Transcripts
1. Introduction: What if I told you there is a way, a really easy way to create fun and beautiful doodles, and you can do it with zero drawing skills. Hi, I'm Kristen, and I'm going to show you step by step, how to do go like a pro using these six simple shapes. If you can draw these six easy shapes, you can absolutely do this. Together we will dry a variety of fun doodles with endless outcomes, and I'll be sharing my own personal tips and tricks along the way. I'll teach you how to prevent shaky lines by building muscle memory and how to vary your shapes for different looks, how to repeat them for patterns and even how to embellish them for a more intricate look. I'm even going to give you practice pages and templates you can print in use. By the end of this class, you'll be able to draw a work of doodled art, whether it's simple and elegant, intricate and detailed or even colorful. So grab a pen and paper click and roll, and let's draw oodles of doodles
2. Shapes & Variations : thank you so much for enrolling in this class. Underneath this video, you can click on the tab that says your project, and you'll find a link to these practice pages there completely optional and all you really need is a pen in the paper. I'm using a fine tip drawing pen because I prefer felt tips and they don't smear that much . But you could use whatever you have available. It could be a pencil, a ball point pen, Sharpie gel, pin, whatever color you like. Even so, I'm just starting off by making some lines in this first box. This is our very first shape, a straight line, and once you get comfortable with that, try adding a slight variation to that line. So right here on making the lines a little bit longer, and I'm getting my hand used to that emotion. I'm also drawing towards myself because to me, that is more comfortable for me, and I have a little bit more control over my hand here. I'm adding another variation where I'm making the lines much closer to each other. Each time you get comfortable with the shape or variation that you're drawing. Try flexing your creative muscles and come up with a new variation. So there I did a line of small broken lines. Another variation is maybe to slant the lines here. I'm slanting them up to the right. Now here's my own personal tip that I use all the time when I'm trying to come up with new ideas and be a little bit more creative. I ask myself a two word question, and that question is what else? So, for example, what else can I do with this line to make it look different? What else can I draw to make this pattern look more appealing? What else can I do that in this shape, what else can I do to this pattern? What else can I embellish this with? So when you get stuck or stumped, just try asking yourself what else. So here I'm just going to try a new variation by just making clusters of little lines Together. You can do a cluster of to a cluster of 35 whatever you like or for another pattern. You can dio a cluster of three and then switch the direction so you might do three horizontal three vertical three horizontal three vertical. After you're comfortable with your straight lines, you could move on to the next shape. And here we have a curvy line or a wavy line or squiggle, whatever you like to call it. And we're gonna do the same drills as we did with the straight line and just draw it until it feels comfortable. Once you're comfortable with that, guess what? Here come the variations again, so I'm going to do a longer, curvy line. You're variation can be whatever you like. After that feels comfortable. For a while. I'm going to do a car beeline, but make the curve is much, much smaller and closer together. Now you might feel that thes practice drills seem unnecessary, and you may even want to skip this part. That's okay if you dio, however, if you're a beginner or if you have shaky lines or a shaky hand, this is what's gonna fix that. What we're doing in these practice drills is building muscle memory. So what that means is, it's not the muscle memory in your hands. Your hand doesn't have a memory, but your brain does so when you repeat something over and over and over again, your brain remembers, and then after a while it becomes a habit. And then you no longer have to think about what you're doing or think about your doodles. It will just come more naturally. Next shape we're going to do is the point or an upside down V. Now, here I am, picking my tip of my pent up and making two different lines. After I was okay with that, I tried it a different way. I tried just making one continuous line a bet line by not picking my pen up so you might want experiment to see what it feels better to you while you're drawing and starts to adapt the things that come easier to you. And then it will be more natural of emotion for you. Just be playful and have fun with this. Here. You can just continue making a bunch of upside down these or points, and you'll get a zigzag e look or a chevron Look. Another way you can add some variations is to repeat or redraw outline the shape that you just made, leaving a little bit of white space in between. You can also change the height or width of the shape, so you might make a really tall and skinny point or a short and fat point. Really, there are so few limits to this. As long as you can make one little change or manipulation of the shape, you can come up with so many new variables and ways to get different looks with the same exact shape. The next shape is an arc or 1/2 circle or a frown. I don't really have official names for these. This one I personally lovingly refer to as a humpy Bumpy because I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted to call it a hump or a bump. So we went with both. And again, we're just going to continue, uh, practicing, repeating this, um, coming up with variations and trying to make different looks with this same shape and seeing what we come up with another, except I want to share with you, is to really pay attention to your breathing. When you're concentrating and trying something really, really hard, you may tend to hold your breath, or