Mindful Drawing: Create a Castle inspired by Paul Klee

1. Introduction: Hi. In this tutorial, we will be using pen and paper to create our very own castles, inspired by Paul Clay's famous work, Castle and Son. 2. Materials: The materials for this project are very simple, some pens and some white paper. I will go into more detail about what pens to select in a subsequent video. I used a piece of white mixed media paper that was around 110 pounds. You can use whatever paper you want. I also trim mine down to eight by six, but again, you can use whatever size you're comfortable with. 3. Inspiration: Castle and Sun by Paul Klee: What I love most about Castle and sun is how the color and shapes seem to dance around the canvas. Before we get started with our project, I'm going to break down his use of color and shape. I decided to take a very hands on approach to understand his distribution of color. I printed out the painting, cut out the shapes, and then group them according to color. I noticed that there were three dominant colors. The first two colors are very dark and the red is extremely saturated. I counted nine accent colors, including two neutrals. For your project, I recommend selecting three dominant colors that are in the same hue. You can see here that I decided to go with blues instead of reds. Then pick two neutral colors. You could select one cool and one warm as I did. And then a variety of accent colors. And for the accent colors, just pick colors that you like and make sure that some of them are substantially lighter than the dominant colors. I just wanted to point out that one of my neutral pens looks on the video like it's pink, but it's actually a light brown. Next thing to consider is what shapes we're going to draw. So I recommend giving yourself a little cheat sheet or a template. And I just looked at the painting and drew some of the shapes that I saw. And then when I made my piece, I used my little cheat sheet as reference. Notice that all the shapes are mostly geometric shapes and that there's a variety of scale. So you want some large squares, some small squares, and the same for all other shapes. 4. Class Project: Draw a Castle: That we have a better understanding of how Paul Clay use color and shape, it's time to use our knowledge to draw our own castles. I hope you enjoy working on your drawing. And when you finish your castle, please upload it to the projects area of the Skill Share website. I would love to see what you've created. When you're ready, grab your paper and pens and draw your castle. I think you can approach this in two ways. You can either watch the tutorial all the way through and then draw your castle, or you can draw along with me as I go drawing my castle. My goal with this project was to have fun and be somewhat relaxed and get in the zone while I was doing it. So I just focused on two simple things. One was to be sure that I mostly used blue so that that would be the clear dominant color. And the second was to focus on having a variety of shapes and sizes of shapes. And you can see here that I kind of alternate between small and large and triangles and arches and rectilinear shapes. I decided to add a golden sun to my drawing, but feel free to experiment with moons, stars, whatever you enjoy. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and have fun working on your project. Please, please share your castles with the group because everyone would love to see what you've made.