DRAWING GUINEA PIGS: From Observation - Illustration

1. DRAWING GUINEA PIGS From observation illustration: Hi, my name is Holly Surplice. I'm an author and illustrator. And Guinea pig fanatic. This is Popcorn and giving me kisses. And this is a Waffle. And today I'm going to help you do some observational drawings, Guinea pigs, and then it turns into character studies. And for your illustration purposes. In the background, you can hear DibDab. DibDab was going to model, but she's too noisy. Hop over to the next video and let's get started. Start squeaking. Stops squeaking. So much squeaking. 2. Why Guinea Pigs: One of the reasons that I love using Guinea pigs as subjects within picture books. is that they are such expressive little creatures and they have the most wonderful faces. They've got paws that are like hands and lovely feet. You can, although they spend their time like this, as an illustrator, you can make them do this really quite easily. And it makes them really fun if you want to anthropomorphize your animals and just have them doing cartwheels and riding scooters and things like that. Guinea pigs are great for doing that. But before we can do that, I think it's really important to know how the actual animal is put together. And so I like to do observational drawings first. We're going to start by doing that. Waffle is eating one of my pencils, I'm going to be using pencil to draw with. And if you've got some of these, these are fantastic. I'm using Ecoline brush pens. But any kind of brush pen will be perfect. And paper any paper that you like, it doesn't have to be fancy, even just copy paper is fine. I'm all about using what you've got to hand and not worrying about using expensive art materials. You'd be amazed how much wonderful colour you can get from using some old concentrated coffee or a tea bag. So don't worry if you didn't have those things, you can still make fabulous art. Let's get started. 3. GP refvid: Okay, So I've recorded a little reference video and it's the same as I'm drawing from in the next video. If you click on the link below, it will take to my website where you can easily access the video through a Skillshare student page, which you can only access through this link. And then you can watch the video at full size and have it playing along whilst you draw, or, as you watch me draw. 4. Let's get sketching!: Once I've swept the Guinea pig hair off my sketch book, I am ready to go. Now, when you're drawing anything observationally, I find one of the easiest way to go about it is to start by looking at really basic shapes. Now, I'm looking at popcorn. The yellow and white Guinea pig. You can see I've just created two shapes, her bottom and her front-end, and then her ears common. I'm not looking for perfection here at all. I'm just going about it and I'm looking at the things that really catches my eye. Ears are always something and put in some this hairiness. There. She was trying to eat my sketch books. She's made her mark on it now, which is always fun. They have this lovely chins and their little hands. It'll cause peaking eyes. Now she's great drawer because she's got this sticking up here and even though she's moving, I can still look at her and use the information that I'm seeking to helped me to fill in the blanks, fill in what's the other areas of the drawing that I'm not seeing her in that position at the moment. I'm going to move on and do waffle. And she's like, she's like a bean. Views on pig bottom. Lovely head. They are Guinea pigs. They kind of have like a bit of a square into their, to their faces. And some of them are shorter, some of them are longer. They've got these oval eyes and it's lovely, almond-shaped eyes. Ears are a bit like a wave. And a waffle isn't smooth coat, so you've not really got any tough to bits. We can we can put a few in there, but she does have a wonderful double chin. I'm going to put that in. I'm looking at this little space here where her amus. And again, I'm putting in those little pinky toes. There's four little toes there. The backend here, and their back feet are longer and they just have three toes on the back feet. And you can use the markings of them as well. You can always go in some, some shading if that helps you. Because you're working in a sketchbook, you can scribble or she's like an orangey brown, orange Brian, if I was out and about drawing Guinea pigs in the wild, could make these notes. And we could remember, I'm drawing waffle, no popcorn. And she's got this lovely face. Again. Trying to think about those shapes that I'm seeing. Her nose comes in there and there's a lovely little there. Then this position, you're not really seeing a whole lot of it's all about the spikes and those ears, those wavy ears that come out like that. And then she's moved but we can kind of see. So I coming back round. Okay. There's some really rough, very quick observational drawings of Guinea pigs. They're just in pencil, nothing fancy. Now, what we could do is if we look at that video, again, another way we could go about