Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello everyone, and welcome to this class in which you will learn how to develop your style. I am Julia and I like to create colorful art that represents my personality. My favorite media is Gouache, but I also create illustrations using Procreate and Affinity Designer. Today I am going to share with you what are my strategies when it comes to developing a consistent style. Together we will research and explore what elements can be part of your own signature style, and how to choose details that would make your art unique. I will explain what are my strategies when I need to decide what stays and what goes into my personal style. We will work step by step together and I will show you exactly what I do. I will explain how to stick to a process that works and you can use what we create today to start an amazing portfolio of your own. I will provide you with a solid example on how to keep your artwork cohesive, going step-by-step through the whole process and showing you how I upgraded some of my old drawing, with the new style. We will use Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration and then we will get started. You can apply the same strategy on any other piece of artwork. You can apply this to a brand new drawing or use what you will learn today to give consistency to your existing artworks. This class is great for you if this is going to be your 1st drawing, or if we wish to understand what story your artworks tell. There is no need to be [inaudible] in any field. Here we explore what inspires us and other parts of our personality can become part of our unique signature style. If you already have a portfolio, this class can inspire you on how to take a look at your drawing from a different point of view and decide what truly represents your style. This class is great if you wish to understand which items you want to choose when starting a new project or if you wish to change your drawing style. For our project, we are going to create a list of elements that will guide you in creating consistent artwork and then illustration with all the details that you are going to choose. This illustration will become part of a series of drawing in which incorporate the details of your choice and this can really help you understand what are designated details in your artwork; and by the end of this class, you will be able to see what the consistencies of illustration looks like and maybe use it as a kick-start for an [inaudible] portfolio or Instagram profile. I can't wait to see what we can create together. Don't forget to post your work into the project section. Thank you for joining me in my first class and let's get started.
2. The Project: For today's class project we are going to create a series of drawing with a signature style. Going step-by-step through the process that I use when I want to start a project that represents my style and personality. Along with this drawing, you will create a list to use as reference for any other illustration that you might want to keep drawing in the same style. Your assignment is to create a list of details to be included in the final project, along with one or more drawings that represents your style. If you already have your own signature style you can publish some work that show consistency. If not, at the end of this class you will have something to use as a guidance for your next drawing and a great list of details for your next words. I really struggled at first with many things to draw and I was overwhelmed by the beauty of other artists portfolios. I realized that a series of cohesive drawing was visually pleasing, so I decided to put in place a strategy to start developing a consistent style. You will see that I will give you some of my [inaudible] like how to pay attention to recurring details and how i incorporate in my drawing the thing that catches my attention when I look at illustration and artworks. I will also explain how to gather elements from your existing illustration if you have any. If you don't, don't worry because we will take inspiration by the Pinterest board i made for you. In the resources section, you will find a Pinterest board to be inspired by, a list of elements that we will use as a guide and some settings sketch where you can add your own signature details. Download the list of elements that are made for you and your favorite series of sketch from the resources section. Get them ready as reference or print them out. I will tell you how we're going to use them in the next lessons. This is going to be interesting and super creative. Let's get started.
