Fill a Sketchbook: Pretty Spreads Edition

1. Welcome to Class: Hello, Skillshare. Let's fill a sketchbook together. This time, we're doing pretty spreads. In my previous Phyllis sketchbook class, I went over basics of sketchbooking in a way that makes sense to me. I really hope that it helped you out, too, and you have gone on to fill many gorgeous or ugly, no judgment, spreads in multiple sketchbooks. This time, I am specifically going to be going over how I develop pretty spreads. You know, the ones that are Instagram worthy. Now, I want you to all know that sharing a pleasing sketchbook spread isn't the most important thing about sketchbooking. It's the actual doing, making, exploring. But it is quite satisfying to finish a spread that you're especially proud of and like looking at, am I right? In this class, I will be taking you through different sketchbook templates and layouts to making satisfying, pleasing spreads much easier. I will also share the process of what it takes to get to a pretty spread, which often involves loads of preliminary sketches in an ugly sketchbook first. I will be sharing my process of sketching out possible layouts, coming up with themes, and choosing color palettes and my process of finishing a page. Hello, everyone. I'm Christina Hotkrenz illustrator and surface designer from Maria Fred Sweden, and welcome to my pretty pink studio. I primarily work digitally for my day job as a surface designer when I'm working for clients such as Hobby Lobby or Joanne or Orange Circle Studio, et cetera, with my agent Pink Light. Studio. But I have found sketchbooking really beneficial to me and my practice as an artist. It's something that I do for myself. It's something that has developed my art skills, and I really just enjoy it. This class is great for anyone who loves the idea of creating pleasing spreads, but hasn't quite figured out how to or would love even more sketchbook inspiration. This class is open to all artists, hobbyists, et cetera, of all levels, and you can choose to use whichever art materials you like to use most. So let's get started. 2. Supplies and Class Project: All right, to follow along in this class, you're going to be needing a sketchbook and art supplies. Now, you can use whichever art supplies and whichever sketchbook that you like the most. Maybe what I like isn't what you like, and maybe what you like, isn't what I like to use. Also, from day to day, I like to use different materials. So just choose what you're in the mood for at the time of creating the spread. But in a following lesson, I'm going to go over all the materials that I'm loving at the moment. The class project will of course be to create a final two page spread that is pleasing to you or whatever you find pleasing, or whatever you found inspiring from this class, and I can't wait to see them already. 3. Pretty vs Ugly Sketchbooks: Alright, I need to show you some of my sketchbooks, right. So I'm going to go through some of my pretty sketchbooks, some of my ugly sketchbooks. And when I say ugly, they're not actually ugly, but it's more like they're not as finished. And I will also go over how I navigate sketchbooking. It's a whole It's a whole science, actually. Not really. But let's talk about sketchbooks, okay? Hello, friends. Welcome to my brain in book form. I do not know how I can explain this section without coming off as possibly a little crazy. But this is how I work, and it makes sense to me. Maybe it does not make sense to you, but that's alright. So I like to work in multiple sketchbooks at the same time because I like to have them for different uses. That's just how it makes more sense to me. And, yeah, I'll just get into it. Like, what is this? This isn't even all of them, which is just kind of crazy. But we'll start off with, like, ideas. I have two sketchbooks that I have I start my ideas in. This is a beautiful notebook that I was gifted and it's like, it's so pretty that, you know, like, it has to be something precious. So this is where all my ideas go. So this is just written words and my brain dumps and trying to sort through things that I want to draw and put them in written form so that when I don't know what to draw, I can go in here and I can check something off or I can or, you know, when you're wanting to be creative, but you don't feel like drawing like this having a notebook where you're just writing is kind of interesting as a visual artist. So that's the first thing I wanted to mention to have a place for ideas to sort through that because sometimes I write ideas in here. This is more like a traditional messy or ugly sketchbook. Where I have written stuff, and, like, my son and my daughter like to draw pictures for me. And, yeah, and then I have characters, and I have just, like, more writing and it's a illustration of my daughter Tali the cat. So this is just, like, it's random and mixed, and her pages are really thin. So this is my ugly sketchbook. Like, it's not ugly, but the idea is that it's messy. It doesn't have, like, it doesn't have finished artwork. It's mainly in pencil or colored pencil or maybe some like, here's some oil pastel, but there's definitely no paint in this one. This is the tram strum 1917 notebook, and it has 250 pages that are cream, and I really love these pages. They're very thin, but they are perfect for sketching. And like here, I've even used some markers. So it works like that. So this is a perfect, like, place to start, I think. Let's see. What else? Like, I do little thumbnails, and this is just what I'm not Like, maybe I'll create something that I really like, like, this character, this girls really sweet. But for the most part, it's just, like, Yeah, here I'm trying to figure out her face. So I drew her face like several times. Like, which one do we like? Like, this one and this one and this one. And then maybe these ones, like, you'll recognize this in another sketchbook that I have. Anyway, so that that's where I have, so I can write down stuff. I can do thumbnails. I can do sketches. This is just, my daughter again created some sketches. It's not so precious. So it's nice to have something that doesn't feel like, Oh, every time I want if I mess up a page, I can just, like, swipe it. Here's more of Tilly's drawings. She's so incredible. Yeah, so I love having a notebook like this, and this size is so perfect. I think it's like five by seven or something like that. We're a five. This is my favorite, like messy, ugly sketchbook. So that's that. Then I have a second level of, like, it's not quite an ugly sketchbook, but almost. So these are the art creation by Royal Talons. And they are very affordable, but they're still, like, quite a few pages. They have that nice cream color to them, but the pages are a lot thicker than the strom regular notebook. So you can actually paint a little bit in here and use more art materials and tests. Like, this small one has mainly become like a testing ground, and I also do some. But I don't really like the size weirdly. It's too thin, but I use it still. Like, you'll see in this class, I'm going to show you some of these sketchbook spreads and things that I've been planning out and stuff like that. Well, look at that later. But anyways, this one I've decorated. I glued fabric, and I'm painted on top of it. And I've declared this one play so that I know that this is a safe space to play. And that's really important. So, again, like, so the art making doesn't feel so stressed here. I did some studies of other artists that I adore, like Isabelle Arsenault and Emma Carlisle and I M Alka or here, like color palettes or, you know, just more. I feel like in this kind of sketchbook, I can still draw and write ideas and things like that. But then, at the same time, create something a little bit more finished with paint. These are some still lives that I can do, and then they can move from this. So it becomes a little crazy that I first possibly go from this notebook with ideas that I want to do still lives with fruit. And then I maybe do some thumb nailings in this one, and then I do some color studies in here. And then once I've done that, I move to my, like, pretty sketchbooks. But that's just how I enjoy working. But you may be, doing a page like this in this kind of sketchbook. With sketches and things like that. And then the next page could be beautiful sketchbook, like a layout that's, like, finished. But that is totally up to you. Depends on how you like to work and how precious you want a sketchbook to be or not. I like both of these ideas. I like having a space where I can, like, play and think about different ideas, and it's, and my daughter can paint with me, and then I can do thumbnails, and then I can do something more finished like these do more studies. There's that those ones. And then I have these are my more. These are my favorite sketchbooks because I really like the format. I like how they look. I love the paper, and they just feel good to me. So I have two different kinds. These ones are fresh and new. These sketchbooks are from Ranger, and they are the art what are they called? Art creation delusions, creative journal. I don't even think they are marketed as a sketchbook. There if you are in the they're an American brand, and if you go to Michael's, for example, they're in the scrapbooking section. So they're not even marketed as something that you can paint or draw in, but you definitely can. The pages are cream, again. It's just really nice to work on cream, I find rather than white because more welcoming. The pages are incredibly smooth. It's like card stock. And they're just quite thick. So they take paint really nicely. I just really like I just I really love how smooth it is. Like, I'm sure somebody would hate how smooth this is that there's no grit or anything on the page, but I really, really like it. So this is the smaller size, like an A four, I know, A five, and then they have the bigger size. It's a five. So these I have ready to go when I'm done with these, of course, but they're nice to have, like, backup, and I know. It's like, comforting to know that they're waiting for me. So, here's another version. This is the Ranger one, but this is from another company from the Netherlands called VasVsen Creative, I think. I'll have everything written. But this one instead it's like the same thing. They must have been very inspired. But this one's has white pages. And I'd say the quality isn't as good the seams and things, so I have a lot more glue that's gotten stuck. But it doesn't matter to me, again, like this, just a place we're exploring. This one I called life because I wanted to draw to draw everyday life, everyday life scenes, not like life drawing with people, but, like, um, environments. So yeah, so this is somewhere, like, I still see this as