Gouache Character and Doodles

1. Introduction to Gouache Character & Doodles: Hi, this class is about painting this stylized character in gouache with a background of doodles and pencils and pen. Join me as I take you through a doodle warm-up, stylizing this character from a reference photo with lines of action. Painting the character with a limited color palette, which always strengthens the composition. And adding a doodle scene for this character. This will add Lindsay and lots of contrast to your artwork. In the inspiration video, I'll show you more examples. In the resources you can download, reference those with lines of action to help you further. There's even a video on skin tones. I'm all macaques, a painter, illustrator, and teacher for over 20 years. I've written a book about mixed media that was inspired by doodle art. My work has been featured in several magazines and I sold hundreds of paintings since I began my career. I saw my illustrations online, which is so rewarding. And I hope this class inspires you in this way too. I live in Portugal with my husband where I'm continually inspired by old world charm and beautiful vistas. I especially love doodle sketching on location, which inspired the idea for this class. I wanted to share the fun of my technique for creating characters, which brings me so much joy. The key is seeing the lines of action, which I'll show you how to do for this project. You can follow along to create this character. Please post your doodle, warm up the practice drawing and the final painting. Believe me, you inspire others when you do. Additionally, you can use the other reference photos I provided for you to create even more characters. We'd love to see those as well. Why doodles? I believe doodles can show you the way of your signature style and your preferences, the kinds of shapes that you like and what you like to draw innately. It's a super relaxing way to express yourself that I think makes the child inside each of us really happy. Doodling has truly enhance my painting and enriched my illustrations. And I'm sure it will do the same for you. Now let's jump in. 2. The Project Materials: Welcome. So for the materials, I use a very thin paper sketchbook. That is actually the paper so thin you can see through it. So even just computer paper will work. You don't need to invest in anything fancy for your warm up. This is just to get used to the doodles. I use a micron pen, 03. You may prefer a little bit thicker line 05 works well. Or a pencil. You don't even need to buy a pen unless you're going to use it for your artwork. Now from my sketchbook, it is a watercolor paper sketchbook. It's cold press, which means it's a little bit bumpy if you prefer smooth than go for hot press, you can also just use standard watercolor paper. 140 pound is more than enough. And here I'm showing you examples of gouache paint in this style, right? Using some mixed media materials with the gouache paint, I use quite a bit of water, which is why I buy the heavier paper. But I think that anything 80 pound or more for your gouache is probably sufficient. I love royal talents because they're very affordable. I use burnt umber, not black for darkness, and I have a white there. I also showed you a Winsor Newton opera that I love. And these other two colors are the lemon yellow and the turquoise green. So these are all the colors I used. This is plain gouache. Also for the skin tone video, I introduced this turquoise blue, which I do not necessarily recommend. But we have more than enough with the ones that we have here in front of us. Now, as far as the mixed media that you use on top of your gouache, I love using Qur'an dash luminance pencils because there are very soft, they smear really well on the gouache paint. I also like to use the Micron pen. You can see there. And also I'm showing you a six B pencil, which I really love to use for detail work as well. I use the six B pencil instead of a regular pencil. It's smoother application on the paper, I use a number four round brush, which I think is sufficient even for the small-scale artwork. If you feel more comfortable using something smaller, go for it. This is a Posca pen I'm showing you that I used for the triangle shapes and her shorts and also the flowers you can see it's a thicker line. Posca pens come in an array of millimeter size. I'm showing you now a thinner millimeter size, a little bit thinner line. And I'm going to go dig for a much thinner line so you can see the difference. Believe I'm out of the white thin. So I'm going to show you a block here in just a moment. It is. And you can see it's just barely thicker than the micron pen, which I actually prefer for the fine line work. You'll also need a pallet of water container and an eraser and a word on the eraser. In the practice drawing, I use the eraser to help me understand how I want to stylize a character, I may try a hand position in a different way to see which way I like it best. So I recommend keeping one handy. And I wanted just to show you the three color