00:00I'm Lucy Fink and this week is 5 Days of Art.
00:06This past Fashion Week, Refinery29 hosted our second annual immersive pop-up funhouse,
00:1229 Rooms.
00:13This year's event took place in a huge warehouse in Bushwick that's filled with art, culture,
00:17style, technology, and of course, 29 rooms that you can walk through and engage with.
00:22But each room offered a unique experiential way of interacting with art and being exposed
00:27to so much creativity and magic made me wonder, if I tried 5 Days of Art, how could adding
00:33this type of art and creativity to my life affect my week?
00:37Living in New York City, there are a ton of places I could start, but I chose a comics
00:41and illustration class at the 92nd Street Y, a place where I know there's a huge diverse
00:45range of art courses available.
00:47The class covered a lot of different stuff.
00:49Drawing a human figure, which is very hard and needs to be proportional, down to outlining
00:55it with a paint pen, and then using watercolor to add some color and contrast.
00:59I drew myself and made Lucy into a comic.
01:02Huge eyes, obviously.
01:04And then I put a cape on myself that said TLWL.
01:08Try living with Lucy.
01:10Hand lettered on a donut.
01:13I like your style.
01:14What could be more perfect than a superhero wearing a donut cape?
01:18Do we look alike?
01:23I really want to emphasize that art comes in so many different forms.
01:28And it's really important to use your imagination and ask yourself what's most relevant to you
01:32in your life and your interests.
01:34Because truthfully, art is everywhere.
01:36Everything is art.
01:37For me, I'm obsessed with stop motion video.
01:41I've been using my Instagram feed as a place to share this work for over a year now.
01:45But since I've started my job at Refinery29, I've gotten extremely caught up and busy at
01:50making these videos right here.
01:52So I honestly haven't had that much time in the past year to just play around and make
01:57stop motions for fun and for practice.
01:59So today I took the entire Tuesday off from work, hashtag work from home, and I played around
02:04with stop motion.
02:05Stop motion is a series of still images that, when strung together, create a video that makes
02:11objects look as if they're moving on their own.
02:12This is something that I learned entirely on my own through Googling, watching how-to videos,
02:17and ever since the start, I've been extremely scrappy with it.
02:21I shoot it on my cell phone, I don't have expensive cameras or fancy equipment, I only
02:25just recently invested in some good studio lighting, but before that, I used to use my
02:30desk lamp and I'd flip my phone down and tape it onto a chair, flip it over, set the
02:34desk lamp up, boom, you got a studio.
02:37And when I'm done, I take the series of stills and I edit them together using my video editing
02:42software on my computer, and voila, I have a video!
02:45Every time I put a video like this together, I think, eh, maybe it's not going to be that
02:49great this time.
02:50But every time it comes out, I look at it and I'm like, this is magic.
02:58While stop motion is something that I've been playing around with for a long time, today
03:01I wanted to dive into another art form that I just picked up recently.
03:07Cinemagraphs Cinemagraphs are still photos that have minor elements of movement to them.
03:11They're starting to pop up more and more in advertising and editorial content and I'm
03:16particularly intrigued by them because they're so visually interesting.
03:20Sometimes you see a cinemagraph and it takes you a few seconds of staring at it to realize
03:24that it's not a still photo, but that a little piece of it is moving.
03:27Using an app called Cinemagraph Pro, I spent some time out and about today making art.
03:32Putting a cinemagraph together using Photoshop is kind of labor-intensive, takes a lot of
03:37time, and definitely takes a lot of skill and knowledge of the software to do it.
03:41But using Cinemagraph Pro, it is a piece of cinemagraph cape.
03:45The app makes it so simple.
03:47All you need to do is record the video and then you just touch the area where you want
03:50the movement to happen and then the rest of the photo is frozen still.
03:54Even though people have been making cinemagraphs for, I think, almost five years now, I'm still
03:58under the assumption that this is sort of a mysterious and unknown art form to the everyday
04:03average person.
04:04But as a digital producer, I like to stay at the forefront of these cutting-edge technologies
04:08and really understand from the inside out how to use them.
04:15Hi guys!
04:16Just showered and you're about to find out why.
04:19Today, I tried becoming a piece of art.
04:22I invited a body painter to my rooftop and this was her canvas.
04:27I was initially skeptical on whether or not this was considered doing art, but actually
04:32she explained to me why I, as the subject, am a huge part of the final outcome and the
04:37actual piece of art that's being created.
04:39Body painting wouldn't be body painting unless we were working together.
04:43I really respect the model because I couldn't do it without you.
04:47It's definitely a collaborative experience where you kind of enter this space that's extremely
04:52intimate.
04:52You lend yourself to me as a canvas, but I am working with you and it's much different
04:58than painting a canvas because that's flat, it's 2D and you're trying to make it something
05:02that it's not.
05:03But with the body, it's already 3D.
05:05Jen's subjects are normally 100% naked.
05:08I wore clothes because YouTube!
05:11The curvature and shape of my body and the energy that I was exuding, all of that together
05:16helped inform her creative decisions about what colors to use and what shapes to do.
05:20By standing on my roof deck and letting a woman paint me, I was actually making art.
05:25But this was the first piece of art that I tried this week that I don't get to keep.
05:29And I really think the fact that Jen's art is so ephemeral is what makes it really special
05:33and unique.
05:34I might not look like a unicorn anymore, but I sure as hell feel like one.
05:40It's Friday!
05:42And for my final art project of the week, I went up to my cameraman Andrew's six-story
05:46walk-up apartment in Chinatown.
05:48This dude's a camera operator, an editor, a skateboarder, and wait for it, un artiste.
05:55He's always painting window sills, stretching canvas, bending wire, sawing tables, you know.
06:02His apartment is filled with original artwork.
06:05It's a colorful birth of energy and life, and he has a stunning view of the Manhattan
06:09Bridge that I just could not resist painting.
06:12Andrew helped me build the frame, and then we stretched muslin over it to make me a canvas.
06:16Then he set me up in front of the window, and I painted the view.
06:19To wake up, set up yourself a nice workstation, and then just paint what you see is such a
06:25relaxing way to start the day.
06:27And it also makes you look at the world around you a little bit differently.
06:30This is a bridge that I see every day, and now when I look at it, I see something completely
06:33new.
06:34From a cartooning class, to a bunch of digital media art forms, to becoming a work of art
06:39myself and eventually just painting the view in front of me, this week's art has been
06:42not only physically stimulating, but also mentally challenging as well.
06:46I put a lot of thought into this week's artwork, and I hope to be flexing my creative muscle
06:50like this again sometime soon.
06:52What are your favorite art forms to try?
06:54Let me know below in the comments, and as always, tell me what you want to see me try
06:57next time on Try Living with Lucy.
06:59Hey YouTube, it's Lucy Fink from Refinery29, but you already know that because you've been
07:04watching this video.
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