Make Your Mark - Foraging And Creating Interesting Mark Making Tools For Your Art

1. Introduction: In this class, I want to introduce you to some fun, new, exciting ideas for mark-making. I want you to come with me as we forage outside, as we forage our house, as we forage the craft store, as we forage their our own art tools and figure out what marks do I want to make? I want to figure out what's going to be authentically me when I create art going forward. In this process, we're going to make some mark making tools, we're going to gather some natural supplies outside, we're going to hunt in our kitchen, and we'll go through all of the different art supplies for different mediums that you might have collected. Or if you're not like me and you have all this stuff hanging about and you're thinking, [LAUGHTER] I don't have any of that stuff, hopefully, I'll introduce you to something that you didn't think of or that you're like, I really like that. Or I'll show you that things can be super cheap in your art making. For instance, one of my very favorite art making tools that I have a little discovery here in class. I've long used corrugated cardboard, super fun, cheap. Came in some packaging. I just saved the strip of this stuff and cut a little piece out for the particular project that I was doing today. Look how amazing this turned out. I'm like, I definitely going to put the cardboard in the box for stuff going forward. This I loved. [LAUGHTER] I want to show you and let you have some of those same moments like we can collect bubble wrap and shelf liner. These are four of my favorite little art-making tools. There are things that I cut out from some packaging that I got. So super fun. Your mark-making and your art creating don't have to be expensive, but they can be creative. We're going to create some maybe paper clay handles and gather some feathers and make it something really pretty. There's all kinds of stuff that we can make and create and forage and just find. Then once we find some that were like this is cool, then you know that that's something that appeal to you and it was your favorite thing and we can put it in our little box of favorites because I collect a little box of stuff that I'm like, here's the favorite things I like to mark make with. Then you'll have some fun tools going forward that don't have to be expensive. Some of these are all free. [LAUGHTER] Basically came in different packaging and stuff. Some little [inaudible], different things that that I collected outside. They make the most exciting marks and different things that I experimented with as I was just testing out different things. I want you to have fun. I want you to discover new things to use for mark-making and about yourself and what you like in this class. I want to introduce you to things that maybe you didn't think could be mark-making tools, you wouldn't have even occurred to you. I've got some stuff from the auto store [LAUGHTER] that I'm like, look how cool this is in class. I can't wait till you come across that. I'm going to let you discover it. [LAUGHTER] I want you to figure out what ones that you love that are going to be authentic to you going forward. The thing I like about some of these unconventional mark-making tools is that not everybody is going to be using them. Not everybody is going to have the same discoveries and aha moments that you're having as you're collecting and gathering and trying these things out. As you go forward, some of these are going to be unique things that define your authenticity in the art that you create, and I love that. This is the things that you can let your mind relax. You're not trying to create anything major. Some of our pages are just used the colors of paint you don't like, so you're not wasting it and just try your stuff out and see [LAUGHTER] what does it do? I love this or I don't love this. We start off with some mark making pages, just trying everything out, and then collecting a box of the ones that we were like, I loved that. They will have a box of stuff that's fun to create with the things that we know we already like. I love that. This is how we're going to get to a more authentic self in our creating. I can't wait to share with you some of the fun ideas that I've come up with. Hopefully, if you're in a rut or you want to step outside your box, so you want to try something new, you'll turn to some of the spawn mark-making elements and get excited and go out and find some new stuff and come back and create some fun things in your art room. I'm pretty excited about that. I'm Denise Love, and I'm an artist and photographer out of Atlanta, Georgia.I can't wait to show you all the fun things that I've come up with for class today. I'll see you in class. [MUSIC] 2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Your class project today is to come back and show me some of the really cool fine or interesting things that you made so that we can see what you found interesting and what you're going to be using to create some marks with going forward in your art. I can't wait to see some of your fun art making supplies. I'd really love it if you did some little pieces of art or abstract that played with some of these things that you foraged, created, found or used and you made some interesting marks and you're like [NOISE] this is going to be something I use going forward. I'd love to see those. This is one of my favorite because after we make, forage, collect, gather and find we're going to then do some practice pieces, or you create using your marks. Maybe we just create on a big sheet of just a jumble of stuff. But we're practicing with these pieces so that we can go [NOISE] this is my favorite. Or, oh, I didn't like that. Let me just pull this out of the mix. I want to see some of those scribble experiments or any little piece of art that you might have created with the new tools that you've discovered and you had a good [NOISE]. I can't wait to see those. For me this was my good [NOISE]. One of my favorite tools going forward is going to be some corrugated cardboard. How fun is that? What I love about making or discovering or foraging or pulling together all of your supplies and your mark making tools is then you're going to find things that are unique and authentic to your art-making. Nobody else is going to be creating the same thing that you are, so I really love that aspect about it. So come back and share what you've found or what you loved. Or if you've got some amazing favorite mark-making, something that you already have that you want to share, share that too, because maybe I haven't thought of that and I'd love to see it too. I can't wait to see the stuff you're creating. Come back and share with me, and I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 3. Foraging Outside: Let's take a look at some of the things I got from foraging outside. Some of the coolest mark-making things might be things right out in your own front yard or your neighborhood. I just took a little shoebox and I went with my cutters for cutting plants and branches, and cut off anything I found that looked interesting. We can use any of these for some very cool unique marks or as brush handles or as whatever it is that we're intending to use these for. I picked up and look at the interesting different foliage that's blooming. It's early spring when I am out there. There's not flowers and things that I could pick up, but there's certainly new growth on cool trees like these maples. A maple leaf is particularly beautiful maybe we could use those to print a leaf print or to use as mark making. I cut a couple of yummy greenery that was super cool. I also picked up pine cones because if you live in the south, there's pine cones everywhere. I thought that would be super cool. We could pull out one of these little fronds and use it as a mark making tool or we could use the whole thing as a mark making tool and stuff like that, so that was pretty fun. I picked up some bark that the landscapers are putting around in my neighborhood. Those would be some fun mark making elements. I also picked up these sweet gum balls, which typically I actually hate these trees and I hate these little balls because they get out there with my little animals walking on them and they hurt if you walk on these. But for a little mark making elements, it's a super cool element to pick up. I picked up several of those. I don't know what this is, but it was over there near the sweet gums and it was crazy, look at that. I got two of those because I thought, what yummy marks can those make? Super fun. I picked up a stick and I cut it into sections. I've either got good mark-making tools or a good brush handle. If I want to use these as brush handles. I also found a fatter piece of wood just randomly. We could use this as a handle. I could use it as a mark making tool. I can also drill a hole in the end of it and put some type of brush material, glue some brush material in there and it can be a brush, so that can be a brush handle. Then I also found some type of, I don't know, palm leafy looking plants. This was really cool. I thought that would make some great marks. I got two pieces of that. Then I also found not pine straw but wheat straw, hay straw, whatever it is that they put out that is this color over there with the pine straw, it's more like hay. It even has some yummy seed ends still left in it. I thought that will make super cool marks with these little elements that are coming off of it. I thought maybe the hay could be just really cool as some mark making elements in itself, so I picked up some of that. I'd like you to walk your yard or your neighborhood and take your garden shears with you and just clip off little pieces of some type of interesting foliage, pick up some pine straw or some hay straw, pick up some sweet gums and pine cones, whatever it is you see that are dropped on the ground because all of these were basically on the ground or dead from last year. Then I did cut a little tiny bit of some green growth just to see if it could make something I liked. It may not, we'll see. A little pine bark. I want you to look around, take a little shoebox with you, and see what interesting elements that you can forage that you can then use for some interesting mark making elements for your art and we're going to experiment with these in class. Go on your little foraging trip and see what you can come up with and then we will figure out how we can play with these. I'll see you back in class. 4. Foraging Your House: [MUSIC] In this video, let's talk about foraging in your house. I want you to walk your house and find any type of interesting element that you think would make cool marks, and I also want you to consider any craft supplies that you're thinking. I actually went to the craft store and looked around there also and came up with all kinds of crazy fun stuff. I'm just going to pull out different things to give you some ideas of what you might look for and what you might love. I actually have some wired ribbon that I got for some type of project at some point that I've just never used, I think it was probably for photography props, and I hadn't pulled it out for that. But what I like is it's a burlapy patterns, jute and burlap, and they're really cool patterns, so I thought that would be really cool as an interesting mark or some type of fun element. Look around if you've got anything fun like that. Also, maybe that could make the cool end of a piece that dabs onto things, and because it's got such yummy pattern, we're not going to get a smooth dabbing on there. We're going to experiment. I also found something that randomly already looks like the end of a brush. [LAUGHTER] We'll know where it came off of, but I pulled it out and I'm like, "Yes, that's a good one." [LAUGHTER] I also found some Rapier ribbon that was wrapped around some dried flowers, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, perfect. Rapier coming out with me." [LAUGHTER] I found some pretty ribbons that have a nice texture to it so I thought, "Okay, that's pretty." It could either be pretty as a mark-making tool or maybe to wrap something on one of my sticks to hold my mark making stuff on the stick so I thought, perfect, pulled that out. I also have some random fake flowers that I had planned for a photography shoot and I thought, "Oh yeah, that's like a stick and it's got different edges and elements to it." That might have some fun making pieces in it that I could easily just pull these off. I don't even have to cut it up, and then I've got my mark-making element, so I pulled those out. These came from some garden center that had everything clearanced, it's like 75 percent off. So definitely go look at the clearance things in anywhere that sells fake flowers, any craft store, see what fun things you might find that you don't mind getting dirty. I also have a box of, I'm going to call it popo reed, but it doesn't really have a smell. It's random natural elements and I got it for photography shoots. [LAUGHTER] But look at these cool elements in here. I'm going to have to decide which of these elements I would consider using as a permanent art supply, or if I need to keep it for my photography stuff. But what I really liked about it is in here, it has these fake sticks and that would be perfect for a handle