Transcripts
1. Welcome :): Every illustration has
a story behind it. Even if you don't blend
the story ahead of time, it's a way for you as the artist to express thoughts, ideas, emotions, desires, and just
do what you're here to do, which is to create more
and better every time. Hey, I'm Gio. I'm an
artist and con creator. Today I invite you to
participate with me in this 7 day challenge
where we'll exploring your identity as an
artist and help you find your very own original
art style and do like a shortcut and the whole process of developing the personality of your art. This class is designed
for you, artist, dreamer, person who has
feelings, thoughts, ideas to express and likes to express this in a visual way. It doesn't matter
if you're painting, if you're drawing,
if you're sculpting, whatever it is that you're
doing this class will get you out of the boxes you
tried to fit yourself in. It's going to
challenge you to ask yourself the right questions. We're going to look for
inspiration outside of us and also inside of ourselves, which is where all the
answers lies, spoiler alert. I promise you, you're going
to live this class with a very well defined
visual language and a lot of resources to keep working
on your personal style. As an artist, it's always amazing to
try new things and make different arts and not be
stuck to just one style. Your personal art style
can be a representation of how you see life and how
you see the world around you. It's a way for you
to express yourself and communicate with
others around you. I truly believe it's
alive and moving. It's going to change
through time, it's going to change with
your new life experiences. This class is going
to help you get in your very own unique
artistic flow. There you can create art
that makes you feel things, makes you feel motivated, makes you feel proud of yourself and excited to make more art. Before we start,
don't forget to hit the follow button up
here next to my name, so you can be the first
one to know when I post updates and new classes and now join me on the next
video so we can talk about all the materials you're going to need
for this class.
2. Materials & Final Project: By the end of this class,
you're going to be invited to create
an illustration in your very own personal
style that we're going to develop and explore
during this week, and I would absolutely love
to see your creations. So make sure you post your projects in the
Projects section down below. I give personalized
feedbacks in each project, so it's a way for us to
connect a little closer, and I'm also free you to connect with other students
which is really cool. Before we start, I want to
say that you don't really need to take this class
as a weak challenge. I developed a class like this because I don't
think everybody has that much time to
put into each exercise, and I would really like
for you to dive deep into each lesson without worrying
so much about time. This is why I separated
it in different days, but you are welcome to take
a whole day if you want and just do the class or do everything in an
hour, I don't know. You're welcome to do
whatever you want to do. Maybe I'm just slow and I just take a lot of time to do
things, I don't know. Now talking about materials, this is a very fluid class. I really want you
to get whatever I offer here and adapt to
your own experience. There's not really a set of
materials that you need. I'm just going to show
you all the materials I'm using in case
you're curious, but again, none of this is exactly necessary
to take the class. To start, I'm using a mechanical pencil by
Pentel, this plastic eraser. I'm also going to be
using alcohol markers. I have a bunch of different
sets from different brands, so I'm going to mix and
mingle with what I have here. I also have this
India ink brush pens, and I might be using some
fine liners as well. Now join me on the next
video so we can jump into our first exercise.
3. Journaling About Your Art: Today we're going to do a
super fun journaling exercise. The goal of this lesson
is for you to take a little break from making art, letting your creative
brain rest a little bit, and to allow yourself to
connect your memories, your story, your interests, your inspirations so
we can get working on a mood board for your
personal art's style. I'm going to give
you six prompts for you to journal about. The first one is describe your first memory
of you making art. How old were you?
What were you doing? What art were you making? Who was with you? Maybe you were drawing
something and you remember what you were drawing. How are you feeling? Why did you decide to
make that artwork? Were you in class? Was someone influencing you? Were you doing it by yourself? Try to describe that moment
as well as you can even if you're not sure if that was exactly your first
memory or not, just trust your intuition that the right memory
will come to mind. I'm writing about this
memory of me drawing. I was in my grandmother's house. In my head, I was very little. I think it was like three, which I don't know if I can have a memory from three years old, maybe I was older. I don't know. I think I was
drawing a bear and I remember that my grandmother
complemented my drawing. I think that I felt really safe and I felt like I was
good at what I was doing. So maybe this is why this memory stuck with
me. I don't know. Anyways, the second prompt
is very straightforward. I just want you to
write about what you usually like
to make art about. Maybe you never really
rationalize this. But if you look back in
all of your artworks and what you're used to creating and what you
like to creating, what you feel
called to creating. What are the patterns
that repeat themselves? What are the elements that
are usually in your art? In my case, I usually like to illustrate nature and humans. I like to draw faces. I like animals,
insects, flowers. I love to add hidden elements in my drawings and hide little meanings and
things like that. I love to draw eyes. I love putting some random
eyes in my drawings. Maybe you want to go a little
deeper and ask yourself what feelings and what
energy you like to create, and what vibe you like to
create in your artwork. The third prompt is, I want you to write about the materials and mediums
you like to work with. I want you to think about
