Transcripts
1. Trailer: Since no official guide exists, being an artist can feel like fumbling around in the dark, unsure of what to do next, or even if progress is being made. I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, I made this class to light the way the creative journey and to level up your knowledge and skills. Hi, my name is Hismena. I'm a self-taught watercolor, ink, and other mixed media artist. You might know me from various other Skillshare classes. This class is a little different. Instead of teaching a certain technique or how to use a medium, we're going to dive into the core principles that are required for a strong foundation to be a successful illustrator. This class is composed of all the things every new or experienced artists should be aware of. Essentially, these are the things I wish I knew years ago. I'll go into detail on tons of topics from super important design principles, to drawing exercises, to how to find the right media for you, and even discovering your style and personal niche. We'll also touch on things you probably have questions for, like using references, building your audience and brand, and how to monetize your art so you can make a career out of it. I'll even give you advice on things like art jealousy and art block. Whether you're a hobbyist or a professional, this class will help you to ask yourself the right questions and to figure out what you need to do next on your creative journey. It will also give you tons of ideas and hopefully inspire you to grow and practice your craft. What are you waiting for? Let's dive right in.
2. What Does it Mean to be an Artist?: What does it mean to be an artist? Well it's simple. For me if you love to make art and you do it often, you are an artist. Think about it. Pablo Picasso, the moment he picked up his brush and started creating and loved doing it, he was already an artist. It wasn't like somebody come up to him and said, "Hey, you know what? You're finally good enough. You can call yourself an artist now you're allowed to." You already have power to label yourself as an artist. Even if you're a complete beginner, I want you to accept the fact that you're an artist, because you're watching this class, you putting the time and the effort and then you have to live up to it. You have to put the time in, you have to put the love in, you have to practice your craft. In the next lessons, I will give you a lot of ideas on how to practice your craft and to learn about the foundation you need as an artist to make your work look presentable and have nice compositions and stuff like that. But being an artist is a personal thing. You have your own special creative journey that you're going on. That has nothing to do with my journey or anybody else's, you're going to know what's right for you, if anything that I say in this class doesn't seem right to you or jive with you, just take it with a grain of salt. The most important thing to being an artist, is perseverance, because at the beginning stages you make a lot of ugly art. Like here is my sketchbook from 7.5 years ago. As you can see, it wasn't very good, it's really embarrassing. It was in a private sketchbook and I filled it out and I kept drawing and drawing and drawing and drawing because I loved to draw. So please, just draw. Don't worry about the results. You're practicing, you're getting better and better with time. It's only a matter of time until you're just like the professional artists that you look up to. Don't let the fear of making ugly art stop you. There are no mistakes in art, there is no ugly art, it's just practice time. I make ugly art all the time, even nowadays, as you can see here, there's just stuff that I make that has mistakes in it and doesn't look good enough. It happens all the time even now and I think it's going to keep happening forever and ever and ever. I'm grateful for it because it makes me really appreciate when the piece goes right and I learn lessons from every piece that I make like this. Please, don't hold yourself back by saying, "I'm not going to make art anymore, " just because you don't think you're good enough yet. The only reason you're not good enough yet is because you have to practice more. So practice, practice, practice, and don't be afraid of making mistakes. That's a normal part of the creative process and journey. Before we start the class, take a moment to commit to your art practice. Take a moment to think, you will work hard at this and you will succeed. If you believe you will, you will but you have to put the work in. The harder you work, the better the results will be and the more fulfilled you will feel. It's a win, win, win, win, win. Just take your time, do your thing and love your craft. You're never going to stop learning, evolving or growing and that's an amazing thing. I really look forward to a whole life of this. If you put the time in every single day or almost every single day, who knows how beautiful your work will be, a year, two years, or even 10 years from now, maybe even 50 years from now. I can't even imagine how you will affect the world. Art is powerful magic. Seriously, we're all sorcerers, and I welcome you to the magician's guild of artists. I made that up. But the point is you are so lucky to be bitten by the creative bug and I cannot wait to see how you will affect the world and your life and just enjoy the process. Let's go over everything in artists since you know for their foundation because if you have that foundation down, then you can do whatever you want, with whatever style you want but we have to learn the basics first. So let's get into that.
3. Line, Shape, & Form: Art is made up of many elements, but arguably the most important is line, shape and form. Line is just that a simple line. It can be squickly, straight, broken up into many lines or anything else you can think of. Lines can also be thick or thin or have line variation that goes from thick to thin, which is my favorite way of using them. They can even have a texture to them or make the feeling of texture or shading or both just by being used in a certain way. Like here is an amazing example by the super talented DZO Olivier, who makes extremely detailed illustrations using lines in all ways. He's mastered pen and ink illustration, and it really shows that the depth and detail of his work and he does all of this is in simple technical pens. Another good example, is the work by Katie Wolford. She uses continuous lines to make her illustrations. This just means, she never lifts her pen off the page. Her illustrations are essentially, one very long line. Isn't that awesome? Here's another example by a master of line, Sara Tepes. Her lines are fluid, full of character in life, and this was on ink, but look at this pencil drawing. It fills just as alive, even if it's a different line type, that isn't as expressive. As you can see, there's a lot that you can achieve with line. The funny thing about lines is that if you look at the world around you, you can't see lines outlining things but only draw, especially when starting out, we tend to draw contour line drawings, which is just an outline style of drying. This is a great way to learn how to draw and to notice the details, but it can also make things look more cartoony and less realistic. Some artists use outlines with realistic work on purpose for cool contrast or because it's their style, like DZO does, but some don't, for example, if you look at the extremely skilled artist, Ozabu, you can see in her finished pieces, she gets a very lifelike feel by not using outlines. But here's a different example from her sketchbook, that feels less realistic and more stylized because she did use outlines. As you can see, they both have different feelings to them. Another awesome thing about her realistic pieces, is she actually uses lines that are close together to shade. Aligning or not using outlines is up to you. There is no right way of making art, but it's good to be aware of the effect you get by including or excluding outlines. I personally do use lines most of my work by breaking them up and not letting them touch all the way. They up the contrast and detail on the pieces, but that's just my style. The point is, I'm aware of how line effects my art and use it deliberately, but it's not something that I usually think about, like all the concepts I will teach you at first, you will think about it a lot, but after a while picking what to do, become automatic expression of your style, and you will know what effect you'll achieve automatically. Just try to be aware how different artists use line, when you look at their work, and you will naturally develop a feel for the different ways you can use line too. Also get as creative as you want, because line is super versatile and the possibilities are infinite. Next is shape. Shape is just what happens when a line meets backwards starts. Squares, circles, triangles, and so forth are all shapes. Shapes are 2D, which means they're flat. Shapes are extremely useful, especially when sketching proportions of what you want to draw. You can draw anything close, I showed you how to break down objects that you see into basic shapes. In this way, you can start your sketches with the basic proportions, and you don't have to worry about when you add detail it and it end up looking wonky, because you didn't know where everything is supposed to go. Having the skill of looking around you and seeing the basic shapes that make things up, is really essential as an artist. If it's hard for you to see the shapes and everyday objects, I recommend you get magazines or books with pictures in them and try to break down the pictures that you see into shapes using a sharpie marker, or if you have a tablet that's even better, you can just use a lot of different images and do the same thing by tracing over. Keep doing this until it becomes, easy to see them. Be sure to keep it simple and you're all set. Seeing shapes in complex subjects will make it easier to draw anything you want. Another fun thing you can do with shapes is exaggerate or play with them. For example, artist Eleni Kalorkoti, uses shape in the interesting way. She had only paid attention to the shape of her subject, but also to the shapes made in the background or the negative space. Notice how your eye travels through all the shapes and it's so much fun to look at them. She used to play a huge role in her style and as you can see, they give her work a really cool feeling. In other good example is we put three circles together, you think of one must famous cartoon characters ever made. That's because good character designers know the importance of shapes and always pay careful attention to the silhouettes of their characters. As you can see, you can recognize who each of these character is, even though I'm just showing the silhouette. A silhouette is super important. These are just a few examples, but you really can do a lot with simple shapes so don't underestimate them and play with them. Now forms are little bit more complex. It's essentially a 3D shape. Circle is a shape and a sphere is form. Same thing with the square versus a cube. Form is important because we live in a 3D world and because of this, your subject will usually be a 3D. You have to understand this and think of it as 3D subject, especially when you're using a photo reference, it can be easy to forget that it's a real thing that you have a photo of. That's why I recommend you start drawing from life, but when you do end up using photos, just keeping in mind that it is a 3D thing that you're looking at. It will make your rendering moralistic and it will feel right. Thinking of your subject as 3D means you pay special attention to lighting, and the angle they're facing and so forth. For example, if you look at Gabrielle Brickey's work, the first thing you'll notice is all her portraits feel alive and real. Even though their styles and the edges are blended out, it feels like you're looking at a real person because she's a master at seeing things in 3D, that knowing how light bounces off each part of the face. Luckily for you, she's also a skill share teacher and has a class on how to use lighting and portraits. I encourage you to check it out if you want to draw or paint people, but don't worry if this got a little too complicated for you, you will naturally get used to thinking about form with time, and I will show you a way to practice seeing and drawing from the drawing exercises lesson. Let's talk about value.
