5 Days of Sketching: Habit & Experimentation Challenge

1. Intro: Hello, and welcome to this sketchbook challenge class where we go through five days of sketchbook exercises to experiment and create the habit of sketching. Each time we'll have a different exercise. We'll start with something very simple drawing some lines and shapes and as the days go by, we'll have more complex exercises. The goal of this class is for you to get more used and comfortable to using your sketchbook. Just use your imagination and creativity. With each day, I'll give you a new assignment. You'll have a total of five assignments to make and I'll give you any resources or reference that you'll need for this class. As for what you need for this class, it's very simple, just a sketchbook. It doesn't matter how big the sketchbook is. It can be a smaller sketchbook or a big one, it's totally up to you, although I do recommend to have something maybe an A five or smaller because the goal here is to fill one page a day. If you feel that that's a bit too overwhelming, start with a smaller sketch. Other than that, you can use a pen, a pencil, markers, basically any medium you want, and you can even mix things up as we go. Personally, I will be changing the mediums I use to encourage you to do the same. Pencil, pen, markers, whichever you feel comfortable with. With that said, grab your sketchbook and let's start sketching. 2. Resources: Hello, and welcome back. Now, before we start drawing, I just want to let you know that I have a few templates for you to download. I will also give you some references for you to use for specific parts of the class. Don't forget to download those and I will let you know when you need each of them. Yeah, this is it for now and follow me to the next video where we'll start our sketching. 3. Day 1 ‘Wrong hand’ Drawing Challenge: Hello and welcome. This is going to be our first exercise to create here sketchbook habit and to be more comfortable drawing just random stuff and maybe bad stuff in your sketchbook. The first exercise, I like to call this drawing with the wrong hand. But what this is drawing with your non dominant hand. So I like to call it drawing with the wrong hand because it definitely feels wrong when doing it. The goal of this exercise, part of it is obviously developing your motor skills, especially with your non dominant hand that you usually don't use. It's going to be a bit hard to do, but also for you to understand that it's okay to make bad drawings or that your sketchbook is a place to experiment, do weird stuff. Do stuff that maybe won't work because that's the idea of a sketchbook. It's to explore things, it's to experiment. So things will work, others want, it doesn't matter. A sketchbook is not a place for our drawings to be beautiful. I have here all my supplies and for this one, I'd say for you to choose the supply or the medium you're most comfortable with. For example, for me, I'm going to use a pencil because it's a thing I'm more used to pick up and to have it on my hands. It makes things a bit easier to choose something that you're already used to. All right, we're going to start and the idea here is always to fill a page of your sketchbook. Now, you can dog with a smaller sketchbook. I have this one here, but you can go with something smaller and we can start with very simple stuff. We can just start with drawing straight lines. As you can see, my lines won't be very perfect, but draw some vertical lines, some horizontal lines, take your time. We can go for shorter lines. As you can see, I cannot draw a straight line this way. It's very difficult to have the control. Same thing with some vertical ones. This is the exercise you do to improve at your line art with your dominant hand, but it can also be a good exercise to do with your non dominant hand. It's a good way to start. Some diagonal ones as well, try to go for a slower line and other times to just do a quick stroke. There we go. Let's try to do one from almost one point of the page to the other. There we go, not bad. Now we can start maybe some curve lines. Trying some waves. As you can see, very simple line work, it doesn't need to be something to complex and detailed. We just warming up and improving our skills with our non dominant hand. If you're someone who's always been used to use both hands, this will be very easy for you. But if not, I think this can be a great way to work on that as well. I think it's always nice to try to have the same skills in both hands. I obviously don't and I obviously don't practice it that much, but it's a nice skill to have. We have some curved lines, we have some straight lines. Now let's start some shapes. Let's try doing some simple shapes. Let's start with the square. That could have been worse. Let's try another one. Let's just do a whole line of squares. Maybe try draw it in different ways. Maybe we are trying to draw it in the same way that we do with our other hand and if we do the opposite, it might work better. I don't know. There we go. Now, some triangles. Triangles are a bit easier. Let's try doing the opposite way. There we go. Let's do an upside down triangle. Upside and triangles are slightly easier to draw. Now some circles. Circles of different sizes. So are easier to do, others are more difficult. That's normal. If you try to do this, let's say you want to really improve at using your non dominant hand to draw, you can try doing this every day, filling a page of your sketchbook every single day. I'm pretty sure you'll see some differences in a month and maybe one day, you'll be able to draw with both hands. But I think it's a very fun exercise. Now I'm going to try and draw something. For example, let's start with a smiley face. We got a circle two eyes and the mouth. Now let's try a