Transcripts
1. Introduction: Art could be a wonderful way to
create your own world. To go beyond the
limit of this realm, to imagine and birth
new characters, new ideas, and
bring them to life. Hi, I'm Osheen Siva. I'm a visual artist
from Bernardo in India. My work revolves around themes
of my family inheritage, queer and feminist power, environmentalism and
conservation as well. When I was growing up, I didn't really see a
lot of characters that have a similar background
to me or looked like me. As I grew up, I tried to
include as much of a diverse, colorful and fearless
characters and worlds that correctly
represent the diversity that we have around us. In this class, we're going to be learning about how to visualize your creative voice to a powerful portrait using
illustration and painting. Expressing your
unique voice is so important because you
never know who is going to connect with and it has the immense power to
make people feel seen. I will take you through some of my process on how to create a character by creating a mood board and an
inspiration board, how to form your
own color palette. We're also going to
learn a bit about inking and how to give
your artwork depth. This class is for everybody. You do not necessarily
need to have a ton of experience
or technical skills. All you need are some simple
tools for you to be able to confidently express
yourself in a creative way. I can't wait for you to join me.
2. Finding Your Voice: One of the reasons
why I love creating art is the fact that you
can take your thoughts and ideas and manifest them
in the physical realm. My practice for me
is a medium through which it connects the
past and the present to re-imagine a more
inclusive and diverse future. I love working in the speculative fiction
realm with sci-fi elements. It helps me create
this wonderful world that I can escape to. Representation is a
very important aspect of my art practice as well. I think it's very important to identify who you are and
where you come from, your roots or your heritage, and reflect your personality
into the work that you do. I also just happen to be part of a lot of
marginalized communities, including my fellow community
and the queer culture and just generally being a
brown, creative in person. I love the fact that
people reach out to me that belonged
to my same community and I love to be able
to have a conversation and relate to somebody
in that deeper level. In the beginning of my journey, the artworks that I created were more aesthetically inclined
as I've kept going, my characters now have a
fully fleshed-out idea. They have backgrounds, they
represent certain things. They have a powerful voice and this is something
that has taken many, many years for me
to arrive at and is still an ongoing process. A good way to figure
out what you want to say is to identify
different things that you're interested
in and bring those into a unique cocktail
that represents you. We will be doing a little
exercise that breaks down this process and helps you
find what you want to say. All you need is a piece
of paper and any pen. We can start this by jotting
out broad categories, such as books or music, movie, and animation,
or cartoons. Start populating these
different categories with things that you like. For instance, book that I like, book series is dunes, Hip hop, fantastic planet as an animation and Strange
days as a movie. As you fill out
these categories, you might be able to see connections and similarities
between these things. For me for instance I can
see ideas of revolution, dystopia, otherworldly
characters, cosmos. We will drop those
commonalities down. Evolution, fantastical worlds, cosmos, dystopia,
aliens, and the unknown. Another thing that's
common in all of these are a strong protagonist or
lead character as well. Writing these down will also be a good idea for you
to start out on your journey of identifying what you want to say
to your artworks. Be truthful to who you are, you all have something
very uniquely you. Do identify that and explore, you might feel pressure
to keep up with trends, but it's very important to
keep in touch with yourself as well in order to create
a more authentic journey. In order to catalog my thoughts, I find it easy to have
an archive online. For me, I have a
Tumblr account and a Instagram account dedicated to pictures that I
take of my hometown, pictures of family
archives that I refer to create my works. There are many, many different
ways in which you can archive things that
interests you. Some of the platforms
could also be interest or Tumblr or blogging. If you're an
up-and-coming artist, remember to be flexible
and try different mediums, try different topics
over the years the themes and ideas
that have explored have changed and morphed and become stronger or
weaker as well. As you continue on
with your journey, what you believe
in the most will become stronger and stronger.
