How to Create Without AI, part 3: Painting

We started out this section with a goat discovering the secret to painting can be as simple as a secondhand canvas and some leftover house paint. In fact, there's an entire public television show about how to paint pastoral landscapes, big strong mountains, and happy little trees. Bob Ross-type nature painting, while the most common, is certainly not the only style to paint in. Our creative goat on the intro page is simply slinging paint at the canvas. Or, you can paint geometric forms by using cardboard to block out areas on the canvas.

Unfortunately, this is the first place where we're going to need to spend a bit of money, since most people don't just have paints, brushes, and canvases lying around. Before you go shopping for art supplies, know what style you're going to be painting in. Since we're just starting out, let's use watercolour paints, specifically those dry wafers that elementary school kids use in art class. You can get these pretty much anywhere they sell school supplies, they're easy to work with, easy to clean up, and can be used on regular paper. We can graduate to acrylics and oils on canvas later.

At the same time you get your watercolour palette, also get a clipboard and a sketchbook. You can probably even find them in the same section of the store. The clipboard is going to stand in for the easel and the sketchbook for the canvases; also the clipboard will take any paint that leeches through the paper so you won't make a mess on your desk or kitchen table. For your first painting, make something that looks like it would get put up in an abstract exhibit. Absolutely go nuts on the paper with your watercolours— make shapes that don't make sense to anyone except you, brushstrokes that have meaning only to you; don't worry about form, or colour theory, or what the randos on the internet would say about your painting, just paint! This is the freest form of expression available to modern humans outside of Play-Doh, so express yourself! If your current emotional state were to have a physical form, what would it be? Paint it using your watercolours. Make something that would make the Twitter traditionalists start a 20-tweet thread on why contemporary art is a mistake. Apply colours to this section and that section for no reason other than you want to. It's really that easy. When your brush starts getting dry, wet it down and get some more paint on it. You're done with this assignment when you can look at the paper and go either "yes, good, I like it", or "holy christ, what the hell have I done?" Then, take your painting off the clipboard and get another piece of paper onto it and repeat the process, making something different. Do this as many times as you want, or until you run out of paper, whichever comes first. Do not destroy your work! Right now, there is no such thing as a "mistake". How can there be? You're painting pure emotion, there are no mistakes. You don't have to keep your art around forever, you don't have to display it, just leave it sit until it dries, then decide what to do with it. But, remember, while you are painting, there are no mistakes. Do not destroy your work while it is still on the easel.

Let's carry on with the watercolours until they're gone. These homework assignments will not require you to buy anything beyond what you've already got.