Always Drawing: 7 Creative Exercises to Jumpstart Your Sketchbook | Mike Lowery | Skillshare
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Always Drawing: 7 Creative Exercises to Jumpstart Your Sketchbook

teacher avatar Mike Lowery, Illustrator and Author

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction and Welcome

      1:51

    • 2.

      Day I: Blob Monsters

      7:04

    • 3.

      Day II: Your Tattoos

      4:58

    • 4.

      Day III: Group of Icons

      4:44

    • 5.

      Day IV: Something Flying

      8:00

    • 6.

      Day V: Imaginary Treehouse

      4:20

    • 7.

      Day VI: Weird Animals

      5:01

    • 8.

      Day VII: Something Hairy / Bug Party

      2:53

    • 9.

      Final thoughts

      1:03

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About This Class

Have you ever wanted to keep a daily sketchbook but didn't know what to draw?

In this class author, illustrator and avid sketchbook-keeper, Mike Lowery will walk you through one full week of fun and creative drawing exercises that you can do in your sketchbook. These assignments can be repeated any time you're feeling that dreaded sketchbook block. 

The prompts for the class include:

  1. Colorful blob monsters
  2. Personal tattoos
  3. A group of icons
  4. Things that fly
  5. Creative treehouses
  6. Weird animals from Google
  7. Something hairy, or a Bug Party

In each lesson, Mike introduces you to these topics then dives right into sketching so you can see how easy it is to get started.

Mike Lowery is on a mission to get everyone drawing in their sketchbooks for 30 minutes a day. Always Drawing is a series of classes to help do just that. This is Part 2 of the series — if you'd like to check out Part 1, hop on over to the first installment, Always Drawing: How to Start and Keep a Daily Sketchbook.

Meet Your Teacher

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Mike Lowery

Illustrator and Author

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Mike Lowery is an author, New York Times bestselling illustrator, public speaker, and an avid sketchbook-er.

He's been keeping one every day for more than TWENTY years, and he's on a mission to get you to keep one, too.

Ready to learn how to make digital illustration on an iPad? Check out the

PROCREATE DRAWING PARTY!

Want to watch the WEIRDEST sketchbooking class on Skillshare?

How to Draw Aliens: A Sketchbook Adventure in Chile 

 

Want to START a daily sketchbook habit? Check out 

ALWAYS DRAWING, part one. How To Start and Keep a Daily Sketchbook

Not sure what to draw? Check out:
ALWAYS DRAWING, part two. 7 Creative Exercises to Jumpstart Your Sketch... See full profile