flower. That's also all about circles, the button and some petals around it. Not too bad. What else could we do with cat? This one is a bit more difficult. But I think we can do this. There we go. I just want to fill these small spaces in here. I'm going to draw a rectangle. Rectangles are a bit harder than the squares, and I'm going to draw a few strokes. I'm just having fun here. Let's do the same here. There we go. Grid. A very weird grid. What can we draw here? Let's draw a house. Just think of simple things you can draw, the things you would draw as a child perhaps and do it. It's fine. There we go. Very simple. If you want, you can just fill your page with lines. So horizontal lines, some vertical lines, some diagonal lines, you can do just this. You can fill your pages just with this. Then once you feel more comfortable, you can try and start drawing some shapes and so on and so on. Just go slowly. And you'll get more comfortable with this. This way, you'll get also a bit more comfortable with just making some weird things on your sketchbook on experimenting and not being afraid of things not working out because that can happen and it will happen. It's your sketchbook, it's supposed to happen. This is it for now. Don't forget to download the template for this exercise, you can draw on it, you can print it or you can do this digitally, and once you're ready, follow me to the next video. 4. Day 2 Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt: Hello, and welcome back. This is day two of creating a sketchbook habit and making different exercises in your sketchbook or sketchbook challenge. For this one, we're doing something that I like to call the Scavenger Hunt. What does this mean is we're going to pick random objects. That are in front of us. For example, if you're in your office, you can draw stuff that is on your office. If you're at home, you can grab stuff from different places if you want. But the idea is to find different objects and draw them. Now, it doesn't need to be a very detailed or complex drawing. It doesn't need to be super realistic. All I want you to do is to just pick different stuff, random stuff, and draw it without worrying if you know how to draw it or not, if it's going to be good or not, none of that, just drawing. For that, I'm going to use this big pen, a very simple pen, and some markers. You don't need to use this, you can use whatever you want. I want to use some markers just so my drawings are a bit different and so I can add some color to my sketches. I also have a lot of different objects here that are broth to draw and you can use the things that I'm drawing in here or you can use whatever you find at home or another possibility is to just go online, go on Pinterest or if your Instagram page has interesting stuff on your feed and just draw the things you find in there. Sometimes watching a video also works if you're watching a log, for example, you can draw random objects or foods that you see in the video, that's also possible. But I think making this Scavenger Hunt can be really fun and just look for stuff that you have around you. Let's start. I'm going to start by drawing this cat pin that I made. The shapes are very simple. Once again, the goal here is to fill a whole sketchbook page. You can be quick with these sketches. You don't need to spend too much time on them. These sketches are not about perfection, they're just about capturing something new and doing simple drawings. The idea is for you to practice that. Keep things simple. Let's go for the next one, this pumpkin. As you can see, my sketch is not perfect. But that's the point. I just want to make quick doodles. Also the colors of the markers I'm using don't really matter for me right now. Again, I'm not trying to capture something perfectly, just want to have some fun. I just brought hand them markers and use them. Go for this one, the pencil pin, as you can see, I'm using very simple shapes here. There we go. Another one the. Let's strike this one. We have this well. I'll make mistakes sometimes and that's fine. There we go. I'm also not being very perfect with my coloring. I just want my drawings to have some color. Next one, this one. I'm going to start with the bow, so that lines won't overlap. Small objects, this is it. Now I have here some bigger objects such as this small ghost in here and I'm going to draw it. I'm going to leave it like this for a few seconds. If you want to pause and draw this ghost, some color to my ghost here. Then I got here this pumpkin as well that I want to draw. There we go, same thing. I'm going to leave it here for a bit. If you want to draw it, my pumpkin is going to be pink. But next. Now I'm going to start looking for stuff around me. For example, I got here my camera case so I can draw that. There we go. A simple object, click to draw. I use green because I haven't been using a lot of green here. We can draw this pencil. We did already draw pencil, but well, no matter, we draw another pencil. That's fine. There we go. Let's draw this one as well. What I do for these kind of sketches is I'll just focus on the shapes on each individual shape. Of each object and draw one thing at a time. There we go. Let's also use this one might as well, draw all the supplies here. As you can see, my lines aren't perfect at all. But we can see the drawing here. We know what it is, and that is part of the fun. What else? We can draw this perhaps. Let's start with this one. I'll leave it here for a few seconds so you can look at it. We have this cat, heating sardine. There we go. Now a left one to fill the space here. Let's draw this big guy over here. I'm going to show you for you for a while. If you want to draw him, and we go, all right. This nose should have been bigger, but that's fun once