being sketchy, but it's also at the same time, kind of more finished than my other sketchbooks. So these pages, I don't fill with writing and I don't fill them with m thumb nails and things like that or color palettes. Like, this is just where I'm landing. Either I've done some studies like I've shown you in the other previous sketchbooks or I jump right in and create something finished like this. This is in Stockholm. Where else. Here's some snowy scenes. It's in the city where I live at night. Some snow. So, yeah, I love preparing pages like this. We'll also get into that later. So yeah, this is another version of a notebook and how I yeah, create a pretty a pretty I feel very conflicted about saying pretty a pretty sketchbook, but a sketchbook that has more finished artwork or more intentional artwork or more pleasing rather than just pencil sketches. Doesn't mean that I'm not experimenting in here. It's just that it's a little bit more finished. I hope that that makes sense. And I can quickly go through this one because this is actually the sketchbook that I am currently most proud of. I've been working on in this for the past year or so, and it's just I feel like, you know, since February 2024, I just feel like I've gotten some so far with this sketchbook. And this one has primarily been landscapes and things. But it's nice to sit down, I think, in a sketchbook and take some time with a drawing. Rather than always just sketching out ideas, but I think it's nice to spend, and create something finished. It skips home. What else? I don't want to show you the entire thing. Or you can just do a little flip through. The light. So here, yeah, I can show you I did those sketches, the thumbnails in my other play sketchbook, and then here I went in and created a more final version. And then later, maybe I would go and create these even more final on a separate piece of gorgeous watercolor paper. It's a nice wintry scene back in December, created that. But the pages, they really take a lot of materials. Here's a lot of paint and pastels and all kinds of things that I've thrown at this. Yeah. I just it's really pleasing when you're finished with a sketchbook like this to go back and flip through and see all these beautiful artworks. And I hope that this class is going to help you feel comfortable making pleasing spreads, too. Yeah. I'll flip through a little bit more. Really love the texture in these rocks. Doesn't mean that everything is really successful. Like, this one, I don't think is my best work, but I still had fun creating it. Okay, so that's an overview of all of my sketchbooks. Not all of them. Like I said, I have other ones, but that is how I go about using my sketchbooks and how I start and that I want you to know to get to this, there are other steps. Like, I have other sketchbooks that I'm working through before I work on something like this. It's not always that it just, like, sit down and create something like this. It takes work and planning and thinking through and playing with your materials and other pieces and in other sketchbooks that maybe you feel a little bit less precious. I've become a little bit less precious about this sketchbook because it isn't it's not incredibly expensive, and the pages aren't that amazing. But still, so, yeah, I hope you enjoyed taking a peek into my sketchbook and you're starting to feel inspired about creating in your sketchbook, too. 4. Materials: Alright. Now it's time to talk about art supplies. I think in every single sketchbook class I do, I always talk about art supplies for way too long, but it's because it's so much fun. But since my last sketchbook class, I've gotten new favorites that I need to talk about. So it's time to talk about art supplies. Alright, we get to talk about materials now, and this is my favorite thing. I wish I could just talk about materials all day. But I've done material chats in many of my or all of my sketchbook videos, so I don't want to repeat myself too much, so I'm just going to go over some things that I really like right now. So I still really enjoy working with gouache, and I use traditional gouache that you can re wet. This is the Karen dash pan set. Just a basic pan set. It's really nice. But I have taken out the plastic thingy holder because it's quite clumpy. And here are all the colors that you get in that regular set, just like the primaries. And I have also put in my own watercolor pans filled with my own color mixes that I use most often. I can show you my color palette. Where's that? Here. These are the colors that I mix by myself so that I get the colors that I most use. And I found these custom colors by noticing the colors that I was drawn to in other materials such as colored pencils and in other artists work. And I started pulling those colors more often. And then when I started creating these colors and having them to hand, then I would, of course, use them more often. And these are starting to feel like my kind of colors and my color palette. And you can see that when you look through my sketchbook that you will see these colors more most often because I have them to hand and they feel really good to me. So I use this arndasGuah paint, but I also to do these, I use Windsor Newton traditional guash, and I will mix them together and put them in these pans. And here I just, like, Yeah, you can see the kinds of colors that I am liking at the moment. And this is always something that can change. But, yeah, wash. And when you use guash, you, of course, need water and something to clean your brushes with. I like a rag that I can wash. It's a cotton rag. I have other little things like it's not necessary, but an old, like, toner spray bottle that I can I have filled with water that you can spray your paints to keep them wet or a little dropper also from, like, skin care. You just clean them, of course. And then you can drop water onto your paint so that they moisten. Alright, and then brushes, of course. And I don't have a particular brand or any kind of brushes. These are brushes that I've had. Some of them I've had for, like, over 20 years. And they're pretty beat up and banged up. But, I mean, like, I kind of like when they're kind of frayed and messed up 'cause I don't do very precise artwork. But yeah, just a mix of brushes. I really like a flat brush. That's my favorite to work with to paint with, but that's very personal. I think most people like a round brush for a round brush. I like both. All right. What else? I'll go back to a plain page. So maybe I should just paint a little bit with you guys. Let's see. What kind of brush? This kind of cool brush. I have no idea what this shape is called. I'll paint with some of these custom colors that I really like. I like naples yellow is one of those. I'm just really enjoying the warmth of this paper. And I'm loving these colors like this, like, gold green kind of color. And then I will always love pink. Also really gotten into ultramarine blue, I think maybe because it's such a good compliment to these really really yellow golden colors, but really like that. Yeah. So paint, and I feel quite comfortable painting, and I love that as a base. Like, I love starting all my artworks with paint. Another base that I've been working with lately is pan pastels, and they are also really fun to work with. I've been trying to get the past year or so, two years, I've been interested in pastels, but they're so frustrating because they're so chalky and they get dust everywhere. But these pan pastels are in this, like, lovely little easy container. That's like a makeup thing, and they come with a lid or you can put it in a little whatever plastic thing that you can get. And you don't use your finger, and they hardly get any dust anywhere. And they stick to the page. So there's just it's like how I wish pastels would work. There's funny little tools that you can get. And they're just making using pastels so much easier and lovely. So that's something that I've been really enjoying lately. Again, I really like these as a base. So instead, sometimes when I don't feel like waiting for paint to dry, which can take forever sometimes, having a base set pastels is really nice. These ones you don't really have to set with a fixative, but if they do, transfer. So it is nice if you're going to be working on a piece for a long time that if you do a base with pastels, spray it and then continue to work 'cause you will get messy, but it's not at all as messy as traditional pastels. Those are crazy messy. So there's those. I'll chat about these in an upcoming sketchbook class again. And then so those are my like the materials that I like to use as a base, and then we have, of course, things to do all the details and things like that. So I love working with colored pencils. This is my role that I bought at Ikea. They sell everything. So I have on my desk jars of different colored pencils grouped in different color ways. So I have the worms and the cools and neutrals. But sorting through all my pencils like this every time I'm going to draw is overwhelming, and I get stuck spending way too much time choosing pencils rather than drawing. So having a selection of colors to hand is really nice. So every few months or so, I go in and take these all out and then pull a new selection. And they're usually the same colors I've like I told you with the paint, I've kind of figured out the kinds of colors that I really like, like, the warm yellows. And I'm starting to really like, like, peaches and things like that. And then the funky greens, like, I love this color again. So it's matched with the paint, and, yeah, like cool greens, too. And the blues that I'm loving, like all the ultra Marines and, like, a lighter version of ultramarine. So these are all colored pencils are so versatile that you can, like, do some sketches with them. You can add all the little details. You can draw with them over your paint or your pastels. Like, I really like colored pencils. They're really fun to work with or just feel like a vital drawing uencil material, something like that. And I'm not brand loyal at all. I really love let's see. I really love the Derwent drawing pencils. They have such creamy, interesting colors, too. Like, they're really thick and fat. You can't get, like, details with these, but these are great for creating lots of shadows or yeah, just, like, drawing lots of shapes and shadows and texture and things like that. I also really love the prisma colors. You can't get those really in Europe so much. But in America, I think they're creamy and lovely, and I really love that the color is on the pencil. I think that's so nice. Like, I do, of course, love the Karen Dache luminance pencils, but it's kind of annoying that the color is only just right here in all of them. They're