Botanical Drawing for Relaxation: How to Doodle Simple Leaves

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] In this class, we're going to focus on doodling simple leaves for relaxation. If you love the idea of doodling simple botanicals to help you unwind, then this will be a great starting point for you. Hi. I'm Shalone Stephens, an artist and author, specialized in watercolor, illustration, and modern calligraphy. I'm also a clean doodler and a top teacher here at Skillshare with over 18 classes. You may have already seen my introduction to doodling class for beginners, which is a great general starting point if you're completely new to doodling or drawing, but you do not need to take that class before you start this one. This class is aimed at anyone who wants to start doodling botanicals. You do not need to have any experience at drawing or doodling, the only things you should need to take this class are a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. This leaves class is a start of a series focused on botanicals, showing you how to simplify them so that they can be really relaxing and enjoyable. I will show you how to break the leaves down into simple shapes and create endless varieties by changing simple elements like the shape, size, details, or distribution. We will doodle a whole page of leaves together, to give you inspiration for more doodling. Then I will show you a few ways that you can apply them to fun little projects, like dividers, to add underneath your titles, bouquets and ways for cards or journals and really simple but lovely gift tags and bookmarks. I'll also be giving you a look into sketchbooks to give you more inspiration for other simple yet beautiful doodles and designs. I hope you are ready to start some doodling. Grab your pen and paper and let's get started. 2. Supplies: Let's talk supplies. As I mentioned in the introduction, you really only need a pen or pencil and some paper. You can still easily get started with whatever you already have at home. For paper, you can use any paper you have. Some printing paper will be absolutely fine. I like to use sketch books for my doodling. These don't need to be anything fancy, you can get some really cheap sketch books from your local arts and craft stores or even from the supermarket. When I'm using pen or pencil, I'm really not that fussy about what I'm using. In this class, I'll be using this A4 sketchbook for most of the doodling. This is an Art Deco sketchbook with paper that is 150 grams per square meter which tells you how thick it is. You'd see this as 150 GSM on the label. Just to give you a comparison, printing paper would be about 80 GSM, so this sketch book paper is a bit thicker. Most normal sketchbooks will be 80 and 200 GSM in weight. I tend to like to go for the slightly thicker paper in the sketchbooks because I just like having that thickness, but it also means that you won't be able to see the pen through on the other side. Sometimes I also like to use mixed media sketchbook for my drawings or I like this small skin mini pocket sketchbook. This is actually a watercolor sketchbook, so it does give me the option of adding some color with watercolor to my doodles. But it's also got this nice texture and thickness, so you can doddle on either side and you won't be able to see through. As I'll show you throughout the class, I like to doddle especially leaves in my journal. This is a Scribble & Dot journal. This one has these dots on it as do a lot of bullet journals, which just really helps with layout and composition. Also just so you can keep your texts in a straight line. The other paper that I'll be showing you a bit later on in the class is Bristol paper and this is 270 GSM. Fairly thick again, but this has got a smooth surface. I'll be using this for some of the gift tags and bookmarks later on in the class. In terms of pens, again, you can use whatever you have. If I don't have my nice fine liner pen handy, I'll just grab whatever's nearby, whether that be a pencil or a biro or anything. I like to use these uniball pens and these Pigma Micron pens because they both have a nice flow and they also vary in thickness. These Pigma Micron pens you can get in sets from the smallest, which is 0, 05 to 08 which is the thickest. I'll be using this 02 in this class for finer details for the leaves and the uniball pen, which is slightly thicker. I'll be using the micro or the fine pen for the outline or for slightly bolder leaves. I'll also be using a pencil on some occasions throughout the class, if I just want to map out something before we actually put pen to paper. It'll be useful to have a pencil handy as well. The other things that you'll need throughout the class include a rubber or eraser and something circular to draw around for when we get to the resection. I have these metal circles which are from my die cut machine and I have them in different sizes, but you can easily find something that's circular around the home that you can draw around. Perhaps a draw or a bottle or a small plate depending on how big you want it to go. 3. Tips: Before we get started doodling our leaves, I wanted to share some quick general tips with you so that you can get the most out of doodling these leaves as a relaxing activity. The first one is to keep it simple. If you're a complete beginner, and worried about starting, just start by keeping everything really simple. Doodling can be especially great for those times when we're busy and overwhelmed because it doesn't require time or decisions or pressure. Just taking a few minutes to doodle the simplest of leaves and just repeating them can still help you to relax and get you started. Starting really simple will give you more confidence for going on to experimenting more. My second tip is to focus on the process and remember to breathe. My main goal when doodling is to relax and enjoy what I'm doing to find a few minutes of calm in my busy day. Whilst I'd also like to create something that's nice to look at, that's not my ultimate priority. If you find you are a bit of a perfectionist, then you may just need to remind yourself of this every so often to allow yourself to focus more on the process and how it's making you feel, how it's calming you, rather than the end result. I've mentioned this before, but seeking perfection in your artwork is the enemy of relaxing and being creative in general, because it would just make you frustrated and less motivated to keep going. One way we can feel more connected in the moment is by taking a few deep breaths when we get started to feel calmer and more grounded. I talk about breathing a lot, especially in my watercolor for relaxation class. But it's so important to help you feel relaxed and it can be very easy to hold your breath when you're drawing or painting, especially if you're worried about getting it just right. Keep checking in with your body and your breathing and slow down your pen strokes in rhythm with this and make sure you release any tension that you're holding in the shoulders. This can include in your hands if you tend to hold the pen really tightly, just try and loosen that grip a little bit. Focus on the goal of relaxing so you can enjoy what you're doing and remember to breathe. My third tip is, don't worry about being realistic. These generic leaves are some of my favorite to doodle because you can just make them up without having to think too much about what you're doing. There were just endless variations that you can doodle just by changing some of the elements slightly. I'll show you how to do this in the class. You don't need to use a reference, they don't need to be realistic. There is absolutely no pressure here. Finally, look for inspiration all around you. There is so much inspiration all around us that we might not have noticed before. Keep your eyes open, especially when you're out and about on walks or looking at different plants or even patterns. Whenever I go on a walk, even on the school run, I'm always looking at the gardens or trees that we pass to see the different plants and leaves. You'll be amazed at how much variety there is. Again, going back to the last tip that these doodles do not need to be realistic. You don't need to recreate what you see on these walks. But keeping your eyes open can really help to give you more and more inspiration for different versions of doodles you can make. I also find inspiration from my past work. For example, I might look through my sketchbook and see a particular element that inspires me, like the contrast between these two leaves, and then decide to use that in a future piece. I hope these tips have been helpful. Let's start our doodling. 