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Transcripts

1. Introduction and Welcome: Hello, I'm author and illustrator and avid sketch bookkeeper, Mike Lowery. Welcome to Always Drawing with me, Mike Lowery. In this volume, I'm going to give you seven creative things that you can do in your sketchbook to battle the blank page, the dreaded blank page. It's pretty intimidating to open your sketchbook and just see a blank page. It can be more intimidating than a ghost, or a vampire, or a crow with a dagger in its feet and it's flying around with this dagger. Anyway, those things are intimidating, but not as intimidating as a blank page. I'm going to give you a whole week worth of drawing activities that you can do in your sketchbook. These activities are for anybody at all skill levels. Maybe you're just getting started with keeping a sketchbook or you've been doing one for years. Maybe you're a dog. Well, actually maybe not dogs. They can watch this but they're going to have a hard time doing the activities probably. I know that there are some very talented dogs like that one that played basketball and then volleyball and baseball. But this class is more for humans or whatever. But in this class I'm going to give you creative approaches to keeping a whole week worth of sketchbook drawing. Join me now on Always Drawing with Mike Lowery. 2. Day I: Blob Monsters: Grab whatever sketchbook that you want to get, grab whatever drawing materials you want to draw with. Here are some topics that we're going to draw. Ready? Here we go. Number 1, blob monsters. This is a really great exercise. It gets your brain moving. You don't have to think about it too much. You're going to grab maybe watercolor or whatever the light color is that you want to use. I'm going to show you when we get to the tutorial, and then you're going to get your favorite pen or something darker where you can draw over top of that. I'll show you that in just a second. Here we go. Let's do it. For this project, you're going to start with a light color. I'm going to be using these Posca markers that are acrylic paint in a marker. They make very matte, very opaque, final shapes. I'm going to start with a couple of little simple shapes like this one and then fill them in. Now, you could use watercolor for these. You could use acrylic paint and a brush. You could use gouache, but you want to start with a light color. Now, what I'm doing is I'm going to start coloring with these bean shapes, and I'm going to fill them in. So that you don't get exhausted, I'm going to go ahead and speed this up a little bit here. Maybe go ahead and drink a lot of coffee so you can draw as quickly as I'm drawing here in this video. But I'm just drawing some random shapes, and this is why they're called blob monsters because we're starting with these blob shapes here. Maybe you want to vary it a little bit, that's up to you. I'm going to draw some varied shapes, and then you just want to fill them in. You're thinking, what could these blobs be for? Now, let's let it dry. The Posca's dried pretty quickly. Whatever it is that you're drawing with, you want to make sure that it dries very well. I'm going to brush off some of the little weird, clumpy things that form with those Posca markers. Now, for this next part, I'm going to use a Tombow brush pen. These work really well over top of Posca paint. I'm just going to start drawing. On these since they're monsters, I'm going to start, I'm going to draw some eyes. Maybe you want to draw some antenna or mouths. Maybe you start drawing in some weird legs. But you're just not overthinking it, the whole point of this exercise is to just draw. You're not trying to come up with ideas for a new book. I mean, maybe it happens because when your brain gets some time to spend some time on its own, you might come up with some new ideas. But really right now, all we're doing is just drawing and trying to turn these weird shapes into something interesting. Just drawing some eyeballs here. For this one, I'm going to use the outline all the way around that filled shape, turn it into some little furry, little caterpillar-looking thing. There's some tusks. These are some bug tusks. I don't know if you all have studied bug anatomy as much as I have, but those are called bug tusks. You just keep going. You draw some legs. Maybe some of them end up with some personalities. Maybe they start looking like bugs, maybe they look like monsters. Mine always look sort. Now, one time while I was doing this, and I was just drawing from my own sketchbook time, I was working on a book at the same time, and I had to come up with a character for that book. I actually came up with a character while I was working in this way because I wasn't just sitting and thinking, I was actually drawing. Really for me, keeping a sketchbook, one of the biggest things that I could push you to do is, if you're drawing every day, you're much more likely to just come up with little random bits of ideas and things that you might want to use later. Way more so than if you're just always thinking about what you want to be working on. So if I can't think of something to draw or if I don't have anything in particular to draw that day, I will start with an exercise like this that just helps my pen start moving. There we go. There's my first page. Now, I'm going to show you how you can do it in another way. For this one, I'm going to use this flat acrylic paint. I'm going to use this acrylic palette here. This very professional looking acrylic palette that I like to use. This is not, this is a saucer