3. Starting Your Project: Today we're going to be creating a portrait of a futuristic character using
illustration and painting. I like portraits
as a composition because characters tend to emote ideas and thoughts in a more understandable
and tangible way. It's interesting to
mix illustration and paintings for
me because it gives me more to play
with and also gives the composition more
depth and dimension, especially because I
predominantly work in a 2D space. Working with mixed
media might also lead to some mistakes which you can use to your advantage
in terms of thinking on your feet and
problem-solving on the go. The solo show that
I did recently, I used woven tapestry,
acrylic on canvas, ink on paper, and also acrylic and mural on the
insides of the gallery as well. The exploration of
mediums helped me express what the show was in a more
deeper and elaborate way. The tools that you
need for this class are pencil-and-paper, a glass of jar with
water, acrylic paints, 4-5 colors, a couple of
brushes for painting, a masking tape, a spray can, and a brush pen. If you don't have
these specific tools, that's completely all right. You can always find alternatives with what
you have at home. For instance, if you do not
have a brush pen with you, you can also use a thin
brush with black ink. If you do not have a
spray can at home, you can also use a
dry brush technique, which is basically a toothbrush
with any kind of paint. You can spray it across and get the same effect as a spray can. A good thing to also try out could be to customize
your own tools. There are artists that make their own brushes
or natural dyes. You can also make anything
into a brush like a chiseled piece of wood from
bamboo or anything else. These customized tools
can also help you defined your style and set you apart from what
anybody else might have. Now we're going to go
through my process of how I go through
with a project. But do remember that you can
always add on or subtract things to make it personal
or adaptable to you. My process to begin with
includes brainstorming, in which you will be making
an inspiration board with all the different things
that inspire you. Then we move on
to mood boarding, where you pick out aesthetic elements that
you're attracted to. We will work on creating
your own character, where I talked to you
a little bit about the basics of making a portrait, how to create basic
proportions and perspective. We will then move on to
the coloring section, where I talked to you
a little bit about color theory and how to mix and match colors to
create your own color palette. This is where we
will be filling in our portraits with
colorful paints. We will then work on spray painting and creating a gradient for your background. Finally, we will move on
to the inking section, where I talk about how to add an outline and dimension
to your composition. Your project for this
class is to create a dynamic portrait using illustration and
painting techniques. Gather the tools that we spoke about to get our
process started.
4. Brainstorming: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we are going to
be doing a bit of brainstorming with the use
of an inspiration board, and at the end of it,
we will arrive at a theme that we can use
for our portrait today. Brainstorming is a process
of collecting ideas from different sources to be able to conceptualize and
ideate a theme. We will be collecting
pictures from your interests such
as books or movies. I like to make a
board on Pinterest. You can add pins and ideas here from your own
personal collection. These could be
pictures that you've taken or we can also do secondary research by typing
in things that interest you. When we have a
collection of these, we will refer back to them and
pick elements from them to add details and depth to the character that
you'll be creating. This is a poster of one
of my favorite movies. Another thing that
I'm interested in are Indian matchbox designs. I really love the
surreal element that is happening
in this design. You can also research on
your favorite artists, I love the artworks of Soramaya. This Japanese artist
that works a lot with the theme of cyberpunk
and futurism. I'm also researching another
artist called Pater Sato, who is this 17th Japanese
airbrush artist who makes these colorful
portraits that live in this futuristic and
powerful worlds. This poster by Pater Sato. I love how the composition creates a very
striking portrait. You can see the
character's personality and energy through the artwork. I'm also researching a bit about thumper jewelry and
thumper heritage. I love the fact that it
represents my history. Everything that you've been
collecting so far should be added onto one common board. You can add as many as you like. I have about that much so far. You might notice that when
you put your board together, there are thematic elements that arrive at one
particular idea. In my board, what I can see is
that I'm attracted to strong characters with retro futuristic elements
