Develop a Sketchbook Practice: Unleash Creativity & Embrace Self-Care

1. Class Introduction: I used to be paralyzed by the possibility that my sketchbook pages would turn out ugly or weird or just plain bad. So when I was first starting to make art, I rarely touched my sketchbook. I wish I had, because it's not just about what shows up on the page. It's about the experience of creating it. By I'm an View tara, I'm a self-taught botanical watercolor artist, writer and teacher. Eventually, I overcame my fears. Sketchbooks even fell in love with the practice. Now, nearly 12 years later, I can't imagine life without one or many more than one. To spill my ideas into. The practice of keeping a sketchbook is about so much more than just making art. It's about making time for yourself and committing to your creativity. It's a beautiful form of self-care. Even when the pages don't turn out how you imagine they will. Although it's not just about what shows up on the page. We still, especially in the beginning, want the page to look Good. That's where this class comes in. Together, will create six sketchbook pages that will help you develop your skills and also bring you joy even in their imperfection. Throughout, I share many examples and suggestions to spark ideas for your own pages. I want to open your mind to the vast possibilities of the blank page, so it no longer paralyzes you. You'll also learn what I wish. I'd known all those years ago when I was first starting out. And we'll tackle the stumbling blocks that kept me from creating. So you can overcome them to. By the end of this class, you'll have the tools you need to break through the barriers holding you back from creating. So you can develop your own nurturing, joyful sketchbook practice. I can't wait to share the joy of sketchbooks with you. So come on, let's get started. 2. Why I'm Teaching this Class: In the summer of 2016, just about six years ago? Exactly. I taught my first class here on Skillshare. That class was getting started with a botanical sketchbook. At that time, I had only just begun to fall in love with working in sketchbooks. Before that, I had been intimidated by them. I had ideas in my head that a sketchbook needed to have perfect, beautiful polished pages. And I had so many stumbling blocks holding my back. I had so many misconceptions about what a sketchbook should be and what a sketchbook practice should look like. And all of that kept me from creating. But once I began to fall in love with sketchbooks, I couldn't help but share that love. And that's why I taught that first-class. And that's why I kept coming back to sketch books as a theme for my classes. But I felt that I wasn't truly capturing all of what I wanted to say about keeping a sketchbook and developing a practice that's nurturing and personal and really reflect who you are as a person and as an artist. This pile right here, these 16 sketchbooks, these are all of my failed books. There's one more that's not in this pile that I sent to a friend as a art exchange. So if filled 17 books And then this pile of 14 sketchbooks are in progress. Within those pages, I have learned so much. I've learned about making art. I've learned about creativity. I've learned about self-care because I truly believe that creativity is self-care and taking time to express yourself creatively. Even if it's an, a messy way. Even it's just playful or do Li or scribbly. It's so important. I'm a self-taught artist and I have developed my skills through lots and lots of practice. And I've gone from B, leaving that I couldn't make art and I wasn't an artist. And to being a professional artist, I know that so many people feel the same sorts of hesitations that I did around art when I was first starting out. And that's one of the reasons that teaching is so important to me. When I was first learning how to make art, I encountered other artists online who are sharing their stories about how they learned, about how they developed their art practice, how they overcame their fears. And that was so inspiring for me. And it showed me that someone else who is following a dream and a path similar to what I was dreaming and where I wanted to go. And that helped me to have the courage to pursue my dreams. And I want to share that with you. I want to encourage you to pursue your own creativity. Now this class isn't about becoming a professional artist. Instead, it's about overcoming stumbling blocks. It's about opening yourself to possibility. So often we close ourselves two ideas, two possibilities. And if we let go of the things that are keeping us close to, that are keeping us fearful, that are keeping us hesitant than so much as possible. And that's what I truly want for this class. One of the things that I've learned along the way is that it's not so important what happens on the page. Instead, it's about the experience of creating and about the time that you spend with yourself, with your creativity and on yourself, nurturing yourself, encouraging joy, encouraging creativity. I believe that all of us are creative and all of us can benefit from expressing ourselves creatively. Even if that only happens on the page of a sketchbook that no one ever sees. Blank sketchbook page is a blank slate. Literally. It is filled with possibilities. And once you start looking at it, not with feelings of intimidation, but instead with excitement and an openness to experiment and play and see what happens, then everything changes because this class is not about creating a certain type of art or having a certain project turnout a certain way. Instead, it's about how you think about creativity. How you think about experimenting with art supplies. I really want you to be open to possibilities. I really want you to begin thinking of all the ways that you can create pages that reflect who you are, what's interesting to you, and what will bring you joy or help you get out of your head and help to release you from worry. I want you to be able to express yourself creatively. I want you to be free too. Make mistakes, make ugly pages, to do things that you wouldn't have done when you are worrying about doing something the right way. Because that's how you learn and that's how you develop. That is how you can be truly creative. And being creative is good for your spirit. It's good for your heart. It's good for you as a person. When you are feeling grounded and relaxed and happy, joyful, then you're better able to show up in the world and do good things. A perfect, an example of this happened while I was filming this class. I had been having a bad day. I don't remember what it was that was stressing me out and what I was worrying about. But I just took a timeout. I grabbed some of the black paper that I had been using for a couple of exercises. I grabbed my colored pencils, which are one of my favorite art materials. I set out in my garden. And I observed the tomato plant that was at the edge of my patio. And the beautiful colors of those are ripening tomatoes. And I began to sketch. I slowed down. I became relaxed. I felt so much better. I love the way my little sketch turned out, but really it's not about what shows up on the page. It's about the experience of creating an about the experience of spending time for yourself and with yourself. It's about your ability to create joy within yourself, within the pages of your sketchbook. One of the things that always excites me, energizes me, and inspires me, is art supplies. So that's what we're gonna be talking about in the next lesson. 3. Choosing Materials: Before we get started tackling any stumbling blocks, I wanted to talk about something that I really love. That is art supplies. Now, I don't want you to stress out about materials. When I was first starting out, I had the idea that there was a perfect sketch book out there. And if only I could find that perfect sketch book, I'd be able to create this amazing perfect art. And if I could find the perfect art materials that perfect paints are the perfect pencil, then I could create perfect beautiful art. I'll let you in on a little secret. There is no perfect sketch book. There's no perfect art supply. I don't want you to stress out about materials at all. First, I'll just say use what you have. I'm going to be creating pages and demonstrating different techniques and exercises throughout the class with materials that I love using. But you don't have to go out and buy those materials and you don't have to use them if you are not interested in them. I will be giving lots of suggestions of different ways that you can create similar pages using what you have on hand. So again, don't stress about your materials and outlet. Art supplies be a stumbling block. I find them to be so joyful and so exciting. Anytime I get a new delivery of supplies, It's like Christmas day. Now, if you do want to go out and get some new supplies, because you get excited about trying new supplies and you really need a new sketch book. Great. If you're going to be choosing a sketchbook which you don't even need to use a sketch book. For this class. You can create on separate papers. You can bind them yourself, or you can tape or glue them into another book. That works perfectly fine. But if you are going to choose a new sketch book, there are a few things that you can keep in mind that will help you make the right decision for you. Probably the most important thing is the type of paper. I'd recommend choosing a sketchbook with mixed media paper because that'll give you the most options. One brand that I really like is Canson XL mixed media books. X L isn't just the size here. They come in different sizes. This one is actually a watercolor over here, but it's also x l. And this one is nine by 12, whereas this other one is 11 by 14. I also have created one that's smaller, That's 7 " by 10 ". There's lots of different sizes. But what I like about these Canson mixed media books, there's a lot of papers. The spiral binding allows the book TO lay open flat. They're not very expensive, so I don't worry about making messes are ugly. Pages are just partially filling a page and turning it if I don't like it. Another thing to keep in mind is the binding. And some people really dislike working in a spiral bound book. It's up to you again. Spiral rebounding is one option. Here's a hardcover book, this one is a watercolor book. And it's a little stiffer probably because of the watercolor pages. But this one also will lay mostly flat. Some books are soft cover and we'll lay flat. This one is a sewn binding. There's different types of binding, different types of covers, paper type, binding, size. This little book which is I think it's less than 5 ", maybe four-and-a-half by four-and-a-half. Much smaller than this huge 11 by 14 book. Choose what you think you'll feel most comfortable with. A large book can be a little daunting. It can be awkward to work in. It can be hard to carry around. A little book is great because you can take it anywhere. The small size pages make it quick torque. And so if you don't have a lot of time, perfect. We're also going to be working in class on some even smaller pages. These are two-and-a-half by 3.3 quarters. So that is great for working if you don't have a lot of time. Small books can also feel a little bit cramped. So maybe you're gonna be more comfortable with something in the middle. I love buying art supplies online, but it's also great to go to an art supply store. Feel the book, do you like the way the cover fields? So that's aesthetics of the book. Do you like the way it looks? This little book makes me so happy because this is one of my favorite colors, which may seem silly. But when you're creating a nurturing stress relieving self-care, practice. You want all aspects of it to bring you joy. And if that means picking a mint green sketchbook because that makes you happy. Do it. We've talked about choosing your sketch book based on paper type, size, binding, aesthetics. Keep in mind how many pages? Maybe a huge book with lots of pages feels too overwhelming. So you want to choose something with fewer pages. In addition to type of paper. You can also think about colors of paper. Most sketchbooks have white paper, but I have some that have tan paper. I've been really having fun working in black paper. So many different options. Again, don't be overwhelmed by the possibilities. Instead, choose something that you think will work for you. Think about how you'll be using the book. Do you want one that's small and easy to carry with you? Do you want one that is spiral bound or not? How do you think you're gonna be working in the book in terms of paper type, most books will tell you what materials they're good for. These mixed media books. On the front cover it says acrylic, watercolor, pen and pencil. If you know that you want to be using lots of different materials like that, you'll want to look for a book that is good. For those materials. Though. If you have other materials you want to use, you can still experiment and see how they work in a book that's not really meant for them. I do that all the time. Also will be doing this in class. You can glue or tape pieces of other paper into your books. You can kind of think outside of the box and free yourself from some of those limitations in so many different ways. So again, don't stress about materials. Use what you have. Or if you're excited about your trip to the art supply store, or you want to scroll through on your phone, on your favorite online shop. Do it, get some fun new supplies to experiment with? In class? I'm gonna be doing some painting. I'm gonna be using some markers. I'm going to be using pens, colored pencils, crayons. Again, you don't need to use those materials. That's just to give you an idea to open yourself up to some possibilities. So gather up your materials, think about what you'd like to use. And then in the next lesson, I'm going to talk about some of the things I wish I had known when I was first starting out. So I'll see you there. 