that aren't aesthetically pleasing, which are a lot of them. But this is not expected from you. Your paintings will be private unless you choose otherwise. I just wanted to show you what you can expect, so you don't feel bad when you make ugly art because I make tons of it, especially when intuitive painting, but even when I'm not. What is intuitive painting? Intuitive painting doesn't mean you have to be a psychic or anything fancy to paint, it just means that you allow yourself to do whatever you want to do in the moment as you paint. Whatever feels right or good. It's a way of painting with no rules. You are free to experiment and express yourself. The trick to the paintings we will be doing, is we don't care about results. In fact, everything you paint from this class, you should have the mindset of, you're doing it for the experience and you can, and probably will throw it away when you're done. That way you have complete creative freedom to play. This concept of throwing it away is similar to a Tibetan Buddhist monks do. They make super intricate Mandalas from colored sand. This requires millions of pieces of sand and a team of monks to work on end from days to weeks, depending on the size. What do they do when they're done? They destroy it. This reminds them of the transient nature of life and is how they practice non-attachment. They make the Mandala to enjoy the act of creation and I'm sure they're very mindful, and in the flow state when creating it, because it requires so much attention to detail and concentration.Also they're monks, so they meditate all the time. We're not that extreme in this class. You can keep or throw away your paintings as needed, but the point is that it's important to keep in mind that you're painting for your soul, for the experience, for the joy, for the process, not for pretty results that you can show off on social media. If you doing something that you can share from time to time, then that's great too, but don't expect it because you probably won't that often, and that means you're doing it right. When you have expectations, you're not painting for the process anymore. You're painting for results. Think about a kid. When they paint, they don't think about results. They don't even know what they're doing. They're just embracing their creativity and spontaneous nature in that moment. They're playing with the paint. They can still paint subjects. They paint subjects a lot, like their family in front of their house, but they just do it in the moment, and they don't care what it turns out like. They just want to paint it. If the child is not exposed to toxic thinking, they will also love what the create, even if it's a puddle of mud. They have an experience with what they put on the page, and they see it through the eyes of joy. This is what we will try to accomplish in our painting. We just want to reconnect to the joy we have within, and to our inner child. All you have to do is pick a random brush, a random color, and start. Maybe you're drawn to something specific like a gentle nudge. That's your intuition. It's okay if you're not, but if you are, listen to it and learn to trust it. It's guiding you to what you need to express the most in this moment. It could be imagery from your subconscious mind, or repressed emotions, or you simply really like pink today, and it brings you joy to look at it. Maybe you really want to paint butterflies, or just random abstract shapes. Maybe you want to be neat and take your time with every stroke and be mindful of your breathing, or you go crazy and make a piece in one minute. Just raw expression of emotion through strong brushstrokes. This is all up to you and will change from moment to moment. There are no rules, just paint. Don't worry about developing your intuition too much, just do whatever it is you feel like doing and it will naturally develop. But if you don't feel anything at all, just pick something, just do something, just start, and it will naturally continue. You can do this anywhere, but it helps if you don't have distractions. Silencing your phone for a session is a good idea. Maybe using noise canceling headphones, with or without music. You can even set the mood by lighting a scented candle, or just do it in silence in the kitchen before anyone is awake. One of my favorite things to do is to paint outside, listen to Mother Nature symphony. It might also help to put a certain time aside daily for your sessions. You only need five to 20 minutes, or even less or more. It's all up to you, and there's no perfect way, place, time, or method of painting. The important thing is just to start, and it will take care of itself from there. You might find it hard to start, you might have resistance, and fear will overcome you. That's to be expected because you have such a strong inner critic. We are here to defeat him. Take the brush in your hand anyway, and do it in spite of him. Lock your door so nobody sees what you're making, if that makes you feel better. But be sure to give yourself that freedom to play. You need it. You are watching this class for a reason. You will see once you do it, how awesome it is. If it takes a few sessions to get the point of feeling free and in the flow state, that's completely normal. It took me a bunch of tries as well, but now, like any skill, I've developed it to the point of being able to jump in without even trying. It is effortless. If you don't know what to do, that's okay. I don't either. I just do random things. To do something. Anything is right, because there isn't a right. If you're still paralyzed, just fake it till you make it. Until it becomes fun and natural, and before you know it, you'll be in a flow state. Just do something, anything. I made future lessons to show you different examples and guide you in different ideas to get you started, but just remember that the possibilities are infinite and you will have your own unique way every time you sit down to paint, but it doesn't hurt to have some ideas. As you can see, my intuitive paintings vary greatly depending on my mood. The important thing is just to paint. They're are no rules set in stone, but there are some guidelines you could try to follow. They are: don't care about results, be in the moment and enjoy the process, overwrite your inner critics negativity with positivity, have fun and experiment, and as a result, get into the flow state. With that being said, let's dive into supplies and the basics of Watercolor. If you already know how to paint and have supplies ready, just skip ahead, but remember that whatever you do, just make it your own and have fun. Let's start.
5. Recommended Supplies: Now let's talk supplies. Whatever you have on hand is good enough. But my advice is to use the cheapest supplies you can. When you use cheaper supplies, you don't care about wasting it and that takes the fear and stress out. The paintings we make in this class will be with the mindset of its okay to throw it away. It's hard to be in that mindset if you feel like you're wasting money with expensive supplies. So that's why it's so important not to invest too much money into it. In this class, we will be focusing on watercolor, but you can use any art supplies that you have on hand to practice the concepts. My advice is to use whatever you enjoy using the most. You can even make digital intuitive paintings like this one that I did on the iPad. I just personally prefer watercolor because the paint is so magical and does its own thing. It's my personal favorite medium. But if you like layering or painting thicker, you can instead use gouache or acrylic or oil paint. Like in this example, which was done with gouache, I just put the paint right on the page and make these beautiful, intuitive butterflies. The feeling is very different from watercolor, but also really fun. I have a class on the basics of gouache that you can watch if you're interested in learning that medium. But if you do choose watercolor, which I highly recommend because of how magical it is without even trying, here's what you will need. Watercolor paint, any kind will do. Here I am doing a painting with cheap Crayola paints that I got for three dollars. It turned out pretty good. It won't have a lot of the qualities of expensive watercolor. It's not as transparent and has a weird glossy texture in some parts. But those things don't matter if you're just painting for fun. Now this painting was done with five dollars watercolors and even though I got more color choices, I prefer the Crayola paint because these five dollars strikes super chalky and muted, and the Crayola ones were more vibrant and transparent. So I highly recommend the three dollar Crayola paints if you're on a super tight budgets. But there's all kinds of cheaper brands out there. You can do your own research and find something more in your budget if you want something better. I usually use Mission Goal paints, which are really pricey, mixed with the Jane Davenport brights palette, which is a more affordable option and nearly just as good. You will also see me use Dr. Ph. Martin's liquid watercolors, which can be super fun since they're so concentrated. But the paint to get is up to you. There's all kinds of brands out there and they will all work just fine. You will also need a brush, or brushes. If you want to go super cheap, you can get a variety pack with lots of different options. Just make sure it has soft bristles. These usually come with fun brushes like this fun brush, but if you want to paint more professionally or use your brush for nice paintings and fun paintings, my favorites are the Princeton Neptune series, Silver Black Velvets, and the Trekell Protege brushes. But like I said before, there's all kinds of brands out there. You can find whatever you like. I just think these are good quality brands. Honestly, you only need two brushes so you can get like a size 10 and a size 2. That's really all you need. A bigger round brush for bigger things and a small one for detail. I usually just use two brushes for my work or even just one brush. You can do whole paintings just with one brush, like I showed in my suites class in which we painted all the pieces with just one brush. So if you can only afford one thing, I'd get like a size eight high-quality brush. You will also need water color paper. Luckily, my most used one is also really cheap. This Kanson XL paper can be one of the cheapest in the store. If you live in the US, Walmart usually carries it for really good price currently at six dollars per 39 by 12 pages, which comes to about $0.20 a page. You can get it actually even cheaper on Amazon by getting 11 by 15 pages, which are even bigger for the same price. If you compare the nine by 12 to the high-quality Arches paper, that's the same size and weight, the higher-quality papers is $1.50 a page, which is seven and a half times more expensive and way too pricey to be using for fun. Yes, there is a quality difference, but I think it's definitely not seven times better. The only reason you'd need very expensive paper is if you plan on painting realistic with tons of layers and want to sell your work. But we won't be doing that in this class. I almost always use the Kanson XL paper anyway for all my work. But you can use any watercolor paper you want. Just make sure it is watercolor paper or mixed media paper. Also try to get paper that is at least a 140 pounds. If not, you can go lower, but it will warp more. It's important to get watercolor paper in the first place, because if you try to use printer paper or thin paper, it will warp like crazy as you can see here. That will take the joy out of painting. Watercolor paper is designed to have water on it. So it's important to have the right paper and I think that's the most important supply you can get for this class. You will also need one or two water containers. You can use old glass jars like I do, or simple plastic cups or whatever you want to because water will be used to initially clean the brush and the second will make sure that the brush is clean. So it's always nice and fresh when getting a new color. You could instead use one for cool colors and warm colors who'd want to dip it twice. Or if you want to be really simple, just use one container. You'll just have to change your water more often. Paper towels or reusable clothes are also great to have on hand for a variety of reasons. Mostly they pick up excess water from your brush or your paper and you can make textures with it. It's just always useful, especially when you're trying to control the paint to wider ratio on your brush and paper. Now this is all you really need, but here are some other optional ideas. You might also want to get a mixing palette to mix your colors depending on how many colors you have. You can just use a simple plate for that or get a fancy one just for it. But a simple plate will do just fine. You can get artists masking tape to tape down your page before you start. This will help prevent warping, especially if you use lots of water. But as you'll see in the class, I won't be using any, so you don't need it. You can also get some white to use on top like acrylic paint or gouache or a white gel pen and so forth. My favorite is a signal broad point white gel pen, but I won't be using anything fancy in this class like that. I'll just be painting. You also might want to get your other fun supplies out from color pencils to crayons, inks, markers, and anything else you can find. Like in this intuitive painting example, I use oil pastels on top of a simple painting. I had a lot of fun getting my fingers dirty. You don't have to be limited to paints in these paintings. Watercolor is a great medium for layering with other mediums, and you can use dry media on top or below it. Experiment with what you have because you never know what you'll find. You can also grab fun things like nip pens or an old toothbrush, your fingers, a feather, or even a leaf, you can stamp with it. In my pen and ink class, we had a mark-making lesson and as you can see, you can make marks with anything you find. This is definitely usable and they're fun intuitive paintings. Have a collection of brushes and fun things have collected over the years and I encourage you to keep your eyes peeled for fun things you can use as well. But you don't have to. But making marks on the page, even using your fingers or anything else you can find can be super fun. So don't ever feel inhibited in anything that you use. You can use anything you want for supplies. These are just basic guidelines to help you get started, but find your own favorite way of working with this magical medium. So that's it for supplies. Now that you have everything you need, let's go over some basic watercolor techniques just in case you need a refresher or are a complete beginner. If you're already a watercolor master, you can just go ahead and skip the next lesson. Let's go.
