Not too long ago I filmed a video where I drew with sharpies and it was a
real-time video and I was exploring how sharpies work and how I would use them
in an illustration and so I made a lot of mistakes and I've been itching to
tackle that project again so here it is I'm drawing with sharpies again!
♪
here is my current Sharpie collection, I've been a very good girl and I have not fed this
addiction in over eight years
I have a lot of fine point sharpie
I have a few
ultra fine point Sharpies
and then I have like four of these 'Stained by
Sharpie' pens which are actually a brush pen and they're very fluorescent so
they're fun to use with my normal sharpies even though they're made for
fabric -- Before diving in headfirst I decided to take a couple extra
precautions to kind of plan out the idea of this drawing and I decided to do it
digitally so here I'm just thumbnailing some ideas trying to find something that
sparks my interest and I finally landed on this third one right here, I really
just enjoyed the hairstyle I think
from here I start detailing the pose and
making sure it's something that I want to pursue further when I move on to the
traditional section of the drawing
and once I'm happy with that
I start adding in some colors and I made sure that i swatched all of the sharpies
instead of using the cap colors and then I tried to translate those into
Photoshop and see how the colors are gonna work well together like which
colors look good next to each other, which ones don't, which ones have
contrast and which ones don't - and from there I was able to come up
with this illustration and although it's a lot more detailed than a thumbnail
necessarily needs to be, I kind of treated it as a thumbnail so when I
moved on to my piece of paper
here it is
and started sketching with a mechanical
pencil I didn't necessarily imitate the idea verbatim - my computer and where I
draw are in two separate locations so when I'm actually drawing the computer
is behind me so I can't really look at it very easily while I'm sketching so
I'm doing it from memory and the elements that stood out most to me are
the ones that I'm drawing and the ones that I like didn't seem as important are
kind of getting left on the wayside - I think this kind of helps the idea
actually further itself because I'm not looking back at what I liked I can only
take forth what I liked or what I remember and input that into the new
sketch and it's kinda like a selection process
it's like throwing away some of the not so potent ideas and just holding on
to those ones that I really really liked and for me I think it was the
heart-shaped umbrella, the half updo in her hair, and that pinafore dress
now these legs and the skirt I feel like I had the most trouble with I think it's
because I was varying the most from my thumbnail sketch so you'll see I'm
playing around with the way the skirt is floating and blowing in the wind because
I want it to be a very loose sort of floaty sketch whereas my thumbnail it
was kind of stiff and you know she was sat pretty firmly on something (even
though I didn't draw that something she was still you know sitting on the
invisible something) so when it came to sketching on the paper I had to really
think about it and basically go through that whole thumbnail process but on the
paper -- even at one point tried to draw her like walking through a puddle but
the legs were a little bit too short for how I had drawn the body and I didn't
really want to erase the whole thing so I decided floaty was probably a better
way to go and boy am i glad that I did because I love these legs I like the way
the knees are kind of together and then the ankles kind of get further apart and
then the toes touch again - I don't know I think this is really really cute it's
not super stiff, it's flowy, and it has character to it and I love that about it
and of course I was able to give her those rain boots because it's raining
(it's not super obvious but it's raining) at this point I realized there was some
mechanical structure issues with the umbrella so I had to shorten the length
of the pole and draw the little spider webs that come off from it the
mechanical bits and I think this went a long way just shortening that because
we're looking at the inside of the umbrella so we're not able to see the
top of the umbrella and with an umbrella the handle is connected to the center of it
so I need to make sure I take that into consideration when I'm drawing it and
yeah like I said that just went a long way to making this look more like an
umbrella because umbrellas don't come in heart shapes I think that would be very
difficult to pull off so any little help I can do to make it look more like an
umbrella was definitely necessary and now we finally move on to using the
sharpies so the last time I use sharpies I think I outlined everything in black
first and then I learn that I really liked it when I use a
contrasting color or a similar color to outline the colored sections instead so
here I am going in with that idea outlining the
hair with this dark pink and then I'm going to fill it in with a lighter pink
so that there's some contrast there (my favorite word)
I did this because I wanted to be able to
erase the pencil before I filled in the blunt of the hair color because with
sharpies when you go over a pencil it just makes that pencil permanent and you
can't erase it afterwards and you can still kind of see it through the Sharpie
because it's slightly transparent and that's just kind of an ugly look that's
why I decided to tackle the illustration this way I use this technique for not
only the hair but also the dress and her rain boots now for this characters skin
is where I decided to try a different approach
I erased as much pencils I could to where I could still see like the basic outline
shape of the legs these two legs are right on top of each other so it was
kind of important that we had that line otherwise I was going to lose the shape
of the leg and so what I did is I outlined the whole thing with the
thicker sharpie I think it's called a fine point sharpie but I always called it a
thicker sharpie and then I colored it in and I made sure I did quick fast strokes
to try and get a flat even layer of color I think it took two layers to get