that also connects back to thumper culture and vintage thumper
elements as well. From this, I know that
the artwork that I'm creating today will have
themes of surrealism, futurism, and my
culture as well. I will use these elements
in creating the sketch. Your student exercise for
this lesson is to create a inspiration board so that we can come up with an
overarching theme based on it. [MUSIC]
5. Making a Moodboard: [MUSIC] Now that we've figured out the idea of
what we want to make, we will now explore how that idea might visually
be represented. Mood boarding is a
process of identifying things that you are
aesthetically attracted to. The difference
between a mood board and an inspiration board is that the inspiration board contains the ideas
and the concepts, and the mood board
is a collection of visual representation
of those ideas. This is one of my digital
illustrations called Mollem. The idea and inspiration
for this artwork came from the Western Ghats and the Mollem forest here in Goa. Specific elements from
this composition, like the lily and
the lady's hair, and the flower and the monitor, butterfly are creatures and flora and fauna that are
present in the forest itself. These could be examples
of things that you might add to your
inspiration board. The colors present
in this artwork, such as the orange
flowers and pink lily, were picked from the elements
present in the forest, which you might add to the mood board section
of your process. In this mood board, we're going to have
a collection of things that you like visually, and from that we're
going to pick out specific elements that you
can use for your artwork. I've chosen this image because it's a vintage circus poster. I really like the quirky and
serial nature of the poster, as well as the bright neon
colors and the aesthetics. I also have a matchbox
design and my mood board. The technique of this
artwork is screen printing. The colors are very bright. I like the fact that it has a
limited amount of colors in them and how those are combined and put together
to create a composition. In this one, I have an image of home in South
India, Tamil Nadu. I love how the colors in them are very bright
and contrasting, and this is something
that I might use in coming up with
a color palette. I'm also going to look for comic book artists and
illustrators that I love. These include Mobius, this
French sci-fi comic artist, and one of my favorite
illustrators called Charles Burns. I love the texture and the color combinations
that he uses in this. I like the idea of how the skin tone and
the background are monochromatic but are
very complimentary. One of the other things
that I love about his work is also his
inking technique and the way that he brings
out the light and shadow of a composition through
his pattern of inking. I loved the fact that Charles
Burns' works are quite surreal and mutated
otherworldly, but also have a dark twist other than a secondary research
for your mood board, you can also pull from pictures that you might have
already taken. For instance, does thumb
or topography that I saw in your local Xerox
shop in my hometown, and this truck design
in thumb area as well. It could also be from
costumes or jewelry. This is a picture that I took in Fungi temple, Tamil Nadu. I loved their
brightly-colored series and the colorful flower
hair adornments. When we put all of
these together, we have a mood board. Now that we have our mood board and our inspiration boards, we will move on to
the sketching and coloring where we
will be using these. Our student exercise for this
lesson is to put together a mood board and analyze what aspects of it that you are attracted
to aesthetically. [MUSIC]
6. Sketching: [MUSIC] For the sketching part, I prefer to stand up or look at a piece of
paper from a distance. You can also do this when
you put it on the wall. It's always a good
call to sketch a bit away from
the paper so that you can see the perspective and the proportions and the
dimensions correctly. For this composition,
I chose a perspective towards this side just
because I wanted to add more elements on the ears, I think the jewelry is a big part of this character
that I'm creating, so I wanted to show that
aspect of it the most. You can choose the
perspective of your character in any
way that you prefer. A good way to figure out the perspective of the
portrait that you want to draw is to look in a mirror and perhaps
try a self portrait. When you look at
yourself in the mirror, you'll notice the
different lines and shapes and how they change as
you turn your face. For instance, when you view
your nose from the front, it would just be a line
and the bottom bit. But as you turn to
the side you can see a slant line and the
perspective that way, and if you turn all the
way to the portrait, it again becomes like
a singular line. Now we'll start a little bit on the basics on how
you make a portrait. You want to figure out
where you want to be in the middle of the page equally. Now, I'll take about
