Glass Dip Pens: Sketching & Writing With Glass Dip Pens For Everyday Pages

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to my new class Glass Dip Pens, sketching and writing with Glass dip pens for your everyday pages. Have you heard about Glass **** pens? Have you seen them online or in an art store where people are doing really cool, funky little writings and drawings with them? And are you curious about what these pens are all about? How they work, how to use them? Can you even draw with them if the answers to any of these questions is yes, and it sparked your curiosity in Glass Dip Pens. This class is perfect for you. My name is Imran. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator. And this class is a continuation of my series of sketchbook journaling and everyday pages, where I really advocate and encourage you to draw, sketch, and write on a daily basis to improve your well being. And this is an addition now to adding to the excitement of creating those beautiful pages by using this fantastic tool that we know and call as a glass dip. He. This class is divided into five main parts. Part one is all about glassed pens, where we're going to talk about what these lovely, fantastic tools are all about, how to use them, which inks work best with them, which surfaces work best with them, and then just to go through the general pros and cons of using these where I will demonstrate my past experience of using these and so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did. Then number two, we're going to jump straight into the warm up exercises where we're going to do three different exercises to practice and get familiar with this pen and how to use it and really get into the groove and flow of using this fantastic tool. Then number three, we're going to do the exciting stuff and look at how this tool can be used with inks to create wonderful special effects where we may add or use other mediums or other tools to really enhance the experience and results that we can get. And then P four, we're going to delve straight into sketching ideas and techniques that we can use so that we can incorporate these into our everyday pages. And then in the final parts of the class, I'm going to go through some of the work that I've created using this fantastic little tool, the Glass dip pen so that it can inspire you, motivate you, and get you all excited about using this tool in your everyday pages, your sketchbook journaling or just to use as a tool on the side. You're bored of using your mediums or you just can't come up with something to excite you, then you've got this glass dip pen so that you can continue this journey of everyday pages and sketchbook journaling to improve your well being and really get excited of creating that beautiful art and relaxation on a daily basis. So I know you're excited, can't wait to start the class, and what you're waiting for, grab yourself an ice drink, get yourself an ice cake, grab your glass dip pen and supplies if you haven't already got them, and let's get started with the class. 2. Class Project: Oki, welcome back. Let's now quickly go through what your class project is all about. So it's really simple. Let's just go through it step by step. So for step number one, all you need to do is the warm up exercises. These are from lessons five to eight within the class and then step two, then all you need to do is the effect exercises where we go through the beautiful special effects. These are going to be from lessons nine to 12. And then number three, all you need to do is follow those lovely sketching exercises that we go through. These ones are less 13 to 14. And then the next steps are just to go ahead and create your beautiful artwork because that's what it's all about. We just want to create and express ourselves with the techniques that we've learned and the most important part, once you've completed or as you're going along, do sure to take some lovely pics of your and then upload all of that to the class project gallery. You don't have to do it all at the same time. You can do it systematically. Once you've done a few exercises and maybe a few sketches, just go ahead and take some pictures and just upload them. That way we can see your progress and we can talk to each other and really enjoy this experience. Doing it together. And then finally, once you've completed all the exercises, create that beautiful final artwork, whether it be in your everyday pages sketchbook or in your sketchbook journaling, as in the previous classes, it makes no difference. If you just want to do one piece on a separate piece of paper, go ahead and do that. But do ensure that once you've done the techniques, you really bring that excitement and energy into your own beautiful work, do some sketches, do a bit of writing, and just create a wonderful piece using your glass dip. And that's it. You've done all the exercises and you've uploaded all your beautiful work to the project gallery, and then the final step is just to go ahead and leave a lovely review on the class. And that's all you need to do. That's it super easy. I know you're really excited like me. So let's just maybe go have a nice little drink, get our tables set up and get nice and comfy, and then we can now move on to part one of the class where we're going to start off by talking about the wonderful world of glass depends. Let's move on to that one next. 3. Glass Dip Pens: Oh. That was nice, actually. I think I put a little bit of lemon in there. Oh, it did enhance the flavor a little bit. Not bad at all. I think I'm going to put that on the side before I start the next part of the class. Do you need to remember what I did so add a bit of lemon to my ginger tea. Ok, dookie, welcome back. Again, what I was doing there was just admiring the drink that I had, and it was a ginger tea that I had, but I added a few drops of lemon, fresh lemon in there. And it did really enhance it just like we're enhancing our art with our Glastic pens. So let's continue now. We started the first part now of our class, and we're going to talk all about Glasti pens. So let's jump straight into it right now. So what are glass dip pens? Glass dip pens are handmade pens crafted from glass, often featuring decorative swirls and colored patterns. The nibs are spiraled to hold ink through capillary action, through grooves that have been created so that the ink can flow and hold into these grooves. And as you move your pen up and down through the nib, the ink flows just like it would do in a normal dip pen. They are typically used for calligraphy, journaling, sketching, and ink testing. They are easy to clean and suitable for both right and left handed users. So how to use a glass dip pen, dip the nib in about halfway into the ink, but don't submerge the entire nib itself. Otherwise, you're going to get a lot of mess all over the place. Twist slightly as you pull it out. This helps the ink, coat the grooves evenly, start writing or drawing with light pressure, rotate the pen as you go to maintain a consistent ink flow. When the ink runs out, simply just re dip. You can clean between inks by rinsing the nib in water and wiping gently with a soft cloth or just dabbing it in a bit of dry tissue. What are the best inks to use with glass dip pens? Fountain pen inks are ideal because of their smooth flow and wide color variety, calligraphy inks, which are non Sheliac based are good for vibrant pigmented writing and try avoiding acrylic inks or India inks because these can clog or damage the glass grooves as you use them. And if you do want to use this type of ink, then make sure that you clean it thoroughly with a clean brush so that all those little bits and bobs get out of those grooves and don't damage the glass dip pens tip. What are the best surfaces to use then? Smooth, high quality paper, such as bristle board paper, hot press watercolor paper or mixed media pads are ideal so that the ink flows really nicely and smoothly on this type of a surface. Velum or coated papers for crisp lines and minimal feathering are also really good for this. I use this quite often for a lot of the glass dip pen work that I do. Avoid using rough, highly textured or absorbent papers. They can cause skipping and uneven ink flow. I generally use smooth watercolor paper or I use a really nice vellum coated paper pad that I tend to use. But I will go through these as we go along in the class. So generally, what are the pros and cons? The pros are that this glass dip pen is beautiful and an artistic writing instrument. There's no need for cartridges or refills. Just dip and start to draw and write. They're easy to clean and switch colors quickly so you don't have to worry about just sticking to one color. You can easily swap your colors around. All you need to do is dip it in a bit of water and rinse that water off, and you're ready to move on to whichever color you fancy. They are excellent for ink testing and swatching and generally really nice to create beautiful titles in your work when you're creating your sketchbook journals or everyday pages. With everything, you get positives and negatives. So some of the cons of this pen are that they are very fragile because they're made of glass, so they can break if they're dropped, and I personally have dropped my pen once or twice, and I have damaged the tip. I'll go through and show you that in the next lesson. Some of the nibs in glass dip pens can feel a bit scratchy on cheaper paper or paper that's too rough with a texture on it. These pens are not ideal for long writing sessions due to the ink drying out or the flow of inconsistency, generally, sometimes they can be a little bit uncomfortable to use depending on the shape and size of your glass dip pen. And that's it. Now we can now move to looking at the class supplies that you're going to need for this class and they're very basic and minimum, so you don't need to worry about having so many supplies. All you're going to really need is a glass dip pen and some inks and paper. So let's move on to that one next. 4. Class Supplies: Okidoke, welcome back. Let's now go through what you're going to need for your class supplies in order to complete this class and do your class project. Okidoke. So the first supply that we're going to need for this class is the glass dip pens. This class is all about glass depends, so we are definitely going to need a glass dip pen. Now, glass dipens come in different sizes, shapes, and variations. It makes no difference at all which glass dip pen you use. Just get the one that you're most comfortable with if you have a few and if you don't have a glass dip pen, then maybe just watch the class, have a look, get inspired, and then have a look at the resource sheet to have a look at the ones that I use, and maybe it's something that you want to get into. They don't start off at a very expensive price. They can get very pricey when you go into the unique versions and the high brands, but the entry point of a glass dip pen is fairly cheap. The ones that I'm using over here in this class, they cost about seven to eight pounds UK GBP. So basically, less than ten pounds will get you started in the world of glass dip pens. Two, you're going to need some inks. As we mentioned before, I'm going to be using fountain pen inks for this class. You can use other inks as well. Drawing inks are