again and here we got our eyes. Then we go, I'm missing here this bit. Let's put it back and now color it. Now I want to show you what I usually do as just a final little thing that I do with my sketch pages. At the end when I do this random object exercise is I decorate my page a little bit. This is very simple. I will just pick up my markers and I'll do random things like a spiral here and there, just in random places. Is just to add a little bit of extra and a little bit more color and fun to my pages. Other than spirals, we can do stars and maybe just some random dots here and there. I also like to make some random ones like this. On some of the drawings. Let's do here as well. Now, let's speck another color and do more of the same. Now, one more, the pink, we're missing the pink here. There we go. This way, our page looks much more complete, much more fun, very colorful. This is just a bonus step here. You don't need to do it, but I think it can be very fun and relaxing. This is it for our second exercise for our sketchbook challenge, or Scavenger Hunt, so just look for random stuff that is around you. It can be your phone, it can be a watch on your pocket, if you have one, your earrings even. It doesn't really matter what it is, choose some random stuff and just put it on paper. It doesn't need to be perfect. It's just a sketch, a doodle. Just have fun with it. It's just for you to get comfortable with drawing stuff and putting things on paper. This is it for now. Take your time. Don't forget to download the template that I gave you. I also made a small reference board with some examples of objects that you can draw so you can use that as well and just have fun and I will see you in the next video. 5. Day 3 Coffee Tea Stain Art: Hello and welcome back. This is our third exercise date or sketchbook challenge, and this time what you're going to do is doing some blob art, creating something out of random spots or blobs of paint. I already have a page ready, but this is very simple. I'll also leave you and template this image that I have right here for you to use if you want. Download it and you can draw on top of it. But basically, we'll just do some random blobs on the page. I use some leftover coffee grains, coffee beans to do this. It was very simple. I just reuse stuff that I had, I didn't do coffee all over or just use new grains. I just use stuff that was already used and before going to the trash, I just added some water to it and filtered it and added some random blobs on my paper with a pencil and just splash stuff in here. You can do this also with some teabags, some leftover teabags you might have or with paint. So watercolors, even with acrylics, just mix it with a lot of water and you can do the exact same thing. What we want to do here is draw whatever we see in this splashes of paint. Yeah, very simple. I have here a fine liner and I'll just draw whatever I see. Let's the first one. This one reminds me of those very small dogs, but they have lots of fur, so I'll just draw that. It's very, very simple. There we go, just a tiny dog. This one reminds me of a cat sitting from the back. Let me see if I can with a big tail, a big pushy tail and this head is tilted, something like this. There we go. This one also reminds me of a cat. When cats are washing themselves in very weird position, that's what it reminds me of. Can I draw this? Just follow the lines. Cats in very weird positions. All right. This last one, this is a bit more difficult, but I think I see a person here sitting down. This is a very abstract work. As you can see, I'm doing this, roughly. That's the idea of this drawing. Now for the legs, and there we go. A person sitting down. These are obviously very experimental, but I think they're very cool and you never know what you end up with and feel free to be very messy with this. There we go. So we got three animals and one person here. But, you can be very, very simple with whatever you see or a bit more complex with more detail, but you'll always see something. Sometimes, all you need is to just put the pen on paper and just let yourself go because sometimes at first, we don't really see anything or we just see a part of it. But as we draw, we start getting more ideas of what could this stain be this blob be. So yeah, very simple. Just throw over everything. You can download this page, the very same stands that I use, or you can make your own. It's totally up to you. But if you want, you can download and use this one. You can do this digitally or with a pen, you can print it out and use a pen. It's totally up to you. Just have fun and I will see you in the next video. 6. Day 4 Food Doodles Fiesta: Hello, and welcome back. This is day four of our sketchbook challenge class, and today we're going to draw some food, but we're going to put a spin on it. The kind of food we'll draw doesn't really matter. I'm going to draw just things that come up to me and we want to draw some expressions on them. That's the twist of it, and we're just going to have fun drawing different cute expressions on our food. I have my fine liner for this time and perhaps I'll use some markers. We'll see. Very simple. I know it's scary to have this blank page looking at us, but just draw the first thing that comes to your mind. For example, I'm thinking apples. That's what I'll draw. A very simple shape. Once again, remember this is just a sketch, a doodle, it doesn't need to be perfect. Now, let's draw here a simple face. There we go. Cute and simple and you already have something on your bad so now we just continue. What can we draw next? Let's keep ourselves in the foot perhaps. Strawberry, for example, this is the shapes I use for strawberry and don't forget the seeds. This is basically almost a triangle, but we round corners