There's no need to visit a museum or fancy gallery to find beautiful art when there's a whole world of inspiring illustrations to be found inside children's picture books. This daily practice from artist, educator, and children's book illustrator Constance Moore pulls from these different facets of her life to bring you a unique art class for all ages. Each day, Constance shares a children's book, including a few she has illustrated herself, with a creative prompt inspired by the art in each book. Explore the elements of line, shape, and color while focusing on using accessible tools and materials found in most classrooms. Try playing with watercolor, tempera paint, oil pastels, or whatever materials inspire you. This class includes drawing, painting, collage, and even a three-dimensional piece. With years of experience teaching art to children, Constance embraces the joy of getting back to the basics, allowing you to discover and free your own creative spirit.

Artist, author, and avid art journaler Mou Saha shares her love of art journaling through the technique of cut paper. Learn what inspires Mou’s collaged art journal pages, including how she uses color to create emotions, and how she simplifies images to create graphic layouts. Mou shares innovative ways of working with new and familiar materials in order to express yourself vibrantly, and explains how the mundane can become a memory worth saving.

 

Learning through play is artist and educator Joy Ting's favorite way to discover new techniques. Join Joy in this fun-filled class as she demonstrates how to be loose and expressive while exploring the fun of oil pastels and colored pencils. In this daily practice, you’ll be inspired by the natural world around you in order to make drawings in a variety of sizes and colors. Beginning with a simple sketch and fall down a rabbit-hole of creative play, discovering a style that is all your own. 

Elevate your abstract painting practice with fine artist Abby Houston. Before diving into this intermediate course, we recommend exploring Abby's Abstract Art Making Daily Practice, where you'll build a solid foundation of techniques. In this class, Abby guides you through the creation of two finished abstract artworks. You’ll begin by learning how to stretch your own canvas, then follow her as she works on two paintings side by side—one in warm tones and one in cool tones. She leads you through building layers of color, intention, and decision-making to achieve your desired result. This practice-based approach encourages curiosity and risk-taking while staying grounded, embracing mistakes, and trusting the creative process.

Explore the art of surface design and storytelling with fabric as your medium. Delve into a world of rich textures and techniques—painting, dyeing, printing, stitching, and more—to craft four distinctive sampler book structures. Jody Alexander, a renowned book and textile artist, showcases many bookmaking and fabric art techniques to help shape narratives using your unique style and mark making. With suggested sizes accommodating diverse structures, seamlessly transition from page creation to book assembly, embracing experimentation as inspiration for future creative endeavors.

A pattern a day keeps boredom away! Join Austin, Texas based marbling artist Mercedez Rex and immerse yourself in the captivating world of marbling, mastering techniques that adorn paper with mesmerizing patterns. Throughout your month-long journey, delve into four distinct pattern categories: Stone, Gel-Git, Nonpareil, and Chevron. Embrace the interplay of colors, gradually advancing to more intricate designs. Grow your creativity through marbling and experience the enchanting art of swirling colors, unveiling breathtaking designs that will ignite your imagination.
Need an introduction to marbling? Check out Mercedez' first class, Creativity Through Marbling: An Introduction

To share your work on social media use the hashtag #MZRXdailyPractice.

Artist, educator, and A Field Guide to Color author Lisa Solomon shares her unfettered enthusiasm for color in this daily practice series. You’ll experiment with color theory, patterns, and layering as you move through a variety of watercolor prompts. You’ll also work with masking fluid, gesso, gouache and other materials as you alternate between painting and revealing color. Be prepared to fully engage in color exploration and cultivate mindfulness. After a month of observation, your perception of the tones and shades of your world will be attuned in a new way.