fine. However, do bear in mind that with any type of drawing ink, you tend to have pigments in them and these can attach themselves to the glass dip pen. Cleaning the glass dip pen can sometimes be a bit problematic, do bear that in mind. For this reason, I tend not to use my pigmented or waterproof inks too much with my glass dip pen. Stick to the fountain pen inks, which are easily washable and interchangeable with a quick little dip in water. So all you're going to need is just a couple of inks. If you only have one ink, absolutely fine, get your ink ready. Number three, you're going to need some paper, some surface to draw with your glass dip pen on. And the ones that I usually use are watercolor paper. I prefer to use the smooth surface one so that the glass dip pen glides on it nice and easily. However, for my sketchbooks, I do use the cold pressed paper because you don't get too much texture with cold press paper, depending on the brand that you're using. And I do tend to use my sketchbooks quite a lot with my glass dip pen. Especially because I'm focusing on my everyday pages. So whether you're using a sketchbook, watercolor pad or just individual sheets, just get it ready and just make sure that they're nice and clean on the surface. And another good option to use, which I will be using in this class for the lessons is using elm paper. So llen paper is just a coated smooth paper. The one that I use more often than not is the one by Rod this is great for writing and practicing on. And again, it's a very cheap paper to buy, generally speaking. I usually have quite a lot of pads of these that I just tear out and use for practicing. That's a great option using vellum paper. Bristlebard, again, is another great paper option to use because it's really nice and smooth. It's a lot more thicker than the rodeo paper. So that's another option that I use. So if you have bristle board, try it out with the bristle board paper. Whichever paper you have at hand, you don't have to specifically go out and buy a specific surface to do this class. Just grab hold of the smoothest sheets of paper you have. And if you've got your sketchbook, that's ready to start working in after the lessons, then just keep that to the side so that you can use it for your class project. Number four, you're going to need some water, have a nice water jar or a container to keep clean water in, preferably have two of these so that you can switch between clean water and the dirtied inky water when you're switching your colors. Having water is absolutely necessary for this class. Number five, some cloth or some tissues to wipe away the excess ink or the excess water in between the washes that you do absolutely necessary when you're using ink and glass dip pens. Number six, this is an optional supply, but if you have a nice clean brush at hand, it will be very useful, especially in the lessons where we look at special effects in this class. So any type of brush is fine. Using it for part three, specifically of this class will be really beneficial if you've got your brush ready. So it doesn't have to be any specific brush. Any clean brush will Number seven, having a brush to actually clean your glass dip pen is also handy. I tend to just use a toothbrush that I've used not in my mouth. I've kept this toothbrush just for cleaning purposes. So if you just have a cheap toothbrush or if you have a toothbrush that you want to throw away, just maybe keep that just to clean your glass dip pen, specifically if you're using pigmented ink or any type of acrylic ink for special effects or anything like that. It's always handy to have a brush that you can use to clean your glass dip pen. We have it. We have now gone through what glass dip pens are all about and we've gone through the class supplies that you're going to need. That's part one of the class complete. I know you're super excited for the next part because now things start getting interesting and we're going to start working on some warm up exercises for part two. So maybe have a bit of a break, let it all sink in, get your supplies ready, and then now let's move on to the next one. 5. Warmup Exercises: Hmm, I wonder which one of these fantastic inks we should use for these warm up exercises. Oh, I don't know. I've got so many. I am quite tempted to use my Emad de chevoi. Beautiful ink, but I think we might just stick to maybe something basic for now. I do love that tabasco sunburst. Oh, I don't know. I think we'll save these for maybe the sketches. Yeah, let's save them oh, hello and welcome back. What I'm doing now is I'm just contemplating which one of my lovely inks I should use for this part of the class because this is part two of the class now and we're going to concentrate now on our warm up exercises. But they're not going to be physical warm up exercises. They're going to be warm up exercises with our glass **** pen. Let's now make a start on that. Yoke, welcome back. So before we start off with our warm up exercises, what we're going to do is we're going to quickly go through what I need for these warm up exercises so that you can get yourself prepared, and there's just a few items. But before we start, let's talk a little bit about the main item, the glass dipen. So on the screen here, you can see, I've got my glass dip pens here, I've got three different glass dip pens, and then on the left hand side, I've got my paper. I've got some inks selected. I've got some water jars, a cloth, a microfiber cloth for cleaning, and some tissue papers. That's all we're going to need for this warm up exercise part of the class. But first, like I said, let's talk a bit about the glass dip pens. Now, this glass dip pen that I've got here, that I've got on the screen, this is the first ever glass dip pen that I bought many, many years ago, and I was so excited about this pen. I wanted to try it out and see what it's all about. It looked really nice and funky and cool. But I didn't really know much about glass depends back then and I thought that all the inks would work perfectly with them and I could just use it like I would use my normal dip pens. But I was super wrong, and as we mentioned before, the type of ink that you use really, really is important, especially with a really delicate item like a glass de pens. I'm not sure if you can see on the camera but this pen I actually accidentally damaged because I didn't really know how to use it properly. I put too much pressure on it, and I was like, throwing it around like my other pens, and I ended up chipping the nib, and it got chipped from the nib over there again. I don't know if you can see that properly, but it kind of damaged the pen, and once that nib gets chipped, then the pen is practically useless because it becomes really scratchy on the paper and it's not going to function as it should. I've kept this all this time just to remind myself to make sure that I be very delicate with my glass dip pen. Naturally, I ended up getting another one, and this was my replacement. It's practically the same. The grooves are slightly more thicker and deeper than my original one over here. But on the screen, you probably can't even tell. These are my glass de pens. You can see that the design is very similar. You've got this really thick part over here where you've got the grip of the pen. Then you've got this little round ball and then it comes into that spiraling, lovely twisted design. Of what we have in our glass dip pens. And the kind of inside material, it's got this nice glittery glow to it, a blue shade. You can get these in so many different shapes and sizes. My original one that I had over here, I think this might have even had a strip of another material inside there, but I don't know it's damaged. But again, it's just a reminder to be really careful with these beautiful pens. So with this one that I got, I got a really nice rest like this. It's like a little drop, isn't it? It's like a sweet, but don't go eating it. These are not sweet drops or anything like that. These are just nice little rests that you can rest your glass dip pen on like that, and they come really, really handy. So that was kind of the main pen that I bought. Let's move the damaged pen out of the way so we don't accidentally use it. And then I've got another one over here. This is quite a nice one. This one is a beautiful bamboo style, green, beautiful glass dip pen. It is very different in terms of the tip and the nib. So if I bring this closer, you can see that on the screen. Not sure if you can see properly, but the grooves in this are straight compared to the twisted grooves that you get in a common glass dip pen like this one over here. And the grooves on this one are a lot more deeper. And the advantage of that is that it can hold ink for longer. Compared to the twisted grooves. So it all depends on the type of glass depend that you have. The ones like these, these kind of speciality ones, these are actually a bit more comfortable to hold because of the actual part of the glass depend that you're holding. So you've got this area here, which is really nice and smooth. It's more like a traditional pen compared to this one, which is a bit more fancy. I find this a little bit tricky to hold for longer period of time. It can get a bit uncomfortable because it's not a standard pen. Again, whichever one you have, just get that one ready. I do love this bamboo one. I do tend to use this one quite a lot. So let's maybe move the glass dip pens to the side for now. So that's the first thing we're going to be using our lovely glass d pens. And then let's move on to our inks. So for the inks, my diamine fountain pen inks, and I've just selected four different colors because we're going to be doing four different exercises for part one of this warm up stage. And if you want to follow along, if you have the same colors, then I'll quickly read them out. I've got ancient copper, I've got Sherwood green, I've got lavender, and I've got ox blood. I've just chosen four different colors so that it makes it interesting. So we're not using the same color all the time. So that's my inks. And then I've got my glass jars, so two glass jars of water, clean water. On the right hand side, I've got my cloth. This is just my regular watercolor cloth that I used to clean my brushes and my fountain pens. So that's just great to have when you're dipping in between colors and giving them a rinse with your glass dip pen, always handy to have a nice cloth. And then I've just got some tissues over here, some clean paper towels, some tissues to just dab off any excess ink and water. And then the final thing is our lovely paper. Now, I mentioned this before in the previous lesson about surfaces. This is my Rodia vellum paper pad. And if you have a look at the back, it says it down here, the specific grade of this, this is the AT GSM paper. It's high grade vellum, absolutely fantastic for you doing smooth inkwork on with dip pens, with fountain pens, with glass dip pens, great little paper, not too expensive. I've got quite a lot of these nicely folded over like this, and it's really a great option to exercises, warm up exercises on because we don't want to be doing warm up exercises and all these pre exercises before we start working in our sketchbook. I'm all ready and set up. I'm just going to open up the jars, lay out my things, and we can start with