and then just a puff of leaves at the top. And as for our expression, what can we do? You know what? I'll keep these seeds and I'll draw a face a bit differently and we can draw an open mouth. We can even draw here some strokes of surprise in there. There we go. Next, a watermelon slice. Basically, we draw here half circle, now another arch line. Let's start with the face so we don't forget. Let's draw with the mouth open. Now we can add the seeds. There we go. What else? I'm basically thinking of my favorite fruits here, a straw pear. The pear is going to be a bit similar to a strawberry, but upside down and we can add more curves. This pear is a bit angry like this. As you can see, we can make very cute expressions with very simple lines, just a few lines and we have an expression. What else could we do? Let's go for another thing. Let's say a muffin. So muffin, I would go basically first with part of a trapezium shape like this. And then have a few lines going this way. This is the paper or surrounding ormuffin and then half a circle at the top and we can add some chocolate spits to it. Now face, there we go. Let's draw a slice of pizza. Pizza is basically a triangle, but one of the sides is curved. Something like this, then down, down. Now we have here the crust. Let's draw our face, something like this, and now we can draw perhaps olives, mushrooms, there we go, a cookie, obviously. Cookies basically a circle, but you don't have to worry about it being perfect. You can have the irregular size because that's how cookies are. If you've made a cookie, you know how it is and we just keep drawing cute expressions to them and of course, some bits of chocolate. As you can see, I'm being very rough with this. Don't need to be perfect. If we want to, we can also add some arms and hands to our drawings if you want to make them even more human. That's true. Pineapple. Let's go back to the fruit. Pineapple, we can draw a circle and then we got this green area. This is how I go about it. There are always different ways to draw something and I like to keep my drawings very simple. I'm going to draw stars for the eyes here, something like this, some tackles, so for taco, we have half a circle and we got here our face, and then we just add some random toppings like some lettuce, bits of tomatoes. What else? Can we add some bits of meat right and keep it simple like that. We can also draw a sushi. We can draw I'm going to draw two types like a sushi roll, so we have an ellipse like this and then our seaweed and our face. Now we can also make one of those I like nihili if I'm not mistaken, we have the bits of rice with some fish on top. We can also draw that. Here I like to make instead of a circle or an ellipse, a perfect one. I like to add some texture like this and then the bit of salmon, for example, on top and a different phase. There we go. Two types of sushi. We can have a mug of coffee, right. So half a circle, then this curved line below it, and now the handle. There we go. Then we have our coffee inside. I'm just going to add some color inside of it. We can have some lines here indicating there's some warmth. And now our coffee that is enjoying our mug that is enjoying the warmth, can also go for a tall glass like this. See, my lines are not perfect. This is fine. I'm just doodling. Let's perhaps make a bubble drink here is our expression, and now we can also add a straw here, very, very simple. Just before almost like before, we can draw a pumpkin. So pumpkin, I like to use of ellipses like this, but I'll show you another way to do it. Now we got here our face and instead of doing the separate shapes, you can also just make a whole shape right away, something rounder. This is another way of doing it and now we have these lines for the pumpkin and there we go. Or you can make something in between. Adding the lines like this, there we go. Make a tired face like this, two dots, and now the hand, the mouth going down, and there we go. Three different ways of drawing a pumpkin. We can draw what do you call some green onions. Very simple. Go like this. You're trying an epsulon like this can add here those bits of roots and now we can draw face here, a tiny face. We should draw something set, right? It's not the most fun, but I think we should draw a set face. I'm sure we can do more vegetables here. An onion, let's make an onion crying. I think that's very fitting. This is it, very simple. Now our onion is crying. There we go. Poor onion, I feel bad for her. Oh, we can make a turnip. Turnip will have a similar shape as the onion, a turnip or a reddish. This is more of a redish perhaps, I don't know, and now the leaves. The leaves have this wavy look to them. This is a very simple way of drawing them. There we go. Let's straw some peace and no one expression for each one. This one is bored and this one is cute. Let's just try to fill this space here and perhaps this one, we can make a lollipop, those big round lollipop, something like this, a spiral, there we go. Now another candy. So a circle and then something like this. Make a watermelon but closed a full watermelon, so a big circle. Doesn't need to be perfect because if you look at watermelons, they're also not perfect, and then we got some stripes. Again, not being too perfect about this. I want to give it some arms as well like we did with a pair. There we go. Now just one more. Make a banana here. So the top of the banana and then just two curved lines like we're drawing a moon and then we go. So now I'm just going to color this very quickly, just to give a bit more color to my page. I like to add color to my pages. I just realized I painted my watermelon wrong. Let's more or less fix this. This is fine, mistakes happen. There we go. This is it. Once again, as you can see, I'm not matching the true colors of each food that I have here. I only picked up these very limited palettes here, but that's fine. I'm just adding some color. I don't need for things to be real or to look real and go according to reality. This is just for fun, some doodles, and this is it for now. So don't forget to download the templates. You can draw the same foods I drew. Here, you can take this page as inspiration, or you can just go into Pinterest or online or even look through your cupboards and fridge and choose some stuff that you might want to draw. Similar to what we did in the Scavenger Hunt. Have fun, draw some of your favorite foods, draw tiny little expressions on them, have fun, take your time and once you're ready, don't forget to share your assignment with me, and I will see you in the next video. 