4. Value: Now let's dive into something a little bit more complex and may be daunting, but don't worry, like everything else is just practice. Value means the lightness or darkness of a color or hue. If you look all around you, you'll notice some things are lighter and some darker, and within one object there are also lighter or darker parts depending on what's in light or what's in shadow. If it's hard for you to see value in color, you can always start with only doing studies in grayscale, and once you fully understand it then move on to trying to see value in color. An easier way to understand this is by making a value skill in your chosen medium. It's just a scale from pure white to black that gradually changes. Every color also has a lighter and darker tone and you can also make a scale with them. Value is what makes your art look realistic because it shows a lighting in form of the object. This concept is an easy one to ignore, but it's really important to master, to make your art have that special realness to it, or even surreal illness like remember Gabriel's art. The reason it feels surreal is because she's a master, at seeing and painting value. Playing with values, we can change a value contrast of an image. For example, this is a normal picture with normal value scale. Now the image on the left is a high contrast image because there are less shades of gray between white and black. And then one on the right is a low contrast image because its value scale is within a limited range with little variation. Notice how white and black are not even included. Usually high contrast images are dramatic and low contrast or subtle. You can also imply values by shading using simple patterns like I showed, independent in-class. Many beginner artists completely avoid value because it's so hard to master. But just knowing the basics can be extremely beneficial. For example, in this piece, I made the crystal pop out more and feel shinier than making a darker background and outlining them in black ink. This greatly increase the contrast with the lighter crystal and even the parts that are white. It is a simple and effective technique. Another neat trick is to make your art black and white using Photoshop to see if you're doing your values right. If you make a piece that has almost the same values throughout, it will feel flat and there will be that underlying feeling of something looking off. Be sure that your values are changing throughout your piece. Even if you're making cartoony art, you can do this just by picking colors with different values for different parts. There's a lot more to learn about value and the best way to do so is with value studies. Get some charcoal or pencil and try drawing using only values for practice. Now let's study about every artist's most important skill.
5. Observation is #1: If you've taken my, You Can Draw Anything class, then you already know that observation is the most important thing in an artist's toolbox. Without the ability of properly seeing no matter how good you are at drawing perfect circles, your work will suffer. Observation does a lot but most importantly no matter your style, it will keep your work looking unique, believable, and alive. Let me show you what I mean. Our brains are wired to make shortcuts, and this is especially true when it comes to drawing. If you look at a beginner artist's work or a child's work, it looks something like this. The reason is the brain thinks it knows what everything looks like and it gets in the way of actually drawing what you see. If you look at the world with fresh eyes instead of labeling everything, you'll notice the details and how different everything is. A true artist sees line, shape, form, and value when they draw not an eye, not a blanket, not a plant. They see the details and the shapes. Memorizing how to draw something is not a bad thing. In fact, that's useful skill for when you learn things like anatomy and such. The problem is, you already have a lot of faulty things that you memorize when you drew them as a kid or beginner. I'm guilty of this too from time to time. That's why when I draw I pay close attention to the details and get lost in them one detail at a time. It's important not to be afraid of making ugly work. Your brain wants you to play it safe. Don't listen to it. Instead, be honest with what you see at least in the beginning. When you get your observation skills up to par and learn to see well, then you'll have the ability to stylize anything you want using your own unique voice. If observing is hard for you, my advice is to practice drawing from life as much as you can and really paying attention to details and the lines and I'll show you some exercise that will help in the next lesson. The point is, don't let your brain tell you what you see, listen to your eyes instead. Observation shouldn't be complicated and in fact should make drawing easier not harder. At first, it will be hard for you to make the switch if you haven't already done so but once you really see, it will become simple. Now that we learned the most important basic concepts in art, let's go over some drawing exercises that will help you grow your skills quickly.
6. Drawing Exercises: Now we may know the basics of drawing, but without actually drawing, we won't improve. Practice is key for any skill, especially in art. But I know how daunting can be to stare at a blank page or not know where to start. That's why in this lesson we're going to go over tons of fun drawing exercises, from improving quickly. These exercises are for any skill level and you don't have to do all of these in one sitting. Just learn the exercises and do one or two when you have free time. But try to do each one at least once so that you can see which ones are the most challenging. Those are the ones you need to work on more. Remember, the harder something is to do, the more you are improving. Take challenges head on. The first thing I want to talk about is how important it is not to underestimate the importance of putting down marks on a page. It doesn't matter what it is that you draw. The practicing, even doing basic shapes or just wavy lines, benefits you. This was a warm up exercise and that you can draw anything class. I'll let you in on a secret. I made it up. You can warm up in this way or you can scribble, or you can practice hatching or even to a small doodle. Just do something, anything. The next time you're staring at a blank page, take out a scrap piece of paper and go wild. You can practice your mark making skills with whatever tools you want to experiment with, or you can doodle intricate designs, even have classes on that. Or you can even do a quick studies. Don't underestimate the fact that every time you put pen to paper, you are getting better. Do whatever floats your boat. Now, let's get into some famous training exercises that have specific rules. For this first exercise, I'll be using a brush pen, but you can use anything you like from ballpoint pen to a micron pen or a sharpie. I just prefer it not to be erasable so you don't erase it and redraw the lines all the time. The point is not to do that. This is just an exercise. Don't take it seriously. I'll be using my hand as a subject since hands are complicated, have a lot of detail and are easy to obtain. I recommend you draw yours too or pick a subject with lots of detail like hands. Now I'm drawing the outline. I'm not worried about proportions or shading or color, just details being interpreted into lines. You are training your ITC details and outlines, and you are also training it to draw what you see instead of what you think you see. This is called contour drawing. Draw all the wrinkles and kinks and any other detail that pops out. Contour drawing is the first way we learn how to draw and it's extremely important to master. You can take your time and make it super detailed and accurate or do it quickly like me. The important thing is to look at your subject as much or more than your paper. You are learning to properly observe. Do as many as you need until it feels natural. Another thing you can do is blind contour. This really trains you to study your subject. You have to get two piece of paper and cover your page with the second one or just draw a subject directly in front of you, instead. You just can't look at your page at all. Pick a point and start drawing your subject. Just try your best but don't look at your page and go as slow or as fast as you feel comfortable. As you can see, my result is weird-looking, but this is a perfect blind contour drawing. It's so much fun to do this. It doesn't matter what it looks like at the end. We're just practicing. If you don't know what to draw in real life, you can just draw the random things on your desk, like I did here. Notice how I don't sketch out the proportions beforehand because like I said before, the results don't matter. It's just about having a quick practice session. If you want to kick it up a notch and practice seeing form too, then you can do cross-contour drawings. This is when you use line to show the form or volume of your object. Study your object first. This is why doing realized subjects is better to start, and then use line to show for it. For example, the pot is flat on its sides, so I use normal straight lines. But the plant stems are rounded on the outside and slightly concave on the inside. I use line to show this. Here's another example of this. This is actually a large drawing of a statue that I took my time on, but it helped us study the form. Here's another one. If you want to make 3D art, I recommend you practice a skill a lot to make sure you understand form. You can also do value studies, which ignore a line in your subject and instead focus on the darks and lights. I did a lot of large drawings of animals since that's my preferred subject. These were done with alluded Inc and were fun and loose. I did use colored references, but if that's hard for you, you can just use image editing software to turn your images into black and white or just find black and white images. Another thing you can do is negative space drawing. It's when you study the negative space around the object instead of the object itself. This makes you aware of the negative space and the shapes it makes. You can also try timing your drawings to force yourself to loosen up and to do it quickly. Try anything from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. This is actually super-useful in gesture drawing, which is just doing quick studies of the human figure. There are tons of sites that are made just for this and if you want to draw people, I encourage you to look into it and make it a part of your art practice. I've really just scratched the surface with these examples. Because truth is, there are an infinite amount of ways to practice. Just do your thing, find what works for you, but don't run away from challenges. Instead, be excited when you meet one. Because it means you can improve a lot in something. Remember, it's all practice. Put the time in by doing exercises and experimenting. Now let's learn more advanced but equally essential concepts.
7. Patterns & Textures: Patterns and textures can be extremely fun to play with. They can also be used to give a lot of dimension to a piece. Also, don't forget textures and patterns are interchangeable because a pattern is also a texture. I showed a couple of different ways to shade and examples of patterns in my previous Pen and Ink Basic class. but you're not limited to pen and ink for this. You can use patterns and textures with all kinds of media. You can draw it or paint it with whatever you like but don't forget, you can take texture to the next level in making it real. This is easier to do with acrylic or oil paint and can add more dimension to your art. Textures and patterns can make your work feel more tactile even if it's flat and they can also make it more interesting, so definitely play with it and consider using it in your work. For example, look at how the extremely skilled artist, Daria Hlazatova uses patterns and textures in her work to give her pieces and other worldly quality so much dimension. Don't you just have the urge to reach out your hand and touch it even though you know it's flat? Another great example is Matt Miller's gorgeous work who mostly uses texture, but notice the amount of detail he puts in. Also patterns are very interestingly used throughout. His pieces have a lot of rhythm and detail thanks to patterns and textures. Catalina Estrada on the other hand, makes gorgeous patterns that have texture inside of them and patterns within patterns. Her work is so much fun to look at and even though there is a lot of detail, it is not overwhelming instead it feels like a party to the eyes. As you can see, patterns and textures can be super powerful all on their own, so don't be shy in incorporating them even a little bit in your work. Now, let's go over the basics of color theory.