Paper quilling, or paper filigree, is a centuries-old art form popular during the Renaissance. You use a quilling tool - which was probably once made with a feather - to coil long, thin paper strips and bend and pinch those small coils into many different shapes. Then combine these shapes to create astonishingly intricate and mesmerizing pieces of art. Nikki Furlong is the artist behind Simply Quilled Designs, and she is passionate about sharing this little-known craft with you. In this daily practice, Nikki teaches you the basics of paper quilling: how to use a quilling tool, how to make shapes such as teardrops, petals, marquise, and scrolls, as well as her favorite gluing methods. Each little piece you make throughout the month will be part of a final project: a beautiful and colorful flower mandala. Plus, you'll get to make some smaller bonus projects with your extra shapes. Quilling is extremely versatile - all you really need is a tiny tool like a pin or paper clip, glue, and paper.

Every single day since 2018, writer and gardener Lorene Edwards Forkner has been on continuous quest for natural color. Encouraging you to pick up a brush and pay attention, she shares her personal daily practice of painting a grid in watercolor inspired by collections of natural elements such as flowers, shells, and rocks, as outlined in her beautiful book, Color In and Out of the Garden. Each day this month you will chase color and create gorgeous watercolor studies as you begin to see color more clearly and deeply. Lorene's unique painting process offers a chance to see the ordinary with fresh eyes and look closely with great heart.

Learn how to make DIY stickers using packing tape with Courtney Cerruti. Demonstrating this easy and budget-friendly craft from her book, Playing with Image Transfers, Courtney will show how to turn photocopies and magazine pages into custom stickers you can use on anything. Make stickers for holiday wrapping, for journaling, for card making, mail art, and more! This craft is easy to do for kids and adults alike. This is a recording of a live event filmed December 19, 2023.

Use a sketchbook as your muse to gather captivating imagery that ignites your imagination. Rebecca Ringquist of Dropcloth Samplers, celebrated for her embroidery and intricate stitched drawings, empowers you to explore your unique artistic style through fearless experimentation, free from the constraints of perfection or productivity. Over the course of a month, embark on an expressive journey dedicated to spontaneous mark-making and playful collaging in the first half, then respond to those textures and images in the second, culminating in exquisitely layered, visually intricate pages. When you're done, you'll have a place to begin.

For more of Rebecca's sketchbook work, check out her other class, Magpie Sketchbook: Collecting a Resource of Imagery.

Capture the vibrance of spring and summer flowers and make a lush, felted floral crown. Melissa of Hex House Crowns is a fiber artist and handwork teacher with a love of all things handmade. Soft and fluffy natural wool is one of her favorite materials, and she shows you how to create beautiful flowers with wet felting, then how to add details with needle felting. Learn how to assemble your floral crown by attaching felted wool flowers to a crown base, using blanket stitch to sew your crown structure together, as well as two ways to fasten your crown using either flowy ribbon ties or a stretchy elastic band. This class is a fabulous introduction to the world of felting, and you'll have a gorgeous accessory to wear for any special occasion.

Join designer, technical editor, and author Tian Connaughton and crochet The Reignbow Vest, a versatile, fast-to-crochet, and playful project. Begin by creating a swatch to determine correct gauge and fit, then work the vest in corner-to-corner (C2C) crochet while following a chart. The combination of C2C and alternating yarn colors creates a vibrant and dynamic pattern, and the vest is constructed simply with two identical panels seamed together. Easily add a keyhole detail in the back for an extra fun design element. If you're familiar with crocheting stripes, you might assume you’d be dealing with many loose yarn ends, but Tian shows you her wink-wink secret for weaving in ends, along with some fun modifications in the pattern for a variety of looks

Garden historian Mac Griswold poetically states that “Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts,” but this art moves swiftly once the growing season is underway. In this class, led by lifelong gardener and artist Lorene Edwards Forkner, learn how to make the most of every season by developing a personal garden journal that provides space for exploring garden dreams, stashing pertinent plant tags and seed packets, and diagraming planting ideas. Included is a practical garden log sheet: a place to record seasonal weather and keep track of bloom time and harvests, along with garden wins, losses, and discoveries. A well-used garden journal is a valuable reference when plotting for the future but you need not limit yourself to the realities of your growing region or resources; simply choose any plant that appeals to you and have some fun!