perhaps, so I liked that. It has these random flowery-looking things, but look at the shape on this, and I thought that was so cool that it might be something I could consider sacrificing for my art. [LAUGHTER] I also have one of these, it's some dried plant that was bleached. But it's really cool though stiff. I think that they would make good mark-making elements to give me some cool organicy-looking lines, so I pulled one of those out. I got a whole little bouquet of that. Photography prop of course. I also found a cheap set of paint brushes and the reason I pulled these is because when we're making our own brushes and I wanted some brush material, not just things I foraged, it's really hard to find bristles for making brushes. So I thought, okay, we could buy some cheap brushes or some brushes made of material that we like. I like the hockey brush. I have ordered some new hockey brushes so I can cut the bristles off of those. Let me see where I've put one of those and I'll show you. Oh, yes, here we go. This is a hockey brush and I like it because the bristles are soft. I think it would be easy to cut these and use these bristles on my own mark-making brush tool. I do have some of these that I've ordered specifically for cutting up. If you can find loose bristles, this is sheep, I believe, is what the hockey brushes are made out of. If you can find some synthetic bristles that you can make into brushes and you have a good source, great. I found that hard to find, so I just ordered a couple of paint brushes. I don't mind cutting up and we'll cut those bristles off and maybe use those. I like the hockey brush so, I thought that'd be a great bristle to experiment with. I also got a whole bunch of rubber bands. We're going to be using a bunch of rubber bands. This would be really great tied onto something like a wood skewer or something, and then these could be our mark-making element, row of rubber bands if we wanted. We could do a lot with rubber bands in addition to holding our stuff together. [LAUGHTER] I also got a piece of felt, and I thought something like this would be really cool as a dabber, we could get that on our little handle and then we could use it as some type of dabbing-type element. I was thinking the jute could be a dabbing element, so we'll see. I'm just spit-balling stuff out here. [LAUGHTER] Also at the craft store, because it's one of my little craft finds, I got a bag of feathers. One, because I can use it in photography setups. I've purposely picked colors that I thought were beautiful, that'd be able to do multiple things with. It's such a big bag that's not going to bother me to use these as mark-making tools in my art, and it was not expensive, super fun element. If you've got some bird feathers that you found outside, then that would work too. But I like just having a bag of fun colored feathers to use as props and as mark-making things, and so we'll be playing with some feathers. I also, at the art store, got pom-poms. I got different pom-poms because I'm like, all these pom-poms are different. I need them all. [LAUGHTER] I was thinking we can do different things with pom-poms. I like the variety. We could also, perhaps I'm just spit-balling here again, glue these to stick. We could glue one or we could glue a whole row and it could be a whole row of mark-making things. I'm really liking soft, fuzzy, round things. I also found some pre-cut yarn [LAUGHTER] that I could easily just take a little section of that for my mark-making elements. I went ahead and instead of buying a thinner yarn and cutting it all up myself, I was lazy and got some pre-cut yarn. Then I got this stuff which is called craft fluff. Look how fun that is. I thought that would be a really fun mark-making element. It just looks super fun. We're going to do craft fluff, possibly. Got some fun elements that I'm going to use, maybe with some brush making. Let me just set these to the side. [NOISE] We'll get to those in a minute. I also found one of these, which is different elements. It's got the fuzzy balls, got pipe cleaners, but I got it because I liked these little straws. Straws are a good choice. I got a really fun pipe cleaner package. Of course, I got pretty colors because I thought that could be a really pretty element for me to photograph as props around my pieces if I don't use all of these. Maybe I'll use one or two or some out of this package instead and this could be like the photo prop. Look at those colors. I encourage you, when you are out there looking at say like the craft store for different elements to use in your pieces, even though if you actually use it in your piece, you're going to get paint all over it, but some of these you can save for props and photography and stuff like that. Save those, get the pretty ones, get the ones that have colors that you think, "I love those", which is exactly what I did on these packages because they can have multi-purpose uses. Then one other thing that I've gotten here that I foraged from around the house is some grasp things that sprouted out of a dried arrangement in the house. I went through and just sacrificed some of them and thought how great would those be for mark-making? It really reminds me of the pieces that I got when I was outside foraging, it was that same texture. Super fun if you've got any cup of dried flowers around the house that you are willing to sacrifice a few pieces of, that would be great. I got more stuff sitting over here I forgot about. Look at here, this is shelf liner. Look at the texture on this stuff. This is, it's rubbery. You can't move stuff on it, it's the no-slip stuff. But I had a whole roll of it, so I just cut a strip of it. That was perfect. Another thing that I particularly love is corrugated cardboard. These came in packages that got delivered. You can see the packing tape here. I have two. Look at this one. This one is my favorite. I love all the yummy wavy pieces of this, but I love the straight of this. Any kind of packaging material that comes, save anything like this that looks interesting because these are amazing. I love this in some of my encaustic projects, my paint projects. I love that I can stamp it down into things or I can cover over paint and use it as a stamp or I can drag it through paint and make lines, it's got so many uses. I love having a great big piece of that because I can cut little pieces out of it and put it away, and then when this piece is so used that I feel okay, I need a new piece, I can come and cut a new piece out of it. This is just like the gift that keeps on giving. [LAUGHTER] Packing materials. This is a forager house. See what interesting, unusual things that you can pull into your mark-making that maybe you're not going to be able to find at the art store. I want you to think outside the box on this assignment. Forage your house for anything that looks like it could maybe be something interesting to make marks in your art, and then I will see you back in class and we'll make some fun stuff with this. [MUSIC] 5. Interesting Handle Options: [MUSIC] Thought I would give you some ideas for some brush handles. We can use the different things that we get with our fingers, but let's say that maybe you're working with something that you don't want all over your fingers or maybe you want a little bit of distance between you and your work, or maybe it's something that you can use over and over, then maybe consider mounting some of these on handles, whether it'd be temporarily or permanently. I thought I'd give you some ideas of different things that we could maybe use for handles. I picked up sticks and those make great handles and mark-making tools. If you get some that are thick enough, you could take your little drill bit and just drill a hole in the end of the stick and you could put your stuff in the stick and glue it in. I'm just going to be using some craft glue, some Elmer's glue, the kind that is white but it dries clear. You can use any kind of Elmer's glue for that. That's just what I'm going to be using in class. You could also use rubber bands to attach things to our sticks. Say that we don't want something permanently attached, but we want it for a couple of marks, we could use a rubber band to attach our mark-making elements to our stick, get it all situated and then just rubber band it right on, and then we're ready to go. This would be if I were wanting to use something that I know wasn't going to hold up for more than that day of me painting, I would rubber band it to my element and now I've got a stick or a holding element for that piece. I want some rubber bands and some glue as some possible attachment pieces for these. I've got a cute little tin to put my rubber bands in there and I'm ready. I also have some twine, because what if we made something really interesting, a beautiful brush that we could maybe use over and over or maybe we're using our brushes as photography props. I've got some handmade artist brushes made out of ceramic with bristles glued in. This feels like the hockey brush bristle that I showed you, it feels like the hockey brush. That's going to be a good choice for that. I may never use this brush ever. I'm going to just photograph it every chance I get and I have it hanging on my wall as a decoration because it's truly a work of art. This is a really good choice for something that we could do with our brushes and I think it's really fun if we attach a piece, then we use some pretty twine over the rubber band perhaps, and maybe put some feathers off of it and maybe we have a beautiful art piece that we don't even want to necessarily use, but maybe we'll photograph it in all our pictures with our art, so think about that. We can have some things that are utilitarian and we can have some things that are beautiful. In the beautiful realm of stuff, I've started making some plain in some paper clay and I'll show you how I made these. They might not be like the perfect artisan play piece that somebody that's been working with clay for years has done, but they're beautiful to me and there really be an element that's unique that nobody else will have that I will be able to use in photography and stuff and so I actually made several. I made a big fat piece and I used pretty stencils to make a pattern in it and the thing about paper clay is it dries in a couple of days, just air dries, and so the paper clay just came to me and I was like, I should make some handles of that stuff. I've never played with it and I want to play with it, so let's experiment with that. I got this great big piece package at Michaels and it's a 16-ounce package for about $12. It's way more expensive if you get it from Amazon. It was like eight ounces or 16 ounces for like $20, so you judge. I apologize, the mowers have showed up, but I want to show you my stuff that I got here so we'll hear some mowing maybe in the background, I'm sorry about that. I got some stencils. I molded these into what I wanted and then put some stencils in it, and then a couple of them, I actually took a paintbrush and just made a hole in the end of it so I could glue some brush material in there and that could be a brush, like the one I was showing you. We can just glue our material in there and that can be our fancy brush, and once this clay is dry, it can be painted with acrylic paint or whatever paints you have and so you can just make them beautiful. I'm excited about that and I'll show you how I make those. I made a bunch of them. We can also use popsicle sticks if you want to just have something easy that maybe we can glue stuff or attach stuff to, and I'm probably going to glue like my fuzz balls on these, and I can use the fuzz balls as something to drag across a piece, so I like that. With the paper clay, I have a dough cutter, but I think you could cut that with a knife or you could probably just pinch some off because it's pretty soft, you can just pinch [NOISE] whatever you want off. I've got some pretty stencils that I found at the Michaels. This is a stencil that I used on those fat ones and I could just wrap it right around. I looked all around the craft store for interesting things that had a raised pattern that I could use as a stencil. This is called a Sculpey Tool and these were just over there with the clay materials. They were just packages of double-sided stencils and I'm like, oh yeah, that has a lot of use, I can use that. I particularly like this one with the little crosshatches, and this one has a yummy dot pattern, and I like dots, I think I'm going to like those. Super fun for mark-making and for pressing into our clay, and so the pattern is real subtle because as you press into the clay, you're squishing the clay, but it still worked out really well. I liked that some of these have that soft little pattern, but you don't have to use those if you don't want. I just wanted to hopefully get something that I love and can use as a photo prop because can't you see some of these very interesting, maybe some brushes attached or double attached and then that being part of the photo that I take of the art that I made with some of these. [LAUGHTER] I cannot wait and hopefully you'll see some of those in the class preview photos and you'll be like, I can't wait to make that, and so that is some ideas I have for you on handles. We're going to make a few handles, we can