Styling Artwork for Social Media

1. Styling Artwork Class Intro: Whether you consider yourself a professional artist, an art enthusiast, or somewhere in-between, photographing your artwork and sharing it is a valuable tool. Sharing it on social media is a great way to challenge yourself, engage with others, and get noticed. In today's class, styling artwork for social media, I'll show you a few tips on how to style your artwork to make clear, effective photos that showcase your work. I'm Daniela Mellen, an author and artist here on Skillshare. Welcome to my class. In today's class, I will show you how to create simple, yet intriguing layouts for your artwork that you'll be proud to post on Instagram, Facebook, Etsy, your blog, or other media. This class is about styling your artwork, both completed pieces and works in progress. I will also show some ideas for styling artwork made into products like bookmarks, prints, and postcards. You may be asking, why post my artwork at all? I do art for a hobby. The answer is that no matter what art you do, posting your work and engaging with others helps you to grow in three ways. First, you'll make new connections with people who see your work and comment. Secondly, by setting the goal to post your work, you will improve your productivity by making it a priority to post your work. Lastly, by doing artwork and posting it, you will develop your own style. You will discover what style, color, and media you are drawn to, and discover more about yourself as an art creator. In this class, I'll show you how to take your artwork and create square format photos. We will use supplies that you probably have on hand and a few that you can easily acquire. Our goal when styling our artwork is to create scenes that showcase our artwork and compliment it. I've included lessons for styling finished pieces, sketches, paintings, works in progress, and even art made on the iPad. For your class project, take one piece of your art and style it using one of the tips from class. Please post your work in the project section or on Instagram using the #styling artwork, and please leave a positive review if you liked this class. If you'd like to see more classes exploring the topic of styling artwork, please leave a comment and let me know. Thank you for joining me. Let's get to work. 2. Styling Supplies: There are many classes that offer great photography tips. This class is for styling, not so much photography. An overview is to make sure you have nice light. I do that by dragging my table close to my light source, my window, and then I'll set up a foam board to reflect light as needed. Then I'll get onto styling the props. For styling props, you can use a lot of things that you already own or you already have around the house. There are just few things you should consider purchasing if you don't already have them. One of the key things is a piece of foam board. Here I took a standard piece of foam board and I cut it down just in half, to make it a little more manageable. This makes a great light reflector, so I use this as well. I can use it as a background or I can use it. If I hold it up, it'll bounce light off from the light source onto my subject. This is a handy thing to have. For backgrounds, I like anything plain. Some patterns are nice to have like a newsprint pattern on occasion or a musical notes pattern. But for the most part, plain backgrounds that don't compete with your surface are ideal. Here's just a board, it's whitewashed. This makes a nice background pattern. It's rustic and textured, so it contrasts with very shiny elegant surfaces nicely. It also fits right in with a country theme or a homey theme. Standard scrapbook paper is excellent. These come in lots of shapes and colors and patterns and hues and textures that are just paper. It's fantastic it's [inaudible] easily. Larger pieces of paper, what I call oak tag come in all different poster board, come in all different colors and these are fantastic as well. You can even use a white piece of poster board as your light reflector. Getting a little more costly in the art supply section of your store, and this is an art board. It's beautiful, it's heavyweight, solid and it comes in a variety of colors. I think you can get this for under $10. That's an afterthought too. Then another source that I like for background is to take a piece of contact paper, and attach it to a spare foam board. This way I get a durable piece of work for a background and sometimes the contact paper comes in very interesting patterns. This is one I like. It looks like a board and yet it's just a piece of contact paper. For other props, again, you use what you have around the house. Sometimes a kid's toy can be really handy. I really like using my art supplies as a prop. Sometimes if I see a nice small size ruler, since most of my artwork is small size, I'll get that and because I'll try and get a color or a pattern that's very simple that goes with a lot of things. [inaudible] with a pair of scissors, here's a gold handled pair and yet they're small scissors. I have a fun