7. Day 5 Comic Day: Hello, and welcome back. This is the final day of our sketchbook challenge class. Today we're going to do something different. This is perhaps our most complex exercise, but I believe in you and you can do this. Once again, keep things simple. We want to draw a comic strip. This time we won't be filling our whole page, a small comic strip. You can even make four squares perhaps with whatever you prefer. The idea for this comic is for you to draw something that you do in your day. Just a simple task. It can be just, for example, brushing your teeth in the morning. Waking up, making your breakfast, just anything that you can come up with, just a simple action that you do throughout your day. To make things simple, I would cipher to use only four panels. So try to choose the most important parts of that task and draw them. Now, I'm going to use this pencil, this mechanical pencil, and I'm going to draw four squares first. The task that I want to draw here is making a cup of tea. Let's draw four squares first. They don't need to be perfect. So we're going to start from here and here. I think the first action here is fill the kettle. So first, I want to have a faucet right and my kettle. And yes, I'm not being too perfect with it. Once again, these are sketches. Let's say you're planning a comic, your first drawings won't be too perfect. You just want to have a very simple idea of what you want to draw. There we go. Next, I have my kettle turned on and waiting for the water to heat up, and then I have here my mug with the tib waiting for my water. Then, of course, we have the mug again with the teabag and we have our water pouring, everything very, very simple and a clock because we are waiting for the tea to be ready. We have to wait this long. That's way too much, but you get it. Now, I don't have here an eraser and I do recommend you to not use an eraser because that way you can't be constantly fixing your mistakes. Like this panel, it could probably be better, but this is it. If I was planning on making this an actual comic, I would probably draw several ideas and that's something you can do instead of just four panels, you can have several four panels and try different ideas of the same task. This way, you can try different compositions, different perspectives, perhaps different parts of the task, and at the end, you will choose one of them that feels like it's the right one and finish your comic really go through the next step, which is making a better sketch, a cleaner sketch, then making your line art, adding some colors, and finally, finalize your comic and post it somewhere. If you wanted to make a comic, those will be your steps. Now here we just doodling. We're just putting things on paper. We're not thinking about the next stages of whatever project you want to make. This is just it and maybe one day I might want to pick this up and make something with it. Now for my last step, of course, I'm drinking my cup of tea. So I have my mug. I'm grabbing my mug, see lines are overlapping. This is fine. Another hand here, everything very, very messy and I want to keep the kettle here in my kitchen. We can draw some cupboards here, the background like some tiles. Same thing here, some tiles in the kitchen and here as well. You can go back and forth in your drawings. But yes, this will be it. My cup of coffee, the mug is gigantic, but this is it. This is very simple. As you can see, this is very, very messy. I'm not really thinking too much about the planning of it. I'm just putting ideas on paper right away. This is the first thing I thought about and I'm drawing it. If I want to work more on it, I can do so later. Why is this useful for you is because throughout the day we get ideas. Sometimes you just sitting down and you get an idea and maybe sometimes instead of writing it, writing it down and especially if you have a visual idea, you can just pick your sketchbook very quickly. That's why it's good to have a smaller sketchbook that you can walk around with. You can just open it up, sketch your idea very quickly. Bam, this is it, you can pick it up later. This is it. Take your time. Don't forget to download the template that I gave you and don't forget to post your assignments and share them with me so I can give you any feedback you might want and I always love to see your assignments. Just have fun. Take your time, and I will see you in the next video. 8. Conclusion: Hello again, fellow artists, congratulations. You finished this class, five days of sketching with different exercises and with different themes. I hope you enjoyed this class and don't forget to share with me and to post your assignments so I can see them and give you any feedback you want. Also, I'd really appreciate if you could leave a review, so other people like you can find this class and enjoy it as well. Once again, thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to check out my other classes. And remember, keep on drawing.