make them pretty if we want or utilitarian, your choice. Sticks, popsicle sticks. I've got a couple of sizes of those, these are great craft sticks that you can just get whole packages of at the craft store in usually the children's crafting area. I have lots of packages of these because I use them to stir wet things like when I'm using epoxy stuff. I can still have my stirs and I can stir up paint when I'm doing fluid paints. Lots of uses, but today we're going to use them as possible handles for our mark-making tools that we create. Look around, and see what elements do you have that maybe you can use as some mark-making handles. Too, you could get something like a cheap palette knife tool, and use this end to attach things to with a rubber band. It doesn't have to all be random things that we foraged. I can use some of my art tools if I needed to. I could rubber band stuff to the end of it and that could be a handle also. I just wanted to give you ideas, things that you could look for. This is a nice tool. This is one of those things that you seal the edge of paper with. A darning tool, I think might be what it's called, I forget. Again, I could rubber band stuff too, anything like that. Just look around, and see what do you have that might be interesting as your own mark-making handles and tools. The paper clay, I'm particularly excited about, so that was something I wanted to play quite a bit with. You might consider getting a package of paper clay. The eight ounce would have been plenty for all of the brushes I created yesterday, and I'm going to create some more in class. But just to give you an example of how far eight ounces would go, pretty far. [LAUGHTER] Because I was testing the paper clay and seeing how my stencils worked, and deciding if I wanted different handles, I also happen to think which I'll probably make in class, this is about eight ounces. See how many that makes. An eight ounce little package would get you a lot, because I have half a package still left and a whole package left, to show you and to create stuff later. [LAUGHTER] I happen to think though, I made all of these to attach other things too. But I had this one that was a little bit longer, and I thought if I made some of these that came to a point, that would be a good mark-making tool also. I could have also made some of these that had different edges that I maybe cut different things out of. I could have been more creative with some of my ends, like this paintbrush has fun sections cut out of it there. I could have done something like that with the paper clay too. I could've made my own maybe bigger, flatter with some cutouts on it. I don't know. We're going to just have to get creative with the paper clay. As I'm just sitting here thinking out loud, I'm, "I could do this and I could do that." That's what I want you to do. I want you to see some of these ideas and think, "I'm so inspired, I could do this, I could do that," or whatever. See, this will be fun if I had some big, pretty squatty ones, and I had put a hole in it like I did this. Then I could've glued some stuff into the end of it, like this right here. These are still slightly soft, so it takes more than one day for this to dry. Because I made these yesterday, and they're not dry. The package says, 2-3 days possibly depending on how thick these were. Expect 2-3 days. But see how we can just slip stuff in there, and then that's going to hold our element. Whether it be raffia or whether it'd be something like a plant, or whether it'd be some brush material that we cut out of our hake brush to make that little bristles like this. [LAUGHTER] We're going to get creative, and just see what we can create in class. The paper clay is a fun option. Twigs are great option, so pickups and sticks and twigs, and whatever it is that you can find out there in the yard. Popsicle stick is another favorite for some elements that I want to create. Then just see, what can you come up with to make some of your mar- making tools? The last thing I want to show you too, as you're foraging around your house or the antique store, anywhere that you could go looking for fun things that, who knows what they were for originally, this is for yarn. I think they were spools for yarn and stuff for making clothing or cloth, or whatever. But you can find these at the antique stores pretty easily. They may be like a spool core or a spool, or yarn spool, antique yarn spool, something like that. But I've come across them a whole bunch, and so I actually have quite a large selection of these. I'd say, I probably have 10 of them. As for something that I have a bunch of, that weren't really expensive, I might consider sacrificing these to be art tools, going forward. Because a lot of my antique stuff, especially boxes and old cups and old containers, they're all art storage for me. Why not use a few of the old things as our tools? If you're out looking at the antique store, and you come across something fun like that and you think, "What can I do with that?" Well, we could use them as mark-making tools, and we could use them as elements to attach our mark-making stuff too. These actually have holes in them so we could put brush materials, some type of material in the end of it. Let's just use this as an example. Then we have a really fine brush that we could use for photographing. Could just be our photo element, or we could use it to actually use it. What's fun about this one, is there's actually paint on it, which I find fun and weird. A little bit like, wonder if somebody used this for some art something before, because I know I have not used it in art, but it wants to be an art tool. [LAUGHTER] Look around the antique store too, find anything that you're thinking that would make a fun shape or a stamp or a brush holder, a handle, whatever. Look there too. I just wanted to throw that in there, because I'm going to throw this in my box of possible handles and mark-making tools myself, since I just saw it. [LAUGHTER] I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 6. Paper Clay Handles & Tools: In this video, I thought I'd show you how I'm going to make these paper clay handles and I have a variety, I tried different links. I have several that I took a brush and made a hole in the end of it so that we could then put something in the end of that, like a brush material or fake flower material, whatever. We could put something in there if we wanted to. If it were perfectly flat, I could use that as a mark-making tool. Keep that in mind as you're making. These are still wet. The instructions do say it takes a couple of days for these to dry. Then as far as long-term mark-making tools, I would think you would just need to be careful with these and not slam them around or drop them on stuff. Then the thicker ones, I think should definitely last just fine. It's the long thin ones that I'd be really careful about. I just made different sizes and several with holes and several that I stamped in a pattern. I think the pattern, even though it's really subtle, I really think once we paint those, that pattern would just be really cool because once you make these, they can be painted with any paint you want to pain it with after they're dry. They do have to dry. Let me grab some of my stencils. Not stencils but stamps. This one is one of my favorite and it is a sculpting tool and it's an oven baked silicone mold. This is a mold and it's got some stuff that you pour into it and then you bake it and then you pop it back out and you have this. I thought that would be perfect for the clay. I took these little ones, just basically wrapped this around it and squeezed it and got a pattern on it. You can experiment with different techniques and see what works for you. You might not like a pattern at all. You can just do these with no pattern and that's fine. I also got some rubber stamps, some of these that have like a long vinyl thing on it. I also got some other stuff to use as marks, but you can maybe use these as stamps. These are over there in that clay area of the craft store. I've made all these in their drawing and I will use them to attach stuff in the end. I may use them to attach stuff on the end and have it come off of the end. Like maybe I could rubber band or glue some raphe or something or something fun to make a brush. Then these I had it in mind to make as some dabbing thing and it would be cool too. If we had it flat, we could use that as a stamp making tools. As you're making stuff, just get creative and put your thinking cap on and look around at the craft store and say, what can I find today that's interesting that I can use. I'll make sure my surface is clean. When you open the clay, you're going to cut off pieces that you can use. Then when you store the clay, if you don't use it all in one sitting, then you can store it in an airtight bag, which is what I did. This is stored overnight and the clay is still malleable and the package says that you can add a little bit of water if it starts to dry out while you're working with it. I'm using a specifically, this is called a loaf cutter. It's like a bread loaf cutter. You can use a knife. I just wanted that because it's easy and it would cut this big thing for me very easily. I think I'm going to make some more of these little [inaudible] things and a couple of these long things and just show you how I did that. You could start off by rolling it in a ball so that you've got it all mashed together and you don't have big cracks. I didn't do that as well yesterday, but you do get a better quality and you'll have like less cracks if you get it all smashed together really good. Work you're really good and then you can work it out into a shape and we're less likely to get those cracks. You just have to see experimenting like what is going to work for you. They don't have to be exact and they don't have to be perfect. I think it's more interesting if they're not perfect. Just be creative, so now I have got this squatty look and I am going to just roll that around and then squeeze it. Really let that pattern go on there. Look at that, one one turned out great and it's not perfectly perfect, but I like it. We're going to call that one good. I like it. I'm happy with that. You see how fast and easy that was to create, takes no time at all, and then set that to the side to dry for a couple of days and set it out of your way because I set these in my way yesterday and then everything I did like touched them and I'm like quit touching those, telling myself stop it. For the longer ones, I did the exact same thing and you can make these a little thicker if you want these to be thicker or longer. Just role that clay up really good so it's all squeezed in there good together and then you can start rolling that out to the shape that you would like and just work it until you get something that you love. For the end, well, say, I want to make this about this length. On the end, maybe I want to make this one that I'm going to maybe put some brush material in. I just took the end of a smaller paintbrush and as long as the brush is a little bigger than the thing I'm sticking it in, I'll get a good size hole. If you're going to be gluing material in there, then you'll need the hole to be little bit deeper, at least a quarter of an inch. If you want this to be a shape and I want to shape one, then it doesn't have to be that deep and we want to make sure that it's flat enough so that when we go to use that as a shape, it's got a flat end. Might just tap that and let it have that nice flat end. We're going to let this one be a shape one. Make as many as these as you want. I want to have some point, a pointed end, I want the leaves, a little diapers. I really love these and I can maybe attach something to the end of those. We'll look at that in our actually creating our pieces video. Then if you want to design on these bigger ones, I actually think that these long skinny ones worked really well to put a design on both sides, so these are recollections, clear stamps, and it happens to be a buffer, a variety of them. But I like these long stamps that look like this, because they're about the length of the brush I made. I can press it on two sides and then brush might not be perfectly round at that point, but look at that pretty pattern that it puts in there. I like that and you can put the pattern on one side if you like, or you can put it on two sides, you just play with that and see. Then maybe I want to make sure I didn't still got that flat end because I want that shape. You can work your shape a little bit if you need to, and then set this to the side. I'm going to do the pattern on one side, so I'm just going to have it on like that, and then when we paint it, I just think the extra decoration on there will be pretty done, you don't have to do it, but I think it's pretty. Then we're ready for that to dry, and leave it alone. Now that's thick enough where it's probably going to take a couple of days to dry. It's not going to be the one day dry because on all the ones that I made yesterday, they're not a 100 percent dry. It's like they're dry on one side but not necessarily dry on both sides. Keep that in mind. The other thing I was thinking and let's just go ahead and make some while we're thinking it. May be, we could do some mark making tools that are