your breathing will start to get really shallow. So we want this to be a fun and relaxing activity. Not a stressful one, because what happens is when you're breathing stops. If you're holding your breath while you're doing something or if your breathing gets really shallow, your brain can't tell the difference. Your brain things. Oh my gosh, I'm suffocating because I'm not getting oxygen. It doesn't know that you're doodling, so it just knows it's not getting air, So you're gonna end up getting stressed and you don't want this. So to prevent this, I try to concentrate on my breathing as I'm drawing, so I might draw one line and breathe in, and then the next line I might breathe out and, you know, practice your inhales and exhales with your different line strokes. And I found this has almost a Zen like effect, and I become more mindful and focused on what I'm doing. And I get super relaxed when I doodle when I use this method. So here we are. We're already at the circles were almost finished with this practice page. Now, when I draw a circle, I started the top and I draw around towards the left, which is counter clockwise, and then I meet it back up at the top when you draw a circle that might not feel right to you. So you might want to try drawing the circle from the bottom and make a clockwise motion or started on the left side of the circle. So just play around with this and see what your hand prefers to dio and then go with that again. We're just going to continue making variations. It could be on the size. It could be, you know, a bunch of small circles. It could be flat circles, which is actually like an oval or, uh, zero. You can overlap. The circles make circles inside of circles again. Just whatever variations you can come up with. You can certainly copy these or come up with your own. So we are on our very last shape, which is a little droplet type of shape. It could be a teardrop or a ring drop or a flower petal. Just continue drawing it until it feels comfortable. Same as before. Change it up. Maybe do some appointed up. Some points down. You might want to try to make some taller, some short and fat, and mine my short and fat ones, ended up looking like Hershey kisses. Also, while you're doing these practice drills, if your hand starts to cramp up or get sore, just stop for a minute. Take a short break, shake out your hand. Um, you know, flex your fingers, do some hand hand, uh, exercises and, you know, start right back up. Now, here's an interesting way to draw these petal shapes. If you dio to with the points facing each other, it looks like the number AIDS or an infinity symbol. And if you cross them over like that, you get almost a little flower look. So just roll several of them together with the points of the pedals all touching. And it's like a little ah, daisy type flower. You make them long and thin. You can fit more pedals in there, and it would look more like a daisy. Now, here I'm just drawing one and then another one over it, another one over it, and I just keep repeating it all the way around. When you're done with your page, snap a photo and posted to the project section. I'd love to see a progress along the way
3. Making Patterns from Shapes: Now that you've mastered the shapes, let's create some patterns with them. To me, this is the relaxing part simply repeating the shapes that we did in the previous step. So to fill up this box, I want to draw some just straight lined stripes in here and to make them evenly spaced. I make it a little dot in the center of that space, and I do the same thing on the bottom and then just draw a line connecting those two dots where you can just eyeball it. You notice I don't use a ruler when I'm doodling. I like the look of, um, kind of quirky organic doodles over perfection. But if you like the look of perfection, you can certainly use a ruler. Next. I want to feel the box with horizontal stripes, so I'm just going to draw some stripes going straight across and feel free to turn your paper around and draw them so they're comfortable. I changed it up and tried drawing some stripes away for me to see if that felt more comfortable, but I prefer drawing the lines towards me again. I am just going to make a little grid by doing some stripes and eyeballing the center spaces and then starting in the top right corner, just draw diagnosed, lying down to the bottom left again, I find the middle space and using the point in the bottom left to just draw a line towards that. And then I want to make all of my lines go towards that point on the bottom left, and I just keep finding the center spot in each space and adding a line there. And you kind of get like a little sunburst effect in this last box. I'm just going to make a bunch of smaller lines, some going up and down, some slimming to the right, some slamming to the left, and I just change it up to give it its own little pattern of small lines. And I think this one is starting to look a bit like a tire tread pattern now, moving on to the Carby lines were just going to feel each of these boxes with some sort of Karbi line pattern here. I'm just doing some stripes and then adding a 2nd 1 right up close to it to give it sort of a curvy striped look next is I'm just going to do some uneven sort of organic looking wavy lines with no rhyme or reason to them just filling up the space here. I want to make some diagonal, curvy lines and just again filling up the entire shape with some curvy lines, and I try to keep them all somewhat spaced. The same. Um, you absolutely don't have to stop after you filled up these boxes. I really encourage you to keep going, maybe on another piece of paper, or copy this one several times before drawing on it and challenge yourself to see how many different patterns you can come up with just by using that one shape over and over and over again. If it starts to get hard for you to come up with ideas for how to fill your box, remember what we learned in the first lesson. Ask yourself what else? What else can I do to fill up this box? What else can I do with this shape to make a pattern in this box and, um, just go