Exercise one of warm up exercises. Oki doke, everything is now ready for exercise one of the warm up exercises stage. And for this, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get my regular glass dip pen and I'm going to use my ox blood diamine fountain pen ink. I'm just going to give that a little open on the side over here. And with the glass dip pens, all you've got to really do is just go ahead and dip them in. Now, I have quite a lot of ink in this one, which is why I chose this ink for this particular exercise. So I'm just going to give it a little twist like so, and then with the excess ink, I'm just going to get it off on the edge over there. Move my ink bottle to the side, make sure I cap it up. Otherwise, it will fall if my hand hits it on the side, so that's great there. Then with the ink, I'm just going to turn it around like this, so I'm going to let the ink flow into the grooves. Good idea to do that. You can see I've got a lot of this excess ink coming over here because I've over dipped it. But that's not a problem with your paper towel, just go ahead and get rid of any excess ink that goes onto the kind bridge and the kind hot of the pen that you hold so that you don't get inky fingers all over the place. So we don't need the ink to be there that's pretty good. Move that tissue to the side, and we are ready to start doing our first exercise. So for this first exercise, just grab your glass dip pen, hold it in a position that's comfortable to yourself, and all I want you to do is just do some light lines like this. Now, you can see I'm pressing very lightly, but it's not really giving me much of an ink flow. And the reason for that is because I haven't put enough ink on it. What I've done is I twisted it up like this. All the ink fell to the back, and now it's not flowing. So it's really important that you ensure that you dip your pen in the ink appropriately you get a good coverage, do a little twisty, twisty move like this with your ink, and then pull it out and you've got that beautiful ink in the grooves. Now, if we do this again, you can see the flow is so much better. I'm going to see if I can get a Zoomy zoom in on this so just like that, we've got a really nice flow of ink. You can see I'm just creating these scribble lines just to demonstrate to you that it's so easy, but it does depend on the glass di pen that you've got. It depends how deep those grooves are, and it depends on the ink that you use. You can see this is fountain pen ink, and I've managed to get a decent spread of that ink with just one dip. I'm going to go ahead and dip it in again just like this, give it a little twisty twist, and then turn it upside down so that the ink falls into the grooves and then I'm going to go again, maybe just do some straight lines like this, do some warm up lines. What this does is it just gets you into the mood, into the flow of using your glass dip pen if you haven't used it for a while, or if you're completely brand new to glass dip pens, it just gives you an idea of how the flow of ink and the application of ink will be with your glass dip pen, and it's really just having a bit of fun on a page just do some scribble lines. Once you've finished, then just get rid of the page, let it rest on the side so it dries up. And again, I'm going to move this to the side because it's actually getting in my way. So let's go ahead and grab hold of our ink again. I'm going to do another dippy dip with my glass dip pen like this. Nice and juicy ink on that pen. So again, now I'm going to do just some lines coming down, whereas before I did normal lines. And what I'm doing is I'm twisting my pen as I go along so that I get the maximum flow of ink. And basically, what we're going to do is just do some scribbly wiggly lines like this, just like that, and you can see, you can see the sound that beautiful sound of that glass on the paper. It's such a nice soothing sound that is a lot nice bit of ASMR going on over there. So just like this, I want you to practice doing lines, squiggly lines, and just up and down scribbles effectively, do this on a couple of pages, especially if you've got this paper that I'm using the rodeo paper, it's great for this type of practice. Do another dip, maybe twist it into your ink bottle. And get it out like that. So maybe this time we do some diagonal lines and keep them nice and loose. You do not need to press hard with your glass dip pen because again, you're not really going to get any flexibility in it. It's a solid piece of glass with a very fine tip, and you can see that so easily done and you can just produce beautiful lines without much effort at all. All you've got to do is keep dipping your pen. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to go ahead and just get this paper off here. And another thing is with your ink, because my ink bottles here, these are just the small ink bottles that I've got. They have a very small kind of opening. So it's actually ideal for the glass depend to go in without it moving around and banging on anything. And these ink bottles are made of plastic, which is a huge advantage because glass, again, if you've got glass ink bottles, for example, these ones here, these are the same diamond inks. These are made of glass with a bigger. If you bang a glass onto glass, then it's more likely going to get damaged. So if you do have these plastic bottles, these, I think, are so much more safer to use with glass dip pens. But again, I use a lot of ink. So I have bigger ink bottles like this, and these are made out of glass. So you do have to be careful when you do dip your ink into your bottles. So again, I'm just going to go ahead and do some squiggly lines like this. I'm going to do a little bit more pressure, twist the pen around to see what my flow of ink is like. Have a bit of fun, bit of scribbly scribble works just like this and to see how much ink flow I'm getting. So just give that a go, a couple of dips, maybe on about four or five light pages. Don't waste paper. We don't want to waste paper. We just want to get into the flow. We can use these sheets again because you don't want to be wasting paper. We want to preserve paper. We want to just use our materials the best we can and we don't want to throw things away. So I'm going to go ahead and clean this now, so just a nice little clean on the pen. So just like that, we have that mesmerizing ink going off there, just a little bit of a twisty twist, twisting it around, trying not to hit the glass jar of this water jar, and you can see it easily cleaned, just like so fantastic stuff. And then all we need to do is just get our cloth with our cloth, just dab it on like this, don't need to press too hard. I'm just dabbing it on, twisting it at the same time, and to get rid of any excess water, using me tissue, and then I'm just going to give that a little pinch like so, twisting it as I go along, you've got a beautiful clean glass dip pen, fantastic stuff. So let's just move all this to the side. And there we have it. We've done our first exercise with our glass dip pen doing the warm up stage. So we've got some nice squiggly wiggly lines. We've got some straight lines, we've mixed it around, done some scribbles. Now you are more familiar with how the flow of your glass dip pen works with the particular inks that you're using. Great little warm up, and we're going to save these sheets to use as a scrap sheets just to test some inks later on so we don't want to throw anything away and we can now move on to the next exercise. 6. Shapes: Okay, doke, welcome back. What we're going to do now is move on to exercise too, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my lovely lavender ink for this. So same process as before. Let's just move that out of the way. Got my glass dip pen. It's nice and clean. No residue on it, no water on it. Let's just open up me ink, and I'm going to do a nice dippy dip of that Ink, give it a little twist to get as much ink on there as I can. Sometimes if you've only got a little bit of ink and your inks running out, maybe just give your ink bottle a little kind of angle so that the ink touches all of that, lovely glass dip pen and look at that. What a fantastic color that lavender purple. For this, what we're going to do is we're going to concentrate on doing some shapes now. So let's maybe start off with some circles. All I want you to do is with your glass dip pen hold it in a comfortable position and just draw some circles like this. What this will do is this will give you familiarity of how to create different angles and concentrate on certain specific shapes. So just like that, I've got a nice row of circles, and then let's continue and do some squares. Doing some rigid lines like this, just a couple of squares, following that same pattern. This will just help give you an idea of how angles work when you're drawing and sketching with your glass dip pen. Because again, it's a heavy solid material, the glass tip that you've got, and you will only get better at it as you practice. These warm up exercises are just to serve that purpose of just practicing. You can see my first dip is actually continued, so it's working really well. Let's continue with a triangle shape now. So maybe a couple of triangles like this up and down. Just give it a play aound, come up with whichever shape you want. Idea really is just to fill this little page with shapes, different shapes so that you use the different angles and tips of your glass dip pen. That turned out to be a non triangle shape, but it's absolutely fine. And then I'm going to move into maybe rectangles like this, just some rectangles. I just going to follow it through. You can see I'm getting a lot of really nice flow with this one dip that I did. Sometimes it can depend on the ink, the thickness of the ink. If your ink is too thick, you're going to get much of a flow. But if your ink is fountain pen ink and it's good quality ink, then you get a lot of flow. I mean, I've drawn so many shapes or I've lost count. I'm not really counting them, but I'm just continuing on. So you can see I've got four lovely rows of shapes all with one dip, and I think there's still quite a bit of ink on there. Then maybe let's just do some funky shapes like this. Hexagons, whatever, how many other sides they are, I have forgotten how many sides there are to shapes. I haven't done math for so many years, but it's all good come up with some funky shapes that you can go ahead and draw hexagons, pentagons, whichever gos you've got, just go ahead and do them and continue. They don't have to be the same. They don't have to be perfect. Warm up exercises are all about just warming up. And just getting into the flow of things. So just like that, I've created these weird funky shapes. So maybe let's do some stars, some stars like this, just a couple of stars. You can see this is a continuous star line that I've got, and I think this is just great. I mean, look at that. We've just done one dip it's still going. Do you think we'll be able to manage to do the full page, maybe a couple more shapes? Oh, I spoke too soon. Look at that. It's all running out. I can see it fading away. However, it still wants to continue, so maybe let's do some more circles here. Well, let's do the number eight over here like this. Let's do a nice big eight. Eight like this. Nice swirly worthy shape over here, like so keeping it different and creep interesting and it's really so easy to do. Again, I'm not pressing down hard on this. I'm using a very light touch, just letting that glass tip glide on the surface, and I think we'll call it a day on that one. That was exercise too, all done with one dip of my glass tip pen. Give that a go, make sure that you clean your glass dip pen as soon as you've used it because you don't want the ink drying out onto that tip. So I'm just giving it a little rinse in that earlier jar that I used, the red colour, the oxbod color. So just giving it a little dip in there, and then I'm going to go ahead and I made it four then I move that out of the way, get my other jar of clean water, put that there. And then just give it a rinse in that to make sure we just have clean fresh water on there and then just dab it on to my lovely cloth, like so twisty twisty and then give it a final dry with some tissue, paper towel, and we're going to be ready to go for the next exercise. Put that on the side and we're done. That was a lot of fun. Try that out for exercise number two of the warm stage. We can now move on to exercise number three. 