flatter and have maybe some shapes cut out of it. Let's just see, let's just play here. I've got a metal ruler that's got like a sharp edge, like a knife. I could've use this to cut that clay a nice little ruler like that would've done good. I should have thought of that. Well, I like having a dough cutter. Alright, so let's get that really worked in. You don't want to work these two too long because this clay dries out, but if it dries out we can come back and add a little bit of water and moisten it back up and then it will work good for you again, so just keep that in mind. But what do I want to make here? If you want to use something to help you flatten it out without your fingerprints being in it, you could try something to flatten it out. Maybe I want this shaped like almost a rainbow shaped, flat or maybe so that I have a handle. Paper clay is fine. If you've ever had an interest in anything like making things with clay or whatever, this is the perfect time to experiment. Let's just use this flat thing to see. Flattened that's fun. I was almost thinking, once we get this flat enough that we could use one of these as some type of a shape spreader. If you're not getting a flat enough edge, you can use something like this to cut that. Maybe we can come through and just create a design, and this could be something unique mark-making, whatever, that's going to be just ours, but maybe wondering if I've got something thin Exacto knife over here. Might have to get an Exacto knife out. But what if we cut some of these out? Now we have a tool where we can make a cool pattern from the clay that's left and again, don't get stuck on it being perfect. Our goal is just to make interesting mark making tools for ourselves. It's not something we're making for anybody else. But look at that, like now I have a toothy mark making tool. That's pretty cool. Don't get stuck on it just being round handles. Now we've got something that's really fun, look at here we can even maybe try one of the use of flowers on it. I think I'll try that again. I didn't press very hard. Look at that. Now that just became very fun. I could try that on the top, if we do it like right here, we could try something like a box, squish it on it. Of course, I squished some of the pattern off of this side, but that's pretty on that side. This makes sure we got an edge that's going to make a mark, and look that fun little tool, like a little comb, like something that we made. Don't just think handles, think mark-making shapes and tools too, super fun. Exacto knife might be handy for that. To get some nice shapes cut out. Then if you're looking at it and you really do want it to be a little bit nicer on the spot so you cut it out. You can maybe just go back with the edge of a brush and smooth that out, like that. You could work it a little bit. I just wouldn't overwork it and don't get hung up on the overall look of the tool, but see some of these tools I want to use as photo props. That might be a cool photo prop once it's dry and I paint it, and then maybe it's just sitting there as part of my toolbox of stuff as I'm photographing a finished piece of artwork, so I'm loving that. Let's use that over there, and then I wanted one of these that does something like this but comes even more to a point and then I could use it to draw in. That might be fun. 7. Clay Tools Continued: Maybe we'll cut off another piece of this and make a long round one. Since I haven't made one of those yet. You can put a little bit of water in here if we feel like we need it. Then I'm going to get that work done in my hand. [LAUGHTER] Then start rolling it out. Now I guess I did make one long one. [LAUGHTER] Already forgetting what I've made today. [LAUGHTER] I've noticed too, as I'm picking these up, I'm looking if they're not completely dry, they're malleable. I don't want them to be super crooked, so I'm careful in touching some of those. They might be drying with a little curvature just because it's a long skinny shape too, you never know. It's just trial and error with some of this, get creative. Think outside the box. [NOISE] Have a little bit of fun. Have fun painting and decorating these, and then there we go. Just getting that edge coming down, which we may be creating an edge that breaks when we try to use it, but that break is something interesting. So there we go. It might not keep a sharp point as we're using it and pushing it on artwork. I thought it'd be interesting to at least have something with a point and now I've got that. I touched this. I didn't mean to. [LAUGHTER] I'm just going to rub some water in it and some of these will crack. The side of the package says if you get a crack and you really need to fill it in, you can fill it in with some more crack clay and let that dry. I'd probably recommend a little bit of water when you're doing that to do that. It says that you can do that, you can fill the cracks, but I don't really care if this crack. If I have this crack on here on the bottom, that's probably because the two pieces of clay that I squished together weren't quite squished as good as it could have been. As far as a very interesting tool that I can use, it's fine. So now we've made a long one, doesn't have to be perfect. We've made a long one with a stencil and a hole in the bottom that we're going to use as a stamp. I've also made lots of them with longer, bigger holes so that I can glue some brush material down in there if I wanted to. I have some of these two that I can just use to attach some material to it and have it come off the end. Lots of little variations here. This one I'm particularly excited about is the little cone tool that we made. That would be particularly unique to you because you could have your own weird shaped teeth and can be really pretty painted and used as a photography prop. Then little fat guys, those are some of my favorite because I can attach something on the end and we can have dabbers and things like that. Or in the case of like I did this one here, we could actually put a hole in the bottom of this and it could also be a shaper. Before it dries now that I've thought about it, we could let this be a stamp of something, it could be a circle, it could be whatever shape you want to make it. If we have an indention at the bottom and we make sure the bottom is flat. That can be a shape that we stamp into our pieces. Think of those two shapes that you might want to have stamps. They're weird shape but [LAUGHTER] it's something. [LAUGHTER] Really if I had something like maybe this would be better like the bottom of this ink pen, that would be the right size. So there we go. That's a better stamp maybe. You have a little time to play. We've got a little bit of a stamp on the bottom of that one. After a bit, it's not going to be really malleable and you're just most likely to break it. We're going to let those do their little dry thing. Then once you have your clay, if you've used it all, great. If you get the little eight-ounce package, definitely use it all. If you get the bigger package and you want to save the clay and work with it a little bit later, seal it in a plastic bag and try to get all the air out. Then I actually double sealed it just to try to get the air [LAUGHTER] away from it. It did last overnight, but once you open it, that's not going to last forever. I'd say probably plan on using it fairly quickly. If you're just going to make a nice little selection of brushes, the eight-ounce one will make quite a lot of brushes. I made all of these yesterday with half of that 16-ounce package and I got all of these out of there. The eight is definitely a lot of clay. Look at all of these that I got. You could do a bunch with one eight-ounce package. I can't wait to use some of these. These I actually need to finish drawing. I may go ahead and start making stuff with them before they're completely dry [LAUGHTER] because I don't want to film my class while I'm inspired. [LAUGHTER] The really wet ones that we just created, I'm definitely going to set those out of my way so that they can actually dry. I can't attach anything to it while it's this wet. While they're mostly dry, I can attach something to that. I could conceivably use it if I really wanted to take my time on them though, I could let it finish drawing. I can paint this white or whatever, and that'll give it a really good protective surface that art material then won't soak into like inks and stuff. It won't soak in, it will sit on the surface, which is fun. These are art-making materials and so I might want stuff to get on it. I don't know. You just decide. [LAUGHTER] You make these and you'd love them, then you can make some prettier ones. So can't wait to see what handles that you make in the clay if you decide to make some of those. I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 8. Putting Together Our Tools: Let's go ahead and start making some tools, and that way, we'll get your creative juices flowing. We can then start looking at art that we want to create with some of these tools because once we make these tools, I want to practice with the tools. Let's start making some of our tools. One of the things that I was thinking I would like is to maybe have some of these cotton, these little fuzz balls. Maybe have some of those as some art-making or something I can drag through like a drag tool maybe. I was thinking that just on a Popsicle stick would be a really nice way to have these to be able to drag stuff. I'm just going to take my craft tool and start gluing some stuff down and setting it to the side and letting it do its thing. Doesn't really matter the color of ball that we're using because obviously we'll be sticking that into paint or ink or whatever and dragging it. But go ahead and make it, so it's something that you could use. Glue it down, set it to the side. These are a little bit possibly disposable because once you use these, you might consider making some of these brushes for a collection or an idea that you have in mind and maybe making a couple because once you use these, that might not be usable again with dried paint all over it, and you may not be able to actually wash this. Not all the tools that you create are going to be permanent tools that you can continue to use, but I'm going to do a little fuzzball one. I really wanted to do some dabbers, and I'm thinking that this material is some good dabbing material. I'm going to make it enough material that I could rubber band it on my piece here. I'm going to cut a pretty good size square, don't have to be perfect unless you're trying to make something pretty that maybe you're going to use to photograph stuff. I've got enough a little pom-poms here, then I'm going to use a pom-pom as my center. If I can get one of these pom-poms open. There we go. You can use cotton balls or stuff like that. I don't want this to necessarily be permanent because again, this might be something that's a little more disposable. I got my rubber bands here. But just because it's not permanent, doesn't mean it can't be pretty, so I'm not going to glue this on here because I want to keep using this. But I want that to be the center of that dabber, and then going to rubber band these on with a little bit of a rubber band so that it's pretty-ish, and now this is our dabber. If you wanted this to be pretty enough to photograph, we could then take a little bit of some pretty twine, and we could put some twine around that. Where's the end of this twine? Here we go. If you wanted it to be something that's pretty in a picture, you could then take some twine and tie that off and then that's much prettier, and we could use it as a photo prop, but we still have not permanently attached this. It's good, we could use it. Now that's our dabber. We could have trimmed up these edges, but we've made it pretty enough that we could photograph and do stuff with it. I've got something to dab and mix blots with. That's what I was feeling, I wanted to be able to do with those, some type of fun dabby stuff. That's the one choice. I've got these fun yarn pieces. Let's go ahead and see how we can do the yarn. I think I'm going to attach these to a handle. Because this is again, a more temporary end, it's not an end I'm going to be able to easily wash out and use over and over. A lot of these are just not the same as if I were using a brush that I could wash in the sink. But let's say I wanted something flimsy and floppy that I could do stuff like that, you can decide how much of that yarn do you need. You see why I like this package of these pre-cut edges because now I didn't have to cut all these pieces the exact size. I do like when I can find things that make these types of projects just a tiny bit easier. I think what I'm going to do is go ahead and rubber band some of these together so that I'm not fighting with them. These rubber bands, man, look at that, they just stretch and stretch and stretch. That's pretty cool right there. Then if I have one of these that is hard enough, I could then poke that up through the edge. I feel like if I do that though, I might bend my clay that's not completely dry, so do be careful. Look, that worked great. Just slide it right down on as carefully as you can. You can see my tip is poking out right there, and now I have a fun little moppy brush that I can make some fun lines