Every year around August or September I get really excited as I walk into the grocery store and I'll see all the school supplies
There's always that Crayola display and I want to buy everything and then I have to realize wait. I already own all of these things
Today I'm going to be using the Crayola crayons pencils and markers. They already own and create an illustration with them
To prove that you don't need expensive art supplies, you know to create something I'm gonna be using the cheapest supplies possible
so I've got a piece of printer paper a regular pencil, a pack of Crayola colored pencils, and some washable markers and
Crayons about a year ago. I did this exact same sort of like a challenge
It's not really a challenge because it's just using supplies that I used to use when I was younger
But I did this exact same exercise
About a year ago last time that the school supplies was in the grocery store and all that stuff
But doing it last year
It didn't turn out exactly how I would have wanted it to and I learned a lot of things about
The different ways to use these supplies that I wanted to try and you know
apply to a new
Illustration and see if I can use what I learned is to create something a little bit more appealing to me
and
So I'm going to be redrawing that exact same picture
That I did a year ago and see if I can you know improve upon it if you're interested
I'll have a link in the description
We can check out that video, but I'm going to be recreating the illustration so spoilers if you haven't seen it
So on my last attempt to use Crayola art supplies to create an illustration
I drew two small and I only use well, I basically only use markers. I also used some crayons but
Because I'd only used markers and they're the wide tip. I didn't have any of the fine point
Crayola markers cuz I'm pretty sure they make those but I don't know anything. Um, I
had a lot of trouble with line variation, And my lines were just very very thick and bold and I
Wanted to combat that by drawing bigger
so you'll see I'm taking up a lot more space on the page with my illustration and
I'm hoping to combat that, That way I also am going to be using Crayola colored pencils this time
Which have a much finer point than like the markers?
So I'm hoping to be able to get a lot more details into this illustration
Oh and here I'm just changing the arm because I was looking back at the reference of my original drawing and her arms are behind
Her back, so I was like, I gotta move to her arms back her back now
That's that another thing
I realized I did wrong after looking back at the reference was that in the original?
Illustration her eyes were closed and I thought maybe it would be okay to have her eyes open
But I decided I really want to try and capture the old illustrations
so I decided to shut her eyes, and I really enjoyed drawing shut eyes like just a once whoosh it's just a very simple and
Stylized the way of doing it and I just had to find that one
I think I've mentioned quite a few times that shoes or something that I wanted to get better at drawing and I've been practicing them
And I think I'm quite happy with the way the shoes turned out in this illustration
I think I've you know stepped it up a notch on them
and I really like the way they look like with the soles, and the full toe of the foot and that
Sort of thing. So in the two years that it's been since I drew the last
Creole illustration I have improved in I suppose many ways
But one thing that I think I still need to practice a lot and I don't feel any better at is drawing braids
I feel like at one point. I kind of understood braids better than I do now
It's somehow I've just like lost some of that knowledge
So, I need to do some more practicing with that. But basically I was just winging it for this
I was like because I know what a braid is like. I braid my hair a lot
I I know what a braid looks like, but for some reason drawing them even with a reference is extremely difficult for me
So you'll see these braids especially near like her scalp area is where the braid makes the least amount of sense
so yeah, just thought I'd point that out and
something that like some experience I have with drawing braids is that whenever I try to draw like swishy braids the more
Detail I put into the braid like the stiffer the braid looks and it looks like less swishy and swishes
But I'm going for specifically with this one
and so you'll see me drawing that gesture line a lot trying to figure out the swish of this braid and
When I start adding in all of the actual strands of hair it starts getting a little stiffer
So I was really trying to combat that because I just know from experience that that happens and I think I did an okay job
Of combating it last go-around. I added this like simple little red
Skyscraper, buildings, background square thing in the background and it was definitely an afterthought
So this time I wanted to make sure it was more incorporated into the illustration in some way
so I use like the swish of her braid to like create half of a circle and then I drew the other half of the
Circle around behind her and then put in a bunch of skyscrapers behind her. So like a cityscape
And I actually rounded that off too because in the original illustration
It was kind of like the skyscrapers are just pointing in random directions. It was very like illustrative in that way
So I wanted to try and capture that again, basically this go-around
I'm just trying to redo everything I did last time but with more purpose if that makes any sense
Once I was happy with the sketch
I just took my kneaded eraser and erase little bits of pieces at a time and then started going in with my
Colored pencils and I started with the face because my life expectancy is too short to not eat my dessert first
Okay, it's my favorite part
It started with like the bubblegum pink color to just add some
blush and around the nose and the cheeks and then I think I found like I think it was the color slate or something and
I used that to blend outwards and try to make her face look a little less like
cloud white and a little bit more
Skin Tonee in some way because in the original illustration, I didn't have any skin tone except for the blush. So I
wanted to
definitely upgrade that this go around and try to add some actual skin tones and
Then for things like the nostrils and the lips. I used a darker pink color
And then for the most part
I think I used the color mahogany for like all of the lines and the eyelashes and like her eyebrows
I think I don't know I use the colour mahogany a lot
Like I used it to outline almost everything and funny funny story
My pack of Crayola colored pencils doesn't have a black in it
I seem to have lost it somewhere along the way or I used it up
I don't know but so I couldn't use the colour black for anything unless I wanted to use the crayon or the marker. So
For any shading that you'll see in the future that looks like black. It's actually dark brown. Just a funny story here
It looks black enough. So I I don't really have a problem with it
I kind of think I like it better because it's like less harsh than the color black might be like a solid black
So the dark brown worked really really well for that
Happy little X and while looking at the sketching of the city skyline
I liked it so much better this way than what it turns out
bummer where I messed up with this