with it. Have fun, try different things, and when you're doing your patterns in your shapes, your brain may start to make associations, and your patterns might start to remind you of certain things. So, for example, this one reminds me of stained glass. This one reminds me of Charlie Brown's T shirt, and that's because there's patterns all around us. There's patterns in nature at home, from the tiling on the floor to the knitting and a sweater to the petals on a flower. Um, the weaving in a basket and all you have to do is look around you to get some inspiration. If you're ever stuck, you can also go back to your other practice page, where we were doing the drills and pull from that. So on. There we were doing some really tall V shapes and some really short ones. So here I just combine those into one and ended up looking a little bit like a zebra pattern. And this one sort of looks like a scalloped pattern just by drawing lines of connected arcs . Here is sort of rainbow looking shape just by drawing an arc over each of the previous arcs , and then you could make that sort of, uh, into a smaller pattern. So maybe just do three or four lines and then start a new one and just keep repeating that into your whole space is full. So just three or four lines of arcs and it looks like they're peeking out from behind each other. Next, I want to make sort of a fish scale pattern. So I am going to draw a row and then on the tops of each one. I'm just gonna put a little dot and that's how I know where to connect each one. So sort of like we were doing before with having each space, this is sort of just a little guide to help you know where one line should start in one line should end. And then you get a really nice looking scale pattern. And for this last box, I discovered that if I just combined five or six of those little arcs in a circle of pattern, it sort of looks like a flower or a cloud or even a little piece of popcorn. So now I'm moving on to the circles and justice before I'm going to fill each box with a different pattern just by changing up how I'm drawing the shapes. So in the first box. I just did a sort of like a grid of circles here on making little chains of connected circles, and I asked myself what else? Because I wanted to do something else in that box. So I thought of doing a pattern of three small one Big three small, one big and just filling in those empty spaces that way. Next, I am just going to draw a bunch of differently sized circles that are all touching at some point. And it kind of gives thelancet of bubbles a bunch of just just different suds and bubbles. Here I am just taking my circles and making sure to overlap them. So at some point in the circle, it's going to overlap with one of the other circles. And finally, I'm just going to do a cluster of circles to fill up this shape. And after this, we have our teardrop shape left and again, just following the same as before. Just come up with various patterns, and one of the reasons I think this is so relaxing is, um, when it comes to repetition, your When your brain knows what's coming next, it's comforting and relaxing. That's why you'll find a lot of repetition in Children's books and stories and also in music. It's not only how we learn, but it's safe and comforting to know what's coming next. And it sort of gives our mind a break of, you know, thinking too far in the future. You're just kind of focusing on the here and now and what you're drawing at the moment. And it's almost Zen like to create these patterns. And at this stage, remember, we're just creating the patterns. Don't try to think too hard about what else you can do to tweak the pattern or make it better. Just make the pattern right now and the Nets lesson. We're going to look more at embellishing these and making them a little bit more intricate and eye catching. But right now we're just brainstorming on paper and getting our patterns out on the paper. So once you have your page filled, be sure to snap a photo of it and uploaded T the project section so we can all look at the wonderful ideas of patterns that you came up with, or even if you just followed along with me and drew the same ones I did. That's awesome, too. We want to see your progress. So be sure to share a photo with us.
4. Adding Embellishments: after your patterns or John, it's time to embellish them. For this lesson. You can draw right on top of your doodle patterns or start all over on a fresh page to show you some of my favorite ways of embellishing. I'll just re draw some more lines in this first row and then go back to the page that has other patterns on it. One of the easiest ways to embellish your pattern is to Boldin up some of the lines or thicken them up. And here I'm just doing every other line, just making a little bit thicker, coloring it in a little bit. And it gives almost like a candy cane stripes. Look to it again. Here I am just making a grid by drawing vertical and horizontal lines, and I like how that looked. So I'm going back to do it on the candy cane and again, bold inning up every other line. And now, instead of the candy cane look, it has more of a plaid look to it. So when we add embellishments, the possibilities are almost endless. Um, you can bold things up. You can color them in. You can add mawr patterns within that pattern. So add lines inside of lines, ad arcs inside of arcs, at circles inside of circles, and even changing them up a little bit. So at arcs, inside of circles or at circles inside the lines. And you really get so many different embellished patterns with this and decorated patterns . So here I'm just adding some lines within lines, and this is just one outcome. So in the next pattern, I'm still going to add some lines within lines. I'm adding small lines within the long lines, and it's a completely different look. So again, a Z Muchas you can think up is as many patterns as you can draw. Here's an example of adding an arc pattern within a line pattern. And next, I'm just going to color in every other blind or every other space I should say in between the lines, and it kind of gives it a little