8. Color Theory : The colors you use in your composition can make or break your piece. They can also be used to show your unique style or convey emotion. I personally pick my colors intuitively, but it takes time to get there. You had to learn the basics of color theory first. A really good example of an artist that uses colors strongly in her brand is Leigh Ellexson. If you look at her Instagram, you can see she uses similar colors in most of her pieces, and they all have soft and dream pastel vibe. She has a main color that she uses everywhere for her brand and is almost included in every piece. Can you guess what that is? That's right, pink; and you also think of pastel yellow and blue. If you look at her YouTube thumbnails, she uses pink overlays on each one. It's so consistent with her brand. The point is she use colors very effectively to convey certain feeling for not only her work, but also her whole brand, and we'll talk about this more later. Now, let's first go over what emotion each color is usually associated with. Red is anger, passion, or attention. Like for example, whenever you go shopping, all the For Sale signs are red. Pink is sweetness, romance, or youth. I think of cherry blossoms or a baby girls clothing. Orange is happiness, energy or confidence. Yellow is positivity, motivation, and also energy. Yellow and orange are both very powerful happy colors. Green is natural, healing, and restful. This is because green is connected to nature and we think of trees and grass and plant, it's a very relaxing color. Blue is calm, stable, and peaceful. Because the sky's blue everywhere you are in the world. It's a very stable color. Purple is royal, luxurious, and spiritual. Purple is very rare in nature, only some flowers have that color to them, so that's why it's such a mysterious and special color. Black is sophisticated, mysterious, and strong. Negative connotation to black is death in the Western culture, but it's funny because in other cultures that color is white, but black is a really classic color and that's why you always see a lot of artists just using black and white in their art and no color whatsoever. White is purity, holiness, and freshness. Black and white together just work well. These are just general words that describe how most people usually feel when they look at a color and how I think of them. They're not rules, they are just general consensus of what every color does. Everyone will have a different association with each color. Don't worry about it too much. This isn't really something I think about, I just subconsciously pick the colors I do. Now let's go over the basics of color theory. The color wheel is a super useful tool to understanding color, and I recommend you either make one like we do in my watercolor color class, or you can find tons of pre-made ones online and print one out and put it somewhere you can see it. We have primary colors, which are the three colors that can be used to mix any color you want. In traditional media or print, they're cyan, magenta, and yellow. But in digital media, they're blue, red, and yellow. Whatever media you work in, pick the right color wheel for you. Secondary colors are the babies or mixes of the primary colors; and tertiary colors are the last remaining colors that surround the primaries. The words don't matter, but it's a good idea to know the terminology. One more thing to point out is that there are cool and warm colors. Cool colors tend to recede and feel calm, and warm colors pop out at you and feel alive. It can really help in setting the mood to pick your colors based on temperature and to use cool and warm colors together to make different parts of the composition standout. This also makes a very nice contrast. We also have complementary colors which are opposites on the color wheel. If these two colors are used in a competition together, they really make each other pop. You have to be careful not to overdo the effect and dilute at least one of them. But you can create gorgeous pieces with just these two color combos, especially if one color dominates a piece and the other is used to drive focus to a specific and small area. The complements of green and red are famous in my favorite is holiday. When you look at this picture, you feel high-energy and the holiday spirit. Analogous colors are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. One of my favorite color combinations is pink, purple, and blue. When I use these colors, it makes the pieces very cohesive and pleasing to the eye. This approach is better for calmer pieces. It doesn't have that pop factor that complimentary color combinations do, but you can add a compliment from the middle of the color group to make things pop a little. A triadic color scheme is made with colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel, like our primaries. This color combo tends to make for very vibrant pieces. There are more combinations like a split complement, but I don't want this to seem too technical or complex. It really is up to you what colors you use. Your end goal should be to have a feel for colors and to create with your own style and rules. The most unique and original pieces out there have their own unique color combinations. If you'd like to create a monochrome or black and white, then do so. If you like to use every single color out there to make rainbow effect, then go ahead. It never hurts no color theory, but do your own thing. If you want to collect color combinations that you like, I recommend you start a Pinterest board and do so, and I have one you can follow and checkout. But like anything else in art, don't overthink it or go crazy. Rules are meant to be broken, especially in art. But to break them, you have to know them first. Now let's learn the ultimate and most important principles to be aware of.
9. Design Principles: Now we're going to go over design principles that are super important to understand. I encourage you to not only watch this lesson until you get it, but also to learn more about it from wherever you can, whether a course on the principles of design or a library book in your local library, or even just by looking at other people's art right after viewing this lesson and trying to see how they use these. Having a strong foundation and understanding design principles will show in your work as balanced compositions an overall harmonious and pleasing to look at artwork. The first principle is balance. Balance is just what it sounds like, equal visual weight on both sides of the composition. For example, a symmetrical piece is perfectly balanced because if you put a line in the middle, It's mirrored on both sides. This is one of the easiest ways to achieve balance. If you do this, you automatically get a perfectly balanced piece. Asymmetrical balance is a little harder to achieve because it takes practice, but it's essentially eyeballing the piece until both sides feel balanced even though they're not symmetrical. For example, if I put a circle on the bottom left side of this piece, the right side feels empty, so it's unbalanced. But if I add a smaller one on the top right side, it feels a little better, but not fully balanced because of the size difference. Now if I fill in that circle, if feels balanced because even though it's smaller, it feels heavier. This is called visual weight, and it's something you have to learn to balance in your composition. You achieve balance by using shapes, colors, lines, contrasts, and a lot of different ways. It's a skill built-in observation. Even though this kind of balance is harder, it's more common illustrations. Overall, symmetry usually feel stable and asymmetry feels dynamic and unstable. Symmetry is also very limiting and usually feel safer. Symmetry is usually more interesting, dynamic and the possibilities of what it can make are infinite. This principle is super simple to learn, but hard to master. Keep an eye out for artists that bounce your compositions in interesting ways. The next principle is unity or harmony. This just means things look like they belong together. For example, this looks weird because there are too many different techniques in each little element. They just don't match or make sense in being together. Now this looks normal to us because we are using similar techniques in each piece and gradually moving to a more loose way, from the top left to the bottom right. Even though, the way we are making the composition is changing, it feels harmonious because it's gradual and well thought out. Another easy way to unify is to put objects close together by using proximity. We automatically associate what we see as one thing. Notice how you're seeing three different groups just because the shapes are close together in each one. Another easy way is by using repetition, which just means repeat a certain element, like color or texture throughout the piece. This simply translates to doing the piece in the same style throughout and you can see it in the dots and lines group. The dots and lines group is way more harmonious and unified than the one with the random shapes. You can also use repetition to make visual rhythm, which is just a usage of similar elements that repeat for a rhythmic feel that feels like the notes of music. The next principle is having a focal point. This is super important and just means a subject that is the center of attention in your piece. The first place the eyes of a viewer land on is the focal point. For example, this piece by Sam Yong captures your attention and focuses it on the cut of the tail just because he added color there and nowhere else. This can also be done by using scale contrast, detail, and so forth. The focal point is just something to be aware of because you usually have in mind what it is and to make sure nothing random steals the spotlight. Another important thing that ties into this is continuation, which just means that viewers eyes are drawn to next thing, and the next things by the lines and shapes in the composition. For example, this piece by Michelle Wolfskulljack uses a focal point in continuation in a genius way. The first thing you look at is a sculpt, because of the contrast, since it has no white in that area, then the beak guides you to look lower because it's pointing there and you look at the arrow, the skull, and the air, are the two most important elements of the composition and we look at both of them first. Then you look up in taking the whole raven body because the arrow goes up, and most likely your eyes end up at the top of the triangle, and then follow the line down to the feet, and then up the skull and beak again. Including the triangle in the background really help to guide the viewer's eyes. Having a strong focal point help because you know where the eyes will land first. All of this is done suddenly and maybe subconsciously, but because your eyes have paths to travel, we find it easier to look at enjoin, even study the composition. To practice seeing this, look at some other art that you'd like, pay attention to how your eyes travel and why. Another principle is scale and proportion, which is just how big or small something is compared to the other parts of the composition. Playing with scale proportion is super useful in illustration. For example, in my Qt classes, I show that having a big head and a small body makes things cute. What we did was we observed an animal or person and then simplified and made the body small and the head bigger for a cute look. That was achieved by playing with scale and contrast in just simplifying. Also by playing with scale, you can crop things in a more fun way, by either zooming in or out. Another super important thing to be aware of is negative and positive space in your work. Negative space is the background, and positive space is the foreground, or your subject. You can invert your perspective to view the negative space. A good example of this is the famous face vase illusion. Can you see the faces looking at each other, if the black is the foreground? Now can you see the vase if the white is the foreground? Just by playing with what's the background or what's the foreground, we're flipping our perception of what is positive and negative space. It's easy to forget the negative space around your object. Awesome makes shapes and you have to pay attention to those shapes much as you do to the positive space near work. It's important to notice silhouette of the subject in your pieces, a strong silhouette that is easily recognizable. This is especially important character design like I showed before. I just went over a lot of principals. An easy way to implement all of these in your work is use thumbnail sketches before you start. Have a super short class and the topic if you want to check it out. But it's basically tiny sketches of what you're going to make. You can play with all of the concepts quickly and try many different ideas without wasting supplies or time until you find the perfect composition. I highly recommend you give it a try and incorporate it into your art practice. As you can see, there are a lot of things to think about when it comes to making your art. But don't get overwhelmed, just try to learn these concepts as best as you can and you will automatically apply them to your work. By knowing all this, you'll have a more critical eye to all mistakes. Overtime you will subconsciously get a feel for what look is good and will make your art pleasing without giving it much thought. Now that we have for foundation design, let's talk about how to find the right medium for you and why it's so important to experiment.