3. Inspiration: To gather some inspiration, we are going to have a look at some artists on Instagram that have a cohesive style. Let's have a look at that as the second and feed. This is crazy and visually pleasing. She sticks to thin lines and pencil like texture and the future dinner characters that always similar. Kara is a completely different style. She uses both hand-drawn lines and digitally illustration and then combines them. You can see that the texture in her drawing is always similar in all the illustration. Like she's painting on a very rough piece of paper, and this is a recording pediment of the style. Take the list that is in the resources section because we're going to use it to gather the inspiration we need for starting developing our style. You can see the main points to keep in mind when we look for elements that we would love to incorporate in our style that are subject, background, colors and details. I also pulled some sub lists, that are clothes and other things. The last two are according to today's drawing and you can totally skip those or change them according to what you are drawing. Let's now have a look at the Pinterest board for inspiration. Click on the link in the resources section to have a look at the Pinterest board that I created. Have a quick look and start taking notes of what gets our attention. This is an example of a Pinterest board that I would use as an inspiration if I need to start a new drawing. You can see there is a little bit of everything. There are girls focuses, good animals pigment. What really catches my attention on these animals here? For my drawing, I need to go for a fox today. But then going to write down anyway all the details that catches my attention because then I can use the list of elements they make today as a reference for my future drawing. For instance, in this illustration with cats, you can see that all of them have glasses, and in this case, this is a signature detail of this particular illustration. I really like the man with the beard and this checked t-shirt. Maybe I will keep it in mind for a future drawing. Moving onto their background, I realized that what I really like are the flat background. Just one color or just white. Here I can see some stars, that are some leaves, galaxies. This is a great moment to start planning how your drawing is going to look and how you are going to draw the background. I also really liked this watercolor effect on this illustration here, and what I really like is that you can see the strokes of the brush. Now I'm going to move on to the colors, and what I noticed is that most of the illustration that they put in these Pinterest board, all have soft colors. You can see that the colors are quite dull and they are not bold or neon. There is no black and white picture, and the contrast is always low. Moving on to the details, what really catches my attention are the big eyes. I would definitely go for something like that, instead of really small eyes like this orange cute illustration here. I really like this pink cheeks and they think they're super cute, but probably wouldn't use them today. But it's nice to keep them in mind for a future drawing. Now I'm moving on the last two groups of elements, which are clothes and other things. These two groups are optional. It depends on what you will draw on the day, but I think that I will find them useful today, so I am going to write down some things in these two groups as well, because these will help me out on my drawing later on. I decided that my character is going to where real clothes something that I would like to wear or something that's already in my wardrobe. I really like this checked shirt and I also like the stripped one. This pattern here is really nice. I also like the little flowers on this girl's shirt. The tools are something that I really like and I'm going to write that down, but probably I won't use them for today's character. I really like the idea of coordinate illustration. Also final thing that I noticed in all these drawings or most of theme is that their tracing line is really soft. You can see that there are no bold tracing lines at all. They are all thin and light and sometimes there is no line at all. Finally, one thing that really catches my attention is this particular hue of yellow. I really like this sandy color and I am definitely going to use it in my doing today. Before calling in my illustration, I will decide which detail will be yellow and then I will start. After taking inspiration from my Pinterest board, that's how my list of elements is going to look. In the next lesson, I will show you how I will add more elements to this list by looking at my existing drawings. Now it's certain to make your own Pinterest inspiration board and collect the elements that you like the most.
4. Gather Your Drawings: I collect some of the drawings that I had at home, that we're going to be using. But if you don't have a collection of drawings, this is not a big deal, you can watch this lesson and use what we shall use as illustrations. Having a look at your existing drawings can be useful because maybe you already have a signature of data and you simply need to take it out from your existing artworks. Now, there are some things to keep in mind, what can be turned into a consistent item? What I really like and what I want to keep drawing? What colors I do or I don't like? Is there any way that I can combine these elements? Finally, what stays and what can go away? I made a few bites of drawings where the elements were similar and that's what I got. I'll start looking close to this drawing and start to notice the elements in this [inaudible] and the details that I like and then I will update my reference list. In this pile here, there are all out-of-body figures. That is always a detailed data that's something about the girl, she looks smart, she has colored jolie hair, and here you can tell she likes coffee. They are a little bit shiny, but I didn't paint the white part, there're colors that are bright. Some of them have a frame of leaves around them, and some of them don't and this looks pretty inconsistent, so I would need to decide later on, what stays and what we don't keep. In these other piles there're all stars and galaxies, some magical elements, and some drawings that are very similar between them. These are all music album from the 80s without the space element. We can see that tie the window. Here, their background is a [inaudible]. Here, I switched to black and white for the subject, and the drawing is made just with a pencil. There is a really high contrast and galaxy in one year of color, I really like the elements of the object space and I will give it for another project maybe, but I don't like the realistic look of the subject or the pencil drawings. Definitely these two characteristics will go away, they will not be in my list, last pile of drawing is going to be digital. Here you can see pink cheeks, brown lips, the color palate because almost always from pink to purple, and some light blue. What I'd really like is that the eyes only have the upper part traced. There are some galaxies here and there, and I really like it. Finally, you can see the list that I made, when I was looking at their Pinterest board, and here it's my updated one with elements that I got from my drawings. Now that that we have enough things in the list, we're ready for the next lesson in which we will choose our favorite elements.
