By the end of this class, you will have created your own illustrated characters with gouache and colouring pencils.

Assignment

In the final project, you will use everything you learned from the previous projects—how to combine gouache and colouring pencils, how to choose colours, how to use marks to come up with new ideas—to create your final characters.

The finished project will consist of at least three illustrated characters on one page, however you can draw as many as you like (or as many as the page permits)!

Understanding the Materials

First, we will talk about the materials we are going to use. I will demonstrate how I use gouache and colouring pencils, and share my top tips with you.

Color Theory and Mark Making

We will then learn a little bit about colour theory, and I’ll show you how I tend to use colour in my work. Then, we will warm up by making marks on the page and turn them into characters.

Sketches and Final Project

This exercise will get you to defeat the fear of the blank page and help you to generate ideas for your final project. We will then flesh out these drawings by turning them into more developed sketches, and finally use these sketches to create your final piece.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do is to get your materials out. Once you have your gouache, coloring pencils, water, brushes and hot pressed watercolor paper, you can join me in our first lesson, 'Understanding the Materials'.

Sharing Your Work

I highly encourage you to share your work at every step of the process. There will be a small project to complete at the end of each class. Please take a high quality photo or scan of your work and post it on the project gallery for each project. To do this, upload your images in the 'Your Project' section. I look forward to seeing your creations!

Class 1 outcome: Material test page

Class 2 outcome: Make a colour wheel!

Class 3 outcome: Random marks turned into characters

Class 4 outcome: Turning your mark characters into sketches

Final project: Creating your own character illustrations using gouache and colouring pencils

You can find the materials I used in this class below:

Coloring pencils: Cass Art watercolour pencils and Faber Castell Polychromos

Gouache: Daler & Rowney Aquafine Gouache

Brushes: Winsor & Newton Cotman Round Brushes

Sketchbook: Moleskine Artists Sketchbook

Song list in order of appearance:

Zofia Bońkowska

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