doing this is by using a brush pen. I love this for sketching because you get down your marks very quickly. We're speeding up. I'm really just using my pen in a similar way to pencil, but allowing it to fill in some of those colored and tonal areas. If I'm using the brush to try and bleed that encodes a bit. But in all honesty, this is not the best sketch book I've discovered for use in these pens. These sketches are a little bit on the rough side and I had to definitely quiet. And Diane, my inner critic, because of that. It's also does a really good thing I think to share. These are in any way my most favorite or most well done observational drawings. But do you know what that is? Okay. It's alright to have some scruffy ducts and they're just keep moving on. Just don't allow yourself to get hung up on those imperfections, as you might see them. Because all of these drawings collectively come together to inform your subconscious brain. Also act as a visual reminder and a visual prompt. Prompt. I love to go in and fill in these little small sketchbook page with small little piggies. Once you've got your sketchbook pages filled in, you can go on to the next video and let's look at developing some character and move these drawings towards finished illustrations. 5. Developing Character: So how do we take our very rough Guinea pig sketches and turn them into something illustrative. How do we go from this to this? Well, there's several things. But I'll tell you that all of these drawings, all of these illustrations come from a place of just having done lots of observational drawings of Guinea pigs and learning how I can make their body move in different ways. So that's what we're going to do next. Okay? Okay, so we've got to grips with withdrawing our Guinea pig. Let's, let's start to think about Turning your drawings into illustrations. We're wanting to characterise Guinea pigs. So I'm going to start with that basic shape, simplified by two circles, a bigger one for bottom, smaller one for the head. And then coming forward, we've got our rough, rough colour Guinea pig shape. Now, as we've been drawing them, I'm sure that as you're observing, you're starting to think about the things. And even if you're not aware of it, actually, if you think back, you can think about the things that particularly appealed to you about the Guineas. When you're developing a character, basically, what you're wanting to do is you're trying to exaggerate the things, the special characteristics of that particular animal. In this case, It's very personal to you, your character, to how you want. Which features you want to exaggerate and emphasise is maybe a better word. For me. I'm all about the bum and the tum. It's why I like Guineas so much. So what I really like to do is really kind of exaggerate that bottom. Keeping our Guinea pig on its side still, I would just, I would really just exaggerate. I would just make, make my Guinea pig very full. And with that, maybe a bigger chin. I'm just kinda going right. I'm following that, that Guinea pig shape. I'm not really deviating from it. But for me, big bum & tum i'm starting to think a bit more about maybe breaking things up, maybe a few tufts of hair happening here and there. Those are good things to bring a bit of character to. The other thing that is really going to help is the eyes. Now, doing the eyes is a very particular, a very personal illustrative trait. You'll tend to find lots of people, illustrators have a tendency to draw eyes in a particular way. This is kind of how I do my eyes. You can see them here. They're a bit like jelly beans. Nice. It's just, it's just the way I like doing them. But if we were to draw this face again, let's just, let's just have a practice. Just going to quickly draw it. But we could go, You could have a sleepy eye or that could be like a super Smily, happy, or what else could we do it? There's so many different ways. You could have your the circle. And then a dot The possibilities are endless and I would really love for you to do is just spend even just five minutes just drawing. really simple. Shapes. Maybe you want to do Just a small dots or maybe a big dot. Drawing your eyes is one of those opportunities to really have fun and find the character that you're developing. It's really worthwhile spending that time and I promise you there'll be a moment where you just think Yep. That's it. That's the eye. And whether it's the eye for that character or whether it's either you just really enjoying your thing. I want to apply that to some other characters. You're going to find it. But it's just got to take a little bit of practice and have fun with it. Okay, Let's go ahead now. I have a turned our Guinea pig on its end and starting to anthropomorphise And let's have a look at how we do that. Okay. I'm wanting to make my Guinea pig stand up. I'm going to start with that gorgeous bottom. And I'm just thinking that she's turned around. She's gonna be at her side. So rather than drawing her like this where I was then her head, we've got her bottom