5. Choose Your Elements: In this lesson I'm going to show you how my list looks once it's completed, and what elements I'm going to choose to put in my illustration. Now, that I have a list of things that I can be inspired by, I can decide what goes into my illustration for the subject. I'm going to decide what to draw and how. I really like the animals illustration in the Pinterest board. I decided that I'm going to draw a fox. I would like it to be a full body drawing in the paper and I want the head to be bigger than the body. The background can be flat. I really like the stars. I wrote down also flowers, leaves, dots, galaxies, and the sea. I decided to stick with a flat white background. Colors, I've wrote down, soft, yellow for the yellow hue that I really liked, low contrast, high contrast, black and white. This is all about your palette. You can choose different shades of the same hue, or decide to put always a detail in the same color. If you're not sure what colors to choose, in the research section, you can find the link to adopt color width and color supply. I decided that I want soft colors and that I want a yellow detail, and the overall contrast in the illustration is going to be low. Moving onto the details, I've wrote down, big eyes, pink cheeks, bold lips, calm expression and eyeliner. Face feature can be exaggerated or really small. This goes by your taste. I decided to put big eyes on my fox, a calm smile on my face and eyeliner, because I'm a big fan of makeup. In the clothes section, I wrote down real clothes, checked shirt, stripes, florals block colors. My fox is going to wear real clothes. In fact, a checked shirt is going to suit her for sure. From the other thing section, I only took soft tracing lines because that's something that really suits my personality. The way that I am imagining my fox, a bold tracing line would not go well into the illustration. Now that I have defined all the elements that will go in my illustration, it's time to gather my equipment and then start tracing the sketch.
6. What Will You Need: So in this class, I'm going to tell you everything you need about the equipment. Use the media you like, or the one that you're most comfortable with. Don't worry too much because this is about experimenting. You can download and bring the sketch they provided for you in the resource's section. For my illustration today, I'm going to use a pencil. I use both regular pencil and mechanical pencils. An eraser, this is a regular one. I also like to use the kneadable eraser because you can use it in this way. Once you've done the sketch, you can just flop it on the paper without removing completely all the tracing lines. I normally use just two brushes for this kind of illustration. I usually use a number 4 and the number 0. I don't spend too much on brushes. I like to experiment with different brands. But what I do is making sure that I take care of my brushes, and always when I finished working, I dry them with our clothes. I never leave them in the water with the bristles down, so I never leave them in this way in the water. The gouache colors that I'm going to use today for my illustration are yellow, blue, red, so the primary color, plus black and a really nice shade of green. I also have this white color and you will need it to mix it with the rest of the colors. Also, along with the gouache, I like to use watercolor pencils for the little details. If you have used watercolor painting before, you can just buy one white tube of gouache and use the pigment of the water color to create your own palette. Moving on to the paper, I really like to use quite thick paper. Because in this way, it doesn't fold or wave when I use the water on the paper. I don't have a favorite brand, but I really like to experiment with different textures or even colors. You would need a place to put your coloring. I've got this plastic palette, or you could use anything leaked. This is jewelry all there that I have at home. Or sometimes I use this nice vintage ash tray. You will also need a cloth. You can use a paper one. I prefer to use this fabric one, so once I am done with this, I can wash it and reuse it several times. You then need some carbon paper. You can buy some, or you can do it yourself. You just need a regular paper, like printer paper, and a pencil. Any pencil would do. But if you have a soft one, it's going to be easier and quicker. I would put the list of the material that I use in the resource's section, so if you wish more information, just go there and have a look.. Now that we are ready with our equipment, I'll see you in the next lesson.