like it to look the way I wanted it to and then I started noticing that some of
the pencil was kind of like showing through the Sharpie and once the Sharpie
goes over it is permanent so I erased it again and then colored in that second
leg behind there -- here I'm trying to do more dense strokes to make it darker and
give it a little bit more contrast between this leg and the leg that's
closer to the viewer it just wasn't in your face enough so I took this light
pink color and colored in that whole back leg first I tried just coloring in
the bottom half underneath the knee which looks kind of cute but there
wasn't enough contrast between the legs like I was mentioning earlier so I
colored in the entire thing and I think I just love the way this looks like that
pink and that peach the way they look right next to each other and it looks
like there's some shadow and some depth there I'm very happy with the leg and it
makes me wish that I didn't line any of the drawing because I just love that
line 'less look so I put like the tan color, the pink layer, and then another
Tan layer on top - and it created that color that you see there
when coloring in the boots I wanted them to look shiny and since there's no white
opaque Sharpie (actually I do own a white opaque sharpie....... well I didn't use today)
instead I just used the paper as my white and I made sure that I left
some open spaces inside of the boot that would give it that shiny exaggeratedly
bright shimmer on the boots it makes it look reflective that is the
word that I am looking for
then I moved on to coloring the dress and I found this really wonderful
denim color I wish sharpies had color names on them
I could tell you what it was, but it looks like this (if thats helpful) there's all the
information I have for you
and again I'm trying to make sure I fill in sections
quickly to avoid streaks and it worked pretty well for the most part if there
ever were noticeable streaks I would try and do another layer over top and then
usually took care of that problem and if that's still to streaky for you you can
always add a texture on top that's not why I added this texture I just thought
it would be fun but I used the ultrafine blue sharpie and just added horizontal ..not
horizontal: diagonal stripes! all over the dress with the straps I gave it almost
like a chevron pattern of stripes and then I made sure that that stripe
continued into the skirts and tried to take the wrinkles into consideration
even though I'd fallen in love with that lineless look that I did on the legs
her shirts gonna be white so I had to outline it with something because (well I guess I
didn't have to but I did) and I decided to outline it with this blue because it
was going to be a blue striped shirt and I thought that would work really well I
love adding stripes to like shirts that are too big for the shoulders because
you have to like think about how that stripe is gonna react with that shoulder
and fold over it and then once it becomes a sleeve that angles gonna
change and I don't know I just really enjoyed that that's just something I
think about and brings me happiness for some reason
when it came to doing the
face, I wanted to try and avoid using a black sharpie as much as
possible so I decided to use that dark blue that I had used lower in the
illustration for her eyelashes and her lips as well I think this was a good
idea not only because I was following the challenge I had set for myself but also
because it added like cohesion between all the colors in the
illustration and then instead of filling in the eye color with the eyelash color
like I usually do I decided to use a lighter blue but it looks very similar
to the blue I use for the eyelashes so I'll have to try harder next time
I tried to avoid lineart where I didn't need it so that's why the cheek and the ear
don't have the pink line art around her face and now when I'm adding in the
color of her skin I'm taking in where that chin would be into consideration
when I color it and that gives it that like paper cutout look that I really
like I tried to add some structure to the face by layering the same marker
over itself for the skin so like to try and add color to the cheeks and the nose
and that worked really well but it was very subtle and I wanted something with
a little more umph so I grabbed the lightest pink I could
find and layered that over on top of the nose I don't really like that so
after coloring in the lips I started adding some more dimension around the
eyes because usually there's some color there and then also on the cheeks and
the ear and I really like the way the face turned out with that and then I
also used this pink again to add even more shading to that bottom leg
exaggerating it as much as I can then I went in and started coloring in the hair
again I'm trying to keep in mind where the shine would be on the hair to give
the hair just a little bit of that shimmer that I like and you really have
to think about it when you're coloring because these markers don't erase I've
found you can always take away highlights but you can't add more for
the most part so do big swooping highlights if you need to and if you're
nervous and then slowly chisel away at those to
make them look the way you want -- now for this further section of hair I realized
if I used a darker color perhaps even the same color that I used for the line
art of the hair I could give it that paper cut out look that I wanted I first
layered on the pink bubblegum color that I use for the rest of the hair and then
over top of that I put a darker color and then just made it look like one flat
shape and that was exactly what I was looking for -- if I had an ultrafine marker
in the same shade that I was using for the skin this would have been easier
because then I could have erased more but here I am doing the arm trying to
get that flat look I even had to redraw that hand because
that one was not going anywhere and I was very nervous about picking up the
graphite with the sharpie and getting those ugly gray blobs so I erased it as
light as I could and then filled in like the tiny little shapes of the hand
without letting it touch any of the graphite even though it was mostly
erased I didn't want to even take a chance -- and then once the innards were