pencils that I used in case you're interested in using the exact same ones. I have the perylene brown, which is what I wrote the word joy width and did that doodle sequence with. I also have in the artwork the rows hibiscus, and that's for the house. I used it minimally for the rocks as well. And I didn't film the green, but I do use quite a bit of dark sap green in this artwork. So right now I'm pointing to the six B pencil which I use for the one hand and the foot. And then I also use the micron pen for the other hand. In the next video, we will start our due to warm up. 3. Doodle Warm-up: Let's begin with a doodle warm-up. I'm going to be using a graphite pencil. This is a six B pencil because it's dark and you can see it better. But I'm going to be switching to that black pen on the left because I find that it just is a little more fluid and so I recommend using a pen or a pencil in general. But these little flowers that I'm drawing right now, these are the ones that I used to draw when I was on the telephone in high school. And I would just sit there and do dozens of them. And what I'd like you to do is start off with the most comfortable doodle for you. So what is the thing that you'd like to create? Is it a little house? Are they just a bunch of squares, circles? Whatever it is, warm up with that for me, it's scribble flowers. It's these little daisy flowers that I just made. It's just creating a wonky shape and then calling it a flower. You can see that I'm kind of connecting these flowers. And the reason I'm doing that is because in the next warm-up, we're going to do a continuous line doodle drawing. I feel like it has a script style, but instead of using letters and we can incorporate letters and words, instead we're using the doodles. And so it almost feels like it's your own language, doodle language. And it almost has that handwriting look a little bit and tells kinda helps to tell that character story. It's a way to take thinking out of your doodling. And there's less judgment. When we pause, then the brain has an opportunity to weigh in and then, oh, well, that one didn't turn out, so I'm gonna do another one even better. This is what I do. This is how my brain works. So the linear drawing is really helpful for me and maybe it will be helpful for you as well. With tree shapes and these larger forums where there's space to fill them in with a little bit of pattern. Go for it, makes circles, triangles, squares. Keep it simple, but it's a great way to keep your hand moving. Now I use this little doodle landscape a lot with these types of illustrations because I want my character to be bigger inside a landscape or house seen inside of a room. Let say. Now here what I want to share is just some personal symbols that I like to use in my illustrations. And silliness is always a good thing. They don't have to be perfect. I mean, I love the beginning and Yang symbol for what it symbolizes. But it's just a way to add my own personality. So think about what kinds of symbols are important to you. For the second part of this warm-up, I'm speeding a lot faster. And I just want you to get a sense of how fluid the process is, even though I'm moving fairly slowly and methodically, the way I'm writing, if you will, writing these doodles is just thinking about, well, one, not thinking very much, but every now and then giving myself a prompt. So e.g. without bicycle, the first thing that I thought of was the inside of an orange. And then when I looked at it after I did it, I thought, oh, I'm just going to make a bicycle out of it. And it's not thinking so much about what does a bicycle look like. It's just about keeping the hand moving like okay. Like right here I should probably put the seat and move it across and now the handlebars. Now what I'm doing right now with the little animal that you just saw. This is my little doodle dog there on the left and on top is a little cat. And it doesn't even look like a cat or a dog, but it just doesn't matter because nobody is ever going to see these doodles, but me and I find that I'm very relaxed and I'm having a great time and it's fun. So this is the attitude that I hope that you can have as well. It's about being free and being childlike and being a little silly and telling yourself silly stories as well as you're, as you're creating. Then what we'll do later with the character is you're just going to pick out, you're going to pluck out your favorite doodles. And it might just be three flowers that you pick for your characters illustration. And that's fine. Again, it's just about looking at what you've created and finding something that you like. And I think that it's just a good practice in general to like what we create, even if it's wonky, even if it's not perfect. So I stopped the continuous line drawing, but what I did is I created a little window. And then what that did is it just prompted me to think about where I was sitting. And I'm sitting at a desk with a computer and I'm actually looking out the window. So this is what I drew. And sometimes the best little scenes that you can create are the things that are happening in your life right in the moment. Also practice any creatures that you really love, butterflies, birds, these are very simple and easy to create an, a very childlike manner. So I highly recommend these kinds of supporting characters for your illustration. In the next video, we will simplify some reference photos and began stylizing your character. 