what feels good to you. Sometimes we admire
someone else's art with a specific medium
and when we try doing it, it just doesn't
really feel right. When I try to
create something in someone else's style or my own style using
pens and markers, which is like my favorite
mediums to work with, it just feels so satisfying, a lot more of myself. This is what I'm writing about. The next prompt is, are there any specific icons, items, themes that you
always go back to? This is very similar
to your second prompt. But this time I really
want you to focus on visual details and
maybe you want to expand on elements that you talked about on
your second prompt. For example, in my case, I wrote that I like to draw nature and plants and flowers, but it's not any flower
and not any nature. There's some specific flowers that I really like
to draw and some specific animals and some specific things that
I like to draw. Then I feel like I can
somehow represent my style. I thought about the
chrysanthemum flower. I thought about like zooming
in on a scene in nature. This is what I
actually like to draw. It's not just nature drawing a forest or
something like that. I like zooming in on
a detail of a forest, for example, in a
detail of a plant and then drawing that
and creating that. I also thought about
celestial elements like the sun and the moon and
stars and things like that. I usually like to add details
like that to my drawings. They're usually not
the main subjects, but I like adding
that and create a little mystery in
my drawings with that and create a little
bit of storytelling, little bit of a notion of time
or time passing or cycles. I also wrote about specific animals that for
some reason I love drawing. They may mean something
to me, I don't know, but I like drawing dragonflies, cats, moths, snakes, octopus. I like creating this whimsical
fairy tale feeling in my drawings and creating
a surreal vibe to it. This is what I'm writing about. This is just another space for
you to go deeper into what makes you feel motivated
and what makes you want to create art. Our fifth prompt is, what kind of art fascinates me? Who are some of my favorite
artists and influencers? We're going to explore
this a little bit later on a future
lesson in this class. We're going to go a lot deeper into our inspirations
and influences. But right now, I just want you
to see what comes to mind. Maybe you can think of anything, not just your style of art, but it could be music, movies, interior
design, TV shows, illustrations, mural
work, pottery. Just think of what
makes you feel interested and motivated and what artists you usually like and write a
little bit about them. Just try to explore in
your subconscious mind why is it that I like this art. What makes me feel motivated or inspired or makes
me feel anything? What makes me come
back to it every time? To give you a few examples, I talked about James Jean. I really like his art. I love the colors,
the rounded shapes, they are like aliens, surreal, like parallel
universe vibe. I feel like it's dreamlike. It feels like child play, but also a little bit
dark at the same time, I really find it
super interesting. Maybe it's not really the
intention of the artist, but it's your interpretation and this is what is unique to you that we can explore in
your own personal art style. Next, I'm talking
about Miles art, but I love the way he expressed such deep and heavy feelings in his art and he does it so
well in a surreal way. I talked about
[inaudible] She gives me a feeling like I'm a child
again and it's safe. It's like a home away from home. I love the colors
and I love the way she portrays light in
her illustrations. It's something I really
want to explore. I talked about [inaudible] I love the abstract dreamscapes. It feels like you're dreaming and you're in a
parallel universe. I like when art takes me out of this reality and shows me a different way of
seeing greetings. This is very interesting to me. It feels like a place
in someone's mind, probably her mind or
anybody's mind. Who knows? Very interesting. I talked about Clint. I feel like his arch
feels like a dream. It's sparkly. There's a lot of
emotions, movement. I just kept writing and
journaling about some of my favorite artists
and arts that I like. I really kept into the painting
and illustration world, but you can totally get creative
and get out of the box. We're going to talk a lot more
about influences later in. Our last prompt of today is
I want you to think about what inspires and triggers
your art creations. What time of the day, what phase of your life, season? Describe your ideal
time and space for creativity or even
making art in general. For example, I noticed
that if the sun is out, I want to go out. I don't feel like making art. I really like to create art when the weather is cloudy
outside or it's the winter, I'm way more creative at
nighttime than during the day. I usually make art when
I'm alone and relaxed. I liked the end of
the day like after I did things and I already went to the gym and I already
moved my body and it's like an introspective time. If I have a lot of
energy inside of me, I would want to create art. I truly believe that
the time and space and vibe you're in when
you're creating art totally affects what
you're going to create, so that has something
to do with your style. In this journaling
exercise, for example, I noticed that some
patterns that keep coming back is
talking about dreams and parallel realities and
just surreal elements. I don't know, it gives
me that feeling of a fairy tale or a
fictional universe. To me somehow that really connects with the
idea of nighttime. It's the time when you close
your eyes and you're able to just go wherever
you want in your mind. It just feels creative to me. This exercise really helped me realize a theme that
keeps repeating itself. This is what I want you to
pay attention as you go. Try to think about the
ideas and things that keep repeating themselves
in these prompts. Maybe to help you make
sense of all of this, you can circle some
important keywords, make some extra notes
at the bottom of the page on ideas,
elements, styles, colors, vibes, anything
that you've noticed as a repeating pattern for
you to explore it later. This is today's exercise. I'm going to see you in
the next video. Bye.
