(cheerful music)
- Hi, my name's Steve Thompson,
I'm an artist for the Walt Disney company,
but one of my favorite characters to draw
is Jasmine from Aladdin,
and that's exactly what we're gonna be doing today.
Let's get started.
(peaceful music)
I generally like to start all my drawings
with a really rough sketch.
This is really just going to be
starting with a circle.
It doesn't need to be a perfect circle in one line,
it's kinda sketchy as you go.
She is turned slightly to one side,
so I'm gonna use this center line as a guide for me
for where the center of her face is.
For Jasmine, her eyes sit a little bit lower,
so I'm actually gonna use the bottom of the circle
as her eye line.
Now since her head is turned slightly away,
the eye on this side of the line,
the smaller portion of the circle,
is gonna be a little bit smaller.
So it's not that her eye's smaller,
it's just appearing smaller.
I'm gonna go in and add her other eye.
She has these nice, large, almond-shaped eyes.
Once the eyes are in there, I'm gonna want to
drop in her eyebrows.
She's got these fairly thick eyebrows.
One of her traits that I think is iconic
of definitely being hers.
If I keep following the center line down I'm gonna
pretty much have a good idea of where
the nose and mouth are.
So I'm just gonna drop in this simple shape for her nostril
and the tip of her nose,
and a little bit of the bridge.
I'm gonna wanna put a little bit of a smile on her.
She's got a nice bow for her top lip,
and her bottom lip is quite a bit fuller.
And that's gonna draw your attention
right about to where her chin would be.
From there we can add that
sort of U or V shape
to start describing her cheek.
She's got a nice, full cheek,
tapers then nicely to this chin.
Come back over to the other side.
This is gonna be a little bit more straight.
'cause actually her cheek is in here.
This is the curved part that you're seeing here.
But this is her jawline,
so this is gonna be a little more straight,
this side more curved.
From here, since I'm already in this area,
I like to drop in her earrings.
It's almost like as soon as you put them on,
you really recognize the character,
and Jasmine's earrings are definitely
part of her costume that I think immediately
starts to read as Jasmine.
This is gonna lead us right into her hair.
I'm already kind of in this area of the face,
so I'm working my way back up.
And if you didn't recognize her by her jewelry,
I think you'll certainly notice her by her hair.
She's got this really fun hair shape.
It's almost like a triangle shape, and then a smaller bun,
and then a long, longer tail,
so I'm gonna see if I can get a little bit of this,
this portion in,
since her hair is definitely much longer than this paper is.
So here's sort of this triangle shape,
got this hair tied back.
So along the center line,
she's got a jewel on top of her head,
and you can see that I've used that center line
to sort of show the perspective of how that actually
sits on top of her head.
So the line isn't there just for no good reason,
it's beneficial the entire time I'm drawing.
Then Jasmine has
a little bit of a angle on the back of her head.
It's not perfectly round,
but I'm using that circle as a guide.
So I'm imagining this hair is on top of it.
It's a little bit thicker than the circle,
which is just describing, for me, where her head shape is,
so I can bring in that subtle angle
right back down into this hair.
So I'm gonna go back into those eyes,
start adding the iris.
Come back over to this side,
you're gonna see even less of that circle
because of the eye shape.
But you want it to kinda sit at the same height
and be about the,
imagine it's about the same size
if I continued the circle around.
That way we get her looking in the right direction.
Can throw in a quick highlight.
And then the pupil is gonna sit within this iris.
Another circle within a circle.
So you can see,
even something that starts off
seeming a little complex or complicated
really just starts with a couple basic shapes.
It's how you put the shapes together.
So I'm gonna come down to her shoulders.
She's got sort of narrow shoulders,
definitely much more narrow than her hair.
Here another, one of those iconic pieces of jewelry
is her necklace.
And then her, little peek at some of her outfit,
with shoulder sleeves.
So this is pretty much
my take at my first pass at Jasmine.
I'm going to use, for myself, a fresh sheet of paper.
So with this paper I'm able to kind of
see through where I was.
I don't wanna loose sight of
where this eye line is, or the center line.
And this is where you can start
changing and refining things.
Compared to my rough drawing,
I'm gonna bring this eye shape down just a little bit.
It is smaller, but I just wanna make it a little taller,
so it matches the same distance here.
So that's an adjustment.
And it's in this stage where I feel like I can
look at the character and really keep the things I want,
make little changes.
Do I want this smile up a little bit more?
Which I think I do.
This eye I seemed pretty okay with.
It was a matter of getting this one to match
a little bit better.
But I know I wanted to go
a little bit thicker with these brows, so,
I'm even kind of changing it as I go.
You know, when I first started working at Disney,
I thought maybe everybody just did these perfect drawings
right out out of the gate,
and I found it a little intimidating
and didn't quite know where to start.
But once I realized that everyone kinda goes through
different stages and has their own process,
it really kind of opened me up to just
not being afraid to get started.
'Cause that blank paper looking back at you can
sometimes be intimidating.
So this drawing isn't totally clean.
It's not completely rough,
but it has that really cool sketch quality
that I think just keeps life in these drawings.
The little tweaks and changes
that I wanted to make in the face really helped.
Making the earrings a little larger.
But I think everything else is almost where I wanted it.
For me I always feel like the second pass
goes a little more quickly than the first.
The first stage seems like, to me,
you're getting the simple shapes down,
but I feel like you're also sort of troubleshooting.
I feel like if I notice something isn't looking quite right,
when I get to this stage,
I know exactly what it is that I want to change.
So I think we got her.
This is pretty much Jasmine.
But I usually like to take it one step further
and add graphite to this.
So I'm gonna take this eraser,
and this is sort of an erasable
pencil that I'm working with.
You don't have to use red, and you don't have to erase.
It's just my process.
And even in this stage,
you can start to refine your own drawing.
Maybe you erased away a little line
that you didn't like or didn't want there.
I always like the eyes,
the eyes are my favorite part of any character 'cause
it's the first thing that we relate to.
I feel like as soon as I got
the eyes looking the way I want them to,
the rest of the drawing is gonna go fine.
Even though this drawing started with a simple circle,
these characters can still be challenging to draw.
I know I still feel challenged by them,
and I've been working on them a long time, so,
I always practice drawing as much as I can.
The fun thing about that is seeing how much you improve
and how quickly you can improve.
Because the approach to the character doesn't change,
but each time you draw the character,
you might instinctively sort of notice,
oh, I should've done this differently,
or the next time I draw her I'm gonna have her look
slightly different way, and none of them are mistakes.
I always say you're not making mistakes in drawings,
you're just giving yourself learning opportunities.
And every time I'm working on a new character
I go through a similar learning process.
I have to find those simple shapes, break it down,
and then start to learn this character.
It's almost like you're meeting them
and becoming familiar with them.
And the more familiar you are, the easier it is to sort of
help them show up here on the paper.
Another way you might make this drawing your own
is to add color.
You might have some markers or crayons or colored pencils,
and you might wanna experiment with them, too.
Find a technique that you like
that's like sort of your signature look for drawing.
And it looks like we're almost finished with her.
I'm just adding a little bit of shadowing.
And that's Jasmine.
I really hope you enjoyed watching along
as I drew Jasmine for you today.
I know I really enjoyed it, and hope to see you soon.