Creative Habits: 14 Days to Start and Keep a Sketchbook Practice

1. Introduction: Drawing is at the heart of every creative idea and every visual art, and keeping a regular sketchbook habit is one of the best ways to ensure you keep drawing and keep that creative flow active. Hi, I'm Julia. I'm a sketchbook artist and illustrator of nature and a top teacher here on skill share. And I've been keeping an almost daily sketchbook over the last five years. As I've documented my adventures in nature, daily sketching has become the center of my creative process and helped me to overcome my fear of the blank page. Artists from all fields and times have integrated a daily practice into their process like Leonardo Da vinci, who kept a sketchbook throughout his entire life. He was curious about everything and kept extensive visual notes, how to draw the movement of water, how a bird can fly or his inventive ideas for flying machines. He used the power of observation to make sense of the world around him, fusing art and science together. This kind of observation and practice is something we all can do if we pause for a bit each day, get out our sketchbook and say, let me look a bit more closely at this. And this class is about just that. Take a moment each day to stop and observe helping you to nurture your artistic voice and grow observational skills while creating a place to creatively unwind your sketchbook. Here's what we'll cover in this class. We'll find out what inspires you and how you can find ideas for what to draw. We'll explore techniques and best practices to actually get creative and look forward to sketching. We'll look at how to deal with difficult aspects like perfectionism and feeling stuck, and we'll see how to avoid diversions and stay in the creative flow that brings out our best workers artists. I'll also share lots of examples from my own sketchbooks and show you how to find your own creative proms so that you never run out of ways to find inspiration. If you don't know how to get started, although you have so many beautiful art supplies. And if you regularly watch all those helpful videos with the best sketching tips, but still feel afraid to pick up a pencil, then I've got you. We'll explore how you can learn to express your creativity in a safe environment without having to live up to anyone's expectations or feeling uncertain about the creative process. This class will provide the space for you to sit down and help you to make the art you want. Whether you're an aspiring artist or a creative professional or you just want to explore your creativity more deeply. This class will help you to start and keep a creative practice with the help of regular sketching. And I really hope that by the end of this class, daily sketching will become a part of your creative routine. So let's dive in. 2. Your Project: I've designed these lessons to give you a really easy start with your sketchbook practice, and I'll share ideas and strategies for building and keeping up sketching as a daily habit. Please note that this is not a class about techniques on how to draw. I shared that in many other classes. It doesn't matter at what skill level you are for this class. This class is all about supporting you in your daily art practice. You can use any technique you like, and this concept can also be applied to other creative techniques like written journaling. Together, we'll look at how I approach my sketchbook practice, what thoughts and techniques work best for me to make it an enjoyable process. I'll also talk about challenges and setbacks that you might encounter. And then we'll dive into the daily sketches for your project, and this is really the heart of the class. So this is the part where you need to take action because simply watching these videos won't help you to develop a sketchbook practice. Don't worry. We'll go through this step by step and make a plan. So this will be really easy, non intimidating for you. First, you'll collect ideas and inspiration. We will set up a place and a time frame so that you always know what to do next. Your project will be to sit down for ten to 20 minutes each day over 14 days and create a simple sketch of objects that you can find in your surroundings or from references you have collected. I also have prepared a list of subjects in case you need some inspiration. It's in the resource section as a downloadable PDF. Keep the sketches themselves really simple. You don't need any special materials or techniques. And after your daily sketching session, I'd like you to take a moment to reflect how the session went, what you like about your sketch, what you would rather like to change. So be gentle yourself in this and plan to include any changes to your approach on the next day in your next sketch. And I'll also show you how I do this with my own work. To avoid overwhelm, don't expect too much from yourself. Small changes are usually easier to integrate. Was big finished drawings or mastering a new technique after only one or two days are not our goal in this class. We will look at a few strategies against creative overwhelm a bit later. You can use any materials you like, but I'd advise a very simple kit so that you don't encounter decision fatigue when you need to choose a pen. If you want to challenge yourself a bit and try out a new tool, that's great, too. If you tend to collect art supplies and wait for the perfect tool before you start actually creating something, this is the perfect chance for you to take the jump and use one of these wonderful materials. Don't be shy, don't hold back. It's just pigment and paper, and it'll be fun. So I'd like you to try out daily sketching for at least 14 days. I would love to see you posting your progress over this time in the project section and you can use the projects and resources tab to share your project. And I will be here for feedback and guidance. You can find my own 14 sketches in the project section for inspiration to. And if you like, share your list of ideas or collected objects, and as many sketches if you have. You can also share your thoughts about how the process went. If you tell me where you struggled or what went well, it's always easier for me to give you feedback, and feel free to use the discussion page for any questions or insights you want to share with me and the rest of the class. And when you finish these entire 14 days, you'll have tried out different techniques for daily sketching and have probably tried out at least one or two approaches for getting over bad art days. I hope you'll feel enough momentum that will keep your sketching after the class. With that, you'll be on a great way to develop a regular sketching practice. Remember, the more you draw, the easier this will feel and creative flow states will start to happen more often and those are the best building blocks for your creative journey. 3. Why Draw Every Day?: In this lesson, let's look at a few reasons for why it's beneficial to develop a sketching practice at all. I could list all kind of interesting things here like that. Making art every day will build your creativity and imagination, that it's relaxing and fun and that it can document your artistic journey, that regular sketching will strengthen your observational and drawing skills and that it can help you to find your artistic voice and keep you in the creative flow we long for so often. All of this is true, but it isn't the reason why I started a sketchbook practice several years ago. When I rediscovered sketchbooks five years ago, I was in a deep creative slump, and I felt burnt out by my commercial illustration work, and I wasn't excited about making any art at all. I was also afraid of sketchbooks. I was a perfectionist and was afraid of making mistakes in a bound sketchbook, which would of course be ruined by one bad drawing. I prefer to work on loose paper that I could just toss. I'm sure many of you know this feeling. It keeps us from being creative from exploring and from really expressing ourselves creatively. So then I stumbled upon nature journaling as a way to keep a regular sketchbook, and I really embraced it as a medium. I've already shared in many classes, how transformative nature journaling or nature sketching has been for me. And this approach really helped me change my sketchbook from a place that I could only face when I felt good enough to a really exciting and fun place that I can just visit every day, and I haven't stopped since then. For me, exploring nature and drawing a little bit each day in my sketchbook has been great. It helped me to let me explore ideas in a safe environment. The sketchbook is a place for experiments for enjoying creativity, for making mistakes. It lets me document my artistic journey and my time in nature, and the sketchbook is for learning, experimenting and growing observational skills. It also lets me to develop better drawing and painting skills through a strong daily practice. It allowed me to share my experience of nature with others, and sketching helped me to nurture my artistic voice. Also it helped me to be more patient. This is actually a big factor for me since I was very impatient and fidgety before, and this has gotten much better and even changed my drawing technique. Taking time for observation, especially of nature has a really calming effect for me. Very importantly, keeping a sketchbook has created a place for me to creatively unwind. I've also found that a small drawing each day stops creative overwhelm, since it will become a habit at some point and will get you out of your comfort zone in a nice non judgmental way really keeps you in the creative flow of things. All in all, I'm no longer afraid of my sketchbook and I'd love to help you to go through a similar transformation. I know so many of you feel paralyzed when it comes to making art, and I felt the same at one point. You want to be creative, you have all the tools, maybe too many, but you don't know how to start and the empty sketchbook pages just feel daunting. You feel you don't have the necessary skills to create beautiful work. Maybe you're stuck at collecting inspiration endlessly, or you binge watch these kind of instructional videos to get all the great tips. And I'm here to help you with this. I know what this feels like. So over the course of this class, we'll face the fear of the blank page together and figure out how you can sit down and make the art you want. I'm going to guess that the sketchbook will become one of the best tools to do that. You'll collect easy creative prompts for every day to build your sketching habit, and I'll show you strategies that help me get from blocked and uncertain to really comfortable with my creative ideas. One way to start with that is to set up your creative environment, and this is what we'll do in the next lesson. 