and marks out of. You can just play with your pieces then. If you've got any that are hanging out, and you can't figure out where it is, you can trim them. Now we have a little yarn mop brush. I saw some long leather pieces at the Michael's when I was there. I could too, now that I'm thinking about it, make it pretty with a little piece of twine. I did see too, some pretty pieces of leather, that would make good floppy pieces like that. The leather you probably could wash paint off of and reuse it again. The yarn is a one-time use, so I don't want to permanently attach it to my holder, but now I have a holder, and I'm not trying to wrestle all those pieces of yarn, super fun. Here we go. Look at this, it's like that wool that they make pictures out of, and I thought that this could be another kind of dabber, or I don't know, I'm thinking dabber. That's really cool. Some of your ideas will say it could be even like something that we attach, and it's in a drags things. It could be something that drags ink across. How fun is that? This reminds me of the little troll hair, in a little troll dolls that were around when you were a kid, or at least they were around when I was a kid. What looks like little troll hair. How fun is that? We could cut a couple of pieces, we can rubber band that and we can have some thing to drag something through. I actually like the very first one even better than that piece I just cut, but that's okay. Again, I cut rubber band this to my little fat stumpy piece I created. This is again, this is more of a onetime use material. It's not going to be one of those that we can use over and over. But we can attach it with a rubber band, and now we've got some weird, let's drag something through mark-making brush, which might be fun for some abstract stuff. I don't know, we got that one there. This other stuff, you know, as you're working, you might think of some other uses for this stuff, so don't put it away when you're done with it. I also liked these fuzz balls. This was another I thought would be really good as a mark making tool. I just might go ahead, and glue that down. I could glue 1, I can glue 15 doesn't really matter, but it might be nice as a mark-making tool. Let's just go ahead and get one of those ready. What do we got here? I've got all of that. Now another handle that we could be using an all this is our sticks. Don't forget the sticks that you got depending on what you want to use as a mark-making thing with the sticks like, we could attach some great feathers to the sticks. We could use the feathers on their own. We don't have to attach it to a stick, but some of these, we could go ahead and attach to a stick and we have a little bit longer working arm. Some of these are really fuzzy. Feathers make great mark-making tools because they've got the stiff inner their part of the feather, and then they've got the pretty feather part of the feather, and some of these are extra fuzzy. Some of these are nice, and stiff. Different mark-making that we can do. We can attach one or several to a stick to get some mark-making interest here if we wanted. Look at all this fun stuff, then these two would be some really pretty off hangings on like a pretty piece that you created. Maybe you want it to be nice and photogenic so we can attach some feathers off of one of our longer handle things if we had the right end on it. Just something to keep in mind. Feathers are fun and we can be really creative with what we do with our feather brushes. I really loved that one. Again, you can either use a piece of twine, little piece of rubber band. I know a rubber band might be a little harder. Let's just go ahead and see if I can get that over may after. That's all right. There we go. Then we have a little feather on the end of our thing pretty. Different fun things that we can use on our pieces, and different things that we can use to hold our sticks. I've got, several different fuzz balls. I like these because they have these little pieces that come off like these longer a little pieces, which is a completely different mark than the other two fuzzball things that we have there. Let's go ahead and we'll make stick with this fuzzball on it. I mean, we could pick these up and dab them, but then you're going to be getting paint all over yourself and might be easier to control being able to do that. But we can always use our fingers so you don't have to attach these to a stick if you don't want. Just choices. Then the feathers might be particularly pretty coming off with something like this as a decoration on these, especially photographing. Like look how pretty this would be on there for our photo. Then if we had some type of brush material in the end. Let's just get our hockey brush. I'll I have to get some more of these. I'm going to recommend if you get a brush like this and you're wanting to cut a brush up like I'm doing use a rubber band to help you out to keep these together. I mean, I might want to get like this much of that. If I decide that that's how much I need, I'm going to rubber band that much off of here. So that rubber band can hold all that together for me maybe. Then I might take my exact dough knife, and very carefully with a very sharp knife, just work my way through these. Be super careful if you're going to use an exact dough knife, you could try that with little scissors , might be easier. Then we've got some that are coming out, we can just go ahead and cut these because I'm not going to fight with these little bristles. Cutting these over here over the garbage can, so I don't have all these little flyaway hairs on everything like I just did. Then what we could do is then we could, I have actually seen this done with like a piece of paper. Wonder where I've got a little piece of paper. Well, let's just use whatever this is. Wrap it around like pretty good there. Then you use that to help you guide your brush into your hole, and then you can remove the little piece of paper. Seen it done with like a V-shaped thing like this, more like this. I may have too much brush here with us. The thing I saw was metal, but we can use this to reign in a rush. Of course, I reign in every side with the side, and then our brushes in there we can pull the paper out. If you want it permanent, I've used enough brush where it went in. Mostly could probably use this exact dough knife to get the rest of it in. Then if it's, enough brush, we could take the rubber band off, and then there's our brush. This is a shorter one. I could definitely get some longer bristles to do this. But I put a little bit of glue in there and then I would stick the brush and if I wanted to permanent. But this one option, look how fun that is. If you don't want to pull the rubber band off, we can just cut the rubber band off. Then we could pull any flyways out. Then anything that you've got as a sprig that's not quite where you want it, just trim it with your scissors. Then you have your own unique little brush there. This was probably too big a handle. I probably should've stuck that in one of my little brushes. But how cool is that? Then if we really wanted to get fancy, we can add some feather decoration and use some of our pretty twine and just have it pretty. But this is pretty by itself. Another thing I like about these is they've got these lines. Those lines might make some pretty lines in our piece. That's pretty cool. That's probably how I would make all my brushes. I would work them in with a little piece of paper, and then pull any extra little hairs off a little bit of glue down in your little stump there, and then trim it to the shape you need. Once you get it in there. Super fun. That's some good ideas that I have for you for attaching some of the things that you're going to be finding around the house, or out in the yard. Just some ideas for you on how to make these usable in your art. Some old stoppers, a feather, some fun fuzz. Just see what can we create with some of these fun mark-making things that we've now come up with. I hope you have fun creating your handles and then attaching random weird things to it to come up with things that are going to be very uniquely you. Don't forget, raffia could be a fun floppy handle so I could have definitely done that. That could be fun and floppy. Then attached to a handle that would be really cool. Think outside the box, look at the different handles you got, and think how can I attach that little rubber bands are very handy. Glue if you need it to stick down good, or you want it to be something that's permanent, and then we'll just see what you've come up with. 9. Cool Feather Brush: I made a pretty little feather rod, and I thought I'd show you real quick how I did it because it's so easy, I know you're going to want to make a couple of these. I've got one of these where I have a hole in the end, and I picked enough feathers to stick into the end. For this pretty decoration, and I could've painted it before I did this, but I went ahead and did not paint it, but I have some of this cording. I got it over there in the beading section of the craft at Michaels, the craft area. I cut a length of the cord. You can be a little more exact, but I don't want to hold you forever here. I decided where I wanted that cording to start down here, and I want this to be a little longer and hanging up there, and then I started to wrap my handle with the cording. I did this one after I did the feathers but [LAUGHTER] if you'll do it before you do the feathers, the feather part really is the easiest and it's not permanent, so when you use the feathers and you're like, okay, I can't use these feathers anymore, you can replace the feathers because we're not going to glue the feathers in. [NOISE] I stopped for the little dog is barking because the UPS man showed up and he brought my new little hake brushes, and I thought these would be good for cutting my bristles out, but now that I got it, this might be a really fun painting and mark making tool. It's different than something that I normally use. I'm going to put this in my heck, yeah, pile. [LAUGHTER] They brought this stuff that looks like a broom, and I thought, oh yeah, mark making fun stuff. A little weird. Also that means if you're out looking at the grocery store, look at all of the different options and things like that or if you've got an old broom, broom bristles, great for mark making. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, when you get to the top, tie these two pieces off together and then we can cut this. I'm not worried about it raveling because I'm then going to take a little bit of my craft glue and put the glue right across the top because this glue dries clear and I don't mind that the glue will be there. That will dry clear and then this will be like the permanent decoration on this brush. Then to make it this pretty feather brush, I do not put glue down in there. I went ahead and pulled feathers out of the feather basket here. Some of these have great ends on them for mark-making. Look at that. I pull enough feathers out where I could at least get a variety that were the same length, and I started setting these in here. Once you get enough feathers stuffed in the hole, they hold each other in there. You don't have to glue it in and you don't have to do anything else. Once you get enough in there, it's stable and we're good to use this as a mark making tool. You might let that glue dry first. But, yeah, you can stuff the hole with feathers, and once you get enough in there, it's firm. Then we've got a great mark making tool. I thought I'd show you that since I made one and I loved it so much. [LAUGHTER] I liked the feathers and how easy is that, so I can't wait to see some of your feather mark tools. Then when the feather is used and you can use it again, you pull it out and put a new feather in there. I love that. All right, I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 10. Mark Testing: Let's test out some of our marks. I'm going to be using some acrylic inks. Some Some these will work good with thicker paint. Some of them will work good with thinner paints. Some of these you're going to do and think, oh, not quite what I thought, but let's just get some ink out here and see what we're going to get. These are the brushes that we just made in that brush video. I also took a little skewer and put some rubber bands on it, and I thought that might be a cool way to make marks. Let's just see. Oh, look at that. Oh my goodness. Now that's a fun mark. It might not look like a lot, but it is. You can always paint on something and drag these through and also, so I'm going to use these as trying to get like a little bit of a mark and see what we get, but some of these might be better as a stamping it into paint tool or get a little bit of the ink on, say, a bigger piece of it. Look at that. We could do that right there. I like that or maybe we use it as a stamp. Look at that. Oh my goodness, I do love corrugated cardboard. Let's see stamps. Oh, look at that. Definitely get yourself some boxes. Oh, yeah, I love that right there. Favorite tools right here. This was that shelf liner stuff. Let's just see what we get. Oh, yeah, dots. Oh, I love things that make dots. You can be a little more careful with it than I am, but I'm filling dots. Bubble wrap. I don't think I've mentioned bubble wrap