6. Watercolor Basics/Refresher: Let's jump into the basics of watercolor. Watercolor is all about the balance between paint and water. We're going to play with the ratio. For example, if you have more paint on your brush and less water, you're going to have a more opaque color. As you can see this is a rich, beautiful color. But then if I add more water to it, it becomes lighter. The more water I add, the lighter it becomes until it looks just like plain water. If you wanted a stronger painters use more paint and less water. If you want diluted paint, use more water and less paint because watercolor is transparent, we don't have any white, so you have to use other media to make white or you have to keep the white of the page. The whiter of the page is our whites, so if we want to keep something white, we just paint around it. If I wet a shape and I drop in color, it's going to spread and make these beautiful fuzzy edges. But if I dropped the coloring on dry paper, doesn't spread. It just makes exactly the shape that I make. This is called wet-on-dry and this is called wet-on-wet. As you can see, this is for making the shapes and if you want to make really beautiful blends, and you can blend the other colors together. If I drop more coloring here, they will mix on their own, and I can mix them myself manually doing this and just makes beautiful color combos, and this is what I love to use. The trick is to combine these two effects. What you do is you make the shape that you want because these will not leave the shape as you can see, and you just make the shape that you want. For example, let's say I'm painting a line, and I can drop in color into that line and just change it as I go. This is wet-on-wet, but this was wet-on-dry. If I take a different color and I go over this one where they touched, they will blend and I'll pick up the paint as I go. As you can see here, there's green in this blue. You have to pay attention to where things are wet, where things are dry and where thinks touch if you want to. But in this class, we'll just be having fun. But as you can see here it's still wet and it bled out beautifully here, but here it didn't. That's the fun of watercolor. What it does on its own naturally. As you can see right here, we had a water puddle and it went out here, made this beautiful texture. Naturally watercolor will do magical things all on its own. If you want to get with a cool magical effects like this, just use more water and let it blend with the paint. Another thing to keep in mind is watercolor is transparent, like I said before. When you get another color, the color below will blend with that color. This is just another thing to keep in mind. You don't have to worry about it, but it does make beautiful effects. Now you can also pull color from a place. For example, right here, it's still wet and I can paint with water right next to it and the paint will move into that water. This also makes it really nice, beautiful effect where it's just nothingness in the paint nothingness in the paint. If you have a dry area like right there, you can just paint next to it also pull some other color out, but not as much as it would if it's wet. Depending on your paint type, it could be different like if you're using ink, it won't do this. Another fun thing to do is to draw your brush and to pick a color up. You can do dry-on-dry. That just means that your brushes dry, your paint is drying, and the more dry it is, the more of a texture you'd get. As you can see here, this is more textured than here. This is also something you can play with depending on how wet your brush is. It's really just water to paint ratio with your brush. I love using things like this for texture that are dry brush. It's just really fun because it makes this awesome subtle texture that you can add to things. You can even play with it and your brush. See, I love this right here because it's still white and move that paint a little as well. It's really about happy little accidents. That's what watercolors are for. Just putting plane water in, just dropping it in while it's still wet. Really gives that cool texture. But another fun way to add texture is to use salt. Let's say I make a little layer. Well I could do is just not play with one color. I Like to mix colors. Even if I have a blue, I'll pick up a different blue or I will mix a different blue and just added in and let them blend. You can use something like a purple. I just loved the little subtle color variations that are created and I love to mix on the page. Fun thing to do is use simple salt. You just take salt and sprinkle it where you wanted, and it will draw in the watercolor color and make these beautiful textures. You just have to make sure that it's wet while you do this. Let's let that dry and we'll see what it looks like. But that's really the gist of it. I just like to play and play with color and let it blend and let it do its own thing. I'd like to just paint with one color and then add another one. They don't have to be perfect together. They're just still blend and let's just see what happens, what they do together. I'd like to drop in more colors while it's still wet. Another fun trick is to wait for it to be more dry and then the color will spread less. It's really just water to paint, like I said before. That's just really my favorite thing to do, just to play like this onto layer and to experiment. Another fun thing you can do is make texture. Let's say I have my paper towel and I can pick up paint. You'll make a beautiful little texture where I picked it up and also this paint I can stamp with. It'll make textures elsewhere. You can also use a thirsty brush, which just means you draw your brush off just like a dry brush. Then you use that to pick off excess paint. As you can see, this plump up quite a bit because it was pretty wet. But if I do this with a layer that is less wet. Say i pickup less water and then a drop in paint because I have less water on my brush and the paper, it will spread less naturally. I can even do little lines and you'll see them. The final touch I like to ask you a lot of my pieces is a simple splatter. You just pick up lots of water and paint. You put your finger out like this and you just tap it. Just gentle taps, simple. This will also make more paint that will blend with other paint and just be beautiful. As you can see, the salt dried beautifully and we can just scrape it off. You'll just be left with beautiful little white areas with texture around them. That's it for the basics. I hope you guys enjoyed this. You guys want to learn more check on my Anyone Can Watercolor class, but I think we're ready, so let's just start the class.
7. Intuitive Painting Example 1: For this first presentation, I want to show you guys exactly how I would intuitively paint on a normal session. You would know that just the way it actually is, and then the next ones will show you ideas of what you can do to have a little prompts, or things you can do a little differently to make yourself more inspired. The first thing I always do is pick a brush. I would just pick whatever sends out to me intuitively. Usually it's a simple round brush sometimes of bigger ones and sometimes a smaller one. This time I'm going to go to size ten and maybe I'll switch my brush sometime in the middle, that's fine too. I'm just going to pick up some water, and now I'm going to pick a color. You can pick any color you want, whatever stands out to you. This time purple stands out to me, and every moment I will have a different mood and different thing to do, and I'm just going to start putting paint on the page. If you don't know what to do, just put marks them anything until it starts coming to you, and then once you start getting into it, you'll just be like, and do this and that, and we'll just be in the moment, just painting. You won't think about it, and that's our goal. I'm just going to start, I'm just putting a markdown, letting my hand do whatever it wants and want to do a movement like that. There could be another one, remember, we're not doing this for results, we are doing this for the process. You can go slower than this. I paint pretty fast usually, but maybe you paint slow, that's fine too, and this two join putting these colors down. This remind me of a rainbow, and maybe I get inspired into thinking of rainbows, and I could just start painting a rainbow, only if I want to of course. There's not be realistic rainbow, I'll have what color comes next or whatever else. I'm just playing with the paint. Notice how I'm using quite a bit of water and letting it catch and blend and have fun. I like to paint very loosely, but maybe that's not your style, whatever your style is, just express yourself. The point is that there are no rules and I'm just having fun, and my inter-critical come in right this second and say you're recording this, you better do a good job, and I will say, "no, I'm here to have fun, and I'm going to show exactly what a session is like." I'm just putting down marks. Now my inter-critical say that looks terrible, you picked the wrong colors there. You shouldn't put red there, and I'll say, "no I'm just expressing myself and I'm just having fun." I'm going to go back to it until it just something I don't think about. Our goal is to get to the point where we don't even think about it, where we're just painting, and you don't think about your next movements. You don't calculate and think of a composition, you're just enjoying yourself. Yes, sometimes thoughts come about the composition in your head, that's fine too, but that's not our main goal, that's not our priority, we are just playing. See how here I'm playing with one wet and I'm just adding this in on top, and I think that looks really cool. Sometimes I do things that look really awesome, and sometimes I do things that look terrible, and that's a great thing because I'm actually learning every time I make a mistake and that am making something good.If you don't want a professional artist and that doesn't matter to you, then just have fun obviously, but you will improve no matter what because you're practicing. I'm just playing and I'm just putting down paint wherever I feel like it. I don't have anything in mind. The other lessons I'll show you how to do it with prompts and ideas and how to do certain themes, but for this one, this how I usually paint. It's usually very abstract, I just go with it and I just go with whatever color I want to pick up next and I was just picking a color putting it down without even thinking about it. It's like automatically painting. I'm just doing wherever therapeutic for me in the moment. For me the moment that the therapeutic things is to make this pattern, I'm just adding without thinking about it. If I want to take a break and I want to look at my paint, I can do that. I can stop and look at the pretty colors right here and see how they blend nicely, and it's like watching paint dry, but it's fun because watercolors are so magical and I can add more. Whatever I want to do, I can do. Maybe now I want to switch over, I don't want to do rainbows anymore. I just want to add lines, perfect straight lines. This is good practice to use the tip of my brush, and it's okay if I mess them up, it's okay if they're not perfect, no one's going to see