from one of our tea cups, and I'm using a very cheap brush right now. I don't always use really cheap brushes, but for this, it doesn't really matter. I haven't just set it aside because I like the shape of this brush, I've had it for a long time. What I'm doing is I'm just trying to do the exact same thing that I'm making really flat, big shapes. I'm trying not to add too much rough three-dimensional surface texture. I'm trying to smooth that out as much as possible. Since I know that I'm going to draw over these like I did on the last one, as a reminder, I want to use a light color. Maybe you're drawing with me, maybe you're just watching me draw, and you're going to draw after I draw. That's allowed. You know what? That's your class. You can take it however you want to take it. Maybe you just want to watch me draw. You'll be so intimidated by how good these drawings are. I'm just kidding. These are just silly drawings, and I think that maybe some of your monsters wear a little buttoned-down shirt. I don't know. I don't know what monsters wear. Maybe they have eyebrows. Go through and really try and change it up. I think after you do it a couple of times, you'll start finding a little bit of a rhythm for it, and you'll find that it's just a fun thing to do. A sketchbook should be a place where you can play. You're not intimidated to start in a sketchbook. A place where you can, I don't know, get some ideas down and really just play around with some things that just get a pen moving. Maybe I'll wrap this one up with a little flower here and some leaves. This one's saying hello to you. Hello. You did it. You drew some blob monsters. I'll see you in the next lesson where we're going to draw something real crazy. 3. Day II: Your Tattoos: Okay, in the first lesson we drew some blob monsters. Here in the second lesson we're going to draw your tattoos. Your tattoos. Now, these might be your real tattoos, they might be your fake tattoos or some tattoos you've always wanted to get. Maybe this is a time to plan out the tattoos that you want to get in the future. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to me, but you're going to draw something. It could be funny, it could be cool, it could be weird. That's up to you. Let me show you here in the lesson. For this one, I'm going to start with a rectangle all around the edge of my page, and this is just going to create a frame. I actually do this a lot when I'm drawing. It just gives me a definite edge to what it is that I'm drawing so that I know where the frame is, and then you need to draw a shape. For me. I'm going to draw my arms and my boxer shorts. But you can do whatever you want. You can make it your body. You could draw a frog. You could draw a whale with tattoos, but draw some shape. For this one, I'm going to assess here a few of my tattoos, and it's got me with some boxer shorts on, and I'm going to fill in the background here. For this one, I'm just using a uni-ball pen for the outline shape and I use black for this one so that when I come in with this really thin red outline, it'll just stand apart from it. This is the pen that I'm going to use for my tattoos. I'm using red ink for this one. Then for this exercise you might want to go look like I did. You might go look at old sailor tattoos, but it doesn't even really have to look like a tattoo. I'm going to use this red ink here to draw this old clipper ship, like some old sailor tattoos. Here's a little flag and some sails on it. This something that I like to draw a lot, so I'm not really using any reference images for this. But maybe you want to draw an old ship or whales or nautical stuff. Maybe you want to draw birds or some handwritten type. Maybe you've always wanted to get a tattoo and you're too intimidated. You're tattoo intimidated to get a tattoo. I'm going to just start drawing some decorative stuff here. The goal with this task is that maybe you're thinking about it a little bit more than we did with those blob monsters. Maybe you're really going through and really trying to draw something new. Maybe it's just stuff that you really like drawing. Maybe your tattoos could be something that are just an extension of you. I guess that's what tattoos are. I don't know. Draw a little mermaid here. If you really like, let's say vintage synthesizers, maybe you want to draw a synthesizer. If you like to play the drums, maybe you draw a little drum set. If you like to knit, if you like knitting and crocheting, then maybe that's something that you draw. This is also really good exercise for the first page in your sketchbook where you are drawing a little bit about yourself. Again, maybe it's all handwritten type. Maybe you want to do love and hate. Those are tattooed hands, say love and hate. Mine tend to be less intimidating. The tattoos that I like to draw, some snakes. Snakes are intimidating, they can be intimidating. Now here's an octopus. Again, this is based on years of research for the anatomy. Have octopuses. If right now you're starting to compose a nasty email to me saying, I think you meant to say octopi, please do what I did and do the research to see which one is more correct, before you write me an email. Here's a synthesizer. I mentioned I like to draw things in here that I just like, I like to draw crabs, so here's a crab. Then what I'm going to do for this one is now that I've got the outline drawn, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm going to go and add a little bit of ink wash. Now most of the drawings that I'm going to show you in this entire volume have an ink wash like