4. Setting Up a Creative Environment: In this lesson, let's see how we can set up a creative environment for your sketching activities. This is crucial because it will help you enter this creative flow state more easily. Depending on your daily life and your routine, this might look a bit different for everyone, but I'll mention several options that should work no matter what your circumstances are. Let's start with establishing a creative setting. This can mean a fixed place for making art or a regular time. It might mean having a small sketching kit in a bag that you take with you when you go out. Essentially, it means setting up your environment in a way that makes it easier for you to make art. I know not everyone has the space at home for a dedicated art desk, but maybe you can put all of your tools in a little box or a bag where they are waiting for your next sketching session. Maybe you have a chaotic schedule, but Maybe there's also the small pocket of time you haven't considered yet like your lunch break or that time directly after breakfast, after the kids have left for school. This could work for ten to 15 minutes a day. This is all you need for a daily sketching session. Make time for sketching. Otherwise, it will get lost in your daily schedule. So whatever measure you can take to make an activity more of a routine will help you to anchor it in your day. Of course, several strategies will work even better. Making something a routine will also help to make it less daunting and uncomfortable. Sketching will just become another thing that you do, and having a dedicated time and place or a tool kit for it will anchor it in your mind. Let's look at my setup. I'd like to start with a clean, unclattered desk with a few favorite artworks surrounding me, a nice view from my window and my most needed tools nearby. It also really helps me to have a nice beverage, maybe a podcast to listen to or just bird song from the outside. I try to make my creative work space as cozy, inviting and positive as I can. And when I go outside for field sketching, then it really helps me to know that I have everything I need with me, sort of pre packaged. It all fits into the small bag that I have ready to go, and I just need to grab it, and then I can sit down wherever I see something that's interesting to me that I want to explore. So this little kit here is actually quite similar to the one that I would be taking out for field sketching. And this is what I will be using for this class. So not very much, I will have this sketch book here. This is actually brand new pristine sketchbook that I will start for this class. Then I have this beautiful small palette by Kramer pigments, which is the landscape palette. So very special watercolors that I thought would be fun to use for this class. And then in this pencil row, I just have very few tools. I have my trusty mechanical pencil, and a few brushes that I will use for this class? These are round synthetic brushes, nothing really special, I always like to use the most simple tools that are available. Another aspect that I find really important is our thoughts and feelings. Those play a role as well. What is your idea of an ideal workspace? What surroundings make you feel inspired, can you even organize this at home? What kind of materials do you like or would you like to explore? And As far as you can try to create this environment for yourself. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you can do these small steps to make it really a cozy creative environment for yourself. One really helpful tip to establish a creative setting is planning ahead for what you want to do the next day. If you want to sketch, then put your pens and brushes near your sketchbook so you can start immediately, put together a small kit. If you want to write, then put your notebook and pen on your desk. This has really helped me to focus many times planning ahead. Another big factor is to avoid diversions, and I'm going to talk a bit more about this now. If you're easily distracted, it can be a great idea to make art in a calm environment or nature or in a space where you won't be interrupted. Maybe at five in the morning if this is needed. This lets you focus more intently on what you're doing. Maybe you need to turn off your phone or your internet connection to. We all know that we live in the ad of distraction. We can all feel it, it can be draining, but we can try to reduce those distractions a little bit. So I'd like you to try something. Just for these 14 days during this class project, turn off the social network feeds and the infinite scrolling at least during your sketching time. We all know the effect that these sites have, right? They keep you hooked whether you want it or not. And endless consumption without context isn't really great for the creative brain. Let's turn that off for a little while and see if it makes a difference, at least while you're sitting down to sketch and making art. Put your phone to the side. Turn off your devices, turn off your notifications if you can. Very likely you don't need to watch more tutorials or to collect more inspiration. You just need to pick up a pen instead, and this is what I want to help you with. When you start to focus on creating instead of consuming, it can feel uncomfortable and hard. I know this from experience. I've been there, but it'll be incredibly helpful a few days into the experience, and it can feel great to just let go of all of these diversions. It's a conscious decision to turn off your devices, to spend time with paper and paint instead. So Just give it a try. See what changes during that time. Your thoughts, feelings around making art. You can still read or listen to a podcast. But I would try to avoid any short form content that's presented in a feed that refreshes automatically. There are other great strategies to remove distractions from your creative setting. These can be to go somewhere quiet or put on noise canceling headphones, go into nature, start with an uncluttered desk. Make sure you won't be interrupted that you have time for these art sessions. If you need to turn off your Internet connection or get up very early. I've done all of these things in the past to ensure I can create in peace and work without distractions. As an exercise for this lesson, I would like you to envision and establish a creative setting that helps you to make more art. Creating this setting can include setting up a dedicated sketching place. Choosing a time when you want to sketch each day and making sure you can set aside that time, putting together a small sketching kit. Nothing too fancy, just a few trusty tools that you want to use for this class over the next 14 days and getting rid of distractions in your creative environment like noise or your phone or clutter. 5. Collecting Ideas: In this lesson, we'll make a plan so that you have topics and motives to choose from when you sit down to sketch. This can be really crucial to keep practicing. I'd like you to sit down with a pen and piece of paper and think about what you would like to practice drawing or what topic you would like to explore. What kind of motives are you interested in? What you put into your sketchbook is completely up to you. For these 14 days for our project, it really makes sense to collect specific ideas or items and choose one of them each day. As you know, I love all aspects of nature, and I will have my own list of possible motives that I will sketch. And if you like, you can just draw along with me. But I would strongly recommend that you make your own list or collect some items so that you end up sketching something that you are really interested in. And you decide what goes into your sketchbook. It can be a nature journal or a collection of quick sketches of people or a visual journal of everyday things or all of this combined. So when you sit down to make your list, ask yourself, what do you like? What seems interesting to you? What moves you right now? So I've actually gone out for a walk and collected some items that I thought would be intriguing or just interesting to sketch. And I'm always curious about what is happening outside in nature. And so this is why I collected a few items and brought them back home, and I will combine them with the items from my list, and some of them are actually already on the list. And so there are items like, you know, a landscape or a bird that I can't put on this tray, but that I can use reference photos of. And you can do the same you can work from reference photos or from direct observation. I would recommend for this class that you pick things that actually exist. Drawing from imagination is often connected with creative block, and I'd like us to steer clear of this as much as we can. So I would rather choose something specific like a flower or a seed pot or a leaf. Then something that's more abstract like visualizing a feeling like joy or surprise. If you want to explore this, though, that's totally fine, but if you feel like you're having trouble, coming up with ideas for what you want to draw, it's best to stick to these real tangible objects. I'd like to show you a few examples for what you can sketch from my own sketchbooks, just so you get an idea of how I approach my daily practice. Your drawing subjects don't need to be complicated at all. In fact, I'm often the most happy with these ten to 15 minute sketches, and this includes the loose pencil lines and then all of the process right down to those watercolor layers. One way to approach this is to just reserve one page in your sketchbook and draw small items like I did here with this page titles more collections. These weren't drawn in one day or in one sitting, but over the course of the entire sketchbook, whenever I found something small and interesting that I thought might be nice to add. I actually kept some of the items here, so you will recognize this shell here, this snail shell. I thought it would be nice to revisit this and maybe draw it again in this class. This page is themed around wild flowers, seed pots and butterflies. Some of these were done on location in the field, and for some of them, I took photos so that I would have a bit to add back at home. The butterflies are usually easier to sketch from a photo. And those seed pots here were collected over several days, and I thought it would be fun to sketch them. So again, these are small, quick explorations with a limited tool set done in one place or mostly in one