4. Things I Wish I'd Known: When I was first starting to make art, I was really intimidated by sketchbooks and didn't work in them because I had all these arbitrary, self-imposed rules of what a sketch book should be and what a sketch book page should look like. Over the years, I came to realize that there are no rules and a sketchbook should be for you primarily, I've come to embrace sketchbooks as a place to play and experiment. It's a nurturing practice, nurturing for your creativity. It's a form of self care. And that's what I want to pass on to you. I thought it would be helpful if I shared some of the things that I've learned over the years, some of the things that I wish that I had known when I was first starting out. The first one is one that I have already shared with you. There are no perfect materials. There's no perfect sketch book, there's no perfect paint, or pencil or marker. Choose what you enjoy using and anything will work in your sketchbook, and any sketchbook will work for your creative practice. This next one is a really tough one. Your sketch book doesn't need to look good. The pages don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be polished. They don't need to be beautiful or pretty. A hard one to get over. But once you do, it's so freeing. It frees you to experiment, to play, and really enjoy the process instead of the finished page, this one is probably pretty obvious at this point after all, the examples I've been showing. But sketchbooks are not just for sketching. Sometimes I do block printing in them. Sometimes I do painting, sometimes I do writing. Sometimes I just test colors. Sometimes I enjoy collage. So remember, sketch books aren't just for sketching, also, not just for recreating what you see. I know many of us think of sketchbooks as someone sitting and observing and making a sketch. But they don't have to be that way. You don't need to be an artist to work in a sketchbook. You also don't need to be good at making art. Compare it to keeping a journal. Just like when you're keeping a journal, you don't need to be a writer or good at writing. I've said again and again, that art is not a talent you're born with. It's a skill that you can develop. Sketchbooks are the perfect place for you to develop your skills going hand in hand with that idea. Remember that no one has to see your sketch book pages. Don't feel the pressure to share them. Keep them private. Give yourself space to develop an experiment and play. Just like if you were to be writing in a journal, you don't share all of your journal pages with someone else. Another important thing to keep in mind, especially if you want to develop your skills and you want to create some more complex pages, is that you don't have to finish a page all in one sitting or even at all. Really. This example here of these viola flowers. This isn't technically a sketchbook, but I was treating the paper in the same way and I worked on it flower by flower. And it was such a fun process to create it over a long period of time and not just in one setting. These other pages also took some time. And I was developing an idea in a couple of sketchbooks. And that's another thing that you can do. Also, this one, I used painted pages for collage, so there was a lot of drying time waiting for things to dry. So if you don't put that time pressure on you, it can be really freeing for your practice. The pages you create in your sketch book don't have to be serious. You don't have to take them seriously. They don't need to have a serious subject matter. Remember, this is about the experience. So have fun with it. Do something just because what makes you happy? Tap into your inner child and the childhood joy of creating. None of us like to make mistakes. But remember that sketchbooks are for mistakes. That's where you work out ideas and make a messy first draft or create a layout that doesn't quite work in order for you to be able to do it better the next time. On the opposite end of the spectrum of thinking about developing your skills or creating an idea that you're going to polish. Sketchbooks are also perfect for self-care, for relaxing and for relieving stress. So remember that it doesn't have to be about what happens on the page and it doesn't have to be about the result of your time spent with your sketch book. Instead, think about the experience. Enjoy things like color or connecting with nature, or just having fun. And finally, remember that your sketch book doesn't need to look like anyone else's. Your sketchbook is going to be as unique as you are. Every sketchbook, all sketchbooks are as different and varied as the people who keep them. In the next lesson, we're going to be tackling our first stumbling block. It's one that's held me back and maybe it's held you back to. 5. Fear of the First Page: I know one stumbling block that a lot of people struggle with is facing the blank page. The blank page is full of so many possibilities. And in our minds we imagine these beautiful, wonderful, perfect looking pages. As long as the page stays blank. All of those possibilities still exist. I think was even harder for people a lot of the time. Then a blank page is the very first page in a sketchbook. Because not only are you faced with one blank page, but you're faced with the entire Blink sketch book. On that first page represents all of the possibilities of the whole sketch book. As soon as we put down the first mark in our sketch book, that bubble, that imaginary, perfect sketch book is burst. It no longer exists. Immediately. Your sketchbook becomes a little bit less, or sometimes a lot less than what is in your head. And that is perfectly normal. Pressure to create perfect pages is something that everyone struggles with from time-to-time, even the most seasoned artists. The other side of this is that one. You do your first page. Every page after that becomes a little bit easier because there's less pressure to create something perfect. Part of this is mindset, of course. And there are so many ways that we can trick ourselves to get going. For the first page or any blank page. One piece of advice that I've come across is to skip the first page. That way it feels a little less daunting for awhile in a lot of my sketchbooks. I did that. And looking back, I see that sometimes I didn't even go back to finish those first pages. Now I don't really feel that pressure anymore, but it's taken me a long time to get to that point. Another little trick that you could use is to make little marks throughout your sketch book or paint backgrounds on pages. That way you don't have the pristine perfection of the blank page to live up to and it becomes easier to create. There are a few things you can do with that first page to make them feel a little less scary. Maybe you want to write yourself a note, either setting intentions for your sketch book as a whole or for your creative practice. Maybe you write a little pep talk to yourself. Maybe you write something about where you got the sketchbook or what you're doing when you're starting the sketch book. Anything that will help you remember the experience of creating in that sketchbook. Because as I've said before, the wonderful thing about sketchbooks, the magic that happens with sketchbooks is the experience and those memories that we have of creating an, a certain time and place or a certain project that we're working on. Setting yourself up with intentions or a reminder. That's a great way to start a sketch book. Something else that I do with sketchbooks on the first page, sometimes, sometimes on the last page. And now really anywhere within the book is to swatch my materials. Sometimes if I have new materials, I want to try, I'll swatch them out, all out. Or in the case of the black paper sketchbook, I wanted to see how different materials reacted with the paper. And so I watched all of my collection of colors so that I'll have a record of what they look like on that particular paper. It's also fun to create swatches that are themed. Maybe you are observing something in nature and you want to capture all of the colors that you see. Or maybe you are going to create another piece, art. And you are mixing colors to use for that and you want to test them out. I do that all the time in my sketch books. Sometimes it's also just fun to pick a bunch of colors and make some swatches. In the next lesson, I'm going to be demonstrating a page in my wonderful mint green little book. I'm grabbing my green colored pencils, my sweet little sketch book, and I'm going to make some swatches. Do you want to join me? I'll see you there. 6. Color Swatches: So are you ready to tackle the first page? I've got my sweet little sketch book, I've got my colored pencils, and I'm ready to make some swatches. Now, if you are not starting a new sketchbook, you don't have a first page. That's okay too. You can still do this same sort of exercise anywhere in your sketchbook. It's really fun and joyful, especially when you pick some colors that you really love. This sketchbook is an art creation book from royal talons it as 80 sheets. It's 4.7 " by 4.7 " came with this little belly band which will take off, has creamy paper. It's not super heavy but not super light. Got this page open. I'm going to do some swatches and a grid. I have my colored pencils here. These are Prismacolor colored pencils. They're very waxy and the color, you can lay down the color in lots of different ways, but I like to lay it really thick. And so I go over the same part of the paper again and again to get more pigment onto the page. You could do swatches, obviously with so many different types of materials. And I'll show you some examples when I finish this page. And you can do it in so many different ways. I'm using all different colors of green. I'm not planning out the layout. I'm just basically randomly picking colors, trying not to do colors that are too similar side-by-side, but not overthinking it. This is not about thinking, it's about doing. Once you get into the rhythm, it gets much easier. You don't have to think so much. You can just lay down one color after another. My layout is a grid and my shapes are squares. So when I pick up a new pencil, I don't have to think about Aware that swatch is going to go or what that swatch is going to look like. I'm just moving my pencil up and down across the paper. Of course, you can have any type of layout that you want to, and you can have any shape you want for your swatches. I think when you're first starting and when you're doing your first page and you're a little nervous, it's best to choose something that's really simple, that doesn't require you to think or plan very much. A page like this may be very simple, but it also helps you to develop some skills like creating and curating color palettes, getting to know your materials, learning your colors, learning how to mix colors, and learning how to lay down even color. So don't look at a page like this