this. I showed you how to make this in the first volume, but it's just ink mixed with water that I keep in a little jar. I show you how to do that in Volume 1. I'm just going to fill in these sails and just add a little bit of value to this final drawing here. All done. All right. Now it's your turn. Draw your tattoos. Those were my tattoos, now it's your turn to draw your tattoos. I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Day III: Group of Icons: Now, it's time to draw one of my favorite things. This is just a fun thing to do in a sketchbook, but it's also good for those of you who maybe want to get into Illustration stuff later. This is a good thing to get into the practice of doing. That is going to be draw icons. Just an icon. Now, icons are any small images that are grouped together all on the same topic or theme. Maybe you think about camping, and for camping, you would draw a lantern, and a backpack, and a sleeping bag. Maybe you draw sports equipment, and that could be baseball, basketball, other sports, stuff like a helmet. Helmet could be good. That's a sports thing. Anyway, so those are your icons. Let me show you how I do mine. I've decided to go with camping stuff because the weather outside right now is perfect for camping. I've been thinking a lot about it. Maybe for you, you want to start with just make a list. Make a list of some different things in the topic that you've chosen. Maybe your theme is all about Iceland, and you want to draw whales, and puffins, and little houses, and trees, and knit sweaters with great designs on them. You start with a list. For mine, I went ahead and made made list, and I'm just going to start drawing that stuff out. You don't want to see me making lists. You know how to make a list piece of paper. Here's a piece of paper and a pen. For mine, I'm doing camping stuff, so I'm going to start with backpacks, and a little lantern here, cup of coffee in the morning. Listen, you don't even talk to me until I've had my coffee in the morning. That's a thing that I made up, just to not talk to someone until they've had something coffee-related. Toothbrush and toothpaste. I went camping one time without toothbrush, and it was the last time that I would do that. It's pretty gross. I like to carry Band-Aids, and then I bring two logs with me when I go camping. I just think about a lot of different stuff in that subject, and then maybe I'll set a timer, and I'll just start drawing, or more likely I'll just draw until I have filled up the page. Here's a little net. Looks like a butterfly net. I don't really know what net it is. Maybe it's for fishing, but I don't really fish with a net like that. Here's a little ax, maybe it's a hatchet. There's some matches. Maybe you want to sit and actually look at some examples of these things before you start drawing. Now, I'm going to color mine in with this watercolor set. Now, I use watercolor in a very specific way, which is that I use it to fill in pin ink lines, and I'm doing so. I'm just going to wet a little bit of the watercolor here and then fill in some of these big shapes. I like to use watercolor very light. For this one, again, I'm going to try and speed this up, so you don't get bored with watching me just painting a big solid background color. But I use watercolor in this way to where I use it to fill in these shapes. I'm not being overly specific about it. I don't mind if it's a little messy and a little loose. You might use watercolor to actually do a lot of the artwork that you're making. In another episode, I'm going to talk a lot more about watercolor, but for this one, I'm just going to really quickly just getting it. Let's just pick this color here and just dip. Then I just add them. You're making sure that you rinse out your brush really well so that I'm not cross-contaminating these colors, and I'm able to go in and through fill some of this stuff in here. I really like this part of drawing. I think that it's really relaxing. Honestly, one of the reasons I use gray wash a lot is I just feel like it feels meditative, and I don't really have to think about it. Of course, I like the fact that it adds a lot of depth to my drawings. Maybe for yours, you're going to add a lot of color. I like to, with my icons, just to add one or two colors to keep them all very unified, very simple. Again, maybe you're looking at reference photos or not. I'm just going to wrap this up here. Those are my icons. That's right. I did some camping icons. That's what mine look like. Now, it's your turn to draw your camping icons. Maybe you want to do yours right now, maybe you want to take a break. You could be drawing these one a day or maybe you want to go through all of mine in one day, that's up to you. But now it's your turn to draw some icons. 