and then this is going to be her back. I find it helpful to get this circle in and then I think the front of the hip coming in and back and then the little legs. I imagined that my Guinea pig is stood up on its tippy, tippy toes. There's three little toes and then the long foot like that. And then they're gorgeous, gorgeous bottom, and then the Tummy is counterbalancing the gorgeous bottom. So we've got some balance there and the shoulder would be here. And maybe issues. I don't know. Maybe let's just let's just put her hands here for a minute. But I really want to keep this voluptuous feeling. And so I want this curve to kind of kick back that I'm thinking cheeks, making sure that her head is big enough. It's coming in, then there's all this happening. That looks like a tiny little ear. It's not a tuft of hair. So remember the ears? Big. Then I is kinda coming forward and I love it. and suddenly things start to happen. And why not make the face open a little bit. I simply follow with this smile and then I'm just going to drop it down and give her a little lip and then maybe some little tufts of hair. Now, you can start to kinda go around and add in some character for little tufts here and there's always really lovely. Have even some marks on here. and this other foot. So she's walking, she's going to be walking really quite purposefully. And this other foot is going to be up here. Because you imagine the other hip is there and it is going on, it's kicking forward and a little bit of a ground line in there and see the other hand coming. And maybe, maybe we've got a flower. Here are some bearing in mind that flower it quite nicely paired too. Guinea pig. Put some freckles and you can add your shading as you want. But there we go. So we're starting to think of making our Guinea pigs do something. And once you're able to start thinking about how we can turn them onto the feet. You can do all sorts. Mean why not turn them upside down completely? Let's have a look what this one's gonna do. All sorts of things you can get your guinea pig today. Just takes a little bit of imagination and a little bit of artistic license. And honestly, please don't worry if things go wonky to begin with. It really, really doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter at all. You can see here that I've drawn things far, too far, too big there. That's okay. Because we're still we're just sketching. And if you wanted to Take this sketch and turn into something that was more finished. You can see, you can copy what you've done. You could use a light box, you could even put it up against the window. Bit tricky if you've got sketchbook, but you can use window or you've drawn at once, so you can draw it again. That is the general rule of things. And maybe this guy, maybe, maybe this guy is wearing a party hat, like a birthday crown on it. Actually, I'm not going to see that. There's all sorts of things. They can be doing, maybe he's got like a party balloon that's floating, floating off and maybe he's going to float off. Who knows? Put your ground line down there and he has floating off. The possibilities are endless. We really can make our Guinea pig do whatever we want. We can just stick to those basic rules that we've find with our shapes through our observational drawings. And then use that information to help us to manipulate the body to different positions. And you'll find that a Guinea pig is very obliging and will happily ride a scooter or wear a cape and do whatever you like it to do. I'm starting to bring in a little, little bit of colour here, just using some colour pencils, but you could carry on with your tonal pencil and just use that. The main thing here is starting to think that we can use different types of markings to bring additional character to our Guinea pigs. There's no limit at all. And if a quick Google of Guinea pigs will give you an idea of the different types of colors and markings on various hairstyles as well that you can start to introduce to your own characters. But really, you can go to tie and you can make your Guinea pigs purple, neon blue, anything you want. You can have them bouncing on a trampoline. Just don't worry. your sketchbook is your safe space to make messes, make mistakes. Whilst you're figuring out how to make your Guinea pig jump on a trampoline or skydive, you're not going to expect to get it right first time every time. So just a lie there to be mistakes and take that as part of the process. Don't feel anything bad about it when you make mistakes. That's part of learning process and it's a good thing. Life would be a bit dull if we got it right all the time. Okay. Maybe your guinea pigs are going to have blushing cheeks. That's another thing that you can play about with. The color. Combinations are endless. And you can have a lot of fun exploring that and playing with whatever materials you've got to hand. I quite enjoyed doing some spots and freckles on a Guinea pig. That's a good tool for bringing out some character. This Guinea pigs. I was a little bit mean