4. Practice 1: Shapes: If you have watched my introduction to doodling for relaxation class, then you will have already practiced doodling some of these simple leaves with me for the potted plants and started to look at how we can vary them. Now we're going to go into this in more depth so that these leaves can stand on their own and we can create much more variety. Don't worry if you haven't seen that class yet, you don't need to before you do this. To start with, we'll look at individual shapes of the leaves so that I can show you how to vary them to achieve a wide range of results. I'm sure you've doodled leaves at some point in your life and it probably resembled a basic shape with two curves either side and coming to a point at either end. We can add a small stalk here to just let us know which way the leaf is facing. This is a very simple basic leaf shape to start with. A variation of this shape would be to curve the base so it's more of a teardrop shape and something as simple as this change can make your branch look quite different once it's finished. Because this curve at the base can soften the overall look quite a lot. We can also flip this so that the point is at the base and the curve is at the top. This is one of my favorite styles to doodle because it has a much more gentle feel to it. Another variation is that we can bring the base off a little and then bring it downwards, bringing it back up to that point so that it resembles a heart shape, and we can also add some lobes, bringing it in a few times, curving at the top, and then doing the same on the other side. There we already have five variations of the basic leaf shape and at each of these, we can vary even more by just changing that starting shape. We can elongate them, making them thinner or we can make them wider and shorter. We can also change the size of the pen we're using to make a more delicate leaf. I think this is a really great way to exercise those creative muscles, trying out different variations in a really simple way. Let's start with the first one. I'm going to draw a little arrow. We can elongate this, making it thinner or we can make it shorter and rounder or we can switch to a smaller pen. With this, I'm going to do the same shape, but I'm going to make the lines a bit wobbly here so it looks much more delicate. Let's do the same with this one. Again, you can elongate this, making it taller and thinner. We can make it wider and rounder. We can make it much more delicate. With this one, we can always make it like a circle, like a eucalyptus leaf. These look like small variations, but once you've turned them into a branch with multiple leaves on they can end up looking really quite different which is really nice. For this last one as we make it taller or we can add a lot more of those lobes in. We could also sharpen up those curves so it ends up looking quite different. This is just an example of a few different variations of the basic shape plus how you can change each of them. If you have any other ideas and inspiration that's coming up, you can add them in right now or any more changes for each of the shapes. In the next class, we'll move on to adding different types of detail within these leaves, which again, will change them even more. 5. Practice 2: Details: Now we have all of these different varieties of the basic shapes of the leaves. We can think about different ways that we can fill them in. I'm going to use my smaller Size 2 micron pen for this, just so the details are a little bit finer than the outline. [NOISE] One way we can add some details, which will be the suggestion of a vein is to start from the base and do a flicking line upwards. When you flick this, you just quickly move the pen forward and lift it off the page, and it means that line will taper slightly, getting lighter towards the top so it's quite delicate. We can draw a line straight down the center from the top to the bottom, and then add some veins on either side slightly curved upwards. We can start from the base and use multiple flicking lines and a bit higher in the center and this just gives it this nice effect of a shadow at the base. This is what I like to use quite a lot. We can add that center line, and then instead of having these solid lines for the veins either side, we can do these flicky lines, just curving upwards as we lift the pen up. We can also do the solid veins but with with less veins. With this one, I'm just going to do them where it reaches that lobe. We can draw some vertical lines all the way along. We can just do one single line from the base to the top. We can also color the whole leaf and so for this I'll use the thicker pen. [NOISE] This can create some lovely contrast, especially when you have a design with lots of different branches, it can really stand out. With these more delicate leaves at the bottom, we can continue with these delicate wobbly lines for the veins. Instead of having a really straight line, just use a really light touch. The pen isn't as straight. It just gives it a more delicate feel. I encourage you now to continue filling in these leaves on your own using the same details we've already practiced because they will look different within a different leaf, or you may have had some inspiration of your own for how to fill these in. [MUSIC] 6. Practice 3: Distribution: Now we have an idea of the variety of leaves that we can make. We can start to think about how to create branches out of them. The size of the leaves that we choose to use and the way we distribute them along the branch can create very different results. If we use our first leaf shape as an example with the curved edges and the pointed top, the very basic shape, we can use larger leaf sizes making them quite big and just add perhaps two leaves. Start with a curved line agile leaf and then partway up bring another branch maybe going a bit higher and add another leaf. There's one way we can keep it really simple. We can draw a curved line for the stem, add one of these leaves at the top probably a bit smaller and then going down each side add a small stalk curving upwards and then another leaf and then on the other side at the same position do another one and then just carry on working your way down. So this branch is very simple and very uniform. We can start again with that curve line with the leaf at the top. But this time we can make these leaves appear at alternating points on the stem and remember each of these can be adjusted by varying the size of the leafs, bearing the number of leaves so you could have these a lot closer together and smaller lot more of them or you could have just a few of them and that again will make it look a lot different which is really nice in a design with multiple branches where you want to create a lot of contrast and difference between all of the leaves that you're doodling. Another way you could do it as curved this line perhaps making it more of an S shape and your leaf at the top and this time we can bring these stems off but add perhaps two or even three leaves coming off of them and maybe some of them will still have one. Bring this up and maybe have three on this one and maybe just one curling in there. And then we'll want to bring out a bit more to balance out so I might do one with two one there and then just add one more in here. That's a bit more random with a lot more leaves coming off the edge. Again it's quite a different look to the others. We can draw part of the stem and I like to do this when I want to create a more random look a bit more of a chaotic look with the leaves with some of them overlapping this center branch so then I would draw a leaf and then bring this stemmed down, curving round back to that main branch and then you can carry on this line and I'll add another one off here. I might do one more curving round the top here. Bring this up and then add one at the top and then you can just fill them in and another one through here. Because as you go along just keep looking back at it and thinking, is there anywhere that needs a bit more balanced to it. I might bring another leaf down here. You can also do the leaves overlapping one another so if I added one more in here you just drove up to the leaf, follow the pen through over the paper obviously without touching and then carry on down which gives it a much more organic look. You can vary the sizes of the leaves within a branch. If we start again with that curved line we might want to start at the top with a small leaf and another thing you can do is connecting these leaves directly with that center stem so removing these stocks and that will again create a different look. What we're going to do with this one is as we move down we're going to make these leaves slightly bigger. We can also make them different sizes as they alternate down the branch so start with one at the top or perhaps to a small one and then a large one all the way down and obviously they don't have to look realistic this is just about doodling for fun. Again I encourage you to continue filling your page up. Just thinking about different ways you can vary the branch using the same shape of a leaf rather than thinking about copying something directly. I know a few students have said to me they struggled to come up with the ideas themselves and it's easier to replicate something. But I think doodling is a great way to just be able to sit down with your pen and paper and have the freedom to try different things without the pressure. Continue practicing these with this leaf shape to see what you can come up with. Vary the sizes of the leaves, the distribution, the number of the leaves there are lots of different ways that you can vary them and then in the next video we move on to creating a whole page of different leaves together. [MUSIC] 7. Projects: Page of Leaves Part 1: Now that we have covered all the basics for how to create variation in our leaves so that you know how to design them on your own, we can now practice doodling a whole page of different leaves together to help you get started with your own doodles. For most of the outlines, I'll be using my uni-ball pen and then switching