this much from the top and this much
from the bottom. You also want to figure
out the shape of the face that you want to do
and the perspective of it. I'm going for an oval
type shape like that. Just a general blob would do. Then since I'm going for a perspective
portrait about that much, I want to do the middle,
somewhere over there. That will be where
your nose will be and the middle section
of your face basically. Then we divide this shape
into half approximately, and that is where
your eyes would be, and then you divide
the bottom section into another half, like so and that's where
your lips might be. If we were to do hair, you can divide this further into half and then the
hair would come down. Now we can start somewhere
like that for your eye. The general rule of
the distance between your eyes is that there should
be another eye in-between. I think it's called three eye rule or something like that. [LAUGHTER] Don't
quote me on that. You want to see how this much distance is there
for in-between your eyes, and then you can draw your
other eye somewhere over here. A little almond shabby
thing would do, and then your nose can
come somewhere like that. Since we're doing perspective, you will see a lot
more the side that is towards you and the one in the back would be
somewhere like that. Now it already
looks like a face. [LAUGHTER] Then
your mouth would go somewhere in-between this line at the bottom of your chin, like that, and
something like that. Now that we have the
basics of a face, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, you can now start on
shaping the face itself, whatever shape that
you want to the face. For me, I usually go for
the cheekbones first, and then drag it
down, make a chin. Then attach that to the end. For the ears, you want
to put them somewhere between your eyes and
the tip of your nose. They come somewhere along the middle of your
head and your face. We want to put that
somewhere around there about that big, and then attach the edge
of your ear to form blob to your forehead because
the character that I'm creating will be fault. I like using features
in my characters that are not considered
conventionally beautiful. They come in different colors, they come in different shapes. I'm just in general
interested in creating as diverse and as inclusive set of characters as possible. Now we can add a bit of
eyebrows on top of your eyes. Make one more eyelid
for your eye. We can do this part and very rough strokes
because we will be cleaning them up later on. Now that we have the base
space of your character, we can now add on elements
that make it uniquely yours. One of the elements that I constantly add to a
lot of my characters is this space and cosmos that are present in
the middle of their head. That for me, was picked up from this fantastic
planet movie. I like to add it,
something like that. Just for me, it represents how we all have the
universe within us. You can pick out
certain elements that represent where you come
from in your heritage, the add-on to your
characters as well, to put more of who you are and what you want to say into the artworks
that you create. Now I'm going to start with
these elongated ear lobes. I'm going to add that
to my character. This is because there is a tradition of elongating your ear lobes in Southern
New where I come from, and my grandma also had these giant gold earrings
that she wore all the time that helped with elongating your ear
lobes over time as well and I found that
very interesting. I'm just adding a
very rough draft of what I think the jewelry
would look like in the end. The different kinds of
elements that I'm putting into this character are coming from the inspiration boards
that we created earlier. So you can add
everything that you have collected in bits and
pieces into your artwork. I'm adding a bit more of a vintage summer
jewelry that I've collected in my
inspiration board. Also just drawing a bit
of the ear details, so I can add earrings. We have these really
beautiful gold earrings that would go along your
cartilage and jut out, which I find very beautiful and also super sci-fi
and cyberpunk key. We also have a
tradition of having multiple earrings spaced
all along your ear lobe, so I'm adding those as well. Other than this, I want
to add a little bit more of sci-fi elements
to my portrait. I will refer to this
image by Jack Kirby. I will pick up a little bit of metal and armored type
elements from there and add it to my artwork like
so, something like that. I'll do so on the
other side as well, like that, and perhaps
some jewelry over here. There is no right or
wrong way to do anything. You can add on, leave it as is, make up things,
[LAUGHTER] create things. I also I'm going to add a bit
more of futuristic jewelry, perhaps something like that. They can go as big or
as small as you like, and the fun thing about sci-fi related things is
that you can pretty much go wherever you like with your imagination because you're speculating what it's