this except all of you guys, but when you do it yourself at home, no one's going to see what you make unless you want to share it. You just give yourself permission to make as many mistakes as you want. You don't have to be perfect. It's really just about the fun. Like I said before, don't think about this as something you'll share in social media. Think about this is something you will not share, you probably will throw away. That's very important because then it's like you don't care about the results. When you don't care about the results, you can truly let go. Not everything we do is for results. We do things just for fun too. When we paint for fun, you just really feed your creative soul, you feed your spirit and it can feel that. You walk away feeling like you accomplished something and refreshed even if you don't make anything pretty, you just walk away feeling really good. I'm still not thinking about it, just putting storks on. So far, I really like this my inner critics being quiet. I can give myself pat on the back. You can always give yourself a pat on the back for like every like that, but don't get trapped to thinking, I'm I going to mess up this whole painting now?" Because you're like, I want to share this part, but what if I mess this part up? Don't think like that, still think I'm probably going to throw this away and that's okay. Just have fun with it because that will paralyze you and it will just take the fun out of it. Don't make this for other people, make this for you. I'm making this for this moment. It's not about how pretty it looks, it's about how much fun you had making the marks, which I did. I had a lot of fun. I've had quite a bit of practice doing this. When you first start, It might be hard to paint without an end goal in mind and just to express yourself because you haven't done that in a long time probably. It takes some practice into getting used to paint like this and that's completely okay. That's completely normal. It took me a little bit too. At first I would think of results all the time even though I was like, "no, don't care about that," but I kept caring and now I've got to the point where I can just have fun and since I've got in to that point, I've actually made prettier abstract pieces. Then I used to form the practice of it and because I stopped caring so much, so I let myself do whatever I want. When you do something from your intuition, usually it does end up better than if you just logically think about every single step because your subconscious mind is really creative and really smart, and it knows how to make things pretty without even thinking about it. It knows things like composition and color, but sometimes you might want to make an ugly piece on purpose. Maybe you're in a bad mood or something, and you want to express that, and that's completely fine as well. The point of creating art is how much freedom we have. It's an amazing amount of abundance of freedom. You will face with a blank page, and you can do anything you want. You're the king of this universe. Don't take that for granted. Don't make rules up and limit yourself, just have fun with it. I love playing with wet and wetting my paints. As you can see, I love to go back and add more color. You see how beautiful this came out. I put some water in here, just plain water and it just makes these beautiful textures. Sometimes I do these early intricate patterns that take longer, like up here or like this, but sometimes I do like really loose epicenter do both like in this piece and I really enjoy doing that and if you get tired in the middle of a piece like you're like, "I feel like I'm done but for now but not forever." You can always just walk away and finish it tomorrow. You don't have to spend all day on a piece and complete it perfectly, there's no stress on this, this is doing for you. You're doing this for fun. You don't force yourself to watch TV. You do it because it's fun. Same thing with this. You don't force yourself to do this, you do it because it's fun. If you force yourself it will stop big fun. I don't recommend that. I recommend you just give it a go and try your best to have fun with it and then try again if it doesn't work. Then you'll slowly unravel your insecurities and fears and your critical quiet down and you'll just be like 'This is nice, this is therapeutic. I like the slow movements of my brush. This is so peaceful'. Painting like this really gets me in the present moment because I'm just focusing on what I'm doing. I'm not worried about the results and [inaudible] on the future. I'm just really in the painting. I'm really in the process and I'm really enjoying what's happening in front of me and I'm just letting it do its own thing. It's a magical feeling of just flow. Flow and presence. It's not something you can really put into words. You have to try it out for yourself. I'm sure you remember having this feeling from time to time, from different things. We don't have it as much as we should in our western society. That's what I'm trying to bring back into my life and hopefully into your lives. Because when we live with mindfulness and we access the flow state more with normal, mundane things, we really live life. It just becomes fun to do anything and its just so freeing. Sometimes I leave hard edges like these and I don't care.I want to go in here and that's fine. They're going to dry like that and that's fine. We're just doing this because we want to have fun. We're not planning anything. I'm just letting my brush guide me wherever it wants to and I'm just following it. It's almost as if I'm walking a dog and the dog tells me where to walk even though that's bad ownership practices, but I'm not guiding it. I'm just letting it do its own thing. I'm not consciously guiding it. I'm just letting my subconscious take over and that's where the intuition comes in. That's what's called intuitive painting because I don't really think about it consciously. I just let it move my brush, move my hand. It is me. It's just not the conscious side of me; its the subconscious side of me. I'm letting myself express my creativity freely and in the moment without any end goals in mind. I really love adding little dots like this. I seem to do this every time because I it just like watching a blend out and merge with the other colors, it's just something really therapeutic about that. So notice how my color palette for this piece is a few colors and usually I continue these colors a lot. You might have colors you prefer and that's completely fine. You don't have to have the rule of having different colors every time you paint. You can use even one color or just ink and no color. I mean, everything is up to you. All the rules that I tell you about are not really rules. They are just things that work for me. Whatever it is that works for you will be different. You should explore that. You should be okay with experimenting and just finding what works for you. Right now I'm sitting here and I can hear the birds chirping outside because it's spring. Usually I put some music on because it's relaxing. But I'm just enjoying the sound of my brush lightly touching the paper. I'm enjoying the sound of this [tapping glass]. I can feel myself breathing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to music. It just sometimes makes me more mindful and I don't. Sometimes music gets me in the flow state faster. Whatever works for me doesn't mean it'll work for you. Everyone's different, but find what works for you. Setting the mood like with a candle like this really helps. Have a little routine of drinking some tea beforehand or during, helps. Whatever works for you, works for you. You can do a full meditation session beforehand or not. You can focus on your breathing beforehand or during, or do breath work as you paint. For example, I can breathe in with a stroke and then breathe out with a stroke. That'll be a really nice meditative piece that you can do that's really simple. The ideas with this kind of painting are boundless. I just want you to be aware of that. I want you to be aware of how much freedom you really have with this and how anything I tell you is just an idea. All you really have to learn from this class is that you can paint without caring about results and do it for fun. You can silence your inner critic and just enjoy it just like you did as a child. Children already do this naturally. We're just trying to revert back to that state and get that feeling again of joy, of pure joy. For example, here I touched this line and I'm like, 'oh mistake' In my head. I'm like, 'No. No it's not'. That's fine, and I just continue as if it didn't happen. I just do whatever I want to do. Mistakes don't exist here. Accidents don't exist here. Results don't exist here. I am in the timeless now enjoying my paint and my brush. The only thing that matters is how I feel. I'm feeling really calm and peaceful. I'm letting my inner child paint. The one that's full of joy and creativity and exploration. The one that has no rules. The one that knows life is so beautiful and that I am unlimited. It's just very pleasing to the soul. So notice I picked up yellow here. My logical mind would say something like 'That does not go in this piece. There's no other yellow anywhere'. But I just wanted to put yellow here so I did. I'm going do whatever it is I want to do. I'm not going to judge what I do. I'm just going to do it. Sometimes you're not aware of why you do a certain thing. I don't have to understand every action I make. I don't have to judge it. I just have to do whatever I want to do and just enjoy the process. I'm feeling like I'm done, just my emotions are feeling like they're done. Maybe I could work on the piece more and add little details with the smaller brush. But I feel like I'm done. So that's all that matters. This piece is not to share with people. So it doesn't matter what it looks like, it's just about the feeling. Once I get to that done state, I'm done. So this took around 15 minutes and that's a normal session for me. I hope you enjoyed watching this and I hope you get an idea of what I'm talking about now, what intuitive painting really is. It's really just letting go and allowing yourself to express yourself and just tapping into your unlimited creative potential for fun. The feelings I got while painting this were just being relaxed. It talks to the flow state. I got to just a quiet a joy in me. A quiet sereneness. That's the kind of feeling I get when I meditate for a while. I can tap into that through art and express myself at the same time and feed my soul and also maybe explore my subconscious. There are so many things that it can do. Let me show you the next lessons, other ideas of what you can do to make it more like a prompt. In case it's hard for you to start, you'll know what you can do and also for you just have more ideas of what you could do in general. Now this piece turned out better than most of my pieces. It's actually maybe frame-able. But that was never the goal, and that doesn't matter. Most of my pieces are not frame-able as you saw in the previous lesson. They look like a mess and that's okay. I just hope you guys understand what your goal is, which is just to enjoy the ride and just to paint. Now let's go the next lesson and find more cool ideas.