4. Create An Iconography Moodboard: In this lesson, we're
going to create your very own
iconography moodboard. This is basically the
time for you to look back in your
artworks and observe what elements you want to keep working with and then
we're going to draw or write about them to create basically a visual guide for your very own unique art style. Here, I have the paper with
the notes that we wrote yesterday so we can gather
inspiration from that. Also another piece of paper
to sketch and try things out before passing it to the main paper where I'm
creating this moodboard. You can start simple by just drawing or sketching
the elements you know, you like to draw for sure. You can also do this digitally and create digital moodboard with images from the Internet
that represent your style. No need to do anything
super detailed. This is more of a guide, a reminder for you about your style that we'll develop
as you keep working on it. It's just another
exercise for you to start thinking what do I
want to keep working on, and what do I want
to leave behind. I'm starting by
drawing some leaves and flowers which will
represent the nature, things that I usually like
to portray in my art. We wrote about that in
the previous exercise. At this stage, I also want you to look back at your own art and see what you don't want
to include in your moodboard. Maybe they're things that
you are leaving behind and they just don't
inspire you anymore. Maybe there's aspects of
your art that you're not really happy with anyone to
leave those things behind. Just don't add that
to your moodboard. It's just an interesting
time for you to acknowledge that and just
move on from that for now. This is not just a
moodboard about what's familiar and what you
are used to creating, but about what truly inspires you and you
want to keep creating. Think about things and elements, colors, textures, materials. Feel free to be creative with the mediums
you're going to use. I'm basically
focusing on drawing because this is what
feels good to me. It's my style is drawing, it's what I want to keep doing. But you can use collage, you can play with
different materials, you can do this on
a piece of wood and just use random
things from nature. The goal is for you to explore
your previous artworks and register in this
piece of paper or whatever board you're
trying to create. What are the patterns that
repeat themselves and that you want to keep
as your personal style. These things, I feel like our elements that maybe people when they
look at your art, they will be able
to recognize you. I want you to explore all
sorts of things, elements, colors, textures that could
represent your art style. As you keep doing this exercise, you can start exploring this
on a deeper level as well. For example, there's
elements that are always in your art and you want to keep them as part of your
personal style. You can ask yourself why, maybe how those
elements make you feel or even what deeper meaning
this element has for you. You can either draw
that or write it down. This is the time for you
to free flow and take note of what is part of your
style that you already know. Maybe some things that
are more new to you and that's when the
side paper comes in handy because you
can test things out before deciding to add
it to your moodboard. Colors for me are something I always went to include
more in my art, but it's still a
little hard for me. I feel like I work a
lot better and I'm way more comfortable with
just black and white, but I want the colors
to be more my style. I'm testing some colors
I already know I like, and then adding them
to my moodboard as I decide what I
like and don't like. This is a good exercise
also for you to allow your brain to make
these decisions like, why do I want to let go? What do I want to
keep working with? What is something
new that I want to incorporate and work more with? These are things
that we sometimes we're just making art and we're not thinking about them and
then we end up making ours, it feels like all
over the place and not cohesive with
their own style. This is what this
exercise is about. I'm also drawing some
more abstract elements, textures, and patterns
with the fine liner. These are all elements I already worked with and I went to
keep us part of my style. This exercise is interesting, especially if you feel like you're creating art
that is not very cohesive and it's like all over the place like
I said before, I've felt like that
so many times before, especially in the
beginning when I was trying all sorts of mediums, I really didn't know what
I liked and what I was good at and this is just part of the
process, it's normal. You should do it, you
should try new things. But I was just
drawing and painting all sorts of things and all
sorts of styles and colors. I like doing this exercise whenever I'm feeling
a little lost. This might happen again
and again throughout your art journey because your style is going to
develop as you develop. right are going to change, your interests are
going to change, your inspirations
are going to change. Again, of course, this
is not necessary, you can totally
just do all sorts of art and you don't really
need to develop a style. But I know that
sometimes we want that and especially if you
consider working as an artist. Having a very well-defined style really helps you grow a strong brand for
you as an artist. I totally get it, but I just wanted to make this disclaimer that
your style can change. You don't need to feel
stuck or feel put inside of a box because this can totally block
creativity too. This should be something
that helps you feel more inspired and not limited. Just keep adding new things to your moodboard as you go
about your art process. Feel free to come back
to this moodboard throughout the class and add more things or
eliminate things, put things on top of the
other and let's create a really beautiful moodboard that's makes you
feel super inspired. Then at the end of this week, you can maybe put
it on your wall, on top of your desk to remind you what your style is about. Now, let's move on to
the next video so we can explore our outside
influences and inspiration.