place. And you can also create spreads that are themed around a certain place like maybe you've spent time in a park or on a vacation and want to document what you've seen and what you've explored. So this here is another example of a page that I created in one place. This was during traveling. And I mostly used two different colored inks here. If you ignore those larger watercolor pieces that took a bit longer to complete. But these are, for example, items that I saw in a museum, and none of these sketches took very long, not even this one we have added quite a few layers of watercolor. So these are examples for what you can do if you just want to spend a few minutes a day. This page is an example for a series of sketches done over several days. Here, I was following the Poppy bloom from bud to full bloom to seed pod, finally. You can see me painting this actually in my class on loose but precise florals. I demonstrate how I painted these there. And what I want to tell you is that I think documenting one element of nature over time is such a unique and powerful way to show change in one item to see it from several angles. Here's another page with examples, more seed pods. This was done at the end of summer. A summer was slowly winding down, there were lots of possibilities to collect small items, leaves and see tots, wilting flowers, and I think the structures and the textures of these elements from nature can be so compelling to sketch and particularly with pencil only, you could easily fill an entire page by turning one of them around and observing it from another angle. I did this on the following page actually. Although these are not exactly quick sketches. They are a bit more involved and took a bit more time, but you can see the same principle here, using one kind of flower and then turning it around and seeing it from different angles. Here's another really minimal page with more found objects from my walks, and I really kept it simple here with just pencil. So this is also a possibility. So up until now, we've seen so many examples from my everyday sketching, and they're mostly based on nature, since that's what I do. That's what I love. You can, of course, choose any topic that you like. In case you'd like even more ideas, I've prepared a PDF document in the resources section for you to download with different prompts. As an exercise for this lesson, I would like you to either sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and do a bit of brainstorming about what kind of things you would like to to you. Of course, you can combine these two techniques. I would like you to come up with at least 14 topics, and it's always good to have a few more so that you can choose if you don't feel inspired by a particular idea. Now that we've set up our creative environment and have a plan for what to sketch, we can get ready to draw. 6. Day 1 Sketch: Apple: It's finally time to start sketching. And remember, it's not about doing everything perfectly. So if you feel like me and feel a bit nervous about messing up your pristine sketchbook, your white page, then just make a few marks somewhere, put in your name at the front or do some explorations in the back like we did in the other lesson. I sometimes find this helps a lot to do this. And remember, you have a plan. So you have collected ideas, maybe collected some objects like me, and we have our tools and our workspace hopefully ready. So the way I will do this is I will share my sketching process in detail with you in this lesson so that you can see how I approach it. Then I'll share the rest of my 14 sketches in slightly shorter lessons. This way, you can still follow along and get an idea of how I approach this, but you don't need to watch through hours of video. I hope you like this format and find it helpful. I've decided to draw this old reveled apple first. I don't know it somehow speaks to me. It's such a interesting object. It has a round shape, so it should be easy to draw, but it also has these wrinkles and these interesting textures and quite lovely colors. I think this will be the perfect thing to start with. I'm starting with loose pencil lines here, and I'm trying to remind myself what I want to achieve with this sketch. I want to lay down the loose shapes and add some interesting details. With the pencil lines, and then in a second step, I want to add a loose watercolor wash on top of that. I'm trying to capture the round shape of the apple here and all of those little wrinkles and interesting textures. And yeah, correcting a few things as I go. And for a simple object like this, you don't even need lots of details, so this is a really simple shape overall. And I'm mixing this nice juicy wash of green with a little bit of yellow, and I try to add lots of water so that the pigments can really flow around. I don't want to overwork this, adding in a little bit of red down there at the bottom of the apple, I'm even lifting a bit of pigment in those lighter areas where the light is hitting on the surface of the apple. For the stalk, I've mixed a bit of burnt umber and with a little bit of blue mixed in, so that is slightly neutralized. I noticed immediately that I should have switched to a smaller brush because the stalk is slightly too thick for my liking and I did this in the second step. But by then the pigment was already on the page. But I'm just adding these dark accents here and there, and now I'm mixing slightly darker mix of the same green so that I can intensify the paint layer a bit and bring out those darker areas near the bottom of the apple. So I don't want this to turn out muddy, which can happen when you add green and red together. But I also want to intensify and darken some areas a bit so that I have interesting value structure. Now it's time to add some of the details. Are a few textures on the surface of the apple where these creases are. And here I'm already mixing this blue green color for the shadow. I've decided to add this as a shadow color because I don't really have a purple in this palette, and I thought this might be a nice change to have this very fresh blue green color. This is essentially it. I'm softening the shadow a little bit adding a bit more pigment and just let it do its thing. And that's the finished sketch. 7. Day 1 Tip: Keep It Simple: As for the tools, I already mentioned that I like to keep it really simple. You can create beautiful pieces with very minimal inexpensive tools or with the most fancy materials you have. The expensive stuff will probably hold you back a bit, but maybe you also feel you can't make real art without it. When the time comes, you feel intimidated by it and your perfectionism kicks in. You've got to make a decision to use your tools instead of just collecting them. We all love art supplies, I love art supplies, but creating your sketch is more important than what you use to make it. I will only bring a mechanical pencil and a small watercolor palette to this class. I'm very fond of this kind of pencil, and I use these mechanical pencils every day. They're just work horses, and you don't have to sharpen them. They will run for a mile or so, and they're just great to work with. This palette is a small landscape palette by Kramer pigments pigment which is a company who mills their own pigments. They are a bit different than my usual watercolor. Here is the color selection. That this palette has. They are somehow a bit coarser and more opaque, I find this palette very interesting and I'd love to explore the paints more for this project here. You could choose a similar kit or bring pens or colored pencils, whatever you have or want to try out. Most of the time, it doesn't matter if you use $101 pencil or $110 extra smooth pencil with a golden holder. Especially in the beginning, it doesn't pay off to get the really expensive artist quality tools. That said, don't get the cheapest materials either. I often find that student grade materials, the home brands from art suppliers work really well. It also doesn't make sense to just get all the tools out there just in case because then you will have problems to decide what to use. If you have too many art supplies, then try to keep your selection minimal to avoid overwhelm. Exploring one tool over two weeks can also be a great challenge and learning experience. Before we take our materials for a test drive, let's quickly talk about the sketchbook. Of course, I will use a sketchbook for a sketching class, and I have brought a brand new sketchbook. So this is actually a self made sketchbook. I like to make my own sketchbooks because I like to use the same paper everywhere. This is 100% cotton paper. It's very expensive. Saunders Waterford hot dress. This is my favorite paper. But please don't feel like you need to do this. You can absolutely use whatever sketchbook you have or even use a single piece of paper and arrange all of your items on one page. But if you'd like to learn more, I've actually created a small class about how to make your own sketchbooks. 8. Day 2 Sketch: Rosehip: Next sketch, I have selected this twig with partly dried rose hips. And I think these are interesting. They sort of caught my eye because each one of them has a slightly different color, and I'm also enjoying the sort of graphic appeal that these thin stalks have. So this is really fun to draw. I think I want to keep these, of course, really elegant and thin. And so I'm taking my time with the sketching aspect. I've even moved my little clamp here so that the paper won't buckle so much. And for the red color, I'm using Vmlion here. It's a nice intense red, it's a tiny bit opaque. As I said, these paints feel really special in the way they handle. I'm dropping in the pigment into the wet wash. For this darker rose hip, I'm adding in caput mortem and a bit of blue to really dull the color and achieve a darker color. I'm also letting this flow into the stalk area into the top, that's already dry too. And you can see I've left highlights here, is the reflection from the light on the surface, and I want to show this is that the surface is really shiny. I think it's always so nice to just leave out these highlights like that. For the rest of the stalk, I'm mixing the green that I have in this palette. I think it's a chromxide green, and I'm dropping in a bit of yellow, a bit of red here and there, to have really interesting flowing colors. I don't want to render this in detail. I just want to show the overall color of this object. I'm dropping in the green of the cast shadow before the rest is dry so that the colors can mingle a little bit. I find this effect really interesting and it gives a nice dynamic to the sketch. So that's the second sketch finished. 