10. The Right Medium For You: You may already know what medium you prefer to use, but if you don't, this lesson will help you narrow it down. Before I go into detail, I want you to know that I have personally tried almost every medium out there and only by physically trying them did I find out what was my favorite to use. I recommend you try do the same. It can get pricey to try all of them, but just try cheap supplies or even maybe borrow some from a friend. The two main categories are traditional and digital art. Digital art costs more to start with, but once you buy the tablet, you don't have to buy anything else. A cheaper good tablet is the Wacom Intuos. I have one of them and they're pretty good. Or you can go the more pricy and professional way and get a Wacom Cintiq. A Wacom Cintiq is very pricey. I actually recommend instead you get an iPad Pro. It has the same capabilities to Wacom, and it can do a lot more, and is fully portable. All you have to do is get a pencil for it and you're golden. If you are using a computer, you will need software. You can find free ones, or you can get the Industry Standard of Photoshop, which is also very useful for making your own graphics for a website or anything else. Or if you're on the iPad Pro, you can get Procreate, which is a lot cheaper than Photoshop. The cool thing about digital art is once you have the software and tablet, you wont need to buy anything else. You can make art in so many different styles and digital art is super forgiving because you can work in layers, and undo any mistakes whenever you make them. This doesn't mean the digital art is easier, its just different. If you want to be a digital artists, my advice is to try lots of different brushes until you find your favorites. With digital art, you can work quicker and make more polish pieces compared to traditional medium. If most of the artists you admire are digital artists, then you probably will be a digital artist. You are usually drawn to the type of work that you will love to make. But if you do decide to be a digital artists, don't fall into the trap of never picking up a pencil again. For example, these are some awesome digital pieces by artist Bobby Chiu. But if you look at his Instagram, you will see that he also does pencil drawings and uses traditional medium from time to time. Paper to pencil is still the best way to plan out your compositions and make quick sketches. Also, sketch books are super portable. You can always get in your sketches or take a photo to make them digital. As you can see, Bobby did so with this super cute painting. Now, onto traditional art. While traditional art can be much cheaper to starting with simple things like paper and pencil, it can get expensive over the long run, especially if you get professional quality supplies because you are using physical things. So you have to replace your supplies regularly and with things like watercolor, paper or pencil. It can be quite pricy if you use professional quality supplies. But don't worry, you can always get away with using cheaper supplies at the beginning. For example, here is a painting I did using really cheap Crayola paints and brushes. It wasn't ideal, but this shows that it's not about the supplies, it's more about the artist. Also, if you want to make prints of your work, you will either need a really good scanner for smaller pieces, or a really good camera and lighting for bigger works of art or art with texture, whereas digital artists don't have to worry about this. You will also need a physical desk to store all your supplies and use them. A good source of light is also necessary, but you can get away with just using natural light from a window. Also, making mistakes in traditional art is much less forgiving, but it depends on what medium you use. For example, mistakes in watercolor or ink are really hard to fix, but mistakes in oil, acrylic or guage, are easy. That being said, I am a traditional artist that specializes in watercolor and ink because it's my favorite thing to work with. I love them. Watercolors have a life of their own and I embrace mistakes. To me, there's nothing better than working with my hands and touching all the different supplies and seeing them interact with paper and each other. This just goes well with my personality and it's my preferred way of working. When I was a kid, I used colored pencils and crayons, mostly did coloring books, and then I did acrylic paintings that were big and abstract, and then I tried different things like oil pastels, inks, and finally watercolors. I wouldn't know that watercolors were my favorite if I had nothing to compare them to. So my advice is to try as many different medium as you can get your hands on, because we all like different things, and you're not going to know what that is until you give it a try. Another way to find your favorite is to look at your favorite artists and find the medium most of them have in common. Usually, you'll prefer that medium yourself. But here's a quick explanation of various traditional mediums to help make your choice. Pencils are great because you can get different values easily. I recommend you sketch with pencils even if it's not your preferred medium and especially if you're a digital artist, because there's nothing else quite like it to easily get idea down, and a good eraser is your best friend. Color pencils are equally fun, but the pigmented ones are usually unerasable. But they have a super fun texture to them and you can even blend them. Copic markers are very expensive, but great at making controlled and all blended pieces. They have a super neat painted feel to them and you can make superclass n-dimensional pieces easily. If they're too expensive for you, you can find alternatives that are cheaper and try them out for us and then see if you like it, and then just get a couple of Copics at a time. There is a lot of ways to use ink and have a class on the subject, but mostly it's with either technical pens or deep pens for super detailed pieces or just to make outlines. Or you can use it as actually a painting medium with diluted ink. Ink and watercolor actually react very similarly to water. So they have a very similar effect when they are used. Wet and wet really summarize watercolors and inks for me. Look how gorgeous this dries. This is why these two are my favorite mediums to work with. But they can be tricky to master and require a lot of practice. When painting with ink or watercolor, be prepared for lots of happy accidents and one textures. If you want to learn how to paint with watercolor, I already have a class on that. Oil pastels are like bondable crayons which can make super during pieces or even hyper-realistic work. They're really fun, especially since you can blend them with your fingers. Oil paints also can have the same effect, but they can be more complicated to use than other mediums because of their very slow dry time, and you have to use a solvent like turpentine, which can be toxic and smelly. But nowadays this isn't a big problem because you can buy water-soluble oil paints. Acrylic paints, on the other hand, are easier to use because they drive very quickly in all you need is water. Also, acrylic paint is much cheaper than oil. But on that note, it's a personal preference. Some artists prefer oil, and some acrylic. I've noticed that artists that tend to draw people use oil because slow drying time helps them to blend the skin more. But some prefer acrylic because it's easier to work with and they don't like the slow drying time. If you want to paint on Canvas, I recommend you start with acrylic and then maybe can work up your way to oil painting. Give both a try to see which one you really prefer. Both acrylic and oil paintings tend to dry more glossy. Once acrylic and oil paintings are fully dry, they also cannot be reactivated with water, but instead you have to add more layers to fix mistakes. Gouache is more tricky because it acts a little like acrylic paints, a little like watercolors. The biggest difference between gouache and acrylic is it dries matt, quicker, and it can be reactivated with water. The fact that it can reactivate with water is what makes it so tricky to use. If you hate the fact that it rewets itself after being dry, you can always buy an acrylic wash. This is a new thing and it just means that once it's dry, it's dry. I, myself have been dabbling Gouache recently and it's actually really hard but fun. An artist that's really mastered this medium is Audra Auclair. Her work is gorgeous. So that's it for this list. But this isn't everything out there. There are a ton of ways to make art, and don't forget, you can mix different mediums together. This is called mixed medium. Usually when people say that word, they think of collages, but it's really the mixing of any medium you want. The point is, there are no limits, but you have to try as many things as you can to find your favorite ways of making art. Like I said before, look to the work of artists that you admire, for a hint to what your preferred medium will be. Next, let's talk about why it's silly to be embarrassed of using references, and how important they are.
11. Using Refrences: For whatever reason, a lot of people have the misconception that using reference photos is wrong or cheating. This is not true. References are one of the most essential assets you can have as an artist. Even if your goal is to draw from your imagination, that will take years and years of study practice and yes, using thousands and thousands of references along the way. There have been cases of artists getting in trouble because they draw from references, that are copyrighted by photographer and don't credit them. I think that scarce some beginner artist. The trick is not to just copy one reference, but to use a couple to make your own image, or if you do choose to use one, make sure to do it in your own style. Once you stylize something enough, it becomes your own because it looks nothing like the reference, or you could really take the initiative and take your own photos or use live references when you can. If you want to make exact copies of a photo because maybe you are a realistic painter and you want to sell that work, then you can always either higher model, take the photo yourself or paint on scene, or if you'd rather spend a few $ to do this work, you can use a stock image site. There are thousands of images on these sites and they only cost you a couple of $ to get one. You can even find some free stock image sites, but they're more limited. If you're just drawing for study and you're not going to sell them or profit from them, then doesn't matter what references you use. I tend to use whatever images I find even on Pinterest, but my finished pieces never look like the reference. I usually change the shapes to my liking, use different colors and change a competition up and just do it in my own unique style. The only things I tend to copy are the pose and maybe the lighting, but that cannot be copyrighted. I essentially use references to make sure that the foreman light on my subject is accurate. Now if your goal is to draw from imagination, you can. It just will take you a long time to get there and you will need to study your subject immensely. References will always be needed no matter how good you get, even if you get to the point of drawing from your head, because there are so many things that you can draw and you can't possibly memorize all of them. Make friends with references and throw away the silly idea of been cheating. If you don't use them, your work will greatly suffer because unless you have photographic memory, you cannot possibly imagine or remember what everything looks like or acts like without being exposed to the same thing many times. Now that's out of the way, let's talk style.