5. Your Influences & Inspirations: Hi, friends. In this lesson, we're going to talk about how the outside world influences and affects ourselves
and therefore our art. We're usually trying to express something
when we make art, even if we don't
really know what it is, maybe it's a feeling, maybe it's an idea,
maybe you just have a visual image in your head, like I want to draw a face, I want to draw this
specific thing. You don't really know why, but usually have
a starting point, and even if the starting point starts inside of ourselves, maybe it's a very
personal feeling, it's an interpretation
of how we live our lives or life experience specific events in our lives, maybe traumas, maybe
memories or relationships. Basically, everything around us ever since we were born helped shape us into who we are
today and who we are today, is able to make art and create this visual style
that we're trying to find. I want to take this lesson
to talk about what inspires you and what moves
you from the outside. Right now I'm not talking about your very own personal feelings and personal experiences, I'm talking about
places, people, movies, music, other artists. I want you to find in your mind, what are your favorite things? What art do you like to consume? What sounds do you
like to consume? What foods do you
like to consume or what inspires you
and what moves you? I want you to take today to make a list of all of these things, everything that comes to mind. I want you to write the list and then right next to
each item on the list, I want you to explore in
your subconscious mind, ask yourself, why do
I like this thing? What is it about this thing
that makes me feel something? What is it that I feel?
Why do I like it? Just explore those
feelings and make some notes on why is it
that this moves you? Why is this interesting to you? Maybe it reminds
you of something. Maybe it makes you
feel a certain way. Maybe you're just like it. You're not sure why, but maybe you just
like the colors. Maybe some examples will help. I'm going to tell you some
of my influences and some of my favorite things and
some of my favorite urge to consume.
It's not all of it. I feel like I could
have a list of 100 things and you can make
as big of a list as you want. But I'm going to show
you a few of my main, the first things that came
to mind when I was doing this exercise and
the first people that I thought of
or other artists that really influenced my work. The first one I thought
of was James Jean. I really like his art, I really don't know
that much about his personal history
as an artist. But when I saw his art on
Instagram for the first time, I was just totally
mesmerized with the shapes. I don't know how to explain it, but I just loved all
the round shapes of it and how he created this
whole fantastic universe. It sounds like you're entering a different alternative reality and I really liked
that about his work. It just brings me to a
different part of myself. I feel like all
of his characters inside of his drawings
remind me of children, but it's not childish
at the same time, it's not adult themed, but I feel like they are
adults, but also children. Again, I've never seen him
talk about this at all. This is just my
interpretation so it might not be any of his intentions. This will move
something inside of me, it's like it's this feeling that my inner child have its
own alternate reality somewhere and it's
so colorful and it's like round shapes
makes me feel fluid. I don't know, I love it. One thing that I thought it's a little bit out of my
realm of illustration. But I thought of
Kelly Wearstler, I don't know if I'm
pronouncing her name right, but she's an interior
designer and her interiors are completely
mind-blowing to me. The patterns and the textures. I love the way she
combines textures and patterns in a very
unconventional way and I love how she chooses
furniture that has all these round shapes and
there's a lot of circles, there's a lot of bold, heavy, grounded, earthy shapes. As you can see, this
is also interesting for you to start
finding patterns. We're going to talk about
this more in a little bit. I already found
something just with these two examples that
talk to each other, which is like the round shapes. Just try to observe this little patterns
and just keep it in the back of your mind for
now where we're going to use this concepts later. Next, a big influence for me is Studio Ghibli movies,
especially Spirited Away. Spirited Away was the
first Studio Ghibli movie I saw when I was a kid, I was like maybe eight or nine, and I remember it was different than any other movie
I've ever seen. It was uncomfortable,
but beautiful. But at the same
time, I wanted to be part of that
world like it was a whole different
universe and this brings another pattern that I'm
already finding here again, which is this whole thing of
an alternate reality like a different universe
where in Spirited Away, I don't know if you've seen
the movie, but it's like, oh, these different gods and
different spirits, it's magical. I liked this sense of magic and something that's not
just fully on realistic. I liked it, surrealism
concept of things. I also really liked their
composition of the movies and the way they portray the scenes
and it's just beautiful. I love the colors, I love the characters, I
love everything. Another big influence in
my work is Marco Mazzoni. I took some of his
drawing classes before. He's an Italian artist, and I love his line
work and the way he expresses very deep raw
feelings through his art and I feel like he does
this really beautifully by using elements from nature to express these
feelings and ideas, so his work really
inspires me a lot. I really like also the
detail of his work. It's beautiful to me. There's a little bit
of a creepy factor that I feel called
for, I like it. I don't know what it is,
but I really like it. Another artist that I really
like is Ines Longevial, she's a French artist. Her style really calls to me, I just love her paintings and I tried exploring this style a little bit before and everything I tried to do
in her style was horrible. I just can't do it. But there's something about
it that I really like. When I was doing this exercise and exploring it
inside of myself, I really think it's the
colors and the subjects. She really expresses a
different point of view of the human
experience, I think. The way she portrays the
light heating of face, I think is just beautiful. I don't know why, but I like her choice
of colors and I like how it's soulful
but not intense colors. The colors are
usually pretty muted. Another two influences in my
list influences I'm going to talk about our movie directors, so first I have Pedro Almodovar. He did movies like The Skin
I live in or The Volver. When I watched them
for the first time, I was just like,
this is different. This is not like Hollywood. There's something else that
this is a piece of art. I don't know how to explain it and just the first
things I think of when I think of Pedro
Almodovar movies are the colors, the warm colors,
and just how well thought out the interiors
of the movies are. A lot of things happen in
the kitchen in his movies. I'm from a more
an Italian family so I understand that
like people being gathered in the kitchen
and living life in the kitchen and
things happening, conversations happening,
important things happening in the kitchen and I think he
portrays that really well, which is like a really