going to be in the future. I want to focus a little bit on the borders that we've
created for this artwork. I want to add a
little bit of nature and conservation side of
my practice to this piece. I'm going to start with perhaps stylized
sparks/sun to the corners, and maybe beautiful snake
just because I've seen a lot of them in my house during the monsoon and I'm
surrounded by forests. I'm just picking up elements
that I see around me. Something about being symmetric with things approximately
is quite appealing to me. I'm creating patterns that are more or less similar
on both sides. I'm adding geometric patterns
on the side of the artwork. Inspired by the Chettinad
pattern tiles from South India. I'm going to keep it slightly
simple that it doesn't take away from the
main character in the middle of
the composition. [MUSIC] Then we're going to do the same thing
on the other side. [MUSIC] Your exercise for
this class is to pick different elements from the inspiration board that
you've made earlier and incorporate them
into the composition that you are creating today. [MUSIC]
7. Creating a Color Palette: [MUSIC] I'll talk to you a little
bit about my favorite thing to talk about, colors. I can give you a very
brief introduction into what a color
theory is but it's always very helpful
to dig a little deeper into all that
color theory entails. Color theory is how we as
human beings perceive colors, how you can mix
and match colors, the different color schemes, and different types of
color groups that exist. Color theory also gives you an idea of how you can mix and match colors and combine them to create your own
color palette. A visual representation of the color theory can be
seen in the color wheel. Colors in general are
divided into primary colors, secondary colors,
and tertiary colors. We can also divide
all of the colors on the color wheel into
cool or warm colors. Cool colors generally
consist of blues and greens and warm colors are more of
yellows and oranges and reds. They're also different colored
groups and color schemes. There are complementary
color schemes, there are analogous,
there are monochromatic. The color palettes that I use
in my art practice and in my artworks are
very much inspired by the surroundings
that I grew up in; my childhood, clothes,
architecture, handicrafts, food, pretty much everything
that I grew up around. The color scheme that
I'm most attracted to are complementary
colors and this just means that they're very
bright and colorful and they come from the opposite
spectrum of the color wheel, it's also culturally relevant. In Tamil Nadu and in South
India in general, I believe, bright colors and
complementary colors represent joy and energy, and togetherness whereas
darker colors like black, for instance, represent
a darker mood. This image is very commonly seen in Tamil
Nadu in South India. You can see the very colorful contrasting color
palette that we use. We're very much attracted to complementary
colors, for instance, you can see how the greens
are next to oranges, which are on the
opposite spectrum. Purples, and oranges as
well, yellows and blues. It is also quite reminiscent to the Memphis design theory. The Memphis art movement
is something that started in the 80s, I believe, where lots of contrasting paisley colors came together
in a geometric form. I think it's quite similar to the architecture seen in
[inaudible] and in South India. Another fun and easy
way to pick out colors is to pick it out from the mood board
that you've already made. Basically, you import the mood board that we have
made onto Illustrator, which is the software
that I prefer, but you can also try Photoshop. I imported and then I select the screenshot
of the mood board. You go to Effect, Pixelate, and Crystallize. I set the cell size
to somewhere around 48-50 just because then you can get a clear sense of the
colors being segregated. For me, I like
restricting the number of colors that I use to
around five or six, this is because
aesthetically I'm very much inspired by matchboxes,
screen printed posters, vintage circus posters, vintage packaging stuff, and all of these have like
restrictive color palettes. But I find it very
interesting to have a limited amount of
color palettes because then you can experiment as much as you can within
that structure. Now I have created around five shapes in which I will fill colors
from the mood board. I select the shape and then I'm selecting one of the cells
that we had pixelated earlier. When I'm doing that
I'm also making sure to pick
complementary colors. I'm choosing yellow and blues, and purples and greens, you can go with any of the
color or hues that you like. There we go. You can tweak
it a little bit if you like. I just made the
colors a bit more vibrant and in the
right top-hand corner. After that I always
like to try out different combinations
to see which one I like and end up
with and for that, you can either take a picture of your sketch and import
it onto Photoshop and then try different colors