4. The Character: Line of Action: Lines of action show us the position of a character's body parts. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the curve of the torso, and what the limbs and head are doing. When you see these and draw them, you can then build your character from their copy and practice the lines of action from the reference photos. Stylizing than simply means deciding how you will build your character from there, you can exaggerate size, angles and make it curved limbs. The possibilities are endless. You can add or delete parts. You don't see an a reference photo to. I'll talk you through the main character now, the line of action of this character is mainly how she is sitting. I see a big U with a lid, which is her arm, followed by a triangle. This character isn't realistic, which is what makes this way of stylizing more fraying and fun in my opinion. I don't need her head to be a perfect oval. I can just suggest it with that rounded V-shape. And it can be much smaller in relation to her body. I want to empower you to feel free to make changes as you feel inspired. I prefer curves over the sharp angles of her elbows. I'm rounding them. And as I look at the photo, I'm inspired to draw hands that I don't see. I want her bottom arm to be on top of her top arm. I'm also exaggerating her arms so they feel really long and folded in on themselves. Just to emphasize the story that this character is telling me as I'm developing her, that she's embracing herself like she belongs to herself. Use the lines of action as a guide, but use your creativity as you wish to create more whimsy or to say what you want to say. I decided I wanted her hands and her arms to feel even more caricaturist. So there really isn't an elbow in that bottom arm. It's very much curved. It's almost a circle. And I feel like that just made me happy when I saw that. And to go with the theme of this character belonging to herself, I also wanted to change her feet and have them touching so they are on top of each other. I just wanted all of her parts to connect. Eyes generally go about the middle of the head. I wanted her to have just a very simple, peaceful look. So that's why I went with just some very basic features. Notice the waste is just a gentle curve and her legs, I've tapered them significantly on the ankles. You can make your legs thin or big. I'd like you to play around with some different options here. A few more same lines of action. 12.3 have thinner thighs in one, her hair drapes over her body. Her feet and calves are bigger into her hair flows over the right side and the words form a part of it. In three, her face is tiny and the U shape is very long in four, there is no second arm. Notice that it doesn't matter. The brain fills it in, we know it's there. We just don't see her face is proportionately bigger in that one and her hair looks like it's growing flowers. So as you can see, these are just four examples, but we can make so many more. And the whole point though, is to enjoy yourself as you explore the different possibilities, more cell considerations. As I think about painting my character, I want to give her much more important, so I'm gonna make her significantly bigger compared to her environment. And I also want to add words on her arm, so I'm not going to give her sleeves, so the words really stand out against her skin. In the next video, we will begin to paint our character. 5. The Character: Painting With Gouache: Welcome back. So I'd like to put a little pencil box around my illustration. And this is just so that should I decide that I want to sell this illustration, it'll just be a lot easier to tidy it up in Photoshop. If I start with a boundary, this is completely optional. So how I mix just a simple skin tone is quite a bit of white, a little bit of a yellow, and a very small amount of the pink. You can also use red. I find that red can be just a little bit harsh and I liked the softer color that the pink Gibbs. You can see that my, I have two tones that I'm mixing. So I mix the first one on the right and this will be my darker tone and then I put more white it on the left. And this way, if I need to have a little bit more toned darkness in my limbs, I have it ready to go. Just enough water so that it's opaque, but I will use water liberally if I want to lighten up my color a little bit more. So you'll see that as I run short on the paint, I'll put in a little bit more water so that I get a little bit variation in her skin with all the different limbs. If you feel more comfortable doing a pencil sketch before you paint, by all means go for it. The reason I don't