7. Textures: Koki, welcome back. Let's now move on to exercise three, for this one, I'm going to use my ancient copper color. Let's just get a nice dip on the pen, so quickly open that up. It's nice bit of twisty, twisty action on there, tilting my bottle so that I get maximum ink on the tip, that looking great. So let's maybe, I think I've got a bit too much on there. I think I need to clean that off over there. I don't want to get inky fingers all over the place. I'm not going to be happy bunny, then, am I. So let's just do that and maybe do another dip because we did move it quite far up. That should be good. For exercise three, what we're going to do is we're going to do some texture work because in sketching, especially with ink, textures are beautiful, so why not practice them in the warm up exercises. Firstly, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and do some hatching lines like this nice and easy, let them flow, and then maybe do some hatching lines in another direction like this in a diagonal. Just like that. They don't have to be the same, they don't have to be even, just go with the flow and then maybe do some hatching lines the other way around at the other angle just to get familiar with how lines can be produced. Then going across this way, to give the full flow of how you can produce lines and then maybe doing some wider lines like this, just to give you a reference to see what we can get. Let's maybe move that page down a little bit so you can see a bit better. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to repeat this again at the bottom so we can do some cross hatching. Let's quickly go ahead and do that. Okay, so we're using the same lines with the hatching. Let's go the other way now. I'm going to do some hatching lines like this. So we effectively have cross hatching. Again, I'm going to move my hand to the top here, go the opposite way produce some beautiful cross hatching textures. You know, if you watch any of my classes before, I love to do cross hatching. I love to create these beautiful textures. Is it. This is just warming up so that you get used to using your glass dip pen, and you may not have been using it in this way before. You may have only been using it for writing or doing simple doodles. You might not have even done any texture work, so it's a great idea to start doing this to get more familiar with it. You can see we've got the hatching on the top, then we've got the cross hatching. Now, I'm not sure how much ink is left in this, but what I will do is give it another dip just to make sure that we don't run out. So just like that, nice little dippy and then what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do some stippling, a little bit of stippling, just like dots, not pressing too hard. We don't want to damage the surface because the glass can be a little bit sharp if you press down too hard compared to a normal metal nib pen, just like that and then maybe do some that are a bit more wider, a bit more uniform, just to create this variance of texture, and then we can use this in our sketching and then maybe do some random ones like this. And then vary it a little bit, make them a little bit wider, then again, more close together with the stiply stipples, great technique to use to create some variations in tone, just like that and maybe just go all the way across like so that way, it just creates this kind of strip of stipples, and it looks really, really nice. Again, just take your time with this, don't rush. You don't want to be using a glass dip pen too quickly, otherwise, there is potential that you may damage it, especially if you use too much pressure. Sometimes you forget you're using a glass dip pen and you just think that you're using a normal pen. I've done that so many times, and then I've had to dial myself back and calm down and maybe go for a drink. Have a nice little sip of my coffee to just relax and get back into that slow mood of working slow with a glass dip pen. So you can see, I've just created this lovely texture over here just with some stipples. Try that out. And then finally, for some final textures, what we can do is we can just do a combination of all of these in this space over here. So I'm going to do another dip with my ink. Beautiful color that color I got what it's called, what's it called Ancient copper? Fantastic color. Look how gorgeous that looks. It's going to look really good when we come to the special effect. So what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to go ahead and do some longer lines coming like this over here, maybe do it up to there, and then I'm just going to go ahead and do some lines going across. Create some hatching lines then I'm going to go the other way. Just to vary it and combine all those little samples that we did on the top, and then maybe at the bottom, do a couple of these stipples nice and gently. And we can also probably do some scribbles like this, some wiggly scribbly lines like we did in the first exercise, and then maybe do some lines going across. And all this is doing is it's just building that texture and then maybe do another dip and just fill up the page with some random textures like this, just to give you an idea of the results that you can achieve with your lovely glass dip pen, just like that on the side, nice and quickly and then maybe some straight lines to go on top. That looks really good, varying it. Can see it creates so much depth, doesn't it? And it's so easy. So relaxing with a glass dip It adds that experience of enjoyment to when you're going ahead and creating your lovely sketches and illustrations. Absolutely beautiful. So there you go a little bit more, maybe do another dippy dip, like sew and do some little dots going on the top. But you know, me, once I started doing something, then I don't stop I want to keep working on details. So let's just keep it just to the warm up exercises and maybe stop at this point. So there it is. Let's do a cleaning clean. So I've got my color water here where I do the initial clean, little bit of a squiggly wiggly there. Get it off there, put it into the clean water now to make sure that we don't have any residue, and you can see some of the residue did come off there because sometimes when you clean your pen, you might miss a little section. That's why it's important to clean it twice. And then again, following the same suit, just going to go ahead, dab off that excess liquid and then get me tissue and on me tissue, do exactly the same. Give it a little squeezy squeeze. And the glass pen is done. I mean, look at that. We've just created some beautiful textures with our glass dip pen with beautiful ink. So give that a go and that exercise three complete, so we can now move on to the final exercise of this part of the class. 8. Writing: Going to focus now on doing writing. Yes, it's all about writing beautiful words in our everyday pages. So let's just do a warm up of our writing. For this, I'm going to use my same paper. I'm just going to quickly go ahead and draw in some lines because it's always easier to draw in some lines like I usually do with my everyday pages. I'm going to quickly go ahead and do that now. Okay, okay. That's all done now. I've drawn in my lines with my lovely stencil. Let's just put that to the side. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to do our lovely dippy dip of our Glass Dip pen in our ink. And the ink that I want to write with on this occasion is Sherwood Green. Fantastic, Sherwood Green. So grab my glass dip pen. Quickly give this an open and we don't really have much ink in there, so it's probably not a good choice to do in this demonstration, so I'll just try getting my ink onto that. Pen as much as I can. That's looking good. What we want to do is we want to start writing. I'm going to start I'm going to bring this down a little bit over here so that you can see this. Then it's just exactly the same, just like you would write with a normal pen. Just go ahead and start writing in the style that you write. This is my Glass. Dip. Pen. As you can see, the writing is just fantastic. But the only thing is that because this pen is a funky shape, I would not recommend using this for too long while you're doing your writing, so I wouldn't write pages and pages with this, maybe use a glass dip pen that has a more comfortable grip like this one over here if you're going to focus more on the writing part. But generally speaking, I don't tend to use my Glass Dip pen too much for writing. I do it for my everyday pages and my Sketchbook Journaling, where I just have a little bit, and I tend to use this one more than I use. This one I tend to use for just the drawings and sketching. But whatever you find comfortable, just go ahead and do it for the warm up exercise, try writing some random words or just write your thoughts, just do a quick little thought journal on a page and see how it goes. That's what I'm going to do here. I'm just going to go ahead and write down what I'm doing right now with this class and I'm recording and enjoying my time. I'm going to quickly do that now and do a couple of dippy dips in my ink just to make sure that my flow remains going, and then I'll see you once that's done. Okey dog, so I've done my little page of writing. I've got ink all over my fingers because I was getting too excited as usual. So let's just give that a little clean and maybe give it a dip in the water to just make sure we rinse it off so we don't have any residue on there, giving it a dry now on me cloth, and you can just put it to the side and enjoy our writing that we've done. Also make sure to close that bottle of ink. Otherwise, you're just going to knock it over and I'm not going to be very happy then. And then I won't be writing happy things, then, well I, I won't. So let's have a look at this. I've just done some different styles of writing, and I had to dip in a couple of times. Using too much ink isn't a good idea because it can sometimes blotch depending on the pressure that you use. So do ensure that when you use your ink, you kind of get the excess off on the edge of your ink bottle, and that way, you'll have a nice flow of I do remember