or you can also make a rough digital sketch
like I have here. For us to try this in different options I
am saving the image, File, Export, Save as. It doesn't have to be a very high rise and import that onto Photoshop. We will also import the color
palette that we had made. Once you've imported
this onto Photoshop, I like to extend the Canvas, for you to do that you go
to Image and Canvas size, and the width about three
times what it is now. I will go for about that and you want to multiply this about three times
because we want to see three different ways in
which the color palettes can be used in this composition and you can pick the one
that you like the best. For filling in the colors on the sketch that
you have made, you can press I, which is the eyedropper tool. Select, the color that
you want to select, G, which is the paint bucket tool, and then fill in two different blocks up the
portrait that you've created. You can mix and match
the colors just to see what looks good with
or next to each other. A narrative around
your character feels the color palette and all the elements that
you might add on. A good way to also imagine where your characters would be like is to imagine
where there are living. Are they living in
real-world now? Are they somewhere
in the future? Are they based in the past? I want this character
to live in this utopic, futuristic, fiction world. For this composition,
in particular, I'm not sticking to
skin tones per se and are going for a bit more vibrant
alien-ask color palette. Now that I have
all three options, sometimes I will go back and change a little
bit of element, for instance, this red is too common to the rest of the face. Maybe I want to change it to
yellow to make it stand out. Maybe I'll do that, maybe I'll change that bit to bring out the fact that they are cyberpunky elements
and there we go. I'm leaning towards the first
one because I feel like it highlights the areas
that I wanted to highlight, for instance, the
jewelry and the tech. The blue really brings
out the alienness and complements the
rest of the colors that I had chosen
for this palette. Now that we have our
color palette determined, we can set the laptop
aside and start painting. [MUSIC]
8. Adding Color: Before we start coloring, I like to lightly erase off
the harsh pencil marks. I'm going to lightly erase so that it's
slightly visible still, I'd like to start color by color to fill it
onto my composition. I will start with
lemon yellow and go in and paint wherever I think
the color yellow should go. I'm starting with the jewelry. The paint that I'm using here is acrylic on cartridge paper. But you can also use gouache
or watercolor or poster. Anything works really, depends on how rich you want
the paint to be on paper. Now I will move on to the
blue of the face. I also like to do
the borders first, and then it becomes easier to
fill in the colors inside. As I continue with the blue, I got a bit too eager and
wanted to change colors, so I filled in a little
bit of pink as well. I tend to jump back
and forth with colors and textures as well,
which is also fine. There's no right or
wrong way to do things. You should just do whatever
feels right to you. I'm doing a second
coat on the blue. I flipped the page because it's much more convenient
to do it this way. I'm also just doing very wide
strokes, uneven strokes. That can be a stick
signature for you as well. But this is because I will go on top of it with another layer. I will let this section dry and in the meantime
start on another color, the red background I like to hand draw my edges. But if you'd prefer
something much more crisp, you can also do a masking tape here so that when your
paint goes over it, it won't show in the final work when you take out
the masking tape. I also personally like the
little imperfections in your sketch because it gives it a bit more character and depth. Also in terms of strokes, what I'm doing is
making my colors in one direction and going over it with the
opposite direction. It's called a crisscross
way of painting. This is because I
want to minimize the amount of one-sided
strokes when it dries. We can also use this technique with pens when you're shading. After I fill in the red
for the background, I will go in and
finish the rest of the yellow in the
eyes, for instance, and a bit more black
for the cosmos and her forehead and
also the eyebrows. Now I have moved on to the lime green on the
borders of the artworks. As you can see, it's not the
cleanest way of coloring. In some of my artworks, I like experimenting with rough strokes because I think it brings out another dimension
to the composition. For instance, that
self-portrait that I did. It also has a lot of light green and dark green in the background with
a lot of texture. I think it really brings out
the character in the middle After I've done with the base colors, I will now move on
to the background. For that, I'd like to use spray paint to start off with the gradient that you