pen. Take my colored pencils. Those make a great prop. One of my drawing is colored pencils. I have my paint brushes. These I just got from the kids section, but they're bright colors and fun shapes, very easily recognizable. I have a gel pen. It's a cute pen with the cap and an eraser here. So these are some handy things to use. The art supplies that I use as props, and they also function as art supplies. If I want to make it a line or a scattered line or shapes line, what I'll use is just some ribbon, and we all have some ribbon, whether it be old shoe laces that are in good shape obviously or leftover from gift wrap. Ribbon makes a great lines in our artwork as a prop, you can curl it, you can move it around. It's fluid. It looks great. It adds a pop of color, relatively inexpensive and it comes in an assortment. The same thing with necklaces. You can find some necklaces. Then you can move them around your artwork. You find colors that you can pick up within your artwork and it's very subtle, and yet very pretty. The same thing with this little string of beads, just gives a pop of color. So that's a very handy thing to have as well. But you probably already have some around your home. I like to use scrabble tiles or really any game tile. I can spell out whatever word I need to spell out on my artwork, and it just ties it all together. I don't like to overdo it but I use it every now and again. I like to use scatter as well. A scatter can be anything small beads. These are just paperclips in a very interesting shape. A round shape is very classic and it goes with a lot of things so it's handy. We also have the good old colored sprinkles if you want a pop of color, the sprinkles come in lots of colors so if you want to stick to just a green sprinkle or a dark sprinkle. You can have that as well. Lastly, just some fresh flowers. You can use artificial as well. But fresh flowers if you have them, keep them in a vase in your home, and then you just pull them into your artwork depending on the color. They look fantastic. These are just some prompts and you probably already have in your home, you don't have to invest too much in, and you might look at a different way. 3. Styling 5x7 Artwork: Here we have a five by seven print of a watercolor whale that I taught in my whimsical watercolor whales class. To use this, I have the blue, I have the whale, and I have the heart as well as the brush. That gives me a lot of options. There's water, there's clouds in the sky. I have a red heart, I think it's a bead, and I have a paintbrush that matches the paintbrush in the picture, so that's a good one. I also have this clipboard, which is a picture frame, and the size is perfect for this. I think I might want to use this. We'll see I might decide not to as well, and I'll need a background. Here I have a board, just a plywood board that's been painted, weathered look, and I have my brown clipboard, so it's layers of wood. I'll put my painting, my print, right inside the clipboard and put my heart there. I don't think I need the brush in this image. I'll take one photo of that. Then I'll take one without this in case I am not sure if this is too much wood. I'll put that right there, and let me see, again, I want to keep the logo off the brush, and the heart, maybe I'll put it right there, and I'll photograph it just like that. Let me move it just slightly. That's one way to photograph another print. 4. Styling Artwork in a Landscape Format: Now here, I have a 5 by 7 landscape format of a print. These are abstract watercolor treats from my class that I painted. To photograph this, I have a lot to work with here. Aside from each treat, I have the colors, which are quite interesting, and I have the abstract image, so it gives me a little room to have a little sloppy, a little suggestive instead of a perfect pristine surface. I'm going to play with the blue, there's a lot of blue in all these, and then I have some other things I'd like to incorporate. I think we can use a blue background, so I'll start with that. I have my blue background, and I'm going to make a flat lay of this. I think I'll turn this on its side. Then I have these little toy; the little stuffed things that resemble a little treat, and the colors are really nice for my image. I'll put those haphazardly around. Again, maintaining that this is going to be a square, end result of the scene that I create. Then I want to put something in it as well. I could use the sprinkles like I did on my other image, but I think I want something a little different. I'm going to take some ribbon. Maybe I'll move these around for now, the ribbon first and then this around the ribbon. They're giving off a little bit of white sprinkle anyway. I just have a wooden spoon here, and I'm just going to wrap the ribbon around the wooden spoon to help it form this little shape that I like. When I slide it off, it will have a little bit of looseness to it. Put that just over here, move that around. Have it coming right off my image. I think I'll put this one right beneath it, and then I had this other ribbon, it's just