beautiful, that they're like, the would look. But I really like having the colors here so I can see what I'm drawing. But the luminans are insanely pigmented. Like, look at this. So if you want something pigmented, especially like when you're doing line work or just trying to working over something, the lumina pencils are incredible for that. I can show you another, like, darker one here sepia. Just they're insanely creamy and dark and pigmented. So it's kind of like, you know, use pencils for different things. I have a few of the fabric castle because they're affordable. Like, the luminans cost a scary amount of money each. And like, the fabric castle are half the price, but as you can see, like, this is the same color, but this one just, like, a lighter version. But sometimes that's okay, too. So, yeah, that's pencils. And it's fun to be able to see them like this and not get overwhelmed by my entire collection. And I have a little floppy brush here, too, just to get rid of the little bits that happen sometimes. Okay. Moving on, I also I would say something like a step up from a colored pencil, but in more like a stick form are the neo car and dash neoclorTs. And this just feels like a really nice, colored pencil. But in crayon form, that's also water soluble. Let's choose some colors. They also just go on so creamy and delightful and you can get quite good details with them. If you sharpen them. I highly suggest that you save the sharpenings because these are organ really expensive, and you can turn them kind of into paint if you put them in a paint palette. So yeah, here you can kind of see where I've sharpened this. So you can get a nice point and get good details. I don't use it very much as a water soluble medium, but I've seen some artists to get some different textures, you can get the color from colored pencil and the paint, and then you can have a little water to kind of blend it together a little bit. It's quite interesting. So I need to think about doing that a little bit more often. But yeah, so these are just nice that they feel kind of less precise than a colored pencil and they go over paint really well. They're really easy to draw on top. Of other materials. They're very difficult to draw on top of these. So if you have drawn, Oh, with this, it's going to be very difficult for you to do anything on top of this except for other neo coolors. But again, like, they're very waxy. So this is kind of like a last item that you would have on your piece, the last details. Speaking of which another thing that is just for the last details is oil pastels. And I really just love how pigmented they are and they go over everything. So once you in a painting and you've tried your colored pencils and you've tried your neo coolors and you still want some pops of color that aren't quite you are not able to achieve, like here, I wasn't able to get the color, like, a creamy oil pastel on top, and you just get that color pay off. And they have such a lovely texture, and you can kind of smoosh them in, too. I used to hate oil pastels because I thought they were just sticky, but I was using cheapy ones. And since, yeah, moving to, like, new pastels, they are really beautiful. The saneli, the French brand is incredible, too. I even have some from Van Gogh brand that are nice and affordable. So, yeah, I just really like how they just go over everything. So that. That's my favorite materials at the moment. It's always fun to talk about materials. One thing I want to mention is just use what you have at home and figure out different ways to use it. Like, take time to experiment and see what you can put on top of each other. Like, just because some other artists that you see is using something doesn't mean that you have to, too. You can test it out. Like, just buy a couple. You don't have to buy like 5,000. Not to begin with, at least. And I would have to say, like, sometimes it doesn't have to do with materials that you're using. It's not going to make your artwork magically better. But sometimes I feel like if you're struggling with low quality materials that can be frustrating, like, I hear some people say, like, Oh, just use crayola crayons. Like, your kids art supplies. No, they suck. Like, you can't do anything with crayola crayons. But I'm sure everybody has, like, some colored pencils at home or something or some paint. So yeah, start where you are and add to it and experiment. Like, baby, I wasn't I had tons of old art supplies before, like oil pastels, and I didn't really know how to use them because I thought you had to use them by themselves. But since I've realized that I can use paint and colored pencils and pastels and neoclors and oil pastels, that is, like, opened up my brain to be like, Oh, I can just reach for whatever I want and use the materials how I want to. There's no rules. Okay, that's my material chat. Now we have to start talking about artwork, I think. 5. Tape: Alright, now it's time to jump into the fun part, which is talking about the different layouts and tips and things for how I go about creating pretty or pleasing spreads in my sketchbook. So first up, we're going to talk about the simplest thing, tape. Alright, my friends, time to get into my tips for making pretty spreads, pleasing spreads. So I would say, like, the easiest in it is tape. We have beautiful sunshine. Now we'll see how that is going to affect. As much as Idure creating full bleed spreads like this, it can be overwhelming to open up a blank page and think, like, now, I'm going to create a masterpiece. And that's just kind of sad. So I think the best easy win or the best in is to use tape. When you tape off your page and create, like, a little frame, your artwork all of a sudden becomes like the masterpiece right away. You don't I just happens that way. It's just because those crisp lines. I can show you some of the artworks that I created without the edge. And they just look more messy. But if I had taped these off, they would have looked like a final piece of artwork. It's weird how that works, but it works. But these feel like sketchy to me, but these feel like I could scan these in and sell them, I guess. I don't even they're not, like, the most amazing things that I've ever drawn, but because there's a frame around it, it automatically looks good. So here, I've set up two pages with tape my favorite tape. I use them reuse them all the time because I like to reuse things. So I just paint, and then I'll put them on another page. So once I'm done with these, unless they got really messed up, then I'll put them on another page in the future. And when I come to that page, I'll go and paint that. And here I've already done some backgrounds. So the tape that I like to use is the Tessa Professional sensitive. This is a Swedish brand, but I'm pretty sure it's available worldwide. It's sensitive because it's supposed to be it's made to be used on wallpaper. So I've found that it has never ripped my paper ever. It's also a really sweet pale pink color, which is adorable. But just, like, it's not super sticky, but it also stays to the page. It's just perfect. So it's my perfect tape. I love that it's pink, and I love that it doesn't rip my pages, and it's easy to use. And it's easy to find for me, at least here in Sweden, but I hope that you can find it, too, or something similar. But, yeah, so just taping up a page, it feels also nice to have this set up for you. So I don't know what I'm gonna paint here, but I've set it up for me. So in the future, when I sit down to paint, like, I already have these pages ready for me with background colors put in. Like, this is the pan pastel, so it's a little sticky. I'm not sure if I set it. I guess not since it's rubbing off my finger. But anyways, I just sometimes it's nice with a full page spread. That's just, like, the whole page, and you can feel like a real artist or whatever that means. And then and then you can just sometimes you want to work on something smaller that doesn't feel so much pressure. Like, this is an A four sketchbook. So working on a double page, that's an A two, right? No, A three. Sorry, I'm getting my A sizes mixed up. So this is an A three. So yeah, it's kind of overwhelming. I like it personally because I feel like I have more space to move around. I kind of get kind of call oustrophobic and small space, and I feel like I can't do anything. But, you know, sometimes it's nice to work small. I want to show you also, here I did with four. Again, because they are taped off, they just look so much more finished. Like, these paintings aren't very good at all. Like, I think the faces became really muddy and smooshed. But because I taped it off, it looks so much more put together. And yeah, that's not what's so important. But if it's something that helps you feel like, Wow, I did something nice today in my sketchbook, I really think that that's nice, too. It's important that you feel good about your art when you finish it, and you pull those tape pieces off. It's so satisfying with that crisp edge and I kind of feel more finished and it's just, uh, yeah, satisfying. So again, just really lovely. And also, just because this is, like, my pretty sketchbook doesn't mean that messy mishaps are gonna happen. Like, paint's gonna seep through the binding and come onto another page, and something's gonna get messy or I don't always I most often don't fix my pages, so they after a while, they get a little, like, messy and cruddy, but that's okay. So, yeah, I just wanted to talk about the easiest way to make a beautiful spread in your sketchbook is to use tape and either just do, like, framed artworks like this or do more grid format, like I just showed you. Where were they? Something like this, you could do even smaller to really set up your page, making more random sizes. This is quite thick tape. It would be nice to cut it in half, so I could have smaller sizes, too. But yeah, how easy is that? Just use some tape, and you'll make some pleasing spreads. 