to the Size 2 for the details. But for some more delicate leaves, I'll start with the 2. We can start with a fairly big leaf up in the corner, and I'm going to do one of either side. With this one, I'm going to stick with this uni-ball pen, and I'm going to draw a line down the center and then small lines either side. This is going to give quite a bold look. Now as all these points meet at the top and the bottom, it creates this darker area, which gives it more of a shadow, which is nice. That's our first leaf complete. Now let's do one with the rounder shape. We can have two of these next to each other and do one slightly taller. I'm starting with a point and then rounding it at the top. I'm going to connect these to the center line directly and have them coming off at the same area. I'm just going to carry my pen through this leaf so I can go underneath it. Then switching to my smaller pen, I'm going to just draw a line straight through each of the leaves. Going back to this basic pointed shape, I'm going to do a branch now which is probably a bit more random, maybe with some overlapping leaves, especially going over that center. I want to be filling in this area here. I'll start with this branch leaning up towards the left and then I'm going to draw this leaf in which can overlap the center line. This one I'm going to make it a bit more wobbly line to give it that delicate look. Then carry this pen through and then curve it round so this branch is an S shape. Then do one at the top which are leaning over. To balance it out, I'm going to do another one coming off here. I'm going to bring this up. I'll bring one off here as well. I just do one more here. I'm going to do another one at the top because I feel like this is bending over a bit too far. It looks a bit odd. I'm going to bring this up in the middle then add one in there. Then to balance out, I'm going to fill in this gap. With a Size 2, I'm going to continue with this slightly delicate wobbly line through the center and then adding these curved lines for the veins either side. Going back to my uni-ball pen, I think I want to use the curved lobed leaf for the next one. I might use the elongated style of the leaves. I'll start by curving the stem round and then do the top one first so I have a quite tall leaf, and then add some sides. It got a little bit wider. That's fine. I'm doing this alternating, so they're not sitting next to each other on the branch. Let's do one more. With this one I think I'm just going to keep to my uni-ball pen and then just do this flicky line through the center. Stepping back and looking at my page, I feel like I want a bit more contrast now. I think the next branch I'll put in, I'm going to color it in, which means I probably want it to be fairly small. I'm going to add this in here. For this, I'm going to use the same curved with the pointy base shape. Start at the top, again, making it quite small. This time to make it different from this one, I'm going to give these small leaves these short stems and make them alternating. I'm just going to bring that down a little, and then I'm going to color these all in. For the next one, I want to use a bit of a different shape. One that we haven't used is that heart shaped leaf, so we can use that here. I'm going to start with an S-shaped branch, and then draw the first leaf at the top. I might make this a bit higher. I'm going to bring it down, and then I'm just going to add some on the sides. I might do a longer stem here so that I can add two, and they can be slightly overlapping. It's really nice to have them pointing in different directions so it's a nice contrast to the more uniform branches. For this one, I'm going to draw lots of veins quite close together and, as they go down, just curve around so it reflects the anti-shape. As you do these ones, just remember you're breathing, especially as we're focusing on repetitive lines. Make sure you're not holding your breath. Relax your shoulders, relax your grip on your pen. Sometimes you can be so focused you don't even realize that you're holding tension. As we do these, I'm sure you'll be discovering some favorites or some ideas or different ways you can do it, and everyone will have their own preferences. It's just about experimenting to discover what yours are. Going down to this corner, so I want to look at the whole page and these bigger ones, they're quite sharp. They've got a lot of the pointed tops to them. So I think I want something a bit larger that's a bit softer and rounder here. So I'm going to start with the branch, do this halfway up to allow myself that overlap again, and then I'm going to do a rounded leaf, and then bring that down and connect it to the middle. Then I'll continue that branch up and draw the leaf at the top. Now we can fill this in, so we'll probably have a few coming off each damaged side. Going back to my smaller pen, I'm going to do these flicky lines at the base for this one. I feel like these details can really transform your branch. Sometimes they don't look like much when we've just got the outer shape. Once you've added some more delicate details in them, they can look really lovely. We've got some space here, so I'm going to fill this in with a leaf that has variation of sizes within it. So going back to our last class, we had a branch that started quite large at the bottom and the leaves were getting smaller as it got to the top. Again, I'll just start with this curved line. For this, I think I'll use the teardrop shape because we haven't used that yet. Again, that's going to add some softness with that curved base. Starting fairly small at the top. Then just getting gradually larger as we move down. For this one, I think I'm going to do a similar shading as we've done with this one with the flicky lines, but I'm going to do it at the top and the bottom. So adding it at the base and then also from this point. 8. Projects: Page of Leaves Part 2: So again, standing back from the page, I can see that I've got three branches here that are all veering off to the right. So to balance that out, I'm going to do one here which is facing towards the left. For this one, I think I want something a little more delicate with small leaves, bit more randomly placed, so I'm going to start with the branch. Again, slightly S-curved, I'll add a small leaf at the top. This is going to have the two points, the top and the bottom, and then, I want quite long stems coming off this. We can have multiple leaves, so I'm going to bring this up. Then, I'll add a few as we go along. So I'm going to make this bush here at the bottom, so this one is going to be a bit shorter, with fewer leaves on. Just add a small one inherits well just to fill that space, and then probably just have to up there. So again, I'm going to do a long one coming from the base. I'm going to do this one overlapping because I wanted to fill that gap there, and then I'll have another short one coming off at the top with some branches coming down and a little bit up there just to fill in that gap as well. With these I'm just going to use the smaller pen just to draw a line down the center of each leaf. So going back to my uni-ball pen, I think that I want to have a colored in leaf here again to give it some contrast, that's the only one colored in at the minute and that's quite small. So I want to probably fill this one in first, just so I don't smudge this one, so I might go for another softer curved leaf here just to keep the page looking nice and soft. So I'll think I'll do either one or two coming off by side, keeping it very simple. So with this one, I'm going to use this same detail with the flicking lines because that's one of my favorites to do, with this style of leaf, I think it really suits it, but feel free to choose another detail to experiment with. So now, I filled in that gap, I'm going to go down to the bottom, and do a more contrasting leaf. So I'll curb it to the right so I can keep it out of the way at this one, and I'm going to do some long thin leaves with the pointed ends for this one. These are going to have the stems, but there can be a bit more sporadic not necessarily pointing the same direction. I might add another one here just to balance that one out. I'm just going to color these ones in. Feel free to turn your page as much as you need to, especially when coloring in. Make it more comfortable. Obviously, I'm keeping my paper straight for you so you can clearly see what I'm doing. Might look a bit awkward sometimes. But if I wasn't filming, I definitely be moving my paper around. So up here, I'm going to create another branch similar to this style. I really like these delicate leaves. But this time, we can make it look different with perhaps by adding a lot more veins to it and distributing them slightly differently. So I draw my branch very long. Again, wobbling this line a bit. This one, I'm going to bring underneath this one. So come up slightly and then down, and I'll add another one onto this same stem, and again, I'll have one coming up and this is going to go underneath, overlapping. I might just have one more at the bottom. So for this one, I'll start with that line in the middle. I'm going to keep these veins really close together. So again, remember to just go slow, you don't need to rush this focus on your breathing. This part of it. When you don't have to think about what you're doing, you don't have to