as wasting your time or wasting materials. And we'll talk more about that idea later. When the things I love most about pages like this is how joyful it is to connect with colors. This color and the first one that I used are so similar. So as I mentioned about learning your colors, you can see what colors are similar, what's different about colors that are very similar. You really get to learn your materials. And that will help you later when you want to create something with specific colors. But this process is also so meditative. It's something that's a great warm-up. It's something that is perfect to do when you don't know what to do with the page. Just grab some materials, grab your sketchbook. Oops, that pencil tip broke, which happens. It's got my favorite sharpener here. This one is great because the two holes, the first hole gets the length of your lead and the second hole gets a nice sharp point. So if you want to have very sharp pointy pencils for lots of detail work, That's great. Of course, with something like that. This page, it's less important. But again, getting to know your materials with low pressure creating this is such a low pressure page. Anyone can create a page like this. And it will look beautiful and interesting. So here is the finished page. There's something so meditative and joyful about making swatches of color no matter what sort of medium you're using. So use what you have. Here's my colored pencil swatches I just did. Here's an example of some watercolor that looks beautiful, some CRAN, and here's some markers. Any materials work for making swatches. Let's see some more examples. Here's one with watercolor, and I've labeled all the names of the colors. As a good record. You could do that with your colored pencil swatches to I did. And this book on the first page has trying out some new pencils, trying out some color mixing two there on the bottom. In this book, I was trying out two different kinds of gouache just to see what the colors look like on the paper. So that's another great way to do swatches. Here's large our watercolor swatches. Here's some neo color to CRAN, swatches with a few flowers on the side. And that beautiful black paper. And then this page is all sorts of colors bleeding into one another. I did this on a day when I had no idea what to do. Here's another colored pencil page with the same greens that I used. I'm testing how they blend together and that was so fun. You can also mix colors like here with these watercolors. I'm mixing colors on the paper and on my palette to recreate some autumn colors. This makes a great themed page. And then in this book, I mixed some colors with white to get lighter versions of the colors. This was with gouache. I also did a few other color mixes and did some text. And looking at pages of color like this always makes me happy. Let's look at some more examples. Here. I mixed some colors to match some flowers. These flower colors have faded, but it's still a fun page and it's a really fun practice and it's a great way to get to know your colors and your color mixing these little swatch pages, they are so fun to make if you're out and about and you're looking and observing different colors and collecting them. I like to do that in the garden. These pages are color mixes and just experimenting and keeping notes, too great reference. But you don't have to be very serious. So you can create pages with beautiful colors and fun doodles. Again, it's about the experience about having fun, about relaxing and enjoying the process. I first read about Werner's nomenclature of colors in a novel and was fascinated by the idea of colors that matched different things in nature. Such a great idea of something that you can do in your sketch book, instead of painting landscapes mimic Robinson captures their colors as swatches and you can see many examples of that and her book, local color. Another artist who has a similar practice as Lorraine Edwards fork nerve, and her book, color in and out of the garden captures what this practice is like for her. Now take this into your own sketchbook. Here are some ideas for you to play with. You can make a page of swatches or a series of pages. You can use one color for your swatch page or many colors. Why don't you try mixing media instead of using just colored pencils? Maybe try all of the greens from all of your different materials. You can experiment with different layouts instead of using a simple grid, there are so many other ways that you can arrange your shapes. You can also play with the swatch shapes themselves. What other shapes might you want to create? You can make themed pages, maybe matching colors that you see. That's something else you can do. You can practice mixing colors. Use your sketchbook to collect all your mixes. You can also experiment by layering color. You can use different media and layer it and see what colors you come up with. There are so many ways you can make swatch pages, and I hope you'll try that in your sketchbook. In the next lesson, we're gonna be tackling a really big stumbling block that I know helped me back for a long time. So in the next lesson, that's what we're going to tackle. So I'll see you there. 7. I Don't Want to Waste Supplies: Have you been hesitant to use your art supplies or touch your sketchbook because you're afraid of wasting your materials or ruining your sketchbook pages. This is a really, really common stumbling block for so many people. And it's very similar to what we were talking about with the fear of the first page and the fear of the blank page. We have this image in our heads of this beautiful perfect sketch book. And if we are going to fall short of that, it's going to feel like failure. It's going to feel like we're wasting our supplies, we're wasting our time. It's going to feel like we ruined something that holds so many of us back and keeps us from creating. I know that that's one of the things that kept me from creating for a very long time. I didn't want to waste my supplies. I didn't want to ruin my sketchbook pages. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The only ruined sketchbook page is one that will remain blank forever. And the only wasted supplies are the ones that aren't used. Supplies can go bad if your paints are sitting unused for years and years, which some of my supplies actually were. Then they can dry up. The pigments can separate, they can become unusable. And that is true waste. I've had masking fluid dry up in the container. You can have markers dry up. That's happened to me too. So use your supplies. I get it. Art supplies are expensive and it can feel like we're wasting them if we're creating pages in our sketch books that were not entirely happy with. But the truth is, it's more about the experience of creating in our sketchbooks than it is about what shows up on the page when we're finished. Think about it this way. Do you feel bad about going to a coffee shop and treating yourself to a coffee when that coffee is going to be gone. In a short amount of time. You feel bad going to a restaurant and treating yourself to a nice meal. You don't have anything to show for yourself really after those experiences. But you have the experience that time doing something special for yourself. Think about your sketchbook practice in a similar way. You're doing something special for yourself while you're spending time within the pages of your sketchbook. But it's even better than a dinner that you eat. And then it's gone because at the end you have your sketch book as a record of all those experiences of all that time that you spent on yourself, with yourself as self-care, as relaxation, as play and as joy. If this is a really hard stumbling block for you, one thing that can help is to start out with some less expensive supplies. Recently, a friend of mine and I exchanged sketchbooks. We each filled up an entire sketchbook and mailed it to the other person. It was full of all sorts of fun, observations and things that we were noticing. Little letters to each other. And my friend used a children's sketchbook for her. And I love that. So go out. If you're feeling weird about touching a pristine, beautiful, expensive sketchbook, go out and get yourself a cheap children's notebook or a sketchbook and use that for your sketchbook practice. It'll feel a little less daunting and a little less intimidating than if you are using something a little more fancy because I love sharing quotes. I have another one to share for you here that I hope will inspire you with your own sketchbook practice. Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it. I also want to emphasize that there is no wrong way to use your sketchbook. There's no wrong way to create a page. There's no wrong way to design a practice that is nurturing for you. That is so important to keep in mind. If you're always worried about the wrong thing, it'll be so hard to do anything at all. In the next lesson, we're going to be creating a page. And it may seem a little strange, maybe a little counter-intuitive. But this next page that we're creating is going to be messy. It's gonna be scribbly. And I'm hoping that by creating it, you're going to stop worrying about wasting your materials or ruining your sketch book. 8. Geometric Scribbles: It might seem a little counter-intuitive for me to be showing you how to make a very messy, scribbly page in your sketchbook as a way to jostle yourself out of the mentality. And the fear of wasting your supplies are ruining your sketch book. But I think that by intentionally using your supplies, using your art materials in an abundant and enthusiastic way without worrying about what's going to happen on the page, without trying to make something perfect or beautiful, then you're going to realize that you can't really waste your supplies and you can't really ruin your page as long as you are doing something. Although we'll be making a messy page and basically just scribbling with crayons. There are still some skills you'll be using in developing when you do a page like this, you'll be curating a color palette. You'll be designing a page. Instinctively. Really don't overthink this. And you'll be tapping into your inner child. You're gonna be releasing that creativity, imagination, and joy that you felt so easily in childhood. This technique is something that I've used again and again. And it is so much fun. I really hope that you will enjoy it too. For this project, I'm using neo color to water-soluble wax pastels. I call them Kranz. They're not really Kranz. I love using them because the colors are vibrant. I loved them because they're a little bit messy. They remind me of children's Kranz. So again, use what you have and have fun with it. First thing I need to do is choose my colors. Now I want you to choose what ever colors make you happy. I'm going to limit my color palette to five. I'm going to choose a few cool colors and warm colors. Five is a good number because I don't want to blocks of the same color and my design to be next to one another. This is a super simple process. And I hope that by making some CRAN scribbles, you feel that childhood joy of creating. There are a few things that are more joyful than scribbling with crayons. And this sort of exercise really takes advantage of that. So all I'm really doing is making irregular shapes in different colors and different sizes and varying the shapes and sizes and how they're arranged on the page. Don't overthink this. Also for my page, I'm leaving some white space, some of the white blank paper between my shapes, but you don't have to do that. You could have the colors running together. You could create more irregular shapes if you wanted to. But I think it's really fun to create sort of weird shapes and get into the joy of scribbling. You. I hope you will lose yourself in this process and embrace the messiness of this page. But also feel the joy of color. Feel the joy of moving your hand across the page. This is a perfect warm-up. If you're wanting to be creative and you just need to get the juices flowing. Something like this is the perfect thing to do. Just like how if you're gonna be jogging or doing other exercises, you want to warm up your muscles, do some stretching. This page does that for you. It is also very cathartic. So if you have some anger or frustration or worry or grief that you need to burn off. Getting lost in the process of a page like this is perfect for that. I'm pressing fairly hard with the