Drawing Prompts: 5 Fun Summer-Themed Drawing Ideas

1. Introduction: and hi there. My name is Michelle Tiberius. I'm a cartoonist and illustrator based here in Sunny Tampa, Florida Here in Florida, our summers are long and hot and pretty intense, but I find a general people really celebrate the summer here. Which is why, for this new class, I want Teoh introduce five drawing prompts that celebrate the current season. I think the drawing prompts are a fantastic way to kind of get the creative juices flowing if you find that you are stuck drawing the same sort of things over and over again. This might be a great way to kind of indulge Anthee summertime sort of mentality of things while maybe drawing some things that you normally wouldn't draw. I'm going to be asking you to draw things that are specific to you. Personal to your summertime experience. We're going to be exploring five specific summer inspired drawing prompts. Each of these prompts will be personal to you, which means that you can not only have the ability to share some of your favorite summertime ideas or objects, but this will also give you the opportunity to explore and express yourself in a somewhat structured way. So the tone of this class is not meant to be super formal or super instructive. While I will be sharing some of my thought process, the idea behind this class is really to be more about personal expression and kind of following your creativity where it takes you while celebrating the summertime. The five summer drawing prompts that we're going to explore. Include your favorite summertime treat, your favorite summertime drink, your ideal summer outfit, your favorite summertime memory from a summer passed and finally, what you would consider to be the perfect summertime landscape. If you're interested in exploring more summer themed prompts, I'm also going to include a video at the end, which gives a couple of bonus prompts to keep you going. This is also a great time to explore maybe different types of art tools that you never used before that you're curious about. Or if you even want to explore a different art style that you've never drawn in before, this could be a great way to do it. So if this class sounds appealing to you, why don't you come with me to the next video and we'll get started on our first drawing popped. Thanks so much for watching. And whenever you're ready, why don't we head on over to the next video? 2. Drawing Prompt 1: Favorite Summer Treat: Yeah, So now let's talk about your very first summer time drawing prop for this. I want you to draw your favorite summertime treat. A treat can include anything from a candy, a desert or even just a snack. Any kind of fun food that you associate with the summer time so some ideas could be. Maybe a cake or pie served cold, like key lime pie, ice cream popsicles or maybe even a candy that's really nostalgic to you, like bubble gum or salt water taffy. I personally love anything with chocolate in it. To me, a treat is not a treat unless it has some kind of chocolate. So I've chosen a Nutella Chocolate Popsicle, which has that chocolatey tastes that I craved. But it's also cool and refreshing in the summertime heat. As you can see from my sketch, this is a treat that is pretty simple. The drawing is just comprised of the ice cream Popsicle shape and the Popsicle stick, so there's really only two shapes going on here. And that means that in order to make the strong more interesting, I want to incorporate more details. This particular Popsicle is made by a Florida based kind of fancy Popsicle company called Hippo, so I'm going to include the logo on the Popsicle stick, And I also really like to draw wood grain texture. So even though the wood grain texture is not that visible on the actual Popsicle stick, I'm going to add that in any way just to create more visual interest within the drawing. Since Popsicles tend to become reflective, the more they melt. I've got to be sure to add maybe a point where the Popsicle is melting and also some shiny sort of reflective surfaces. Again to kind of add were texture and interest to the drawing. I've decided for all of these problems that I'm going to use kopek markers to color my drawings. And so even though each drawing will be a little bit different from the other, they will have the same sort of continuous steam of being colored with the same medium. In this case, I am going Teoh also incorporate a little bit more of a background to destroying. This particular Popsicle is kind of infamous for selling out quickly and also not being offered as often as some of the other Popsicles and hippo So for me, when I see it on sale, it feels almost like a miracle. So to kind of play on that miraculous sort of theme, I'm going Teoh add kind of like a little halo around the Popsicle, because when I do finally get to try it, it feels like this really joyous kind of heavenly event. We're finishing up this particular drawing, and even though mine is pretty simple, I do encourage you to go ahead and add extra fun details with your favorite treat. So if your favorite summertime treat is a candy, maybe include the packaging as well as the campy itself. If, say, maybe your favorite summertime treat is a cake, be sure to add things like pieces of tropical or summertime