5. Day IV: Something Flying : Now it's time for the 4th thing for the week. I'm just going to give you a prompt today. This one is whatever you want to do, but you have to draw something that is flying. It could be a kite, it could be a spaceship or UFO, it could be an airplane. That's up to you. Actually, you can wait. You can just go and pause it now, and draw your own thing, and then come back and see what I did. Or you can now keep watching and I'll show you the thing that I've decided to draw today, so something flying. I'm going to use the Tombow brush pen again. Look, I am not sponsored by Tombow. I just like using this pen. There's a couple of pens that I use a lot. A lot of people ask me what kind of pens that I use. I like to make a big point of saying, you should really try a lot of different things. These work great for me. There's a little bit of variation on the line, but not too much. They're waterproof, which is great because then I can use ink wash over top of them, which is something I like to use. But this is not necessarily the pen that you're going to want to use. Try some different stuff. That is what a sketchbook is for, trying out new supplies, new materials. If you have a gouache set that you bought on that trip in college when you went to Prague that one time, now is the time you use it. The prompt for this one is something flying so I'm going very literal with this one. I'm drawing a rocket ship taking off, flying. But maybe again, you want to do a kite. Maybe you draw a Zeppelin. A Zeppelin just flying around. I'm just jumping right in with ink, but that's mostly just to make this tutorial go a little faster. I don't want you getting bored and switching over to some class about accounting because you're bored with my class. If you have not drawn some of these things before, now would be a good time to maybe look at some reference photos. Don't spend an hour on Instagram thinking that you're looking at reference photos for spaceships. Just take a minute. Look up a space shuttle, maybe look up the Hubble Telescope, and then just pencil it out. If it makes you feel a little bit more confident, start penciling it out. Did you know that if you flew a regular airplane from the Earth to the Sun, it would take 20 years. That's true. I tend to collect a lot of weird facts like that and recently I've been working on a book about space called Everything Awesome About Space. Did you know that the Sun is actually hot enough that it can make diamonds melt. Do you mind if while I draw, I just give you a few more of these random space facts? Venus is actually the planet in our Solar System with the most volcanoes, 1,600 volcanoes. It's a lot of volcanoes. Venus also has clouds that are made out of sulfuric acid. Probably not a really great spot for tourism, Venus. Now I like to draw satellites, I'm going to draw one here in a second. Do you know what Earth's biggest satellite is? Can you think about what it could be? Is it Sputnik? That sounds familiar. Maybe it sounds familiar because it's the biggest satellite. No, Sputnik was tiny. Biggest satellite for the Earth is the Moon. Did I get you on that one? Was that a good trick question? Have you ever heard of the dark side of the Moon? No, I'm not talking about the Pink Floyd album. I'm talking about part of our Moon that for a long time people called the dark side of the Moon, but it's actually the part of the Moon that faces away from us, which does not make it dark. Now scientists call it the far side of the Moon. I think, speaking of the far side, people ask some of my favorite artists, and Gary Larson, who did The Far Side, has always been one of my favorite artists. Just thought you should know that. I'll do a few more weird facts about space. What about the fact that there is a mountain on Mars and it is the biggest mountain in the entire Solar System. It is 13 miles tall. If you're thinking, how tall is 13 miles? Especially if you're watching this and you're in Europe you're thinking, why would he say miles? Thirteen miles is twice the height of Mount Everest. Here's a question for you. How many people do you think have been to space? Just don't look it up. Just guess, this just for you. What are you thinking? Maybe 100? Well, get this. More than 550 people have been to space. Now I'm going to wrap up my drawing here with a few extra little lines on this air tube, or whatever this is and I'm going to use my ink wash again. Again, this is just ink mixed with water and you have to play around with it to get it as dark or as light as you want it. I use just a little bit of ink in mine. Then I go through and I paint it in. Now, this is an additive way of adding in some value. What that means is that I can paint in very light here initially, and then let it dry, and then I can paint more over top of it and add in some darker areas. You can also have two different pots. One is just very light ink, one is a little bit darker. That's what I like to do also. I'm going to speed this up here, so again, that you don't get bored. I'm going to paint this through real quickly. Did you guys know Halley's Comet, the very well-known comet? It passed by the Earth on the year that Mark Twain was born. It also passed by on the year Mark Twain died. That's crazy. People were afraid of Halley's Comet. Some people even took anti-comet pills, were being sold. Obviously it didn't work. It was just a hoax, but people were afraid of it passing by. I'm going to do some last-minute touch up stuff here. I let it dry. Now I'm painting in some darker areas to help certain things stand out a little bit more. I don't normally talk this much while I'm drawing, but I'm speaking to you because I'm hoping that maybe you'll get something out of all of this talking. But if you come up with questions, or you're thinking of things while you're watching me work, my hope is that you'll leave questions so that I can add in extra stuff for the next tutorial that I make. Maybe you have questions about watercolor, or other aspects of keeping a sketchbook. I'd love to cover that stuff in a later class, you just have to let me know what you're interested in. Going to finish this up here. Add a little bit more gray value here and then finish up this blast. There we go. That was a tough one. We drew something flying. I made mine all space related, what did you make yours about? If you haven't drawn it