want in the background. Do you want to block out the bits that you
want to protect? Then only expose the areas that you want this
gray paint to be in. The idea for me is to start with red and transition into fluorescent pink as we
go towards the top. I'm only blocking out the
top half of the composition. You can also do whatever
side that you want. You can do the whole thing or the bottom half
or the top half, or just some elements and
the frame or the background. To make your blocking
more precise, you can also cut the masking tape into
little pieces so that it's easier to block and maneuver in little pointy
or very geometric shapes. You should make sure not to leave the tape on
your painting for two long because depending on the paper and how
strong the tape is, the tape might just get
stuck to your artwork. You want to do the spraying
painting as quickly as possible and take it out so that your paint doesn't come off with the tape as well. I'm making these weird shapes on this side because the shapes themselves that I've drawn
are a bit more points here, I'm dividing the tape in half in order to
fit that section. You can also use a Exacto knife or scissors if you're
good with that to make any shape that you want. For anyone trying spray painting at home, please make sure that you are in a well-ventilated
area so that you're not inhaling the spray too much. Ideally, you should have a mask or you're doing it outdoors with your nose and
mouth covered. I only did a little
bit of it here. But if I was doing a
bigger surface area, I would probably do it outside. Your student exercise, for now, is to pick four to five colors
that we've decided on for your color palette and fill the colors into the composition
that you've created. You can also experiment
with different mediums. You don't have to
stick with acrylic. You can also try
oil-based stalls or pastel colors or crayons
or color pencils. The more that you experiment and different things
that you try out is when you find out
what you like and what you don't like.
9. Finishing with Ink: So now I'm taking out the tape that we have blocked
our artwork with. I love the taking
out of the tape bit. Now, I will start
with inking process, which is also one of
my favorite parts of creating an artwork. So I started out my art
practice by only doing black and white ballpoint
pen type artworks initially, and then I graduated
to experimenting with pen and ink and brush pens. Since then, I've fell in
love with colors and after that I've added on pen and ink and brush
pen on top of colors, because it brings out certain elements and
makes it more punchier. Also, Charles Burns,
the illustrator and thinking artist that I had mentioned earlier is a
huge influence on me. Comic book inking artists and the way that
they ink just brings out a lot more emotion and character to the
artworks that they create, which is where I picked up
my love for inking as well. I like the process of inking as a form of therapy as well. Just because it's
so soothing and it takes me a while to
finish inking and I usually listen to
my favorite podcasts or my favorite music
that I'm obsessed with. These external things stimulate
my brain and makes me concentrate more in this
beautiful process of inking. We've already drawn
the outline of the year in the previous class. I'm just adding a
bit more detail to our composition to give it a bit more depth and definition. I'm just adding a bit
more texture and stray hair outside of your eyebrow
to make them big and bushy. Add some lines that make the character look
a bit more mechanical. So what I like a lot about
brush pens and this inking, is that you can do depths
from thin to thick, depending on the
pressure that you use on your pen or your brush. For me, it brings out more
depth in your artwork. You can use them to create
light and shadow effect. So for me, I like to add
in the brushstrokes on where I think the shadow would fall on a particular object. For instance, on these
jewelry elements, if the light were
to come from top, the top part would be
empty and the bottom where the shadow would be is
where I'm doing the inking. Can also give an illusion of highlights
or 2D highlights by circling where you think the white light
would hit on a face. These are just ways in
which you can bring in a bit more dimension
to your 2D artwork. I'm also quickly going to
outline the border elements as well to connect the mid section with the rest of
your composition. You can also add in as many or as little
details as you like. You can add texture inside
this element as well. But I want to keep it
a bit more plain for this composition so
that the focus goes on the central portrait
rather than the sides. Here's our finished
piece of work. I'm really happy with
how it came out. I'm happy with the shading and the wibbly wobbliness
of the lines. I think it adds more texture. So your student exercise
is to finish your inking, try to add different
dimensions through different brushstrokes
and finish your artwork.