before, but I opened a drawer and there it was. Keep some bubble wrap, and let's just see oh, let's be a little softer with it. Look at the bubble wrap. I'm loving all that, and then once you see some things that you're like, that's a favorite mark like this. Cardboards, the dot thing, the rubber band, weirdly enough, the rubber band thing, you want to do some of these. Once you get the ones that you love, set those to like one side. You see, I love that right there. We can also use the skewer. This one happens to be broken, but that's okay, can be a mark-making tool too. Look right there. Oh, I like that, skewers. I have a little mini skewers, but you can also get the big skewers at the grocery store because they are in the area where maybe their are picnic supplies and stuff because you're making [inaudible] so go over there and get a package of those big long skewers. They work just as good. I feel like I found these skewers at the grocery store too but I don't remember. It's been several years, but there's like a whole package of them. It's like there maybe hors d'oeuvres is what these were for. I'm sure that's probably what those are. Hors d'oeuvres sticks. This was my favorite section because maybe you'll be able to reuse it and maybe you won't, and you want to be able to say, oh, yeah, look at that. Even though I've got this on one of my sticks, the raffia, look at that, I might like it better with more control. Keep that in mind. That's a nice fun mark-making thing. When you find stuff you like, set that to the I like it side. When you find stuff that you're like oh, not really what I thought. Then set that to the not what I thought side. Look at the yarn. That's super cool and I think I can keep using that because it didn't really cover all my paint. Onetime use may not mean just one time. It may mean many times and then you eventually need to swap out the yarn. Good to know. A feather, let's see with the feather does. Let's drag a feather through. Let's see, right there that's fun. Oh, look, I got some really nice fine lines with the feather. Feathers are fun. We can get all fine lines so the feather is good. All of these are my favorite so far. Let's start on another piece of paper. You could be really fancy and tape this off into squares and do the mark in each square and write what that mark was, what you used like your corrugated paper, you could have done a box of that, and right underneath, that's what you use there and be a little more exact about it because then you could use this as a mark-making reference guide and you can remember what tool made that mark. I do recommend that even though that's not how I started out, I really wanted to just dive in and start playing, but if you go ahead and divide this off, you can then do each mark. Look at that in its own square and then right underneath what that was, I used a fuzzball with the little shiny parts sticking further out. This one's more like, I don't know, a yarn ball. Oh, look how fun that one is. Let's try this one. That's interesting. That one's not my favorite. We're going to put that in the not my favorite side but it may be your favorite. Don't let me influence you there. This was just the plastic twiggy thing, and that's okay. It makes some interesting, fine marks. Maybe not my favorite, but it could be your favorite. Let's try this weird, fuzzy stuff. Oh, look at that. That's interesting. We can get some interesting drag marks out of that. I'm actually liking the buzz stuff, and because you only get the paint on a little bit, we could probably keep cutting paint out and use that for a very long time. Just some little tips is we're going there. Let's see what the little dabber does. Look at that, unexpected. Totally unexpected. I expected it to cover the whole thing and just make a black, like just a plop. But that strategically made something pretty. I like that. Once you're like, yes, I love this, set that on your I love it side, or no, I don't love it, set the on the I don't love it side and then you'll know, I did love that, let me put that on there I love it side, then you'll know, okay, I didn't like the plastic thing, I probably won't do that again, the fuzzball stripe. It was okay, but not my favorite, so I probably won't do that again. If you want to be more exact and cut these into little squares or tape it off into little squares and then put each mark in their square right where that mark was, that is a really good way to do it because then you'll remember, oh, yeah, this was the fun pink thing, or oh, yeah, this was the feather, or oh, yeah, this was the dabber, you'll know which one made that mark so that when you're ready to create your abstracts or whatever it is you're creating, you'll remember what created that mark. These are super fun and you'll think, what was that? Then you'll go, oh, yeah, that was this. I don't remember now. This is why that's good, because tomorrow you'll be like, what made that mark? No. I have to watch this video again and see what made that mark. I do recommend if you really like some of these, make your own little cheat sheet as to what each one one these does, and then you'll know shelf liner made these cool dots, or corrugated cardboard made whichever thing that you liked. I really liked these lines, or this corrugated cardboard that made these lines with the little jetting piece out of there that was real pretty. Then it made these lines that were real cool. You'll remember what those were. I liked the rubber band thing on this skewer. I like the skewer marks. We've got a lot of ones that we love. Once you figure out which ones you love, these are the ones that we could then go and try out in an abstract piece. Play with the pieces that you made. I'm going to get our nature pieces so that we can see what marks those make. Let's set these to the side, and let me grab those, and I'll be right back. All right, I got some of our men, our foraged stuff, not man-made stuff, our foraged stuff. I want to see how some of these make marks. I've put my favorites in a little tin over here, so I can be like, here's my favorite pile that I want to use to make some abstracts with. Because after we make these tools, I want you to practice with the tools. I might take a rubber band with this raft here, because I remembered that I really liked as I was pulling stuff out, one of those I really liked was, this thing of the raft here, which might be real raft and it might not. It was something on a plant in my house. This is something I picked up outside. We could take a rubber band and go ahead and just get some of this stuff banded together. Cut off the edge and this could be our mark maker. I've got that. Also, that out of the way, like the ends of this hay stuff. Those could be our mark maker. I liked the little sweet gumballs, which normally in life I think they are product of the devil, but in art might be fun. Let's just see what these look like. Again, if you want to really be organized, tape your paper off into squares, use each thing in a square and decide, do you love it, do you not? You'll remember how it is that you got that particular mark. I could keep all those on there, but I want to see what I get without them. Look at that. That's some very interesting marks. Yes, I still like that pile, because it's just like that other one. Look at this green tree, whatever it is. That almost looks like that raft here, and because this is wilting, it might be something you have to grab fresh and use right away. Good observations. Let's just see what these look like. We could do with this, maybe use them as a draw. Look at that, yes. These are nice as a random abstract drawing marks, because the ink is picking up on several of the big edges there, and it's better than just a single line. Super fun, I like those. We'll put that in our like pile. The end of the wheat thing, it's good for a drag mark making tool. It's okay. Pine cone. Not so even, so it's harder to pick up on enough spaces that are going to draw. If we pulled that out of here, look here, we can pull up. I did not get enough of a piece there. Here we go. Maybe we could use these little pieces. Look at that. Now I do like that, I broke the tip off. If I still had the tip there, I could get some nice sharp edges drawn. Super fun. Maybe I can get one of these off. This is a very dry pine cone, it's apparently been sitting there all winter. Good, this one's still got the tip on it, and maybe that can be used as a writing utensil. I love that. For the pine cone, I like the individual pieces as a drawing utensil. There we go. Now we know, and here's a different pine cone. But I think I'm going to feel the same, but you could try out more than one pine cone to see what you get. I like it as a drawing tool. Then I've got some of these pieces of wood. Those could be an interesting drawing maybe. I wouldn't say that's my favorite. That's some of the natural stuff. Then I also got some twigs, hang on, with a bunch of edges, and these could be like a random draw tool. I don't know, paint might need to be a little thicker for that to work, but I could drag this through some paint on my piece. That could be a drag it through the paint tool. We'll keep that for drag it through the paint tool. Then once we have tested out all the ones that we like and we have a like pile, we're ready to make some abstract. Let's make some abstract art with these. Then no matter what it is that you create, it's going to be something very unique and individual to you. That makes me very exciting. I hope you are enjoying making and searching out different mark-making things, and I can't wait to see what tools you end up liking and using, and let's make some art. 11. Gathering From Your Art Supplies & House: [MUSIC] We have talked about foraging outside and foraging the art stores and stuff, and making some of our own yummy brushes and stuff. Now I want to talk about foraging the art store, or your art supplies, or your kitchen because, you can make a mark with just about anything. But what the goal is, is to find the things that really speak to you, and make some marks that you find particularly interesting. Over the years, I've collected all art-making tools that live up here in my art room. If you pull anything out of your kitchen, like a fork or a spoon or something like that, then definitely make those art only uses. Don't get your good forks, and use those as a mark-making tool, or invest in plastics, silverware, and keep those in your art room. You don't know how many times playing an art things, I have found the need for especially a spoon. I bought a nice set of plastics silverware, that just lives up here. Then when I need a spoon or fork or a knife, then I happen to have it up here, so get a nice quality of those. These are good for stirring paints, they're good for stirring epoxy materials, if you're going to pour resin on things, and they're good for mark-making. Search the kitchen for or get plastic knives, and spoons, and forks. I also like from the kitchen, silicone spatulas, and I have some spatulas that just live in my art room. I don't take them back to the kitchen. Once you use these for art supplies, they are art related only. Don't go make food with them. [LAUGHTER] But these are really great for working with lots of things. You can spread paint, you can make marks, they're great for encaustic work, they're great for resin projects, where you're spreading resin around. They've got lots of uses, and you can see this has still got some type of art material, probably encaustic wax on it that's dried. They're easier to clean because they're silicone, stuff comes right off of them and kitchen spatulas work great. Raid the kitchen, but if you pull things out of the kitchen, don't put them back in the kitchen. Another thing that works just as good as those from the art store, are this Master's touch and these catalyst wedges. I particularly like different wedges and things to paint with. [NOISE] It's fun to paint with something nontraditional, something that's not a paintbrush, to really get unique looks to your work. The catalyst wedges are really cool, because they come in different sizes and they got lots of angles, and straight, and some different options. This master touch ones are really fun. They're silicone, paint comes right off of them, they look like a paintbrush, but they're rubber, so I've had fun with these quite a bit. As far as the rubbery things go, this is another catalyst wedge, you've got lots of options there. This is a silicone bowl scraper by Messermeister, I think is the name of that. Could be off, but look for silicone bowl scrapers on Amazon, or on the Internet, or at the kitchen store. See not everything in art supply use comes from the art store. This is the absolute best wedge for painting with oil, and coal wax product. You see, I've got lots of paint on here. This has got lots of use. It's silicone, the paint wipes right off of it. I could go back and clean this off if I wanted. It hadn't been as important as keeping the edge clean for me. [LAUGHTER] But it's one of my very favorite tools for spreading and manipulating my oil paint and coal wax mixtures, when I paint with those. You can get some other spreaders. I think this might have been from the art store. This might be bowl scrapers too, I don't know, but this one