6. Planning Pages: No next step. Now that we talked about tape, that was thrilling, we're going to talk about frames, grids and panels, which is kind of the same concept, but we're stepping it up a notch with having multiple grids panels on a page. It's going to be fun. All right, my friends, now I want to talk to you about how we go from just using regular old tape to just tape off some sections and make it into something a little bit more fun. I've been lately playing with spreads that are a little bit more curated, a little bit more fun. I've seen so many other artists on Instagram, et cetera, that create spreads in their sketchbooks are art journals that are a lot more curated or designed, and I really wanted to test that out, too. I think there's something about creating a page that feels really pleasing to look at, but it's also fun to create that feels really interesting to me at the moment, because sometimes, as much as I love creating a full page spread, it's nice to do something a little bit more designed, I guess. So a page like this, I love that it's both pleasing to look at, but there's kind of a thought behind it as well. I don't want to just design for the sake of design or create art just to show it on Instagram. That's the worst. So for these images, I'm thinking, I really want it to be functional at the same time as being pleasing so that you can make better artwork or have an enjoyable time. So setting up a page like this just feels fun. Like, I created the boxes. I drew them in with a colored pencil, and then I filled them in later. And just having some pages with some grids that are already ready for you to go is kind of fun to figure out what can I put in this page and what can I fill these sections with? And having spaces that you can have some color swatches so it feels more organic and playful, so it's not so perfectly polished. And here, like, this was a paint clump that like transferred because it wasn't completely dry when it closed the page. Like, stuff like that doesn't matter. I also enjoyed having pages like I've seen other artists like Melissa Lake and Sophie Mac Pike. They create these boxes or even or even our very own Queen of Skillshare, Dylan M Mwenski? Sorry, I don't know. What did you say your name? Dylan M here on Skillshare, that you can create boxes with pattern. And that really appeals to me since I'm a surface designer as well, and that's what I usually call my day job. So having a space where you can test out color palettes or just a space on your page to play while you're waiting for your paint to dry is kind of fun, too. So I like having purpose basa behind my pages as well. So they're not just pretty or I'm not forcing it to be pretty. Here, I tested out a border. And that was kind of fun, too, like spending time just coloring in. So it becomes kind of like a meditative act as well. So you create your painting. And this was quite fast and easy, but I spent a lot of time filling this in. And again, like I could listen to an audiobook or a podcast or YouTube or something like that. It's kind of nice. And then these are the kinds of pages that I call more of like a two D scrapbook page where you're drawing and mixing sketches and a finished painting where the color palette, grid brid pattern thing, color swatch is like you're curating a page, but again, like this can kind of happen organically at the same time as you're designing beautiful page. So I started with some sketches, and then I added I wanted to add in, like, a final space for a final final irate illustration. And then I have a space for, like, something a little bit more designed. And then the color palette because I think that looks really nice. You could if you wanted to add in text, if you want to do, like, visual journaling, as well, that's not really my thing. But I know, like, artists like Rebecca Green are really good about that by adding text and making a little bit more personal, and that's something that you could try out. So that's what we're going to be doing for our class project. We're going to be creating a page like this that feels like, set up and designed, but at the same time, it's functional for you and creating your art. So I want to show some inspiration pages that I've collected and created with you. So here in one of my smaller sketchbooks, we can take a look at some of the sketches that I've taken of other artists artwork. We can zoom in so we can get really close in. And when I say take inspiration, so I will make some sketches of how other artists have set up their page, but I'm not also, like, doing it exactly. And I'm not going to sit and create my artwork and look at that artist's art at the same time. I really don't want to copy. I just want to get some ideas of how I can play with my pages. And again, I'd like to mention, like, Sophie Mc Pike, Katie Moody, Melissa Lakey, Rebecca Green, and there's so many others. But these ladies have such amazing sketchbooks, and they often share spreads that are really visually pleasing at the same time as they have lovely art, obviously, too. So when I'm creating my little thumbnails of their pages, I'm also bringing things myself and how I want to set up because not everything appeals to me. Like, Melissa Leakey, she does a lot of small grids, and I can find that kind of overwhelming to me. Like, I prefer almost sometimes a full page spread because that's just one thing I have to think about. If I have to think about how to fill up one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14 different boxes, that kind of overwhelms me. So maybe I'm a little bit more interested in, like, a space like this or even, like, setting up a page like that. There's so many interesting things. Like it was I was inspired by Sophie for the mushroom spread I just showed you with a large painting, some sketches, like space for sketches, a decorative element, and then the color palette. And I just really like that, so it turns out nicely. I also like the idea of this one with having a final landscape at the top of your page, but having thumbnail sketches at the bottom, you could have thumbnails. You could have color studies. You can test it out and then create your piece. And then on that page, you have the whole progression of bringing that image together rather than it in three different sketchbooks like I showed you that I would maybe do. It becomes just easier to open up one page and start working and then having a final piece as well. And then maybe you can decorate it or write something. Like, there's just so many things that you can do, and it's really fun to be able to test things out. Here was that last spread or the first spread I showed you with the two landscapes and two decorative elements in a color palette. But there's so many, take notes from my page and work with that. Or when you're scrolling through Instagram and you see somebody set up their page interestingly, take out your sketchbook and create some grids. I also have a few more here. There's just so many ideas. Like, this one was a full landscape, and then there was these long landscapes that I saw on an artist's page. So there's so many things that you can do to set up a page that feels kind of it's curated, but at the same time, maybe it comes a little bit free flowing. So we're going to figure out what we're going to be doing in this class. So which one of these layouts do we like and we can kind of work that out together. So I'm going to I'll make a box a little bit bigger so we can see. So here's my full page spread. Use the gutter in the middle just to think about that. I'm not really sure what I want to do. We can procrastinate, and I can show you something else while we think about that. But I saw, like, Sophie Mc Pike, especially does these beautiful grids or Dylan, or here, I've also I'm inspired by Magdalena from the Wild Pencil. She has beautiful sketchbook spreads, as well. And they do those decorative grids where you can test out your color pallor or just have fun and make it look beautiful. So I was looking up quilt patterns, and that was really fun to explore. So that's another way that you can fill up some sketchbook spreads is by looking up these kinds of patterns that you want to fill and have, like I did. This one you saw already, but things like this, and it will be fun to sketch that out and fill that with paint or markers or whatever material that you like to work with. I definitely want to do some kind of I want to I think I want to do this pattern. It appeals to me. So what should we do? I like the idea of having something final, like a final page or a final image. And it's kind of nice to break it off with the gutter. So again, it does become so precious. It can't, since it is, like, right there. And it disrupts the picture so you can't, like, make it perfect. And that's kind of nice when you're working in a book format like this. So do we like any of these? Do you like the idea of, like, the This is kind of nice. This is Sophie again. Like a landscape, and then we could do some color palettes and other sketches and things at the top. Maybe we should do something like that. I don't know. Again, like, I get overwhelmed by having so many little boxes. Let's look at her other. Now, I've lost my page. Yeah. But I also really like the the borders are really fun. Which one should we do? I think we'll try something like this. I really like this one, but we'll make it our own. I'm sure I made this my own first, and then we'll do it again another step. So I think I'll start with we'll have the final landscape. We'll do a landscape because that's kind of my happy place at the moment. And then I will leave space here for a color palette because I really love how the blobs of color look. We can do a little so like this feels like curated, but at the same time, it's just, like, it's kind of nice. This is a part of designing, too, to create pleasing spread. So I want to do an illustration of some flowers. And then, like, with the rest of it, should I just do my pattern here? Yeah, my pattern. What did that look like? We do four boxes like that, and then it was a grid. This. And then it was, like, a pinwheel Then there was another shape. Yeah. Wait. Okay. So that is my little idea for how to set up my page that I plan on doing. But I highly suggest that you guys do something yourself. You can take inspiration from my little thumbnails, like I said, or you can check out all these illustrators that I have named. I will make sure to link their Instagram pages so that you can check them out too and gain inspiration and remember, like what the difference between inspiration and copying is. Like, make sure that you're doing your own thing, too. But there's a lot of illustrators who do this kind of thing, so don't feel like you're stealing somebody's very unique idea. Besides creating drawn grids, I really like painting in some background grids like I did in this little sketchbook. This is one that I've mainly been working on little painted in grids. Here, I don't even sketch them out the size, really. I just go in with paint, and I really like that while I'm waiting for another larger piece to dry in my other sketchbook, I can go in and prepare pages like this where I can go in later. So it's a good use of your time if you're waiting for pink to dry or just again, like those days when you don't feel creative, don't feel like drawing, but you still want to use your art materials, like, set up some pages in your sketchbook. Don't do all of them. Like, I enjoy having I will skip pages so that I have room to, like, I'd say, room to breathe so I can feel