8. Intuitive Painting Example 2: This is a fun one to do, and I'm going to be using liquid watercolors for this. You don't have to, you can use the other ones. But I found a really cool trick with these for this technique. I'm going to do a hard because I'm in a hard mood because they're fun. But you can do any shape like I said before. I'm taking plain water and I am painting a heart. I can't see it, but I'm painting the miscibility. If somehow you get two shapes overlapping or whatever, that just makes it more fun. So just do your best and have fun with them. Now I'm going to take my liquid watercolors and I'm going to put it where I wet the page. As you can see, I am drawing with the tip. You can use a nib pen like this or a normal pen that's empty or a pencil without the lead on it, and it will make a really cool effect similar to this. Now like I said before, you can make any color you want. Let's do maybe a green this time, pink and green. I'm just going to drop it in, and I'm going to let them blend into this muddy color but still pretty cool. What I could do is just keep doing that, keep adding water, and see where I touch, it blends out. Liquid watercolors are very concentrated, so you can have a lot of fun with things like this. You can do the same thing normal ends just use more paint. I don't want to overload the position, so I can just leave some white space if I want to for more fun. Then go back in, maybe this time with this green and do the same thing again. Maybe I want to outline it again. Maybe I want to do something crazy. Whatever it is that I want to do I can. I'm just having fun. I can tilt my paper and let it blend a little bit. If I want to, I can touch my fingers with it or whatever but this will actually stain a lot, so I wouldn't do that. But I have done that with paint. I would just do this paint more. Now maybe let's add some normal watercolors. I'm just doing thing or I'm just having fun in adding color and just seeing what I come up with. This is the painting where you can really experiment with your tools as well. For example, here is an old toothbrush I have just for this stuff. I'm going to set it down and just maybe here. Pretty cool. I'm just playing. This is about just getting your hands dirty and not knowing what the result will be, not know what the outcome will be. It's not about the outcome, it's just about experimenting. Another thing I have is this sponge brush. Maybe I'll just do this. Then I will just pick up some paint and then if I put it down, it will make a cool texture. Every time you think, oh my goodness, I ruined it like right now, I'm like, I don't know if like this. It's a good thing because you're practicing, not caring. You're practicing just having fun in creation. This will make your art practice stay alive as the years go by will make you enjoy it when other people will quit because they feel like everything they're making is ugly. Because you're not in it for everything you're making. You're in it for the pure joy of creation in general. Adding little dots, and see how the paper is almost dry. So they're staying closer together now. Then maybe I want some more of this color. It's Cyclamen from Dr. peach Martin's. It's like a really cute or magentaish color with more purple. I just want to add another drop. Maybe add some here. These are more like squiggly fine lines. Let me show you guys what it looks like with the pencil. For example, here is a pencil with no lead in it. It's a really cheap kind and I just pick up some paint then I can just doodle with it, move it around. You can even dip it into paint and then do the same thing or with a nib if you have one. I could even scratch my paper a little. Just have fun. This is like being a child again, just enjoying the art, the process, creation, fun, enjoyment. No rules, no fears. We are just free. We are just having fun. This will feed your creative soul and will also make your normal art better if you are an artist because you don't have that fear anymore. I'm stamping with the tip here. Pretty cool. You'll discover new things as well. Always fun to do. The less fear you have creating art the easier to skin to flow state. The easier it is to make more art and practice and not worry about it so much and just keep your passion for your art alive. If it's still wet, you can do the blending thing, if not, you can always add more paint, but I feel like this is pretty good. Maybe I'll just add a little bit different color right here, just to give a little more play. Whatever if you like doing. Like I said before, it doesn't matter what you do. Just do something. Just play. If you know what to do. Just put a markdown, just put another mark down, just play. It doesn't look good? That's okay, you're just playing. Let's say I want to add something like this here. If you get stuck, you can just change your perspective by flipping it. That's not a hard anymore. I can just add anything I want. With these things it's so easy to start with a prompt, like I had a shape and then starting your on thing, whatever that thing is. Even if it makes no sense just do anything that comes to your mind, just have fun. I don't know what I'm doing right now, I'm just painting. I'm just moving my brush. I'm going to add some yellow. There's no yellow in this piece of art. I thought some yellow would be nice. Touch these gently. Isn't that beautiful? I'm just having fun. I feel like I'm done. As you can see again, the results are not flammable, but they're fun. In fact had this impulse just do this. Satisfying. It's just about fun. I thought I was done, I don't want to keep adding. This was a piece that took maybe 10 minutes. Another quick piece that was really easy and fun. It just got my creativity going. It got my wheels turning. If I wanted to like make a real peace so I can keep going with this and just keep seeing what comes out and just having fun. I love these fun textures right here. From scratching it with empty pencil. I actually think that looks amazing and it gives it a lot of depth. I love how it blended right here. It's fun to look at the details of your painting and see all the things you did right. But really it's not about the results. It's not about it being a finished piece. It's just about having fun. Hope you guys have fun with this one. Let's try something else When you're ready.
9. Color, Brush Strokes, & Breathwork: In this lesson we're going to actually learn three different techniques. These are some of my favorite ones. The first one is color therapy. This is just when you paint one color. As you can see, I can do it with brushstrokes. I can do as a washed, takes up the whole thing. I can do something like this where it's more textured. I can do a rainbow, which I love to do. All of these are just one focusing on the color. I'm just enjoying being immersed in a specific color. For these exercises, I wanted to use small pieces of paper and I've cut my paper into smaller bits. This is great if you want to conserve paper and also if you want to work quicker and just have more fun with it. I love working small but that's up to you. For this first one I'm going to use a bigger brush. What I like to do is pick a color that I'm feeling right now, I feel like purple. You're just drawn to what ever color you're drawn to. All colors do have different meanings. For example, red is anger, blue is peaceful, green can be healing, and yellow is happy. Purple to me, is just an intuitive color. Now colors can have different meanings to you as well. But you can see I'm just painting that color. I'm just being immersed in it. I'm just letting my paint do its own thing, letting it have fun with the water. This is just a simple wash of one color. I love mixing colors that are also smaller. You don't have to be just using one exact color in your palette. You can get colors that are similar to it. I let them run down the page like this, I love doing that. The important thing is, I'm just being in the moment. I'm painting intuitively. I'm quieting my inner critic cause I'm just having fun. I'm just enjoying putting these colors down. The results don't matter at all. It's really just about the color. This is a great time to play with wet-on-wet when it's just simple color like this. I feel like just adding some pink, what ever you feel like doing, do it. Maybe you start with a color painting and then you start adding more stuff, or second layer, or doodle on top. What ever you want to do, you're free to do anything you want. This swatches are great for backgrounds for other media to be mixed on top with. I feel like I'm done here. It's going to dry really cool, especially if I add some salt or just water like this, and we'll come back to it. For this next one I want to show you guys how to use a color but also mixed up with texture from your brush. What you do is, you don't have your brush completely soaking wet, you just take some of that water off, and you pick a color up. I'm going to do maybe green this time. Green is very healing. I'm going to go more slowly and just enjoy the texture that I'm making and the color. Very simple. Just relaxing to listen to the brush. It's just fun to make these beautiful textures. It looks like a glimmer on a lake. Maybe I want to switch colors and I want to play with different colors, not just one. Like I said before, that's completely fine. You can do rainbows. I do rainbows all the time. They're one of my favorite things to do. Now, I'm not using a lot of water here, so we don't have that cool on one action, but we have something else happening. Just a beautiful texture. But if I want to, I can start using more water. You can do anything you want in your paintings. There's no limits. There's no right or wrong way. It's just play. Maybe I want to just finish it off with just yellow. What ever I want to do is fine. This is just really simple. Now we can evolve this technique of just using simple brush strokes and change it into little landscapes. Here's what I mean by that. This is a little landscape even though really it's just one brushstroke, second one, third one, and a little background, and a sun. Very simple, very easy and fun. I added a little splatter to it. This uses color but more and moving into now using brushstrokes, which is a second type of technique. Let's try something like that. Let's say I am thinking of a field. I can pick up a green that I like. I'm just going to use one brush stroke. You can do it with your breathing, coordinate it. But really I'm just going to go out and I have some color in my brush already. I made this really nice gradient. As you can see, it wasn't fully wet, so it made this nice texture too. I can maybe make a second one on top. If I want to I can wet my brush, pick up water, and let it blend out with a third one. What ever I want to do, is up to me. Now let's say this is my little hill and I want to make a sky. I just pick the color that coordinates with that and just add it in. If I want to add some clouds, I can just use a thirsty brush like I showed you guys earlier. As you can see these are really loose, really quick. They're not perfect. They're not trying to be perfect. I have some paper towel, I'm just going to pick up some paint. This makes me clouds. Really simple. Let's say there's a lake water here. That's it. This is a landscape, even though it's extremely simple. If I wanted to, I can even add some trees by just doing a little dots like this with my brush. What ever you want to do, you can do. Really fun, really easy, and can take you literally 30 seconds. Hope you guys have fun with that one. Let's say I'm using the same brush and I just want to pick up a color and I'm just going to play with it. But what I can do is just play and maybe make these little shapes. What ever I want to do. I can just use one color for the whole thing. I'm doing color therapy but now I'm not just doing one page of color. I can add a second color in. Very simple, and fun, and playful. Now, these are supposed to be intuitive. If you want to do something different, go ahead. You should be doing different things. You should be playing and do what ever you want to do. You can always add more colors in. What ever you want to do. This is just supposed to be fun. We can always add, make into a pattern. Now if you want to challenge yourself even more than this, you could do something really fun. This is going to mix breathing with painting and to me it's like a Zen technique. What I'm going to do is pick up a color, something that I really like. I'm going to breathe in and paint and breathe out and paint. Like this, very simple. Breathe out. I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just letting my brush do its own thing. Breathe in. Breathe out. This slower painting center, look really cool. There's just something about the flowiness of it. It's like you capture the energy of your breathing and it's just really therapeutic to breathe with your painting. This just makes you really mindful and aware of your breathing. That's it. That's my whole painting. That was really quick as you can see and it looks pretty fun. But really it was about me just paying attention to my breathing and the painting. Which really made me zen out. You can make some really cool stuff with this. Let me show you one more example. All of this that I'm showing right now is about simplicity. You really can make simple paintings. I make really busy ones, but that's just my preference. You can do anything you want. I just want to show you guys how easy it is to make really simple paintings. I can pick up different colors and just make shapes that touch each other. That can be more mindful and slow like this. Just make these really small and easy paintings that can take you 30 seconds to a minute. That are just more slow paced and mindful. This is a personal preference like everything else. I tend to work really fast. This is not my type of painting, but it is fun. It can make you slow down. You can even just paint like a circle, or a square, or anything in just one color like I showed before. Just what ever you want to do, you can paint it. There's no wrong way, there's no right way. You just have to explore and have fun. I'm just playing, I'm just letting go. As you can see, it's very simple, very easy. Again, not frame-able, not perfect. But it's just in the moment, enjoying it, being mindful. Whether you guys use this for landscape, just playing with your brushstrokes. Sometimes your brush can be your tool. I want to show you guys one more example. This is using a fan brush. If you have any fan brushes, you can practice with them. The fan brush is really fun because you can go like this and pick up multiple colors. Then I can use those colors and just make one brush stroke. Looked really awesome. If I want to just add more color, just pick up more and just continue. It's really about playing and having fun. That's what these paintings are for. Don't worry about results. Just do whatever you want to do. Play with your tools, play with your supplies. Whether you want to paint simple or complex. Whatever you want to do. Just be mindful of color, brushstrokes. Being in the moment and have fun. I hope you enjoyed these really simple examples. Painting intuitive that can be really easy. Like here where I just did one color and you let the water colors do the fun things like the textures. You can just play with your brush strokes and the water wet-on-wet. You can just make simple patterns. Just breath work with your brush and just play with that and see what comes out. Just really simple patterns like this where you're going slower and more mindfully. A little landscapes that are really easy to do with just simple brushstrokes. Combining brush strokes with color and just having fun with a new technique or tool. All of these are more simple paintings than the other ones. I just want you to know that you can do anything you want and that you can be as playful as you want. You don't have to paint like I do. You can paint in any way you want. I just want you guys to know much freedom you really have. Let's move on to the next example.