a bunch of hearts. But again, it's white and it gives a fun look, I can put my pieces around here as well. I want a square image, so I'll take my camera, and I'm not really liking the way this looks. I'll try it a little differently. I like the ribbon but maybe I'll put both of the ribbons on one side. Create a little balance here, and let's see. If I move this up, put the ribbon on the bottom here along with the treat, and move it around. Take that image. Let's see, let's try one more. I'm going to move the ribbon. Put my main image here, my three other focal points and let's see, maybe they'll just have this go right across the top in a line. It's all very linear, I'll see what that produces. That's another way to play around with color when you're using your artwork. 5. Styling Hanging Artwork: Now to create a scene with this, I have a five by seven print of my artwork. I think I'm going to try and hang it without a frame, just because I think it gives a different effect, a very interesting effect. I have a tiny hanger here where I can adjust these to hang my work. I'll put that inside the frame and then, I can just move it around, so it doesn't distract from the actual image. I have it just like that. I've also taken a piece of foam board and I attached a little temporary hook. If I want to keep this vertical, I could just hang it on the hook, but I could also use this as well for my art. Because I want a square, I'm going to have to really zoom out to get everything to fit in. But I think, I'll just photograph just the hanging part here. If I want, I could put something underneath this to prop it up. Here I am just to prop this up, I'm going to use just a cap from a container like this and then, I'll take my phone and take my picture. I want to get a little bit of the hanger in there as well. It's a very simple image and my product is the focus of the scene. 6. Styling a Bookmark: To set this scene, we have the product that we're using, which is a bookmark. I use watercolor to create the owl, and then it has some colors, the green, the warm brown, and the darker brown, as well as black and white. What I want to do is play off a couple of things. I want to playoff the colors, and I want to play off the fact that it's a bookmark. That leads for props, something you use a bookmark for, which would be a book to hold a page. I want to have an open book that isn't too big or too small that the bookmark overhangs or gets lost in. If the book is really large, we can use it by just cropping down just to the portion where the bookmark is the main focus. Maybe when you're using a book with the bookmark, you might have a cup of tea and have a relaxing time, so that sets the scene and the feeling. To do that, I want to create my background. I want it to be simple and yet look homey. I'll start with a lightly colored board here, and it goes nicely with the bookmark, with the colors on the owl here. Then I have a book, and it seems to be a good size here. Typically bookmarks go just like this, but it's very angular. It stays like this, so I think I'll put it across the page this way, and then I have a cup of tea and the pottery here, the China is green and brown, so it pulls up the earth tones from the book. I'm going to have it just a little off-center, and then I'll put my book like this. Now, because the book doesn't cooperate very easily, what I want to do is maybe take something that will temporarily hold it open. I'm not certain that clips will work in the scene that I'm trying to create, but I could use clips. I think I'm going to use just some painters tape and I'll make a nice big piece here. I'll put it on the book cover and try and hold it down, and I'll see if I need it on the back cover as well. I put my book down maybe at a slight angle, that seems to hold it because it's a light paperback, and then I'll put this here, and then I'll take my camera, and try and get the image that I want. Mainly I want the tea to be showing, and because I've taped it down, I don't have to move the book. I'll go a little closer just to make sure it's obvious that it's a book. Maybe if I turn my camera a little, I'll get that, and I'll still have the bookmark as the main focal point. That's one way to use a bookmark as your product for your styling. 7. Styling Round Artwork: Here's one way to style round artwork. These are a stack of coasters that were made from my panda bear painting. The challenge with them being round is it's a little different than square, but it's still fun, and we have also multiple images to use. That gives us a little bit of leeway to play with. The first thing I'll do is think of a background to show contrast with the panda, to really emphasize the panda face, as well as the shape. I think I'll use a black background and I want to use multiple of these, take advantage of that fact. Also keeping in mind that I want to make a square scene. Let's see, I put my black background here, and then I think I'll do my odd number of five of these coasters. Maybe I'll turn it this way after all. I want to keep it in a square format, round, and