fruit to complement the cake and details like whipped cream. This, well, give it more of a fun, summary kind of feeling. Please let me know what your favorite summertime treat is. I love hearing about people's favorite treats, since I've got a big, sweet juice. Thanks for watching, and whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next video 3. Drawing Prompt 2: Favorite Summer Drink: Yeah. I want you to draw your favorite summer beverage of choice. This could be anything from soda juice smoothies. You could even just draw a glass of water while you're drawing your favorite beverage. Be conscious of things like the color of the drink. What is the best kind of container to put this drink in? Is it a mug, A glass, maybe even something like a wine glass or a champagne flute? I've already created a sketch of my drawing, and so now I'm just going to go ahead and start by thinking it with a pen for my drawing. I'm just gonna go with a simple drinking glass, and I'm going to keep the color of the beverage pretty light since for me, one of the things that I really like to drink during the summer is just flavored water. I like flavored water the best because it's light and refreshing, whereas a lot of other summer beverages, like juice is can be really sugary and flavored water is a little bit more exciting than just playing tap water to flavored water in itself doesn't really have much color most of the time, but I am going Teoh, go ahead and add just a slight tint of color just to show that it's not completely playing pure water. Add a little more visual interest to this drawing and also help the viewer kind of get a sense of how this water is flavored. I'm going to add some Berries down at the bottom and also a wedged lemon at the rib. I've also going ahead and added one of those paper drinking Paris souls beside the wedge of fruit. That way I can introduce a little bit more color to the drawing and in general, just make it look more festive and summary. I generally don't like drinking with straws, but for the sake of adding even more color, I've got ahead and added a kind of neon flexible plastic straw. Since that's something that I kind of feel nostalgic about, and again, I sort of associate with summer time and then, lastly, my drink is also resting on a simple, solid color coaster. Drink itself isn't really that exciting, but by adding the fruit and the accessories like the straw in the Paris soul, I've been able to give this drawing a little bit more personality and character. So consider what kind of things you could add to your drink dry. Maybe you want to add condensation on the side of your glass or ice cubes. Now that I finished thinking, I'm gonna move on to coloring in the drawing and for this drawing, I'm going to use Kobe markers to color, but you can use whatever you want or feel most comfortable with. Some drinks might even lend themselves to adding different types of plants. Like, for example, if you're drawing, say, a mojito, you can add sprigs of mint around or even in your drink to help give your drawing more character. To me, Summer represents energy and vibrancy, so I want to make sure that at least some of the colors that I use are bright and highly saturated to help give that summer sort of feel. I think it helps that while you're working on these prompts that you kind of maintain this sort of summer theme survive in the back of your mind, since it will give you more ideas to enhance your drawing, knowing that my subject is not going to be as eye catching as maybe a bright orange glass of orange juice. It's my job as an artist to think about other things that I can add to the drawing to help make it more interesting. And that's it. Please let me know what your favorite summertime drink is. Whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next video. 4. Drawing Prompt 3: Summertime Memory: Yeah, our third drawing prompt. We're going to be venturing into a summer passed and drawing a bond summer memory. So for this, take a moment to think about something special that took place during the summer time. This could be a memory from childhood. Or this could even be something that took place as recently as last summer. It's up to you. I've decided to go with the memory from childhood. In this memory. I was at a local water park in my hometown, and in this memory, I'm kind of happily and kind of joyfully going down a water slide in an inner tube. And I happened. Teoh, see Annie wanna in some bushes nearby. And this was my first time seeing iguana live in person, so that was really cool. I've never actually drawn in iguana before, so this was a great moment for me to capture because it allowed me to draw something new and full disclosure. I did look at some reference pictures beforehand just to make sure that I was able to capture the iguana somewhat correctly. If you want to draw something and make sure it looks accurate, feel free to do the same and use reference pictures to aid you in your process. As long as you're not directly copying from an image that you didn't take yourself, it's totally fine to use reference pictures while you're thinking back on some of your memories. Take time to consider the details of that memory. What were some of the sights and smells and colors, and maybe