Kranz. So that'll have a really deep color. You could experiment with different pressure of the Kranz. See what it's like. If you scribble over very lightly, you can experiment with how much you overlap your marks. In which direction you move your hand. My lines are all going up and down, but you can have yours go in different directions or experiment with having them all go side to side. There are so many ways that you can play around with pages like this. And that's part of the fun of it to just experiment and not be afraid to use your materials. That's really one of the points that I want to drive home with this exercise. That you need to use your materials fearlessly, with joy and with love. Once you get into that mindset, no matter what kind of page that you're making, you're gonna be so much more free. Free with your creativity, free to make mistakes. Mistakes are so important as you're developing as an artist. And that is, if you even want to develop as an artist, maybe you just want to relax and really lean into the self-care aspect of keeping a sketchbook. This is a really great page to do. If that's your intention for your practice. Being messy is so freeing. I know for me, since my art is so detailed and careful, doing something like this is a great change of pace for me. This page is also great if you just want to sit down and do something, but you have no idea what to do. And sitting down with a page like, this is a great way to keep your commitment to your creativity. And a very low pressure way. In a nurturing way. You can see I have varied shapes and sizes and kept the colors from being side-by-side. And I've tried not to overthink where I will put which color, what sort of shape I will use if it's gonna be big. If it's going to be small. I'm trying to find some balance between colors and shapes, but not worrying too much about it. I just want to fill the page working instinctively, following my joy and letting my creativity run free. I hope that you will create a page like this. I hope that you'll let yourself be messy and free and let go of that fear of wasting your supplies or worry that you're ruining your page because there's no way you can ruin a page like this. And this will open you up to so much joy. Now that I'm done, I'm just going to wipe off the little bits from the crayons. And although it's not the point, I think this looks beautiful. Here's some other examples of similar pages that I've done in my sketchbooks. I use a sheet of tracing paper or other paper between the pages so that the colors don't smear when I'm working in my sketch book on other pages. Just some examples to give you ideas of different shapes and different color palettes. You could also do other kinds of scribbles like stripes. Or you could use paint or markers to do stripes or bubbles. Here's some watercolor stripes, and here's some watercolor inspired by a color palette of a flower. Here's a little design with markers. Here's some squares with markers. And then for awhile I was obsessed with doing little swatches of Plaid. So that's another fun way to be messy and curates some palettes and just have fun with the process. I hope that gives you lots of ideas for your own sketchbook. I experimented in my new sketchbook with these ink tents blocks. I used water with them, which is something that I never do on pages like this. It felt so good to experiment and be inspired to try something new. I hope you will be to this sort of page is so fun to make and I hope you'll play with the idea in your sketchbook. Try making a page of scribbling shapes. You can use crayon or another medium. You can experiment with your color palettes or try using just one color. Experiment with the shapes that you use. Experiment with letting the colors touch or leaving more whitespace between them. Play with different patterns and layouts. And play with how you apply color with the crayons. You can press harder or lighter with other media, you can try laying more saturated or less saturated color. There's so many ways to experiment with laying down color. I hope you'll really have fun with this. And the next lesson we're going to be tackling another stumbling block. This one is huge. This one is probably the most powerful stumbling block that we're gonna be talking about. It probably informs all of our other fears. It's at the bedrock of what keeps so many of us from creating. It's the fear that we are not good at making art. 9. I'm Not Good At Art: Probably the most powerful stumbling block that keeps you from creating is your mindset around art and art-making. And your mindset about your skills and your abilities as an artist. I know for me that helped me back for a very, very long time. I believed that I was not good at making art. There are so many ways that that idea can be spoken aloud or internalized. There are so many reasons that that happens. Maybe it's something that happened in childhood. You are told that something you created was not good or someone next to you at the table in your class was praised and your heart was ignored. I know that that's what happened to me. I saw other people who are creating art and I thought, okay, they're an artist and I'm not. And I abandoned making art even though it was something that brought me joy. Very often when we're adults, we remember the joy that we found in art. And that is a little seed waiting to sprout that joy. That memory of the experiences that we had as a child fearlessly creating is just waiting for us. Now, first of all, you do not need to be good at making art in order to enjoy a nurturing and relaxing creative sketchbook practice. I've been showing you throughout the class lots of examples of pages that aren't technically what you would consider art. And yet the creation of those pages is such a joyful process. You can play with collage and your sketchbook, just enjoying different types of papers, different colors, different textures. You can write lists and write yourself notes and do simple doodling drawings. You can play with color and mixing color and record your observations. Treating your sketchbook almost like a diary or journal. And you can play with techniques like flour pounding, which is so far from sketching. And yet can help you create a fun and realistic and beautiful page. And that's what I really want to share with you. I want you to be able to overcome that idea. That a sketch book, as I said in that lesson, about what things I wish I knew a sketchbook is not just for someone who's an artist or someone who's good at making art. And also remember that sketchbook pages don't mean to be drawn or painted or be realistic looking. Either. Just think about that last exercise that we did that doesn't require any drawing skills at all. But I also want to emphasize that art is not a talent that you're born with. It's a skill that you can develop. And I think that's worth saying again and again. Because I know I did not think that way when I was first starting out and for years, that kept me from pursuing my dream of learning to paint. So how do you go about learning how to draw or paint or Sketch or create realistic reinterpretations of the things that you see. Here are a few tips to get you started. Start simple. Start with simple sketches, simplified versions of things that you observe. Simple shapes, simple colors, simple design, layout, experiment, experiment with your materials so that you get to know them and how they work and what sort of result you'll have with them. Experiment with different techniques so that you can learn structures and shapes of the things that you are observing. Observing is so important. You can observe colors. You can observe shapes and textures. Don't worry about the right way. Have fun with this. If you want to fill your page with silly doodles and sketches, go right ahead. Have fun with the process. Don't worry about being correct. Do things just because they bring you joy. Then practice and make it fun. Experiment in different ways. While you're practicing. Come up with interesting ways to observe without putting pressure on yourself, make it a daily practice or at least a regular practice, and you'll get better the more you do it. Also, remember that what makes your art unique is your hand in what you create. Only you can draw the way that you draw that natural tendency. How you make your lines, what sorts of motifs you like to use, how you depict those motifs. That is what's going to make your art unique. So don't worry about making things perfect. And don't worry about doing something like someone else. Does it. Do it, how you do it. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to make really fun, imperfect, corky page. That's going to be beautifully demonstrate how your hand can show up on the pages of your sketchbook. 10. Mixed Media Cottages Part 1: So the pages that we're going to be making in this lesson was actually recommended by one of my students. Thank you so much for suggesting that I make a video on how to create a page of heute cottages. This is one that I hope you will have a lot of fun with. It's probably the most complex page in this class. And it's going to take a few different steps. It's going to take a few different materials. But I think the result and the experience of creating these houses, these little quirky cottages, will be so fun for you to try. But this will also help you learn some skills. Playing with mixed media, tapping into your childhood creativity. Playing with color combinations. Then more technically, using an opaque medium over a transparent one, creating variations on a theme. Think about what other imagery you might want to try this with. Then working in a grid layout. I want you to remember that anyone can make art, anyone can draw, anyone can paint. I want you to remember when you were a child and you would fearlessly pick up a paintbrush or a marker or a CRAN and just get busy. So tap into that childhood joy, that childhood fearlessness. A quote that has always stuck with me because it's so true about my creative journey is this beautiful quote from Picasso. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. We want you to have fun with this process, not take yourself too seriously. I don't want you to worry if your page gets messy or as a little weird-looking or the paint flows in weird ways. Just go with the flow. Have fun, enjoy the process. I can't wait to see what your little cottages will end up looking like. I'm going to be using my Canson XL mixed media book and this set of current talky watercolors. For my page, I've got my supplies all set up. I have my water, I have my paintbrush. When my favorite Princeton velvet touch, long round brushes, my sketchbook, some paper towel Ling to block my brush. And I'm just going to go with the flow here and start painting my houses. I'm not planning anything out. I'm just going to paint some imaginary shapes with the watercolor. I'm not doing anything fancy. I'm just blocking out color. Using the color directly from the paint pans, which is something I don't usually do. Usually I mix my own colors, but for this, I'm just going to use the colors that are here. And I'm not going to use a limited palette. I'm just going to use colors that speak to me. Again, not planning things out. The little base shape of that house and then the orange is the roof. It's like a little face actually. We're ahead. I'm going to choose a different color for the next house and paint a different shape. So I'm going to vary the shapes and the colors and the sizes of the houses. Of course, if you want to plan things out, Go right ahead. If that makes you happy, I'd recommend though, that you just play here and again, tap into your childhood creativity and your imagination and just go with the flow and see what happens between colors. I'm rinsing my brush and blotting it so that I don't contaminate my colors so that the colors that show up on the page are bright and clear. And I'm trying to get contrasting colors between the houses and the roofs and making sure that each house is different, different in color, different in shape. And I'm tapping into my childhood creativity here, my imagination, none of these houses you don t think would really exist like this. I'm not an architect at, I don't really have a good idea of what would work structurally. And that's not the point here. The colors in this house are bleeding quite a bit, but I'm not going to worry about that and just let the paint do what it wants