Basic doodling: How to Draw a Botanical Wreath

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Carla. I'm a [inaudible] based illustrator with a passion for nature and outdoors. This class is for absolute beginners. I'll be teaching you the skills and tools you need to craft a beautiful botanical wreath. We will go through warm-up exercises. What are the elements about botanical wreath? Where to get inspiration from, and craft a beautiful end project. I can't wait to see you inside the class. Let's get started. 2. Supplies and Materials: We're going to have a look at the supplies and materials that we're going need to start doodling. Paper, ink pens, erasers, pencils and things like that. Just the basic thing will be a drawing pad. This one is just a regular drawing pad that you can find at your local arts and craft or store or you can buy online at Amazon, so you have that. Also, the one that I really like to use is this one, which is paper pad for markers. This one will serve several purposes, not only will help preserve the tips of your marker because the paper is really smooth, but also it can serve you as a tracing paper, you can see my illustration in the background. I really like this paper because of that. It not only preserve your pens, but also it can serve you as a tracing paper if you have something that you want to try it first in testing and things like that. I thought it would be fun, this one which is a graph paper pad. Let me open here because I have done already some couple of test with black ink and white yellow rope, so you have that for fun as well. Also, I will recommend that you can have also a sketchbook and things like that just to have it on the go. I mentioned pencil, but you can use a pencil or a mechanical pencil it's up to you. Also make sure that you have a sharpen tip if you're not using a mechanical pencil. This is an optional part because how I started is that, I first spread this with sketches in pencil and then I ink them. Inking is the action of retracing the sketch that you are ready with the pen, but it's just an optional step. Just in case if you want to have that, an eraser, this is just our regular eraser, but I have one a bit more professional, this can also erase a bit of the ink of the pens and things like that. It's up to you depending on the level that you have or if you want to have that as an option as well. You can find it in your local arts and craft or Amazon. In terms of pens, I have a couple here. My favorite brand is the sakura pigma micron. They come in different sizes, you can see the size here. The numbers just represent that thickness of the tip and the line traits that they are going to have. Just let me show you a few examples, this one a very thin one, this is the 005, and this is ink in pink. You can also have a site of black ink, you can have also clear colors of ink. This one is a 02 which I normally use on a lot. This is a one, you're going to notice the differences, so you see that it's there. It's a lot thicker. You have those but also you can use if you're practice lettering, you can use a fend of zookay marker sensewell, and if you're using the paper specifically for a marker, it won't damage the tip of your marker. Another brand that I have here is penstix as well. You can see that they are in different sizes as well, so it's just referring to the thickness of the tip. You have that one there. Also if you already have this one because they are very popular for lettering. You have the brush tip that you can use for doing some shadows and sometimes some leaves and things like that. But you can also use the other tip for the dual brush double marker. Last but not least, the white gel pen that make sure you know how does it look in the graph paper, so you can have a better moral variation of things that you can use for your dully, you can make a match with a black ink. That's it. All of them you can also find them either at your local arts and craft store or you can buy them online on Amazon and things like that. That's it for the supplies and materials. In the next video we're going to do some warm up exercises. 3. Warm up excercises: So for the warm up exercises, we're going to start doing some lines, loops, some dash and crosshatching. For the line, you can do a zigzag line, they don't have to be perfect. You just want to get your hand used to the movement and with a pen or with a mechanical pencil. I'm just doing it with a pen so you can have a better view so it gets noticed better with the paper. You just have to do a couple of exercises and repeat the same thing you want it a couple of time just to get used to it. So you can do vertical lines, as well, some horizontal lines and some diagonal line. It doesn't have to be perfect, we just want you to get comfortable with the movement of the pencil, the marker, whichever tool you're using, that's completely fine. In terms of the loops, I call these ones loop, kind of like an e-shape, kind of like when you are doing Chi, the calligraphy e or not script but letter type. You can do them small, you can do them big, you can do one small, one big. So it's just to get your hand used to the movement, especially these exercise will help you with all your round shapes like circles and things like that. So it will loosen up your wrist for that movement, yeah of that. In terms of the dashes, you can do like long dashes, you can do also short dashes or a bit more together. I really like to use this type of line when I'm doing, for example, some doodles of bees, kind of