even tastes that you associate with this memory? What were some of the emotions that you felt? And what are some of the things that you could do to convey those emotions in your drawing ? Since there's a few different shades of blue and green in this image made shore to give the iguana really bright, almost neon green color. That way he would really stand out against the green bushes and draw the eye in this particular drawing. Prompt was really fun for me, very nostalgic, a lot of fun memories at this particular water park, and it definitely kind of got me in the mood to try to go inner tubing again this summer, since I haven't gone to being in years, and it was a lot of fun, so this particular drawing prompt can potentially even reconnect you with certain activities or people or places from your past that you really enjoy. The picture that I'm drawing here, since it involved a lot of foliage and water has mostly a pilot of greens and blues. But I've also got ahead and used a white gel pen, and this kind of helps make the water take on more of a reflective, wet kind of appearance. And since I wanted a little bit more visual interest in this picture, I also use the gel pens to create some nice white flowers in the bushes that surround the iguana. So this is my finished drawing. Feel free to let me know what some of your favorite summer memories are. And whenever you're ready, let's go on to our fourth drawing problems. 5. Drawing Prompt 4: Ideal Summer Outfit: Yeah. Welcome back for this video. We're going to be talking about drawing your perfect summertime outfit. For this, you can consider things that are already in your closet or even just articles of clothing that you wish you owned that would maybe make the summertime easier, more enjoyable for you. You also may want to consider what kind of activities that you like to do during the summer time and how your wardrobe reflect that. So if you like to go hiking, maybe your favorite summertime outfit would include a pair of hiking boots and backpack to carry all of your hiking gear. Or, if you like to go swimming or snorkelling, maybe you're perfect. Summertime outfit is just a swimsuit and some flippers. You can also add things like texture, depending on what kind of fabric you like toe wear. If it is, say you puffy or frilly fabric, you can incorporate that into your drawing or even different patterns or prince. And even though you may want to keep your outfit simple, feel free to also add little details here and there to make your drawing more interesting, such as adding things like zippers, pockets or even things like logos, air drawing words or other designs that might go on, say, a T shirt. For this exercise, you can just draw the single clothing items side by side, maybe as though they were laid out on the floor. But since I like to draw the human figure, I'm going to actually draw a little version of myself wearing my ideal outfit. It gets very hot where I live, with temperatures going above even 95 F. So in this kind of weather, wearing lots of layers or close can be really uncomfortable. So I'm going to keep my outfit pretty simple. Some folks like to wear sandals or flip flops. I've never been a fan of those, so I'm just going to draw myself in some well loved sneakers, since that is what I feel most comfortable in, typically prefer to wear pants throughout the year, but summer is a time where I definitely wear lots of shorts, and during this time of year, I also like to wear things that are sleeveless to get more air flow. You can also take some time to consider what kind of accessories that you might like to wear during the summer, I'm going Teoh draw myself in some sunglasses to help keep the sunshine on my eyes and a bright, colorful scarf just to keep things a little bit more festive. I'm also gonna draw myself wearing since earbuds just because I like to be able to cancel out the noise and have some music to distract myself from the heat a little bit when it gets too hot. Although you could put yourself in a hat, he could draw some sunscreen on your nose. Maybe a tote bag full of beach supplies. Anything you think will kind of capture that summer essence for you. You also may want to consider what kind of colors that you may gravitate to during the summer time. I personally try to avoid wearing black, since it absorbs a lot of heat and it can be really uncomfortable. And so for that reason, I think a lot of people tend to gravitate towards pastel colors or even just bright colors , since the summer is kind of like this fun time of year. So this is my finished ideal summertime outfit. Please let me know what you think and tell me what you would add or change or what you think the perfect outfit is. Thanks for watching that. Whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next video. 