yet, now is the time to pause the video and go draw something flying. I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Day V: Imaginary Treehouse: You're back. You drew something flying, and now it's time to move on to number 5. Number 5, we're going to draw, let's see let's try something real. I'm going to get you on this one, this is going to be tough. None just kidding, it's not. None of these are tough. This is going to be totally however you want to do it. Number 5, treehouse. Now, we've made it five days into our seven days of drawing. Treehouse, you can whatever you want to draw. Now, I'm going to draw mine. Again, you can pause the video now and go do your drawing, and then come back and see what I drew, or you can watch when I draw, it's up to you. Let's do it. Treehouse, here we go. If you've been taking these little sections in order, you will not be surprised that I'm, once again, drawing with a Tombow brush pen. The funny thing is, about it, that I go through these stages where I'll use a pen like this for a few weeks and then I won't use it again for a year. This is just one of my current go-to pens. Again, I really urge you to try a lot of different stuff and find something that fits your way of working, your personality, your way of drawing. I'm drawing a treehouse here. If this is a new thing for you, then I definitely recommend penciling it out, doing a lot of sketches. Maybe you don't draw in pen at all. Maybe the whole drawing is a pencil drawing. This is just a prompt. I'm just drawing a little treehouse here. I like drawing treehouses a lot because they sort two of my favorite things that I like to draw, which is, I like to draw these old-looking houses, I'll put in some of the German architecture stuff to it. Then I also really like to draw plants and a lot of leaves. I like to have stuff buried in leaves and behind branches. That's why I like drawing treehouses a lot. If you start drawing this one and you think, I'm not feeling this one, why don't you try an old cuckoo clock? When I made a list of things that I wanted to draw, I put the cuckoo clock as one of them. Honestly, I just ran out of space for it so maybe I'll draw that in the next one. Do you want to see that? If so, maybe make a comment in the notes for the class. Say, Mike, please draw an old-fashioned cuckoo clock. Now, the goal for this sketchbook assignment is, again, that you're really just drawing and you're trying out new stuff. If you're not used to drawing a lot of plants and trees, and you're not very comfortable with it, this is a chance to really play around with it. Again, use pencil, make mistakes. If you're looking at this one and then you think, "Okay. Well he says make mistakes, but then he's drawing this without even penciling it." Listen, this is something that I've drawn a lot, I'm comfortable with it. I didn't choose things for this video series that I thought would make me look like I'm not good at the thing that I'm talking about. So pencil it out, make some mistakes, try some different things. Maybe your Treehouse turns into a birdhouse. Maybe it's got a lot of birds, maybe you have some squirrels that are peeking over. Listen, I've already talked about bugs, I like to draw bugs. Maybe your treehouse has a lot of bugs in it. Maybe it's more realistic. Maybe you find a picture of a treehouse that you really like and you really just try and capture that treehouse, whereas mine's a lot more playful. Maybe yours has dragons in it, who would live at your treehouse. This is something you can be thinking about and these are things that you can think about before you really start getting into the drawing. All right. This is my treehouse. Did you draw a treehouse? Did you just skip over it? Or you just watched me draw and you're not drawing at all? Well, that's not good. The whole point is that you're supposed to be drawing every day. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Day VI: Weird Animals: We're back. Now it's time to get started with number 6. Number 6. This is one of my favorite things to draw. You're ready? It takes a little extra step. You have to go to the computer, you have to Google an image for a weird animal. Just don't put in the name, just Google weird animals, or weirdest animals, or most dangerous animals. Then you're going to draw a weird or dangerous or cute, but maybe something you've never seen before, weird animal. Weird animals. Pause the video now if you don't want to see mine, or if you want to watch mine, you can watch it now, and then you can draw after mine. Here we go, weird animal. Let's go. I am returning from Google, and I saw some crazy images of weird animals. I'm going to start here with this circle drawing, and here's the legs. Here's the animal's eyes, and the antenna, and arms. I dropped it. That's okay. Then I have to draw the smile of this strange animal that I saw. Then also maybe it has a balloon. Maybe your weird animal has a balloon that you've found. Since that one went quick, maybe I'll go ahead and draw another one. I saw this animal that I had never seen before. I'm going to start penciling it out here since I've never drawn this. I'm using a pencil here, just a cheap mechanical pencil. I'm starting with these big eyes that this animal had. If you're watching me draw, see if you can guess this animal, maybe you've seen it before. I had never seen it before. Maybe you can guess it while I'm drawing. No, it's not a kangaroo. No, it's not a turtle. Now, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking,oh, it's a wingless bat. I don't know that that exists. I