is I like the freedom of painting general shapes. So I'm not going to paint in, let's say her fingers or any details. I'm just doing kind of a sketch with the paintbrush. I feel that embracing any imperfections as I paint characters gives them more personality. Believe me though it's taken me many years to feel this way, but I found it to be really worthwhile as I feel much more freedom to paint and I trust myself and the process more. I encourage you to do what you feel drawn to do, no pun intended and whatever makes you feel the most comfortable. Now here I'm using a little bit of the darker paint and you can see that that's a way to differentiate between the background arm and then the arm that's in the foreground. And same here with the leg. I'm using a little bit of the darker gouache in the leg that's behind and a little bit lighter in with the leg that's in front. It's pretty subtle, but I've watered down this leg a little bit so that you can see the difference between the leg and the arm that's just above it. So water is just a great way that you can get some of the white of the paper coming through. And then it's just easier to have that hand pop. When I put in that little bit of darker paint for the hair, I'm mixing burnt umber with white. You can see I just put a little bit of the skin tone in as well. This is just a way to make sure that the whole painting looks cohesive. I'm introducing a new color. So I just want it to blend in well with the color that's already on the paper and that's why you always, or at least I do. I think it's a great practice just adding a little bit of the color that you've been using to the new paint that you're mixing. So you can see that I've added some waviness to her hair and I've also extended her hair so it wraps a little bit further underneath her. And these are the kinds of improvisations that I encourage you to try as well. If you feel called to change your drawing as you're painting, do it. The painting, we'll be stronger for it. I feel like her skin color on her face was pulling a little bit. And so I decided just to dab it. And I kinda like dabbing it, making the face have that little bit of extra white of the paper coming through because it just creates interests in her face and makes the face different than her problems. For her shorts. I'm introducing turquoise screen, but I'm adding in the pink opera as well as just there's a teeny bit of the skin tone in that mixture as well. Mixing your colors like this, instead of painting directly out of the tube, is a way to make your colors uniquely your own, cautious, not water resistant. So what that means is if it's wet, it's going to mix with the colors that are underneath. And if it's dry and you add more gouache on top, it runs the risk of mixing with the colors that you already have to keep that from happening, make your paint mixture a little thicker, not so much water to make something lighter or darker to add more pattern. Let's say you want to make sure your first layer is dry. I decided that I wanted to lighten up her shorts and give them a little bit of a painterly effect. And so all I did is I mixed a little bit of the turquoise green with the water or excuse me, the white. And now I'm just using a little bit of the dark that's already on the palette. You can see here that I'm moving some color. What's happening is the gouache been below her skin tone is because it's not totally dry and because I am using water, it's coming to the surface and I'm not bothered by it because I do like that. We see gradations of blue. To me. It just makes it more interesting. If you prefer a very flat look with your illustrations, then, you know, don't, don't do as I'm doing. Just mix your paint and then use a little bit creamy or consistency so that it's very opaque. And what I'm doing right now is I'm putting the colors that I'm using down below because later when I introduce more materials, I want to be able to test them out on the dried colors so that I can anticipate ahead of time what, how something is going to look. Here. You can see that I'm putting in quite a bit of the pink opera with a little bit of the skin tone. And again, it's just a way to make the color or something brand-new. If you're new to this style of making mixed media illustrations, then I recommend that you do as I do and you create a very light background. Here. I'm keeping a lot of white around her lens so that we can really see her skin pop. And then I'm using the pink kind of all around. I will add a little bit of the turquoise green to the sky just to continue with that whole painterly effect, look, you can see I'm using quite a bit of water and I even threw a little skin tone in there. Because all of that just makes, again the illustration very cohesive. So in the next video, I'm going to make sure this is completely dry before I add more materials. But the reason we go with a lighter is because we want the other new materials that we're gonna be using to really stand out and have a lot of contrast. Stay tuned for a short video on skin tones. 