6. Drawing Prompt 5: Summer Landscape: Hey, and welcome back. Let's not take some time to talk about our final drawing prompt, which is drawing a summer landscape. So for this prompt, I want you to basically just draw a landscape that you think feels or epitomizes what summer means to you. This could be a landscape from maybe a summer vacation that you took, or your ideal summertime destination, which really could be anything from a beach or even a field or meadow full of summertime flowers in bloom. So just take a moment to really think about what the weather is like. What kind of plant life is nearby? The topography. So are there hills or mountains, bodies of water And maybe also consider what kind of colors would you want to use? You could go with really bright, eye popping colors. Or maybe you want to capture a desert or some kind of landscape that gets very, very dry. That case, the color palette, might be very different and might consist more of tans and yellows and light browns, and you can also add other details in your landscape to So, for instance, in my drawing, not only do I have a plateau and some hills and a body of water and beach. I'm also going to you at things like clouds, some little cottages in the background and even a couple of boats and some people playing in the EEC. For this particular prompt, I kind of struggled to figure out what kind of colors I really wanted to go with. A part of me kind of wanted to go with more of a traditional sort of bright, highly saturated, summery colors, like blue and green and yellow and red, because to me, those air colors that I associate with the summer time. But I also liked the idea of maybe trying to capture a sunset and using really warm, slightly darker colors to do that. And in that instance, you can get really kind of creative and abstract with your color choices. You could go with pinks and reds and even some rich purples. So in the end, I tried Teoh capture a little bit of both toe have some of those traditional, sort of highly saturated primary colors, but then also toe have some of those warm, dusky sort of sunset colors in a swell. Ordinarily, I'd probably go with one color palette or another. But I think that's one of the fun things about doing drawing crops is it allows you to try different things into experiment, maybe do things you normally wouldn't dio. So don't be afraid to get creative. And even if the end result doesn't come out perfectly, just keep in mind. That's not really the point here. And then after you're done, if you'd like, you can take a good hard look at your work, continue to do the things that you like and just disregard the things that you don't like. Like many things in life, making art is a trial and error process. My particular landscape is not based on a real place, but kind of based on what I would consider to be an ideal summertime location. Now I'd like to hear from you. What do you think is the perfect summertime landscape, and how do you feel about trying new things? Is it exciting or scary for you? Please let me know. And here is my finished summertime landscape, and now whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next video 7. Bonus Prompts: Yeah. In this section, I'm gonna introduce of bonus prompts for those of you who may be one additional challenge or just want more summer themed drawing ideas for the first bonus drawing prompt. I want you to draw a scene from either a vacation that you have taken in the past, maybe education, that you plan on taking the future. So maybe take some time to consider what would be a great place to have a summer holiday or vacation. It could be a beach. It could be some place in the mountains. Or it could even be a cold weather destination toe. Help you escape the heat. The second bonus prompt idea is an animal or bird or fish or insect, basically any kind of creature that you and maybe frequently see during the summer. It could be a migratory animal or just an animal that you may be associate the summer with . For me, the quintessential summer animal would be a flamingo. That is an animal that I look at and immediately sort of associate with the summer season. But for you, it could be any other interval for your third bonus prompt. I want you to consider any flowers, herbs or other plants that you associate with the summer or are in bloom or in season during the summertime. This could be anything from palm trees or other tropical flowers or plants. Or you could even just include local flora that happens to be in blue or in season during summertime in your area. So, for instance, strawberries are in season during the summer, so maybe you could draw a strawberry bush or some other type of fruit bearing plant that is in season. During the summer, Our fourth bonus prompt would be a summer thieves. Still, life is still life, by definition is a collection of inanimate objects that could be either man made or natural . This prompt is really good for exploring composition. From this, you can collect different objects that you associate with the summertime and make a nice little composition and then base you're drawing off of the composition that you've created . Your objects can include anything like fruit plants, or it can include unnatural objects, just objects that remind you of the summer. Maybe something like drink umbrellas, sunglasses, sunscreen, etcetera. The next POTUS prompt is something that I think would be really cool to do a version of season by season, and that is the view from your window. Now, as I mentioned before, I live in Florida and the climate doesn't change very much here. It's pretty warm your round. But if you live in a place with seasonal weather, this could be a really interesting way to explore how your