I’m a very results-oriented person, not one given to flights of fancy or leaps of imagination.

So as a left-brain dominant person l like things in order, tasks planned step-by-step, questions answered, and rules followed. As an artist, my working process is methodical and analytical. Which helps me to be productive.

However that type of approach is not ALWAYS useful as an artist. The analytical judging voice in my head can dismiss creative ideas before they have a chance to be heard or developed. Instead, creativity requires right-brained thinking which means trying new things, being willing to make mistakes, and learning to play.

Recently I took an online course designed to help artists do more of that type of thinking. It was a three week SPARK course given by Nick Wilton of Art 2 Life. In this post I’ll share with you some of the results of the class and two videos of me painting using this technique.

The course includes painting exercises in a 14 x 18 watercolor sketchbook. We worked in acrylic paint and with cut-out shapes, two materials that I don’t normally use. Also, the exercises were mostly abstract art, which I never do. All these unfamiliar aspects helped me to break out of my comfort zone and to not worry about the results. I kept telling myself, “This is just an exercise, it doesn’t have to be perfect!”

The first exercise, above, was to identify things that you love. As you can see, my favorite things involve travel and solitary activities. Yes, I’m an introvert! The black dots are supposed to be squares, just because I have always liked squares.

I did this exercise quickly, without thinking or stressing, and boldly painted over any missteps while experiencing what it felt like to create playfully.

A later exercise used cutout shapes to create a design using the principle of differences and focusing on contrasts. For instance large/small, tall/wide, circle/square, sharp edge/torn edge, light/dark. I enjoyed this exercise, and as I look back on it I can see that i prefer sharp edges, defined shapes, and order. No big surprise there, but I also see that if I combine contrasts to these qualities, the composition will be more interesting.

These two designs were just free pages where I worked (played) with the previous concepts to create something pleasing to me.

The left design is just abstract shapes using the concept of differences.

For the one on the right, I recognized that I’m not comfortable creating an abstract design out of whole cloth, so I allowed myself to paint something realistic – the watering can – and then worked an abstract design around that.

This color block exercise explored value, hue and saturation of colors, keeping in mind the complements on the color wheel. I painted back into most of these fields several times, adjusting the lightness/darkness, vividness/dullness, until the whole thing worked together. It’s so much easier to do this kind of color balance in an exercise like this than in a realistic painting, so it really helps to have the freedom to just concentrate on color.

The two videos below show one of the last exercises, which was to paint the cover of the exercise book in a way that was meaningful to me. Without much thought I decided to create an image of a painter surrounded by an abstract painting. There was a lot of reworking and painting over previous layers to get to my final composition.

I need a reference photo in order to paint a figure, so on this first pass I used an image from the internet. For the abstract painting I loosely sketched out shapes, knowing that they would change as I went along.

After the first video I decided that it would work better in landscape format. Live and learn. : /

The next day, I decided that I wanted the artist to look more like me, so I took a selfie in the mirror to make the figure more accurate (I know, left brain!). After correcting the figure drawing I just kept modifying the abstract background until it was satisfying to me.

The result: an image of me surrounded by my abstract painting. I like it! I think the painting has a sense of possibility and freedom.

This class was eye-opening and very useful. I hope to continue the process of working creatively and playfully as my art evolves.