10. Making Up Drills: In this lesson, we're going to still get fun in painting and make something that we don't have to think about and we can enjoy the process by doing Mindful drills. Mindfulness is simply being aware in the moment and just being here and not in the future or the past. I'm pay attention to my breathing, I'm pay attention my brush, I'm pay attention to the surroundings. It's very, very beneficial. I'm going to pick a brush that I want to master like my number six, silver black velvet brush. I'm going to get it wet and I have scrap pieces of paper for this exercise or you can use normal paper. I just have a lot of scrap paper because I cut my pages to a certain size and I can just grab one and make a drill up. What do I mean by make one up? I just mean do something and repeat it. Let's say I pickup color, and I'm going to do a thin line all the way through. I'm challenging myself. I'm going to be mindful, I might take my time. There's no rush. I'm just trying to do a line that's the same with the best of my ability. As you can see, I'm shaky. This water is on the way. But that's good. I'm challenging myself. I have to move my hand at the same rate and try not to do this quickly which I am doing. I definitely need to practice this more. But this is just forcing me to put paint to paper and to really enjoy. This also is recommended for those who want to improve their painting skills or like repetitive things. I'm just going to keep trying to make a straight line. I'm going to do this until I finish the page. If you want to make it more fun, you can pick up different colors. Now I'm starting to get used to it. I can go faster. It's really hard to keep your hand consistent for such a long movement. I'm only using the tip of my brush. I'm done and this is not about judging yourself, you just do whatever you do. I'm a professional artist some of my lines are not straight. Do whatever you can. Then you can pick a different color and challenge yourself even more by painting in the lines, or rotate your paper and do it this way to get different angle. That is actually an easier angle for me to do straight lines in. I can just challenge myself not to touch the other lines. Oh, I got really close right there, but I didn't do it. I'm trying to draw quickly. Oh, I touched it, that's okay. I'm just practicing and it's not about grading yourself, it's not about saying I'm failing or I'm not failing. It's just about putting down paint and practice time and just enjoying the ride. It's actually looking pretty cool if I pick a different color. I'm just trying to get one long straight line. Oh, that one is terrible, but doesn't matter. I tell my inner critic to be quiet because I am just practicing and having fun, and no one is going to see this except all of you guys, but that's okay. I just wanted you to see how okay it is to not be perfect. Here's one drill as you can see I tend to do the best job, but that's okay. I had fun. Now let's do another one. This one is about practicing thin to thick strokes. Just pick up a color., any color. We're just going to put down with the tip of the brush and then we're going to press down, lift off again back to thin. I'm just going to keep doing that. I'm just practicing making my brush thinner and thicker. I'm actually good at this drill. Strange lines, I get to and that's okay to have weaknesses and strengths. That's completely normal. You can alternate colors or just pick random colors and a fun thing with this drill is to do a thin line where the thick one was before and then a thick one where the thin one was before. It will make this cool pattern and you can fill the whole page like this and just use different colors so that's really pretty. When you do drills like this, you have to go slow or you're going to make a lot of mistakes. For me that's pretty hard because I usually paint really fast. It's a good challenge for me. But maybe you are a perfectionist and this is the kind of painting you really thrive on, and you enjoy this a lot. Maybe, this is really soothing for you. You have to be mindful just now I wasn't and I made a mistake. It forces you to be present and aware and to be focused and to do a good job. But this is not supposed to be a chore, it's just supposed to be fun, so just enjoy the ride. Like always. It's very relaxing and soothing, and I just get lost in moment. This will be where the inner critic will also try to come out, but not as much because he knows it's practice. For those of you who have trouble with inner critic this might be the perfect exercise for you. But I want to show you guys, I make mistakes and I do things wrong and I have weaknesses and all those things are okay. I'm not trying to be perfect. It's okay if you want to rotate your paper, it's completely fine. If you make a mistake, it's funny because you have to keep up with it in the next one. It makes it look a little quirky and I like that look, so It's fun. Even mistakes can be made into something beautiful. Just ask Bob Ross. There's my exercise, again, not perfect. I'm a little clumsy today for some reason, but that's okay. Its funny I keep choosing the same colors. I don't know why I'm feeling these today, but I am. If you have a really skinny one like this one. A fun thing to do is just simple sidelines that are exactly the same width. You try to just do the same with over and over again. I'm using the side of my brush and I'm just doing the same stroke over and over. You can practice making it really thin and then thicker, thicker, thicker, thicker, thicker, and thicker, and the thickest. It's just a fun thing to do and then you can fill the whole thing in by just going like this. Doing little lines, little short strokes that are really easy and just repetitive play that gets you used to using your brush, used to using thick and thin, used to playing and making your lines good. Now one of my favorite things to do is the twirly technique. I just pick up a color and I, go like this. Just make a wavy line. There;s no perfect way of doing this, no right way. Just do your best. Once I'm satisfied with it, I can go back in and I can do another one that doesn't touch the first one. Maybe make it a little different and then do one more. Now our challenge will be to fill in the empty space between them and not touch them. We are going to do more wavy lines and we're going to try to just play with it. Let's say I put one really close to this one. I can follow it exactly. Like I said before, don't be afraid to rotate your paper to get an easier angle. Now I can do another one from this line. I am just rotating my line trying to keep up with the last line. This forces me to control my brush and to control the angle I'm putting it at and just make lines smoothly and easily. It's so long that it makes it challenging to do from all angles. I'm going from here to here. I do another one between them. It doesn't have to be a perfect width or anything. I'm just being quick with it. I'm getting the dexterity to paint faster. That's my goal. If your goal is perfect painting, then take your time and obviously do whatever is right for your style because everyone's paints differently. I'm just going in here and I can follow one line and the other line and just play with it. It's starting to look a little messy. But I like it. If I can put one between these two. Try and cram as many lines as I can in here. It's okay if they all touch. Maybe one more. Maybe get some bright orange in here. Take that color palettes, I actually like that. I like these three colors together. That's an interesting color right there. I wouldn't have discovered if I didn't play right now. Now it's in my subconscious forever, and another one on top and one more at the bottom. There's no rule to this, but that's it. Simple, wavy lines, just fun. Another neat watercolor drill is to do with shapes like circles. I'm just going to do a simple circle and I'm just going to do my best. Circles are always hard to do. No matter how good of an artist's you're. It's like that Sponge Bob episode. I just going to keep doing different circles. Now this is a fun technique where you let them touch. This can make pretty cold bookmarks or something because the paint will bleed into each other with the wet and wet technique. You can see it's pretty beautiful. You just gently let them touch and that will happen. You can vary the sizes of your circles. They don't have to be perfect. Mine aren't. They're just me practicing making circles. If circles are hard for you to do that's okay. Maybe your circles are wobbly. That's okay. My straight lines were wobbly because I had to do them for a long way. Just make them. Just do it. You'll get better with practice. If something is hard, it just means you need more practice. I'm mastering how much water I have on my brush and how much paint I'm putting down. As you can see, I had quite a bit here and it really bled into it and now I have this murky color, not at all like what I picked up and that's okay. I'm learning as I go. Another shape you can do is like a diamond. But really any shape is fun to do. Maybe for this one, you don't want to fill it in perfectly, you want to have little bit specks of white and add in a second color and just practice the wet and wet. Maybe one is a perfect diamond and the next one is just lines. The next one you fill in again, it's all up to you. Have fun with it and make up your own rules. I made all these drills up on the spot. I'm sure they've been done before. But the point is that you can just do whatever you feel like you need to do. You don't have to look up what other people are doing. This is still intuitive painting because I'm still just doing my own thing. This also forces you to embrace quirkiness and imperfections. I'm just letting the water go out. I really enjoyed that look, and I'm just letting it happen. Maybe I'll drop in some paint into the lines. I love doing that. Now I'm giving out my playfulness. Instead of it just being a drill. I'm starting to do an intuitive painting and if that happens, let it develop naturally. That's okay. If your drills turn into a painting, let it happen. Usually drills are done when we don't know what to paint, so that's perfect. Just have fun with it and roll with it and let it be abstract or whatever it is that it wants to be. I'm going to finish painting this intuitively, just for fun. Just playing with my paint. I love this. Maybe I'm going to fill in the whole page. Whatever it is that want to fill it in with. I'm just playing. Does this make any sense to you? No. It doesn't to me either. But I'm just doing whatever my hand wants to do. I am silencing my critic and that judging what I'm making. I'm just moving my brush and just having fun. It's all about being playful and enjoying the moment. Any stroke you make will teach you something. Subconsciously you're always growing as long as you practice and this is practice, believe it or not. But even if I was just doing this for fun, it's well worth it to express yourself and to enjoy the ride. It's always worth it to be creative. There you have it. My drill turned into play. The result is not frameable like the other ones. But it was fun and I enjoyed it and I went back with a flow scene. Now if I want to start a real painting right this moment, I'll already be in the flow scene, it will be easier to just get into that, especially if I'm doing something loose. Hope you guys enjoyed this drills lesson. As you can see, what you do, it's up to you. There's all kinds of ways of doing it. Just have fun. Let's move on to something else that's really fun.