think about the design or if it's in the right place. This can just be really calming, and all you're doing is just repetitive lines filling in the outline. When you get to doing these ones that go underneath, always try and do one which is whole, and then that will help guide the smaller ones getting underneath. Otherwise, you might find that you've got it at the wrong angle or in the wrong place. This is quite a nice thing to do. Whenever you've got a few minutes. You don't have to fill in a whole page at once. You can just add to it and you can pick it up and put it down, which is one thing I really love about just using a pen and paper or pencil and paper. Just keep it lying around the house somewhere accessible, and then just pick it up. When you've got five minutes. If you are having a cup of tea or waiting for something to cook, is always pockets in your day where it can be so easy to just pick up your phone and scroll or look at the news. When if you used just those few minutes, just to do something really simple and relaxing. It can make you feel so much better for whatever is next in your day. Something for you, something to help calm you, something to help focus on your breathing. Something you enjoy, and then when I've created these pages, I love to keep them as a reference as well. So if I want to create something in my bullet journal or make a gift tag or a card. I can just have a look back and think, you need this leaf. This branch will work nicely with that. Especially if you're not feeling particularly creative. You can always look through your work and hopefully, it should inspire you. 9. Projects: Page of Leaves Part 3: Next to fill this gap, I think I'm going to use this style of leaf because we've only got one of those so far. I want to create a fairly big sized leaf. So maybe I'll just have three are the leaves on it like this one. I start with my branch coming down. Then because of this leaf coming here, I want this one fairly low so I might have this one higher up. Then this one can come off here. So with this one to make it look even more different to this one, I'm going to draw the lines down the center, sticking with my uniball pens so it's a bit bolder, and then only having two veins either side reaching up to those lobes. Now, we've got some fairly small spaces to fill in. I can probably fit a fairly decent size one in here, and then I'll probably have a thinner one here and a smaller one here as well. Just to fill in those gaps. So I'm going to draw a branch going off to the right here with this teardrop shaped leaf. Fairly decent size leaves on this one. Then I'll have two here. It's going to go into that one slightly. Then again, I'm going to do two here. Then I'm going to have one coming down and it's going to go under this just coming out the end and then one going up. Probably not going to come out the other side. Because this one's facing down so much, I think I'm just going to do another one. I'm just going to keep it really simple with just that flicky line for the vein. In this small gap here I want something fairly delicate, probably with this roundish shape. So I might have two branches like that. See how this pans out. Then using the smaller pen to add in maybe just a line again like this one. Up here, I'm just going to add probably a two leaf branch. Bring this over and then bring that up, and then have the curved leaf. Actually I might add another one in, see how it looks. Maybe one more down here and just one more on the other side. Then for this one we can do a similar detail like that and actually I'm going to use my smaller pen so it's different. So starting down the center and then drawing lines either side. It's a little bit more delicate than the other one. We can fit a few more lines in there because they're finer. I think it's really good to have a flexible attitude to your doodling and let your doodles evolve. Obviously initially I wanted to do a two-leaf one, I didn't think they look quite right, so I wanted to add more. So just don't get so set on what you're doing. We've got one more space here. I think I want a colored in one, so I'm going to do fairly tall stem going up and have quite small leaves on it, which are going to come directly off the stem alternating. There is our page complete. I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope it's also shown you that there are so many different varieties you can make. You can make a page of doodles like this every day for a year and come up with different ones, different variations. Obviously, you will find your preferences. I love to do these delicate ones with the wobbly lines and the round ones which have more gentler calming field to them. But I really enjoy doing all of them. I hope you found some that you've liked and it's inspired you to continue experimenting further. 10. Projects: Dividers: I love using simple leaf branches as dividers in my journals or in my notes. They can sit directly underneath the titles and just break up the page nicely. Here are a couple of examples in my journal. This one's for a task list, and a slightly different version for reading list. These dividers are a really easy way to add a little bit of creativity to your pages, keeping it simple and minimal. I know that for me, I would love in an ideal world to have a journal that I spend lots of time decorating with lots of beautiful drawings and decorations, but I know I just don't have the time to keep it up and it just adds the pressure when I really want my journal to be something I use regularly without any stress. Using simple ideas like this is a really nice solution, if you also find you struggle for time to dedicate to decorating your journal, or if you'd just like to keep things a bit cleaner and more minimalist looking. Here are some more examples of different dividers that you can use. We can base this on the leaves that we've already practiced in the previous videos and just simplify them a little bit. I think it's nice to keep these dividers fairly simple and not too distracting. There are a few ways that we can design these, either using single branches or two branches together linked like these ones or with a small gap in the middle. Then we can also think about positioning underneath our title so we can keep the dividers quite small and subtle, having them shorter than the wording, having them in the same length, or having them longer for more of an impact. We can have them off to a side, which is a really nice effect, or we can use two branches, like I showed you in the previous page, linked together or with the gaps in the middle. Grab a blank piece of paper, and we can fill this in with ideas for our dividers. I love having these pages of inspiration that we can refer back to with lots of different ideas on. They're always useful when I want to do something in my journal, perhaps if I'm stuck for idea or want to say what I've liked doing before. We'll just start with the shape of the branches that we can use underneath the title. We'll just start by drawing the branches without the leaves to give you an idea of the different ways that you can create that foundation, and then we can go back and fill in with the leaves at the end. For the single simplest of branches, we can just use a C curve. We can use a small C curve or a larger one. I'm keeping these fairly shallow because I want them to sit nicely underneath the word. Then we can also do this upside down, so the other way around. If you need to, if you're more comfortable, you can always draw these out in pencil first. That's absolutely fine, too. Those are simple C curves, and then we can also use an S curve. Again, keeping it fairly shallow, or we can make this a bit deeper. We can also use these S curves off to the side. They're quite nice for that, just like the example I showed you earlier here. For this, we can just practice writing a word as our title. Then I'd usually start just left of the center, curve up, and then round and then finish roughly in line with the word at the bottom edge or just above. As I showed you, we can also use two branches. The simplest way to do this is to have two branches coming off in the same direction. If we had a main branch, we can have a small one coming off. Again, once we filled in these with leaves, you'll see the effect much more. If we're going to have two branches linked together, we would just cross them over slightly in the center. I'm not going to make this crossover too large, I want it to be fairly subtle. These can be a little bit trickier because we want these to be fairly symmetrical. Again, you can go back to using your pencil for these just to get that right. When we're placing this underneath the word, we just want to find the center point within the word, and then have this center point roughly matching, which is really useful if you use dotted or gridded journals because you can count the squares or dots. Again, we can do this the other way around, just having that small crossover, or we can use those S curves. I'll do the S curve the other way around as well just to show you. Then we can also do two branches leaving that gap in the middle. I'm just going to do this title again, just to demonstrate how I would position this. Again, it's about finding that center point, leaving a small gap, and then starting off to the right. So I'd have two of those curves. Again, we can do this the other