I'll try and keep everyone facing the same angle here. If there's any question of that, sometimes looking at it, it's hard to see. I will just take a picture and then it'll jump right out at me, if any of the bears are not facing the right way. That looks pretty good. I could stick a paint brush here. But, because it's coasters I want to take advantage of that fact. I think I'll put a little, maybe a drinking glass on one of the coasters, maybe just slightly off-center. We'll see how that looks through my phone. Trying to keep it right on the face and I want to break up some of his black. To do that, I introduce some bright colors. Think I'll put some just colored sprinkles. They're not part of the design or the image, but they add just a little pop of color, and they're fun. Just randomly place some throughout my image, and then I'll take a photo of that. Now I think I want to do something a little different. I really liked that image, but I think I can work with having multiple coasters, that gives me actually a lot of leeway. I'll take this off. Still staying with my black background. I think I'm going to have one coaster up top here. Again, still with the square format. Then I think I'll try and just show a little movement, and yet really take advantage of the fact that I have a number of coasters here. I'll create a little half circle, and I'll put my drink as well. We'll add a few of the sprinkles. If I add a little pop of color. Move this one over just a little bit and take the photo. That's two ways to photograph round artwork, and one way to photograph multiple artwork as well. 8. Styling a Stack of Postcards: Here we have our product that we want you create our square photograph for. What I have here is a watercolor that was made into postcards. That gives me a lot to work with. Aside from the theme, an owl, which you can use feathers or other things that remind you of an owl, we have colors to play with as well, pinks and blues. Being a postcard, I can use it as a postcard was meant to be aside from an owl, postcard, I might sit down, have a cup of coffee, and fill out postcards. I think that's the tact I'm going to go with today. Now I just have got to figure out how I want to set this up. I'll take my product and I'll start with the bottom layer, which will be the background. Here I just have a board of a dark honey color, kind of a caramel, far bigger that I need it to be, and then I have my products. Let's see, maybe if I fan them out here and then I have my postcard that I'm actually writing on here, I can put that in and then I'll need my cup of coffee, so I'll put that in here, and a writing implement and I can use my hand also as a prop. When I use my hand, I'll try and keep it in a very photo friendly way and not a realistic way. I always think about that, which means I'll probably set my arm down, have a nice little angle that isn't exactly the stance I use for writing. I want this all to fit in a square, and so one of the things I can look for is my product, the main part of this image, and everything else just compliments it. If it does that, then I've achieved what I want to achieve for this photograph. I think I'll have my top image up straight, maybe just a slight angle, I have my coffee cup in the space in between here and my postcard that I'm writing on. Looking at it, it looks a little sterile. I think I'm going to have to add something to the coffee cup maybe to make it look a little more human, either a cookie or, in this case, I'll add some sugar cubes and a spoon and I'll angle the spoon to fit in that negative space. If I'm uncertain, you can use your camera or even your smartphone to just determine, does it look right? Is there too much open space? Right here, with my arm in it for writing, I really like that look, so I'm going to go with that. I'm going to put my arm down, hold my hand like I'm writing, and then take a photo. If I'm concerned that I'm shaking or unable to do both by myself, I can have somebody help me. But I try and like to be independent, so I'll just set a timer for three seconds. I'll get mostly where I want to be, hit the button and then just wait and it takes it. It's better to take bigger than you need and then crop in post-production. You can also figure out exactly how you want it to go; like if I want to really focus on this product and everything else would be cut out, maybe I'll move these down a little, the stack underneath and I'll have this one be the only thing that's in the image completely. I'll do that one more time. This time I'm going to tilt these a little further and keep that top ones straight, and there we have one composition for our postcards. 