This is my brand-new bullet journal, as you can see, it's completely empty and
the cover is a little 'blegh' - so I thought I would design and draw on the front cover
the back cover,
the inside,
and the back pocket -
let's see what I came up with
I'll be using my Copic markers for the blunt of the work but first I'll need a
pencil and start sketching out my idea
I did all my thumbnailing and like pre
sketching before jumping into the cover because I wanted to have a pretty good
idea of what I wanted to draw before I like went all in so I kind of
came to the conclusion that I wanted to draw a bit of a studious-looking
character but like also fashionable and like - I don't know - like a college-aged
individual with fashion sense and then glasses so that they looked - you know
"studious"
that was the idea because for me bullet journaling has been really
really helpful for me to keep track of like my daily to-do lists and that's how
I use it - I use it to keep track of what I need to do what I've already done
and then to make sure that I'm not missing out anything and
writing it down and making little checklists has been extremely helpful so
when I think of my bullet journal, I think of being productive - I think of
getting good grades - I think of just doing well at life so I wanted to create
a character who looked like they had a pretty good handle on things so that is
what I'm doing - I gave her a bit of a messy bun, those studious glasses like I
mentioned before, a fashionable outfit and of course a backpack - oh! and I also gave
her a pencil sticking out behind her ear so that you know she knows how to
check off her.... to-do lists? I guess *laughs
then once I was pretty happy with the layout
on the page and like making sure the character fit pretty well there wasn't
any like giant blocks of white space that just looked unnatural I went in and
started adding in the details - now with all of my thumbnails I had never really
put in a lot of details so this was definitely a new step, it was time to
really develop this character and make sure it looked the way that I wanted or
well I guess as close to the way I wanted that
physically do, so I was going in and adding the details to like the hair and
making sure that the hair looked like it had a little bit of volume to it but it
was also like sort of unkempt and then like the face I realigned the eyeballs a
little bit better and made sure that she had a forehead - this is something I kind
of like messed up with with my art I always like forget to give my characters
foreheads and I have a pretty decently large-size forehead so it's like.... you'd
think Id remember that those things exist and give them to my characters so I
wanted to make sure that I gave this character a forehead and the glasses I
had drawn originally weren't exaggerated enough so I decided to give her these
giant circular glasses so that they're super obvious and you know that she's
wearing glasses - I don't want them to be too subtle I want them to be you know on her face
in your face
you know?
and to give her a little bit of originality and
to pull her a little away from that generic Harry Potter look I gave little
heart details to the rims of the glasses which i think is quite cute and
continuing the detailing stage I went in and add some more details to like the
ruffles on her shirt and defined her hand a little bit more so it wasn't just
a plain little blob - I also decided on what I wanted her pant seems to
look like and like where they should go and the belt loops and things and also
the section/the bottom section of her shirt I added like that cute little
whats it called? like a tie so it's like a it's kind of like a wraparound shirt and
then it ties on the side so that creates that like v-neck, that was the idea at
least, and then I added ruffles to the bottom of that because I thought that'd
be really cute and it kind of like pulls in the ruffles on the sleeves and you
know it's a cute little crop top thing - I don't personally know a lot about
fashion I'm kind of just faking it from what I've seen on Pinterest and I
was happy with basically where the art was at that point I just erased to that
top bun section so I'm a erasing a small section at a time and adding in the line
art - it's kind of hard to see what's going on because of the camera angle but
I'm taking it very slowly trying to add depth to any places that might be more
in shadow than others and basically just trying to incorporate all of the small
little tips and tricks that I learned from doing inktober back in October
it'd be kind of hard to explain what those are without you having an
experienced it yourself but like basically (I use that word a lot) but what
I'm trying to do is create depth in the lineart so that it doesn't look too
stiff and that might include like not closing all the lines completely or
using thinner lines for less obvious sections of the hair and then
thicker lines for thicker sections of the hair, does that make sense? like
parts that are with more depth get more lines and I'm also using like hatching
for sections that would be more in shadow - I hope that makes sense - but the
best thing I could suggest is that you just draw a lot and use a lot of line
art and see what looks best in your style and what looks not so good in your
style and kind of avoid those things and lean towards the things that look good
you know? and the things that are fun of course, also incorporate those - and
usually when something starts looking good it's a little bit more fun I'm not
gonna lie, that that's just kind of the truth, so try to incorporate those things
into your art and you'll definitely see improvement and maybe even have fun you
know? woohoo!
one of my favorite things to add line art to is ruffles, so I'm just
enjoying this a lot -
oh! I just realized I didn't mention what pen i'm using, i'm
using a prismacolor premier fine liner and this is the 0-5 size I've tested
this with my Copic markers a few times and it's always worked pretty well so
I've decided to use that for this particular drawing because I trust it
with all fine liners it's pretty important to give them their time
to dry before you start attacking them with like any sort of wet medium so you
know just give them their little chance and always you know test them before you
go in for your drawing - oh, there's nothing worse than when you've done the
entire line art of your drawing and then you go in with like a marker and then
everything just smudges
oh!