small deep aspect of life for some people, I guess for some cultures. I think that's really
interesting and I think that's a lot of
the storytelling. I'd like the way he visually portrays things
and makes you feel things through the storytelling of the spaces and the colors. This is very abstract, but this exercise is abstract. I want you to get to
this abstract place to transform something
like I like this movie, I like this song, I like this artwork
and just try to ramble into the wise
without too much logic. The last example I have
is Wes Anderson movies, especially the Grand
Hotel Budapest. I don't know if I'm
pronouncing that right. But that movie to me was
all about the colors. That movie is art to me, I am absolutely obsessed with
the colors of that movie. I don't even remember the story if I'm being honest with you, I don't remember what
the movie is about, but I remember the scenes, I remember the spaces, I remember the colors, and I remember how it
many makes me feel. It makes me feel like I'm in it's not really
like a fairy tale, but again, it's not realistic. It's something that we would
only see a in piece of art. It's a point of view of reality, but it's not actually reality
so I really like that. These are my influences, I hope this helps you,
gives you some ideas. Free to go outside, walk around and have ideas, take your notebook with
you to work and just, whenever you remember something
and take a note and then explore later when you get
home, give yourself time. Don't rush through
this exercise and I think the more inferences
you can gather, the more material
you're going to have to use for the next exercises. No spoilers. But I hope you enjoyed this exercise and I'll
see you on the next video.
6. Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone: In this lesson,
we're going to get out of your comfort zone and experiment with what we've talked about in the
previous lesson, what inspires and influences
us from arch works, movies, music, or anything
that came to mind before. This is the time for you to
explore new styles, shapes, colors and just basically
forget what you know about your art style so far
and try new things out. Maybe try a different
style, try new colors. Look at your list of influences and inspiration
and try to explore something from the
list by drawing or painting in that specific style. Again, no need to
be too detailed, you can just do
rough sketches and explore new forms of
making arts that inspire you and maybe you can
incorporate some of these elements in your own
personal style later on. I'm going to give
you a few examples of how you can do this exercise. I'm starting with my
inspiration from James Jean. I went back to look at some of his pieces and something
that I find fascinating is this shapes and colors he
chooses and how he creates this abstract patterns
on elements like people, clothing, and animals
and to make sense of it. Because visually, I can
understand what he's doing, but I couldn't just get a piece of paper
and do the same thing. I'm going to try to draw in his style and copy what he has in some of his artworks just to try to understand
how he does it. Another thing I have on
my mood board that we created on the second
exercise was eyes. I love drawing eyes on
my illustrations and my eyes are completely different than the
way he draws eyes. He makes his eyes in such a unique way and I'm
going to try to export his style of drawing eyes
a little bit to see if I can incorporate
some ideas on mine. Or maybe he just opens my
mind to a different way of drawing eyes that maybe I
never thought about before. Here I'm also exploring
some coloring techniques. I love how he separates the shadows in different
tones of an element, that's super interesting
and new to me. It's something I really
don't know how to do. I'm just trying to
basically copy like a little piece of one of his illustrations
really quickly, really roughly, just to try to understand what he's doing here. Again, I really want you to see this exercise not as
you copying someone, like I don't want you to get
something from an artist and just incorporate that without changing anything on your style. We want to find your
own unique style. But by studying
other artist's style and who came before us, we are able to open our minds to new ways of creating arts, and this is what this
exercise is about. Next, I decided to
draw some shapes from Kelly Wrestler's interiors. I looked on Pinterest and
just sketched some of the furnitures and patterns
I see in her designs. Again, it's not about copying your influences,
but studying them, getting out of your own boxes to explore things that are calling you and that you
probably want to be able to incorporate in their
style in your own way. I'm dragging furniture. It's not a thing that I do. I don't draw furniture
in my drawing. I think I've never
done this before, but there's something
about the shapes, it's something
about the textures and the patterns in her work that calls to me and I want you to incorporate
that same vibe. I'm just like randomly is
catching some furniture, some art works that she designed and this is
what we're doing here. It's random. I get it. If you're feeling this as
a little weird, it is. I'm also going to draw this one specific scene
from Spirited Away, not because this is my style or that I want to have this style, but something that
really mesmerizes be in Spirited Away is how
they animated water. I love the way they illustrate
water in the movie. It just flows almost
like a cream. It's creamy. I don't know. It's so beautiful and I
would not know how to create that in my own illustrations without using a
reference picture. I want to practice the
water overflowing effect. It's also an
interesting practice on how to draw transparency for me. I know I'm just copying a scene, but this is so out of my comfort zone and out of
my style that I feel like I learned a lot on how I can create different
effects on my drawings. If I was going to draw
something like this, like water or a transparency
like this in my own style, I probably wouldn't
do it like this, but this is giving me ideas
on how I can do it myself. The last one I'm
going to explore in this lesson is a little bit of Ines Longevial's
coloring style. I'm just sketching a
quick portrait here and trying to color the portrait in a similar way with my markers, of course, she uses other
mediums she's painting. I think she uses oil, so completely
different textures, but it's more about the color, is what I am interested
about in her art. This is super out
of my comfort zone. I never explored
different colors and different tones like
that on my portraits. I usually play it safe and
follow a reference picture, which I don't really
want to do anymore. Not like falling
reference pictures, but I want to be able to be more creative with the coloring and create some more abstract
and lighting effects, something I don't
know how to do. I want to be more
creative with the colors. Maybe this practice will help me add more color
to my drawings. Now, it's your turn. Just look at your list of influences and inspiration
that we talked about yesterday and try some of the styles you
have written down. Sometimes we need
to do it ourselves to be able to really
understand how to do it. This exercise is for you to
open your mind to new ways of making art and diving a little bit deeper
into what inspires you. Now, join me on
the next exercise so we can talk
about colors. Bye.