to do. So the next house is going to be on the next line of our grid. Another color. And you do not need to use watercolor for this. You could use markers, you could use a different kind of paint. You could use Kranz. You could make these houses with pen or pencil or colored pencil if you wanted some color. So this house is going to get a third contrasting color. Just to make it a little more interesting. You can get as involved with this as you want. Make your houses as complex as you want, or just keep it really simple. I have already painted a house that's this sort of half oval shape. What I'm going to make this one different by having the roof not go all the way down. For me, painting in this way is so freeing. Usually when I use watercolors, I'm very exact and careful. And of course you could paint that way to here. But I want you to free yourself and have fun with the process. Because this is supposed to be relaxing and joyful. If you're the type of person who's very controlling, try to let that go. And maybe I shouldn't have chosen green right under it of another greenhouse, but this one is gonna be a lot darker. Again, I'm just choosing colors that speak to me, not planning things out too much. Let's give this one a red roof. Sets it apart from that other greenhouse. This shape too. Darker green, a different color roof. If the bleeding bothers you, what you can do is blot the paper, pick up the excess paint. That's going to leave some white marks. But we can go back in with the green paint and cover that up. I could have done that with the top house or it could have intentionally had bleeding colors. I'm skipping ahead here. I painted those other houses in the same manner as the first six. I want you to not worry about recreating the houses that I've created here. I want you to truly tap into your creativity and tap into your imagination. Choose colors that speak to you. Make house shapes that speak to you and truly have fun with the process. I'm going to let this dry and we'll finish it in the next lesson. 11. Mixed Media Cottages Part 2: In order to do mixed media work like this, on top of watercolor, you need to make sure your paper is dry before you use your other media. I have a couple of different kinds of markers. I have a paint pen, paint marker, posca, and a micron pen. And these will all allow me to add some details to these houses. And the first thing I'm gonna do is use this Posca pen to sketch out the windows on the houses. This paint marker is opaque and the opacity of the color that I'm laying down is going to cover the transparent watercolors. At least that is my intention. Because the marker is liquid, it's going to reactivate the watercolor paint. That's one of the properties of watercolor. That even once it's dried, you can go back in with water or in this case with another liquid like this paint marker and reactivate the paint. So far it seems like it's not a problem. If the paint bleeds into the white too much. I can always go back after it's dry and put on another layer. Another way that you could do the Windows is to avoid painting in that space. Either sketch out with pencil first or just very carefully paint. You could use masking fluid. You could use a resist like a wax crayon. There are lots of different options. You could also paint the windows in with acrylic paint or gouache. Just like with the houses themselves. These windows are not very realistic. I'm just putting them wherever. I think they'll look interesting, making them shapes that I think will look interesting. Staggering them in ways that look interesting. And I'm not worrying about things like structural integrity because that's not the point here. The white marker is standing out a lot more against the darker colors. But we'll go in and make sure that you're able to see the windows. Okay, now I've done all of these windows. I'm going to go in then with markers and sketch in some doors. And I'm trying to make the doors be contrasting colors. And I'm just picking colors that I think would be fun. Not worrying too much about my choices and choosing dark enough colors that they will cover over the watercolor. Here with this red, I'm just going to darken the roof. You can go in and add as many details as you want. So here I'm going to put this door where the blue paint bled. Just use that as a design element and then go back and darken up that roof. I've added all of the doors here. We'll go on to do some more detail work. I'm going to be using my microphone on top of the paint marker, as well as using it to add more details. If the paint marker is too wet, it's not going to work well. The microns not going to work well on top of it. You may have to wait and let things dry. This first house, the window seem pretty dry. So I'm just going to go ahead and do them. Well. So have fun with the details here. I'm adding some details on their roof. You can add things like brickwork, opening a door knob. Then just with all of the houses, I'm going to add any details that I think need to be added. And remember to let your hand show through here and don't be too precise. By outlining the windows with the black micron. It makes them stand out even on the lighter color houses. So here again, tap into your creativity. Have fun making your details. As whimsical as you want to add as many or as few details as you want to. You can always come back to this later if you open up your sketchbook and see something that might need some details or you have an idea of how you might want to finish your houses. There's no reason why you can't go back and play a little more with the page. Now I've already mentioned that you don't have to finish a page all at once. And it's worth saying again, especially when thinking about a page that's this complex. So this roof, I think I'm going to add some more lines on here. Not worrying, again, not worrying about being realistic at all. Just trying to make them look interesting, make them look fun. Make them look quirky. You can purposely create really weird or a silly houses. You could tap into Dr. Seuss and make really crazy things. Looking at children's books is a great way to get some ideas. There. My finished page of houses. After I did that page, I decided I would do another page using markers instead of paint. So here it is side-by-side, the two neighborhoods. The second page I did, I used a more limited palette. And I also experimented with leaving space for the windows. So here, this one I forgot to, so I had to use the paint marker, but the other ones, I left space for the windows and they are a bit brighter that way. This was my original page that I did. And in truth, I like it better than my other pages. I think my black lines are a little more distinct there. I added some more details, but you know what, It doesn't matter. But if it bothers you, you can go back and refine your pages here. I added darker black lines. I added more green to the roof of that house where the colors bled. I added some shutters on the blue house here in this yellow house here. Again, you can go back and keep working on a page if it doesn't feel finished. Here are a few more examples. This one is all in pen, some fun little houses. Here's a cityscape I did. That was with gouache paint. Here's a little neighborhood. Think about what other motifs you might like to paint or draw or sketch here, some fun cars I did with marker and pen to go along with the childhood vibe. Rainbows are always fun, whether they're traditional colors are a mix of colors or a limited palette. Those were really fun to do. I love plants. These house plants are fun to line up and paint. Or pencil or marker. Or in this page, I did pen on the right and my friend did some cut paper. I also love playing with snails, so you can do that so many ways, realistic or more cartoony, using whatever medium you want. So tap into your childhood joy and your imagination and let go of all those negative voices. I hope you had fun with that and I hope that all of these examples have you thinking of so many different pages that you can create your own sketchbooks? Here are some ideas. Make a page of fun cottages and play with the media and mixing it. Maybe you don't want to use watercolor, maybe you use something else, or maybe you use just one medium. Experiment with your color palettes. Either have a very restricted color palette or use all the colors. See what you like better. Experiment with different layouts. Instead of using a grid. See what other layouts you can create and what you like the best. Play with different motifs instead of cottages, what other imagery might you use? Add lots and lots of detail or simplify the imagery you're creating and use this idea to create a series of similar pages. The next stumbling block is a big one that I think all of us feel from time to time. I bet that you have. Can you guess what it is? Join me in the next lesson and find out. 12. I Don't Have Time: One thing that keeps so many of us from creating is the thought that we don't have enough time. And it's true, We're all so busy and life continually goes at a faster and faster pace. Our days are full. There's so much that we're doing and it's hard to imagine fitting anything else. And if you're looking at your sketch book, something that needs to be perfect and polished and take a lot of time, then yes, it's gonna be hard to fit that into your already busy day. But if you look at it more as a practice of self-care and something that will help nurture and nourish you and your creative spirit, then it might be easier to fit that sort of practice into your day. There's less pressure when you look at it that way. There are some other things that can help you fit creating into your time. You can schedule your creative practice into your day is if you know that you have some time in the morning before everyone gets up, when it's still quiet in the house, you can brew your pot of coffee, take your mug to the table, and work in your sketchbook, even if it's for a very short time. Well, that's another thing. Working in short bursts of time will make so much more possible for you. You can even set a timer for 5 min, 10 min, 15 min, whatever you want to spend. So many of the pages that I am demonstrating in this Hi class really take less than 10 min. Of course, the last lessons page is the exception to that rule. If you have even 5 min to spare, you can do part of a page and that's something else to keep in mind. As I mentioned in the things that I wished, I knew when I was first starting out. You don't need to finish a page all in one sitting. You can work on it over a number of days and that's perfectly okay. Whenever you have spare moment, you can take out your sketchbook and work in it. And that brings me to something else. Keep your supplies handy, keep them together. Maybe you want to use a basket or a vintage suitcase or something like that to keep your supplies. And so you're always ready to go. Maybe you can even keep that Next to the sofa in the living room. So when you're watching some TV, you can take out your sketch book. That's another thing that you can do. Multitask if you're watching TV or if you're waiting to pick someone up or you're waiting at a doctor's office or whatever, have your sketchbook with you so you can work in it. Something else that can help is working small. I've been loving this small sketchbook because the pages don't take very long to complete. In the next demonstration, I'm gonna be taking advantage of a small paper size, but a really small two-and-a-half by 3.3 quarters paper. That's even smaller than my smallest sketchbook. That means that our sketch is going to go very quickly and you can fit it into a tiny bit of your day. 13. Crayon Butterfly: For this exercise, I'm going to be creating on really tiny paper. This is actually watercolor paper. This legion brand has really small pads that you can buy to test out the paper and see how you like it. You don't need to use this paper or this brand. Another option is cutting small pieces of black paper. You can use construction paper or you can use drawing paper. I enjoy working with this art again paper. But use what you have. It's also possible to paint your page beforehand to have a space to work on. I'm going to be using these neo color to crayons, which are some of my favorite materials. You don't have to buy a set or anything like that. Just use what you have. By creating this butterfly. We're going to learn some skills. You'll be