12. How to Find Your Style: Finding your style can seem daunting and scary when you first start drawing. It's like the secret ingredient that everybody else has but you. I'm here to tell you that it's not something you need to worry about. Your style will come naturally with time. With that said there are some things you should be doing along the way to speed up the process of developing it. What I'm about to tell you will sound taboo, but give me a chance. The secret to finding your style is finding a lot of artists that inspire you and that you greatly admire and then copying them. For study purposes only of course, don't ever share their work and claim it as your own. Copying gets bad rep, but it's probably the most important tool for you to learn how do favorite artists think and make the compositions use color, line and so forth. By trying to replicate their work, you will learn a lot about not only the principles we already covered, but also how they move their hand, how they use their media. You'll even uncover your weaknesses and strengths. You'll see what works and why and you'll grow your skills at the same time. The most important thing about doing this is to be sure to copy lots of artists, not just one or two or three, because if you only copy one or two artists, you risk becoming a copy of one of them. That's not something you want, that's exactly the opposite. Your style has to be completely unique, not a copy of someone else. If you copy 20 artists instead, or even 10, they will all influence your style. You will take the best parts out of each one and put your own twists on it. By doing this, you will develop a totally unique and magical style of your own. This is how every original style is born. We are all influenced by the artists that came before us. When I was starting out learning how to draw, every time I saw some work of art that like I would copy using pencil and leave a little NM next to it to show that it's not mine. The more advanced ways to copy with the same media that the artists used to learn the medium more and to see how they do it. This will teach you a lot about the medium as well. The point is copying is totally okay and you should do it to speed up your learning process. Just be sure to only do it for practice and don't go around sharing that as your own work and your golden. The reason this method works is because whatever you find inspiring in art is probably what your style will end up looking like, because you're style is just what and how you like to create. Whatever you love the most, is what you're going to love to create the most. I promise you that every artist out there is inspired been many other artists and in fact continue to be inspired even during the professional careers and onward. Especially when they were starting out, they had many artists that motivated them to make art and that they look up to and that they wanted to be like. Those artists have greatly influenced their style. For example, one of my favorite artists when I was starting out with Katie Daisy, she has whimsical and happy feeling to her work. Even though we use different mediums and illustrate differently, you can tell that my work is influenced by hers, but my style is nowhere near copy of hers. We just had the same positive feeling and our art and likes to paint similar themes. I loved her art so much because this was the style that I was going towards. I'm sure she also has artists that inspired her before and so on and so forth. Another thing I recommend doing is getting a Pinterest or Instagram account and collecting inspiring art there. This will help you to find your favorite artists and it will also feed your subconscious mind with many different ideas and styles. When I'm feeling uninspired, I like to look through my boards and by seeing lots of beautiful art, I feel like I want to paint again. Overall don't sweat finding yourself too much. It will always grow and develop and continue to evolve for your entire lifetime is not hiding somewhere and know you're not on the unlucky one who will never find it. You just have to keep creating and developing it by making what you love. I remember when I used to worry about style and I just think, wow, that was so silly of me because in the end I found it and it was always here and it was slowly evolving. Just follow your passion and your heart and you'll discover it was with you all along.
13. Filling in the Gaps: We have gone over a lot of essential skills and concepts that you have to know to be a successful artist and to be good at your craft but that's not everything. You are the master of your creative journey. You have to figure out what you have to learn to make your art the best it can be. Think of it as if you're the teacher and the student. You have to figure out what curriculum you need, specifically you, just to make your art grow and to make it better. For example, if you want to make up character, is like really make them up yourself from scratch, you have to learn anatomy and I would do a lot of gesture drawings, I would do a lot of people studies and you have to learn how clothing works and how it drips on the body. As you can see for me specifically, I would like to draw just like natural objects like food items, like kiwis or like animals or flowers and birds. For me it's more like observational drawing. That's what I practice the most. I did a lot of realistic studies and I would really pay attention to lighting and shading and how an animal's body is made up of shapes and stuff like that. I could go deeper into this, if I, for example, was obsessed with horses, I could learn a horse's anatomy and then make up my own horse poses, if I was doing like a horse children's book or something. Also, the media I use and the style I use is very important as well. For example, for my style, I have to try to loosen up as much as I can and that's just something I have to practice. It's not something I can read in a book. It's just something you have to sit down and put it to practice every day and that's how I get better at it. That's why I myself keeps evolving. The same thing for you. You have to practice what you know, but the same time challenge yourself. It can be really bad to have gaps in your knowledge. For example, if you'd like to draw people and you don't know how to draw hands, which are pretty hard. I'm not going to lie. They're pretty hard to draw. I rarely draw them. But for me it's really observation every time and I can't make up my own pen pauses, because I just have to look at my hands, they are right here, your references are here. But the point is, if you want to draw people and you don't know how to draw hands, you can always have your people with their hands in their pockets or something. Or if you want to draw people, but you only know how to draw the straight pose, you're not going to have a big variation in your art style of different poses and things like that. You can find poses online, you don't have to memorize everything. You can find reference photos online and everything you need, but the point is, put the practice time in into whatever skill set you have to have. Another example is if you want to, let's say, do urban sketching or you want to make up cityscapes, you have to learn perspective drawing and you have to really look at a lot of cityscapes and you have to practice drawing them all the time to get the hang of them and to understand how they look. That's just how it is with any style you have out there with anything you want to do. But everyone has a different thing they like to draw and they have different way of doing it. You have to figure out what it is you're missing in your knowledge, where do you have gaps in? What is it that's hard for you to draw? What do you always get stuck on? Is it eyes, is it noses, is it flowers and you really like drawing flowers, but you suck at it, you have to figure that out. Then you have to put the time in and study that subject a lot. What I would do is either get a little planner or a piece of paper and just write down what you need to learn more and then dedicate a certain day to each thing, or you can just dedicate a whole month to one thing like hands and then go to the next thing. Whatever way works best for you, or maybe just have a list in front of you and then you can pick whatever you want that list to work on that day. But the important thing is to always challenge yourself because if you don't, you'll become stale and your progress will be very slow. If you challenge yourself, it's much faster. You'll see results much faster and they'll be much better. Be sure to challenge yourself, be sure to draw as much as you can and it's your responsibility as maybe you are self-taught artist, maybe you went to school, maybe it's a hobby, but it's your responsibility to figure out what you want to be able to draw and to learn how to do it. Once you do that, you'll feel powerful and you could do anything you want. You will never be hurt from having too much knowledge, but you can be from having too little. Be sure to just cover all your bases and then you can make it as stylized as you want and as soon as you have a foundation down and you learn all these different skills, your work will look much better even if you have it super stylized because you know things like values, the form of things or whatever it is that your style needs to know. Even if you're going to be really cartoony like I am, you have to know the basics because if you don't, your work will suffer. Just take some time out every day and learn a little bit. You know, you're on the best learning platform on the internet in my opinion. Sculpture has so many teachers on so many different subjects and you can learn whatever you need to learn. My advice is to never stop learning, watch as many classes as you can. But put the practice time in, because if you don't practice it, you will forget it and you're not going to memorize and you're not going to really learn it. Practice, learn and your work will continue to grow more and more. Just put the time in. My advice is to have a sketchbook to keep all your work in. You can even make it completely private never showing anybody like a journal. Then you can always see your progress and just fill in every page and just practice every day. Maybe have a goal during one skit per page a day, maybe put away 20 minutes in the morning for art. Maybe, in the weekends half an hour each week and day or if you're actually trying to become a professional artists, you have to put time in almost every single day. Be sure to find a way to put your art practice into your life and to study and to learn and to grow and just enjoy the process of becoming better at what you're doing and just experimenting and growing. It's an amazing feeling and it's extremely fulfilling. Now let's talk about the most important thing every artist needs if you want to profit from your work.