7. Find Your Color Schemes: In this lesson, we're going
to talk about colors. To help us out, I
want you to find some beautiful and inspiring
color schemes that you like. You can do that by going out for a walk and taking
pictures of things you like. Maybe you want to go back
on your camera roll and see some beautiful pictures
that you took in the past on specific trips that you did, for example, or easy
route is you can look for a specific movie scenes to explore and study their colors. I like working with movie
scenes because movies are so great to tell
stories through colors, and this is something I want to be able to export in my art. What I'm going to do is go
on Pinterest and look for movie scenes color schemes and look at some
inspiration I like. The idea of this exercise
is not only to explore different and unique
color schemes that you maybe wouldn't have
thought of by herself, but also to explore how these combinations of
colors make you feel, what story each color
scheme is telling you. On a piece of paper, I
want you to paint or draw or whatever medium
you want to use, with the colors that you like. Also you can do
this digitally too, it's definitely quicker, and try to recreate the color schemes you
feel inspired by. I personally learn by doing and by putting
my hands on it. I really have to draw it myself to absorb
that color scheme. This is super interesting
because I personally wouldn't have created some of
these combinations myself. I'm actually taking
note of the name of the movie so I can
remember later where this color
scheme came from. Honestly, most of
these color schemes, I wouldn't probably think
of it by myself at all. So it's really interesting because this exercise will open your horizons to
different combinations that you can later on
explore in your artworks. If you want to understand
more about color theory, there's tons of classes here
on Skillshare that you can find that will go way
deeper into that. But I wanted us to
get out of the box and learn from what's
out there already. I personally know a lot about color theory and I still struggle to create
color schemes, so why not just look
at what we like, what we feel cold for, look at beautiful things
that are out there that inspires us and motivates us
to learn more about colors. Colors is so
powerful to help you create the vibe
of your artworks. I noticed that the color schemes
I drew here are a little different than the
ones I drew on my mood board from Day 2, which is really interesting
because I opened a whole new set
of options for me and I feel like this lighter, more pinkish colors represent more of the vibe I
want to create in my artworks and that just proves my point that the colors
I chose on Day 2, were the colors I was
more familiar with, is what made sense at the time. But now I'm leaning more towards these other colors
schemes right here. I'm definitely going to add
that to my mood board later. Now, once you have
some color schemes ready that you
want to work with, I want you to write
down and journal about how each of these color
schemes make you feel. What vibe are they
creating for you? What elements come to mind
when you look at those colors? You're probably going
to notice that some of these elements and feelings
will repeat themselves. In my case, I noticed that
I felt really cold for pastel tones and
earthy pinkish tones. They make me feel safe, make me feel grounded. But also a lot of the pinks and purples bring me
back to the dream, the child-like, the fantasy, the parallel reality things that we talked about
this whole class. This has a lot to do with my style and the things
I like to create. Now, It's all coming together because I felt that the
colors that I chose on Day 2, they were really earthy
and really nature, but they weren't very
fantastic and whimsical, and they weren't
celestial and magical, which is a big part of the concepts that I
want to create in my art. Now with the pinks and purples that I felt really
overwhelmed to work with before and they make so much sense in this
color schemes right here. Now I feel like my work can have a more cohesive color scheme with the vibes that
I want to create. Now, join me on the
next exercise so we can brainstorm ideas for
your final project.