So in the original illustration the city skyline
Like I said was very much an afterthought and I kind of just threw it in there at the end and I used a lots
Of yellows and reds so a very analogous color scheme for that. So I thought hey, I'll do the exact same thing this go-around which
Is okay like there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was I
definitely made the
skyline background sort of thing a much bigger focal point than it originally was
so the fact that there's so much reds and yellows and
Oranges in this background color kind of distracts from what the main element of this illustration
Really should have been which if I had taken a step back and thought about it
I would have realized this but in the original illustration
Which I'll get to later, which was still really really fun
And I enjoyed making this part a lot was the rainbow braid
So her hair is a rainbow gradient from yellow at the top sort of like a natural hair color and then it goes down
loop to green at the bottom and like that was the point of the illustration in the original go around because
Like I have all of these colors. I have a rainbow set of markers and I want to use all of them
So the point was to use all of them and create that rainbow braid
But because I put so much more time and made it a larger focal point. Like I said this
analogous orange
yellow and red the background it just drew so much more attention away from the braid than I would have liked and
I'm going to but I think I will Photoshop
I'll just edit this illustration at the end and show you what I would have liked it to look like
Like maybe with a more desaturated background. Yeah, that'll be cool
So stick to the end and I'll show you like what I would do. I would have done differently
With this illustration to make that braid stand out a bit better
But I'm getting ahead of myself because we have even gotten to that part yet
but
Here, I'm just using the black magic marker and adding in the little details to address that were from the original illustration
You know
I'm just trying to make it look like her
and I was a lot smarter two years ago because I knew oh I wanted that braid to
contrast with her outfit and that's why I made her outfit just black and white so that there were no colors to distract from the
Braids like I was just talking about
so
Yeah, sometimes we just get Dumber with age oh
And then I just filled in that like lower half of the circle with red
For the background and then added polka dots to her skirts. That part's really fun
I enjoyed doing that, but then it looked a little too flat compared to the style of the rest of drawing
So I'm using that dark brown like I mentioned earlier and adding some shading to the skirt
I tried to when I added the polka dots like think of the fabric
flowing so that like the patterns not gonna be straight across like if it's a pattern of polka dots like it'll
Have been flow with the fabrics. I tried to think of it that way when I was doing it
I don't know if I did a very good job
but adding the shading definitely helped with that and made it look a lot more soft and
like an actual object in the environment
Then I just finished up the shoes or boots or whatever they are
I'm not entirely sure because in the original illustration they were just so simple
I tried to add a little bit of details to them
But I still didn't make a decision on whether they were shoes or boobs. So
Anyway now it's time to do the braid. Finally. I started off with that
mahogany colored pencil and started adding in some one like The Strokes and the lines to figure out where all the hairs would be and
Then I went in with yellow glue
I decided to start with yellow because I wanted to start with like a most natural hair color and then I
Worked my way down the rainbow down to the bottom basically just switching out the colored pencil as I went
Sometimes I would switch out the line color, but for the most part, I think I just used that. Mahogany
Just cuz I liked it and it was staying sharp really well
So I was like why why why ruin a good thing?
Right and what I'm trying to avoid when doing this gradient is any sort of like harsh?
Lines where like the color just changes abruptly to another color. So I'm trying to blend them out as much as possible
so that means just taking the one color going a little bit past where maybe I'd want it to and then
Grabbing the next color and going over that section again and blending those two colors together as they slowly
smoothly change from one color to the next
And you can already see here. How much her?
Braids of her hair of the yellow orange in the red section is just blending in with that background
skyscraper stuff Oh
Like at this point it was too late
Like there wasn't really anything I could do about it. And I was noticing it that was making me look frumpy, but
Another problem I did I guess but but
the thing that I did that could have been helped this a little bit was maybe
Starting the gradient higher up. Like I feel like somehow I
spent way too much time and the oranges and the Reds just in her braids and by the time it gets to the blues and
The greens it's like it's a very tip of the braid and I'd run out of room
So if I'd done this differently
I think I would have like planned out the sections a little better and like divided it more evenly
Which might have helped a little bit with this?
Orange problem this orange, red, yellow problem. We're having oh and here
I'm just going in with the Crayola markers and adding more definition to the braid since these colors are a lot bolder and darker
They're they contrast really well with the colored pencils
So I did that throughout the whole braid and then to try to separate the girl character from that background that I made
I went in with the black crayola marker and just basically surrounded her entire shape
with a stroke
This is just basically to separate her from it in some way like because the they said were blending so much
it helped a little but
Here's what I would have done differently if I had thought about it from the get-go
so here I went for the shop and I just adjusted the picture and I would definitely
desaturate the background so here I just went all the way and just made it a full grayscale background and I like that and
I actually made it the moon still yellow that way it's just like a little bit. Well, it's either the Sun or the moon
I don't know. It's the Sun isn't it? Yeah, I drew it. It's the Sun I made the Sun yellow though and
Made her head smaller just because I could I have this problem. I draw heads too big. It's a situation I
Know it's a problem. So like I end up making the heads even smaller
But then I stake a step back and I like the head still too big
So it's like wow, how big was I drawing heads before?
Good grief. Anyway, this is how it actually turns out in reality
I hope you enjoyed watching me play with some Crayola colored markers and pencils and things
It was a lot of fun and it's nice to just like
do something for fun than it doesn't need to be Stu serious, you know, and this always just reminds me of
Being a kid again and just drawing pictures to make myself happy
So, yeah
There's a lot of fun and let me know if you guys still use these markers for your drawings and what sort of things you
Like to make with them
Yeah, I want to thank you guys for watching and I hope you all have a delicious evening full of waffles! bye!