like, Oh, I don't want to, like, force myself to do this. I want to just paint something big. So here, like, I've done several like that, and then I will paint this. And then it's just fun. Like, what do I want to paint on a pink background? And what would look better on this beige background? And what about hot pink? What how does that look? So it's really fun to have your sketchbook kind of as a project, and, like, some pages a year, I skip them, and I need to go back and do these again. It's just like the whole sketchbooks kind of a project ongoing, and I really like that. Here again, like, here's at the beginning. I need to go back and remember to do these green squares and figure out something to put there. And here in this sketchbook, I've been doing, like, more small studies of things to figure out lighting or techniques that I want to try out. Oh, and then some final pieces that I really enjoy like this one, I really think is sweet and kind of more naive in style than I usually do, but I'm trying to loosen up my style a little bit. Here's an example of using quite a few small grids, as well. I was inspired. This is Alysa Eufa. I was looking at her work and sketching things that I really enjoy about her work. Like, she always has these really funny birds, I have huge mngous feet, and I really like her use of colors, et cetera. Yeah, we're thinking about lighting. So sometimes working in a smaller sketchbook size like this is really nice because it feels more doable and even, like, a spread isn't as huge, but it's still nice to break it into smaller sections so that yeah. I don't know why the barrier, the white page can be so scary. And just like going in and just I don't know, not really ruining pages, but setting them up, like you could do some with paint, and some you could sketch out a grid, and some you can leave blank. So that's kind of, like, all ready for you, ready to go, rather than just having page after page after page blank and you just kind of feel overwhelmed by that. So I just wanted to mention that, as well. And so that we're ready to get started on the class project in the next section, let's just sketch out this little grid in our sketchbook. So I'm going to zoom out again. So I'm going to use this sketchbook that I have, and I'm going to open up to a new spread. The only thing that I would say the downside of this sketchbook is that it doesn't lay flat. So that's the only thing that I don't like about it and doesn't work so excellently, especially now at the end when there's just a few spreads left, but no matter. So I don't like sketching with pencil because it usually gets muddy. It mixes with the paint. So I will use something like a neutral color. What's this? Violet gray, that'll do. And as much as I love tape, it's kind of nice to do something that feels a little bit more not so crisp and perfect. And for the most part, you can follow your own paint lines pretty well, too. I'm just going for it. I'm not going to use a ruler. And so it'll set this whole bottom area up with a nice long landscape. And then I wanted to do some I'll leave some room for flowers that we can draw together, and then I wanted to do a little pattern here. Not quite all the way. And we're gonna set that up. Again, that became wonky, but that's okay. If I was drawing this knot for a class, I would use a much lighter pencil or draw even lighter because I don't really want these to show up. But that might be a look that you really like. I know that Katie Moody, for example, often she uses a bright color. She can use red or blue to mark out her grids, and that look is quite fun and playful, too. There we go. So that's my page set up so that we can paint. And here I can add the color palette. If I was good at text, I could write in nice beautiful cursive. Here we can draw a little flower together. And here we're going to do our final little landscape together. So yeah. And when you're feeling creative, but you don't feel like creating the actual piece, you can go through and fill some of your pages with these kinds of grids that you can fill in later, skip a page and leave that for a full page spread, put some tape in on another spread, create some grids on another one so that when you sit down to create your artwork, they're already good to go and you kind of feel like, Oh, what can I do on this page? Rather than coming to a scary blank page like this, you already have something that's set up for you, such as this or a taped out page that you can just get into painting right away. So that's another tip for you to make a sketchbook feel a little less precious or a little bit more like a project. I also like that I don't always work chronologically. I don't go from page to page. Like here is I painted after this page, and I left these and I will come back to them when I feel like I know what I want to put here. But for the moment, I haven't really figured that out if I want to do more of these still lives or if I want to draw, like, a portrait or if I do want to do another landscape or something. So yeah, it's kind of nice to have these pages set up for you when you come to sit and paint. S. In the next section, we're going to get started on our class project of painting this spread together. 7. Class Project: Part 1: Now that we've mastered tape and panels, we're going to jump into the painted scrapbook page. This kind of page has kind of scared me because it's a little fiddly, and I thought it was maybe too curated. Previously and thought it was too, like, Instagram worthy, and I didn't want to create those kinds of pages, but they've kind of sucked me in because they are beautiful. Like, we can do fold plate spreads all day, and we can do messy pages that are ugly. But, I mean, like, a nice, curated, kind of scrapbooki type of page is just really pleasing. So let's jump into that. Alright, my friends, it's time to get started on our Ware spread. I'm going to be showing the images that I will be painting from with you if you want to paint something similar, and it'll be fun to see how you interpret everything as well. So I don't necessarily do visual journaling, but I do it in my way. Like, I take photos when I'm on walks or I use photos that I have taken years ago and paint. So this was a recent trip that my family and friends went to the woods and we picked wild garlic. So I have this image to share with you, and I'm going to interpret it in my landscape here. I know that the format is different, but we're going to use it as inspiration. And then I can also post some Swedish spring flowers. I thought that would be great over here. And then we can use the color palette in our little decorative element, which is just kind of for fun, as no. So yeah, again, I put this clip here to keep this side down, but this side I'm gonna have to hold with my arm. So, what should we get started with? I think, just to get into it, maybe, I will do this my little sketch of a flower first because it just feels like an easy in and I don't feel like I'm gonna mess it up. Well, at least I hope not. So I will use my weird green that I've been liking using. This is Fabric Astel's green gold. And I'm just gonna draw the flowers and this isn't the most important. It's just thing ever. Then I have another big one here. Again, you get kind of messed up when you draw on the edge here, the gutter of the page, but that just adds to it becoming not so precious. This isn't a typical flower that we see very often. It looks kind of like a I don't know, or like a buttercup, maybe. I'm not a flower professional, but they we were discussing as a crowd, my friend and I when we were picking these possibly called Gul sipur. I have no idea what they're called in English. But in Swedish, we think that this is g Lusipa because it's quite big and they were mixed with all of the more the very well known spring. Swedish flower is a tsipa has the same shape of the flower, but they have different leaves. So very interesting, I guess. I don't do sketches and studies of flowers like this ever really or often, so it's kind of nice to just, like, start off kind of warming up with your painting drawing session with some regular sketches. And like, these could become painted later. But for right now, I'm just going to leave it as just just a regular pencil sketch. They're really weird, like, rounded leaves. Kind of like wrap around the stem. Kind of feel like I want to have one more in the photo, there's a flower peeking up behind. So that could be nice. I can get some shading back there, that flower and the little other petals. Something like that. Kind of decorative and fun. Okay, so I did that. So now I can't procrastinate the image anymore. So I'm gonna go in and draw my scene with all of the wild garlic, Swedish calls Rams look. Rom's look depends on how you want to say it. So my happy place lately has been painting greenery strangely before. I never in the past, like, two years ago, I'd never, like, landscapes was like my nightmare. But then I kind of forced myself to test it out, just giving my paints a little sprits here to wake them up. I took out a really small pencil, but I think not pencil, paintbrush. It's confusing because in Swedish, this is a pencil in English, and this is a pencil in Swedish. Pencil. So that's annoying. So usually, when I jump into a painting like this in my sketchbook, I don't sketch it out because I like to just figure it out as I go. But maybe that's not the case for you. I'm just going to go for it. So there's a really cute little stump, and I'm going to use that as my, like, vocal point, I guess. And then I'm going to do the greenery around it. So I'm going to put my stump off to the side over here with this, like we need some darker colors. Should I bring this closer so you can do that. So you can see more what I'm doing. I'm just using colors from my palette these that I've pre mixed and just going in. That's my stump. It's a lot lighter on the top, so maybe I'll try to get some white up here too. It's a little bit lighter. Okay. And then the background of the image is quite. There's a lot of pink and warm tones mixed in with all of the greens. So could try to attempt having a little bit of the pink peeking through in some areas. And again, I don't need to use this edge as I super have to stay within the lines, but it's kind of nice just to keep the shape and form Good. I'll do a little of the yellow, even though I don't see much yellow in the piece, but there's still, like, a warmth, and it's nice to use these signature colors that I have. Ben giving a lot of warmth to many of my other paintings. Okay, and then of course, there's so many greens. We need to get some greens in here. I have this more neutral green. I use that in a lot of the pieces. I have I really like using this cool green to give