to keep dipping your pen in your ink because you've not got a fountain pen, have you? No. This is a dippy dip ink pen, so keep dipping consistently. Don't dip when it's too late. Otherwise, you're going to have this over here. You've got this kind of dry stuff, and then when you dip, you're going to have it really nice and juicy, so you're going to get this variation unless that's something that you like. And again, the most important thing, don't stress, relax. Smiling and keep sketching. That's what it's all about using these beautiful tools in your everyday pages, in your day to day journaling, your Sketchbook Journaling. It's all about relaxing. Don't get frustrated with the tool. It can be a little bit frustrating if you're trying to do something and you can't remember, this tool, this class pen tool is about slowing down and relaxing. Don't do anything in a rush, chill, put a bit of soundtrack on in the background and relax and do these exercises, and that's about it. So we've completed our warm up exercises. Let's just have a quick look at all of them on the screen. And here we go. We've got our lovely four exercises that we've completed in the warm up part of the class. So that's part two complete now, we've completed part two. It was so much fun. We did it with a different range of colors. So if you have different ranges of colors, you've got loads of fountain paintings like I have. I've just got so many. I've got so many on my desk here if you can see, I've just got boxes and boxes of these. You know how it is when you start initially looking at a new medium, you want to try all the colors, and that's what I did all those years ago when I got into fountain pens, it was such a long time ago. I think I built an collection, entire shelf of fountain penn ins. Use the inks that you have. You don't need to go out and buy any more inks or any more supplies. Just use what you have and go ahead and do these warm up exercises, do them a couple of times, do some scribbles on a page, keep these pages that you have for that first exercise so that you can use these just to scribble down on, do it on the other side. Don't waste the paper, keep them, keep them together, and that way, you'll have a nice little keep safe of what you've done, and then do these lovely exercise two shapes and sizes that we did, these beautiful little shapes. Have a go at that, practice, do it on the other side, do it in different colors, and then do some texture work like we did in exercise three beautiful textures that we created, and these are going to form part of our illustrations that we do in our everyday pages. And then finally, just a bit of writing exercise, draw a couple of lines on your paper if you haven't got lined paper, and just go ahead and stylize your writing, just add your thoughts or whatever you're thinking about or just copy from a sheet of paper that you have something written on just to get into the flow of writing and drawing. What that will do is, once you've completed this exercise, you'll be ready again, all geared up for the next stage, and your memory muscles all be ready. So give that a go, try it out. Don't forget to take pictures of all your work so you can upload them to the class project gallery. Okdoki, that's part two, now complete. We are now fully warmed up and we can now move on to looking at some wonderful special effects where we can do some exciting stuff for our sketches. Let's now move on to that one next. 9. Special Effects: Hello, and welcome back. We can now delve into the special effects that we're going to do with our glass Dip pens, so we're all warmed up as per the previous part. This next part, we're just going to go ahead and create these beautiful special effects with our inks, glass dip pens, and maybe a few other mediums. Let's quickly move on to this one now. Ok dokey, let's now start the special effect, part three of the class. On the screen here, I've got a nice sheet of hot pressed watercolor paper. This is just a standard store brand. So grab yourself some watercolor paper if you have it, if you're going to follow along at this stage. In addition to our glass pen that we need, we're going to need our ink as well. But in addition to that, we're going to need some optional supplies, and these are just a standard clean brush, so it can be a watercolor brush. It can be any brush. It doesn't have to be anything specific, any brush that you have, that's nice and clean. This is just a round brush that I have that I keep for my inkwork I don't use watercolor on it. I just keep this specific brush for ink. So grab yourself a clean brush. And also, if you have a water bottle, water spray bottle with clean water inside it, if you've got one of these, then grab hold of these. So just going to keep them to the side for now, so just put them to on the side. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go ahead and select the ink that I'm going to use for this special effects part of the class. So let's quickly select the ink. And the color that I'm going for is Tabasco sunburst. Fantastic color that. Beautiful, beautiful shade in the fountain pen ink in the diamine range. It's important to know that for this type of special effect, you're going to have to use an ink that is water based. So these DiamandFountain pen inks are water based. You don't want to be using permanent pigment based inks for this because it's not really going to work. So make sure that your ink is water based. Most fountain pen inks are usually water based unless they're specifically waterproof or water resistant after they dry. Grab yourself, your ink. I'm going to grab my pen and just move that to the side, give it a little open, like that. Get rid of them bubbles. Do a nice little dip. I do need to get a bigger bottle of this ink because it is one of my favorite colors, this fantastic Tabasco sunburst. Such a dynamic range of values from this ink, fantastic stuff. I just want to make sure that I get enough of it on my pen. So just like that, move that to the side now. And all I'm going to do here is I'm going to go ahead and maybe draw a quick little doodle of a house. You can see what I've just done there is, you can see that blotching because I went in too fast. I didn't dip it in properly and let it rest on the tip. It's gone and done a blotchy blotch, but that's absolutely fine. At least I could show you that example of how not to do it. So just like this, going to do a quick, housy house drawing. You can draw anything for this example. So just a little door there, little window, nothing super duper neat, keeping it nice and doodle style, little chimney to go there, and then maybe some details over here, just rough areas down here, and I think maybe just a little thing going down there, another little thing there, and just going to kind of square it off at the bottom. I'm going to leave it like that. But what I'm going to do is with that little spill that I've gotten I'm going to just tilt me paper so it's easy for me to do this. I'm just going to go ahead and drag that little spill across so we have element of detail so it doesn't just look like a big splodge of ink. So that's all I'm going to do. For now, I'm going to go ahead and give my pen a clean because I made the right mess of it. Look at that all over the pen to give that a clean. And what I want to do is I want this to completely dry now before the next stage before that special effect starts. So I'm going to let that completely dry, give this a clean, and maybe go for a little tea, ginger tea. Why not? Let's have a little ginger tea, and then we'll come back once this is completely dry. 10. Brush Strokes: OkidkiO ink is nice and dry. You can see over here really nice and perfectly dry, crisp and dry, so we can move on to the exciting part now. So I'm just going to move me glass dip pen out of the way. Otherwise, I don't want to get it banged up anywhere or get it damaged like I did with my first ever glass dip pen, so just keep that out of the way. And we're going to now use our brush. So make sure for this next part, if you're using a brush, it's nice and clean. So just give it a rinse in water, clean water to make sure it's nice and clean. Get a nice bit of water onto that brush like so. All we're going to do is we're going to go in onto these lines and we're going to start bringing in some of that color. Look at that. Beautiful, isn't it? We're using the dry ink to effectively fill in some of those elements that we drew, using the tip of the brush just to let it come in, let it blend into the lovely paper. Create this wonderful, wonderful hue and you can see, I mean, just look at that. That's just gorgeous that. Look at that beautiful color of that Tabasco sunburst. I was saying this is a fantastic color to create beautiful values. I mean, you wouldn't even think it's got this beautiful yellowish kind of tint to it, but it just looks like a brown coloring, doesn't it? But once you start adding water to water based inks, it starts really emphasizing the makeup of those inks and what colors it's made up of. So just like this, just going in really lightly with the tip of me brush, just bringing it down, like, so just adding that lovely little edge color to it, not doing too much at this stage, just bringing it in so that you have a little bit of wet over there, and that's looking great. So what we're going to do is just a bit more water on me brush. You're just adding a bit more water on me brush. Now I'm going to go ahead and just go across these lines. You can see I'm going across the lines where we had a lot of that ink. Look at that beautiful. So I'm just dragging that ink across. Look at that special effecte you never thought you could do that with inks and glass depends and things like but there we go. Look at that. Beautiful. Now you've got quite a bit of ink on the brush, so I'm going to get rid of that, do a little rinse rinse. Move that away. I've got some more water on there, and then maybe we bring in a little bit of that color from the edge there, and that's looking great as well. And then maybe just bring in that color, let it come down. And I think that's looking fantastic. So on the door, just a little swipe like that on the door, on the window, a little swipe like that. And there you have it. Look how gorgeous that looks. Beautiful stuff, magical magical special effects. And on the bottom here, I'm just going to swipe over that line a couple of times so it brings disperses that color and creates this wonderful effect. I'm just going to put my brush away on the side now and you can see it's bubbling up all over the place, and that's because we're adding quite a bit of water and liquid to it to our paper. And that's why it's important to use watercolor paper for this because if you use the vellum paper that we used before, the sheet of vellum, like we did for the exercises, then that's not really going to be able to work and take the load of water. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to wait until that dries again, and I think my ginger tea should be ready and brewed up. Have a couple of sips of that and enjoy watching this ink dry. I'll see you once that. 11. Water Spray: Oh, look at that tea. Gorgeous bit of ginger tea that eh, actually looks quite like that tabasco sunburst, oh, I better not accidentally put that into my tea. Oh, I better be careful. So let's just move this tea out of the way so we don't get confused and all mixed up and muddled up, right. Let's just move that out of the way. Okay, don't back. So you can now see that we've got a beautiful dry on our page. Gorgeous stuff, isn't it? Just look how nice that looks. So let's now move on to the next step of this wonderful special effect. What we're going to do is we're going to grab hold of our lovely spray bottle. If you have a spray bottle, then grab hold of it and all I'm going to do is I'm going to go in and just add in a little bit of sprays on top of this actual drawing itself. Very lightly, just a few little sprays like this, what that does is that's going to enhance that look and just spread it out into the background. You can see by doing that, my paper started curling up like magic, so I'm just going to hold it down. Should have really taped it down at this stage. I'm going to hold it down and you can see that it's creating this beautiful, fuzzy, beautiful feathering effect on my lovely illustration. And I'm going to let that dry now. So just a couple of sprays of that water just to give that extra special effect. So let this completely dry, enjoy it dry, take a few sips of my ginger tea, and then I'll see you once that's done. 12. Details: Dk, we have a nice, lovely dry on our beautiful little drawing over there, and you can see, Look at that spray effect that we just did. We sprayed on top of the dry ink, and it's just created this gorgeous feathering effect that we've done all with one color. Initially, we started with the Glass dip pen, added in water, and now we're going to do the next part and add some details onto this. I just love this effect. It works so nice. It gives it such a unique random look, and then the next stage is going to be about refining it. So what we're going to do is grabbing our glass dip pen and getting that same colour, that tabasco sunburst, making sure that I don't spill any of this all over the page or get any drops of it into my ginger tea, which was really nice, by the way. So let's just continue. Get a nice little dip on there. Onto that beautiful tip, twist it around. Again, I'm running out of this color. I do need to get a big bottle of this. So hopefully we'll have enough for the class and then just giving it a little twist up and down, that should be enough. And all I'm going to do now is I'm just going to go ahead and I'm just going to go in and add in those detail lines over it so that we have the beautiful effect underneath. So just like this. And then I'm going to go ahead and maybe turn the page just so that it makes it a bit easier for myself to do this. So just do it however you like, and then just add in these lines. Effectively, we're doing the outline again. Just to enhance and refine our details with our glassy pen. And you can see it's created this gorgeous kind of speckled sparkled look. Absolutely fantastic. I love doing this in my everyday pages. Again, you have to be a little bit careful with this. If you go a bit too much with the spray bottle, then it can get a bit jazzy, and it can quite overboard and sometimes it might produce a result that you don't like. But again, just experiment. The whole point about this is to experiment and create these wonderful effects that you can, which you wouldn't be able to really get if you used permanent ink. You could do it with a dip pen. You could do it just with any other type of inks, but the fun of it is mixing and matching techniques using new tools like a Glass dip pen to just create wonderful art and keep things interesting, especially in your everyday pages where I highly recommend you work on it every day. Bit by bit, you don't have to complete huge drawings or huge spread detailed work on a daily basis, work on it a little bit at a time. That way, it stays manageable. And that way, the interest level stays quite high and relevant, especially if you use different tools like Glass Dip pens and different inks and mediums. And just to keep it even more interesting, add in a couple of special effects like this. So just like that, I'm creating these outlines again over the areas where I've got that special effect going, and then I might need to do another dippy dip of my pen. It's really just to show you that you can produce various results when you work with ink Glass depends in your everyday pages or just in general drawings and illustrations, if you don't have to do this in your everyday pages, if you don't want, you can just go ahead and create beautiful artwork if you've got a little bit of time and you're in the mood of just splashing some ink around and just creating some textures. So all I'm doing now is just adding in some of those hatching lines like we did in the warm up exercise just to finish this drawing off, and you can see it's produced a beautiful effect. Look at that all with one ink. With one glass dip pen, just a little few splashes of water here and there. And we've got ourselves a gorgeous little quick illustration that was done in no time. And we enjoyed the drying process, grabbing ourself a nice bit of tea, maybe adding in some more details here now and just like this, couple of cross hatching lines. Really nice and easy. Take your time with it, if you're going to follow this sketch step by step, then just take your time, relax, do it a couple of times. Try it in a few other colors. You don't have to just use one color, try it with different colors. That's the advantage of these pens because you can easily switch the colors in and out. And I think that's going to look great. What I might actually do is I might actually go ahead and add a color to the background just to demonstrate it just to make it pop a little bit more. So just like that, adding in them beautiful cross hatching lines and look at that looks great. What I might do is I'm going to go in and maybe add in some of these lines here. Just adding some details. You know what I'm doing? I'm getting all excited and I don't want to stop, but I will stop. I promise you I'll stop. Otherwise, we're going to be here all day, and we're going to have to have many more coffees and teas to keep ourselves awake and going, but it's all good. It's all about art. It's all fun and art. So I think I'm going to leave it there. I'm not going to add another color to this. I'll add another color to the next stage and the next part of the class. So that's it. Let's just make sure that we get a nice clean on our glass dip pen. Always make sure that your glass dip pens are clean as soon as you use them to avoid the drying up in the grooves and ruining those grooves. And just like that, nice clean little bit of a dib dab on the cloth, and the pen is done. And let's put it to the side. Look at that. That is just gorgeous, isn't it? Special effect using those warm up textures that we did in our warm up exercises, and that's it. Oh, that was really exciting stuff that, wasn't it? Those special effects. I really enjoyed doing that, and I use a lot of these special effects in the work that I do for my Sketchbook Journaling and everyday pages. So that's it for this part. We can now move on to the next part where we're going to go ahead and start creating beautiful little sketching techniques with everything that we've learned up to now. So maybe go for a little I think I might go get myself a nice coffee. Yes, let's get a nice Americano, beautifully grind with choclaty notes and maybe have a little snack on the side, and then I'll see you when I'm back. 13. Sketching: Ok, welcome back. That was a gorgeous coffee. Beautiful chocolate, nutty hazelnut notes in that beautiful grinded coffee, absolutely fantastic stuff. It's really woken me up and got me into the mood now of doing some beautiful sketches with those techniques that we learned in the previous exercises. So let's jump straight into that. Now. Okey, welcome back. Let's now do a nice little sketch using all of those techniques that we learned in the previous two lessons. So this is part four of the class where we're going to do a lovely sketch. So for this one, I'm going to go ahead and do this in my watercolor block. This is my Arches, cool pressed Watercolor block. Ideally, I want to be doing this for my everyday pages in my sketchbook. Can be a little bit difficult to record and do it on the screen in a sketchbook because I have to move the sketchbook around quite a lot to get the right angles. So just for demonstration, I'm going to use this watercolor block that I've got so I don't have to worry too much about moving my sketchbook all over the place. But I will show you a complete sketchbook sketch that I've done in my Everyday Pages style using these techniques. But we'll go through that in a sped up video where I'll talk you through it. But for this one, let's do this step by step. So if you want to follow along in your sketchbook, you can here, this is my basic outline of what I'm going to do. It's just all about autumn leaves. I've just got four autumn leaves with a few titles at the bottom, and I might add in some writing if I have time and space. But generally, I'll leave a link to this reference. It's just a quick little doodle. So if you want to follow along, you can. What I'm going to now is I'm going to grab hold of my paper. Again, this is a coal pressed paper. It has a nice texture to it, but not too much that the glass dip pen won't work on. And for this demonstration, I'm going to be using my lovely green bamboo glass dip pen. I'm not going to use the one that I've been using so far. This one, I thought I'll just change it around a little bit to just show you the differences between the different types of glass dip pen you can get so that you can see a visual of this. Again, I do like to use this one more often than partly because of the grooves that it has in it, it has more deeper grooves and I just find that the ink lasts a bit longer in this one. Going to move the holder of it on the side, keep that to the side like this for my four leaves that I'm going to do, I'm going to do them in four different colors. So if you've got these colors, great, if you haven't, that's no problem, use whichever colors you have. I've got sepia burnt sienna, honey burst, and ox blood. And these are really nice warm colors that match the vibe of these autumn leaves. So let's make a start. I'm not going to go ahead and do a pencil outline. I usually do pencil outlines in my sketchbooks. But for this demonstration, because it's just on one sheet of paper, I'm just going to do it fairly quickly and just go as it goes along. So let's just get a Zoomy zoom in on this now. The first leaf that I'm going to do is a lovely hickory leaf. It's a nice golden bronze color. So let's get our sepia. Again, like I said, if you don't have these colors, just use whichever colors you want. It's just a demonstration to show you a complete sketch, how I would do it in my lovely sketchbooks, and again, just so that you have an idea of the entire process. I'm going to get a nice decent dip on this one, twisting it around, making sure that it's covered in that beautiful ink, then I'm just going to go ahead and start drawing that lovely hickory leaf. So just like that. You can see just smoothly flows really nice into there, and I'm just going to draw in these leaves, nice and simple, not doing too much detail, just keeping things really nice