9. Styling 3 Paintings: Here I have my three panda images from my watercolor panda class. I want to photograph them in a square format, so three is nice because it has that odd number that we'd like to work with. Again, I gathered my supplies. I want to put a paintbrush in this. I have this cute little panda, little toy statue, kid's toy, which I think is perfect for this theme. I think I'll do it on a white background since these have colors in it. I think it'll be a nice contrast. Thinking I might need something else. I have some little black beads that I keep in a little bag and that might be a nice scatter to have around the images. We'll see if it's necessary. First thing I'll do is lay down my background. Here I have just a white piece of oak tag, giant card stock. Then I'll put my images down. Keeping in mind that I want to use a square ultimate format. Put this little guy and maybe have him hold that paintbrush. I want to test the paint brush just so that the logo isn't showing if possible. We'll just take a peek and see that I have everything in the frame. Nothing is being blocked, I am going to put a little higher. Just like that, we will now add a little scatter, actually first I'll take the photo without the scatter, and then I'll take the photo with the scatter and we'll see which one we like best. There's my photo without the scatter. Then i will just put in a little here, using what I have on hand. Trying to keep it in square format. Looking at this bear and seeing that maybe because I'm taking the picture from overhead, maybe if I can keep him at an angle that might produce a better result. Here I just have some little, It used to be called Fun-Tack. It's just like a little putty, it sticks to things but not permanently, and used to put posters up with it. If I use enough of it, I can get a little height here and just balance my bear accordingly. We'll see how that comes out. Might not look right. It might be too distorted in the photograph, but I can get it to stay even, take another photo with it like that. That's another way to make a layout kind of a flat lay, using our art. 10. Styling Artwork in a Small Frame: To photograph a small square piece of artwork. This is a four-by-four magnet, made from one of the images from my pumpkin spice class. What I do is, I want to emphasize the pumpkin here. That gives me some images from fall from autumn, and some colors, some of the orange or blue. I have some of these little floral picks, and I have some little pumpkins, and I have some of these as well, different type of pick with a little acorn and some beating. I need a background, and then I will arrange my image. For a background, I think I'll use, I have another piece of foam board and I attached a piece of contact paper to it. It's adhesive and I put it on the foam board, it makes it a little more durable. It has the look of a wood board and yet it's just contact paper. So it washes clean, I can wipe it and it's fairly durable. It's also easy to store because it's on a foam board. I'll put my product to create the scene, then I'll put one of these big pumpkins, couple of small ones framing my image here, in my little pic of autumn floral. So I'll take that picture. I'll take it, one with everything in the shot, and then one where I'm cutting out some of the accessories, just enough to recognize what they are, but making the image the main point. Now because this magnet has a reflective lens on it, it's hard to photograph it without getting my reflection. I'll try in different angles, see if one is better or worse than the others. That's just something to keep in mind when you're photographing something with a reflective surface. Ideally, you'd like to take your prints out of any type of frame that has a glass or reflective lens. 11. Styling Artwork on iPad: For this product, we have another postcard, but it was created not with paint but digitally. I have my Canvas, my iPad here with my stylus, and that's all I needed to create this. But to photograph it, I want to make it a little more interesting. Again, I'll start with my background. This is just a piece of what I used to call Oak-tag, its giant card stock, and then I'll put my pieces here again, I'm going for a square photo. I'll separate my stylus. I don't think I'm going to put my hand in this photo, but maybe I'll do that and then I can always remove it. Could add a little bit of ribbon here, coming off paper. I can make that in a pleasing formation, and then I want to include a feather somehow. See how that looks in my view finder. The two pieces are competing, the postcard and the iPad. I guess I'll have to choose one that I'm going to focus on for my artwork. I'm going to do them both then I can decide afterwards once I have the photo. I have my iPad here first with the stylus. The color doesn't really fit anymore because the blue is from the background of the postcard. I'll remove that. Maybe just put the feather here. There I have three elements, and maybe I will keep my hand in this photo with the stylus. Again, pull that feather a little closer, and if I put the camera straight up and down with the iPad on angle, I get one look. Now, I'll just try and use the postcard. This is overlapping a little and have the the ribbon on the other side. See how that looks to be pulling some more ribbon, and there we have our postcard without the iPad. 12. Styling Stages of Artwork In a Grid (Using an App): One of the really effective ways to photograph your artwork in