10. Next Steps: [MUSIC] Now that you know how to
create a dynamic portrait, I thought I can share
a little bit of tips and thoughts on what you can carry forward from this class. The first thing is that I think style should be ever-evolving. It's important to
keep in mind that your style will and
should change over time. It's good to have that
form of flexibility which connects back or relates to how your personality might have changed
over time as well. Think outside the box and
perhaps keep things fresh. It could be either by
maybe trying to draw on a hand that is not what you predominantly used or
trying different mediums or trying to get inspiration
from different places. For me, it has
really helped me get out of artistic ruts
that I've been in, and just to think
of new ideas and to evolve my art
practice in general. Taking breaks is
vitally important for me and I'm trying to do
more and more of now. Visiting a new place, visiting new people, go for a track, go for a swim in the sea. It really helps you reconnect with your work
when you come back. Also, you have no
idea where you're going to get your
inspiration from. In fact, I actually have a whole series based on
my dreams and nightmares. Just jotting it down
and illustrating my nightmares helped me
get it out of my head. Something that I've learned
over the years is to know why you're choosing a
particular client when it comes to
commission projects. For instance, there are
certain projects that I do because it highlights and
emphasizes what I stand for. They are also projects
that you might not necessarily have your
entire personality in it, but you can use the time
that you have afterwards with your personal
projects to hone in what you want to say and
what you want to stand for. Also, something that
has worked out for me, is that during my free time, I ended up doing a lot of
personal projects that have a deep connection
to my voice and what I wanted to say when you keep putting up work that
you stand for and what defines you eventually you will also be approached by clients that resonate with that same thought
and ideas as you do. This is also a great way to
attract like-minded people. Even if you've been doing
this for some time, there's still ways you
can keep learning, sharing things online can
help you find your community, get feedback, collaborate with creatives that you might like. Collaborations are
helpful in creating new ideas where you might have your strengths and
the creative person that you're collaborating with might have their strengths and by combining
these two together, you're coming up with something
brand new and exciting. You can also share your work on the discussion board on
Skillshare right here, or on other platforms online
like Instagram or Twitter. Your art practice doesn't
necessarily have to be for the outside world, it can also be a
way for you to just explore your inner
world as well. I use my sketchbook as
a journal of sorts, when I'm feeling certain
things or when I'm not necessarily articulate
about ideas and thoughts, I find it easy to do some rough sketches,
keep things down. I think a lot of times it's also more important to keep
a sketchbook rather than a collection of final
products because it's more an in-depth view into your
thought processes and is also a good way for you to
visualize and articulate your personality and also a way to get a bit closer
to your voice. If there's one thing
that I want you to take from this class, it would be to keep practicing, keep evolving and keep sharing. I know in the beginning it might be hard to
find your style or your voice or what you
want to say through your artwork, but eventually, you will find a point where who you are as a person will reflect
into your artwork, and a good way to get there is to just keep
practicing and not give up on what you're doing and just keep doing you and I promise you that you will find your place. [MUSIC]
11. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on
finishing your class. I hope that this class
has helped you get a bit more closer to finding
your voice as a creative, and how to put them down
in a concise way on paper. I hope that your journey continues and I can't wait
to see what you've made. Please share your project
in the project gallery so I can check them out and you can share them with
your peers as well. If you want to check
out more of my work, you can find me at ocean.siva on Instagram
or oceansiva.com. Thank you so much for
joining me in this class. I hope you had fun and don't
forget to embrace the mess.
Osheen Siva, Visual Artist