way around, and we can do it with the S curves as well. We can also change the positioning of these curves. For example, with the C curves, we could keep it fairly flat in the center and then just having it curved upwards. Here we have a dip going downwards, but this is quite flat in the middle. So it can create quite a different look. Again, practice that the other way around. Then again, we can do that with the S curves as well, so going downwards. In terms of adding your leaves to these branches, one thing to definitely think about when you're drawing the branches underneath your title is to make sure you leave enough space to actually add the leaves because you don't want the wording and the divider to be too crammed together. So make sure you need a decent enough gap. There's a fairly small gap here, so these leaves have to be quite small because I don't want to go too close to that word. The other thing is, if you want them to look quite even and fairly balanced with these single ones, it's a bit simpler. You would draw this leaf at the end, and then you may want to just make this a bit longer just to balance it out. You might want to think about that when you're doing these S curves as well because if you have a fairly big leaf coming up here, you might want to stop this line earlier so that the top of that leaf is a bit more even with the rest of the branch. With these two branches linked together, I quite like to have them fairly symmetrical, especially in the center. So if I were to start the leaves around here on this side, I would aim to do that the same on the other side because I think this ends up looking quite a lot nicer. Now we can go through and fill these branches in with different leaves, and you can think about which styles of the branches you prefer. If you've got small space like me, you can add some more in and experiment with different designs. Then like I said earlier, you can keep these somewhere that you can refer back to when you're journaling for inspiration. I'll let the video roll whilst I'm filling in my own branches, and then in the next video, we'll look at how we can turn our leaf doodles into cute little leaves. [MUSIC] 11. Projects: Wreaths Part 1: Another lovely way to use these leaves is to create a wreath. You can try out lots of different designs in your sketchbook, perhaps referring back to the practice sessions and page of leaves again for inspiration. These can be incredibly relaxing because they can be repetitive. Also, the shape of the circle tends to evoke a feeling of communists as circles can represent safety and wholesomeness. Here are some more examples in my sketchbook. You can make these as simple and repetitive as you like, or try out different styles and make them more delicate and detailed. I like to use these wreaths in my journal for either monthly cover pages, here is one example, or you can add them to a layout like this and add a nice motivational quote or some nice lettering inside. In this video, we'll draw six wreaths together, all in slightly different styles, from very simple, and repetitive, and uniform to slightly more detailed and delicate with different styles just to show you what kind of options there are. Hopefully, this will give you lots of inspiration for how to design your own wreaths. I usually like to start my drawing, the circle in pencil first to give myself a guide, and you should be able to find plenty of circular things around your home of different sizes that you can draw around for this. I like to use these metal circles from my die-cutting machine. This one I'm using is roughly two-and-a-half inches. I'm just going to start by drawing out my six circles with my pencil. The first wreath we're going to do is going to be very simple and repetitive. These are some examples of what I mean, and some more here. These two are obviously starting to get slightly more detailed. I'm using my uni-ball pen. The first thing I'm going to do is just trace over this pencil line with my pen. As I said in an earlier video, feel free to move your paper around as much as possible. I would be moving my paper around now to enable me to be as comfortable as possible to be able to draw this circle. The reason I started with this is because I know that I'm doing a simple wreath and none of the leaves are going to be overlapping this circle, so it's fine to start this way. For this one, I'm going to do the upside-down teardrop shape leaf. I'm going to do two at the same point on either side. I'm going to leave a small gap and then do another. I'm just going to work my way around the circle, just repeating this. One thing I really love about wreaths is this repetitive motion. It's repetitive action. You know that there's an endpoint. You don't have to think too much about what you're doing. We can just keep going. Just every so often pausing, taking a step back, checking that everything is balanced. It can be easy to suddenly start making that gap smaller as you go around or larger. Just keep checking every so often. As we get closer to this endpoint, we want to start to think about how many more we can fit in here. Either I can have one here or I can try and fit two in. I will just go for one in the middle. That's the main wreath done and then I'm just going to add my details with my finer pen. With these really simple wreaths, they don't take too much time at all. That just took us a few minutes to do. Adding these to your journal, or to a gift tag, which I'll show you a bit later, or greetings card, or just doodling them for fun doesn't have to take long. That's our first wreath finished. For our second wreath, we're going to move on to something slightly fuller and more organic, like this one. This will take us a little bit longer. I'm going to use my size two for all of this because I want it to be a little bit finer. For this one, I do want some of the leaves to overlap that circle line. I'm not going to draw the whole circling first. I'm just going to draw in gradually. I'll start just with part of the line, and then I'll fill in some of these leaves. For this one, I'm going to have either one or two, or three leaves coming off of each of these stems. I'm going to bring this circle lineup a little bit more and then have another one which is overlapping even more than that one. I want some of these leaves overlapping each other as well to give that more organic look. I'm going to continue a little bit more with the circle now. You can always come back at any point and just check the circle is looking balanced and add an odd leaf in here and there. I might come back and add a leaf in here a bit later, we'll see how it goes. I'll do another one overlapping here. This one again is quite repetitive in the sense that we're just working around the circle doing the same thing adding either 1, 2, or 3 branches every so often, just drawing a leaf in which overlaps that circle line, drawing a little bit more circle and adding some more leaves in. The more you do this, the more you'll get a better eye for composition and balance and where the leaves should sit. Now I've completed the circle. I'm just going to stand back and have a look and see where there are some gaps. There are some small gaps here, and I want some overlapping leaves to bring this piece together. This looks a little bit thinner on this side, so I'm just going to add a couple more in here as well and then maybe up here. I'm happy with that. I'll just add one more in here the last one. Now I'm just going to go around and add in my detail, which is just going to be a flicking line coming up from the base of each leaf. Then I'll just give it a few minutes for the pen to completely dry before I erase the pencil line. Don't be tempted to do that too quickly because you might smudge and ruin your work. I know that I've been impatient in the past and done that too many times. 12. Projects: Wreaths Part 2: For the next wreath, we are going to do a slightly different style where we have gaps in-between the branches. These three are examples of this. We'll use two different leaves, and I'll show you how to divide your wreath up roughly so that you have the same number of branches. You can see here in this example, I didn't do that. I didn't divide the wreath up and I've got two of the plain branches here sitting next to each other, while ideally I would have liked it alternating. It's not a big deal, but I'll just show you how to prepare for that. The easiest thing to do is to break the wreath up into an even number of branches. For this we'll do eight branches. We can just put a mark roughly at the top and bottom and at the side. That's now in four even sections, and then we'll just do another mark in-between those. Now it's in eight sections. For this one, I'm going to use two at the same branches. We'll color one in and we'll leave one blank, but you can use alternating branches if you'd like. For this, I'm just going to start a little way above that mark and I'm going to finish just before the next mark and that will leave a gap. Start with a line and then I'm going to draw my leaf at the top, so the leaf ends just before that line. I'm going to draw leaves at the same point going down, and I'm going to have three. We can just repeat this now. We can color this one in, and then we'll just carry on doing the same all the way around. This one I'm going to color in again. Probably at this point you're