personal landscape changes season by season. The next bonus prompt would be what you consider to be the best way to stay cool in the heat. I like to swim to stay cool, but for you it might be different. Maybe you like to sit right next to the air conditioning at full blast. Maybe you like to have lots of iced drinks or iced coffees, so take some time to consider what you think is the best way to stay cool during the summer heat. The next POTUS prompt would be your perfect warm weather hat design. So feel free to get really creative with this one and think about what would you think is the best hat to support your sort of summer lifestyle. Maybe you would like a hat with a really long brim that will protect you from the summertime heat. Maybe you want something that's really festive looking and fashionable. Or maybe you want a hat that's really practical and can carry a drink. Feel free to go crazy with this one and even look up pictures of different hats on the line for inspiration. Our second to last bonus prompt would be your perfect picnic spread. This will allow you to really think about what would your perfect summertime feast be? What sort of entrees or desserts or appetizers with that include? If you have the chance to organize and design your own picnic, feel free to also get creative and think about what kind of cutlery you would like. Any colors that you think are really summary. What kind of blake it would you like to sit on? Or if you don't like sitting on the floor? What kind of furniture would your perfect picnics spread? Be on top of really take some time to kind of envision your perfect picnic spread before drawing it out. This is a problem that is really all about the little details that are personal to you, and finally, our last bonus prompt would be your perfect summer reading list. In this case, I want to know What do you think are the perfect books, magazines, articles, etcetera to read during the summer? And I want you to actually draw out the books and magazines and articles that you would wanna have with you. If you like to read e books, then feel free to instead draw your tablet or e book reader and similar to our summer themes. Still, life you can kind of stack you're reading list together and compose them in a way that will make for an interesting drawing. Just consider what are the sorts of things that you like to read during the summer? What are the kinds of stories that appeal to you? So those are all of the bonus summertime prompts that I've provided for you, But I'd like to know, Do you have any other things that you would like to draw that you think would make a good bonus prompt? Please let me know. I'm curious. Thanks for watching. And whenever you're ready, let's continue on to the next video 8. Assignment: Hello again and welcome to your assignment video. Now it's your turn to create your favorite summer treat, drink, memory, landscape and outfit. These prompts are meant to be exploratory and casual, so try not to overthink things too much or worry too much about having perfect rendering skills and try to focus more on the feeling and the concept. Take time to consider each drawing prompt and try to answer some questions as your sketching ideas out and thinking about how to move forward. Like What is it about this particular drink treat memory outfitter landscape that is special and unique to you? And what are some of the feelings that you associate with the summertime in general? Take time to think about what the summer means to you. Do you love the summer because it represents freedom and life and vitality? Or is it really more kind of annoying and stressful for you because of the high temperatures? What are some of the colors that you associate with? If summer immediately conjures up an image of a campfire, that's going to be a completely different color palette than someone who associates the summertime with the beach in a lot of ways this class is about exploring your own voice and your own personal insights and thoughts. Don't be afraid to keep things personal so that anyone who looks at your art can get a immediate sense of who you are and how you feel and think about summer. Feel free to use whatever materials you prefer or even go outside of your comfort zone if you want and try out new materials and please feel free to share with the class. I'd love to see the work, and I'm sure that there would be other students to who would benefit from seeing what you've come up with. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns whatsoever. I'm always happy to help and best of luck on your assignments. 9. Closing Thoughts: Yeah. So we've reached the end. Thank you so much for joining me on this summer themed adventure. It was a pleasure making this class for you. And I really hope you got something out of it. I hope that this was helpful. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or concerns whatsoever. Since I am here to help you and, yeah, let me know if you have any other summertime prompt ideas. Um, I'm curious to see what you have to say or if you've come up with any of your own. And I wish you the best of luck in all of your creative endeavors. I can't wait to see all of the work that you guys come up with And I hope that you enjoy your summer. Take care. Bye.