9. Day 2 Tip: Explore Mark Making + Textures: If you want to get to know your materials a bit better, and this is really something that is good to do when you're just starting out, then do some mark making exercises, see what you can get out of your tools. This is also a way to warm up to train your muscle memory a bit or to get started in a new sketchbook. If you ever had this feeling of not knowing how to properly start a sketchbook or messing up or being afraid to start, then try this, test your materials on the first page or on the last page. This is actually a great way to make a new sketchbook feel more used. I'm using the last page for this. Let's see the different kinds of dots and stipples and lines that I can get from this pencil. I don't have a particular plan for this here. I'm just seeing what kind of marks I can make. This is a great way to explore texture and detail. Okay. And even though I've been using this particular kind of pencil for well, I don't know, several years now, I'm still always surprised at the interesting, different ways I can use it and the kind of marks I can make with it. If you don't like to do this kind of random deling then look at a tree or a fruit and figure out how you can show its surface, how you can simplify the masses. We can't really show all of the nature's details in a sketch, but we can find a visual shorthand for them. Another thing that you could do would be to just draw straight lines or curved lines, and this is a great warming up exercise. Yeah, just experiment a little bit with the tools that you have. 10. Day 3 Sketch: Seedpod: I've decided to sketch this beautiful twig of seeds or seed pods next, and what drew me to this was this really intricate geometrical shape. I'm not sure if you can see this too well on camera because it renders the sat pots quite dark, but this is really just a beautiful object that you could use as decoration at home. I'm taking my time here. First, loosely laying down some lines to orient myself and then redefining them with pencil. With this neutral brown gray, I'm dropping in the base color for the seed pods. I wish I would have left a few more highlights at that stage. I picked them out again later. But yeah, it's always better, I think, to preserve the highlights, the white spaces on the page. So as the first layer is dry, I'm going over it again with the same color, a bit more intensified to really show the dark areas, the dark values here. And I think this really helps to read this object as a three dimensional thing with different planes pointing to different sides and different amounts of light showing on them. This can be a bit tricky to figure out, so I need observation. I'm looking at actually at the object and not so much at my sketch here, and then I try to place my dark layers with really one brush stroke. Again, a quick cast shadow painted in blue green and the last finishing strokes for this sketch here. 11. Day 3 Tip: Start Small + Focus Your Attention: So I'm going to draw this dry rose hip from observation here, and this way, I can practice focusing my attention on what's directly in front of me and try to draw what I see. And I focus on the basic concepts for drawing from life here. So notice proportion angles, shapes and relating them to each other. I do this a few times from different angles. This helps me to understand this little row ship better. I start with very light lines, then try to notice the overall round shape of the object and then focus on the proportions, any angles and edges that I might need to pay attention to. I try to follow the contour with a simple outline. By the way, the concept of an outline is really an artistic invention. They don't really exist any of those outlines in nature, but our human perception places a line when there are contrasts and changes between an object and the background. It's quite ingenious really. Sketching like this feels really relaxing to me slowly entering a meditative state. This is often a sign that I'm entering a flow state, so I can draw like this for hours. But of course, I don't want to keep you that long and this is also why I've increased the speed of these recordings a bit. You want a really thorough introduction to basic drawing techniques, I have a very comprehensive foundational drawing class called sketching fundamentals. It's really great if you want to dive deep into all of the basics. But for now, let's stay with our subject here and focus on the shapes, angles, and lines. Now I feel confident enough that I can switch to my paints to explore color a little bit, and I have this landscape palette here with more muted colors. It's a bit more limited in color choices than my usual sketching kit, but I like this as it forces me to think outside the box. I think this will also make for very interesting mixing experiments. With my round brush, I'm picking up a bit of paint. I have mixed a bit of burnciana and there's put mortem here, and I think this matches the color of the, the dried rowsp nicely. I just play the color with very loose broad strokes. I don't want to be fiddling around and noodling paint in for hours here or even for more than 5 minutes really. I think I have a nice detailed drawing to work with. And yeah, recently, I've just enjoyed letting myself lose and letting the paint flow, trying to apply less control to what happens here. I try to leave white areas to indicate highlights, I try to push the pigment into shadow areas so that the watercolor really does the work for me here. Leaving everything so loosely is not always easy for me. I love precision and detail, but I figure in this approach, that's what I have the drawing for. You might have heard me mentioning this loose but precise technique or approach that I take to sketching. I think this is a beautiful way to combine these two different techniques with each other. The precision and detail you can get from a drawing combined with the loose flow of watercolor. Here I even forgo the drawing stage entirely. Try what happens when I immediately draw with my brush and just lay down those different shapes of value, those different areas of light and dark. Definitely take the time to explore your tools, see what you can get out of the materials that you want to use for this class, and remember to keep this fun and playful. Don't worry too much about messing anything up. These are sketches. As I've progressed with my sketches here on the page, you can see that they got progressively looser. I've started with a lot of precise line work, and then in the end, I just went for it without even placing down any pencil lines. And this was really fun to try out. This is one thing that I want to remind you, And what I'm actually trying to tell you in this class, that this process should be fun. Art should be fun and experimental and you should enjoy the process of creating a piece. So I'm trying not to be so precious and earnest with my art practice. And yeah, you can try this too. You can definitely try to loosen your approach and take risks, and nothing really bad will happen if you do this. So this is just pigment and paper. If you're deeply unhappy with the results, you can always throw it away, but it's really just pigment and paper. And another thing too that I would like to say is that mistakes really count two, We all learned through our mistakes, and it's actually helpful if we take a closer look at them. So I'm actually not too fond about this drawing right here. I think it's a bit heavy handed and the dark areas are not really very elegant. But I notice this and I think, Oh, maybe I can do this differently in the next drawing. So I know it can cause bad feelings to look at something that didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. I really know this. I'm aware of this. It can also be very freeing, on the other hand. Remember, this is for your enjoyment. There is no right and wrong. This is your individual journey. I believe that your sketchbook and your art practice is not the place to put yourself down or to reinforce negative thoughts. You know, I make mistakes all of the time, and I try to leave them in these demos, like I just mentioned here. It's not really a big deal for me to show this on camera, and I want to show you that mistakes are human. They happen, and you can actually use them to learn something. And we'll talk a bit more about this later, about this kind of perfectionism, but I just want to put this out here because I know that many of us are dealing with this. So in any case, I hope this lesson has shown you that you can get a lot out of seemingly unspectacular subjects and also limited tool set. I mean, I used three four colors here, maybe and pencil. And what I find interesting about this approach is that when you pick a focus like this, after a few days of exploring and staying with the topic in the materials, you will really start to get a feel for what you can do with it, how you can push the limits. What works well, what doesn't? Pencil and watercolors are incredibly flexible on their own and together. This is probably very easy to use combination. But I've decided to set myself a limit and I don't want to paint in this really detailed layer style that you maybe know from my illustration work. And I want to explore these kind of loose washes. I'm really excited about what I see here and what I see in this sketch. So I really want to dive deep into this. And the same is true for the things that I sketch. So I try to limit myself here to simple unassuming items from nature. So that's my approach to get an interesting results from my limited tools and subjects, and I would like you as an exercise for this lesson, I would like you to drive you of these techniques, get acquainted with your materials and techniques, and have a bit of fun exploring both. Okay. 12. Day 4 Sketch: Marigold: This dried Marigold seed pot is another item that feels really complex that I have to do really a lot of observation on before placing my lines. But it's also fun to figure this out. I can get lost in this process in this stage of the sketch. I'm trying to find the large masses, the basic shapes for this, and then accentuate these with the areas that have these delicate, small lines. And I'm adding just the slightest touch of darker value here with a pencil to. This time, I try to leave highlights. Lighter areas, I try to render the darker areas with more pigment, and I'm not entirely successful. The pain flows into the still wet layer, but yeah, I guess that's okay. It's a sketch after all. I don't want to overwork these sketches. I have two maximum three layers with these, one lighter color, one darker color on top, and then the cast shadow, and that's it. Of course, this is all speeded up. But that's essentially my strategy for all of these. I already noticed that I really love putting in the shadow. I don't do this often enough. This is so fun. 13. Day 4 Tip: Make It Fun: As I've progressed with my sketches here on the page, you can see that they got progressively looser. I've started with a lot of precise line work, and then in the end, I just went for it without even placing down any pencil lines. And this was really fun to try out. This is one thing that I want to remind you, and what I'm actually trying to tell you in this class that this process should be fun. Art should be fun and experimental and you should enjoy the process of creating a piece. So I'm trying not to be so precious and earnest with my art practice. And yeah, you can try this too. You can definitely try to loosen your approach and take risks and nothing really bad will happen if you do this. This is just pigment and paper. If you're deeply unhappy with the results, you can always throw it away, but it's really just pigment and paper. 