simulate their flying pattern that they have. So we're going to mix up some loops and dashes because if you see bee flies, they don't fly kind of like in straight path, they just kind of hover around. You can do that by drawing with some loops like we did before and then use random movements and just following, just doing the line with the dashes. People draw here like a little bee and you will do something like that so you see the pattern, it looks really nice with that. Also, as well you can do them vertically, as well as we saw the previous one, you can do them horizontally as well, you can do them in any direction you want. It's a good way to create either movements or kind of paths; or if you want the one like a continuous straight like this one, you can use that one as you can see, you can mix both. Here it will be mixing like the straight or the pattern of this line, but in a more kind of like loosened way. The last one that we're going to be doing is the crosshatching. This one, I like to use it for filling up shapes and things like that. So as you can see, it's just kind of like doing some either vertical and horizontal lines on top of it. Instead of doing just filling up with just ink, you're kind of like still seeing the paper behind it; so you can have more light, it's not that dark. You can do a couple of those. It doesn't have a specific rule on how you will do it, but you would see it's like a pattern there. So for example, if we have like a square, you can do a couple of those to fill them in. If you leave it like that, you will see you have some shadow here and it will also feel like it has like a little patch there, but you can fill it all the way through and it will look a bit much better depending on what you want as your final result. It will look much better like that instead of just filling everything with ink. So this one, I'm using the one marker but if we use like a finer tip marker, like this one, you will see that you will have like a more subtle effect for that, like more delicate or more refined and you can see the difference there. Those are couple of warm-up exercises that I'm suggesting that you can do to get your hand used to it, to the movement with lines, and like straight lines, loops, some dashes, and you can see how you can use them and some crosshatching. No worries, I'll give you a template in the resources, you can look for it so you can have also the guide when you're practicing by yourself. So in the next video, we're going to be looking where you can look for inspiration and see how can then we can use that inspiration later to start doodling. 4. Where to find inspiration: Now we're going to talk about where to get inspiration from, what thing that inspired you or that could inspire you that you have around the house and things I have. Well, I've a few examples here. For example, if you have a lot of art supplies, you can start by drawing that and drawing that. You see a lot of round shapes or triangular shapes and things like that, that you can use as a basic for those you have a couple of brushes, then you can start and doodle those. Also you can get inspiration from rubbing baker. This one has some record player, some nice tea cups. This one has a couple of botanical inspiration and some plants and things like that, and this one has like a really nice pattern with all the reasons. I get inspiration from nature and that's in a lot of my illustration. You can get inspiration if you have a book at hand of the things that you love to do, that your hobbies and things like that. There's a lot of for example, here leaves and berries and twigs. You will see that a lot in my illustration. But also if you don't have anything around you, you can also source a book either on a library or buy one online to have that. Also magazines are a great source of inspiration. This one is flow magazine, has a lot of things in it, a lot of picture, some pattern that you can use as well but also a lot of photography. This one for example if you would like to doodle like an ice creams, they feast summer time and things like that. You can get inspired to that and you can see a chaise, like triangular or some round. You can start building in your mind what are the basic shapes of the doodles, and the things that will serve as an explanation that are around you. Also this one I think is a very popular one. I have seen a lot of the illustrations down like mason jar. Something that you have around home, either if you have like a really nice sets of the firstly laying or tea cups and things like that that will help you as well. If you have kids or you are into car collecting, this one is like a little model of Volkswagen Beetle. I think it's really nice if you're for example into two cars, you can buy a car like the miniature and start doodling them or at least doing the basic shapes and things like that. O you can see, you can get its inspiration from anything. You can create your own little [inaudible] , either in a sketch book, you can get sprouts of papers that you really like from magazines and things like that that will inspire you to create your piece or your doodles and things like that. In the next video we're going to see what are the basic elements of [inaudible]. We'll see the different shapes, your magic shapes that we can start and building on from that. 5. Elements of a botanical wreath: We're going to start getting into the things and the elements that compose our wreath. We're going to start first with the basic shapes. This would be the