is my favorite. This one has had a lot of use, but it's not my favorite, the catalyst. Keep in mind, not all art stuff comes from the art store [LAUGHTER]. These are from the jelly plate manufacturer, maybe, or it's called jelly arts. I don't know who makes it. Maybe, it's not jelly plate, but what I really like about them, is that siliconey feel. They're great for mark-making. Look at the edge of some of these. They've got different edges to scrape, paint and create pattern. I love having different scrapers like these. I also have some older ones, that I got from the Ranger company. I don't know if they still sell these or not but any edge scrapers that create a pattern, those are super fun for mark-making. Now, I can just come and pull something interesting, and look at all the choices that you get, when you get a little package of mark-maker's like that, super cool. Another favorite thing that you might not think of as a mark-maker, is a mechanical pencil. It's one of my very favorite things to draw and scribble and make lines in paint or add decoration. A mechanical pencil is super fun for making art with. I use this in all stuff. It's one of my favorite pieces, so that would go in my favorite box. If you start practicing with some of these and you think, "Whoa, that's my favorite." Put those in your favorite box. I've already started collecting things here in the box, that we've already forged and looked for, and this would definitely go in that box. Another fun thing, are some of these little brushes that have little mark-making ends. These are Jane Davenport. It's a little sad that came from the craft store basically. I also saw a set of these, and I thought I'm going to get those. The other day when I was at the craft store at Michaels, looking at clay tools, because I wanted something interesting. I was looking for a scraper or something and I thought, look at those, and they had a whole set of five or six of these. They were cream colored, not this pretty teal. I thought I need to get those. Then I saw something else, and I got distracted and I didn't go back to it. I think I'm going to definitely make a trek back to the craft store, for more of these, because this one that looks like a comb is one of my favorite. I love using that one, which by the way, if you have a fine tooth comb for combing your hair, that would be a great mark-making tool also. [NOISE] Moving right along, you can see here, I've got lots of fun, palette knives. Those are fantastic for painting with, and making marks with. I love that they come in all of these yummy shapes. You can also get a collection similar to those little paint brushes I just showed you, that have mark-making ends, instead of a regular end. That's really fun for dragging paint through. These are called FX-effects. FX-effects is what these are called. They come as a whole set, so you'd have several of these, [NOISE] in that collection. I think I got a gigantic collection, because I have a whole bunch of these really big ones, [NOISE] and a whole bunch of these that make marks. I think it was a package of two different things, like this, and it came with all these fun shapes. But, if you have one of these silicone spreaders, that I was showing you earlier, it's the same thing. These are doing the same thing basically. Some of them may be a little different than the ones I already have, but they may be the exact same. I'm just all and overkill, I want all the options. [LAUGHTER] Another thing I want to show you, let's move some of these out of the way, are these super fun little things, and these are from the auto store. They are seam rollers, for sound deadening material, that you install into a car, apparently. But they're the coolest thing ever. I think I first discovered this when I was taking a gene all over art class. But I freaking love them. I got a whole set of these three off Amazon, and they were not very expensive at all. They were $17 for the set of three, which [LAUGHTER] that's fantastic, because these are heavy-duty, and will last you your whole art life [LAUGHTER]. We can make a pattern with it, we can drag this through wax, you can do a lot with those. Another thing too, that you could look at, rollers. These are ink rollers for printing in stuff, so that's super cool. I also like dip pens. This are great for mark-making. You can dip them in ink and make marks, or you can drag them through paints. I really love a dip pen, and that gets lots of use. Clay tools. This clay tool that looks a little bit like a mini ice pick. [LAUGHTER] I don't know if you remember ice picks or not, dating myself there, but when I was a kid we had ice picks, and so that looks like a little tiny ice pick. But it's a clay tool, and that little ice pick end, is my favorite for dragging marks through paint and stuff that's wet, so super fun. I have several of these apparently. I do like this. This one has the plastic tip still on it. But clay tools are super cool, because you can see all the little edges, and things that you can drag through paint. But it's also great, for making marks and doing things, when you like to do encaustic wax, which is why I have these. Then look at this fun thing with a brush on each end. That would be really great for making marks, making a pattern, maybe splatter paint. Lots of good uses there. That's an awl. It's one of those things that you poke holes on paper. [LAUGHTER] Again, another ice picky looking thing that would make great marks. [LAUGHTER] This is a cutter. Got a couple of spoons in here. Clay tools, this little fun thing. This is a clay tool, but you can find this in the grilling section for different grill brushes and things, that you can get bigger ones of this. That'd be great for mark-making, and it's just got some fun shape to it. I love that. I keep all these little tools together. I want you to look around your art room, your art supplies, and gather everything that might be interesting for marks, including some paint brushes. Look at these. This is the FX-effects brush collection. I just want to hog wild with those FX-effects. But look at all the shapes, that these come in. They make different effects because the brushes are cut, different links and shapes. How fun is that? [NOISE] Hunt your art room, hunt the art store, [NOISE] get some spoons and forks, super fun. Spatulas or catalyst wedges, love those. This pair of auto rollers, definitely super fun. Then let's take some of these, and make some marks with it, and see what we can get. [MUSIC] 12. More Mark Testing & Ideas: [MUSIC] So I've just pulled out a random little high flow paint so that I can put some out and see what different effects that we can get. So maybe I want to use a catalyst wedge. Look at that. Maybe I want to spread some paint and we could see if any of our little wedges would drag through. That's fun. See, we get a good pattern if we use this. I also want to, let's get some paint on one of these auto rollers. Not too much, so I don't want it so much that, look at that. See, that's super fun. I love the auto rollers. That's a purchase that [LAUGHTER] I will always appreciate. [NOISE] Then I'll just wipe those off, [NOISE] wash them under the sink. If I've used acrylic paint, just move those through the paint. [NOISE] See, super fun right there. I'm in love with these little auto rollers. [NOISE] These are worth making a trip to the AutoZone or getting them online and seeing what fun stuff that we can get. I love spreading paint with different spatulas, look at that. Then we can use them as the end for tips like that. [NOISE] Some of these are better for dragging through paint and getting an effect that way. Look at that. See, look at those. [NOISE]. See that thing right there, personal favorite, I love that. You can also use these spatulas for spreading paint. These are really nice for doing large abstracts. So that would be super fun. I like any wedge. Any type of pencil or marker, I particularly love scribble in my artwork, especially starting off a piece, I like to scribble to start the page off so it's not blank anymore. Scribble is one of my favorite ways to do that. So definitely pull out all your pencils and pens and mark-making and anything that you could use to create some interesting marks and lines. Those are fun. Another mark-making thing that I love are some micron pens. Those are super fun for mark-making, drawing, doodling, scribbling, anything like that. Love it. Micron, I liked the O5 and you can get different sizes and that. Also one of my favorite mark-making things is this gigantic piece of graphite. Super fun. Great for scribble. Love that right there. [NOISE] Yes. Another thing that I really love, and I know I've got a box of them over here. Let me get this box open, are my paint pens. My Posca paint pens, my most favorite tool for mark-making. I love acrylic paint pens. These are good for drawing, doodling, dot making, and I really particularly love making dots. So most favorite art supply in my whole room probably are some of my paint pens. Then I really like for mark-making especially, some of my pencils and my crayons. So crayons, so I like the ink tints Derwent pencils because they're nice and vibrant [NOISE]. On top of that, they are water-soluble. Let me just grab a paintbrush and we can move that around and get other things happening. Sometimes graphite's water-soluble, charcoal was water-soluble. Charcoal is a good mark-making option. I have tinted charcoal pencils. This is the neo color to water-soluble crayons. Another absolute favorite must-have for me in my art room. What I like about these is they are vibrant colors and they are water-soluble. So I can add touches of color and stuff throughout my piece very easily. I just have just a random collection. The fun thing about these, you can dip them in water and draw with them with the tip wet. Or you can draw with the tip dry, or you can come back and add water to it after the fact. How fun is that? [LAUGHTER] I want you to look at some of your tools in new ways and start gathering anything that you think. I wonder what mark this can make and start experimenting with some of these things. Then your very favorite things pull together as, okay, this is a favorite mark-making thing. Pull together a little box of your favorites. So I have a little box of crayons that are my favorite. I have just all random things sitting around that I'm like, yeah, that's my favorite. Then I'll turn around and I'd be like, yeah, that's my favorite. So everything my favorite. [LAUGHTER] I do love having lots of options. You can also use the end of your paint brushes to make marks. If you've got some fresh paint on something and you want to draw mark through it. The end of your paintbrush is a good mark-making scribble tool too. Move that paint around. I do that a lot. Also, a lot of times if you have especially inks like watercolor inks or acrylic inks. The Daubert thing that it comes with, I make a lot of marks with this. Look at that. It has the dropper in it that will suck up paint, so then you can squirt out a lot of paint. But I like using the dropper itself as my mark-making element. Look at how fun that is. Definitely consider your mark-making tools, your paint tools, the stuff that comes down into your paint, sometimes as your mark-making. If you're using high-flow paints, that might be depending on, that might be an element where you could get it just right and get some good scribble out of it. Look at that. [NOISE] [LAUGHTER] But you've got little by little test that or you'll end up with big blobs of paint. Then I don't know what I was combining right there. But just in this experimenting, how fun is that? Let me tell you, this is not my normal colorway. I would not normally pull quinacridone nickel azo gold for anything because it's a puppy gold, a baby puppy color. But in mixing with that olive green acrylic ink, which is one of my favorite greens. Look at that amazing look. Now, all of a sudden I'm like, maybe I need to look at this color in a new way. Because that was totally unexpected that it started to merge and it looked very exciting. If we look at this as a cut-out piece, because I like to cut out my art and we make little abstracts like I could come back and these little mark-making sheets and be, let's cut this piece out to be my abstract because even though the big thing looks like a mess, the little sections almost look exciting. I was pulling out paints that I don't normally use so that I could not waste the good colors. But now that I've done that, I'm like, look at that fun discovery, there. Super fun. Look around your art room, pull together pens, pencils, mechanic pencils, scrapers, spreaders, anything with a pattern to it. Any wedge that you have, a catalyst wedge, silicone spatulas, forks, spoons, knives, any interesting auto thing that you find, it don't have to be these rollers. It could be some washers. Who knows? Things that rust, paint pens, pencils, crayons, water-soluble things, anything silicone. The goal here is to think outside the box and expand yourself on the things that could make some pattern. Another thing, let's just some string or yarn or thread or something that we could drag through. We cut a piece of this twine. Cut some twine here. What if we just dragged this thing through wet paint and just see what can we get