14. Building Your Audience: Now let's talk about building your audience and finding your niche. No matter what he wanted to do as an artist, if you don't have an audience, way much harder to succeed. If you look at all the successful artists out there, you will notice most of them have a huge social media following. Not all of them do this. Some of them just have art agents and freelance, but having a huge following can really help. It can just be Instagram or YouTube, or Pinterest, or Twitter, or Facebook. You can use a couple of these, only one of them or two of them. I think at this current time of 2018, Instagram and YouTube are the most powerful social media platforms for artists. But if something else works better for you, then use that other ideas are Tumblr or Dribbble or any other social media that is widely used. Another thing you can do is grow mailing lists just by putting a simple form on your website. This will guarantee you having a personal and direct access to your audience. Another thing you can do is start a blog on your site related to art. Just write about whatever you're passionate about. It can be about your creative process, reviews for supplies, or you can even make tutorials. Having a blog is a great way to grow yourself because people will find you through Google and you can even monetize this with affiliates. I'll talk about this in the next lesson. These are just a few examples of why having website it's beneficial. You especially need one if you want to look professional and make money as an artist, since it's important to have one and showcase your best and most recent art. This is called your portfolio. This will not only make you look a real artist to your audience, but also will greatly increase the likelihood of client will contact you to work on a project. Even if you're not interested in doing freelance work, it's always good to have one place where you can bring everything you are together. There are numerous benefits to having your own site and you don't have to know how to coach to set one up. I personally use Squarespace. I find it so easy to do whatever I want my site without any coding knowledge. But you can't hold data on a site until you already have a strong illustration portfolio and some followers. The best time to make a site is when you are ready to start profiting. Because once you profit, you can take your website expenses out of your taxes, you'll be self-employed. This lesson isn't here to show you how to use Instagram or YouTube. There are tons of tips and tricks out there with a quick Google search and there are many classes on the subject found here on Skillshare. But there are a couple of tips that I can share with you. First off, pick one or two platforms and think about how often you want to make new content. Maybe an Instagram posts every other day and YouTube video once every week or two. Then make high quality content. Quality always trumps quantity. Making high-quality stuff a lot is the best way to go about it, but that can overwhelming for most. Just make the best of that so you can then put it out there. If your stuff is good, people will find it and they will subscribe or follow you. That being said, it's a slow process and don't be discouraged looking at the numbers at the beginning. Celebrate every new follower because that's another person that is interested in your work and your style in you. I also don't recommend thinking about who your audience is too much at the beginning. That will make itself clear with time. You'll attract your audience natural with the work you make in social media love to show you stats and who follows your work. Don't worry about it too much for starting out. That's also important to understand your niche and brand. A good way to get the heart of that is to ask yourself questions like these. Why do you make art? Why do you want to share it? What makes your art special? How do you want the viewer to feel? What's your favorite thing to illustrate and why? Answering these questions will help you make your brand more clear. Maybe you like making really cute things and you just want people to be happy. Maybe you like extreme detail and when people to be in awe. Or maybe you make comics that specialize in 90s and histology and make so many people laugh. The point is you have a much higher chance of being remembered and successful if you know what your brand is. I mean, think about it, most artists are known for something specific. Like Katie Daisy mix posit art that is connected to nature and makes it If you're happy and optimistic. If you scroll through her Instagram feed, you can see how everything is related to nature and how strong her brand is. Or how about Peggy Dean, who was also a Skillshare, teacher. Notice how clean her fetus is and you can tell right away that she makes tutorials and step-by-step drawings. One of her passions is teaching. She specializes in three things, lettering, inking, and watercolors. She tries to make art easy like I do. You can see all this just by scrolling through and also notice how Peggy really loves flowers and botanical work and brush lettering. Those are her main themes. You can tell the feeling of her plan just by looking through and you can see that it's for people that want to learn and grow their art. Also remember Lee Erickson from the color theory lesson. Notice how her work is so cohesive and you get a certain feeling when looking at it too. Some words that I would use to describe her work are dreamy, cute, happy, and magical. She also has a theme that is her favorite to paint animals. Let's not forget the awesome colors that repeat and make up her brand. Do you see why branding is so important. It's okay to experiment as much as you can when looking for your style. Over time you've won their yourself down to a certain essence and then you're ready to share it with the world. I recommend you take a moment to get a piece of paper, and it just brainstorm about what you think your brand will be about. What words do you think describe your art? What words do you want to describe your art? Another way to look at is to ask yourself, what is my personal mission with my art? Making art for the sake of art is great, but there is something much deeper than that. There's a reason you want to be an artist and there's something specific that is your mission. My niche and mission is to teach other people how to make art. But if you go deeper, I want everyone to feel like they can do anything. I want art to be easy for people, as cliche as it sounds. I want to change the world and making more people make art and the other side of the art is to cheer people up. I love to use vibrant colors and paint lighthearted, happy subjects and sometimes I use brush lettering with positive messages to make that even stronger. In fact, when I started putting my art out there, I did it on Tumblr with lots of tiny pieces that took me around 15 minutes a day. My goal was to make people happier and change the world for the better. I didn't make money doing this by to get a lot of messages from people that inspire next, they grew up pretty hefty following. Looking back, it was how I built my audience brand and style at the beginning. Just put yourself out there and do what you love to do. Your mission will become more clear and you'll figure out what your brand and niche looks like if you still don't have any clue to what your brand is, take a look at your strengths and your personality, and maybe even ask a loved one what words they would use to describe your art or you. My biggest advice is to do what you love, draw what you love, and try everything you'd have a want to. You are on a journey of self-discovery and that's a beautiful thing. The path will be made more clear with every step. The next lesson, I will share my story to show you how everything you do connects.
15. My Art Story: Before we go through a list of how to make money as an artist, I want to share my story with you, just so you can see what I see when I look back and I connect the dots, because I think there's a couple of valuable lessons in there. One thing I want to point out is that I'm not going to be mentioning all the time I spent studying my craft, all the books I've read, all the time I put into practicing, and just getting better at what I do. I'm not going to mention all that, I'm just going to be mentioning the things I actually tried. As you know for the last lesson when I was starting out, I made a tumbler of positive works of art, and I would update it every single day. I really loved doing that. It was so much fun. I didn't make any money out of it, but it was so fulfilling because I felt like I made a difference in people's lives, because I got e-mails from them, and I see like sometimes my posts would get thousands of notes and I'm like, well, I don't know how many people saw that, how many people would've been uplifted, and it just felt really good, and I love doing that. I knew that something with that stuff was what I was supposed to do. Around that time, I also started learning graphic design because I thought, you can't really make money as an artist, and that that you have to be a graphic designer if you want to be in that field. I wanted to be so, I'm not the kind of person that really likes a structured learning environment, I like to learn on my own and pick my own things to do, but everybody's different. I was learning it, and then I started doing freelance work. I did like logos and brochures and I hated it. There's nothing wrong with working with clients, everyone's different. But I realized that's not what I meant to do. I'm supposed to make my own content. I don't like being told what to do and then fulfilling that it's not my thing. But maybe that's your thing, I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying I realized something about myself, and that's why I really encourage you to try different things. I also started doing like little art commissions at this time and charging some small money for it. That really helped me to grow my skills, and go out of my box. Also at this time I started doing Threadless. Threadless is a T-shirt like design competition thing, and you're making sort of looks like funny graphics on them like cats and just funny stuff. I loved the challenge of it, and I will always make them an illustrative with digital, and I realized I didn't really like working in Illustrator as much as I did make my little tumbler post. I realized traditional media was more for me. At the same time, I realized that they had led to different competitions, that open-ended ones where you could do whatever you want, and themed ones where they have a theme for you. I realize I did not like doing the themed ones, so I really like being open-ended and not being put in a box at all. I don't know why, but my creativity always stems from that and it's like I don't control it. Something tells me what to do, something outside of me. That's how it feels. If something tells me what to do, I can't be creative. By doing all this, I was learning more and more about myself. I didn't want any Threadless competitions, but I was competing with the best artists around the world. I'm not surprised. I wasn't that great back then, around this time, I decided to try college ago. I just went to a community college that had some art classes. I just took some art classes just to see what it was like. I realized that I hated pens textured learning environment again, I mean, something about yourself being like repeated a couple of times to understand that. But something really good came out of it, because I was challenged to make really big realistic works of art like life studies of things. Because I did this, I realized I was more skilled than I thought and I really grim up to observation skills. It helped challenge me, and we did this drawing exercises that also helped me to loosen up. I realized the importance of trying exercises, and that's why I told you guys they're super important. There was also a hint about what I should do next when I was in school, I explained something to a student about being a Watercolorer. Then another student said to me, you should teach, and I was like, "Ooh, no, that's terrible idea. I'd be a terrible teacher". Yeah, here we are. But it's funny because I had that hint and I just shrugged it off. What if I never give teaching a try? Just because I limited myself. That's why don't limit yourself guys and just try everything. You don't know what you like until you try it, you don't know what you'll be good at until you try. Just give everything a try. After a couple of classes, I realized it wasn't for me and I quit. Then I tried streaming on Twitch.tv. They have a creative section where you can post paintings and art. There was a lot of fun. I would make like works of art while talking to people for hours. I would make works of art that took me longer to make than my little tumbler pieces. I was more serious about them. Actually, not knowing if I was building my illustration portfolio while doing this, and also my confidence in talking in front of a camera. Also I got all the equipment I needed to fill my first Skillshare class. Also I was working with videos, how to figure out, how do we know where to place my cameras, when I made my art, and things like that, and I was just learning a lot. It was fun and they made me build my confidence because, 40 people would tune in at a time and watch the paint. I realized, maybe I'm not finally could enough. Maybe, the critic in my head can be quiet now, and I know what I'm doing. I did a year of that and then I quit because it stopped being fun, and it always fallen the passion. I know I'm a quitter but I'm really just following my passion and losing something. But at this time I didn't really know what to do. I remembered that Skillshare emailed me a couple years ago to to teach a class, and I ignored them because I thought, I'm not good enough yet. I went on their website and I saw they had a teach challenge and I thought, maybe I should try teaching a watercolor class because people over-complicate it and I wanted to make it simple and show that anybody can do it. I made my first class and I barely slept, and I was obsessed with it. When I finished, I put so much work in, and now it's like thinking, what if nobody watches this, and what if I actually did a really bad job? It got such a great response. I was so happy because I was so passionate about making it, and I realized, I finally found my passion and my niche. After that, I just kept making more and more classes. I want to go back to the whole audience building thing. The reason I got my first couple of students that you need to trend on Skillshare was because I had a pretty big audience on tumbler and I did a giveaway on there. But most of them didn't join the class, really like maybe 20 people did. The problem was that I had 13,000 followers, but they were all not interested in learning art. That's why it's important to build an audience specific to what you want to do, and what you want to provide. But at that time I didn't know I was going to teach. So I can't blame me. But having that audience, even if only a couple people joined, really helped me because that was only reason I could try. The only reason a lot of people saw my class from Skillshare later on. After my success of my first class, I just kept making classes, and making classes, and making classes. I was obsessed. I loved doing it so much. I could finally actually make normal income as an artist and not worry about it. Looking back, I realized that everything I did that I failed at or quit, were actually super important skills, and were the reason I made such a successful Skillshare class. Think about it. I learn graphic design, which is super important for making little thumbnails for the classes, and the cover images, and how to frame your shots and all that. Graphic design is very important also in art itself. That's why I taught you guys that basic principles. The next thing I learned was, how to use Adobe Photoshop and illustrated aftereffects. Because of that, I could learn how to use premier much easier because they're all very similar. So video editing wasn't such a steep learning curve for me, as it would be for somebody else. It's brand new to this. Also I had all the equipment from streaming and that helped out. Also I build my portfolio from streaming that I could show my work. what efforts they make class I'll show that, I do know how to make art. It is just everything built up from everything I tried to pass. Because I tried to all those different things, I learn more and more about myself, and who I am and what I like to do, what I don't like to do, and because of that, I know where to concentrate my energy. The only way to learn all of this is to try different things. I encourage you to try whatever interests you at any moment, be passionate about it, try it out. If you don't like it, you want something new. If you don't like something you learned about what you do like, because I don't like for example. I don't like having a creative brief. I don't like being told what to do. I know that for a fact that I like freedom, I like to work for myself, I like to be a crater completely and not have anyone tell me what to do. By knowing what you don't want, you know what you don't want. Give everything you can a try. You will benefit a lot from every experience, you will learn something new. In the end, you never know how the dots will connect and what you will do in the future from the skills that you learn in your past, by just trying different things. What's next on my journey? I don't know I was thinking about making an iPad app, children's books, there's a lot of things I keep thinking about doing. I'm so obsessed with making classes, and I'm still going to do that, but I'm going to start trying to branch out more, and because I have the stability from Skillshare, and it's an income, I don't have to worry about it as much. It can be as creative as I want to do, whatever I want to do. I'm so grateful that I give teaching a chance and I didn't just psych myself out and doubt myself and that I just tried it. Try as many things as you can guys. I can't stress the importance of that because if I wouldn't have given teaching a try, I wouldn't be here right now. That would be a very sad world for me. Maybe some of you who are inspired by my teaching style, and I didn't know I had the skill. Just give it a go. Your journey will be different from mine, from anybody else's, but you have to start somewhere. Just do things that matter. Try as many things as you can and have fun. In the next lesson I'm going to show you different ways to make money, and these are all things you can try out and see what works for you.