14. Day 5 Sketch: Willow Leaves: These two willow leaves caught my eye because they have such a graphical appearance, such an interesting quality about them. So almost like a still life in itself. And I thought it would be really fun to draw these curved lines, and then here I'm adding a bit of structure at the edges, these sort of serrated edges. And now I can drop in very intense yellow ochre. This palette has two beautiful yellow ochres, or one yellow ochre, one raciana. It's really fun to mix these. I'm leaving highlight where the middle vein is of the leaf, and I'm dropping in slightly muted color for the bottom part of the leaf. So I've added a bit of white to it. Again, my thought here is to let the paint flow to not over work and noodle in details, but to really let the paint do its thing, loose but precise. You know, I've talked about this before. I'm dropping in darker paint in the areas that have already turned away from the light that are a bit darker. After the first layer is dry, I can add in a few details and show these interesting, small spots and textures, and I don't want to overdo it, but still a b goes a long way. This is really fun. Then I'm switching to my big brush for the shadow. I have to add more water because again, this paint is a bit coarser than usual. I'm putting in this shadow with one big stroke. That's really all it needs. Then I'm softening the shadow a little bit with a wet brush. 15. Day 5 Tip: Mistakes Count Too: Okay. And another thing too that I would like to say is that mistakes really count two. We all learned through our mistakes, and it's actually helpful if we take a closer look at them. So I'm actually not too fond about this drawing right here. I think it's a bit heavy handed and the dark areas are not really very elegant. But I notice this and I think, Oh, maybe I can do this differently in the next drawing. So I know it can cause bad feelings to look at something that didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. I really know this. I'm aware of this. It can also be very freeing, on the other hand. Remember, this is for your enjoyment. There is no right and wrong. This is your individual journey. I believe that your sketchbook and your art practice is not the place to put yourself down or to reinforce negative thoughts. You know, I make mistakes all of the time, and I try to leave them in these demos, like I just mentioned here. It's not really a big deal for me to show this on camera, and I want to show you that mistakes are human. They happen, and you can actually use them to learn something. And we'll talk a bit more about this later, about this kind of perfectionism. But I just want to put this out here because I know that many of us are dealing with this. 16. Day 6 Sketch: Bird: This bird that I will sketch now is the first really complex object that I will sketch that will take a bit longer, hence the longer demo, and it's also the first object that I don't sketch from life. So I use a reference photo for this. So remember, this is definitely another possibility to collect items to sketch. So I'm starting the way I always do. I define the big shapes, the angles, the proportions, and from there on, I try to add in interesting details. Yeah, interesting defining elements like feathers and wings, overlapping structures. I still try to keep this loose. I don't want to add too much detail in the drawing stage. Just those most defining elements of this little blue tied here. It's a really cute bird that I see every day on the feeder and in the trees in front of the house. In case you want to learn more about sketching birds, I have an entire class on that too. I'm switching to my paint. I'm putting in the lightest color first. The bright yellow for the belly mixed in with the slightest bit of gray. This is probably a young bird that has not fully changed into the brightest colors. And here I'm mixing this intense blue for the crest and for the wing feathers. This is really fun to paint in. I have to pay a little bit attention not to let the colors mingle too much because this will produce green. But yeah, this is really a wonderfully colorful bird. You can see I'm using a lot of water here. Again, keeping everything very flowy and loose. But I'm trying to show a little bit of texture with my brush. So I'm working in the way of the feathers, the way they grow, and I try to show a little bit of texture. Again, here for the area around the eye. That's really delicate area. I'm switching to my smaller brush. Here I notice my yellow has not quite dried yet, so I have to be careful there, but better let it dry or else, everything will be ruined. I'm working on other areas first around the eye, where I want the view to look at. I add more details, interesting, small brush strokes that show the feathers around the eye. Again, the yellow isn't quite dry yet, so maybe I can work on the wings and on the feet probably. This way of adding watercolor sometimes means that you have to jump around in different places of your sketch because you need to let certain areas dry before you work on the second layer. Now it's time to add this really nice black color that the bird has around its head. And finally, a little bit lighter, I'm adding the feet in this dark gray. And this is an area that really doesn't need much work. I don't want the feet to be over defined. I'd rather add a few more tiny details around the eyes and the beak and in these areas that have interesting patterns. 17. Day 6 Tip: Pick A Focus: What I find interesting about this approach is that when you pick a focus like this, after a few days of exploring and staying with the topic in the materials, you will really start to get a feel for what you can do with it, how you can push the limits. What works well, what doesn't? Pencil and watercolors are incredibly flexible on their own and together. This is probably very easy to use combination. But I've decided to set myself a limit and I don't want to paint in this really detailed layer style that you maybe know from my illustration work. I want to explore these kind of loose washes. I'm really excited about what I see here and what I see in this sketch. So I really want to dive deep into this. And the same is true for the things that I sketch. So I try to limit myself here to simple unassuming items from nature. So that's my approach to get an interesting results from my limited tools and subjects, and I would like you as an exercise for this lesson, I would like you to drive view of these techniques, get acquainted with your materials and techniques, and have a bit of fun exploring both. Okay. 18. Day 7 Sketch: Ivy: This is another interesting item. It is an Ivy fruit or seed, I guess. So it has little It's a bit like Sputnik. And it's a lot of fun to figure out how all of these little spheres are arranged. So another great opportunity to study those basic volumes and see how you can render them with a pencil. I'm keeping the drawing really simple here and the painting part too. So again, I wished I had maybe left a few more highlights here that seems to be a theme in my drawings or in my sketches. And yeah, I'm dropping in this lighter green, and just a little bit of brown around the front parts of these spheres of the seeds. And as the first layer is dry, I'm really finding those areas. I'm darkening the areas that are a bit more in the shadow. And yeah, this is a really straightforward and easy sketch. Adding a bit of yellow here and there. And of course, the cast shadow. I'm so happy to return to those cast shadows. This is really fun. And as the last step, I'm adding in some highlights. I was missing highlights, so I'm using a bit of white, so this is not the most opaque, but it will do. It's a nice addition. 19. Day 7 Tip: Self Critique + Style: You're already on a good way when you've set up your creative space in a way that makes it feel safe and inviting to make art when you've got a list of ideas or recollection of items and a nice small kit with art materials. We've already talked about how you can prepare for the fear of starting a new sketchbook. But sometimes the creative block happens when we sit down and open our sketchbook or are in the middle of our project, and I'd like to address this. We all have a kind of ideal style in our heads, and very often, our skills are not fully there yet to match that style. So of course, establishing a daily practice will help us to get there eventually, but what can we do in the meantime? When our art doesn't live up to our expectations, why should we even start? Well, one answer is, don't make it about the result, but more about the experience, about the process. Make it about learning something. Focus your art on something else than about how good you are at sketching. And I know this is really hard. We want our art to look nice. So if you focus on the process of learning or on experimentation, it can take some of the pressure away and it can actually help you to get closer to the style that you have in mind because you create more and you get better along the way. The class project we're doing can simply be about the love of exploring a new technique or to see how it feels to make art every day for 14 days. If something comes out of it, that looks great, that's awesome. If not, that's not the end of the world. 