all colored I was able to erase it and then go in and add some more details and
even like shade some of the fingers to make them look even further away -- for the
other hand, I decided to take the easy route and I outlined some of the fingers
with that magenta color and then just colored in the skin section - that way I didn't
have to worry about the graphite and I still had something that looked remotely
like a hand you know
now for the umbrella I wanted to try going at it without any
lines so I just picked out the colors that I would need and erase as much of
that umbrella shape as I could now remembering how I had colored in the
thumbnail over on my computer I remembered where I wanted like the
shines to be and the shines on the umbrella are going to be in this pink
color have a little bit of a hue shift there and then the base of the umbrella
or the base color of the umbrella was going to be that purple color so because
I knew this in my head I was able to kind of just do this as I went because I
had already made these decisions previously (that is what thumbnails are for!) I really
need to prep my work more than I do I feel like I usually just sit down and
draw something and I tell you what I do but I'd like to like do some more
pre-planning in my art in the future it's really helpful
(there's a reason you know professionals do it this way)
I used an ultrafine sharpie for all of the like
mechanical bits of the umbrella and then once those were done I was able to fill
in those sections with the purple and when you have smaller sections to fill
in it's a lot easier to get a flat color without having to worry about streaks so
those are really good and like diversifying the large umbrella shape
into smaller sections and then to add some more depth to the umbrella and make
it look further in the distance like behind the character I used one of those
'Stained by Sharpie' brush marker things and I used the purple one which is like
the only not florescent one so that worked perfectly and I
just shaded behind the character, I decided to shade in sections because the
umbrella is those like funky shapes and like the lights gonna be hitting each
angle differently and I thought this was the best way to approach that and then
it looked a little bit like this I feel like it looks a little bit like a gem
do you agree like I don't know if it looks anything like an umbrella but it
looks cool and I can't ask for more than that
and then here's where I start going a little crazy and I add a bunch of
raindrops hitting the umbrella but only the umbrella (weirdly suspicious) and I
also tried to add like heart-shaped puddles underneath her don't think that
works but I tried and I'm gonna make a little bit of a confession here my
self-esteem was a little bit through the roof because the art was turning out
like exactly the way I wanted it to (which isn't necessarily a good thing) because
then I was like 'hey I can draw a background?" look look how good I draw..' I
can draw a background oh my gosh whenever I feel confident in myself
that's when the art [fart sound] takes a turn for the worst
don't let me do that!
[frustrated grunt] luckily it doesn't happen that often but when it does, I feel guilty for
feeling good and then I make poopy art so trust me I get my just desserts
anyway I decided to add color to the background I wish I just chosen one
color and it could have been like a monotone background I feel like that
would have contrasted well with the character in the front but I didn't do
that decided to use colors tried to go over them with pink to try and create
that monotone look in post but they were competing with the character in a way
that I didn't really like so it's kind of like a last-ditch effort to save the
background I grabbed my white dr. pH Martin's
Bombay India ink -this ink is like a little slightly opaque so I thought it
would be perfect to layer over top of this and just lighten it up a bit
make it less overbearing and it did work but I think it's smudged some of the
Sharpie because it created like almost a pink tone and then I had to like figure
out what to do with the edge of this pink I tried to blend it out as much as
possible but it was really working so I decided to make it look like fog which
actually looks really kind of cool that's one of those happy accident
things (but I still want to liked it better if it didn't have a background at
all) and after that dried I went in and added in the tattoo I did a lot better
job of drawing this tattoo in the digital version I think it was the angle that
threw me off but I played around with it and got to look semi-decent
it's supposed to be like a Sun on the kneecap and then there's like a cloud
underneath the Sun and then underneath that cloud it becomes rain
just look at the digital version it makes me feel better
that's what it was supposed to look like
then I went in with my Sakura decorous white gel pen and added in some
highlights here and there that I missed when coloring it in and I also colored
in the tattoo because I thought that would help
but yeah here's my finished illustration I really like the way sharpies look next
to each other if you can find ones that like contrasts with the ones around it
you can make some really fun pops of color illustrations and I love that sort
of like flat look there's still streaks in them but it's like a fun streak like
it looks like sharpie you know and as a kid sharpies are like that art supply
that you have access to that are also like really cool and feel like an adult
art supply and the fact that I can make art with these I don't I feel like I'm
just making eight-year-old me so proud
I had so much funnn!
I say that at the end of every
video but I love doing art and I have fun making it so I'm not being redundant
it's a new fun each and every time anyway I want to thank you for watching
today's video. do you use Sharpie for your art if you
do do you have like a specific pack of sharpies that you like the best I
noticed there's like so many different kinds now with all these different
colors and I wonder how different they actually are so I'm wondering what your
opinion is on that.
anyway thanks for watching I'll see you guys all next week
and I hope you have a delicious evening full of waffles!
Bye!
♪