and simple here. We're not here doing detailed work. We're just doing this as a demonstration so that you can see how it works. Again, I'm just going to go ahead and just draw in these leaves nice and lightly just like this. It doesn't have to be accurate. You don't have to follow no reference image for your actual everyday pages that you have. The reference images can be important, but just for this type of an exercise, it's absolutely fine. Just go along with it, see how it looks, and then tweak it if you want, if you don't relax and enjoy the process. You can see I don't know if you can hear, but it is quite scratchy like that on this paper, and that's because this is cold press compared to the hot press, you're not going to get that much scratchiness, but it still works. Again, my sketchbooks are usually cold press, so they have that texture to them, and I just prefer the look and effect of them, but it's entirely up to you. Hot Press would be ideal if you just want a super smooth surface to work on, like those vellum sheets that we worked on in the earlier parts of the class. But that's it there. I've just got my Hickory golden, lovely little leaf drawn up. I'm going to let that one dry now and let's just close the ink and do a nice little switch on the colors and washing between our switches. So I'm just going to go in into my dirty water dirty water jar there with the ink. Give it a nice rinse on that. Move that to the side, and then make sure like we've been doing, give it a nice rinse in clean water so that we don't have any residue of the old ink, and I'm just going to use my tissue to go ahead and dab all that excess off and I think that's looking good. Let's now move on to the second leaf and I've got that birch leaf. For that, I'm going to use the burnt sienna color. So again, whichever colors that you have, just use them. Just like that, get a nice bit of dippy dip in there. Spin it around a little bit because these are plastic bottles. This should work fine. Let that ink flow, and then maybe start this one around about here and just let that come down with that kind of storky part of the leaf. Let it come down here, just like that. It doesn't have to be accurate, like I said, and then maybe the kind of overall shape of the leaf, bringing it in like this. Beautiful, lovely autumn leaves, my favorite part of the year, my favorite season, as you well and truly know. And then just go ahead and drop in these lines that represent those veins of the leaf that are going like this. Just like that. And that's it. How easy was that nice and easy. So I'm just going to give that a close. Just rinse me pen now again. Okay, dog and then let's go and find the color which is honeyburst for our sugar maple. Love them sugar maple leaves. You see them all over the place, especially when I go for me walkies in the park every morning to get a bit of exercising. What a fantastic leave that is. It comes in all different colors. Colors of autumn looking great, so just a bit of a dip on that. Now for this leaf, I'm going to go ahead and draw in those rain lines first, just like this. Oh, dear. Look what we've done there. We've done a little splogy sploge because I was getting excited, but that's no problem. We'll deal with that later. Don't worry if the ink flops and sploges all over the place. I don't want you to worry at all. We're not creating perfect art. We're just having fun. Have fun with it, go along with it. Wherever you get a little spidgy sploge, if you've got a bit excited like me, then just leave it, leave it there, let it dry. Don't try smearing it away, try using it within the design, and you're going to be absolutely fine. So just like that, I might actually pick a bit off there. So that's going to be pretty nice. And then I might just go ahead and just let that line flow into it, and then maybe add in a couple of dots here and there. So just like that, we fixed it. It's not the end of the world. We're not here to worry. We're just here to enjoy ourselves. So again, I get a lot of these what we call happy happy accidents that they call them sometimes in art, but I just call them. They're not accidents. They're just happy movements and happy marks that I get, which are random, not planned. But again, we just go along with it, go with the flow, relax your mind, enjoy that moment. And sometimes these kind of random marks can turn out to be rather unique now, can't they? So you can see I've just closed it off over there, absolutely fine. Might throw in a couple of lines here, might pick up a little bit of ink from there, saves me having to dip me ink. So there you go. That's a benefit of doing these sloges. These random sloges you have a little pool of ink to work from. There's always a positive and everything in life. Ok doke and now we can do a final leaf. You'll squeeze it in it over here. I'm not going to leave it. I'm going to dip it in. I'm determined, so I'm going to get my ox blood color for that beach leaf. So just get a dip, nice clean dip on the pen like that. Fantastic color, that ox blood, and just do a small little version of this leaf here. We don't need to be accurate. Drop that leaf in there just so that I can show you the different colors and ranges that we can work with with our lovely ink and our glass pen. So just like that following the and just bringing it in from here, like so, and it looks like a really nice shape there. And I think I'm going to leave it like that, maybe dropping a couple of lines here and there. So that's the main structure done of the leaves. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to let that completely dry and give my pen a clean, and then once it's dry, we can move on to that next stage of adding in those special effect. Dk, everything is nice and dry. Even that lovely sploge that we did error, by mistake, has gone nice and dry now, so we can move on to the next step. So I'm going to grab hold of my lovely spray over here. So again, if you've got a spray, go ahead and do this. I'm not going to bother with the brush. I just wanted to do it with a spray right now and see what results we get. So very lightly from a distance, I'm just going to go ahead and start with this leaf over here. So just like this, a little bit of a spray, and you can see the magic of that Beautiful. Fountain pen ink has just started making it disperse. It looks great. Then again, on this one, I'm going to go ahead and just spray it. I'm not spraying directly down. I'm spraying it at an angle like this so that the water goes in one direction. And then we're catching a bit of this here as well. You can see, look at that. Beautiful bit of hickory there. Look at that. Nice splash of color. And then finally on the ox blood. Over there, you've got a beautiful, beautiful spray, and it's just enhanced that entire look of that little illustration drawing. Move that to the side, and you know what we're going to do now, we're just going to go ahead and wait until it all dries, maybe grab ourself a little snack or go for a walk, and then I'll see you once that's done. 14. Detail Work: Okay, everything is nice and dry now. And look at that. It's this gorgeous dispersed effect that we've got. Nice and dry, it looks quite unique, especially with that little lovely little sloge that we do there. I told you not to worry. Don't worry about them, little sldges that you get, work with them and continue and see how it goes. Our next step now is, yes, to do some details. Let's add in some details. Now you can add in the details using the same inks and the same colors that you had on the leaf or you can change it around. Why not change it around Because you'll have the colors mixing in from underneath as the first layer, and it'll just add a bit more depth. A rather show you a different version than what we did so that it just creates uniqueness. So what am I going to use for my next ink, I think I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to use this one, one of my favorite inks, Emma Rod de chevoi. However you pronounce it, I don't know. I just love the color of this ink. So I'm going to move me little ink bottles out of the way, and I'm going to concentrate using this going to give that a little shaky shake. This ink is also fantastic. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn my little pad like this so that it's easy for me to do this. And then just give that a little open over here. And we should be good to go. So I'm just going to go in and just add in some random details. That's what I want to do. So just a nice dippy dip in there, and you can see it's a lot easier to dip your pen in when you're using a wider bottle. So just like this, I'm just going to go in and just add in some nice little squiggly wiggly lines like this just to give a little bit more depth and interest to this drawing, and it just effectively looks like a nice outline, doesn't it? So all I'm going to do is, I'm just going to do that across all of these leaves. Some of them I'm going to do the full outline. Some of them I'm just going to leave as they are. And I'll quickly go ahead and do this now. As I'm going along, you can watch, and then once we're done, we'll have a nice little chat and see what results we get. Doke, now you can see, I've added that detail on now, basically an outline with this beautiful dark green color. And all I've done is just added in where I want the details to go, not outlining every single line that I had on before, just to keep it nice and interesting, and just adding in a couple of little stipples here and there, just to complete the look of the entire drawing itself. And you can see that little thing on the corner. It looks quite unique, doesn't it? I don't know what it is. It could be like a I don't know, a little jelly sweet just hanging at the end of that lovely, beautiful maple leaf. So just like that, having a play around, just adding in some textures here and there, bit of dots over here, some lines, maybe some scribble kind of things like this, just to add in some extra texture over here. And it all depends what you like and what you want to do, how far you want to take it. Again, this was just a quick little demonstration. I spend a lot more time in my sketchbooks, which I will show you in the next part of the class. So just like this, have a go at this, just maybe do these leaves that I've got in the reference image, kind of like the reference sketch. You don't have to follow it exactly. You want to use your own reference for leaves. Go ahead and do just give it a go, a quick sketch, nothing too deep, but nothing too detailed, just like this. Then what you can do is you can go ahead and start doing some writing on here just to add a bit more interest. Over here, we had our hickory, so I'll just quickly do that. Add in a couple of lines, maybe add some details in, add a few more leaves, add some nice little design elements. Maybe you just want to add in a couple of leaves like this, just to float them around in the kind of empty space that we have over here. So just like that, maybe just drop in a couple of leaves, make it look nice, fill it up, a couple of round berries here and there in that lovely autumn look. And I think it just adds a nice touch to your overall illustration, which you can then incorporate into your everyday pages, and I think it's going to look wonderful. So let's maybe just add in a