turning your page to make it easier for you to draw these, which I would definitely be doing and definitely recommend. Just be careful not to smudge these with your hand as well. That one is done. As before, please don't be tempted to rub out those pencil lines for a good few minutes, especially because we've colored these in, so there's a lot more ink that needs to dry there. For the next wreath, we are going to do one like this. It has two laurels up each side with a gap at the top and they're crossing over at the bottom. We're going to be using lots of different branches within here. It's quite different to the ones we've done already so far. For this one, I'm just going to grab my pencil again and just mark a point at the top of the circle on both sides where I want the leaves to stop, just so it looks nice and balanced. Using my unit ball again, I'm going to start with the two top branches. I'm going to draw the line partway up, and then I'm going to draw a fairly big leaf coming up to that point, and then some more leaves on the other sides at alternating points. This one have five leaves on. I'm just going to mirror that on the other side. Starting roughly the same point, and then drawing the top leaf first. Now I'm going to leave a small gap and then draw in a rounded leaf. This branch is going to come all the way down. When we get to the center point, it's going to bring it down in that slight curve. I'll do the same on the other side. Bring this down and cross it over. Now, I'm going to fill this branch in with more of these leaves on alternating points again. Now in this gap, I'm going to do another leaf style which will be similar to this one but longer stemmed. I'm going to have this, coming off here, so it joins up and then add in a few more layers and these is going to sit underneath that leaf below. I'm going to color these ones in to add some contrast and so we can easily see that that leaf is distinctive to the others. I do the same on the other side. Start with that longer leaf which touches this bottom branch just so I can join them up. This is just one way to do this. You can play around with lots of different styles of leaves and try out different processes for adding them in and see what works for you. You start with a pencil, and then obviously a lot easier to adjust your design as you go along them. Now I'm going to grab my size 2 pen and just add some details to these leaves. I'm just going to add the flaky line to these bigger leaves at the top and then the shading at the base of these ones. I think I'll leave that one there. I like the simplicity of it with just the three different branches. If you'd like to add a few more, you can add some smaller ones like in this example and they just sit behind the leaves that are already there. These are just a rounded leaves coming off in a few different places. 13. Projects: Wreaths Part 3: For the next wreath, we are going to again use this Laurel style but with these wobbly lines going around. For this, I did try out a few different options to see what I preferred, having the leaves going a bit higher and a bit fuller, especially in the middle. These ones come off to the edge a little bit more, which I quite like the look of, and have the contrast of the darker, smaller leaves within. This one, I left that little gap in the middle. Again, these leaves come off to the side slightly and then this is just a different style of leaf with more detail in and I use a thicker pen for these lines. For this one, we're going to stick to the wreath like this. I'm starting with my uni-ball pen again, and because some of these leaves will be overlapping, I'm not going to draw the whole circle in to start with, but I will start with my pencil and just mark out where I want the leaves to go up to. I don't want them to be too high, so probably about halfway or just below. I'm going to start with the first leaf at the very end, so just curving the line off, and then bringing that leaf outwards. I'm going to do the same at the end, and that just gives us the finishing point for where those branches end. Now we can just go ahead and fill in the leaves. Again, I'm going to be using either one or two stems for each of the leaves, and then overlapping a few of them. I'm going to get a little bit sparser as we move towards the center point so that we can have a gap, there. I'm going to continue the pen around and then on the opposite side, I'm going to start the leaves again facing the opposite direction. Now we've done the main leaves. We can just have stand back and see, is it balanced? Do we want to add anymore in the center? I might just add another one in there. Maybe another one, but fairly low-lying so it doesn't give it too much height. I'm happy with those leaves. I'm going to switch to my size two pen. For these, I'm going to add in slightly more detail to these branches. I'm drawing that full line with two veins either side just to make it a little bit different from these ones. As I've said before, take your time with these, fix on your breathing, relax, there's no rush. Relax your shoulders. Now we've done leaves. We can draw the circle in and I'm going to draw three circles. They're going to be slightly wobbly, slightly organic for different effects. I'm going to start at the top here, this leaf in this pencil line. Lightly, I'm not moving too far away from that center circle, and then for the next one, I'm just going to move slightly over and crossover, bring it so they're quite close together but they just crossed over at two different points. Then I'm going to do one more on the other side. I'm going to bring this up a bit higher, and then round, and then I'm going to draw another line along the stem, either side of the stem where there are no leaves. I don't want to go over the leaves. This is just going to add to that and then along the bottom here as well. That's that wreath finished. We can go back now and take out some of these pencil lines. I'll leave this one until the end. For the final wreath, we are going to do one like this. It's got the same three circular lines going round, which we'll draw first, and then we're just going to add in two sections of leaves either side. It's a really nice, delicate look. I'm going to start with my size two for those circles and then roughly following the circle line around. I'm just using a light touch, so it's quite wobbly, all the way around. Then I'm going to do another one, crossing over occasionally and joining up, and then one more. There we go. I want these branches to be about this size, I think. I'll start with a small leaf here just as a marker point for where I'm aiming to finish. Then these are going to have longer stems so then they can have more leaves coming off. You see that's quite long stems, so I can probably fit maybe three leaves on this one. I'm pressing slightly harder just so I can see this line a bit better, so I know where to bring the leaves off of. You can do the odd one on its own and then have the longest stems with 2, 3, 4. I'm going to do the same on the other side. I'll probably start about here so I'm just going to put a mark, and then end about here. I'll just draw that end leaf in so I know where to finish. These leaves are definitely less uniform but more scattered and delicate than some of the other ones we've done. There are our six different wreaths. Hopefully, that's given you lots of inspiration for the different types of wreaths that you can create. Obviously, this was the most simplest and quickest. This is fairly quick as well. Depending on how much time you have, you can just spend a few minutes just doing something really simple or you can really get involved, and do something a lot more detailed with more details that takes a bit more time. In the next video, we're going to be moving on to gift tags. 14. Projects: Gift Tags: Using our leaf doodles, we can make some really lovely symbol gift tags to add to our presents. These can take just a few minutes to make. So really handy, especially if we haven't got a gift tag to use or if we just want to add a nice handmade touch to a present. For these, I like to use fairly thick card so they're not too floppy. I sometimes just take a page out of my mixed media sketchbook, if I haven't got any white card lying around, or I might use Bristol card, which is much smoother. It can be handy to prepare a stack of these gift tags if you're likely to make them regularly. I'm a big fan of batching jobs like this, having lots of templates for gift tags, or bookmarks, or polaroids when I'm painting, as it just makes things easier and quicker every time so then you can just grab a blank tag and doodle your design on it. For these tags, I like to use either circle tags or the rectangular ones, and you can see I've got two different sizes here. You can make your tags whatever size you like, depending on how big your present is. For example, you can see this slightly bigger present I've got the larger circle, and for the smaller one, I've got a slightly smaller circle. For these circle gift tags, I actually use these punches, which are super easy. You just put the card inside, press it down, and it will pop out underneath. I've got these in two-inch and a three-inch. This is the smaller two-inch and this is the larger three-inch. For the rectangular gift tags, I just draw this out with a pencil and ruler and cut them out with scissors