looking, so I've kinda gone dark for that. But added some freckles and it's softened the face just by adding those freckles. It kind of makes him look a little bit like a naughty, naughty little school kids Guinea pig. I'm adding a bit of shade on that year helps to kind of indicates that there's a wobble in it. In the next lesson, we're going to grab some watercolor and some pen, and we're going to create some more finished illustrations. So hop on over and let's have a go at that. 6. Let's create a finished Illustration!: Okay, So I really like this guy. I think I'm gonna try to convert him into something a bit more refined. So I'm going to grab some watercolor paper. And the stuff I like to use is this watercolor block. The reason why I love the watercolor blocks is that the paper is all gummed all the way round, which means that it stays super flat and it won't buckle at all until it's dry and then you can take it off. I like to use hot pressed paper. So it's super, super flat for drawing my lines. I like an ink line. You can see here, I like to use ink and for these lines, I use these dip pens. And they just, they're dipped in some lovely black ink. But for the purposes of this, because it takes a while for those ink to dry, I'm going to use one of these is a Tombow. I can never say Fudenosuke Pen and it has like the nib is soft and moves. But when it dries, it's completely water proof. So brilliant when we're using watercolors. Watercolors, I'm using are. But you can use anything at all. These are Kuretake, and I'll put all the list of all the things in the, in the materials section. But these are lovely. They are nice and rich. They're very, they're quite opaque. So I enjoy them. I enjoy the richness of the colors. Some people like things a bit softer. But at the moment, really enjoying this and that's what I'm going to use. Paint brushes. My favorites are, these is called, this is a filbert shape of brush. I love this. I like using big brushes to lay down my water, but water and paint. This is not inexpensive brush, so this is just a Pro Arte size 12. For finer details, I'll use just, again, nothing expensive but just a nice round tip. Like class. Sometimes for bigger paintings, I'll use nice big flat one. But for this purpose, I'll personally just use these two, these two paintbrushes. Okay, let's go ahead and Let's do it. I'm gonna put this somewhere so that I could have got it as reference. So to begin with, getting rid of more Guinea pig here, I'm just going to really lightly sketch using my original drawing as reference. I'm going to sketch out my Guinea pig. Start with that big bottom and then I'm going to bring in that big tummy. I'm just going to copy that sketch. I'm going quite big here, but you can go to whatever size you like. Just so happens that this one's coming out. As I said before, you can use a light box. You could go into stroke directly with your pen. You don't need to do this, but I imagined that for some of you, you probably feel more comfortable sketching out first. And if you do it lightly, I'm really I'm moving my hands. I'm not moving my wrist. I'm trying to make nice sweeping pencil marks and I'm not pressing heavily because we're going to arrays these lines once we've got our pen down. So we don't want to make it too hard for ourselves. I'm all about making life easier. As good as flower here. I'm really, I'm properly roughing it in there. I do like these tufts on the back of the head though. I think, I think we're about right with their tummy here. So once you've got it sketched out, we can take our pen. We can start drawing it. Again. I like to try as hard as I can to keep a looseness to my drawing. So I don't want to become a massive slave to perfection. I really like it when we have line that is expressive. So sometimes that line is a bit broken up or, or sometimes it's thicker. You don't want line that's the same all the way around. I like to apply different pressures to my pens as I'm drawing along because I like to get that variety of line. Also really liked to break up the line on my Guinea pigs with some bits of hairs. And for here and there. When you get to this point, you can really make corrections and edits to your original sketch by refining things with your pen as you go. You don't have to follow the lines completely. In fact, I urge you not to. Got it. Once you've got your pen work done, we can go in and we can just simply erase away. You want to make sure your pen's nice and dry, but I mean, this dries pretty instantly. So let's get rid of that pencil. Try and use an eraser. That's not too hard. I like these ones. I like it when there are even softer than this, actually. I quite like the ones where you end up with loads of your eraser all over the page. Yeah, The great thing about these gummed watercolor pads is that the paper doesn't move when you do this as well. So you can really raise away until your heart's content. There we go. So it's coming together. Let's get some color happening. Sure way. I tend to store my painting by the ears. Just tends