6. Painting Skintones: Welcome back. So with skin tones, I like to begin with a base of white. And then I also add to that a little bit of the yellow, a tiny bit, bit of the opera pink. You could also use red. However, with red, I feel like it's pretty intense and so pink just makes it a little bit warmer, a little bit softer. I have my burnt umber for my darker skin tones. And I'm just using blue to show you. Some folks believe in blue on skin tone, which is fine because there is blue and skin because we all have the vein the veining. However, I feel like it can quickly turn ashen. So I'm going to show you what to avoid. In my opinion, I like using the white, yellow, and pink as a base because I feel like these are warm. This is a warm color combination that always plays well with other colors. And here you'll see that I'll start with this combination. And then to lighten it, I can add a little bit of white. And now I'm going to dip into the blue and I'm going to exaggerate a little bit so you can see just how quickly it can go. Dull and ashen. And now I'm adding a little burnt umber just to darken it a little bit. And you can see that, I mean, it just doesn't even look like skin really. So now I'm going to start over, but I'll be adding a little bit of it with my usual combination, the white, yellow, and pink. And now I'm gonna be adding just a teeny bit of burnt umber a little bit at a time. So you can see just how nice and warm the skin tones, the gradation goes. And you can see here now I'm definitely adding the burnt umber. It's getting darker. It's not very much in this example here I've added just a touch more of the pink. So you can see that it kinda gives it just a little bit of a rosy next to it and I just love it. So you can just keep going stark as you'd like to create the skin. And now again, I'm showing you by adding a little blue. I feel like it kinda dolls, dolls it down. But maybe you need it depending on your colors that you've chosen. So I just wanted to show you what Blue does with these particular skin tones. In the next video, Let's add details with doodles to our character. 7. The Character: Doodle Details: Welcome back. So I'm placing my warm-up doodles to the side where I can use them as a reference. I'm going to be creating the idea of a continuous line drawing right now. Putting three little dots in as if it's a conversation that is continuing. I'm creating the idea of a continuous line drawing. However, for this final artwork, I'm being methodical and I'll stop and start as I go. So I'd like you to also think about when you're doing your continuous line artwork idea to dip the lines. So here I'm going to go a little bit lower. I started and I'm going to create another little doodle, little butterfly doodle. It doesn't have to look like it's a straight line the way you would write a sentence. So I'm going to also be placing in just some stems right now. And then I'll add the little flower tops in just a moment. So as I looked at the drawing, I sort of felt like I wanted her feet to look like they were grounded. And so this is another way to create a little perspective is I placed her little feet on some rocks for her face. I'm going to keep it really simple. And to create interests, I'm gonna give her glasses now one lens is going to be different than the other. And that's intentional just because I like how they look, like they create contrast and just gives it a little more personality. You'll see the screen here in just a moment. I get excited when trying and I forget that there's a camera, so I'm creating two mountains. And then this third one that feels a little bit more like a hill. It's not precise. The reason I made it the way I did is because I like how it's kinda framing her in. And now I'm just looking at my doodle warm up and figuring out what kinds of trees I want to include. I've moved to Portugal recently, and I absolutely love the old style pink houses that dot the landscape here. So I'm including them and almost all of my artwork. I really love them. And I'm just finding every opportunity to place them, even if it's just a little sliver of a house there on the side. But you can see that something like this. Whatever it is, personalize your artwork. And as even these tiny little shapes, different colors and using the variation between the pencil and the pens creates interests and its contrast, right? And we have different thicknesses of lines between the pencil and the micron pen. I'll move the paper here in just a moment. But now I'm coloring in some of those doodles and just very subtle, just a tiny bit of the dark green and a little bit of the pink. And you don't have to color in every shape. You can just do a little line drawing like I did here on this last flower. I'm sure by now you've noticed that the pencils I'm using are similar in color family as the paints that I chose. The only different one is this very dark green. But it works because I'm using it repeatedly in the background. So it's just another way to keep your artwork