or with my craft knife and a metal ruler. In terms of design, here are a range of examples. There are so many ways that you can make these and it's really fun experimenting with different designs. You can make it really simple, just using one branch and maybe add some lettering, or you can make it much more delicate and detailed, either by making something like a bouquet like this one or having more branches coming off, having different styles of branches in a border like these or filling up the whole gift tag like this one. In this video, I'm going to walk you through how to create three of these gift tags. The templates that you'll need are one rectangular gift tag, and as I said, this is two inches by two and three-quarter inches or seven centimeters by five centimeters, and then I'm going to be showing you how to create two with a circular gift tags, and both of those will be three inches. If you don't have a circular punch, which I don't expect you to, then you can just find something roughly around three inches, draw around it, and the cut it carefully out with scissors. For the first gift tag, we're going to be using the rectangular template, and we're just going to be creating one branch with some lettering underneath. Here are three examples. These two I used my Size 2 pen so the lines are a little bit lighter, and this one I used the uniball. So it depends how bold you want your gift tag to be. I'll be using my uniball pen for this. Whenever I add lettering to a gift tag, I like to grab my pencil first and map out that lettering just so I know that it's in the right position. I want to make sure it's not too crammed in at the bottom. So I want to leave a gap at the bottom, so come up a bit, and then just lightly, I'm just going to map out these words just for you. Then I'll just stand back and check it, and I'm happy with that. I might just make this a bit higher. For the leaf, I'm going to go straight in with my pen, and then I'll come back and go over the lettering. I'm going to leave this space up here blank, that's where my hole is going to be, and I'm going to start with a bit of a space above the lettering, and then draw an S curve, and then that top leaf. I'll do two this side. One here, another two there, and then perhaps just one more there. I might just do one more on either side at the bottom overlapping. I'll go to my Size 2 for the details. In terms of process for all of these, just think about what you prefer, what makes you feel most comfortable. If you want to draw it all out in pencil first, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm switching back to my uniball to do the lettering now. I'm going to give this a decent amount of time to dry before I erase that pencil, especially because this is Bristol card and it's my thicker uniball pen so the pen will take a little bit longer to dry. I can also just add in that hole punch at the top. This is my Fiskars hole punch, and then I'll add some twine to that and then it will be ready to go. For the next gift tag, we're going to use the three-inch circular tag. So here's my template. This is the design that we're going to be basing it on. It's got this lovely bouquet, and I love drawing and doodling these bouquets. They're really simple and really delicate and pretty, and they're also great for adding to your journal. Here's an example as a cover page I did, which is really nice. Again, very clean and minimalist looking and doesn't take that long. Then here are a couple of more examples in my sketchbook which have a bit more contrast with those darker leaves. I'm going to use my Size 2 pen, and I'm going to start with the lines of these branches. I tend to like to use an odd number of branches, so perhaps five or three. Five I find works quite well, and I like to give it some height in the middle, and then as we move down, make these branches quite a bit shorter and more delicate. We'll start with the lines first and we'll have all these crossing over just above the base where we can add in the bow at the end. I'm going to start with a curve going up to the left, and then I'm going to have another one which will curve off to the right, but it will end slightly earlier. Do another one going off, so I'm starting just to the right of that first one, curving off to the left again, crossing over, and then I'm going to add those two smaller ones. A lot of these leaves are going to be overlapping each other. I'm going to start with the longest one with this upside-down teardrop shape using either two or one leaves. I'm not going to take this down too low. I think I'll finish about there. Then for the second longest branch, I use the more pointy shaped leaf, and these will start to overlap a little bit. For the one on the left, I'll do the lobed leaf. This is coming off of alternating points along the branch. Then I'm using smaller leaves for these branches that are lower down. Hey, so now we can go ahead and fill in some details. Add some shading to these rounder leaves. I may add a line down these. We've got a little gap here, so I'm just going to fill that one in as well. I'm going to color these ones in, these small ones, and I might color these lobed ones in as well. I'm just going to grab my uniball pen because these are a little bit bigger. Then I'm just going to add that both, so two loops and then two curves coming down. As I did for this one, I just added some small dots all the way around, so I'm going to do that as well, just to give it a nice border. Finally, I just want to add that hole punch. So I'm going to try and line it up so that branch is in a line, and then add it there. There is our second gift tag made. For our third gift tag, I'm going to use this circular template again. Again, this is three inches and we'll be doing a design like this, filling up the whole of the gift tag and it's going to have a nice contrast between the empty leaves, the blank ones, and then the ones with the detailed veins in. I'm going to start with my uniball pen. I'm just going to start from any edge and just draw a wobbly line towards the center. Then I'm going to start with a leaf overlapping that line and bring it in. Then carry on that line, bring it up, and then add a leaf on the end. Now we can just go ahead as before and fill in these leaves. Again, for the leaves, I'm using that wobbly organic line. You can have either 1, 2, or 3 of these leaves on each branch. Once we've done that first one, I'm just going to move it round and I'm going to draw another branch coming up from a different direction. Again, a wobbly line, just a little way in, and then I'm going to have a leaf overlapping to give it that really organic effect and carry on this line through that leaf, and then add one at the end. Again, just go ahead and draw the leaves and they can come off the edge as well, which is fine. Now we've got these two gaps here, so we can just draw instance smaller branches. I got a bit of a gap here, so I'm just going to add another leaf in there. Then here I'm also going to add in that shorter branch. These can all overlap each other. Then if you've got any gaps at the edges like this, you can just draw the the tip of the leaf coming in. There's the foundation. I'm just switching to my Size 2 now and then we can just draw some of these delicate veins into some of the leaves. I'll roughly be alternating which leaves I choose to do the veins in, but it doesn't really matter. It's nice especially when you have overlapping leaves to keep one plane and one with the veins in. It just makes them stand out a little bit more. I feel like there's quite a lot of the plain ones here, so I'm just going to add veins to this one. Just stand back and have a look and I'm pretty happy with that. Then you just need to find somewhere which has a bit of a gap for the punch, so I'll probably do it here. Going back to the first one, I'm just going to now erase that pencil line as I'm pretty confident that that is dry. We have our three gift tags. I really hope you've enjoyed making these gift tags and you feel inspired to make lots more and design your own and realize how simple they are and how lovely it can be to add that handmade touch to a gift. I'd really love to see your gift tags. So please do share them with me in the project section along with your other products from the class. In the next video, we are going to be moving on to making bookmarks. 