I recently got a new sketchbook.
So I'll be continuing my tradition of painting on the cover
and of course, I'm gonna take you along with me
and show you the entire process.
♪
Starting a new sketchbook is intimidating and exciting,
you're face to face with countless empty pages.
The possibilities of success and failures,
as you start this new adventure.
Of course, it doesn't have to be intimidating.
You can just start sketching,
which is what I've done in the past
but more recently I've enjoyed the process of creating
a project out of like my first illustration in the sketchbook
or the cover as I'll be doing today.
So I really like to focus on each step of the creation process
So first, I'm gonna be starting with,
as you can see, thumbnail.
As an artist, it can be easy to look at something
and kind of see how you want it to look.
But the way you're seeing it in your head,
doesn't always translate onto paper.
Which is why thumbnails are your best friend.
By drawing small and simple
and just visualizing your idea onto paper,
you can see what's working, what's not
and make small tweaks
without having to erase large mistakes
or find your issues way further on down the process
and not being able to fix them.
After creating a very small thumbnail in the top left
I started drawing a little bit bigger
so that I could pinpoint some more of the elements
of this thumbnail as it is.
So I want to focus on the character design.
So the clothing, the hair,
maybe a little bit of personality in the face
as well as pinpointing the pose a little bit better
and I also took this opportunity to play around a little bit
with the color scheme that I had chosen.
I thought a little bit of a teal, coral would be fun.
I can go way overboard when it comes to colors.
So what I've been doing. especially when painting,
is just picking my colors in advance
and really limiting my color palette
So what I chose this time,
was a bit of a teal and coral color scheme.
That way I don't get up and go grab more paints
and end up just muddying up the whole illustration.
Again, I'm not trying to be too exact.
I'm not trying to be too detailed.
I'm just trying to see how the colors are going to look
laid next to each other.
Do they look good next to each other?
How do I have to separate my tones?
How do I have to separate my hues?
We're not worried about rendering.
We're just exploring ideas
Mixing colors without having to worry about making
gross colors because if they don't work,
we don't have to use them later.
Thumbnailing and sketching has always been my
favorite part of the art process
because there's no wrong way to do it.
You're trying to find the right way to do it
but by finding the wrong ways to do it,
you're hopefully heading in the right direction
to find the right way to do things.[Laughs]
and I like that it can turn out bad without it being a failure
because you've just found one more wrong way to do it,
still teaches you something and I just love that feeling
of making a mess and not being upset with the way it looks.
I happen to suffer from being a lazy perfectionist
and it means that I try to find a lazy way to do something
and when it doesn't turn out well,
I hate it. [Laughs]
So by learning to enjoy the sketching process
and not hating what I make
because it's part of how it's supposed to be.
Little victories I tell ya'
and then this second drawing of the character,
I tried to come up with a different outfit
because I realized I draw a very similar outfit
on many many characters
So I thought let's try something a little bit different.
But, well, I would never wear that and then I was like,
well, I don't really want to draw that.
So I moved on to something else.
But even though I drew a character
and the outfit didn't out well
and it wasn't really what I wanted
and I found other little aspects of this drawing that I liked
that I can then carry on into the next illustration
in the next sketch
So from here I want to explore the pose a little bit more
because I wasn't crazy about the one that I had colored earlier
So here I am just like trying to draw a very scrunched,
slouchy person because I happen to be a very slouchy sitter
and I don't know how to sit in a chair properly.
So I like drawing characters just like that.
The small inspiration that I had for this illustration
was kind of focusing on like the digital world
So like a character on their phone
and then I used speech bubbles or text bubbles.
However, you want to call them,
to put the information that I'm looking for.
So whenever I do a sketchbook cover page,
or draw on the cover of a sketchbook
I like to include the number of my sketchbook
and then sometimes the word sketchbook
a lot of the time the word sketchbook actually. [Laughs]
I've currently completed 23 sketchbooks,
which makes this my twenty-fourth sketchbook
so I'm trying to make the number 24
very prevalent in the design
and I thought it would be cute
to stick it in a little text bubble
and have the character on their phone
and then it's like a notification that goes boop
and it's like 24. [Short laugh]
As soon as I did that first thumbnail,
I kind of fell in love with the fact that there was no background
and there kind of floating in internet space you could say.