16. Different Ways to Make Money: This lesson is for those that either aspired to be professional artists or are already professional artists, or even if you are just curious of how artists can make money. The truth is, thanks to the internet, there are a myriad of ways to profit from your art. Every successful artists out there has their own unique path they carved out based on their brand and what they like to do. Most of these ways requiring established audience. That's usually step one, but some don't like freelance work. My advice is to start now and try as many different ways as you can to find out what it is that you like to do. When you find that thing that you're passionate about and that you love doing, that thing that doesn't feel like work and you could do all day, then fully concentrate on it. It doesn't have to be just one thing either. Most artists do various things at once. This lesson, I'll give you tons of ideas and how to make money. I got these from observing how other artists make a living. I encourage you to observe how your favorite artists do so as well. Most artists mix and match different ways and they all add up. Keep your mind open and try many as you can. Remember that I didn't know if I would be a good teacher, but I'm so glad I tried it. In the same way, you may not know what to do, but once you try it, you'll be sure if it's the right thing for you, and if it's not, you can try something else until you find that thing you really love to do. Before we start the list, I want to say one more thing. Don't forget that all of these ways require a lot of perseverance, dedication, and hard work and skill. You have to get to the point where you're good enough to charge for your craft. That doesn't mean you should wait until your perfect. It just means you shouldn't be disappointed if you don't succeed and you're not ready. You are learning from everything you try. Most important thing is perseverance, because one day you will be more than good enough and you will accomplish all that you dream of and more. The first way is when most artists offer on the side or as their main source of income, is selling prints or originals of their work. There are two main ways to sell prints. The first is to get a printer and print it out yourself and sell it on a site like Etsy, Bigcartel, or your own site. If you've a large following doing it yourself is viable through your own site. If you don't do with recite like S8 because you have a high chance of people discovering your prints and your work when they do searches on the site. You'll just have to pay a tiny percentage to Etsy for every sale. Listing items is free. If you don't want to deal with the hustle of printing and shipping, you can always sell on a print on demand site like Society six, you only receive a couple of dollars for every sales and profits are much slower, but all you have to do is upload your work and also had the same convenience of being searchable like Etsy and Society six, you can also print on stickers, bags, mugs, and so forth. They also hold sales very often will e-mail you about them so you can notify your followers if you want to learn more about Society six, they already made a class just for skill share about them. If you don't want Society six, there are other websites and there are tons of other classes about print on demand sites. You want to sell original work, looking at other artists with their scalable audience and the same medium and chemists and see how they price their work. Watercolor paintings, for example, usually sell between $50-300, but Euler Acrylic paintings on a big canvas, sell much more from hundreds to thousands of dollars. This also depends on how famous the artist is. If you want to become a fine art gallery artists, you can try to show your work in galleries, especially if you have a collection and you can even just do this locally. The problem is, this is very competitive. The good news is there are a lot of fine art websites. I'll let you list your work for free and are a great way to get discovered by collectors if that's what you want to do, you can price your work at gallery prices and lot of people saw their work this way. Don't be afraid to take advantage of the Internet. You'd be surprised how many collectors find their art online. If you do decide to sell big pieces online, just be sure to figure out how to ship your bigger pieces safely. Another thing in this category is commissions. Commissions are a great way to make extra income and get practice time and with your personal style, commissions are usually priced more than the originals because they are custom made. Some artists do certain themes like pet portraits or people portraits, or you can leave it open-ended. The next thing I'll talk about ties into this. Patreon is a great way for artists to make extra income from their fans and supporters. Artists can offer tears and supporters make monthly payments and get the benefits of those tears. You can also offer prince, shop coupons or commissions, or even a newsletter subscription only for patrons or even just videos only for patrons or tutorials. You can also specify how many spots you have available in each tier. If it's something like commission, patron makes up a big bulk of many artists incomes. It's important to realize that it's not as effective if you don't already have the medium-sized or large size following that is dedicated to your work. Like I said before, having an audience is the most important thing. If you don't have one, make that your number 1 goal by making lots of free content at the start. If you want to learn more about patria luckily for you, they're already made a skill share class. You probably already know this, but YouTube is another way to make extra income. Usually the payout is a dollar per 1,000 views. That means to make $1,000, you have to get a million views, which is a lot, especially for videos related to art. It's not the best way to make an income, but it's an amazing way to build an audience. I recommend you start one. You can also do affiliate marketing, which is when a company pays you to generate traffic or sale to their company. An easy way to do this is with Amazon product links. All you have to do is become an athlete by applying and you'll get a tiny percentage of each sale. You will see that almost every YouTube does this. I did this too because I get all my supplies on Amazon. Once you get big enough on YouTube you can also be sponsored by companies that give a special link which gives the viewer a discount and the artists that commission or they pay the artists based on the amount of views at the video gets or both. If you go this route, makes sure to only work with companies that you yourself believe in. The YouTube [inaudible] can take a while to build an audience in. Once you do, it can be profitable. Don't worry if you don't have one yet. There's other things you can try in the meantime. Designer art competitions are great way to put your skills to the test. If you do things like Threadless and get published, you will have a stream of recurring passive income coming in with every shirt sold every month. Third list might be your route if you like graphic tees, but especially funny ones with puns [inaudible] art, but also they do print serious work to, they usually have a couple of team competitions or you can just enter into an open-ended thing. Sometimes big companies hold design competitions and if you win those, you get a huge client. Just be sure to keep a lookout for those. These things are extremely competitive, but it doesn't hurt to give it a try and you'll build your skills in the process. Client work is also something you can actively seek out. Different clients specialize in different things like sometimes they're looking for someone to illustrate something for a wine bottle or to illustrate a children's book, or even patterns for clothing. Or you could even work with a company that makes art supplies. When you go out shopping, look around and see all the art that some products and think to yourself that somebody made that. If you want to do the same, just be sure to have a solid portfolio first. Once you have a strong portfolio that showcases your work in, has a strong style, you can then get an art agent. The downside to this is they will take a commission from every job that you get, but they will get you work. Or you can even take things into your own hands and e-mail clients directly and tell them why they should work with you and who you are. I've been receiving e-mails from clients if I'm in Instagram or YouTube lately. Be sure to put yourself out there actively and built your audience at the same time because clients will find you that way too. The other thing you can do is sell assets on websites that creative market. An asset can be anything from illustrations, logo templates, or even fonts. You get money every time someone buys it and that can add up. The other idea that we talked about earlier is starting a blog, especially if you like writing. Not only will this be profitable through affiliate marketing, but you can build your audience in this way. It will open a lot of doors for you because people will google and find your work. Or you can teach online classes like I do. Or maybe even teach workshops in your area. Or if you have an art degree, you can teach at a school or a college. There's also ways to profit from specific skills at combinations. Like if you're greater at brush lettering and water coloring, you can make handmade wedding invitations. If you have a specific dreamlike working at Pixar, I mean, this guy's a limit. If that's your goal, go for it. Sure it won't be easy because the best of the best work there. But if you find your passion and put the work and you can do anything, my advice is not to worry about the success, especially at the beginning. If you love doing what you do and persevere, you will succeed in the end. Take artists Dallas Clayton as an example. He wrote and illustrated a children's book called An Awesome Book. It's super quirky and has a sweet message. It's just unlike anything I've ever seen before. He tried to get it published, but he was turned down by several publishing houses. He didn't give up. He self-published it and offered it for free online. He sold thousands of books, and now he has a book deal with Harper Collins and Kindle Book Press. Since then he's made many more books that touch and inspire people around the world. He's living his personal mission and dream. It all started with following his passion and not giving up, even when people told him that he wasn't good enough. This is just one example and you can say," Oh, he got lucky," But I don't believe in luck. I believe in believing in yourself and doing what you love to do. Just go out there and do it and don't worry so much if you don't know what you will do at the end, try doing this amazing things you can, who knows? Maybe you'll also self publish a children's book and touched countless lives. Or maybe you'll start a creativity podcasts and do the same. Maybe you'll host art workshops all around the world. The possibilities are endless. There are countless ways to build an art career and everyone's path is unique. Remember my story and how many different things I tried before I found my way and I'm still finding my way. Don't worry about it too much. Live in the moment, enjoy the ride and try as many things as you can. You will get there with time. Just persevere, don't limit yourself and do what you love. Now let's finish the class with some parting advice on things like our block and jealousy.