contrast to the two greens that I have, so it's not everything so warm, so there's some coolness. So there's a patch of moss by the trunk of the stompie and it's more like warm tone, but I'm going to make it cool tone just to make it different and more my own. And then I also want to use some of that cool tones in other spaces, so I will add it in. Kind of, I got to say, kind of randomly, but also I enjoy using a color three times. So if you bounce around an image, boom, boom, boom. Unless it's something very specific, like, I want to keep this brown maybe just in this area. I need to go back into my regular neutral green. Making some leaf shapes here. This is a green that I mix myself. So the pigments don't always stay together. Same with these, the gray, the turquoise green. And I kind of like that when it separates, it becomes like another element of interesting color. One thing that I need to get better at is adding dark, let me get this dark. I also like having this as individual pan so I can pick them up like this and use them more like that. Get some darks around my little stump here so that you can see it better. One reason why I really like drawing greenery is because you don't have to really It can be quite What am I drawing? Abstract. It doesn't have to be photorealistic, and there's a lot that you can just kind of make up. That's fun to me because I get overwhelmed by looking at an image and think, like, Oh, I have to draw every single leaf. Like, that's not happening. But here, you can kind of mimic leaf shapes and, like, the organic, like, craziness that's going on in a in a nature scene in a landscape. To here, it just looks like a mess. But this is also, I want to remind you, like the underpainting is also just in my sketchbook, and I'm just playing and having fun. And it will be even more fun when we go in later and do all the details with pencils and pastel, oil pastels and new pastels and all the other fun materials. Okay, so here, mainly, I just want some lots of greens. Still not dark enough, but that's something I can go in with my pastels. Were not pastel colored pencils and stuff. I want to bring some, like, highlights some of the leaves are really bright and vibrant now in the springtime. So I'm going to use this, like, sap green mixed with some greens that I have over here. So it'll be a little bit more muted, and I want to bring those in a little bit, like, to the warground. Maybe I'll do some. Highlight some rooms there in the front, and then I'll have some in the back here, too. Again, that like rule of threes like a random. I like uneven numbers. Okay. Go to want to go back to my stump here 'cause I need to make it a little bit darker, maybe some more of this gray color. Okay. Okay. Now to consider how we're going to do our little this one. And I was hoping to work on that while this dries. So maybe we shouldn't use wet media then. So let's get out our colored pencils and do some fun scribbles there. The yellow spur Gilipur or that beautiful yellow color. So I thought it would be fun to do yellow. And this, again, like, should this be you could do this with markers or with paint, if you like spending time coloring in little sections like that. This isn't so vibrant. I kind of want to bring out my new colors to see if I can get a really vibrant yellow. Okay, let's see what's this golden yellow. Like, that seems more of what I'm going for. Kind of like that, almost, what's it called? Like a pre effect. So I'll do that. I'll do the edges a little bit lighter sketchy. See, this is the thing that's so fun about sketchbook is that I am just playing and I will figure out things that I like doing or just sitting here and talking to you is really enjoyable. Or if I'm by myself, like, yeah, I can watch Book tube on YouTube and think about what I'm going to be reading next. Go. Mm. These are so nice and creamy to work with. But what's cool about No colors, they don't really transfer, so they're not messy. Okay. Thinking about our color palette here. Also, this is I didn't do any color testing over there. Now I have to be like a poser and add those in. But just it can be nice to test your colored pencils on top of these kinds of colors. So it is nice to have. So not complete poser. Just a small poser. What's a little bit of that pink in there. There we go. So then I have that area to test out stuff. Hopefully, that will also dry by the time we're ready with our little decorative element over here. So, you know, we have to think about our color palette. So I want this nice, cool, bluey green color. I'm going to take this earth green, and where should we place that? I don't know if I want to put it exactly there, but it also can be something I can change and test out maybe in the background. Do every other. I have to say it is nice to be able to draw on your page while you're waiting for the paint to dry, 'cause that's something that I get so frustrated with when I'm working on a full spread, and then you're waiting for paint to dry. And I swear when you're waiting for paint to dry, it dries, like at half speed. You kind of get warmed up. Maybe you get a little bit looser so that you feel like you're not going to mess this up or something like that. Okay, so there's my little do I mess that up. No. Um, so the other color, maybe I should do more like that Another green. Get all my greens. Thinking about this section. I'm not sure what I want to do there. Maybe the pink since you have the pink in there. But then I want something that really contrasts with the beautiful golden yellow, and I'm thinking I have the perfect oil pastel for that. But right now, I think I will do this whole section pink and I'll do it darker in the middle and lighter go out. Back to wild garlic. I don't know if you're a forager where you live if there's places where you can go forage, but since well, since moving to Sweden, that's, like, a thing that people do lots of people in Sweden love being out in nature. And then since we moved from the city, Stockholm to out into the country, that's become even more of a thing. And in 2020, I started becoming like a mushroom forager. And then since then, once you start getting like, learning more about mushrooms, you want to, like, move to the next thing. So I have been going to more greens and things. So wild garlic is in the springtime. Like, it's the first thing that you can forage that I know of. And it becomes this outing we've been doing for the past four years, and it's so exciting that we found this place where there's so much wild garlic that you can't believe it. Like, it's just, like, an ocean of it, and it's just really exciting to me. You become like a wild garlic hoarder. Just because it's free and out in nature and you can pick it and we brought home bags of it, two bags, and it's like, What do I do with all of this? Okay. So I was thinking this gorgeous lilac color. I feel like this light purple violet color is my favorite at the moment, and it's gonna look amazing with this yellow, so I'm going to go for a nice little click here in the center, and that looks. Really lovely. And because we tested this color palette out, I definitely want to add a click of this color somewhere, even though it's not in the image, but it's my image, so I can make it up. So I'm going to put this color over here so I remember to use it. I'll have it over here as well. I also probably will want to use this bright yellow somewhere as well. So that is finished, my little decorative element up here and even have the flowers over here. This isn't quite dry in all places, but I can start to work in some areas. So, let's see. 8. Class Project: Part 2: No I also I kind of I want to be, I don't know, like I want to be brave and write something, but I just know, sometimes I just don't like it. So I'm gonna skip that for now, 'cause I don't want to feel like I ruined it, even though you can't really ruin stuff. So, okay, let's see. I definitely need to get this dump to get a little bit more, but that's where it's wet. So let's go in with these leaves. Like, I want these Rams leaves to stand out like the dump, and this is going to be the part plus some zi pour. Um, let's see. Okay. I want to get some definition on those. So let's see. Is this dark enough? Too brown. Let's see. Try this one. I'm gonna get some definition to these. They're quite delicate these leaves, but I want to get some definition in here, so I'm going to go quite dark with these lines just 'cause I want it to kind of stand out. Okay. And here, test out if it's dark enough. Yeah. So here I can get some contrast to this stump to make sure that that's, like, sticking out more. Just giving some shadow. This stump has interesting texture. Here again, it's hard to work over when some areas are still wet, but it's okay. As long as you don't rip your paper. It would be really cute if I drew something that would be sitting here on the stump, but again, like, I'm still kind of afraid of doing little characters and things. Something that's holding me back, I need a little bit more practice. That's what I envision, like having some little character. Maybe we could come up with something. Maybe we'll gain more confidence as we go. I hope so. Okay, so then we need some more, here's some darkness there, and here's my leaves. I kind of feel random at the moment. But then I can go in and then just I also like to create outlines of leaves, even though you haven't painted, like, a specific underpainting with that color, but just to give some outlines here. And then let's see. We'll use some neo colors. I'll grab some colors. Test those out. Here we did the rumslk over here, so maybe some lightness. Also, Yeah, can we get some light into those as well? Highlights. That looks nice. And it kind of softens those dark lines. What does this color look like? Quite green, green. Just a little bit of that. Okay, that's fun. And then, again, like, work with some outline, some shape, something more defined, something still quite abstract. That's just how I've been playing and finding it really exciting and fun to draw greenery, you're just kind of making it up. Let's do some lightness over here. I'm going over these areas too, my moss. How do we make this look more mossy? I need something to define that. Maybe this color like little dots. Since I did those little dots here, maybe I want to replicate that somewhere else, again because of my rule of repeating. Unless it's something really you want to be standing out like this, I want to stand out, so I'm not going to have an open area that's lighter than everything else somewhere else. But in a few other areas, I can add in these like mossy textures Okay. This class isn't really supposed to be about how to draw greenery, but I hope that this maybe helps you feel more playful when you're