So that's why I've kind of pushed back
from drawing inside a square
and really focusing on the character,
the character design and the layout of like the...
Speech bubbles.
So you can see this last one, when I drew the character
I curved them in a little bit of an L shape, a reverse L
and then I included the speech bubble inside that gap
that I created that says 24
and it kind of creates -
So the character is still fitting within a square,
but it's open and free
and then to add a little bit of depth,
I included some speech bubbles behind the character
and then some like emojis encircling her in this thumbnail.
This is definitely one of my favorite sketches so far of the day
So I went a little over rendering on it.
You can kind of tell that I was inspired a little bit
by like egirls So kind of fitting into that Internet theme.
I wasn't thinking about it at the time,
but, I don't know, just happened.
For this next character sketch,
I was falling in love with her. [Laughs]
She was just so cute.
So I wanted to like explore her a little bit more.
Make sure I had an outfit that I liked because
You can't go ahead and start drawing on the cover,
unless you're 100% sure of what you're drawing.
So I wanted to make sure I knew
exactly what the outfit looked like.
After drawing that sitting pose,
I was pretty sure of what I wanted,
but I wanted to draw her in a little bit more standing up pose
so I can see more elements of the character design.
So that I know if I run into any problems
when I'm drawing on the cover,
that I can reference this drawing
and kind of see from another angle
what everything looks like so I can pinpoint a solution
when I'm working on the cover
and since I decided I was going to use this as a reference
for everything going on,
I decided to add color to this as well.
One of the biggest changes
is that I moved away from the coral color
and more to an orange color
and I thought the orange and the teal
gave me more of a futuristic vibe,
which I really liked because
again, it's the illustrations kind of based around
wireless communication
and that makes me think of the future.
So I think that's why orange kind of fit in so well,
whereas coral, it's seen in nature a lot more often,
you know flowers and things,
actual coral.
and I think it grounded it a little bit too much.
While that was drying,
I actually started drawing her again
I was having a lot of fun with this character
and after seeing a character with the orange and the teal
I actually started thinking egirl while I was drawing it
so then I thought maybe some space buns
with a little half-up half-down
and I started really playing with it
and accompanying my idea of an egirl.
I didn't do any research. I should put it out there.
It's just what I've kind of come across in my life.
Mostly the last two months probably.
Didn't really want to look up any references
because I kind of wanted to stay away from it being...
exactly like anything that's already out there
and keep it my idea of it.
So if you think that doesn't look anything like an egirl,
that's probably why.
Then by this point the acrylic paint was dry,
so I went over it with a fine-liner
on that last character there
and when I was writing the 24 inside the speech bubble
for this sketch, I ended up -
I actually added some extra lines to make the
number look - I thought it looked more future-y
I don't know why it has like this sort of like fake language
vibe to it and you can see now with colors on that 24
in that speech bubble right there,
It has like a stencil appearance,
like I used the stencil to paint on the numbers or something
and for some reason that just gives me super futuristic vibes
and at this point I thought I was pretty well comfortable
with the character. I knew how I wanted to lay out the pose
I knew where I was gonna put the letters
and the numbers and everything like that
So I decided to move on to the cover.
To sketch, I am using a watercolor pencil
in the color white
So I'm dipping it in water every once in a while
and as I sketch so that it's visible.
I think previously I've used a white charcoal pencil,
but I think this works a lot better
and for the first step, I'm just using big blocky shapes
and making sure that it's laid out properly on the cover
and it's exactly where I want it to be
before I start adding in any paint
or lines that aren't erasable.
Then from there, I start pinpointing the shapes and
breaking them down into more complex shapes and
making sure the knees are in places that make sense
and all the elements of the character are visible
that I want to be, like the cellphone
and then there's also a silhouette,
so the legs are kind of separated
and the head isn't overlapping with any shoulders or anything.
So it's all pretty well
formed and should be visible from a distance
that it is a human being.
So then I've got this really messy sketch and
It's time to start adding in some paint.
I ended up doing one color at a time.
Waiting for it to dry then adding another layer
because the paint's seem to have thinned.
I later found out that I just hadn't mixed them enough,
even though I was shaking the crap out of this bottle of paint
but that's why I wasn't opaque.