learning how to layer and blend the crayons. How to depict a simple but realistic looking butterfly. Then you'll be using the paper itself as a design element. So let's get drawing. Before you begin sketching, it's helpful to look through a book of butterflies to get some ideas of colors and shapes and patterns and designs. I really loves low blue butterflies. And I'm looking at a couple different butterflies for ideas of how the colors blend. I don't want anything too dark, so it'll stand out more against the page. So I'm not going to recreate any specific butterfly. Just use all of these as ideas. I'm going to start by sketching with a light gray CRAN. And I'm just going to get the basic shape of the butterfly. I put the first line for the Centre for that body part of the butterfly. And then I'm sketching in the wings. And these gray marks are going to be covered over with other colors. So I can refine the shape as I go. I just want to have a basic mostly symmetrical shape here to work with. That way, my butterflies shape doesn't get too wonky, which sometimes happens. It's hard to sketch symmetrically. After I have the basic shape down, I can come back in with some colors. And I'm going to start with this dark blue. I'm going to keep layering and blending. So it's not that important how careful I am with this first layer. I just want to have a basic blue color to work from. One of the things I love about these grants is how wonderfully they blend and how you can layer the color, one color over another. So although this is a quick sketch, I want you to take your time with it and really have fun with this medium or whichever medium you choose to use. So moving on to a lighter color, see how beautifully those two colors blend together. Butterflies are especially blue butterflies are somewhat iridescent, and I'm really trying to recreate that by having lighter and darker colors. Moving on to an even lighter color, blue. Blend that in here. And just keep switching back and forth between colors. Keep blending, keep layering color. I like to keep going until you can't really see too much of the paper left. Of course, the paper does give you some texture which makes your sketch more interesting. Now when I layer this light gray on top of the blue, it blends with the blue and ends up looking somewhat blue as well. So Kranz break, that's okay. I'm working on the body now and trying to get the shape and get some shading that makes it look more three-dimensional. One of the great things about butterflies, or at least butterflies in this layout, is that they're pretty flat and it makes them easier to sketch. But you still want to have a bit of volume. Here my intent, I made them lighter than the actual butterflies because of the black paper. Let's see, I'm going to use this brown color here. Some of the blue butterflies have black edges and some have some brown in there. I'm going to just emphasize that the brown in this rendering of the butterfly, because of our black paper. It'll help the butterfly to stand out some more and not blend into the paper. So some gray, some brown. All of this shading and blending makes for a really interesting looking butterfly, for a really simple butterfly, but one that's interesting. It's not a really fancy shape. Some butterflies have very intricate shapes. This one's pretty simple. The interests comes in all the blending of the colors. And that's one of the reasons that these crayons are so great for this. Sometimes, especially with this watercolor paper. When you have thick crayon marks, it lifts off some of the wax. So I can go back in and add more. It's really up to you how many colors you want to use and how intricate you want to get with your blending. You want it to look natural. But also interesting. You could also make your butterfly not look natural. Again, it's up to you. However you want to depict the butterfly, you can experiment and try different ways to differentiate between the top and bottom wings. It's nice to put another color there between them. So they look like distinct wings. So there's four instead of two. And then just keep going in and refining with this light crayon. I'm just going to sketch some quick veins. Don't have to be very exact here, just give the hint of them with the very tip of the Qur'an. Until you're happy with how it looks. You can keep going back. Refining the edges are finding the shape, blending the colors. A bit more fun process. And then one of the things I love about the black paper is that you can go in with a black crayon and neaten up your edges. Just cover over anything that's lit bit rough or messy. Or if you need to refine your shape, just cleans up your whole image here. Then that one antenna is kinda thick, so I can narrow that out. And the black blends perfectly with the black background. I can use a little black to define the wings to there, There's our finished beautiful blue butterfly. I really love how this butterfly turned out, and I hope that you have fun creating one of your own. You could also use this same idea of creating quickly in a small space to create a much larger page. Here's the spread done in colored pencil of lots of butterflies. You could easily spend a little bit of time each day working on a butterfly like this, or doing it on black paper. I love this black paper and sketch book. These were done in CRAN, like the one we just did. Here's some birds done in marker. And then here's another example on better paper. Birds are really fun to do this one is in paint. Here's some hummingbirds done in colored pencil. And here's a spread with birds and flowers done in CRAN, so it doesn't have to be realistic. You can really have fun with this. And then here's another example, totally different, but also so fun. The vegetables that one is gouache and here are some end marker. I hope these examples are sparking lots of ideas for you. Now play in your own sketchbook. Create a sketch of a butterfly on black paper. Use crayon or another medium. Try painting your paper black. If you don't have black paper or just to see how it works, try another color background and see how different it is. What color might you choose? Fill a whole page with butterflies, and don't finish your page at once. Play with different motifs other than butterflies. What else might you sketch? Birds or plants or flowers or people? Experiment and play. Experiment with different paper types. And be realistic in your sketches or be fanciful. I hope you'll really have fun with this. Spoiler alert will be creating another butterfly later in class using a different medium. Right now though, we'll be moving on to another stumbling block. 14. I Don't Have Energy to Create: Often the feeling that you don't have the energy to create really is coming from other fears. Fears of ruining your page, fears that you're not good at art. If you find yourself without energy for creating, it can be helpful to dig a little deeper and see if it's really a problem of energy or if it's something else that's keeping you from creating. I want you to feel that your sketchbook is your happy place. That it can be a getaway, a stress reliever, and the practice like a meditation. I want you to remember though, to give yourself grace if you truly don't feel up to creating for whatever reason, it's okay not to create, to give yourself some time off if that's what you need. If it really is your energy level. If it really is your energy level that's keeping you from creating, then there are a few things that you can do to set yourself up for success. When you're confronted with that situation, you can just roll and keep going. Let go of the idea of perfection. We've talked about this a lot already throughout the class, but it's always good to remind yourself. Also, collect ideas for quick pages. A lot of the exercises throughout the class are good examples of this. Cure rate. A library of inspiration. See the bonus lesson for help with this. Make sure your supplies are ready and waiting for you to create with. And remember to focus on the self-care aspect of the practice. It also helps to immerse yourself in inspiration. So in the next lesson, I'm going to do just that. 15. Simple Line Drawing: Whenever I'm struggling with my energy, I know that going out to my garden will inspire me and helped me to begin creating again. So that's what we're going to do today. I've got my cute little sketch book. I've got to posca pens. And I'm going to load them up in my overalls and go outside. Whenever I'm feeling low on energy, just going out to my garden, walking around, looking at what's new, what's in bloom. What may have changed from the day before because things are always changing. That brings me back to myself. It gives me energy. It inspires me. Most of my art is directly inspired by my garden. And so it makes sense that coming here energizes and inspires me. Just spending time looking around, observing, seeing different colors, textures, and shapes always brings me back to my creative self. So I want you to think, where do you feel most inspired? What energizes you? What kind of situation can you set up for yourself that you can feel the same way I feel when I'm in my garden. Maybe it's obvious to you right away where that place will be or what situation it will be. Or maybe it's going to take a little more thought. Either way, I want you to come up with you're perfect inspiration place and then immerse yourself whenever you're low on energy. Some of the skills you developed by creating a page like this are finding a subject to sketch. Simplifying your subject, creating with just two colors. Designing a layout in a small space and adding text to your page. It's important to keep things simple when you're low on energy. So I'm using just two colors. I'm using my small sketchbook. And I'm going to do a very simple line drawing. Starting out here with the center of a dahlia flower. That last flower that I looked at is going to be the inspiration for this. I love these simple dolly of flowers, the ones that don't have lots and lots and lots of petals. They're very beautiful and the bees love them. I started out with the center of the flower. And now I'm going to sketch out some very simple petals around that circle up the center. I know drawing with paint pens like this can be intimidating if you are not confident in your drawing skills. My advice for you in that case is to just be simple. This is a very easy to sketch flower. You could also stop right here and not add any more petals. I'm adding the details of the veins on the pedals, the texture, they're not really veins, It's almost like folds. But you don't even have to do that. You can just outline the shape. And I know some of my students have worried about drawing the correct way. Don't let this stop. You. Observe your subject and sketch what you see. So moving on from the flower, I'm sketching the stem. And then I'm gonna give this flower, this plant stem, another little bud up here. So those are the little leaflets around the bud. And then here's a little leaf. I'm simplifying my subject. The Dalia plant that's sitting in front of me has lots of leaves, lots of stems, lots of buds. But I'm keeping mine simple. I'm not doing a lot of detail on the leaves, a little bit of veining. I'm also trying to have a nice layout to the page. So the stem is curving. The leaves and the clusters of leaves are going into the blank space on the page. I want to cover this page without being busy. So simplifying a subject is a great way to create if you're low on energy, but it's also. Great for when you are learning how to draw. Keep your subject simple. At first. As you become more confident, your composition can be more complex. Your drawing can be more complex with more details, more color. But in the beginning or when you're low on energy, keep things simple. You could even simplify your flower more than what I'm doing. You don't have to sketch out as many leaves as I am. You could use one color instead of two. There are so many ways that you can simplify your sketches. And that's a great way to experiment. Create different pages using different techniques, simplifying things more or less, see what you like best and what brings you the most joy and have fun with the process. Now I need to add some color up here for the bud. I think I'm going to fill the bud in with solid color. It's the only part of the drawing that's going to be filled in whenever I push myself to create when I'm low on energy, I'm