to be, I like to start my mix up a peachy pink on this occasion because that's the color palette. I'm using my brush, going to add a little bit more pink on there because it's a little bit pale and actually the light isn't really helping the moment. It's not really showing the color very well. But here we go. We've got a bit of pink coming on. I really don't mind if it bleeds off the area. It's part of why I like using these bigger brushes, but if you feel uncomfortable with that, then you can use a smaller brush. I just quite like things when your color outside the lines. I quite like that. The pink goes on the feet and on the underside of the hands, but you see a little bit of the fingers there for this little guy. I'm quite generous when I'm mixing up my paints. I use a lot of water. I get my paintbrush really nice and wet. And then I load up a good amount of paint on the brush, which hopefully you can't see here, but yeah, I'm mixing some different yellows and just loading that on. These Kuretake paints are lovely and vibrant, which is a reason I like them. You get a really good delivery of color with them, which is fun. Again, you can go with your own color palette. You can keep things natural if you want to, or you can be a bit more vibrant. Whatever kind of floats, boats. With this daisy. I'm just putting a little bit of shade on the side of the petals. I like to leave quite a bit of whitespace when I'm drawing. I tend to not completely fill in areas. And in this case where it is white, I definitely like to leave white. I'm wanting to color my Guinea pig quite an orangey. I want it to be quite vibrant and ultimately it's going to be quite orange. But I quite like laying down a bit of yellow underneath. When you're putting your watercolor down. You really don't want to scrub it onto the paper because the more scrubbing or disturbance you do of your paper, the more you're going to break down the surface of it. The better quality your paper, the less likely it's going to do that. But even still really good quality paper, if you keep scrubbing away, you will rough up the surface. But one of the joyful things about watercolor or ink is actually to let them do some of the hard work for you. And by that, I mean, allowing it to bleed into areas. Often actually, if I'm working with watercolor or ink, all this area that you see, this yellow. I would perhaps go in with just water and nothing else and then I would drop the color in and allow it to just bleed and flood into that area. And that's maybe something will do on another, another class. But I'm just taking some of that color and letting it come off into little tufts. And then i'm, I'm not gonna do a whole heap more. I'm going to add a little bit of a brighter orange. And then i'm, I'm very much going to let it do its thing. Let's just be through the remainder of this. I'm just going to add some freckles, maybe a few little spots here and there. Then, why not take your brush and flick a bit of paint, get a little bit of energy happening. This can often be just a really fun thing to do. And just adds an extra little bit of dynamic into the situation. If you've got a character that is perhaps running or scooter ring off some flicking of pain can be a really great way of adding a feeling of movements and dynamic action. I'm going to come in now using my brush pen. It's just in a pale, warm gray. And it creates a little bit of shadow here and there. On the, under the arms. Onto the tummy here. You don't need to use a brush pen. You can use your paints. I would suggest using I actually really enjoy using a watered-down Payne's gray for the, for the shadows. But you can experiment away with that yourself. I think the brush pens are really nice way of having a little bit of control and ease overdoing your shadows. Which is why I wanted to show it. Because sometimes adding in some shadows, some shadow who can sometimes feel a little bit daunting. I don't know. Sometimes it can feel like it's where do I put it, but you just have to think where. In this case, the light source is above and behind the Guinea pig. So the shadows on the underside of that huge tummy. And in all honesty, I didn't really like what I did with the pen. I wished I'd gone straight in with the paint. And so I'm just adding a bit more over here with the knowledge that it will dry, lighter. I'm trying really hard not to let that inner critic say, Oh, Holly you idiot, you stuffed that up. Those thoughts come into your head. You've got to not listen to. Just let it go. We're having fun here, and that is the main objective. Never get that impulse and just cut off. Throw something in the bin. It's never as bad as it seems. I promise you that. And there we go. We've got our finished illustrated Guinea pig. I'm looking forward to seeing this wine is dry and I am really looking forward to seeing everything that you guys do. You can put it in the project section. I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial and I look forward to drawing with you again. Soon. Take care. Bye bye.