My Creative Process from Start To Finish ·   Creating a Painting in One Day ·  ad

One of my goals at the beginning of this year was to work on more bigger finished pieces out of the comfort zone of my sketchbook, to work more conceptually, more from imagination rather than so heavily from reference and I don't think I could have gone further from that so far. So I decided today that I wanted to paint something, I didn't know what and I didn't really know where to start and I figured out today along the way a little go-to process that's gonna kind of jumpstart me into that journey to a finished piece. Now this isn't the only way to do it obviously, this is kind of my portable process, something that I can kind of do wherever and whatever kind of mood I'm in so sometimes you know it's great to work outdoors with other artists maybe to collaborate with other people, sometimes it's great to go to galleries for inspiration, sometimes you're just alone in your room and you want to paint something and sometimes you're away traveling and you want to be able to capture those moments so this is a process that I wanted to put together for myself, something that would work in any of those settings really. Now this video is coming to you today as part of my partnership with Intel and thank you guys so much for your response to my last video with them. This laptop and more importantly the supercharged processor that it has, I was really excited to see what that could bring to the planning stage of my process today which I think is actually the most important part of creating a finished piece. It was cool to find a balance because I've recently been finding that I jump more back and forth between digital and traditional when I am planning a piece but you'll see more of what I mean about that as I go on. So first obviously it's time to look for inspiration. I had no idea what I was going for for this particular piece. I had no ideas, no like just beginning point to start with so I was kind of scared to start with but I know that I am a very visually stimulated person so I first started out by just going online and searching for images, looking on Instagram, looking on Pinterest, looking at art of other people that I love and just looking for really nice images that would spark something in my mind. I also spent a little bit of time watching some cool videos and a little bit of a film as well. Here Intel have really delivered incredible performance in such a neat and sleek little package with their first processor with discrete graphics and I don't count it as procrastinating if I'm looking for references. Now I can actually save time and do all of these things at once on this laptop. The 8th gen Intel Core i7 processor means that multitasking really isn't an issue at all. I can browse super fast from one thing to another, jump down that inspiration rabbit hole wherever it leads me and I can even like stream 4k completely seamlessly. I've also found that during this heatwave that we're having it's been great to just get outside and look for inspiration, just get some fresh air, get out of this room. Like I said in my drawing houses video, it's nice to just walk around without headphones on and be really aware of my surroundings and just take in everything around me and take some photos as well. There's real ease and flexibility in this two-in-one laptop, being able to jump from the hard work of like compiling and sourcing references to jumping straight into sketching and brainstorming and all the other fun stuff. I've got the added bonus of the touchscreen and sliders capabilities as well built into this so when something does stand out to me I can make it notes instantly, I can save images, just pick and choose from the mountain of visual stimuli that are out there and compile it into a mood board or a visual coming together of all the things and themes and colours that are standing out to me at the time. So that's what I do, it doesn't have to make sense or connect, I'm just gathering all the information that I can, anything that kind of takes my fancy, just putting it all in one place and not trying to read anything from it straight away. Sometimes it takes a while for those ideas to ruminate and for something real to come forward but after a while of kind of messing about and tweaking with them there's always one kind of solid idea that's poking through and trying to develop into something else. If I'm still kind of struggling I will just get straight into making thumbnails, even if I don't have an idea in mind it helps to just fill a page with little boxes and challenge myself to draw something in them and that generally sparks the momentum, the flow to get going and something will eventually start to stand out. Now this is where the jumping back and forth starts for me. I definitely feel more comfortable sketching on paper but I do prefer to colour and plan out different compositions digitally where I have the control over being able to tweak things and mess about with things more easily. Obviously if I'm drawing a subject I've never drawn before this is the time to start doing some studies and obviously if I was spending more time on this then I would put more time into that but this as I said is like a really compressed version of this process so I'll spend you know a half hour maybe an hour doing a few studies just to get a good idea of the subject I'm drawing so I'm able to manipulate it in a way that will work for the particular piece. The back and forth continues until I'm relatively happy with the composition of the piece and once I've got a few kind of colour swatches mapped out digitally and then I will go straight from my messiest sketch, I'll just put that under a fresh piece of paper, I will pop them both on my lightbox and trace over for a fresh clean starting point. And then it's just a case of getting together all the supplies I think I'll need. If I'm feeling particularly nervous as I was today I might just sit and kind of visualize the process of the painting, not necessarily how it's going to turn out but more so the steps that I might take to get there so where I'm gonna start in order to make it easier to do the next step and the next step like maybe it could be like starting from the back and working your way forward so that things stand out properly and things don't get lost in the background. And then honestly there's no real routine after that because obviously every piece is different so in this case I decided that I would start with a kind of light wash of everything just to get the basic colours in, have them all kind of meshing together, that's kind of the look I wanted to go for anyway and then I went in with the background colour, a darker background colour just to have everything standing out and then with that I was pretty happy with how I was looking at that point. I added a few more watercolour details to add a bit of dimension and then just went ahead with some coloured pencils to make everything kind of stand out, come together. It was a bit of a watery mush which kind of looked alright in my opinion but I thought a little bit of coloured pencil right at the end would be nice to just bring it all together, finish it off nicely and really make it pop. And there is a completed finished piece of art pretty much planned and fleshed out in one sitting. Something a bit more creative than my usual stuff, something a bit a tiny bit further out of my comfort zone which is definitely what I was looking for and this is a process, a planning process that I can really take from now on whenever I'm feeling a little bit of doubt, I can take this and do this every single time. And that's what I mean about this process being portable with you know a few basic supplies and this two-in-one helper that has basically everything I need in one place. If I desperately want to make a painting wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, this is always gonna work for me. So thank you so much for watching. Information on this laptop and Intel's Core i7 processor will be linked in the description below so do make sure to check it out if I have piqued your interest and other than that I will see you in the next video. Bye!