How you make marks on the page is completely unique to you and is an essential part of what makes up your visual vocabulary. Your visual vocabulary includes the amount of pressure you put on your pencil, your color palette, and the shapes and elements you use over and over that altogether create your artistic style. Join artist, illustrator, author, and longtime Creativebug instructor Lisa Congdon for this month-long mark making daily practice. You’ll explore the basics of mark making, build your own repertoire of marks, and learn how to use those marks to create drawings and collages in different media like colored pencil, watercolor, and collage. Lisa will guide you through drawing everything from leaves to birds to landscapes, as well as one large final project where you can combine and play with everything you learned in class as you continue to refine your drawing toolkit. Find Day 31’s recorded live conversation with Lisa HERE.

As a professional artist, art therapist and mother of three, Abby Houston knows how important it is to promote imaginative play. Join Abby and her nine-year-old Violet as they work on four projects exploring the basic art elements of line, shape, form, and color. Abby offers suggestions for an art box of materials that your kids can have regular access to, how to be flexible and receptive to your child's unique process, and how to make cleanup fun. Whether they work collaboratively or independently, this is the first step in building a nurturing creative practice for your kids. This class is recommended for all adults and caregivers who want to foster creativity with the little artists in their lives. 

Play silks are inspiring, open-ended toys that children can transform into almost anything with their creativity and imaginations, like a red and orange silks for lava and blue silks for water, or wearing them as magical capes or carriers for dolls. Melissa Lang Lytle of Hex House Crowns is a fiber artist and handwork teacher, and she will guide you through the very accessible process of dyeing play silks using RIT dye. Start with a dreamy ombre rainbow pattern and then try a whimsical, heart-shaped tie dye. With Melisssa's tips, you can also dye wool felt in the same dye bath as your silks in order to maximize your dye as well as color-match your materials. Children can heop with certain parts of the dyeing, and everyone will enjoy the exciting reveal of the finished silks.

Artist, printmaker, and educator Sarah Matthews demonstrates her vibrant signature style of layering stamps to create graphic prints. Throughout each week of this daily practice, you’ll design, carve, and print your own stamps. Then, you’ll bind the resulting prints into four different book structures. The month is rounded out with additional techniques that you can use in any book art project. Sarah’s playful, low-pressure style and dynamic approach to color creates deceptively complex designs that radiate energy.

Dyeing fabric with ice is like watching magic happen before your eyes. Lesley Ware, a maker and author of three books on sewing and fashion, takes you step-by-step through the fun and fascinating process of transforming a plain white T-shirt with dye. All you need are ice cubes and powdered dye to add a burst of color to your wardrobe and create interest with dynamic patterns.

Like magic, Christine will show you how to print multiple colors in one print. Whether you are new to custom carving stamps or a seasoned printmaker, this versatile technique is a game changer for printing on fabric or paper – without fussing with registration. Plus, this class includes downloadable templates of Christine’s signature designs.

Introducing CbMixtapes: playlists made of specific bits from different classes and grouped together by a common theme. It's a fun way to learn how one topic is approached by a variety of artists with different techniques, all rounded up in one curated mixtape.​

Summer fruit is vibrant and can be playful in patterns and art. Begin with drawing easy tropical fruits using brush markers alongside Courtney Cerruti. Paint fruit from your imagination with illustrator Carolyn Gavin using acryla gouache. Capture the colors of a juicy ripe strawberry with artist and gardener Lorene Edwards Forkner. Use gouache to make both a stylized and realistic paintings of a pineapple with Jen Orkin Lewis and watch Carolyn Gavin as she paints bundles of fruits in summer bags and baskets that will make you run to the farmer's market this weekend!

Want to watch more? Check out the full Daily Practice series with each of the artists below:
Courtney Cerruti - Daily Drawing Challenge: 31 Pattern Motifs
Carolyn Gavin - Daily Painting Challenge: Flowers, Fruits and the Natural World
Lorene Edwards Forkner - Color in and out of the Garden
Jen Orkin Lewis - Daily Painting Challenge: 30 Things to Paint with August Wren

​PDF reference photos can be found on the full class pages.