I've been there.
after erasing most of the sketches
I realize I completely forgot to draw in the glasses with the pen so that's what
I'm doing right here being very slow and careful trying to get as perfect of a
circle as I can with my free hand and I'm quite happy with the way they turned
out - then I just finished up by adding the line art to her pants adding in
those seams (those are so much fun to draw) and I was
done with the line art and so it was time to go in with the Copic markers
mm-hmm
I made sure there was no sketches left
because I really don't like the way pencil-lead interacts with Copic markers
it just looks "bleghy" so I made sure that was all gone and then I used a E15
color in the skin and I particularly in my head imagined her skin significantly
darker than this mid-tone paper that I'm drawing on and the cool thing about
mid-tone paper is that it is a mid-tone so you can either add lighter hues by
using like an opaque pencil then the color white and you can actually draw
with white which is cool and you can also get darker which is what I wanted
to do for the skin - you'll notice as I'm drawing with them, my E13 marker was
definitely running low but I was a little too afraid to try and mix it with
another color so I kind of just 'wong-it' - by the time I get to the end I think
it's a little less obvious because I go over it so many times so just bear with
me and while I didn't have like a complete color scheme in mind when I
started cuz I didn't do enough pre-planning - I kept seeing the
color pink and brown so I was like those are the colors I'm gonna use so that's
definitely what I gravitated towards I did end up using some more colors as
well but another cool thing about using these toned paper
or the toned cover of this bullet journal, as it would be, is that the
colors because they have that mid-tone behind them they all kind of create a
bit of a cohesive color scheme no matter what color you pick, it kind of just
helps them blend together I'm sure there's some colors you could pick that
would just be like "whoa! that's kind of way out there" but for the most part you
have a lot more leeway when you're picking colors because they're not being
drawn on like a flat white surface and they're all having that hint of that
mid-tone-y tan color and then it's gonna help with your color scheme
overall so me being a beginner with color theory it's-it's kind of fun to be
able to just use whatever color and it kind of looks good so yeah I'm pretty
happy with that - is it obvious that I had a lot of fun with this? because I had a
lot of fun drawing this, okay?- what I was talking about
earlier was really obvious with that last
where I used RV000 to color in the pants which is like a light pink
violet color but when I put it over this tan paper it looks like a khaki color
okay but then here I'm using G 21 which is a bit of a light green and by going
over the backpack to give her a nice green earthy tone backpack and this
looks really cool because it has that hint that that tan color behind it and
it makes the color scheme just blend together and oh! yes! - I like I don't even
know what to say I'm just like such a good mood, I just really enjoyed drawing this.
I used G 99 to add some pretty simple shading to the backpack just to add a
little bit more depth and make it look two-dimensional...not two-dimensional
three-dimensional! and then I colored in her hair I actually used two different
colors I used YG 95 which is a bit like a yellowy green color and I colored in
like the shaded bits of her hair and then colored over top of that with E18
which is a reddish brown and I feel like it really helps pull the background
color of-because I used that like YG95 - and I used
that to create the shading so then when I went over it with the e15 it's
reacting to that green color underneath of it and then it's also where there is
no green it looks brighter and perkier and I feel like that really helps with
the way hair looks in real life like where it's shadow where hair has shadows
there's like less vibrancy to it and then where the hair has like lighting it
it's more vibrant and I feel like that really played well with that if that
made any sense at all - I feel like I'm rambling at this point - then I took a
step back and kind of looked at the whole thing and realized I wasn't really
happy with that really light khaki color for pants so I went in with a much more
vibrant pink and just colored over the top of that with it and I think it's
just much brighter and more what I was looking for and then to tie the like
green color more into the illustration I used that same green color and added
stripes to the pants so that it's more like a fun pattern and I really like
that, I would wear those pants - I started adding yellow shading to her top but
after looking at it I realized I really didn't want her to wear a yellow top so
I switched over to a pink color and while the yellow shading was still there
I just colored over it with the pink and it actually looked really well I don't
think it made any weirdness to it.... that didn't make sense.... I don't think it
really made anything look weird I think it just-I think it actually added to the
illustration by adding like shadows with like a slightly different hue to them I
think it's cool so I'm kind of happy with that little
mistake so yeah just like Mr. Ross would say: "happy little accidents" and it was
actually because of that like yellow mistake that I decided not to completely
color in her top with pink but add that like sort of gradient and almost like
tulip effect and so yeah I'm really happy with that I'm definitely happy
with that choice I think it really adds to the drawing it just makes it look a
little special it's not just a plain flat colored top, it's got a little
something extra - after I adding shading to the skin with that same pink
color I realized I wanted her lips to be a little bit more bold so I went in with
a darker almost reddish brown color for the lips and it really made them pop and
I really liked that so I decided to give her some more bold makeup with the eyes
as well so I went in and started slowly darkening it I started with like a
lighter color and then I was like no it needs to be more so then I darken to
that no like "more!" and then I darken that and then we ended up with that really
bold dramatic eye so we've got the lips and the eye and I really like it I feel like she
she likes to play around with makeup so that was-I feel like I'm learning more
about this character as I progress and then I was done coloring in the
character but wait! this is where it starts getting really interesting I
didn't want her to just sit there on a blank page I needed to add something
interesting to the background and I decided on
stripes!