stages is to show the steps of progression as you go throughout the piece. I'm going to demonstrate by painting one of the abstract watercolor cupcakes from my class, Abstract Watercolor Treats. Every now and again, I'll stop and take just a photo of my progress and then at the end, I'll have an assortment of photos. I'll choose four that can make a grid to show the progress of the photos. I'll speed it up, the actual painting process, and just show you the photograph and then the end result. There we have our completed image throughout the process, took photos, and then I'll go and I'll load those photos into an app. To use the Layout app to make our grid, what we do is download the Layout app, it's tied to your Instagram account. You have to have Instagram and then you download Layout, which is made by Instagram. You open it up. It automatically goes to your picture files, not the ones you have on Instagram, but the ones you have on your computer or your phone or your iPad. From there you can select any of the photos you like. Here are our cupcake photos. I'm going to select four because I want a grid. I just click them and you'll see it creates a line automatically. They're six, there we go. Here, up top it says choose layout. I can scroll through here to choose whatever format I want, whether I want large pictures, equal size, vertical, horizontal. I am going to just choose the grid, so I click it. Now, from here I can make any changes I want. I'm going to put it in order that I want. I'll drag the first photo over, then the second photo, and then I'll swap these two around. Now that I have the order that I want, I want to choose the size. I'll just go to each square and try and make them approximately the same size, and this one I'm going to leave a little smaller because I want the pen to show. If I don't want the pen to show, they can all be the same size, but with the pen showing, it's a little smaller. Then from down here, I can choose if I want to mirror the image, it selects the one that's highlighted in blue, or if I want to flip the image, and so on. The last one is borders, and I like that look, just creates that grid to make sure that the viewer knows that these are separate pictures, not just one picture combined. From here, I hit "Save", and then it's saved to my camera roll. If I go in to my camera roll, it's right there. From there, I can upload it to Instagram or I can save it and upload it to any place that I want on my computer or online. 13. Styling Artwork in Progress: Here's a scene that we're going to set, of a piece of artwork that's actually in progress. It's a piece of watercolor paper, just a small square with a sketch of a sand $ on it in pencil. Eventually I'll use watercolor, but for now, because it's not complete, I want to show my progression. I just want this to be the focal point of the picture. I don't want to combine it with other images. What I want to do is, because it's a sand $. If I have any other shells, there would be a nice thing to add. I want a background that it's going to stand out from. Because it's white, its going to go with a darker background. I have my black background, and I have my picture. I'll probably use my pencil because it is a pencil sketch at this point. Maybe an eraser as well. I have my sand $ that I can use for reference point. I can maybe put it on the side, and this is the main focus. I also have some game tiles, some scrabble tiles. I found the letters for sand , so I think I'll add that as well. Any game tiles will do. There are other games besides scrabble. I'll just try and straighten this out. Then I'll put my image here, my focal point. Let's see, I'll try it without the pencil and eraser yet. Take a snap or a photo of that. 14. Styling Don'ts: Here is just a quick little lesson on some don'ts for styling artwork. Before we go into that, I just want to say that artwork and styling artwork is completely personal. What I like and what I style does not have to be what you like or you style. It's a great conversation starter. It's great for discussion and debate but ultimately, we do not have to agree on it. I'm just giving you some guidelines that I follow so that you understand how I come to my conclusion on how I choose to style things. It's totally subjective. I encourage you to do your own thing; be true to yourself and authentic. If you can please yourself and you can post something and you feel good about it, that is all that matters. Here's my original whale photo that we styled with a paintbrush and a heart. Here are a couple of examples of styling that I did not care for. Here's one where I used a different background and the styling, I didn't care for as I thought the background competed with the actual artwork, the focus of our styling. The background here is a musical print. Musical print is a beautiful classic image but I just didn't like the way it looked with the whale. Some people might like it. I thought a solid color was more beneficial. It made the artwork stand out. The second one was a different background. It was like a beach scene. Theoretically, I