20. Day 8 Sketch: Berry: Another interesting object. This is these are berries that I found outside and they look a little bit like elderberry. But it was a different tree. I found them on. So again, lots of basic shapes. I have the thin long stalk and then all of those round spherical berries coming out of them and overlapping in different configurations, I guess. Again, this is one of those times where I'm looking more at the object itself than at my drawing. This is a really great opportunity to learn patients, I guess, and spend just a little bit more time on the drawing. Then I'm free to drop in some paint and I've mixed this slightly murky red. With a bit of gray mixed in and I'm trying to keep these strokes very thin. I think I had a bit of too much coffee, and some of them are a bit jittery, some of those lines, but it's a sketch. It doesn't matter. And I'm adding in this blue black color. I've mixed in a little bit of ultramarine blue, and I'm sort of varying the color here and there. I don't want to use the same color for every berry. I'm modulating the color and also the amount of paint that I throw in for each berry. After the first layer is dry, I go back in with my small brush and intensify everything, darken a few areas just to intensify the paint in a few spaces to add a bit of interest. I'm also doing this for the darker side of those little berries here. And, of course, the cast shadow. I'm looking forward to that. So it's a bit funny with the shadows in my sketches. They come from different sides because of my video lighting. You will see the shadow here is very diffuse. So if you ever have problems seeing the shadow, then use a natural light source that comes from one side. That should help you seeing the shadow clearly. 21. Day 8 Tip: Sketching Faster: In the beginning, sketching will often take longer than you expect and longer and more challenging than you see in my demos, and that can create feelings of impatience or frustration. Please try to stay patient. This, too, is a normal part of learning a skill. If you're just learning to draw, it's okay to take your time. Speed will really come with practice, and it's better to take your time in the beginning to build this solid foundation than to rush through your sketches. You don't have to finish each of your drawings if this stresses you out. In fact, you could do partial studies or leave sketches unfinished. Try leaving out elements of what you see. You don't have to copy everything from reality to the paper. You sketch is not a photo. Drawing and sketching means interpreting what you see and changing it to produce an interesting result. 22. Day 9 Sketch: Seedpod 2: For this next sketch, I've chosen some small simple items, again, another interesting kind of seed pod. And I know there are a lot of seed pods and dried berries and stuff like that. So it's winter as I film this, but I also find that I really like those small unassuming objects. They're really great for practicing basic drawing skills, and you have results very quickly. And so this is great for these sort of quick daily sketching sessions. So after defining the outlines, I'm dropping in a bit of I think this is a very muted earth tone. That is just perfect for these more delicate parts of this little seed pod here. I'm adding slightly more pigment for the tip that's a bit more intense and a bit darker. And I'm using my small brush for this because these are really small sketches. I don't want to I want to preserve the linework this time, not making the same mistake again. So I'm working my way around the seed pot, and then I can actually paint the seeds themselves with almost black, and they have, as you can see, those shiny highlights preserved. This is what I like about this. I really find actually a little bit of the outline with my pencil before I drop in the shadow. Again, I'm surprised how simple yet beautiful these kind of sketches can be. 23. Day 9 Tip: Handling Bad Art Days: On some days, making art just doesn't work out the way you want it to. We all have bad art days. I know I have. Whether it's due to stress or pressure or because you're just not feeling good, these days happen. There are just some tricks to get the creative juices flowing again. When I have a bad art day, I sometimes try to simply allow this. I try to be nice to myself and give myself room either to recover or to find new ideas. And often this sort of block disappears by itself, or sometimes consuming a bit of creative input also helps before I try my hand at putting out stuff again. Okay. What I try to avoid is letting negative thoughts overtake me. It's quite normal to have this inner critic, this voice that comments on what we do. Very often, it seems to be connected to our creative activities. It doesn't have to rule your day. You can battle those negative thoughts. So if you try shifting your thoughts about yourself and your art, maybe tell yourself, this is just a sketch. This is a warm up. If you expect bad art, you might be pleasantly surprised if your art turns out good. So this works surprisingly often. You could also try acting opposite of your feelings and just start anyway. This seems like a hard strategy, but it can help you get unstuck from negative thought patterns, like I can't do this, or my art is no good, et cetera, and this can just get you started no matter what. You can change your mood simply by working through it. Behavior can change emotions and thoughts. And on somedays, this won't work, and then it's fine to take a break and do something else and when it works, it's really quite amazing. So another thing you could try is taking a non judgmental position and encourage yourself. So when this inner critic takes over, you'll notice that you will focus more on negative aspects. So this is really a survival method from our stone age selves. It's really just the brain doing its thing, and you can learn to detach from these thoughts a little bit or at least ignore them. So you have this critical voice. It's on autopilot, but it's really not against you. It's an aspect of your mind that's trying to help it in its own way, saving you, maybe from expanding energy or from disappointment or from critique. But you can consciously decide to overrule this part of the mind. And try to concentrate and take a non judgmental stance and encourage yourself. This will make it easier on a bad art day to get a foot in the door and maybe pick up the pencil anyway. 24. Day 10 Sketch: Dry Rosehip: For my next step, I've chosen another rose hip, and I think it's really interesting to look at the same object, but maybe from different angles or slightly different items. This one is even drier than the last ones, and so it's very wrinkly and has these interesting surface patterns. I keep my drawing to the very minimum, and I instead want to figure out this interesting texture with my brush. I'm leaving lots of highlights. I think this works very well here. I'm applying a bit more paint in the area near the bottom where the shadow is. I'm letting everything dry and I want to apply a second layer. First, I add these dark dry bits at the tip, and then I can go back in with my red and add a bit of contrast to bring out the three dimensionality of this and show a bit more texture. I'm really intrigued by these different wrinkly bits of the row hip. Okay. And again, there's the cast shadow. I'm fading it out a bit at the edges. I think that's a very interesting effect, and it's also really fun to paint this. 25. Day 10 Tip: Keeping Your Motivation: We all know what it's like to start with good intentions on a new project and then abandon it in the middle because it's really hard to follow through with a new habit. I know I've been there. And so what begins with inspiration and excitement might suddenly just feel like work or we don't really see progress. And sometimes life just gets busy and you might get thrown off track. So I'd like to encourage you to see a creative practice as an ongoing process. I know I've talked a lot about daily sketching and how I benefited from it. Let me tell you a secret. I often miss days. And I don't sketch every day without fail. I know I really want to, but sometimes I'm too busy or sick or unmotivated or life just gets in the way. But guess what? This doesn't really make me stop because I know I can just pick up where I left off. So you can always start again, open a new page in your sketchbook and explore. What's especially helpful is to have an overarching goal in mind that motivates you to come back. So how will sketching help you to achieve this goal? Maybe do you want to work on your art skills to build a career or do you want to be a creative person and just express yourself through art? Do you want to feel connection to something through sketching? Having this perspective, having values like this, makes it easier to develop a strong practice and come back to it. And of course, it helps to have a plan. Like we discussed earlier, if you have a list of prompts and a place and materials all set, it will remove friction and you'll have an easier time to talk yourself into this. If it only takes 10 seconds to set up your sketching gear, there's less of a reason not to do it, right? 26. Day 11 Sketch: Landscape: For this landscape in the middle of my page, I'm using a reference again, and I'm defining the frame first with the slightly rounded edges, and then I'm dropping in just the very basic shapes of the landscape. So I don't think this has to be over defined. It's more like a cloud scape. The land part is really only at the bottom. So now I'm trying out what kind of blues I can get out of this palette. So some more muted blues, some gray blues. This is this really intense dramatic blue that I can get from earth tones and ultramarine, and I really have a great time dropping in wet into wet these clouds. You can see I'm lifting paint here and there. I'm dropping in white here and there. It's all about letting the pigments mingle and not overwork these things. I'm blotting out pigments here and there, where I think the clouds should be whiter. Then I'm letting everything dry and go in with one big stroke for the land, the landscape itself. This doesn't need too much definition. I don't want to paint individual trees. I just want to show that there's something that frames the clouds at the bottom. Again, dropping in different pigments makes this more interesting to look at. 27. Day 11 Tip: Lower The Difficulty: Lower the difficulty if you need to. Especially in the beginning, everything about sketching seems to be hard and the results often clash with our perfectionist goals. Remember, you will get better if you keep sketching, so don't stop because you're not perfect. Work through the bad sketches. Don't be afraid to produce bad sketches in the beginning, particularly when you try something