dragging thread through painting stuff that can make some interesting marks. So yarn, thread put a globe of paint, or you could soak this in paint and then drag it across your piece. That could be fun for mark-making, so think different things at the fabric store that you might look around for a different mark-making and dragging and drawing and things like that. I want to just start expanding what you're looking for for your marks. It doesn't just have to be a pen or a pencil. I want you to start getting creative with some of your marks. Because the more creative and the different types of tools that you use. How many people, more after watching this class obviously. [LAUGHTER] But how many people you think are going to go to the auto store and find this exceptionally cool roller and think I want that roller in my art. So it would definitely be really unique to you and your art that you're creating. I love that. I love using something that nobody else maybe is using or thought of or might have come across and people looking at that and thinking, what is that? It's so interesting, I wonder how they did that. That kind of thing. I want that to be an interesting mark that makes you think twice and makes people come look a little closer and think, wow, look how they did that. Look around and start pulling together things that you forged in your art supplies and in your kitchen, and the auto store and the craft store, in addition to all the stuff that we've made and forged from outside. I don't want you to limit your thinking into thinking, I can only do this, or I can only use that. I want you to get creative. Think outside the box while some of these things that you use for making your art. [MUSIC] 13. Lets Make Art: [MUSIC] Once you've started making and gathering your tools, then I want you to experiment a little bit with making some art with them. I'm obsessed with the little abstract acrylic paintings that I do. [NOISE] I'm going to just take some water and dip some ink in and then maybe use some of these mark-making tools [NOISE] to create or drag or add to my, these are some of the minimalist things that I like to do and we'll just experiment. I'm going to dip ink in and maybe use my ink dauber as my mark-making element and just see what can I get these to do. Because I'm getting started here, but maybe I can start and just see, can I drag this through, and look that, and get it to make any pattern? [NOISE] Maybe I can use this thing that looks like a comb. That's fun. Maybe I can add some of this other color. This is Payne's gray and antelope brown in my acrylic inks, because these are just super, some of my favorite. See, we can drag these through and just get a little bit of pattern in there. Super cool. We could also do some mark making with these feathers. [NOISE] I can see the feather being a favorite, especially the ends for making some of these yummy interesting marks. Love that. We could also take our sweet gumball. Took me a second to even think what that was and see if [NOISE] we can spread some of this ink around for some little dots. That was super cool. [NOISE] We also have all kinds of stuff in our little palette of stuff we made. Got these fun brushes that I made, got our little hockey brush. We've got our piece of string that we just used. [NOISE] We could dip something in some paint and maybe do some little bloop. [NOISE] We might try that. Let's see. Let's go ahead. Let's do another one. That's some of the most favorite part of making the little abstracts, is watching the ink do its thing. [NOISE] Look at this over here. We've got some really super cool water splatter. I like that. I might just do some Payne's gray dripping and again, using my little ink dauber as my mark maker, I might come through and do some fun marks. Could come back in and do some more splatter like that. This even though it's yarn and I'm doing painting, I'm not necessarily washing it out every time. It's going to actually last for a while, so I can keep using this and then when I finally get to the point where I'm like that yarn is saturated and it's hard and it's not doing its thing anymore, I can just replace the yarn on it because remember we rubber banded this to our handle that we made so it doesn't have to be thrown away. We can just replace the yarn part and then we have a fresh new mark making tool. I like making some of these that are semi-permanent. We've got a nice handle but then we can do something like this and just use it until we're done using it. If I put a little ink over here on my paint palette, [NOISE] we could try our dauber. [NOISE] Look at that. I like that darkness of color that that just threw in there, super fun. Again, this too, we can use that until we're like it's not working like I thought. Take it off its handle and make a new one. That one's super easy to replace. [NOISE] Another thing I have down here are my little cardboard pieces. I cut off big, small enough pieces where I could really let this. [NOISE] Look at that. This was that shelf liner. [LAUGHTER] I love the shelf liner. Then making little samplers like this, especially experimenting with anything that you've made or foraged, you're going to discover a few super favorites, like this is my super favorite. Maybe let's just make a couple more of these. I'm just going to spread some water so I can drip some ink. I'm telling you I could make these things. Look at that. That right there, was super exciting. Look at that. [LAUGHTER] My goodness, I could just get so excited about doing these every single time. I really like these cardboard things. Look at that. [LAUGHTER] Drag that through and just let it do its thing. [LAUGHTER] Look at that. My goodness. Super fun. That right there is like a finished little abstract. I know that I'm going to love that one. Do I want to add anything else to it? Maybe a little tiny bit, maybe not. Maybe pencil like this could be an opportunity to add a little tiny bit of scribble and just make a little extra excitement on there. Not too much, but enough to be like, look what that did. These little abstracts are super fun and they're excellent for color testing and mark-making. We're not using a lot of supplies and we're learning and discovering fun new stuff. Look at that. [LAUGHTER] I love it. Let's do a purple one. I love this. Olive green and purple lake, but I may not have the purple lake or where I can get it easily. Here it is. Let's do these. Let's do it. I definitely love this one. That's probably going to be on the little promo card for this class. [LAUGHTER] How funny. Always got to be thinking, how can I make this as exciting for you as I've just made it for myself. You can do your experiments with any paint. You don't have to be using the ink, I'm just currently obsessed with my inks. I love them. Look at that. My goodness. Let's just get a little more green go in here and then let's move that paint around with something interesting. What have we got in here that we haven't tried? I do like this little guy. It's the other piece of cardboard. Look at that. That's a really nice way, for moving that paint around. Look at that. That's super fun. I'd like stamping these. That's fun. [NOISE] We could use a twig to see if we can drag some of that paint around. [NOISE] That's fun. Maybe I want to add some more water in here and let those paints move a little more. Maybe a little extra color. We can use again our little stick here for mark-making. I love watching things spread out. That's like the most satisfying. Look at that. You know what else we could try? We have in our little stash of stuff, [NOISE] little piece of bubble wrap. I like some of these common householdy things. Look at that. For some of our experimenting and mark-making because they're cheap, they're easy, and they usually come in a box that you got delivered. That's super fun. This is the raffia's fun. [NOISE] Not my favorite for this one. [LAUGHTER] Super fun. I want you to do a bunch of little experiments. I want you to pull together all the different things that we have collected, made, gathered, and start testing them out. I expect to see 100 little paintings if you want to do little abstract paintings like I like to do. That's an excellent way to say, this is my favorite. I know that this corrugated cardboard, that's a personal favorite of mine. This is the most exciting piece. What you might do is if you create some of these and you're like, that was amazing, then on the back of that piece when it's dry, write down what it is you use to create that. If you used acrylic ink and you used a piece of this corrugated cardboard and you used a pencil, write down these four supplies on the back of that little sample and save that in a little journal or sketch book as your project for that day. These are really great for the 100 day project if you think, I'm going to come and use some mark making tool that I've never used before and we'll see what we can create. That's an excellent way to discover new colors, new mark makes, new pieces that you think that's a favorite, and little pieces of art that you can then write down what you loved about it and keep that for future reference when you want to make more or bigger pieces or you think, how did I do this? I forget, then you would remember. I hope you really have fun making some art experiments. I'd love to see you start something like 100 day project in a sketch book or in little pieces of art. If you do that, come back and tell me and then show me some of the yummy discoveries that you have done and I can't wait to see what you're creating in class. I'll see you next time. [MUSIC] 14. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] I hope you really enjoyed all the fun things that I shared with you, the ideas that I've come up with for foraging and finding and looking around and creating. I want you to hopefully have come a way with a few, "Aha I love this" or "Oh, I didn't think of that" moments, or "I found a new thing that I'm going to use going forward in my art, a new discovery that's going to be uniquely mine." I hope you've had some of these moments in this class because this is more of a foundational class where just presenting and showing different things that I've learned and discovered and tried throughout the years to just introduce you to some new things that maybe you didn't think of or maybe if you're in a rut and you're like, what can I do differently or what can I explore? What can I sit in my studio today and create with that maybe I don't normally create with? How can I step outside my comfort zone and do something different? That's what I want you to take away from this. I want you to step outside your normal creating and try something different and get a new excitement for your art and come away with something that's going to be authentically yours to create with going forward. That's how we come across and create and develop into our own style of art-making. Because we can take classes and things and we can duplicate what the teacher is doing and we can create those projects. But in the end, in doing that, the reason why we do that, and they've done that all through history. We see if you go to Louvre I went to Louvre when I was like 20 [LAUGHTER]. There were artists sitting there replicating the masters. Trying to replicate their colors and their brushstrokes and their techniques to create a piece that looked identical to one that was hanging on the museum walls. I don't know if you can still do that today because blue gets packed [LAUGHTER]. But local museums around you have that same practice. But I was fascinated that even people in school and stuff, that's how they learn too. They copy the masters, they copy the things that they emulate, they want to create in that style. But for the most part, you're never going to be as good as that original because the original person was being authentic to themselves. But in this learning and creating and trying out of new things, you can pull pieces and parts that work for you. Then the longer that you create and find things that are fun and that you particularly love, the more you will develop into your own style and you'll be creating with things that people are like, I wonder how she did that? I wonder what tool that was? Look at these marks? I've never seen something so exciting. I want you to just learn and develop. Make yourself a little box as you're going through this process of creating, and say, "These are the things that in my practice, in my play, in my scribble, in my discovery, these are the things that I loved." Then when you go to create art in your room, you have a little box of things to pull from and grow from, and then you just keep adding and subtracting and taking away and creating new things to add to your box and use in your art. It's almost really fun if you decide at the beginning of a collection, I love these three mark-making tools for this collection and you set forth a goal for yourself in creating. Then the next collection can be a different set of tools that you use and create with. That's a fun way to think of that. I hope you have fun gathering and collecting and creating new things to make marks and interest in your artwork. Can't wait to see the things that you've come up with. Definitely come back and share those with me and I'll see you next time. [MUSIC]