thought, ''Beach, whale, that might work.'' But I don't know if the colors were off or it was just a different tone. I thought it competed too much. So that didn't work for me. In our second example, it's using props that overpower the piece. Our original artwork was the sketch of a sand dollar, and I paired it with another sand dollar, and some scrabble tiles that said, "Sand dollar". I really like the cleanness of this look. It was very vibrant. The sand dollar stood out. On the don't, I think I have too many props. It's a legitimate example. It has the odd number of five. It's got two sand dollars, my sketch, a pen, and then the text. So it's very similar to the original, except, I think there was just too much going on, that the artwork was not the main focus. I thought it was a fine image and it could work in certain settings but for wanting my artwork to stand out, I don't think I achieved it here. Here's our original image where we have our postcards of the barn owl and I'm writing a postcard with my hand. The first image I had a cup of tea and a pen with no logos. It was a fun pen. It had a big pearl on the end. In our "don't" image, I have the same image set up but I replace the cup of tea with a can of Coke and so that looks a little sterile, and then I replaced my pen, my writing implement, with a beautiful Micron pen. You can see that it's a Micron pen because the logo is right there. That's something I just didn't care for. Those are three basic tips of what not to do. Not to let the background overpower your work, not to let your props compete with your main focus, and not to feature logos. 15. Class Wrap Up: Today's class focused on various tips for styling artwork that we have created or are currently working on. By styling our art to photograph, we gain confidence by knowing that we're sharing it in an effective way that highlights our work. Posting your work on social media is a great way to get feedback from others. When we share our artwork, we become vulnerable. People make comments, give their opinions, and engage with you. Comments and criticism can be hard to hear. But keep in mind, they can also be helpful by giving you a glimpse into what other people think of your artwork. By posting your work on social media, you will hear from others. Most responses will be overwhelmingly positive. Some will be helpful, and some will be negative. The thought of harsh words can be terrifying. What if they don't like my work? Just remember, you create artwork because you enjoy it. You post your work to engage with others, not to be praised or criticized. By creating artwork and posting it, you're stretching your creative muscles. We don't have to let the fear of a negative word limit us. Accept helpful criticism, dismiss hurtful words, and believe in yourself. Remember, don't let people's compliments go to your head and don't let their criticism go to your heart. Thank you for joining me for this class. If you'd like to see more classes on this topic, please leave a comment. And if you've enjoyed this class, please leave a positive review and follow me here on skill share. I send out quarterly painting tips and you'll be the first to be notified of new classes. I look forward to seeing your styled artwork. Please post your work in the project section or on Instagram with the hashtag styling artwork, and I'll follow along. And, leave a positive comment. Thanks for joining me. 16. Bonus Lesson: Here's a bonus lesson for some fun props that you can find without spending very much money. Clipboards are great for using as props for your photos. A standard clipboard, while you can find some really fun and great patterns, they're usually designed to hold an eight and a half by 11 paper, which can work with a lot of images. But lately I've noticed in stores they carry these. They're in the picture frame section. They're great because you can easily interchange artwork on them. They come in different sizes that are really manageable for photographing and keeping around the house as a useful tool aside from just being a picture frame, but for your arsenal, for styling your artwork. One thing I was particularly thrilled with was I found these very small ones as well. They come in various patterns and styles. These are great for artwork, small artwork. This is a small matchbox size artwork. It's two and a half by three inches. I think it looks pretty terrific inside one of these little frames. I can flip it whichever direction I want. Now to style this, it doesn't really require very much from here on out. I like this piece with a darker clipboard because I think it shows little contrast that I like. I'll just move these out of the way. Because it's a flower, all I have to really do is put a bunch of flower next to it. I want to also put a paint brush just to really draw home the point that it was an artwork painted. To create this scene, I have some fresh flowers, my flower painting, the little clipboard, and a paintbrush. To take the picture, I want to focus mainly on this image here, the painting. I have my complete image.