7. The Sketch: I have my sketching sketch with me and then going to tell you why it looks like this. You can find this anonymous sketch in the Resources section. I also have my list of elements and focusing only on the element that I highlighted. I decided that my subject have to be an animal, so I choose to draw a fox, and he had to be a full body figure with the head bigger than the body, and that's what happened. I really like the idea of a fox standing in a human like post. I had to stick to the Detail section of my element list, so I drew. Large eye, they're going to have an eyeliner and that comes on her face. She's going to wear a real clothes, a checked shirt as I write down in element list, and I will go for a denim skirt. There are some groups of elements missing, and I would incorporate them in the next lesson while coloring my illustration. Now that I've got my sketch, I need to trace the outline into the water column paper, and in order to do so, I'm going to use some carbon paper. You can buy some from Amazon or you can make some yourself, and that's what I'm going to do. It's really easy. You just need one piece of printed paper and we need to fill these out with some graphite pencil. You can do this with any pencil that you have at home, it will work the same. Just if you have a softer pencil, is going to be easier and quicker. I will take the carbon paper that I made, I'll put it on the water color paper and this sketch will go on top. What I want to do now is use some tape to make sure that the sketch doesn't move where it wasn't. Just making sure that I didn't miss any bits and I'm ready to add my details.
8. Putting Elements Together: Now it's time to incorporate the details that are left on the list and all the things that I didn't use yet in my illustration. I need to keep in mind that the tracing lines needs to be solved according to my list. Later on I'm going to erase the pencil to make sure it doesn't show. I created a palette with some soft colors. I'm going to use a pink base for the face and then orange for the rest of the form. The shirt is going to be green with yellow accent, and I will use a blue for the skirt. The background is going to be white and I'm thinking the yellow detail in the hue that i really like that I really like is going to be the mark here. I decided that she likes coffee, but you can make her all the backs on flowers, pictures, or anything that you think that matches that personality. Now we are ready for the last part. We finish out being the last details to sketch, and then we are ready for adding colors. Once the brush is dry I will do texture with my water colored pencils. I compared some of my pencil with the sample palette in order to get a slightly darker shade for the texture. I really like adding white details on darker color of my palette. So I use the white pencil for the fabric details on the denim skirt. This is the final result. As you can see, I incorporated all the things that I highlighted in the list of elements. Like the flat white background, the yellow detail for the hairline. So in the next lesson, you will find some tips on what to do next with the things that we already created. I see you there.
9. Final Look: Now that our drawing is complete, we can decide to stop here and use what we created as a reference. Or you can keep going with your other sketches and create your first series of illustration. I kept going and I made three other illustrations, sticking to the elements that I've wrote down in my list. If you wish to experiment with other subjects, you can download the other sketches that I made for you. You can keep drawing, incorporating the elements that are on the list in your existing drawing, and create a broader selection of artwork with your [inaudible] What I like to do is keeping with me the little piece of paper that I use to try the colors for my illustration and keep it as reference for my future illustrations. I really liked some of the details that I discovered today and I decided to grab some of my other artwork and put them there. You can see that the look now is way more consistent and it doesn't clash if you put them close to the fox drawing, even if it's a completely different subject. So you can now decide to continue on this style or experiment and try different combinations.
10. Done!: We are now at the end of this class, we're done in creating your first illustration, stick into a list of elements. Using this strategy, today we start to creating what can be your own signature style. The more you are consistent with the same elements, the easier it is going to be to recognize an artwork as your own. I hope that you enjoyed taking this class as much as I had fun creating it. I hope that it work as a prompt or inspiration to create artwork that adds aggressive style. But did it help you to look at your existing artwork from a different point of view? I will be super happy to read the list of elements and details that you created along with your drawing. I think it's going to be great to inspire each other. Don't forget to post what you create today into the project section. I would love to read your reviews and feedback. If you like this glass, you can follow my profile. Thank you for joining me in my first class and I'll will see you next time.
Giulia D'Andrea, Illustrator - Artist