couple more leaves here and there and then just add a couple of berries here, maybe a few berries, just like that randomly placed, maybe a little leaf on the top area down here. A couple of lines, and I think I'm going to leave it at that. Otherwise, I'm going to be here all day and I'm going to fill the entire page up. But let's leave it at that. And that's it. That's part four, complete of the class. Okeke, that's part four of the class done. We're going to now move on to the next final part of the class where I'm going to go through some of the work that I've created in my sketchbooks for Sketchbook Journaling and Everyday Pages. So let's move on to that one next. 15. Everyday Spreads: Koki, welcome back. This is the final part of the class part five, all about inspiration and motivation so that you are inspired and motivated to create beautiful work inside your everyday pages, Sketchbook Journaling, using Glass Dip Pens. So let's move straight on to the exciting stuff and have a look at some of the things that I have produced. Oke. So let's start off by looking at this sketchbook spread that I did for my everyday pages. So the first stage I did in this one was just to do some outline work. I added in my lines for the writing part, and all I'm doing here is I'm just drawing out some nice leaves for that autumn vibe autumn feeling, just like we did in one of the previous lessons, we did a little bit of leaf drawing. But with this one, I've started in with the pencil lines because I want to work with quite a bit of detail and spend my time on it. So just going in now with some ink, just using my standard Glass dip pen, and I focused really on using different colored inks for each one of these leaves. You can see I'm switching the colors now, moving on to that second leaf there, using that really nice orange color. And just like that, I was just going to go ahead and outline each one of these leaves and really focus on those details, taking my time didn't do this all in one session. I did this over the course of a couple of days. I just spent maybe 15, 20 minutes in each session per day, just to relax my mind and just to enjoy the process. And that's the advantage with everyday pages and Sketchbook Journaling and especially using a glass pen, the process, the enjoyment that you get from that movement, from that material of ink onto paper. That's just great. I had a nice soundtrack in the background that I was listening to, so it was just a relaxing session. And that's what this entire series is all about. So you can see now I'm just using all the different colors that I've got for each one of these kind of leaves and components of autumn. And then we're doing that special effect where I'm going in with the water to wet those lines, and then all we're doing here is we're wetting them lines and making sure that I rinse in between each wash. And that's now fully dry, so I've just moved on to the writing part. I think I was just writing whatever was in my mind, it's all about getting your thoughts onto the page, either you're writing something specific or not, it makes no difference. Then once everything dried, I think on the next day I went in with the same colors that I did for those particular leaves, and I just wrote some more thoughts, some more information about those particular leaves. I think I went in with the color and what that leaf is all about. But again, it's just this building momentum and just doing something every day with your beautiful colors and using this fantastic tool that will effectively force you to slow down and relax. I think this spread turned out absolutely fantastic. I really liked the look of it. Once it's all dry, it looked great. Okie doke, let's now start looking at another example here. This one I've done in my smaller square format Sketchbook, and I'm just going in with the inclines immediately using my bamboo glass dip pen, and I've just gone in, and I'm just looking at those conkers that I've got on the table. That's the theme, the autumn Ckers, the horse chestnuts, if you don't know what conkers are. And I'm just drawing in, as I like to free flowing, not planning too much. Just whatever I can see, drawing it in, spreading it out on the spread. And because I'm using a smaller sketchbook, it's just so much easier and manageable. I actually did this all in one session. I didn't take too many breaks in between. Now I'm going in with the brush, just adding in water, more controlled rather than dispersed, just to get a bit of color and interest into those little scribbles and doodles. And then I went in with some different greens using the same pen, just filling in those areas where I've got a little bit of white space. Really enjoyed this, and if you notice, I did a couple of sploges of ink as well. One was by mistake, and then the others were all planned, and I liked how they turned out. And you can see now I'm just drying with my dryer that I've got. This just speeds up the process, and I'm using a bit of tissue there just to dab that excess pool of ink, and I thought the effect looked really nice. Going in again with the brush and water and drying in between, it just speeds up the entire process. This one didn't really take much time and real time to do. I think it only took me about half an hour because I was fast drying with my dryer. And now I'm just finishing off with some nice outlined and a bit of cross hatching, like we did in the class. This is my usual systematic approach of doing my everyday pages and journaling sketches with glass dipen Again, it forces you to slow down rather than using just a fine liner or some colored pencils. You have to go through this process. And when you have that extra bit of time or when you want to just relax and listen to a talk or put some tracks on in the background, it's just fantastic. So now I have dried up the illustration and I'm just going in with the writings, and I'm just writing whatever's coming in my mind, writing my thoughts. Related to what I'm feeling on that day, what I'm drawing, conquers bonkers. So just getting it all out, and I really liked how this one turned out, it was more manageable, got it done really quickly in a smaller format. So that's a couple of examples that I've shown you of my Everyday Pages using Glass Dip Pens. Let's now move on to some single sheet illustrations that I've done using Glass Dip Pens for more inspiration. 16. Inspirational Pieces: Okay, welcome back. Let's have a look at some small format, doodles and drawings that I've done with my glass dip pen. So I usually like to cut down some paper into small sizes, do a little frame with my stencil, and then just go ahead and start doodling with my glass dip pen in one color, two colors, or as many colors as I feel like on the day, it's a great exercise this just to get warmed up, put a little bit of soundtrack on the background, listen to a nice talk a motivational talk. Just go ahead and doodle for about 10 minutes, 11 minutes, so you can start really creating those beautiful patterns and textures in your beautiful artwork with glass dip pens. You can see I'm using those lines and stipple lines, and I'm going ahead and creating cross hatching, using nice variation in my work. I'm not thinking too much about it. I'm just going ahead and creating this pattern design, and then I'm just adding in a little bit of notes on positivity because it's all about being positive to improve our well being. So give this a try, cut down your piece of paper, whether it be bristle board or watercolor paper, cut it down into small sizes, and maybe sketch on them once a day, and see how you go. It's a great idea. And here are some examples that I've done systematically with different colours, different ideas and layouts. So do give this a go. Don't spend too much time on it. It's a great warm up exercise in addition to the class. I've also done this technique on bigger pieces of paper. So these longer strips of my bristle board, you can see, very loose work, detailed work, and then some pattern work with a little bit of writing to go along. And yes, I've done some mini doodles as well on really small cutouts of watercolor paper with my glass dip pen. So much fun to do. So please give this a try if you can. Okay, okay. The class is now done. We've gone through so many different things. Let's now finally wrap up the class with some final thoughts next. 17. Final Thoughts: Doke, welcome back. Now just a couple of final thoughts just to wrap up the class. I hope you really enjoyed going through the exercises and the demonstrations of using our fantastic Glass Did pen, and I hope you continued and did the sketching exercises and maybe completed a complete spread for your class project really to get some excitement and enjoyment in this process of daily sketching to improve being, you know, I enjoyed myself as usual with traditional mediums and this magical tool of a Glass pen. Just try your best to create art in your sketchbooks on a daily basis, explore and experiment with fantastic tools that you can find like this. They don't cost much to buy and give some enjoyment into your day to day routine of daily sketching. So thank you so much for your time and help and your support. Do follow me on social media if you don't already do so and also ensure that you follow me on Skillshare so that you have all the latest news of my upcoming classes. Again, just leave beautiful discussions in the class post so that we can keep talking with each other. If you want to contact me separately, you can go ahead and email me on my email link that I have in my profile page, in my Skillshare profile channel. And this way, we can stay in touch with each other. We can explore this wonderful world of art and the most important thing, we can improve our well being because that's what it's all about. That's what I want you to do. I don't want you to stress. I don't want you to worry. Life has its up and downs. Sometimes there's too many downs and not many ups, but when we do have our ups, then we want to enjoy them and express them and really bring that inner peace into our lives. And why not do this with the work of art? Expressing yourself with fantastic tools like Glass pens and inks and all other traditional mediums. So thank you again for all your support without your support. I can't create this class, I can't create and continue being motivated to create classes. But I love to do this, and I love to watch the work that you produce. And I just love this beautiful community that we create where we talk to each other and enjoy each other's experiences. And it's just a fantastic little world that we live in. So thank you again for all your support. Do ensure that you upload your class projects in the class project gallery and also ensure that you leave a beautiful review on the class so that other students can find the class. So if you don't leave a review, then people won't be able to find this class, and they won't be able to learn from your wonderful experience. And so let's just go ahead and just get as many people as we can in this beautiful circle of art and journey and adventure into our artistic well being. So thank you again so much for your time. Thank you again for your help. Can't wait to see your class project, and I can't wait to see you on the next one. Take care of yourself, stay happy, stay relaxed, and peace.