So this ended up taking me forever
even though it is a pretty simple Illustration in my opinion
It ended up taking me almost three hours
for the painting section alone. [Short laugh]
And I was feeling a little disheartened but I stuck with it,
even though at one point the face looked like this
So anything's possible guys,
especially with opaque art supplies.
So with the skin I mixed the orange with the white
and then for shading and for blush
I just mixed in a little bit more of the orange.
I watched an egirl makeup tutorial once back in the day
like two weeks ago
and they used a lot of peach blush
and sometimes eyeshadow, too.
So I thought this fits. [Laughs]
I eventually just covered the whole face in like a skin tone
and then used orange to block out
where the main facial features are so we have two eyes,
eyebrows, a nose and a mouth.
It's almost like sketching in paint
is how I would describe how I did that.
That's not how it's going to look in the final
but it's gonna help me figure out where they belong
without trying to do one eye completely
and then trying to do the other eye
and then realizing that they're not well balanced
and then oh, that's just a...
terrible idea. [Laughs]
Then I added a couple layers of the solid orange
and the solid teal until it started being very opaque
and you couldn't see the sketchbook cover through it
Also mixing in a little bit of white where I thought it would work
[Laughs]
The white was the most opaque paint that I had,
so I ended up mixing it in with a lot of things
just so that I could use less layers of paint.
I also used a little bit of teal to shade the hair,
so even though the hair is orange,
adding a little teal adds a little bit of a hue shift
and makes it look a little bit darker and pushed back
and more similar to the black background.
I want to weird route when it came to coloring in
that speech bubble
so reason I colored in the number first,
then tried to add the white background
but I ended up like chopping into the number a little bit
but here you can really visualize
the little stenciling approach that I went to it.
Even though it's not like straight up and down numbers.
They have fluidity and like angle to them
but also have that stencil appearance and I really like it
I just check the time stamp on my video
and without editing anything out,
we're at the three hours and 15 minute mark
and it doesn't quite look like too much yet
but that's kind of just the painting process here.
You gotta work at it.
It's not gonna look like much
and eventually you're gonna chisel, chisel, chisel, chisel.
You'll find the details hidden in the mess.
I ended up actually mixing a little bit of my acrylic ink
in the color black with some of my paints to
just add a little bit more depth to some areas because
I thought they were a little too mid-toney in some sections.
I know I got paint on this side there, shoot.
Now since I had the black acrylic ink out,
I decided to use it as a little bit of a liner
and I also went around the character cleaning up the edges.
From where I was sitting,
you really couldn't see it as much
it almost looked like the same color
and texture of the sketchbook but
Looking at the footage, I can tell that it is a lot shinier
and almost deeper black.
At this one I used a wet paper towel
and just removed the rest of the watercolor pencil and
at this point I thought these white specks were all just
from like smudging the watercolor pencil around
but it was actually from smudging the acrylic paint around
they were a little bit more difficult to remove and
some of them are still there.
So it has a little bit of a messy look
but it's still significantly cleaner than it was
with the watercolor pencil
So, you know small victories.
Then here after looking back and forth at my original sketches
Which I liked and looking at my illustration on the cover
Which I didn't like as much, I realized that the face
was the issue and I was very nervous
So I grabbed my pencil again
and tried to sketch over the acrylic paint on the face
putting in where the facial features are again and
realizing that the shape of the face was wrong.
So I ended up adding some acrylic paint for the cheek
and really adding more shape to the face
and making look a lot less flat
Of course I had to add a lot of peach blush
because I loved that in the sketch as well
and I used it to shade a little bit of the face too.
So it wasn't too flat.
My original idea for this illustration was very flat colors
and I did maintain that for the most part,
but obviously I wanted to have a little bit of fun with it too
Here I'm using a fine liner
and adding in some dark lines on the shoes.
I was going to use the paintbrush for this
but I just do not have a steady enough hand
or a thin enough paintbrush, I guess
and then I use the paintbrush with some paint
to add some lines to the speech bubbles.
Obviously, I couldn't write words with a tiny paintbrush on these
so I thought little lines would suffice
and these are supposed to be like background elements
so I didn't want them to distract too much anyway,
so this worked perfectly.