cohesive. Now for contrast and also, I mean, I could use the same pencils I've been using, but for little contrast, I'm going to use the pencil just for her body. And this is another way for her to stand out a little bit different than the background. So I'm not going to outline every single part of her limbs, but most of them, but I'll leave some of them not outlined. And that again, is a way to create contrast. I'm introducing a new material. This is the Posca acrylic paint pen. And the thing about it, and gouache is e.g. here on the white and cleaning it down below because it will pick up the color of the gouache. So I don't want to really color in aggressively. I'm just doing a couple of passes for each of the flowers, cleaning it in-between. And that way I keep those flowers as white as I possibly can. Pattern is a great way to create interest in your artwork. And also things that are kind of mismatches are kinda fun, unexpected things like triangles and I will add leads to her shorts as well to go with those triangles. Here again, I'm just using the pencil that I've been using from the background. And it's a way to bring the foreground and the background together is using the same materials just a little bit. If, if I had not included the pencil and the short, it would have been fine. Here. I'm keeping some of the leaves filled in and some of them just outlines. And again, that's another way to bring some contrast into your artwork. The theme of the artwork is important to me and so I want to emphasize that with actual words. And I kind of, I'm riffing on the doodle this time by including those dots. It's sort of like this conversation that started with art and, or maybe it started with the words and then it continued with the art. But they kinda look like they belong to one another. I mentioned in the warm-up doodle that personal symbols are really a fun way to make your artwork super unique and nobody else's. So think about what kinds of symbols you could include in your artwork. What is important to you? If you'd like baking, you might make a tiny little cake doodle and hang that or place it somewhere in your artwork or ice creams or rainbows. I mean, really, they're just infinite possibilities. In the next video, I'll show you some variations of some doodle backgrounds and give you just some tips and tricks that I use for creating some more characters. 8. More Inspiration: I included the gesture lines for this photo in the files for you. I just wanted to show you that even something that looks as odd as this position which I actually love. I put my feet up like this at home all the time and it kind of gave me the idea for this particular illustration. I love though, how you can find photos that maybe speak to you and then you can turn them into whatever you'd like. Here, I've exaggerated the character's legs and just given her a little bit rounder look, gesture lines for this character in the photo files. I wanted to give you the opportunity to slow down this video so that you can create a character like this if she interests you. So the doodle details for this character, I started with the Posca pen and you can see I just started with three simple flowers. And now I'm just repeating this pattern idea in her dress. And so this is just wanted you guys to see this so that you can think about maybe doing the same thing. This scalloped pattern can be a great way to bring your artwork altogether. Then I'm just creating a simple landscape for her using just the luminance pencils and then filling in the detail with this pit pen, which is the fabric Estelle Artists Pen. And then just using more pencil work. For this character, I was inspired to do a little bit more elaborate landscape, but very simple. And I just wanted to show you that the rainbow is not perfect at all. The lines kinda overlap on the left. And mountains, like the project illustration just to simple triangle mountains. But you can create depth even with doodles. And here you can see just putting a couple of those mounded, that mounded look of shrubs and then creating different sections of, you know, florals and trees. And the sizing doesn't matter, but the flowers give the impression that they are very much in the foreground. And then the trees because they're so small, give that sense of distance, right? And then just the way the river essays from tiny, too large. Now adding one more shrub on the right in a darker color really gives it even more depth. And it's something that's so small and easy to do. But it just gives that extra little bit of layering. This one's a little more childlike and I just wanted to share how Scribble hair and scribble flowers can create a nice contrast with the gouache as well. Now it's your turn. I'm super excited to see what you create. Please post your project. I'm here to support you and I'm happy to answer questions. If you liked this class, please do leave a review as it helps me to bring you even more classes for your enjoyment and learning. Thank you so much for taking this class and happy creating.