glad that I did. Now I'm gonna go back up to my studio and show you some more examples. That was so much fun. I hope that you will be inspired to create some simple and beautiful line drawings the next time you're feeling low on energy to or maybe even when you're not. Before, I show you some more examples, I just wanted to share what I'm doing on the opposite page next to the flower that I just sketched, I decided to add some text with some watercolor paint. And if you're not comfortable painting your text, you can use other mediums. I just see that I accidentally wrote paint instead of sketch, but that's okay. Now I'm going to add a date using my date stamp to finish off my page. That way, I will have a great way to remember the day. And no, when I created my page, I love dating my pages for that reason. I love how this spread turned out and I'm so glad that I overcame low-energy to create it. I created another page in the same manner just to see what it would be like if I wrote the text with marker instead of using a paintbrush. Creating with this same technique on large paper is another fun way to experiment and create your pages. So it was interesting to experiment with two colors on black paper as well. Simple line drawings give you so many options if you want to use one color, if you want to use different kinds of pens, here I used a brush pen, which is really fun to use once you get the hang of it. These two pages, we're done with brush pen as well. And then where they bled through, I used color pencil to color it in. You can use any color for your single colored line drawings. You can make your own colored backgrounds and use metallic pens or use a dramatic single color like red. Going the opposite way and sketching lots of colors is fun. Lots of flowers done in micron is another fun way to create some pages. There are so many options and I know you'll come up with your own fun ideas as well. I can't wait to hear about them. In the next lesson, I'm going to be tackling another stumbling block. I'll see you there. 16. It's All Been Done Before: We're getting near the end here and we've covered so many stumbling blocks. One more that I want to talk about before letting you off on your own is the fear that it's all been done before. In terms of art, it's probably true that everything has already been done before, but that is no reason to stop you from creating. Elizabeth Gilbert says it beautifully when she says it might have been done before, but it hasn't been done by you. You have a unique voice that is all your own, a unique perspective. You've had unique experiences. There's never been another you and the art that you create is, aren't that only you could create in the way that only you could create it. I know it's especially hard when you're still developing your art skills and your techniques and your voice. But that shouldn't stop you from creating. Actually, it should be the opposite you need to create. I know one of my students said that she felt the world doesn't need more mediocre art. Well, the world does need more mediocre art because there's no way you're going to get to the point of making beautiful, wonderful, quirky, inspiring pieces. If you don't start where you are. So don't let the fear that it's all been done before keep you from creating. Another way to look at the idea that it's all been done before is the idea that you can do the same types of art again and again and again. You can repeat the same types of imagery. You can repeat the same techniques. You can use the same colors. Intentionally create art similar to what you've done before, because that's the way that you grow and develop, come up with new ideas, new techniques, new favorite materials. You've seen so many of my pages throughout the class that are similar to one another, that are me riffing on the same idea again and again and again. And that's the wonderful thing about art. That's how you develop. It's how you grow. It's how you get to that beautiful art. That's how you get past the mediocre stage. And you can't get there without doing what's been done before again and again and again. Now, don't let that stop you. The idea that you'll have to do it again and again. Because again, it's all about the experience. It's all about the joy. It's about spending time being creative and devoting your time to yourself and your own development and your own relaxation. I know that not everyone taking this class wants to be an artist. And really that's not the point. Again. The point is that you spend time with an on yourself. You spend time nurturing your creativity. You spend time building joy with your own two hands. Now to honor this idea of doing the same thing again and again. In the next lesson, I'm going to be demonstrating another page created with a technique that we've already done, but with a little twist. So I'll see you there. 17. Colored Pencil Butterfly: Did you remember that I had given you a spoiler alert earlier in this class about creating another butterfly. This time, I'm going to be sketching a butterfly with colored pencil. Another one of my very favorite materials. The skills for this exercise are very similar to the first butterfly. This time we're going to learn to layer and blend color pencil, depict a simple but realistic butterfly. Use the paper as a design element and create a dynamic page layout. This time, adding our little piece of paper into our sketchbook. I'm going to be creating on another one of these little black watercolor pages. This one is hot press. The first one we did was cold press. And then if you look at them side-by-side, you can see the texture difference. I think the smoother texture of the hot press paper will be better with my colored pencils. Now I'm using Prismacolor colored pencils for this. And I'm going to use the same technique that I used with the CRAN. The colored pencils will give me a finer line than the Kranz did. But I'm just going to use the same technique. So I'm sketching out the basic shape of the butterfly with a gray colored pencil. And then I'll begin layering color. I know sometimes I get questions from students asking about what colors I'm using and frustrated that I'm not telling you all the exact colors. The reason that I'm not doing that, especially here, is that I want you to use your own materials. Maybe you don't have Prismacolor colored pencils, or maybe you don't have the same selection of colors that I do. That should not stop you from creating. I want you to free yourself to experiment, to be curious and ask questions like, what would happen if I layer this color over this other color? Or how might I recreate the blue that I created with CRAN, with colored pencil? If I don't have the same color, blue. I think that's another stumbling block that people come across again and again. And that is the feeling like there is only one right way to do things. And that is so untrue. One of the reasons to do the same sort of exercises again and again is to learn different ways of doing things. And I really wish that for you. I wish you that freedom. I wish you that curiosity, and I wish you that joy. This process is so joyful for me. I love layering and blending color in colored pencil. And in CRAN. I also love layering and blending color with watercolor, which is the medium I use the most in my serious art. Color itself is such a joy. And it's such an inspiration. So you can see that I've just been blending and layering with these colored pencils in a very similar way to that first butterfly that I created with the neo color to. One of the things I love about Prismacolor colored pencils is that they're very waxy and you can use a heavy hand and get a very saturated and opaque color with the pencil. And you can cover up the paper enough that you're not able to see any of the paper underneath your pencil marks. And that requires a lot of blending, a lot of layering. For me, that's such a meditative process. In addition to encouraging you to experiment with color, with your butterfly, is to experiment with mark-making. Experiment with different ways of moving your pencil. How can you get different effects? If you move your pencil back and forth or in one direction or in circles, there's no right or wrong way to use your art supplies. So I hope that you will let go of that fear and stumbling block as well. And just experiment. I'm adding some darker color here. I love all the variations. And yes, sometimes when you're blending color or layering color, you're going to lose some of your earlier marks and earlier blending. But that's okay. It's all part of the process of experimentation. Billowing some of that dust away there. Okay, So we'll continue here. Going to add this lighter part down at the bottom of the lower wings of this butterfly. I'm loving how it's looking. Now, moving on to the center, the body of the butterfly. Just like how when I was creating the butterfly with the Neo colors. I'm layering different colors to get some shading to give some volume to my sketch. So it looks like this body is three-dimensional to give some texture. And although it's not exactly the same as the CRAN butterfly, it's still very similar and I think very beautiful. So moving on from the blues and grays to add some brown. Again, I don't have the exact same colors. And that's okay. Because I'm just going to keep layering and blending. And I want my finished sketch to be able to stand on its own, as well as be a companion for the first butterfly. So here's a darker brown adding that in there. A bit. On the top wings. I'm loving how this one is looking. I can just keep going in and adding more detail, doing a bit more blending until I'm happy with how it looks. Or I could stop at any point. You can try experimenting a few different ways and see what you like better. That's the beauty of something like this. You can do it again and again and again. And learn from every experience. You get a feeling for your materials. You get a feeling for your colors. I'm going to add some veining, just like I did with that first butterfly. Just a hint of more texture, a little bit of detail. You can be as detailed or not detailed as you want because you are in charge. I'm coming back with black, just like I did with the Qur'an butterfly. Just to neaten things up a little. Just covering up some of those gray marks that my other colors didn't cover up. Just refining the edges and refining the shape. It's not a necessary step. Okay, I think this butterfly is finished. I love the way they look together. Now, there are so many ways that you can adorn your sketchbook pages with your smaller pieces that you do outside of your sketchbook? I could lay them side-by-side in this little sketch book. Or I could use a slightly larger sketchbook and create a page with the two of them together on top of one another. Attaching pieces done on separate paper is a great way to have a dynamic page design. In this sketchbook, I disliked the paper and so I've been gluing and taping things into it. These swatches and these pressed flowers, I use tape for the flowers and glue for the swatches. I also love using photo corners that creates some fun pages. Here's some more examples of that. Here's an another sketchbook, some little photo corners. You could also use washi tape, the decorative tape to attach your little pieces or create some pockets. Here I created pockets and put all sorts of little experiments into them. Another way to do a pocket is to use a, an envelope, a transparent envelope, and you can put your piece in there. Makes for a fun page design where you could just go Lou things into your sketch book here some color swatches and experiments. Here are some more color swatches and some plant material. Really fun. This sketch book page, there's the sketch I did. And then the block print that I created from that sketch, this sketch book, Let's see what it is. It's this Shinzen watercolor book. It's got a really rough surface. You can see how textured this is. It's hard to sketch n. So I've been collecting swatches and then gluing a photo of the piece that I create. I frequently use my sketchbook when I'm planning out a painting and I'll have rough sketches and photo reference. And then I like to have a pocket with all sorts of experiments, color mixing, testing out my ideas. And that way I can keep everything in one place. For one of my watercolor projects, there are so many ways that you can make interesting and fun sketchbook pages, and I hope you'll feel free to experiment. So I ended up using my small sketchbook and putting them side-by-side. I use some tracing paper cut to size to keep the colors from smearing. And I wrote a record of the materials I used for each page. I love how these two pages turned out. And I think I'm gonna have to do some more butterflies like this to put in my book. I want you to embrace the process and enjoy doing the same sorts of pages again and again and again in your own sketchbooks. In your own practice, I want you to try doing the same sort of sketch with another medium. Maybe even fill a whole page with experiments. Try using different backgrounds, different colors. Painted backgrounds are different types of paper. Experiment with different layouts. So when you glue or tape your pieces into your sketch book, try doing it in different ways. Use photo corners, use decorative tapes, make pocket, or frames for your images, and create a series of themed pages. So remember to do it again and again and again, but don't forget to have fun. In the next lesson, I'll be giving you a few more words of encouragement before letting you off to play and experiment and have fun and your sketch book. 18. Bonus: Library of Inspiration: Even the most experienced artist will sit down to create from time-to-time and have no idea what to do with that blank page. The key is to do it anyway. I love this quote. Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. I hope that each of the exercises in this class and all of the examples that I've shared throughout have given you lots of ideas for things to do in your sketch book. You have no idea what to do with that blank page. I have lots of other classes to give you even more ideas. But I think what is most valuable is for you to cultivate your own library of inspiration. Inspiration is everywhere. Anything can spark an idea, colors, patterns, textures. When you're out on a walk, maybe something that you see might catch your eye. A reflection in a puddle or the colors that someone has painted their house. Anything, everything can spark ideas for your creativity. Open your eyes and ask yourself the question, how am I, I be able to use that in my art? There are so many ways to cure rate your own library of inspiration, your own set of prompts, your own set of ideas. You can use your sketchbook even to collect ideas. You can write it in the cover or write it on the back page. You can just make a list creating collages of images and words cut from magazines is another great way to collect ideas and inspiration. Or maybe you want to do something that one of my students did to spark her inspiration? Instead of just a list of ideas and prompts, she created an inspiration deck that has cards with prompts, themes, mediums that will inspire her creative practice. Taking photos while you're out and about is a great way to come up with ideas. And it's fun to print out those photos, whether on your own printer or have them printed for you. You could even glue or type them into your sketch book or a special book, all of inspiration. Some places that many of us find inspiration. Art and nature books, films, magazines, the Internet is ripe with inspiration as well. But that can be a double-edged sword. Spending time is scrolling on Pinterest, or if you're on Instagram, scrolling through Instagram can be inspiring, but it also can raise some other fears or worries or feelings of comparison. So I'd be very careful with that, especially if you have a tendency to those sorts of feelings. Other artists, their sketchbooks, their art, can be so inspiring. Just be mindful of how you're feeling and don't spend too much time consuming others work truly though, you need to find what works for you. I hosted a series of interviews on my blog called Sketchbook conversations. You can access them at my giant strawberry.com forward slash sketchbook conversations. And each of the artists is so inspiring, creating wonderful sketchbook pages. Some artists that inspire me, Abigail helping is an illustrator. She has a regular sketchbook practice and has self-published this book with some of her sketchbook pages in it. She sketches people quite a lot, and her sketchbooks are lovely. She also keeps up log. If you go to her website, Theo design.com, It's a great place to see more of her work. Also, I'd recommend signing up for her newsletter. It's a great way to stay in touch and receive regular inspiration. Helen Hallows is another artist who has published books of her sketchbooks. These are seasonally themed books and they're filled with so much inspiration. It's wonderful to have something analogue like this. So she has a wonderful website, Helen hallows.com. She has more about her sketchbooks on her website. She also has a great newsletter as well. I love books and magazines for inspiration. And Strawberry Moon is a relatively new publication that's all devoted to art journaling. It's beautifully put together and very inspiring. Be sure to visit their website, Strawberry Moon dot art. And you can sign up for their newsletter and read their blog. Uppercase Magazine is beautiful and inspiring. Their tagline is for the creative and curious. So beautifully put together publication. You'll also want to jump over to their website, Uppercase magazine.com. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can sign up for Guineans weekly newsletter. Karen Alban is another artist who is passionate about sketchbooks. If you go to her website Karen OB and.com and click on her tab for sketchbooks, you can take a look at some of her pages. You'll also probably want to sign up for information about her workshop, Sketchbook Revival. It's always a lot of fun filled with lots of artists sharing inspiration from their sketchbooks. You might know Jennifer 4k and Louis as her brand name, August Wren. If you go to her website, August print.com, you can see lots of her work. You can read her blog and you can sign up for her newsletter. Her art is so colorful and inspiring on her YouTube channel, bits up an artist's life, Sandy Hester shares a lot about her process, including lots of her sketchbook pages. If you go look through her playlist, you'll see she has a whole playlist, just a sketch book tours. Connie Solera is another inspiring and encouraging artist. She used to keep a blog and now she says inspiration through her newsletter, but she also has her blog archives available on her website. And of course, there's so much inspiration here on Skillshare. So you can do a few searches and see what comes up. Under sketch book. You can limit the search results to all classes or just originals or staff picks. You can limit the class level and also the class link. So play around with a few different keywords to discover some more classes. You can also follow different topics. So just click follow. Remember that you don't want to copy an artist's ideas and claim them as your own, but to use them as a jumping off place for your own creativity. Of course, copying other artists is also a way that people learn. Just remember not to claim those ideas as your own. I love what Sandy Hester does in her sketchbooks. When she's creating a page inspired by someone else's art, she always writes that artist on her sketchbook page, mentioning that That's where she got the inspiration. One way that you can be inspired by another artist is to collaborate with them. A turning point for me in my sketchbook practice was collaborating with my friend Dana Barbarian. You can connect with Dana. Dana barbarian.substack.com. Our first collaboration was featured in uppercase magazine. We've gone on to collaborate on a number of projects since then and it's always fun and inspiring. So reach out to a friend and see if they'd be willing to collaborate with you. Or maybe you just have an art date, sketching date, either in person or over Zoom or FaceTime call whatever works for you. This is also fun to do with a child. If you've ever spent time creating with a child, you know, how fearlessly they are able to create. And that can be a wonderful inspiration for you and your art. I hope that you are ready to create your own library of inspiration. I would love to hear about it. Actually, that would be a perfect thing for you to include in your class project. Especially if you're not comfortable sharing your own sketchbook pages. In the next lesson, we'll talk more about your project. 19. On Your Own: Now comes the exciting part. I've shown you lots of examples from my sketchbooks. I've demonstrated some ways that I enjoy creating. And I've given you lots of food for thought, lots of ideas for how you can take my examples and make them your own. I hope that my class has helped to open your mind possibilities. I hope that now when you encounter the blank page, the first page, any page in your sketchbook, you're excited to begin that you have many ideas for what sorts of pages you can create. We all encounter stumbling blocks. We all get flustered from time to time. We all face that blank page and have no idea what to do. We all have days when we're low on energy or low on ideas. I don't want that to stop you from creating. Instead, I hope that you'll be able to find ways around those challenges so that you can keep going, keep creating, and keep discovering joy in the process and in the pages of your own sketchbooks. What happens if you create a page that you don't like? What happens if you create a page? That's terrible. I say, just turn the page and keep going. Every page will be part of a larger story. The story of your creativity and the story of your life, your experiences. I hope that the creation of your pages will be a wonderful form of self-care for you. One thing I want you to keep in mind is that you do not need to share your sketch book pages with anyone. You can keep your pages private. And doing so, you can allow yourself freedom to develop. There's no pressure to have a beautiful, perfect looking, polished page. If the only audience for that page is you. I really hope that you will create a project for this class. Even if you're not comfortable sharing your sketch book pages online, one thing that you could do is just show the cover of the sketchbook that you're using. Or a photo of some of your favorite supplies, or a photo of something that inspires you. That way you can keep what you create private, but also share about the experience. What challenges did you face, what stumbling blocks are keeping you from creating? Is it something that I didn't mention in class? If so, please ask about it and I will share any advice or any experiences of my own that I hope would help you and encourage you. I love connecting with my students. So don't be shy. Don't be shy to share your project. Don't be shy to jump into a conversation. Either start one or comment on someone else's post or comment on one of my posts. I really love the dynamic in skill share of the community, of the classmates in the classes, of teachers, encouraging students. That's what makes Skillshare truly special. So please reach out to me if there's something specific you'd like to know or some specific advice you'd like on your project, please ask and I'll do my best to address your questions. I hope you'll follow me here on Skillshare. You'll always know what I'm up to, what new classes I have planned, what classes I'm working on, what classes I'm releasing. A love getting student feedback. I love having suggestions from you. You can see in class that I included some of the student interactions in my lessons. And I'd love to do more of that going forward, so please reach out. I also host contests here on Skillshare, where I give away at Skillshare memberships. So following me will be the perfect way to know when I'm having a contest. Also, I'd love it if you hopped over to my website and sign up for my newsletter, I call it a joy letter because I love to spread joy. And that's my intention for these notes that I send to sign up, go to my giant strawberry.com, forward slash skillshare, dash subscribe. I also have a sketchbook guide that you can download when you sign up. Among other things, there's a list of prompts that would be perfect for your library of inspiration. So follow the link and you can get that guide. Thank you so much for spending your time with me, for digging into the joy of sketchbooks. I really can't wait to hear about your sketchbook practice. I can't wait to see where your creativity will take you until next time. I'm wishing you so much joy.