The only problem was I thought they'd look better with a lighter color
So I did end up changing that to just like a lighter teal
mixed with white on top of the darker teal speech bubble
Then the face was dry again.
So I went in on that with the fine liner on the eyelashes.
Then I used some white paint to fill in the eyes over the eyelashes
and then I used more paint to paint over the rest of the face
So it's definitely just layering and layering,
trying to get the look that I'm wanting
Constantly looking back at those sketches that I really like.
It's hard to capture the life of a sketch
in a finished illustration at least for me.
So by looking back and forth,
It definitely kind of keeps me grounded
and stops me from going too crazy stiff
with my finished illustration.
It also helps me look back and see what I liked
about the old sketches and kind of compare and contrast
along the way.
While the cover was still drying,
I added in the title on the spine of the sketchbook
It just writes sketchbook 24.
I kind of had a little bit of a rhythm to this
and I kind of make them look very similar
to all my past sketchbooks.
So not too much creativity over here on the spine.
Adding in the pupils definitely help the character
look a lot less creepy.
So I'm glad that happened. [Giggles]
Then I went in with the acrylic ink and started outlining
this white speech bubble,
trying to just harden the lines, sharpen the lines,
that's probably the word.
I want the lines to be a lot sharper around this.
They're a little...
Fluffy right now just from the paint
and touching it with my hand and blending it all about
I also used acrylic ink to add a little bit of depth
to the letters to make them look like they're popping
out of the speech bubble.
I really like the way this looks
and I kind of wish that I had made the letters popping
out of the speech bubble completely
So like the speech bubble doesn't make it outside
of the lines of the number.
and I also use the acrylic ink to clean up some of
the other speech bubbles and at this point,
Looking at it, I thought oh,
there's so many areas with like shiny ink now,
so I thought maybe I can use that as a design element
So I added a heart...
Behind the character in the shiny acrylic ink,
but I wasn't sure it was quite visible enough,
So I tried adding a white stroke around the heart
and I ended up carrying that white stroke around
the speech bubbles and the rest of the character
and it made her look like
a sticker kind of slapped on the sketchbook.
Which I like but I thought it was just too distracting
on the speech bubbles
because they're not really supposed to be prominent
They're not a prominent part of the design.
They're kind of just a background element,
so I wasn't sure what I was going to do there.
So while I was thinking I just wrote sketchbook
over the speech bubble to kind of make it look like
You know, when you receive a text message
and it says like the date above it and the time on the side
So I added like those in there
and of course for me, it wouldn't be an illustration
If I didn't regret some of the final things that I did to it,
so I tried to "erase" (finger quotations)
the white strokes around the background speech bubbles
just to kind of push them back a little bit
and I want the character to pop more than those.
So that's what the thought process was here.
And then I opened up the sketchbook
and started working on the back cover for the back cover
For the back cover, I like to keep it pretty simple.
So I just put two speech bubbles
and then I included that 24
and I made sure it looked very similar.
So it's almost like a logo for the sketchbook
and the top speech bubble I put in the word sketchbook.
Took a bunch of - [Laughs]
Layers and trial-and-error,
much like the rest of this illustration.
I mentioned earlier that I am lazy perfectionist
So the fact that I spent almost five hours on this
and it doesn't look like the Mona Lisa,
kind of tears on my heart a little bit
but then when I started thinking like that,
I definitely need to just take a step back
and realize you know, it's not me that's the problem.
I was kind of fighting with the art supplies,
getting them to show up,
making sure that they were opaque.
Taking multiple layers to do a simple kind of tasks,
even if a half an hour into most illustrations,
I already want to start a new one, [Laughs]
but luckily it's a sketchbook.
So there's lots of room inside for sketches.
Just perfect.
After a few final tweaks, this is what it looked like.
Here we have the sketches that led us to that cover
as I designed the character
and kind of laid out the illustration as we went
and then we have the cover with the front
and the back and yeah.
That's how I spent my day.
Let me know if you draw
on the cover of your sketchbooks.
and what will I do on the first page?
It's funny doing this voiceover
because I've already drawn in this for a few weeks
[Laughs] but I have not drawn on that first page yet.
Anyway, 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!
♪