Kick-start a collection of intuitive or abstract art by focusing on creating a collection. This is a combination of a live recording of a class and pre-prepared lessons to gather your thoughts. You'll be working on your inspiration and then watching me create my collection whilst creating yours.
Each painting will lead you to create more as you work on more pieces towards a cohesive collection.
Ease in fairly gently in the first week, meditating on your future direction, looking at past work, and inspiration. Remember that as an artist you do not have a linear path. We are here to explore and become masterful. Then watch me paint live over three to four weeks in real-time as you follow the recordings of Ignite Your Art that took place in January 2022. You will hear me answer student questions as they come up. I am no longer on Facebook but there is a community here on From A Place of Wonder that you can join to share your work and ask me questions in addition to the chat box.
You might decide to paint in a purely abstract way or mix up observational painting in an intuitive way. This is up to you!
Watch me create a major part of my Sonder collection, most of which sold later in the Spring of 2022 to one collector at the Lilford Gallery in Kent. I work on a variety of sizes from small to medium format, answering student questions as I paint. Watching me will inspire you to become looser and more intuitive with your work. It's motivating!
You have lifetime access to this course.
I'm your guide through this self paced course
I filmed this course live in early 2022 when my business was called Brave in Paint. All the videos are unedited, so you can still get the full experience if you go at the same pace we did or you can take your time and fit it all in when you can.
Contact me anytime while you're logged in through the chat as you go through the course , and you can share your work with me in the free group on this platform. You will have lifetime accesst to this material for as long as I run From A Place of Wonder. I look forward to seeing what you create!
Hello - it's great to have you here! This week is all about settling in, discussing colour choices, inspiration and all the exciting, stimulating things that go to make up a collection your are passionate about.
Please binge-watch all this week's content so that you can plan when to work on things and source anything you realise you need, in plenty of time for next week.
Here's a downloadable pdf. of this week at a glance:
week one.pdf 252.85 KB
There's a suggested materials list to download in the third lesson this week.
The only thing you need to ensure you have right now is a journal and a sketchbook or plenty of good-quality cartridge paper. I began by using paper from my A3 sketchbook for the colour exercises and then progressed on to my A1 thicker cartridge paper which for my own purposes I cut down to A4 /A5 and masked off its edges.
I show you what I'm going to be using during the course as a whole in the third lesson.
I have a lot of wooden surfaces and I don't expect to create wonderful paintings on all of them. I'll be thrilled if 50% of the surfaces I've bought end up as paintings that I love enough to display! I've also got a stack of paintings that I never completed or recently began leaning up against the studio wall, to grab if I feel inspired. These are random sizes. To begin with, use what you have until you've thought about what you want your collection to comprise of, in terms of size.
I believe in following your heart and accepting that your desires for your art can shift at any point and there is nothing wrong with that. Finding time to explore is essential.
I know that galleries and art consultants seek a certain level of consistency of style, or genre. For our work to have this strength and clarity, we must allow ourselves to explore or ideas enough that we can curate from the best of our own work before showing it.
There is a richness and satisfaction in creating your process, one that results in paintings that are recognisably yours or at the least are cohesive, collection by collection. For most of us, it's important to create A LOT.
During this course, I will demonstrate my way to create a collection while investigating different approaches to abstract and intuitive work. Try these with me, and if you know quickly what your preferred approach is go with it; if not stay open-minded and keep exploring because you might discover something unexpected.
I'm here to ask questions of, to be watched and to support you in your foray into intuitive or abstract painting. You can message me for support any time through the chat bubble and join the free group where I will allocate you to the Ignite Your Art topic. Message me so that I remember to do that.
If you're fairly new to acrylic painting, you might understandably feel the need to copy what I do at the start - you'll quickly reach a point where you will want to move away from that. Listen to your internal nudges and thoughts that come in, the flow that happens during the chain reaction of a painting is what I'd love you to experience. Painting is rarely perfect - it's a process of growth through repetition, trying different tools, different variations of composition and tone, different colour palettes and seeing what feels strongest or most interesting to you.
Here's a short welcome video I made at the beginning of this course in 2022
https://youtu.be/rFFSwcG1vTk
You now have access to all the content in one go so that you can move through it as fast or as slowly as you wish to. You have lifetime access (for as long as the course exists).
To share your work with me use the group I mentioned, or on Instagram use hashtags #igniteyourart and mention me @theevolutionaryartist so that I can add your work to my stories
The aim this week is to explore different approaches to abstract or intuitive work with your "ingredients" list foremost in your mind so that your own desires for your work take centre stage and start to develop.
Insightful discoveries are more likely to happen if you open yourself up to possibilities for this week or however long you are giving yourself to explore. If something I'm suggesting takes you away from what you want to be doing, then do the thing you want to be doing! If you're lost, however, allow yourself to experiment or do similar things to me.
This week I'm continuing to work on thick acid-free cartridge paper. Then I will move to using high-quality water-colour paper, with a couple of the exercises that excite me most. If you do the same, you will be creating work that could be part of this collection or simply works on paper that you could sell in a print browser at open studios or an event if you like them enough. They don't have to BE part of the collection you are working towards, they are almost like circling around your ideas and closing in on them.
In relation to this collection, what's exciting for you to aim for and also achievable for you right now? Think about how you might want to adapt any exercise I show you this week. What surface might suit you best, what scale is interesting or practical for you, your aims and where you work.
There will be a pdf with the weeks overview and key journal questions for you in the next lesson.
Welcome to week three. This is where you start to see me create my collection in real time from the very early stages of painting. You get to see the recordings of my live sessions unedited in real time, with written encouragement to pursue your path.
This is the week we bring our paintings to fruition or continue to improve them.
I show you how I finish mine off and how I framed them and you get to see my full completed collection.