8. Brainstorming Ideas : Today we're going to do an
exercise that I love and it helps me so much when I
don't know what to draw. This is something you can
do for every illustration and every artwork that you create from now on
if you want to, especially if you want
to create a story or give meaning to your artwork. The first thing I want you
to do with this piece of paper is to write down
a starting point. Maybe it's a feeling, maybe it's an idea, maybe it's a message that you want to pass. Maybe you already know a
specific elements like, I don't know, a
butterfly [LAUGHTER], a face or whatever
comes to your mind. It could be literally,
literally anything. Just write it down. It's a starting point, something that you want to
portray in your artwork. In my case, I wrote
change, transformation. It's something that
I feel like is a strong pattern
that is happening in my personal life right now. I like creating arts
there relates to my life. I feel like I can dive deeper into it and it becomes
a self-awareness thing. You don't have to do that, but I like adding
a little bit of me into my illustrations. From here, I want you to
literally unblock your mind. Don't limit yourself. Just write down anything, literally anything that comes to your mind when you think
about your starting point. In my case, I have change
and transformation, which makes me feel
of many things. It makes me think of cycles,
dreams, butterfly, eagle, moon phases, day, night, like how the day transform into nights and night
transforms into today. I'm thinking of when
you're cleaning your house and decluttering and how that brings change
into our lives. This way I wrote declutter, giving me the feeling
of like new person. When we transform
into a new person, being a new person makes
me think of changing skin, which makes me think of snake. You can also feel
free to sketch things like maybe you're thinking
of visual elements, shapes, patterns, anything
that really comes to mind, you can add on this
piece of paper around your starting point. Then when you feel like you have enough elements
to work with, you can start
circling things and connecting elements that you feel they connect
with each other. I feel like, for example, the ups and downs makes
me think of cycles, which makes me think
of moon phases. Snake connects to me
with the new person, same person changing skin, getting rid of your old skin, and getting rid of
old skin reminds me of a letting go of the past. By doing this exercise
of just circling things out and
drawing extra lines, you're making sense of what
you have here and connecting things in clusters of
energy and concepts. Now from here, I want you to grab another piece of paper, and we're going to
sketch some miniatures. This is not supposed to be as super detailed complex thing. You can do this super quick. I like to divide my paper into
nine separate rectangles, but you don't have to
limit yourself to that. You can just use this
piece of paper and feel free to sketch any ideas that come from the words and concepts that we wrote before. Usually, the first
one is going to be a little bit clumsy
because you're not really sure what's going on [LAUGHTER]
and how to transform those words and concepts
into visual images. In my case, the first
thing that came to my mind was someone
walking with a backpack, which would represent
the old me. Maybe this person is
dropping the backpack. I'm just sketching
this idea here. This person is
walking and moving, so it's moving to
the transformation. The second idea I had
were like two feet grounded on Earth and
then one feet lifting. But there's a bunch
of plants keeping this person from
walking and moving. It gives me a vibe
of feeling stuck, but this person is really taking their
feet off the ground. They're going to do it.
They're going to walk. It maybe represents how change and transformation
can be difficult sometimes. Another more literal representation
of the changing skin was a girl coming out of
her old skin and her head. Her own skin divided in two and her new person coming out. I also thought of
this angle of hands climbing a mountain
towards a new view, a new perspective of life
that could be maybe like a jungle or nature,
something very abundant. I thought about adding
the moon because that would look
nice. I don't know. I also thought of this
girl with an eagle on top for some reason I wrote ego and something I never drew before. I wanted to explore
a little bit of that with an eagle on top
of this girl's head. I don't know what that
means. Maybe it's like she's flying like
an ego. I don't know. I also thought of again, the same concept of
getting out of your skin, getting rid of your old skin. But just a hand, so one hand zipping out your old skin and coming
out as a new person. I'm drawing a person laying down on the ground and
surrounded by nature. I don't know why I drew that. I don't think that really
represents [LAUGHTER] anything. I also thought of cycles. I wanted to do something
that represents cycles. I thought about mirrored
portrait of a girl. It sounds like she
would be spinning ups and downs, ups and downs. Then the last one, I drew it as a
horizontal illustration. Everybody's in a pool. This is super out
of my comfort zone. Don't usually draw
things like that, but this girl is upside down under water with her legs up, and everybody else is just doing their own thing in the
normal position in a pool. But the girl's upside
down, I don't know. I think this would look
really good with colors. But we're going to keep this black and white because
in the next lesson, we're going to turn one of these concepts and one of these ideas into an illustration using everything that we
studied this week to create a beautiful final
project for this class. If you want to color
these sketches, you can, maybe this will help
you come up with a better notion of what
it's going to look like. Now, join me on the
next lessons so we can start our final project.