drawing greens and things like that in your sketchbook that it doesn't have to mimic every single leaf and I can't draw and talk at the same time. You don't have to draw every single leaf, but you can mimic certain areas that look like the image, and then some areas are abstracted, and then some areas go into, like, like here in the corners, maybe it's not important that we have anything that's defined at all, but here where it's closer to, like, the stump that's supposed to be my um, visual focal point that I do things here that are a little bit more defined. Let's see. We need to bring in my white flowers. I'm not really sure how to draw those in 'cause now I didn't leave any white space for the flowers. So we can maybe hope that one of my neo cuddles can go in with that. Let's see if this goes over. Like, it goes over the yellow quite well. Yeah. Nothing colored pencils do not go over neo colours very well at all, but I can use another neo colour possibly to get some definition there inside the flowers. Kind of cute. Hmm. Let's see. Anything else you want to define a little bit? Okay. And then we need to do my purple element. So this is supposed to be the wild garlic, but this is my image, so we don't have to follow that. So I'm just going to insert that color here with some random flower shapes. So we get that pop of the purple that looks really nice with the yellow so cute. Okay. Now we need to figure out if we can make a little cute dude here. I draw. I've been gonna do a little Give me a little bug taking a break a little read a little ladybug or something. Ladybug sweet. Taking a little break on a stump reading a book. Alright, so how do we draw that? Again, I'm not a huge fan of using black in my work. I think it's too harsh, especially when I use so many light colors. So my darkest color that I have used so far has been this color. Draw that in again. Just to have that. And I will draw in a little feet. Land. Difficult to do the face. H. I leave openings for the go. And then, like, do you want to introduce another color for the red for the maybe. The book shouldn't it be yellow maybe to continue with that? Can you tell? Can you tell it's a book? Maybe I'll keep my palette small, so I'll just give them. It'll be a purple. It'll just be a bug. Very cute. The face is a little frightful, but that's okay. Cute. All right, I need some shading underneath there, so they look like they're sitting on it. I can also give the log, even though I can't really see it, but I want to give the lines in there. I want to do a little bit darker there. Okay All right. That's my little page. It's really sweet. And I would go and possibly write something if that's something that you like. I definitely would write the date. I like writing the date to when I'm done this. I kind of feel like I didn't use this dark color enough, so I want to, like, use it here. Ooh. And it smudged some of that purple that looked really pretty. See, again, like, that was a mess up. But that just like a little pretty Okay. Like, I could continue doing this forever and ever. Okay, I'm gonna call that it's done now. I think that turned out pretty cute, and I added a little character here just to make it a little bit more playful and fun. So that's my little spread. And I think it's both pleasing and it's also um, helps you with your art. I didn't test anything out over here, but I can I can show you that in retrospect. I get stressed, I have to say, when I am filming and drawing at the same time, like, I forget to do certain things, and I talk much quicker, and it's difficult to talk at the same time, but it is handy to have these spaces and test out colors so you know what they look like. But when you go in and create your final artwork, they also good reference later you go back and flip through your sketchbook and think, like, Oh, what what did I what kind of color combinations did I do? How did I layer certain things? Sometimes you'll not figure out what you did, but you can at least try to mimic it a little bit. Hm. Yeah, pretty fun. I enjoyed that. So yeah, I think I'm going to continue to create pages like this. Like, not always. I love still creating pages that are full page spreads because I just feel like I can breathe sometimes, but sometimes it's just I don't want to sit down and do a whole painting. So it just feels more doable and approachable that I can have pages that are setup like this. Like, I can go in now and create a few layouts so that when I sit down later and want to draw, I have them done. And then I can go back and look at this and share this and think, like, Oh, I had a nice time while I was waiting for this to paint to dry. I did this little section, so I didn't feel like I was wasting my time scrolling through. Instagram or something like this. It is really sweet. I am compelled to write, but I don't want to. Oh, my God. I'm having, like, a crisis. Never mind. But I will write the date, even though I'm filming this on the May 7. So there we go, and I can I don't know. Should I go for it? G SIPA. I don't even know if it's called that. God. S. There we go. Added text. Go me. Okay. That's it. I can't wait to see your spreads and see if you also created a scene like this. And if you want to add a little character to your stump, who's your little character going to be? This was so fun. Thanks so much for painting with me today. Bye. 9. Next Steps: Right. That's it. Now that we have learned all about how to create more pleasing spreads or how I go about doing that, I hope that you're inspired to do that, as well, and you find it a little bit less scary, maybe, or, like, you're gonna mess it up or you just can't do it. I'm sure you can. So I would love for you to take these next steps to keep going with your sketchbook journey. And the number one thing is to bring that sketchbook with you, bring a small sketchbook with you. Maybe it's more of your ugly sketchbook so that you can jot down ideas, or when you see something beautiful, you can kind of take notes. And if you're going on a more of a longer day trip with art possibilities, you could bring a pretty sketchbook, too, and lots of art supplies so you can sit in a park and draw or at a coffee shop or something like that and create a spread that's a little bit more well thought out, especially if you've taken the time to think through your inspiration, things like that. Go over the exercises that I have shared in this class or in previous sketchbook classes over and over again because you can always learn something new. You can always develop another skill. You can always get inspired by a new color palette. This is why sketchbooks are so fun and why it's so exciting to flip through it at the end when you see how you've progressed from the first page to the last page. The last thing I want you to remember is that sketchbooks are supposed to be fun. It's a safe space just for you. You don't have to share anything on Instagram. I usually do not. But still, it's nice to be able to flip through something, and, yeah, maybe you'll have a few dud pages that are kind of ugly. But it's just a part of the journey of learning new things, and then you can jot notes and be like, that messed up because I mixed colors really weird or I just started wrong and it like messed me up. Like, it's no big deal. That's why moving to the next page is okay. And yeah, it was really bad and it just, like, really bothers you, just paint over it and start again. No big deal. It's supposed to be fun. You're supposed to see the progression. That's why it's so great to have a book at the end of as an end product, because you can see from the first page how maybe you were a little shaky learning things. And then by the like 50th page or however big your sketchbook is, you can see things happening. And that is really exciting. So I hope that you'll enjoy filling lots of sketchbooks with my tips and other classes here on Skillshare that are really inspiring. Just keep drawing and make sure to draw for you. If you have something like I do like fun Friday, where I dedicate a whole workday to just playing in my sketchbook and that is so important to me. I highly suggest doing something like that. It's really beneficial and it just loosens you up to being able to play. Get all your work done Monday through Thursday, and the rest of the week, that little chunk of Friday is just to play and have fun and remember why you want to be an artist in the first place. 10. Where Else Can You Find Me: H. Alright, that's it. Thanks so much for taking this class with me and filling your sketchbook with different tips and tricks that I've shared in this class. I can't wait to see your beautiful spreads in the project gallery, so please be brave if you want to and post a picture of one of your favorite sketchbook spreads that you've done, which was inspired by this class. And I would love to see it. If you would like any feedback, please let me know. Otherwise, I will just give you some positive encouragement. And if you would like to hang out with me outside of Skillshare, you can find me on my website at Kristina hot krantz.com or Instagram, where I post on occasion at Christina Hud krantz. I also have a gorgeous, fun Friday Patron group where I post videos every Friday about art making, my process, art materials. I have different drawing prompts every Monday that go out, we do a new theme every month. So if you'd like to draw with me on a monthly basis rather than just taking my classes when they come every so often, I would love to see you in that beautiful creative group on Patrion. That's it. Until my next class, make sure to follow me here on Skillshare two. So you'll be notified when I post my next book class or my next surface design class or whatever I come up with next. And until then, bye. 11. Bonus: Sketchbook Flip Through: Hello, fends. I'm so excited to share this sketchbook flip through with you all because this has been with me for over a year, a year and a half nearly. And I'm just really pleased with this. I think this is the first sketchbook that I have created that I'm truly, really proud to share. Like, the other ones I was proud to share, but they weren't as they weren't full of such beautiful drawings like this one is. This is my pretty sketchbook. Yes, it took me longer to work on this because I don't fill my pages with silly sketches or mess ups. Like when I go to this sketchbook, this has been a place where I create more finalized artwork and that's why it took so long to fill it rather than my ugly sketchbooks where I can play or if I mess up a page, I just move on to the next thing. Let me just get into it. Again, if you were wondering this is the Ranger delusions art I don't know, creative notebook, something like that. It's marketed not as a art sketchbook. It's more for