at first I used a
dark color for a stripe and then a light color for a stripe and kept alternating
between those but the more I did it the less I - like, the more time it had
been since I used the light green color the more faded it was and the less you could
see it so just felt kind of pointless so I decided to just color in the rest of
the background it was just the darker stripe and just kind of mentally imagine
where the lighter stripe would be to save time and it still ended up with
like the same result so I think it was a good decision and I was really happy
with all the color choices up to this point but I wanted to make it pop a bit
more and going into this I knew I was going to be using my Posca white pen so
now is the time! and I decided to outline the entire character with the white pen
and it just made everything just "Phoooh!" I just love it it's just that fun extra texture
it's like a little cartooniness, I don't know what, I don't know what using
illustrative? I don't know it's just really really cool and I really like the
effect that it has it makes her stand out from those stripes and then to
incorporate that a little bit more to the background I added these like
circles just some abstract circles to the background to kind of just spread
out that white color so it wasn't so concentrated around the character and it
became more part of the illustration
I was really in love with just the
brightness and the vibrance of the white pen so I decided to also incorporate it
into her outfit, just a tad, so I added more circles and dots to her top and
used it to make like her teeth and the glasses pop a little bit more and also
used it on her bracelets and added some doodles to her backpack like it's not a
brand new backpack she's used it for a while and maybe she started doodling on
it one day at class kind-of-thing - and then I also used a light pink color and
filled in just a couple of the circles at random to kind of add again just a
more interesting element to the background then I just added some final
tweaks here and there using both the Posca pen, in some cases, and markers and
other and then I was done with the cover of my new bullet journal but to
personalize the bullet journal even more I decided to customize the inside cover
and this I added a "this belongs to" section so that I could put my name in there and
then I also made it all sort of match the cover and I did this by adding
glasses up the top so it's like her glasses and she took them off so they're
setting there at the top and at the bottom I added her backpack just sort of
to incorporate elements of the cover and of course it really wouldn't resemble
the cover if it didn't have those big bold green stripes so I added those
as well and of course some circles and pink circles and Posca pen and stuff
outlining things yeah, and then it sort of matched the cover
when I wasn't done yet I decided to also incorporate this sort of design to the
back pocket which I had mistakenly used as a swatch paper to see if the
markers and the pen would work well together on this paper but I decided to
just ignore that and add the stripes and I used like this old sticky note to put
into the pocket so that the stripe would end right at the end of the pocket
and I could get a very crisp line there with the stripes and then of course I
added in the circles as well so that you know it's a matchy-matchy this I kept
really simple so that was just about it for the back pocket and the only thing
that remained was the back cover so I just opened up the book like completely
flat and started adding in these strokes I tried to use a ruler but it wasn't
really helping keep the ink in a straight line so I kind of just gave up
on that and just free-handed the rest of them and I tried to add like a cool
little element at the end where it's like some of the stripes don't make it all
the way to the top you know? like a more designer design... thing?
but I don't know I
feel like it just kind of looks unfinished what do you think? and then of
course I added in these circle designs I don't know I guess I could call them
bubbles they looked a little bit like bubbles so I added in those bubbles and
colored a few of those in to represent the original design and I was done I had
a almost completely customized bullet journal and I'm really happy with it if
you remember... was it last year two years ago? I did sort of the same thing so this
is my old bullet journal right here I feel like I've improved a little bit art
wise and I'm really happy with the new one and I'm so glad that I went through
and like added in like the back cover and everything I feel like it just feels
more personalized and I'm really really happy with it
anyway thank you guys for watching I hope you enjoyed seeing how I
customized my new bullet journal I'm very excited to start using this because
I finished my old one and it's time to get back on
track with things yeah... thank you guys for watching! I'll see you guys all next
week and I hope you have a delicious evening full of WAFFLES!
BYE!
♪
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