circle, square, triangles, and I have another circle here which is of a bigger size. In terms of the circles, you can get anything around the house, it depends on the size that you want, the diameter that you want for the circle. This one, I use the inside of the washi tape. For the square and the triangle I just use a ruler just by measuring the size that I want and making each side the same size. The same as for the triangle. In terms of these big one, I just use a lid of a container that I have around the house. I really like the size for the base of my wreath. You can do it either with pencil or with your markers. In this one, I just wanted to point out that if you see I have here the off circle, off center ones. It's a couple of circles together. They had a little either movement to the right or to the left. It's just by placing your lid and just making the trace around it. Then just move it a little bit to the right and just use the same to trace it, and just a little bit to the left as well so that you will get that same effect. Those are the basic shapes that are going to be the base for our wreath. In terms of the elements itself that we're going to doodle and draw for our wreath, we're going to be doing some leaves, some flowers, some berries, and some flourishes. This is just more around free handed doodles or swirls or line similar to what we did in our warm-up exercises. It's just to give more a natural locate field. You can see like in nature, not everything of life just perfect in geometric. If you get a twig wreath, I don't know if you have seen those, they're either made of different lines, and also they have a little bit of imperfections or maybe twigs coming out of it and things like that. Just for you to have it in mind. I'm going to leave that there so you can see what I'm going to be doing. First of all, we're going to start with the leaf. The leaf that I have chosen, they're very simple. It should be very easy to replicate. I'll do it a couple of times so you can see the movement and the shapes that I'm doing. For this one, you can think about our triangular shape that we saw at the beginning. It's just very free handed, so there's no wrong or right. Remember, at the beginning of this class I told you that I would like you to draw in your own style. This is where your own style is going to start showing up. You can practice in a couple of times when you're comfortable with and you're happy with the doodle or the drawing that you have done. This one, I'm just doing it a bit bigger so you can see it better. It's just one line up, one line down with a bit of a curvature, and another line in the middle. Let's do it again. One up, one down. I just did a smaller. You can see just by doing little tweaks, you get a different field for the same doodle so you can experiment which one you are happy with. The next one that we're going to do is the holly leaf. This one is what you see, mostly in the winter time and things like that. I thought it would be good to use to show you that. This one is just like basically doing M's and C's, and you're on your handwriting. You can do it like that. Just going up and doing some pointing ends and just close it. The next one we're going to do the firm like this. It's just a simple line. I'm just doing these shapes. If you want a bit more dense or bushy, you just always can go back and fill it in. It's just a simple line fleeing up with V-shaped line. Then if you want a thicker, you can leave it like that. It's just to reference. But you can go back and always fill it in. Just can have it more fuller look. The last one that I'm going to show you for the leaf is just the one that I did with the tombow brush. Just in case if you have these then you're into luxury. It's just doing a simple line, and it's just pressing the tip of the brush down. It's an easy way to make some leaf shapes. Again, this is just optional if you craft it. In terms of the flowers, I'm going to show you different solids as I show you before. They are very simple, just similar. I'm taking into account the exercises that we did at the beginning. You have a four loop one, I just like to do the center with a little bit of dots. Again, it's just one, two, three, and four. You can do the petals as thick as or faint as you want. That will give another character to your flower. Another one is my interpretation of [inaudible] , it's just a C looking up going up and down at the top. Again, it's just a C looking up, going up and down again. You can add a little bit of lines here just to make sure flower the air, or just by only giving the little dots. The next one is, again, two interpretations that I have of roses. The first one would be just to swell that we're going to close. You can do them as big or small as you want. You have little ones. You need to do a bigger one, just close it. The other one is like overlapping the letter C with itself. The too close one is going to be the center. Then you can build from there, as many layers as you want. You have that one. Again, and you can build as much thickness or fullness that you want. The next thing we're going to do is the berries. These are just circular shapes. You can the three O, which I really like. You can do them with the center white or just full black. Depends on your preference. You can do cherry type, and can do a half circle and then with a vent on top, two little pumps there and you have a cherry there. The last one we're going to do is a blueberry type of those because we can see him find those things in the woods