bit more, um, depth to it. Your embellishments could be something as easy as this. Just putting an ex by making to cross lines inside each, uh, grid on your box. I'll skip that one because we did that one on the previous page. I'm here. I'm just again adding crosses and lines to make exes on every other line and then going in and just picking up some of the lines, and that just embellishes it and gives it just a little bit more umph that it didn't have before. And this one I'm just adding Kirby lines behind the curvy lines that are already drawn. So this is just a curvy line pattern inside of a curvy line pattern. Here, I'm just thickening up some of the lines with a marker and then going back in with the pen and adding a little bit more thickness to certain parts of the lines. So it looks like some parts of the line are thick and some are thin again, going back to the basic line and on every other space in between the squiggle lines. I'm just adding some little stripes, and that's my embellishment for that one here. I'm just tracing inside Go just tracing lines inside each of these sort of off off filtered squares, and here I'm using my arc shape, and every place that has a point where it connects is getting a couple arcs added to it, and you will really start to notice the major difference of looks that you're going to get when you start to add different designs and decorations within each pattern. Here. I'm just adding some lines, and I asked myself, What else? So I thought some circles might look good in there just to fill up those blank spaces. Um, again, if it's hard to come up with something, just trace what you did before. So here I'm just tracing a smaller triangle inside of the triangles that were already drawn , and you get a completely new look here again. I'm just going back to basics, drawing a line and you can kind of see I got a little bit of uneven line there, so that's fine. Unease. E way to fix Your mistake is to just draw over it and then repeat that throughout your pattern. So then it doesn't look like a mistake anymore. It looks more intentional, so if I just thicken up each of these lines, you'll never know. That mistake was there to begin with, so drawing patterns is really forgiving, especially if you make a mistake. You can just repeat that mistake throughout the pattern, and nobody will be the wiser. After you start doodling for a while, you might start to notice that you'll tend to get some favorites. There might be certain doodles that are your go to doodles, and you always tend to draw them first. With me, it's lines and circles. It's almost automatic. When I start to doodle, I automatically just start drawing lines. And I kind of have to remind myself, um, there's other shapes out there. There's the curvy lines. There's Thea Arc stirs that teardrops and incorporate all of that into my doodles. Um, and it gives it a little bit more of an interesting look when you can combine straight lines with Kirby lines or softer lines with more harsh lines, and it just kind of gives it a whole different feel. So here, within the arcs, adding some lines in every other one and some flour looking thing is in every other one these I decided instead of popcorn to make them into flowers. So I just added another circle in each of them, and some arcs around each of them to kind of give it the look of pedals and then some curvy lines to kind of combine them all here is my go to adding lines. And here I'm just really, really simple adding an arc inside each of the larger circles. And it kind of gives it the look of a pearl. Um, with the's, I decided to just fill in the empty spaces in between all of the circles. And then I just added the upside down V shape or the point shape. And I really wasn't happy with that. And that's okay. Um, you you learn from trying. So I know in the future I probably wouldn't draw that doodle again. Or I might just go back at some point and fix it by, you know, adding some different lines to it. And in these, um, clusters of circles, I'm just adding little dots and dots are fun embellishment. Even though they're not Technically, one of our six shapes, there is still really easy and and fun to add to some of our patterns. Then I'm just adding the teardrop shape two random places, and they kind of now looks like little Berries. Um, here is one of my favorites is adding circles and a line and some more lines with in each of the teardrops, and now they almost look like Bos. And the next one once again, just some lines that aren't going all the way to the end. And this daisy looking pattern, I'm just giving it some more circles and lines and, um, turning my paper round just to try to get a little bit of a straighter line and then just going on with a marker and filling in the empty spaces. So now that we have a page full of patterns with embellishments, I'd love to see your progress. So if you'd like to take a picture of your embellished patterns and uploaded to the projects, I'd love to see what you've created so far.
5. Class Project : for your class project. You're going to take some of your favorite doodles and put them into a full page doodle. You might recognize this one from the curvy lines that we drew in one of our patterns. And here's the project that I do just by adding some doodles inside each of these shapes, you can do the same thing just by filling up the shapes as you filled up the boxes. In the previous lessons, you'll notice I just added a pattern to each of these shapes and then went back and embellish the patterns. And you can do the same thing. You can use this page or any of the templates that came in your packet, or you can just freehand it when you're done, snap a picture and upload it to the project section. I can't wait to see the creations that you come up with. You can choose to keep it simple or make it elaborate and really, really detailed, or even add some color to your projects. Thank you so much for hanging out with me in class and be sure to tag me on social media if you share any of your creations online. Happy doodling
Cristin April Frey, Procreate Lettering & Doodles