11. Exploring Emotions with Art Therapy: Now we're going to learn about painting our emotions or issues but before I show the live example, let's learn a little bit more about what that means. You will naturally paint what's on your mind, how you feel or the issues in your life without giving it conscious thought with every painting you intuitively produce. That's why it's important to let yourself do whatever you want. Paintings can be used for therapy. In fact, this is called Art Therapy. I recorded an example of what that entails. I started my intuitive painting outside on a dreary day and I wasn't in the best mood. I rarely use symbols in my intuitive paintings, but I wanted to paint bare trees for some reason. The colors I used were pretty dark and there was a road that led to nowhere and lots of quick and ugly strokes like thorny bushes. I added even more darkness into the corner and then I realized I was painting my depression. At that moment I felt compelled to add a sun, put rays around it and even added leaves to the trees that were near it. That was my way out, there was hope. I kept painting what I wanted and it looked like the painting turned into one of hope hiding in the sadness of winter. Making the last strokes that added yellow to the road, made it a road to joy. I felt a lot of release with this painting because I felt something inside of myself and gave it a positive twist. I didn't do it consciously but I was interacting consciously with my subconscious because I was painting without thinking about it and then analyzing what I put down. This is like interpreting your dreams but sometimes it's better to wait till you're done to analyze the imagery, and sometimes it's better not to analyze it at all. Just do whatever feels right to you in the moment. If you do want to analyze it, which you don't have to, because just by putting it down on paper, you will release it but if you want to analyze it more, you can get a journal and make it a journal for your paintings. You can write down what you think about your painting when it's done. You can think about what it's about, how it felt to release the emotions, what it brought up and anything else that comes to mind. Maybe it made you think about other things, maybe it showed you why you feel that way or how you can change it, or maybe it just made you feel really terrible and now you're healing. It can take you a week to heal. That's okay. Whatever happens when you bring issues to the surface, you can overcome them by facing them and they will naturally heal. This doesn't mean you become obsessed with something negative and keep painting something bad. It just means that you let whatever is inside of you come to the surface and then you try to re-frame it in something positive or heal from it. But the funny thing is, right before painting the depressed scene, I painted a very bright and happy piece full of energy. As you can see, this piece has nothing to do with the depression and it was me trying to paint what I think I should paint using happy colors. I thought about the camera watching, and I just thought this is how I should feel, so this is what I will paint. The interesting thing is even though I enjoy painting it, it did not take away my sadness. I felt more relief from the dark painting because they actually face what's inside of me instead of trying to cover it up, which helped me to release it. I learned a valuable lesson that day, and it's been helping me with releasing more emotions in my other paintings and I'm so glad I recorded it for you to see what I mean. What I learned is you have to paint what you actually feel, not what you think you should feel. If you do this, you can overcome the bad memories or feelings and then there'll be room in you for good ones. You'll just have to try it for yourself to see what I mean. Now let's get into two live examples to get a better understanding of how to do this and what it means. For this painting, I wanted to paint something that I've been feeling lately. Right now we're in the middle of the Coronavirus outbreak, just the beginning of it and I've been feeling a little stressed and down and I feel like I can feel the stress of everyone in the world because what everyone is going through this, even if it doesn't directly affect me, it just makes me really sad and I just wanted to put that on the page. This is a good way of releasing it and looking at what I'm feeling and of processing it. I'm just going to just start painting. Now what you can do is just paint anything that comes to mind where this kind of stuff when you're painting an emotion or a feeling or a memory or something that's happened in your past, your subconscious. When you're directly looking at something specifically, usually imagery will come to mind and sometimes imagery comes to mind when you're just intuitive to the paint, this is stuff you probably do naturally but the image that comes to mind is just a frowny face and to see these little frowny faces of fear and he's recording his little hands up and it's like there's darkness coming down here. Notice I'm just using Payne's gray, I'm just using one color, it's of the swirling vortex of darkness down here. See, this is nothing fancy and I'm really not thinking about it, I'm just doing whatever comes to me and I don't care what it looks like, obviously, this is not. An award winner usually when you paint about things that you're dealing with, they will not be pretty, usually, they'll be pretty, pretty ugly actually. To make something really pretty you have to come in a place of no fear and enjoy, usually, sometimes not. It's really good to deal with things like this. You will feel a lot of relief afterwards and he's not pure white, he's grayish, so I'm letting the paint smear off everywhere, and just this messy dark painting, even more darkness down here. It's like it's suffocating the planet right now. I don't know what it is, but I've just been feeling this great depression since this whole started. We're just so connected to the world nowadays and it feels good to just paint that and then maybe my painting keeps evolving and I just keep doing whatever I want to do and this feels good to me, making these really lives feels good. If you have anger or sadness or anything frustrating like anxiety, you'll probably do something like this where it's really messy and you definitely don't want to share with anybody. You just have to put it on paper and it's okay to feel emotions. You're honoring them. You're expressing them. This really helps you just to release and just to feel what you feel and just put it down. There's just something really therapeutic about expressing yourself in this way. This is what children do when they have something on their minds. They paint it. If you've ever seen a horror movie, which I hate watching but in horror movies, that's exactly what the show they showed the little kid that's demonically possessed will start painting like really bad things and that really comes from somewhere true though, that children express themselves in ways that we don't want and they just paint whatever it is on their minds. Those are just example, but you get the point. I'm just going to keep painting. Maybe there's a little bit of redness right here to represent pain and loss and people who are going to lose their loved ones and just things being in turmoil. I feel like I'm done. Once it's done, you can just reflect on it. You don't have to analyze it, usually just putting down on paper will be therapeutic enough but sometimes it helps to analyze. For this particular one there's nothing to analyze, it's self-explanatory. I just feel a lot of anxiety and depression towards this problem, and I just let it out. But maybe something will come up as you're painting, maybe you'll start crying, maybe you'll get angry for no reason and it's good to explore those emotions and see why you feel the way you feel. For me nothing new came out, it's just all the same but you're not always going to have the most breakthrough session ever. You just have to roll with it and see what comes out but I do feel better after putting this down, I feel a little bit more peaceful. One more thing you can do before you completely finish it is just pick up a happy color, like yellow and just put something positive on it. I want people to be happy again. I'm going to put on his face and then maybe I'm going to put a little heart made up the red that we're going to be just fine. We're all in this together and I'm narrating it in my head that everything will be okay. This is temporary and as much as it sucks, everything will be okay because everything passes. I'm just re-framing it in my mind, is just color axons here in a critic but now your silencing your depressing voices or sad voices or anything that you're feeling that isn't good. I'm just painting over the painting, anything that I want to change and that's pretty much it. Now I expressed the motion, I looked at it, I felt in its entirety, and I've tried to re-frame it by just making it more positive. You don't have to do this part, but it's just an idea and there's just so many things you can do with this and I encourage you to look into what art therapy is if this interests you more but you really should be doing this in your intuitive paintings naturally, because your subconscious will emerge when you're not thinking, so envision it in your mind, it will make us blind to the paper. If you want to paint something ugly, just don't stop yourself from paint that ugly thing, you'll figure out why you're painting it later. Now you might also might not be done with one session you might also do multiple sessions, so just go ahead and do as many as you need to, that's why it's important to use cheap supplies and not worry about it. But I want you guys to have an example of what yours might look like. I tend to paint very abstract, but when you do things about delve into your subconscious, usually you'll just start painting, you'll start painting images. But if you do it consciously, you'll paint even more images. Yours might look like a child's painting almost, it might look like you start painting like a scene from your memory, let's say that you miss your grandpa and you used to go camping all the time and he died maybe two years ago and you never got over it. You will start painting, maybe where you guys camped, maybe you camped in the mountains of the Washington State and you just start painting and remembering what that was like and you would use just imagery and you paint childlike because you're not using references and that's completely fine, that's completely normal. You're just painting this happy scene, this happy memory and you might start crying because you miss him so much and it's such a good memory or maybe you never got to go on that last fishing trip and you want to paint that last fishing trip. Whatever it is you want to express, you can create your world here and you can just paint whatever it is you want to. There's no limitation, there is no right or wrong way of doing things. There's no one judging you but putting things on paper like this really, really helps. Your inner critic might come out when you do things like this and say, that's a really ugly painting but you have to remember two sounds in those moments, especially because you're doing something very important and don't let it stop you. I'm just showing you what it looks like when you just paint a random image in your head quickly and this is probably what yours will look like and that's completely fine. I actually think it's really cute but yeah, it'll be just very childlike. There's no right or wrong way of doing this and you might just paint this and you might just lay out without thinking about it because in can watercolor this will show through in the next layer, that's fine. I'm just going paint my grandpa. We better wait for the layer to dry, that's fine too but everyone do and we're just sitting and I know his legs are in the water, that's fine. Here's his fishing rod, he's fishing. Here I am sitting next to him and I'm fishing too and here's our bucket full of fish. I know this sounds simplistic but even painting something like this where it's really quick and it's just imagery will make you feel better, it will just make you express new memories and emotions and anytime you express yourself, you'll feel good about it and the sun was even happy, everybody was happy. Usually when you remember a good emotion like this, you will feel good, you will remember what that felt like. But it'll be bittersweet because of what happened but maybe you'll be like, it's okay, how to make good memories with him and that's why it's important to journal and reflect on why you feel the way you feel you don't have to. But even just sitting down after painting is done and thinking why you included this or that detail because you'll include things that you're not even aware of. For example, maybe this is a rainy scene or maybe I added a bird of some sort that meant something to me and it's good to explore all that and to think why and what it means but you don't have to like I said before, just putting down a paper will usually be enough therapy on its own. There are just so many things you can do with this and art in itself, it's just so therapeutic. It's a way of expressing yourself in your inner world. Don't be afraid to do this kind of work, you probably will and that's completely normal. This is actually doing a lot of benefits for you behind the scenes, you're not aware of it consciously, but give it a try a few times for different things that bother you or topics you never fully healed from and see what happens, see what comes out of it because you'll be surprised and you will feel a lot better. I hope you guys enjoyed all these presentations and they give you a better idea of what I mean by intuitive painting. There's millions and billions of ways of doing this, you'll have your own unique way but I hope it just shows you what I mean by it and you can start experimenting and figuring out what your unique way is. Now, let's move on to the next lesson.