for the very first time. This is okay, and it's still your creative expression and interpretation that's in there. I've kept sketchbooks with technically bad drawings, but I can see so much of my ideas in them, and it's that thought that really counts. And I've also ripped out a few pages, and I have a nice big eraser, so don't worry too much about editing your work, though. You'll learn something from every bad drawing. Your sketchbook, it's more about documenting the process, experimenting and learning new things along the way. 28. Day 12 Sketch: Buds: I found another tweak with these cute buds from a bush that's already preparing for spring, I guess, so I've painted this arch that makes it a little bit easier for me to make the correct measurements and place the individual shapes next to each other. I use a lot of negative spaces to find out where each individual element has to go. I'm actually looking at the space between the individual elements to figure out some of the angles and the proportions. I'm mixing out this light muted green with a bit of yellow in it for these birds that look really soft almost velvety to me. Really interesting tree. I wonder what it is. I have to go look in spring and see what it will look like with leaves on and maybe flowers. I'm dropping in some brown on the sides that have this changing colors. I'm intensifying the color a little bit too. And as the first layer has dried, I'm going back in to the areas where there's a shadow away from the light, and I'm just adding those. It's not really so visible with these tweaks because the surface is so soft, so they are not really any hard highlights on it. But it's still visible and you can still render this in the three dimensional way. And of course, the cast shadow again slightly softened at the edge. 29. Day 12 Tip: Pick Easy Subjects: Pick easy subjects and simplify. We've already talked about this, especially in the beginning, keep sketching really simple and low friction for yourself. Pick items that are easy to draw that you can complete in a few minutes. They are worthy practice subjects. This way, you will get in your pencil miles and improve over time, and then you can give the more complex subjects a try. And since simplifying is a key component of drawing, really make use of this, break down complex subjects into their basic parts, leave parts of your sketch unfinished. This will also make the sketching process simpler and not as challenging. 30. Day 13 Sketch: Twig: For this next sketch, I let my twig here do the heavy lifting so that I don't have to observe all the measurements, but I can just copy them from the object itself. So that's another great part of having what you draw in front of you. You cannot only turn it around in your hand and see where the individual elements are going, but you can also sometimes you can also just copy what you have onto the page. And by now, I think I have started to loosen up with my line drawing style a little bit. So this is looser than the ones that I did in the beginning, which I think is interesting. Yeah, I'm dropping in this nice burnt sienna color for the buds, and then I'm darkening this a bit for the twig itself. So I try to make sure I leave a few highlights this time. This is sort of a shiny surface, and I want to show where the light is coming from. And using a smaller brush makes it really easy to stay inside of the line work. So this is also really crucial for me for these kind of delicate subjects. And I'm adding the cast shadow with the same small brush, and I wish I would have left it at this stage. So this is very defined. I'm trying to soften the cast shadow here, and I don't think it's working. I liked it better before this. But, you know, these things happen and Again, it's okay. It's an experiment. It's something that I tried out, and it didn't quite work, and I will try again and do differently in the next sketch. That's what the sketchbook is really for. Adding a few dark spots around the dark side of the twig. So just a little bit of visual interest and form shadow. 31. Day 13 Tip: Your Creative Inventory: Refill your creative inventory when you feel uninspired or like you've lost your creative spark. The idea behind this is that in order to make something to do creative work, you have to consume some amount of creative work by others and surround yourself with ideas that start your own thinking process. You need to fill up on ideas because every time you draw something, you use a bit from your inventory, just like you use physical art supplies. Now, the brain doesn't work like a mechanical thing that you fill and use up again. It just works in jumps and associations and sudden ideas from which you can go deep into a topic. So it's always best to offer yourself a lot of these ideas and also different ones. So stocking up on your creative inventory doesn't mean browsing the Internet all day. I know we're all really good at this, but it rarely sparks action. Refilling your creative inventory could look like this. Get new ideas in books, in museums, on websites, and documentaries. This can be art related or something entirely different. You choose what interests you. Explore different topics and see how different artists have treated the subject. What would you like to include in your own work? How do other artists work? What can you learn from their process? Analyze art style you like. Is it maybe loose or tight or painterly? What's the technique? What in particular do you like? What would you like to include in your work, or maybe have a conversation with a fellow creative or listen to or read an interview to find out how other artists get inspired. Expose yourself to different ideas, human expression, different ways of seeing the world. The importance is getting input for your brain and surrounding yourself with new concepts or revisiting things that you find yourself thinking about? And yet ironically refilling your creative inventory could also mean to remove yourself from too much input for a while or stop before you have an overload of input. Browsing Instagram or Pinterest for 5 minutes might be really useful, but doing it for an hour might be too much. I would treat all places on the net that have a feed and that present many ideas in a short amount of time very cautiously. Be a bit careful on those sites that serve you a lot of ideas in a very short time and find the right moment to unplug. We live in a world of input, and I think we also need to be comfortable with our own thoughts from time to time. Having a plan works great here too. Maybe pick one aspect or artist or style, and try to study or copy that and set yourself a timer when you browse. All in all, I find that filling up your creative inventory with new ideas or techniques or themes is one of the most important things for me as an artist. I try to remind myself from time to time that it's perfectly normal to have times for creative input and for creative output. 32. Day 14 Sketch: Oak Leaf: And for my last sketch in this small collection, I found this big beautiful oak leaf that's dry and that has this interesting hole in it. I wonder who nibbled there. And yeah, I've drawn the rough outline, and now I'm refining my pencil lines a little bit. This is another trick that you can do. You can just leave your pencil lines very loose and very light until you're certain that you have defined the shape in the right way. You can even leave those loose lines. It doesn't matter for the sketch if they're still there in a later stage. So it can look really beautiful. I don't want to focus too much on the outlines, but really what I'm after here is those interesting slight color changes. On camera looks like it's just one brown mass. But in reality, I found the color was really modulated by the amount of light that shown on it and then maybe by some growth patterns. So there were three or four distinct brown tones that I'm trying to bring out in my sketch. So this landscape palette really works great for that. It has a few pigments that are slightly granulating, slightly coarser, that works well with this motel texture that the leaf has. There are also enough earth tones that make for an interesting mix. I'm dropping in this warmer rosiana now and have put mortem at the lower left side. This is more of a more purple brown tone. This can be another interesting way to experiment with the colors on your palette and see what they can do. And as a big wash is drying, I'm adding my cast shadow with a really large brush. I'm also adding it to the hole in the middle there. I wish I had left that as white. But there you go, that's another mistake or another experience that I know now how I will handle these kind of things in the future. As the first layer of color on the leaf has dried, I'm ready now to go back in and add a bit of texture, add a few of these small details, the veins of the leaf, and I'm using a slightly darker mix here to really add contrast and interest. Not every area of the leaf is dry yet. So some of the lines feather out a bit, but I don't think this detracts too much from the crisp areas of the sketch. So this was a really fun sketch to do and definitely a very nice edition in the corner of this page. And that also means I'm now finished with my 14 sketches and I can reflect a bit and review what I have sketched. 33. Day 14 Tip: Build Your Skills: There may come a point when you want to learn specific techniques and grow in your skills in a systematic way. When you feel ready for that, I strongly recommend a structured approach that will train you with a well thought out curriculum. For sketching, studying the basics like this would include concepts like exploring mark making, tools and different drawing techniques, how to create a drawing using basic shapes, volumes, angles, and measuring. There are also intermediate concepts like mastering perspective, for shadowing, values, contrast to create well balanced sketches, adding textures, using shadows, learning how to draw different aspects of nature or man made environments. Basically, learning how to draw anything. I go through all of these in my foundational drawing class, sketching fundamentals in a very comprehensive approach. If you feel ready for this, then definitely give this class a look. For painting and watercolors, you could study concepts like understanding and applying basic terms, again, value, hue, saturation, masses, and shapes, how to use edges, details and textures to create interesting paintings, how to design and use color, mastering composition and counterpoints, and also putting emphasis on elements like line work and light and dark in your painting. Studying a technique with in a more structured approach can give your sketchbook practice a goal. And as we saw in this class, having a plan or an overarching goal is a great way to keep a creative practice active. So if you'd like to dedicate your time to this and would like to deepen your skills, your sketchbook will be an excellent partner on your journey. 