and things like that. Since we're doing botanical wreath, I'm going for that flare, it's going to be similar to that. A berry itself, you can do it a different way. You just have a circle and you spiky lines at the top. You can do an M-shape. A bit like that. Also, that would be a [inaudible] or something like that. Or I can also do the circle. I'm just can do a [inaudible] on top of it. You have those different kinds of things. The last thing that we're going to do are the flourishes. This is very free handed, like swirls and movement just to give your wreath that natural feel and look. It's just like doing free handed swirls and shapes, can do the opposite. It's different from the one that we did before in terms of the roses since these one are a bit more elongated and we're not going to close them. You can do them in any shape or form that you want really. You can, twins there. Last, you can do some tweaks. You can do like that. You can add more curvature. Those are the elements that we're going to be using to create our botanical wreath. I'll be also putting these examples and exercises in the downloads for the project. Don't worry, you will have a copy of this types or, it's not a template, but like a guide for you to remember the things that we saw through the lesson. In the next lesson, we're going to put all the elements together and I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to get a [inaudible] of beautiful, the planning conclusion. 6. Doodling a Botanical wreath Part 1: Now we are going to put everything together. So all the elements that we saw in the previous lesson, we are going to put together to come up with our beautiful botanical V. I had here a couple of examples in the circular shape, square and the triangle for you to have an idea. I will Make sure that you have this one as well. The sheet available in the resources area so you can have like a guiding inspiration. To give you a little bit of summary, you have here with a little flowers and the brush and technique that I showed you. Then you have here a more fuller leaf with the roses, kind like the leaf that we did at the beginning. The fan, branches and a little bit of the flourishes. Then we have the square shape, I made a very simple one. So you can see even making something very simple looks very elegant and delicate. So you can use it as a frame, maybe to put some quote in it or something like that so I think this one will also be really good for redoing icon drawn invitations and things. I think that one looks really pretty. Also a triangular shape to give you an example base, not really that common, you will see a what I wanted for you to have it in mind in case you want to use. So the ones that we're going to be doing today is this one. So you can see it has different elements that refracted and a couple of new ones that I will show you, so don't worry about that. Everything is going to be really easy, we're going to work with the rule of three. So the rule of three is kind of like composition rule that work in groups of threes because it's very pleasing to the eye. So it will make your composition, your illustration whatever your design, everything that you would make it more pleasant to the eye. So the eye will go easy, through the illustration and we'll have, a better flow. You can see here that I have applied in different places. So you have the little roses, the tulips, mix of everything and it looks very nice. We're going to do this one. I have already drawn the circle for the base, and we're going to do a regular circle with a lid that I had showed you at the beginning when we were doing the base shapes. So again, try to work slowly and if you're unsure, pause for a moment, see how the re-fix loop gain and then go back. So it's always good to pause look at the overall composition of your leaf in the info box. So we're going to start with the firm branches. Don`t worry, if you're like for example, when I trace by getting close properly because you can either fill it with all the flourishes where all the leaf that you are going to be doing or you can leave it like that as I had for us to do all things, in this example that I have made intentionally to look like that, so there's no perfect or wrong. Just remember to exercise your style, what you like, and all your preference and that end I am pretty sure, so is going to be amazed. We're going to start with that. Again. Just a little line and started doing like V-shapes. More. Push remark Fuller tells optional because you have that one. Then the excess. So you can see I'm going to be moving around a lot of the things and let me get rid of things like that. So I make sure that my area is clear so I can have the freedom of movement and it's to make sure that you're comfortable. You don't have to draw in the same place. So it's okay to move it around to be in a more comfortable position while you are doodling. So make sure to have that in mind. I'm going to keep my example here just to have it as a reference and as I move it around, I will have it there. So we're going to do another branch. Those fans, and again, drawing the V-shaped platform, then I'll go back and make it more fuller, to make it more natural. 