12. Being Inspired by a Subject: This lesson will be a little bit different from the other ones because we're going to make intuitive painting and painting of subject. I have this beautiful bouquet of flowers right here, I would paint something that you really like, pick a subject that resonates with you, because the point of this is to have fun, so when you paint something you liked, you enjoy it more. You can use a reference if you want, that's completely fine. I just like painting from life when I get the chance. For this one, I just picked a random brush like always, and now I'm going to intuitively paint something inspired by this. I'll just show you what I mean. It's just like Zen painting where they tried to capture the essence of their subject. I'm just going to jump right in and go slower or as fast as I want to. I usually paint quickly, but maybe you paint slower. The point of this exercise that's different from just painting something is to quiet your inner critic and this is good practice for actually painting a real thing and doing that. I'm just going to go quickly and enjoy the process because that's how fast I like to work. The important thing is to have the mindset of it doesn't matter which turns that like because I'll just throw it away if I don't like it, and no one has to see this. But this time we're doing a subject that really could turn out good potentially, but that's not the goal still. In fact, think of this more as a practice session of practicing painting. Something you like instead of actually painting it to frame or to get away. I'm just capturing the essence of it just by observing it and quieting my mind and being present with my subject. I can experiment, I can play with it like right now, I'm out looking at my reference, I'm just adding little details, little touches here in there. Maybe I want to pick up a color that's not in the reference and throw that in. This is where you mix intuition with the real life. You're just playing with paint and painting a subject that is real, not for your imagination, but it doesn't have to end up realistic. It can be as weird or fantasy, because what you want is to combine different things and just play with it. Do as much or as little as you want, it's up to you. Now that I'm done studying one row, I just studied this rows right here, and maybe I'll go in and just play with the idea of these little white flowers and like look at their stems and maybe just make it my own. May be I don't want it to be exactly like I see it, which I don't. I just want to give the illusion of some stems, the stem hook is a fuzzy thing. I'm actually pings prep for the fuzzy things without even realizing it. I don't know what that thing is, so I'm going to call it the fuzzy thing, and I don't know a lot of plant names, but you know what, I'm going to flow with it. Since you can't paint white in watercolor, what I can do is make it blue or I can paint the negative space around it, and I'm combining the fuzzy thing with the white flowers. I don't know their names either. I'm not very good with names of things, and I'm just playing. I'm just enjoying this. I have the pressure of you guys watching, so if I mess up, you see me. The important thing is to remember that no one has to see this and you're just doing it for fun, you just studying something you like to study, and now I'm going back in with a different color and this is not the reference, I just wanted to do this, and teaches you to trust your intuition to experiment. Because there's no expectations, you can really set yourself free and play with your subject matter more than you normally would. Maybe I'll paint this pink one now, with the weird folds, and I'll just go crazy. I can do that because it doesn't matter. That's what I wanted to do. I'm trying to capture the essence. This is more like Zen painting where you use the brush to really capture, with something that looks like with deliberate brushstrokes. I find it really fascinating, add another color. I'm just playing with what I see, making it my own. This is really great practice. It's a blend of all kinds of things that we've learned and now we're starting to incorporate into our normal art. It just teaches you to silence your inner critic, like you can say, oh, this looks great composition. That's okay, I'm not trying to get the composition, I'm just having fun and just to reminders critic, to leave you alone. After then myself, I'm like, leave me alone. But you the teacher is supposed to do a good job and show your students, now I'm supposed to have fun, and then my students will see that, that's all that matters and they'll be like, "Oh, she makes mistakes too." It's completely normal. So I'm just going to do it like a normally would. Trust me, I have a lot of bad paintings that I'm really try and then I get discouraged and I'm like, oh my God, I lost my spark. I don't know what I'm doing and then I remind myself just to try again, but the inner critic can really get in the way of you painting, we going to make sure to silence him or her. I feel like adding dots here. So I'm being intuitive with it. I'm flowing with it and it's important to blend, not just to be realistic, it's interest painting realistically. You just do whatever you want to do, but you're inspired by something in front of you. I want to add some leaves that are not in my original, and I see some of them underneath here. I'm keeping track them, but I just like adding normal leaves. There's nice springing color, and I think I want to add more of those fuzzy things that I made up on this side. I'll make it a little bit more loose using a different green like the leaves. I'm just going with the flow. There's no exact rule or perfect way of doing things. You just do it. In this exercise, we're not doing it for turning out pretty. We're doing it because we want to paint and we'd like to pink flowers. Whatever you decide to paint, it's important that it's something you'd like to paint or something you'd like to look at because that will make it more enjoyable. Usually your art style will evolve from whatever you enjoy painting the most. Therefore, don't force yourself to paint something unless you're doing it for practice or to challenge yourself, but just do what you love, it will come naturally to you. I'm adding another green like last time, and I'm going to add some leaves here. I'm starting to not look at my reference now, I'm just playing with ideas. This is how you get practice timing. So because I'm doing this for composition, I'm incorporating little pieces like these little dots or these little leaves and are like larry and the greens. These little things are techniques, and by practicing them, I'm getting better at them or I'm discovering something new I haven't done it before, and I can see what works and what doesn't work. That's the catch that always what works, sometimes things don't work. It's important to know what those things are and to try lots of things to find out what those things are. I'm going back in here, I want to add another petal here, but define these more. Whatever you want to do to just play with it and flow. I want to add more huddle circles. These represent the white flowers. Just to help balance it out. I'm just painting wherever I want to paint and whatever I want a paint at this point. I'm not really looking at the reference anymore. If you want to be more realistic, you can be, but usually with realism, the inter critical started come out because it wants everything to be perfect. If you start getting realistic, you will have to practice to shun down the critic more. But anytime you practice anything, you really should quiet that critic and just practice. It's okay to do this with realism as well, is just being more loose makes it easier to not be so concerned with the results. Realistic piece could take hours and loose piece could take 10 minutes. It's the time invested in as well that makes it feel different, but if you're realistic artist and you enjoy that pain that lead the most, by all means, practice your realism like this with no results and intuition guiding you and just playing with it. There's no rules or anything I tell you, these are just things that work for me, and you're going to find your own way of doing things that work for you better. I like how this turned out, little circles then the little dots, that's pretty cool. I've really never done that before. Not like this. Hey, look at that, I discovered something new. I like it. I have a neat idea, just popped into my head of going with a darker color above my roses, and just seeing what it'll look like if I paint two rows above each other kind of thing. I like it, that looks pretty needed, gives a definition. This is the perfect place to just try things out. As you can see, I'm experimenting and learning, and some things work and some things don't work, and that's the fun part. It's just play. I'm playing like a child would. So far, I really liked the little dots and circles, I really like how this turned out. Maybe I'll do that with the rest. I like layering the green parts, I like how loose this is, like outlining the white space. Maybe they don't all work together well, but I got all these techniques that I like under my belt now that I can use in other works. I'll just organize the composition better and plan it out more for a finished real piece. Also I got practice time and shutting down my inner critic, like that. I want to add some detail like in the reference. Just try to get this line, it has this really cool feature of being outlined at the edges. Just hint at it. This is also a good place to practice loose brush strokes and actually incorporating them. It's one thing to do drills up loose brush strokes, but to actually use them in a piece can be nerve-wracking. So it's good to practice putting down on an actual illustration even if it's not going to be framed, because that's really the best way to practice, because then when you do a real piece, you'll be so scared to try it out. I'm just in the flow. I'm just feeling the joy, the spark of creativity, and imagination, and play. There's nothing else other than me being here right now. I think I'm going to put this one too. I just want to add some more leaves just for practicing leaves. You don't have to be perfect or the perfect color. I'm just practicing. Especially if you mess up a painting like this, you'll be, no, this is not going to turn out good. It gives you the freedom if you keep going to just make mistakes and play and practice. It's a blessing in disguise if a painting just starts going bad. Even if one did plan out and it wasn't meant to be a practice session like this, just go in there and just play with the paint and try to just finish it to your best ability, and you'll just give valuable practice time. I can't stress enough how important it is to not be afraid to put the hours in a bag work because you will get practice time in and practice time is a secret ingredient to being good at anything especially painting and drawing and just anything creative. I'll put some outlined ones. I love doing that. Maybe trying technique with them like painting the stem first. Have another splatter and then I go back in and maybe add a nice little green background. Just something light and it makes it feel more fresh. Like I said, good practice time to do your loose washes. I love to do loose background washes, and I'm honestly never afraid when I do this because I've done them so many times. Sure, sometimes I mess up because it is pretty rare because there's no fear involved. I really feel like when you're afraid, you just subtract yourself messing up. So it's really important to let that fear go and just to get let loose and have fun and explore. It's funny because everyone's always like so scared and predictability water clip. I'm just like, now I'm just going to go in and I love what it does because I just have no fear when I do things like this. Doesn't mean that I always do it perfectly, but no feel really helps. I'm going to add some blue in here, and then I want to add some pink. May be like this. As you can see, it's really similar to the way I paint intuitively, I'm just going to paint flow. I'm playing with it. I'm having fun adding whatever I want to add, but it was inspired by something real. It didn't turn out perfectly just like the other paintings, none of these are frameable, but they're fun. They're really fun to do. I just enjoy the process of creation. It's so quick, it's such a great practice session. Intuitive painting has really changed my art-making because it gives me the freedom to just have fun and create and make mistakes. I encourage you guys to try all the lessons, but if you get stuck, just pick some subjects you like and try doing this. This is just as much benefits as the other techniques, and it's so easy because you can just pick something in front of you. Like I could just do this unicorn, or a crystal, or whatever it is that you have on hand. I hope you guys enjoyed and take a lot away from it, and you can see how normal it is to mess up. I think this is not social media worthy, and to me that's like my standard of like, is it good? But it was fun to make, and I'm showing to the world, and if I had the courage to show you guys when I make something that I don't like, then you going to should have the courage to do that in your own home for no one will see it. I'm a professional artist and I make so much art that I don't like. You can do it too and give yourself permission to do it. I've had lots of practice hours and I still do that, and I think it's very important for my growth. Just give yourself permission to do that. I hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. Now let's finish up the class.