scrapbooking, but I think it works just as well. I think the pages are really thick and they're very, very smooth. So some of you might not like that. If you like some paper texture. This has zero paper texture. It's almost slick, but I've learned to really like it. It has a nice warm color. Anyways. So, I also just like the design that has this pocket that I don't ever use. It just looks nice, but it's not too fancy. It wasn't too expensive. I started in February of 2024 and I finished it now in May 2025. And, start off the page with big test page, just test out this new slick paper that I had never used. This is the first time I've used this sketchbook. So we'll just get into it. So, in the beginning of 2024, I was really getting into working from my own photos of places the place where I live in Marie frit in Sweden and learning to love landscapes, which I had never in my entire life enjoyed drawing, but I guess when you turn 40, you enjoy stuff like landscape drawings and drawing birds and stuff. I don't know. This is the beautiful castle where I live on a sunset in the wintertime, so this is 2:00 P.M. I didn't sit out drawing because it's icy, yeah, I take photos and work from home. Same thing here. This is also in my neighborhood on a dreary winter day. I was really inspired to try and capture that dreariness of the winter because sometimes it just I haven't been inspired to draw something like that, but it was really enjoyable. I love this fence that I created. Here's from a TJ Marston session on Patron. Also Sweden. Funnily. Funnily enough? Here is when I went to Florida, I took some photos when I was visiting family. This is the view from my parents' house and this was somewhere. I don't know. There was a bird and what are they called turtle. So again, just navigating how I want to draw landscapes and plants and things. I think by the end of that you'll see how I've developed my color palette and how I use paint and things. It's really interesting. That's why using a sketchbook so fun because I have a catalog of what my artwork looked like in February 2024 and what it's going to look like in May 2025. Here's for a session with Emma Carlisle and her patron working with trees and there's some stuff that I love about this. Then I was getting excited or obsessed with trees for a little bit. I think they just went a little bit too mystical, magical, but there's something in there. Then there's this tree by the castle where I live, and I just think it's stunning and I still haven't been able to capture it properly. It doesn't look like this. This part looks good, but the top doesn't look like that. Here, more just exploration, trying to get into the woods and cute little creatures. I think this was for one of my patron sessions. Here's some cats trying to think about trying illustrations that have a little bit more character or something going on because just empty landscapes can be a little bit empty. This is not my backyard, but close to where a view from my house is with rabbits or hair. Here's another place in Marie Friet my live cute little is called Arcman. It's like Duck Island where they've set out a teeny little miniature house and outouse for the ducks. Where's the castle again. This one I did actually sit in the gardens and drew it on Plan Air. Another view from the castle towards a mansion that's out in the countryside. Here's the Emma Maliaka session on Patroon. Back to the Castle Gardens. This Castle gardens that we have here is so stunning. I'm starting to realize the colors that I like to work with the cool greens and the warm greens. I'm really liking the ultramarine blue too. More castle, more castle. What is it castle. It's another like exercise I did my patron group. The three materials challenge. It's actually quite difficult. Here's from our beautiful Deer Park, I managed to take a photo that's similar to this with a deer looking straight at me. It was so nice to capture this. This has been one of my favorite drawings of my sketchbook throughout the time with my sketchbook, I don't know, something just clicked and the ability to use all of these different kinds of greens from cool to warm to dark and light, I feel like something I really managed to get something when I created this. I love this so much. Just like looking back at it. Like, I still reference this when I go to paint new things. It's just like I don't know. Sometimes, you know, when you're just like in the zone and you create something and then you don't even realize how you did it, like, I don't even know what I did here, but I can kind of go back and feel the materials. Like What did I use? I love this. It's just okay, drawings. More Sweden. Like, I feel like Sweden has really crept into my work this year. More from where I live. It's my friends I painted this from my friends garden. They have sheep. Not so much loving this, but this is really sweet. Too bad I didn't fix this size, this page got all messy, but that's okay. This I believe we did for one of my Skillshare classes. I'm not sure which one. More drawing outside. I did actually draw this while sitting outside and looking at different rocks. Creating all these textures is so much fun. This was on a trip to Denmark. I didn't capture it as much as I wanted to the beautiful rolling hills, but you can always try again. More deer and greens. I really started to love greens. Again, playing with texture has been something that I've been really focusing on creating these beautiful textures, but also everything can't be textured. So finding that balance between what areas are super textured. But again, there's some areas in this painting I really love the trees, how I capture the trees and the warmth here. But here it's a little bit messy. Then I tried to capture my kids. They look a little funky. Some birds still not comfortable drawing birds. Again, more from my neighborhood. I feel very privileged to live in such a beautiful place. There's so many different places to draw and gain inspiration from. Just loving all this warmth here in the grass. It's really nice. Here's another beautiful garden where I live. Here's from another Emma Malika session. She has amazing sessions for drawing. Again, with Emma. Drawing the C side, another MMA session. I think I was catching up on all of the sessions I missed. Another EMA session. You're trying to get into the dark side, that's something I'm usually afraid of going dark in my work and having that super contrast so that's something you need to work on. Here's another EMA session that I really love these. These feel like artworks to me. I should probably scan this in before they go really messy because I love this. I love creating these little fake tree clumps. It's fun. Then some mushrooms and this I guess fall, October, we're getting to fall and I was using some neon colors just for fun. More painterly. Use the castle again, but now with fall colors. Don't think I captured it as much, but I also feel I didn't spend as much time on this. I could have spent a lot more time. It's the only page that I left empty. Here's some more exercises with my patron group. Drawing from film. We're back to another session with Emma. Now we're in December, so it's wintery capturing those dark Scandinavian Arctic winters with ice and the darkness and the glow from the city. Then how it looks like there's this beautiful light if you've ever been somewhere where it's cold. It's like the air is icy. Here more darkness. Then I didn't use my sketchbook for a couple of months so now we're in April. I wasn't feeling so well. But now I jumped into springtime with lots of still lives and the trees were starting to bloom again. This is where I live again. I live out in the countryside. Here more still lives. And here is by the Castle Garden again, these two cute old men. I used to see them all the time on my morning walk because I would always walk around the castle. I don't do that walk anymore, and I unfortunately haven't seen them together in a while. I've only seen one of the guys, so maybe the other man has moved on. But it was really sweet. I took a little sneaky photo of them once in this scene where they were walking on the path. I'm so happy that I captured it. I'd love to try it again because yeah, you always go to try again. More still lives. Now here starting to get obsessed with creating these spreads for this class. I wanted to test that out in this sketchbook too. Mushrooms and more that water because I really like that other one that I created, wanted to create something similar. Another scene from where I live by the lake and more trees and my greens. I really locked down my color palette that I like to use. Now I'm trying to incorporate small little cute figures and characters because I think that would really bring my my work to life and here's the spread that we did in this class. I just really like the idea of bringing that playfulness into my artwork and I can't wait to practice on that in my next sketchbook. This not. This might be my least favorite artwork in this sketchbook, but doesn't not. There's still some nice beautiful moments. I love what's going on here. You're another little mushroom character that I've been working on, little Correll, super cute. I really like what's going on here. It's that mix between. I'm trying to figure out that messiness that I like, but also having crisp elements. How do I get that? I'm trying to work on lighting too, so it's always something to work on more of the castle, plot, castle, some simple floors because we're getting close to the end of the sketchbook and I just want to fill it because I want to get to the next one. Here's the last spread. But some cherry blossoms that we've been having lately, it's so beautiful. I took some photos with the Swedish red houses, one of my neighborhood houses and they have this beautiful cherry tree in their yard. I've been really enjoying these decorative elements too because it's just fun to focus on something else that's not just trying to capture flowers and trees. So that's it. Here I did some sketches for my next my next notebook. I have it ready over here. Nice and crisp and new. I'm starting to decorate it with some nice flowers on the top. I'm going to give it a name this time, and it's ready to go. It's nice and fresh, so many possibilities for so many new fun drawings and scribbles and learning new things with textures and composition and lighting. I'm so excited for what this sketchbook is going to take me because this one I feel like it took me so far. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed and found this inspiring to see my journey through 1.5 years in one sketchbook and how my artwork has developed and what I'm working on and thinking about. I can't wait to show this to you in maybe a year's time. Bye.