7. Doodling a Botanical wreath Part 2: Let me see. You can do the one with a little flower. It's like you need the four loops in the flower. One, two, three, and four, little dots. Again, one, two, three, and four. If you have a line like I just have, you can try to make a center of flower with the line of the circle if you want, but that's just optional. I think I'll do it like that, better. I think that will be better. Again, one, two, three and four, and fill it in. Then we're going to do this one, which reminds me either of a lavender, little branch, or there's another flower here in the UK that is very similar to that comes in purple. I don't recall exactly the name, but it's like a little branch or little mini pine tree made of little bots. I'm going to do that one next. As you can see, it's very loose and it's very freehand. It's just how you feel composition is going. For this one, as you can see me of a lot of little dots. I'm just going to put here, like the reference thought for our high peak or the top, and I start drawing the base from there and just do random dots there. Now that one there. The other one here, again, just a little bit smaller and then you fill it in, try and get triangle shape. Last one is here. As I'll show you that you can pause at this stage to see how your composition is looking, are you happy with it? You want to add any more or do you want to start adding in other places and things like that? The next thing that we're going to do is going to be the grosses. With grosses I like to do first, tie the ross first and then draw them like this. I'm going to do it here and then link it to the right. You can do it the other way around, I just putting out, and then doing this round. Inhabit their leave my color here. Again, you can do this flower first and then I like it like that. Its kind of like slowly taking shaping and fill it together. Again, we do the squall and link it to the main leaf. The next thing that we're going to do are going to be either this with a brush here, and we have like a little tweak there just to give it more balance in the same size. Let me get my brush pen. Brush pen would be on the outsides there near on top of their roles , there you have like that. As I showed you before, just whether it off the brush pen and we're going to press it like a mark those in these in one side and in the other. Make sure you're careful because if we are using the marker paper, asked one that I show you before, you have to let it dry a little bit because otherwise it will get smush. If you place your hand over the in toward somethings that you have to be a bit more felt. That's I also move it around a lot, not to make it difficult, but just to make sure I don't put my hand over the ink that is still wet. Especially with this one because this one, as you can see, they're draws and you can see a bit of shine. There's like that's a lot to the paper with ink. Just to make sure that you're aware of that. We have that one, then the next one we can do is like the branches and tweaks then you love those. Just being really careful draw a line and just are very loosely. We can draw a little berries like that. The next one doesn't have to be the same. There are one be this one and there you have it. Now we have completed that I wanted to see what other elements that we can add. We can add tulips and then I'm going to show you that thing with a little leaves and flowers and things like that. The last part would be the tulips, you just remember that to be careful not to switch the ink or anything if it hasn't dried. [inaudible] so are tulips on top of this one so you can make first the flower. Remember it's just a C-shape up line going up now. Again there you have and then this one here smaller we have that. That's stay here up and here C-shape up and down and draw the little steps to word. Those are all the elements. You can see flourish isn't flowers that we have. Now what I'm going to do, because you can see that we have like a lot of blank spaces there. It's up to you because this one, even though I tried to make it more symmetric, left here of the for half here a little purple gap, begin to feel that. Also we can fill it in line, so it depends on how you want to do it. If basically up to your style and preference. These leaves are very simple, it's just gone like looping to one side and then to the other. We're want to do that, where we see either a space or yes, I state that we want to feel out. I'm going to couple up here just for fullness and completeness. We have these one here. That one can do a couple of more here. You can see is very loose, so it's just in terms of your favorite. There how they are beautiful, what kind of gallery that I just added a couple of edits, mints here for just completeness and wholeness and I had a little bit of white space there so you can have a better there. We have all the elements that we practice in our previous lessons when all the leaves, flowers in a little bit of flourishes there, and you want for you to practice there. Hope you have fun doing your own projects and see you in the next week for the final remarks. 8. Final Remarks: Thanks again for joining the class. I hope you had fun going through all the lessons and learning all the tools and skills you need to craft a beautiful botanical wreath. Make sure to copy your project in the project area so I can see all the beautiful things that you are creating. If you have any questions, please do put in there. I'll be more than happy to answer them and guide you in any way possible. Also make sure to check out the resource area, I'll be putting there all the templates that I used throughout the lessons. If you want to keep up with my work and my illustrations, I'll be more than happy if you follow me on Instagram at foxbearandme. That's it for now, and I can't wait to see you in my next class.