13. Optional Guided Meditation: This is an optional guided meditation that you can do before you start a painting to help you get into the flow state and connect it to your inner child. To start, find a comfortable place and position to either sit or lay down. Now close your eyes and bring your attention to this present moment. Notice the feel of the hair on your skin. The way your clothes lay on your body. Any sounds you hear, no matter how faint. If there are any sensations inside of you, you can scan your body from your feet to the top of your head. Just take your time and just notice. Notice any good feelings or bad feelings, and just let them go. It's okay if you start thinking about something, that's normal, just go back to noticing what is happening. Now press your attention on your breathing. Notice the temperature of your breath in your nostrils. It is cool when you inhale and warm when you exhale. Let yourself breathe naturally and just pay attention to each inhale and exhale. Be fully present in it. If more thoughts come, just let them go gently and go back to your breathing. Accept this moment as it is. Now, I'm going to count backwards and I want you to relax deeper as I go lower. I want you to let go of all the stress and tension in your body and mind. Ten, you are relaxing, nine, eight, this is so easy, seven, you are becoming more and more relaxed. Six, this is so effortless. Five everything is perfect in this moment, four, everything is fine as it is. Three, there is nothing to do but rest deeper and deeper. Two, you are floating on a cloud. One, your muscles are completely relaxed. Now, notice your breathing again, it is slow, peaceful. I want you to use your imagination. Just try to imagine what I say and if you can't, just listen to my words, whatever you do is good enough. We'll begin by asking ourselves a simple question. What is my favorite place to be in nature? Picture it in your mind's eye. If you can't, it might be easier to remember when you were there last. What was the weather like? Is it windy? Is it sunny? How does that feel on your skin? Notice the sounds around you in your environment. Take a deep breath and inhale the smells. For this moment you are here, rest in your sanctuary. Just breathe. A golden path starts to manifest in front of you. You take steps barefoot on it. It leads you higher. It feels warm and tingly, like sunshine. It goes up a hill. As you near the top, you notice a beautiful white desk waiting for you. On it are all kinds of supplies. Any color you can imagine. Anything you could want to play with. It's all here. There is a magical chair. It's sparkly and it looks like a puffy cloud. This is your chair. Have a seat. As soon as you sit down you relax even more. A weight's been lifted off your chest. You feel something else stirring in you, excitement to play. There is a tap on your shoulder. You turn around to be greeted by a younger you, your inner child. They're smiling at you, and you know deep in your heart that it's always been with you. Your inner child is a part of you and lives inside of you. They have a special message for you. They wrote it down on a piece of paper in rainbow letters and they handed to you. What does it say? Let this message uplift you in your heart. Hug your inner child. Once you do, they disappear and you're left with the warm glow emanating from your chest. You look down. It's a bright, warm light with little rainbows. This is your inner child and resides in your heart. Your excitement to play is now even bigger. You are remembering how fun it can be to create and express yourself. You remembering the joy, the joy, the joy in making art. The joy in expressing yourself. It feels so good to be there. It feels so good to be free. You look around. All kinds of brushes and unique objects to play with are laid out in front of you. Your hand is drawn to something. Pick it up, look at it, examine it. There's also a rainbow spear on your left. You realize it's every color that you can imagine. Now dip your object or brush into it and pick up the color that feels right to you. It's easy. You just think of a color and there it is. There is a blank page in front of you as well. It's gleaming with possibilities, whispering to you to start. You now have a brush, a color, and a blank page. You can finally, finally begin. Your inner child is giggling in your chest. You feel the excitement in your soul. As you look at your hands, you realize they are the hands of a child. You are back to that place of boundless creative fun, no limits. You can do anything you want. Nobody will judge you, not even you. You look up at the sky and see "No Judgment Zone" written in big bold letters made from clouds. You are free to express yourself here. You are in your happy place. You can sit here for as long as you want. Take your time. Soak in the feelings. Just breathe in the endless, unlimited creative freedom that is your birth rite. If any negative feelings come up, greet them with your sunny attitude. Imagine them as shapes with faces. Give him a brush and a color or a flower. Point at the sky showing them the one rule. Remind them there is nothing to be afraid of. They're safe here. You are allowed to feel anything you want. Don't hide from bad feelings, explore them, and paint them. If you bring them to the light they will leave you and you will have room for good feelings. If good feelings come, welcome them and embrace them. Feel gratitude for them. Be their friend, laugh with them. Take your time. Do whatever you need to do here. You can come here whenever you want to. You can even paint here. Or just breathe. You can come to this place at anytime. It's always inside you. When you are ready to create in the real world, you can open your eyes again and start a painting or illustration. Express yourself freely and have fun. I hope you guys enjoyed this meditation. Now, let's finish up the class.
14. Your Turn! :): Congratulations on finishing the class. Give yourself a big pat on the back for watching it. Now that you know what Intuitive Painting is, it's time to challenge yourself to start this wonderful joy-giving habit with numerous benefits. Sit down with your brush and paint and let your first intuitive painting takes shape. It might help to quiet your mind first with your breathing or you can do the guided meditation, or if you're feeling inspired, just jump right in. There is no right or wrong way of doing this and there are no rules. But I encourage you to find what works best for you. If you can get a routine started, that would be awesome. You are just here to express yourself and to have fun in the moment. Remember that, you're just here to play experiment and let your paintings naturally develop. There are no rules, but let's go over the guidelines one more time. These are just things you should keep in mind and try to do. Don't care about results, be in the moment and enjoy the process. Overwrite your inner critics negativity with positivity, have fun and experiment. As a result, get into the flow state. But I'll repeat myself again. There are no rules. There are absolutely no rules. Just pick a brush a color, and make your first mark and keep going from there. The possibilities are truly endless and you will find your favorite way of working with the medium of you're choosing over time. Since this class is all about making art with no pressure because you don't have to share it. The final project isn't about what you make, it's about how you feel making it. For the final project, share with the class how it felt to sit down and make it first intuitive painting, make it like a journal entry. Was there resistance? Were there any challenges that you didn't expect? What enemies of creativity showed up and how did you silence them? Was it strange to paint something without caring but results? Was it fun? Did you see any benefits right away? How about overtime, did you enter the flow state? If not, update us when you do. These are just some prompts giving an idea of what he can answer, but you can write about anything you experience. Have the project be a journal of your creative journey with these magical paintings. Sharing what happens to you will not only help you to understand your experience better and to learn from it, but it will also help all of us to understand creativity better. Now this is completely optional. You don't have to at all, seriously, no pressure. But if you want to share your paintings, you can go ahead and do so. The uglier the better, because it will give everyone else permission to share there as well. Remember if it's ugly, you're doing it right. Didn't feel like I gave you permission to do whatever you wanted when I shared my strange pieces, maybe that's what the world needs more of assuring of all kinds of art pretty and not so pretty. That's not judging it and just respecting the creative process. Sharing ugly work may also help you to release silly pressure intention about having to be perfect to share work in the first place. But like I said before, everything you make is only for your eyes if you want it to be. If you paint something really pretty that you want to share, go ahead and share it. You can do whatever you want. I just want you guys to have no pressure and to really have fun with this and to make your project is the place of openness and joy and for your inner child to speak and to share and for you to connect with other inner children. I really hope you guys will enjoy painting like this and make it into a daily habit. It is so highly rewarding. I cannot wait to read about your experience with this process and maybe see some paintings. Remember, you can always revisit your project when you feel like you make progress or learn something new, whether it's an a week, a month, or a year, it's great to reflect and see how you've grown before you know it, you'll be painting in the flow state, having fun and making more art in general, does that not sound awesome? So pick up your brush and get to practicing, all that you've learned in this class. From quieting your inner critic and converting him into a cheerleader to try and to hear the silent voice of intuition by letting go of reasoning. But most importantly, having fun and connecting to your inner child. That's what this class is all about. I hope by painting intuitively, you will reconnect to your inner joy and have boundless creativity. So that's it for this class. If you have any questions, leave them in the discussion section, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. If you want to continue learning for me, I have numerous other classes you can check out, and in the meantime, I'll see you guys in the next class. Stay awesome, my friends and I hope you had fun.
Yasmina Creates, Artist & Creativity Cheerleader