want to say that it's called an aye-aye. I have never seen one of these before, and I've drawn a lot of animals. Now, listen, I know that there are people that are watching this right now, they're thinking, "He's never seen that? I own six of these." Well, I didn't know that it existed, I'm so sorry. Here we go. I'm going to draw mine really quickly, again, so that you don't get bored. I'm using this Tombow pen over top of pencil, and I'm working in the fur here and just trying to get the essence of this very strange-looking animal. Don't get too bogged down into the research when you are drawing stuff like this. Don't let your Internet time outweigh your drawing time. It should just be this real quick thing. This is not meant to be a photo representational drawing of this animal, for me, at least, maybe yours is. You don't want to spend too much time with the actual research. Let me see here. Mine, the image that I saw, it did not have this giant word balloon, but this seems like something that this animal would just yell at you. I'm going to go ahead and draw this big word balloon. Of course, I have to erase the pencil. Now, I skipped ahead because I didn't want you to see this ink drying, but I let the ink dry very well so that I don't end up with some smudged ink, which is very frustrating to me when I smudge the ink. Now, I'm going to use my ink wash to go in here and add some value. I'm going to start with the areas that I know are going to be the darkest later. This aye-aye, I keep thinking that I'm going to say it differently, then I keep saying it the same, but I just hope that I'm saying it correctly. It had these really dark circles around its eyes. A lot like me when I'm working on deadlines, maybe this is what drew me to this animal in the first place. I've started there because I know that I'm going to be able to add more of this ink wash over top of that later, and I'll make some of those darker areas even darker, and really stand out. Again, maybe you're using watercolor, maybe you're making little paintings in gouache in your sketchbooks. Whatever you want to do, however, you want to do it, this is just my way of working. Maybe you draw a bunch of little animals very sketchy, very quick, but there's no wrong way to do it as long as you're working in your sketchbook at least 30 minutes every single day. Here we go. This is mine. You did it. Did you see some weird animals? What was the weirdest animal that you saw? Yell it at the screen, yell it into the phone that you're looking at or the laptop computer that you're watching this on. That is a weird animal. I know that one very well. See you in the next lesson. 8. Day VII: Something Hairy / Bug Party: Now it's time for Number 7. This is the last day of weekly drawing. Last day. I'm going to give you a couple options here. You could take one of these options. You can either do something hairy. However you want to interpret that or you could draw a bug party. What could that be? Something hairy, bug party you choose. Pause the video now or keep watching, you can see me draw and then you can watch when I'm all done, or draw when I'm all done. You can watch me draw. I could watch you draw. No, I'm not going to watch you draw. Choose one of these and let's go. I'm going to draw something hairy because I do feel like, I've mentioned I love to draw bugs. I like to draw those a lot. I haven't drawn something hairy in a while, so I think I'm just going to draw something hairy for mine. Maybe the thing that you draw that's hairy is a hairy sea captain or a wizard with a long beard. Maybe the thing that you draw that's hairy has a hairy situation. But for mine I'm going to go straight up hairy monster looking bear thing. This is just a hairy thing. Somewhere between a, maybe a gorilla and like a yeti. It doesn't have to be anything that you've drawn before, you can just start drawing. You can use pencil and I'm going to put some boxer shorts on mine and a sweat band, just to make it decent, fun. There's a bird on their shoulder and this one's saying hello. This is a quick one. This one took me right at about 30 minutes. I know I sped it up. I'm going to finish up here with little bit of my preferred ink wash. Just ink mixed with water. I find this to be very meditative, very relaxing. Here we go. You've got something hairy and I worked on a little extra there. If you've made it this far in the video, that means you've done seven days of drawing and it's very impressive. It's not easy to do. It's not easy to find time for it. Let me wrap it up here. We've got one more little bit of advice for you in the next lesson. 9. Final thoughts: The whole goal on this was for you to just draw something every single day for a week. Did you do it? Did you do all of these in one day? I hope that you had a good time either way and I hope that you continue to draw. If you've made it seven days, I want you to keep going. Try and draw for a month, 30 minutes a day, that's all you're trying to do. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's work, but keep going and see what you come up with. Here's what I want you to do. The drawings that you come up with, please put them down in the project gallery here on Skillshare so I can take a look at them and I'll try and make some comments on it. I hope that you'll keep up with me on these projects that you've done. I'm already working on the next class for Always Drawing Volume 3. If you have suggestions, things that you want to see in the class, please make notes and let me know. I'll see you next time on Always Drawing with Mike Lowery.