34. Reflect + Continue: So let's take a look at our sketches at our own work. I have all of my sketches from all of the 14 prompts here, but I would like to encourage you to do this each day after your sketching session in that way you can sort of change directions and apply something that you learned from one sketch on the next day. So Yeah. Overall, I think I'm quite happy with how these turned out. I was really interested in how these slightly different water colors would work. I wanted to embrace the slightly coarser texture and the more loose approach that I was going for in this. I really enjoy all of the loose shadows here, also the fresh color, this blue green of the shadows. And if I were to start with one thing that I'm not so fond of, it's probably maybe the light and dark areas in some sketches, so the value contrast. And this is something that I should have probably planned in in the drawing stage. So for example, in this sketch here or also in this one, I think I would have preferred if I had defined the fine aspects, these details here, and if I had a clearer value structure, a clearer distinction between light and dark. This somehow all falls into this shadowy area here, and I think a few more highlights would have helped me to define this area better. It's right here in this part, but not so much in these other parts. That's not as readable as I would have liked it. The same goes for this sketch. I really enjoy the loose shadow here. I think it would have helped to get more of a feel of the the volumes and the three dimensionality of this small twig. Or the seed pods rather to have a few more highlights. So you can see in this sketch, I added a few highlights after painting with this kind of gel pen, which I didn't plan to use, but I had lying around, so I sort of cheated a little bit, I guess. And it added back in a few highlights. But of course, I would have preferred to have these from the start. So you can see how beautiful it looks when you just leave the paper white for the highlight. But I'm quite happy with some of the other sketches here. I really love this one. It's just arranged so beautifully, and I really love the way the shadow turned out here, the cast shadow. I really like how this little blue tied here has turned out. It's really as loose as I wanted it. I love the cute expression on its face, and I think this is just a sketch. I'm actually quite fond of this sketch, so I really love this one. I also love the treatment of the cast shadow in these sketches here. And I really think this adds a lot to the sketches that the shadows are allowed to fade out a bit. Um, what I would have wished for here again is a bit more preservation of highlights. So I remember with this twig, this didn't really have any highlights. This had more of a sort of a velvety texture in these little buds. But I think sometimes you can sort of tweak reality a little bit to make for a clearer sketch. So this is something that I need to keep in mind. I did this for the berries here, and I'm much more happy with the highlights on the berries here than I am with the lights and darks for this one. But it's okay. The cast shadow sort of salvages it. I'm really happy with how the landscape turned out. So, really liking those rounded corners here, sort of gives this vintage feel, and it's always fun to paint clouds. So the cast shadow here in this area is not as I had intended the effect to be. I wanted to fade it out in these other cast shadows here, and I think I misjudged how much of the pigment had already sort of sunk into the paper. And I think I liked it better. Before I did this particular step. You can probably see it in the video before I apply additional water. It looked really nice, and I think now it doesn't look at nice, but it's okay. It still works. You can see where the light is coming from. Again, the cast shadow here, I probably would have liked it better in hindsight if I had left this interesting hole in the leave, white. So it would have added more contrast. I don't think it's a big deal, so it's still interesting to look at, and it still reads as a hole. But I think the effect would have been even better if I had just left this wide. Yeah, but overall, I'm happy with how the textures and the different colors of this leaf turned out. I really like the process of painting this. So laying in a full wash of color and then dropping in these different pigments and watching them spread. This was really fun to do. So yeah, these are my sketches. Overall, I'm quite happy with how they turned out, and I hope this gentle self critique has given you an idea of how to approach this kind of feedback to yourself. Another thing, too that I want to say is don't expect too much from yourself. If you want to make changes to your drawing or your painting technique, then notice that these changes will come slowly, accept this, and they will come through regular practice. That is why we're doing this a little bit each day. Don't expect to master a new technique or a new tool after a few days, even if you understand it because your hand and your eyes and your brain will need time to learn about it too. Try to diffuse this common self criticism a bit because I know that many of us expect really perfect exact drawings after the first few tries or expect to turn out a great sketch after sketch like a productivity machine. And that's not how it works. Drawing and painting needs a lot of practice, a lot of time. And doing something over and over again and the right frame of mind to do it. So don't be frustrated with yourself. When your sketch doesn't turn out how you intended it to. Just means that your taste is a bit more refined than your skills. And that's good news because you don't need to focus all on your skills or the lack of skills. Just try to focus on enjoyment on exploration, trying to figure out how this stuff works. And this alone is worth doing and worth exploring. And this is also why I find journaling or any kind of sketchbook practice so valuable because it carries us through this rough time where we maybe don't have as refined skills yet. This can be slightly frustrating, but if you make it about something else, then this will carry you through And just another quick word that I want to say about having talent. So, you know, my approach to this is that drawing is a skill, and that means you can get better through practice. And I would like to tell you a story about myself. So when I went to art school back in the day, I believed I had no talent for drawing, especially when I saw my incredibly gifted classmates who were creating amazing drawings. What I came to realize, many years later, that is, I wasn't untalented. I just hadn't put in the time. The students with more talent just had put in more practice and pencil miles. They had drawn more than me at that point. That was all. And as I started practicing more and doing these sketchbook pages, I managed to get better drawing at some point. It's always possible to build these skills to hone them, and so called talented people have just spent more time with a certain subject matter with a certain tool. Practice will over time, almost always compensate for any kind of innate talent or disposition that a person might have. So again, what I would like you to try when you're looking at your own work is to talk to yourself like you would to a friend. You wouldn't make your friend feel miserable and demotivated, would you? You self critique can be constructive and helpful and gentle, and this way, you can make adjustments in your learning process and don't lose the fun in it. So keep this in mind when you look at your work. I want to mention too that sharing your work here on the platform with me and with the community is something that takes a lot of courage. I'm aware of that. Please feel assured that me and all of the teachers I know here are always looking to give the same kind of kind and gentle feedback that is encouraging and helpful. So don't be afraid to share your work here in the project section. It can be a great step to build more artistic confidence and seeing how your project will grow over 14 days will also create a bit more accountability. So you can definitely be proud of yourself when you share your progress here. So I'd love to see your sketches if you'd like to share them and give you some encouragement and gentle feedback if you like. 35. Final Thoughts: I really hope you've enjoyed these 14 days of sketching and feel that daily sketching is now a part of your creative routine. For me, sketching is an essential part of my creative process, and it has changed so much of how I think about and approach my art. It's really the go to tool that helps me to find fresh ideas, and it's also become a place where I can just go to relax. So I hope you've discovered how taking a short moment each day to stop and observe can help you nurture your creativity. And help you find your artistic voice. If that seems like too much, maybe it has just been a fun way to creatively unwind or to try out how you can express yourself or to get a grasp of your tools. This is what keeping a sketchbook for me can all be about. As we recap these 14 days, I'd like to give you a few final strategies for keeping your creative practice interesting and fresh. Just as a quick recap, here are the core concepts of this course. You start with setting up a creative environment, keep it simple, start small. Make it fun. Let mistakes count two. Forget the idea of a perfect sketch. Work slowly if you need to. Don't worry about bad art days. And give yourself general feedback and encouragement. I hope I've given you an interesting insight into what makes keeping a sketchbook so central to my art practice, and I hope you can use it in your own process and also build a strong creative habit with the concepts that I shared. I'd really like to encourage you to take what I've shown in these lessons and see how you can make it work for yourself and your creative path. I hope I've shown you how you can set up a creative environment, develop a regular sketching practice with our pressure and perfectionism, but with all the playfulness and joy that will let you explore your art every day. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and I'll see you very soon. Bye.