15. Projects: Bookmarks: Another way to turn these leaf doodles into something you can use is to make them into bookmarks. If you see my watercolor for relaxation classes, you'll know I love to make bookmarks because it means you can use them around the home and see them more. I always find it relaxing to look at these little pieces of art and try to incorporate them as much as possible into daily life. They also make lovely gifts for friends or family. Just like with the gift tags, I'd recommend some fairly thick card so that these are not floppy. I made these all out of the Bristol card which I showed you earlier, which is 270 GSM. It's also nice and smooth. You could also use standard card, mixed media paper, or watercolor paper if you wanted to add some watercolor backgrounds. I've made these using a couple of different sizes. These are slightly taller and slimmer and are 4 centimeters wide by 18 centimeters tall. These ones I wanted to be slightly wider, so I also made them slightly shorter because I wanted to be able to fit the branches coming up from the bottom next to each other. These ones are 5 centimeters wide by 16 centimeters tall. You can make your bookmarks whatever size you like, depending on your design or your preference. I just drew these out with a ruler and pencil and then cut them out with scissors, or you can use your craft knife. In this session, I'm going to take you through my process for making two of these different styles. We're going to be drawing something similar to this one with the branches coming up from the bottom, and then doing one similar to this one with the leaves scattered and coming in from the edge with this border around. For both of the bookmarks, I'll be using the slightly wider template, which is again five centimeters by 16 centimeters. For this first design, we want to leave a gap at the bottom and then just a small gap either side as well. I'm going to be using my Size 2 Micron pen. Starting from the bottom, I'm going to draw in the branches first. I want that first one to be going up fairly high, it's going to be the tallest one, and curving around slightly to the right. Now I'm going to draw in the one on the right, which is the medium height one. This is going to curve slightly inwards. Then finally, the shorter one in the middle. It's going to have slight curve to it, but it's not going to bend over either way. Now I'm just going to go down and add in all of these leaves, just like we have now quite a few times. We can use either 1, 2, or 3, or you can choose a different leaf style for this one. I don't want get too close to this edge because I don't want it to look too crammed in. If you're fairly close you can just bend the leaves over a little bit more so they're not too close. Then as we get towards the bottom, I'm going to make these leaves slightly smaller. We can do the same for the other branches now. I'm going to make these slightly smaller again as we move towards bottom. Now it's just the one in the middle. Then again, just adding in those smaller ones. Then we can go in and add in our details, so whatever details you like. I'm going to do that shading at the bottom. That's our first bookmark made. If you wanted to, you could make a small hole punch at the top and add in some twine, which can look nice as well. For our second bookmark, we are going to draw these branches coming off in all different directions. Here's another example of this using a much more delicate smaller leafed branch, and you can see for both of them, I've added the contrast of having either the planar leaves and the vein leaves, or the slightly darker shading in alternating branches just to give it that extra interesting contrast. For these ones, the first thing I would do is grab my pencil and ruler and just draw out a very light border around the edge so that it don't go over it. For this, I'm actually just going to use the small lines on my ruler and line them up, and then just draw a line. I don't want this border to be very thin just to give that extra white space around the edge. Make sure you're doing this quite light so it's easy to rub out. Again, I'm going to use my Size 2 Micron pen for this. We'll use the bigger leafed design similar to this one. I'm just going to start at the bottom with a fairly big branch. These leaves are going to be quite large. As you get towards the edge, just think about where the next one might be and then take it up to the border. Then we'll do the big ones first, and then we can fill in the small ones. I'm going to draw another one in a different direction up here. I want to leave space between each of these branches because I think this white space looks really nice, so I'm not going to overlap the branches. I'll have another one coming up here. Then I imagine there'll be a leaf about here, so I'm just going to draw the tip of that there. Then I'll draw one coming downwards. We've got the biggest ones in now. We can start filling in any gaps. I'm going to bring a leaf up here, and then I'll have another one part of a leaf coming there. Another leaf coming in here, just the top of it. Then maybe one here and up in that corner. I might just do a small bit here as well. Now we can just go round and alternate the details for these. I'll start with the veins. This one is just going to be more plain and I'm just going to do that flicky line. I'll do that for these as well. Then this one, I'll add the veins in. I've just done that one at the corner as well. That's our second bookmark complete. Just wait for the pen to completely dry before erasing those lines. 16. More Inspiration and Conclusion: There are so many more ways that you can do with your leaves, either just for fun or for decorations in your journal. I like creating these pages in my journal to refer to when I need a little bit of inspiration. This is just full of ideas for what we can do with our leaves and some we've already covered. We looked at the dividers for our headings and one thing I didn't show you was how you can actually just use one single leaf underneath the title, which can be really nice. We looked at the wreaths, so using them for our cover pages, or for quotes or just generally for decorations. We can add small accents to our titles or use the leaves as bullet points, or we can make really nice borders, and these work well for cover pages as well. These edge borders are lovely within our journals as well, or we can just add simple leaves to frames within our layouts. We can also just use the leaves to fill in any gaps that we have within our pages. I like to add a small branch or leaves in my long form journal, which I mainly just use for writing just to add a little bit of decoration. Here is my mini sketch book, which I've already shown you snippets of. You can add watercolor to the background of your leaf doodles and fill in shapes like this heart. There are lots of ways that you can combine watercolor with your doodling in lovely ways. Here's an example of a border using lots of different types of leaves. Usually start with a bigger one in the middle and then work outwards overlapping alternating which ones sit behind which and adding in some contrast. This is an example of just taking one leaf shape, so there are there simple lobed leaf shape and filling a whole page of different designs with that leaf shape. Thinking about different details, different sizes, different distributions within the branch, all the things that we went over in the practice session. This is a really fun way to just exercise those creative muscles without any pressure. Similar to one of the gift tags we did. This is just a lovely way to fill a whole spread starting with one large branch, adding in another, and then ending by filling in the gaps with those smaller leaves. Here are a few more dividers. Then just thinking of lots of different ways that you can add different leaves in a downwards border. This is another repetitive design just using three different details within to add that contrast, and then a couple of bouquets which I showed you earlier. It can be really fun to add your leave doodles towards, either within the lattice or as borders outside. Here I just sketched out the letters for calm with my pencil and then just went around and brought these leaves spanning outwards for each one. This is a really nice design that I like because you're keeping a lot of whitespace in here. I think it just looks lovely on its own or it would actually work really well in a journal for really minimalist design where you could have the text just keeping to one area of the page. This is a border which I haven't yet finished, but just as an example of the contrast from the earlier border I showed. I was inspired by that to create something with similar leaves and a similar effect. Then here are just lots of little bouquet designs and experimentations. Some of them have just got the same leaves, just with contrast or using just simply three branches of different leaves. Just another repetitive fun way to fill a page. I really believed that there are an endless variety of simple leaves that you can create and have so much fun playing around with different designs. I really hope this class has given you a good grounding for how to get started and given you plenty of inspiration for what you can use them for. Please do share what you have created in the project section of the course. I would really love to see them and do let me know which type of leaves or which application you enjoyed the most. I would also be really appreciative if you could take a moment to leave a review for the class and let me know how you found it, and this will also help other students find the class. You can also tag me in any of your work on Instagram and I will share it in my stories. If you enjoyed this doodling class, then do keep an eye out for the next in the series where we will look at how to simplify and draw more specific leaves, including popular and common ones like oak and eucalyptus, and also lovely tropical leaves. Make sure you're following me here on Skillshare to get notified when that class is out. If you enjoy creating for relaxation, why not check out my watercolor book, Watercolor for the Soul, which has over 20 simple projects inside plus a beginner's guide to getting started, and lots of tips for using watercolor as a way to relax. [MUSIC] Happy doodling, and I look forward to seeing what you create.