9. Create An Illustration In Your Style: In this lesson, we're going
to work on our final project. I want you to get your
sketches that we did on yesterday's exercise and
maybe you want to develop on one or two ideas and
combine some ideas. Feel free to do a few more
sketches if you want to. I ended up choosing
my second sketch, which is the feet on the ground. I really think that represents
where I am in my life and I feel connected to this
concept right here. I did try to take some
pictures of my own feet, which I'm not going to show
you guys because gross, I'm not going to do that to you. Honestly, I felt really overwhelmed with
the idea of drawing feet so I changed into hands. It's going to be
hands on the ground. This is a little bit
more my style anyway, I love drawing hands. It's going to be two hands. One of them are going
to be lifting from the ground and it's okay to change and to adapt
your ideas as you go. This is part of the process. I really want you to try to
incorporate some styles and some ideas that we talked about throughout this class
in this illustration. Don't stay too focused on trying to create
something beautiful, like don't pressure
yourself like that into trying to create a masterpiece
or anything like that. This is going to
be an experiment. This doesn't need to
go to your portfolio, it doesn't need to go
to your Instagram, this is an experiment. You're trying a new
way of doing things. Maybe you're going to combine
what you're familiar with, with things that you're
not super familiar with, which is really what
I want you to do. Maybe the result
is not going to be exactly what you were
trying to create, but it's going to
be an exercise in the right direction of
your own personal style. Again, I told you guys, I took some pictures
of my own hands because I like working
with references. I created my own
references, ahead of time. I also found some
references of plants and leaves and nature elements that I want to incorporate. I found them on Pinterest. I don't really like to fully
copy a reference picture. I like to incorporate many reference pictures so it becomes a whole unique thing. I'm sketching everything with pencil and I can totally see this looking completely amazing in black and white and ink, but I'm going to get
out of my comfort zone. I told you guys this
whole class I wanted to incorporate more color so
this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to try some color.
We're going to do this. I'm really like exploring all of these beautiful elements
that I love to draw and that most of them I'm
already familiar so really the challenge
for me is going to be in the coloring
and in the finishing. Another thing that
I'm trying to do that is completely out of my
comfort zone and very different from what I
usually do is usually I either erase the pencil
and then color it, or I outline it with
the black fine liner, erase the pencil
and then color it. But I'm trying not to use black. I have a feeling that I don't want to use black on this one. This is something I
never really liked, is to see the black
contour around things. I'm using this gray
brush pen that I think the colors are just going
to cover it when I color, because I think the alcohol
markers are going to cover the gray so I'm literally just outlining with this
gray pen everything I already drew and then
erasing the pencil marks. Then for the ground, I wasn't really sure how
to do it because I was thinking of the ground of a jungle and there was a
little bit overwhelming, I wasn't really
sure how to do it. I thought this could
be an opportunity for me to incorporate another element
from my mood board, which is the abstract patterns
that I like to create. I'm creating this wavy pattern that goes up in
the hands fingers. I just thought it was
an interesting texture. In the end it looks more
like water than ground, which interesting how an
illustration develops. This is not what I intended, but it's becoming its own thing. You have to allow the
artwork to do its own thing. This is super out
of my comfort zone, but I wanted to tell you
about the process of how I created this artwork
so you understand how things can
completely change. Which funny is, this is the concept [LAUGHTER]
that I'm trying to portray in this illustration. My starting point from
yesterday's exercise was change and transformation. I feel like this illustration is changing and transforming so much from my original idea, which maybe has to do
with the whole process. But anyway, I'm like
just showing you what I'm doing because maybe
you find it interesting, but of course you're
going to be doing something completely
different than me. I guess it doesn't really matter what I'm doing,
but I don't know. Maybe this is
interesting to you. Anyway, I'm coloring a
little bit using some of my favorite colors that I
had on my color schemes. I always have a side paper where I test colors on the side. Again, I was overwhelmed
with the pinks and purples. I wish I had added more
pinks and purples to it. I tried adding some purples
to the roots of the trees. I did this dark background to represent the night and I left the water or ground as just
like light purple as well. Again, super out of
my comfort zone. I really like the illustration
itself, like the concept, but I'm not a big fan of the colors so maybe
one thing that I can do eventually in the future is to take a picture and play
with the colors digitally. This is also a good
exercise that you can try if you are feeling
uncomfortable with the colors. But this is basically
the exercise. I just wanted to show you
a little bit of what I created so you can see from beginning to end what came out of this seven-day
challenge for me. Of course, this is going to be completely different for you, you're going to be
doing something totally unique and special to you. I'm super excited to see
what you guys created. Please post your
beautiful artworks and your beautiful projects in the project and resources
section down below. I'm really excited to see them and I'm going to
comment and give you feedback and
it's going to be great for us all to connect. I hope you enjoyed this class. Now join me on the
next video so I can give you some final notes.
10. Thank You!: Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to
post your project. I really want to see them. I hope you really enjoyed the exercises and you develop
your style a little more. Hope you're feeling inspired, and creative, and motivated
to create more art. Also if you want to follow
me here on Skillshare, you just click the button
right next to my name. This way, you get to know
my updates and giveaways, next classes and just fun, art stuff that I have planned for you guys for the future. If you want, you can also
follow me on social media. Am artsygio on
TikTok and YouTube and gio_vescovi on Instagram. If you want to
post your artworks on social media and tag me, I will share them and I
would love to see them. It's going to be amazing. Again, I really
appreciate you being here and I'll see you in
my next class. Bye.
Gio Vescovi, Visual Artist