17. Parting Advice: Now that the class is coming to a close, let's talk about some super important topics, like jealousy. I used to be so jealous of artists that I saw on Instagram. I'm like, "How does that look so good? How did they do that? They're born that way, I can never be as good as them." It was so silly looking back because they put so much time into what they're doing to get to that level. Me being jealous is ridiculous because I can get that level too if I just put the time in. Remember that every artist out there, no matter how talented they may seem, they were one day looking at Instagram or whatever was around back then and thinking, "Man, look at these artists, I can never be as good as them." But instead of being jealous and being depressed about it and just quitting art, they actually picked up their brush and pencil and they worked harder at it. They got motivated to be as good as that person. That's why they are. So you have to be motivated by other artists, be inspired by other artists. Don't be jealous of them because it's silly, because we all have something special and unique to offer to the world. We're all in this journey together, we're all making a difference in the world and we're all brothers and sisters that are interested in the same topics and doing the same things but in a completely unique way. You have something completely unique that nobody else can offer to the world, but you have to uncover it by working at it and working at it and working at it and working at it. Trust me, it's not a competition. There's more than enough of everything to go around and you just have to become good at your craft. That's all your goal has to be. Just be inspired by other artists. Don't let that demotivate you. Be inspired by how good they are and how good you can be one day. The next thing we'll talk about is burnout. I had a really nasty experience with burnout just like a month and a half ago. I, as you know, have made a lot of classes and I was so obsessed with it. Sometimes I would make two classes a month, one time I made three classes a month, but they were short. But I was just crazy about it because I loved it. It got to the point where it became a habit and I started becoming burned out and I was forcing myself to make classes. It became a job instead of my passion. I felt burned out, but I wouldn't take a break and I would just force myself to do it. If I would have just taken a break, if I had just taken a week or two weeks off, I would have been fine. But I didn't, so I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and ignoring it, ignoring my intuition, how I felt. Until one day, I couldn't pick up a brush or a pencil or anything because I felt like I never want to make art again. That was terrifying because I've heard stories of people that get burned out and change their career or change their life, and I did not want to be one of those people because art is my everything and without it, I'm incomplete. What I did was I completely stopped making art in every single way. I didn't think about it, I didn't do anything related to it and I just did completely other things. I forgot about it completely. I was just depressed. I was so depressed because I was was terrified that that was it for me. But I kept believing it'll pass, it'll pass. It took me a month and like a week, but I finally felt so much better. I just woke up one morning and I was just like, "I can think about art and I feel excited about it." It just went away because I let my mind completely rest from being creative. I know that sounds productive. Think about it, your mind is just like your body. It's like a muscle. If you keep working it out all the time without taking a break, you're going to get exhausted, you're going not to feel good. You need to take breaks to digest what you learn, to process, and to just heal. In fact, research shows this, they show that creative people have to take breaks to have a fulfilling life and avoid burnout. So if you feel like you need a break, if you feel it's starting to come on, take that break. Don't be like me and then have to take a whole month off and not doing anything else. Don't force it because you risk losing your passion for it. I thank God I lost it only temporarily, but it was so terrifying to think it could've been permanent. So just don't force it, take your time off and do whatever you want to do. The funny thing is my creativity came back and with it I had a dream about this class. I was like, "I'm ready to make classes again," because I had a dream about it and that's never happened before. So it's funny how creativity works and how burnout works, and how your subconscious mind is always working even if you can't see it. You're getting ideas generated in there all the time. If you try to force an idea, it's not going to work. You have to be walking your dog or taking a shower for that idea to come to you. If you just sit there staring at a blank page, it's not going to work. It's not how it works. Creativity is super mysterious and strange and you can't force it. You just have to roll with it, and you have to accept it, and you have to listen to it. Usually art block is burnout. But if you have art block and you don't make a lot of art, you shouldn't be tired, then it's probably something else. What you should do is just draw anything. Just do a life study, do a sketch, do an exercise, and that's the way you're going to get better at it. You'll be improving your skills and during this time, your brain will start to be more creative again slowly and the wheels are turning all your good ideas again. You just unblock it a little. The next thing I want to talk about is confidence and imposter syndrome, and things like that. Imposter syndrome is when people that are professional, at the top of their field, they're amazing, don't think they're good enough. Think they're a fraud. Think that they're going to be caught one day, that they don't know what they're doing. But the truth is, nobody knows what they're doing in the creative field because it's just so alluding, and strange, and random. Creativity is not something we can control. My advice is to be confident, because when you lack confidence, you can stop yourself from doing a lot of things. It never hurts to have too much, but it does hurt to have none at all. I'm not saying not to be humble, of course be humble, but believe in yourself. Believe in your art, and your ability, and your journey, and your spirit. You have to believe in yourself. If you don't, nobody else will, and you're never going to do what you want to do. My advice is just to fake it till you make it. Think about how do your favorite artists feel. Do they feel like they've accomplished something amazing? Do they feel like they're the best? Maybe they don't say it, but do they feel like that? Do they feel excited to sit down and work on a blank page? Pretend to be that person. Pretend to be good enough. Pretend to be like, you know what? I'm the best at what I do. Even if it's a lie, you're going to feel better and you're going to grow your confidence. Because a lack of self-esteem is really hard to succeed as an artist with it, and you're probably going take free work and things like that which you shouldn't do. Trust me, I didn't believe in myself for the longest time and only with some of my experiences that I finally started to believe in myself and with people telling me. But it shouldn't have been like that. I should have believed in myself from the beginning. I don't have to have somebody else tell me something. Even if I wasn't good enough, I should know one day I will be because I put the hard work in and I will get there. You have to believe in yourself. If you are the most talented artist in the world but you don't believe in yourself, you're not going to share your work. You're not going to try different things and no one's ever going to discover you because you're hiding. You have to get out of your shell and show your work to the world and just do your best. I know maybe sometimes you have psychological problems like people in the past told you that you're not good enough or artists starve or something like this. Trust me, a lot of people have told me that artists can not make money and that I should rethink my career choices and that I'm not good enough and I didn't listen to them. I just kept doing what I wanted to do because I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I was so passionate about it. So just follow your passion, do what you love and believe in yourself. That's it for my advice that I thought would benefit the most people. But if you have something specific you want to ask, just leave it in the community section of the class or send me an e-mail and I'll respond to you. With that, let's finish up the class.
18. Your Project & Goodbye: So the class is coming to a close and I hope you enjoyed it and took a lot out of it. I know that being an artist can be tricky and not knowing where to go next and what not. But I hope I helped you out and I hope you have a better idea of what to do next and you believe in yourself and you're excited to be on this journey. If you want to share a creative journey with rest of the class, other aspiring artists, you can make a project in the project gallery, and put whatever you want in there. You can share your sketchbooks, show how your style has evolved over the years, give your own advice. Talk about, artistic struggles that you're going through, whatever you want to do. You can put it in the project gallery and there'll be such a fun place for learning and sharing and just see how other artists act and think just like you do. You can share your social media as well. Drawing exercise if you follow them a lot in the class or whatever else you want to do, even your own tips and tricks that you've learned from your trade. I want everyone's projects to inspire each other and uplift each other but don't worry if you're too shy to share anything. That's completely fine. My advice is just to check out other people's stuff because maybe you'll make you brave enough to share. But if you're not, don't worry about it. Maybe you're not ready and that's okay but hopefully one day you will be because trust me, sharing is so fulfilling. Our journeys personal only. You know when you'll be ready. So with that, I hope you enjoyed the class. If you have any questions, leave them in the community section the class and if you want to learn more from me, you can check on my numerous other classes on different media from ink, to watercolor, to drawing and so-forth. I'll just [inaudible]. Remember you also have access to thousands of other class from amazingly talented teachers. Be sure take as many as he can, but remember to practice what you learn. You can only learn by doing guys. So put the time in and you will see results. So with that, I'm going to say bye, I hope you guys enjoyed the class and I'll see you in the next one.
Yasmina Creates, Artist & Creativity Cheerleader
