Hone Your Illustration Style: Draw Vase & Vessel Sketchbook Assets

1. Class Introduction: [MUSIC] I've read a lot staring at a blank page. On the flip side, do you ever feel like you see so much beauty around you it's almost overwhelming? Your imagination is just bursting with ideas and you need an outlet? What if you could grasp all this visual inspiration and combine it with your imagination and channel it into creative work original and meaningful to you in a fund low-pressure way? My work has been called whimsical, minimal, and mid-century-inspired. Let me show you the process I use to hone my style. I'll demonstrate how you can develop your very own sketching short-hand using shapes, lines, and forms that you can use to make beautiful illustrations and surface pattern designs. All of your spirit and character. We're going to practice this technique studying responsibly sourced references of vases and vessel-like objects. I chose this vesicle subject as it has many applications and facets to play around it. There are great vessel to explain this process that you can use with any subject. Hi, I'm Erika Catan Nickels. an illustrator, surface pattern designer, decorator, and teacher. My art work has been featured commercially on various products and published in print. It's my goal to encourage others to surround themselves with art and designs that foster creativity, innovation, and a sense of wonder and make belief. While my last class Decorate Like An Artist help you do this off the Canvas, this class can help you on your proverbial Canvas. When I started practicing illustration, I was seeing a disconnect between the work I wanted to make and what I was making. I was in all beautiful inspiration around me. It wasn't feeling this resonate in my work. Through trial and error, I developed a sketching shorthand of sorts that helps me process and express visual information and gain a greater connection to my art. I now rely less on references and more in my imagination, my inherent style as I create. I made this class to save you a few steps. I want to help you get curious about both the beautiful things that surround you and the ideas living in your head. Then focus on exactly what lights you up. I want to help you follow your creative intuition on purpose. I'll also help you objectively analyze what you're drawn to draw. You can incorporate these shapes and symbols for a better understanding of your style and build a language with which to experiment and create new work using your fresh perspective. I'll share some real-time decisions I make and why, like how to own your imperfections right down to different ways to hold a pencil. This class isn't how to draw a vase one-on-one, a rigid step-by-step how to, like you'd imagine an art class. Instead of pulling inspiration into a literal mold, drawing what you see true to life, this sketching process should feel as if you're sculpting a one-of-a-kind work at a fresh clay. When you finish you walk away with a working collection of Sketchbook assets and motifs to pull from and to add to overtime, as well as the option of creating a finished piece in your medium of choice. This class is for all skill levels, whether you're new to art or experienced, do it professionally or as a hobby, this class can help you improve your sketching and observational skills and refine your style. Ready for a ton of inspiration to spark your imagination and to create something unique? Pick up your pencil. I'll see you in class. 2. Your Class Project: We're going to jump into our class project in a second. But first I wanted to offer some words of inspiration and encouragement. When you've completed this class project, you'll have a stockpile of your own sketches to pull from when drawing vessels and vessels. But more importantly, you're going to learn observational and drawing techniques to help you develop what I call a sketching shorthand. This will enhance how you process visual information and ultimately how you express yourself in your work. On a deeper level, in addition to training your eyes and hand, you'll check in with your mind's eye. You will learn how to analyze and group symbols and patterns in your sketches, internalizing them for a better understanding of your style moving forward. You can then start to lean less on references and more on your imagination. I'm going to read you a brief quote that I read years ago before I was an illustrator and was heavily into interior design. It really resonated with me at that time. I tracked it down recently and it's weirdly perfect for this class.It's my pattern designer, Allegro Hicks from the intro to a book An Eye for Design. I realized that this time that something crucial was missing from my life, my own language, I've been drawing all day long for hours at a time always patterns, but I had no idea how they should be applied. An almond shape I drew became my starting point my A. I turn this over and with a dot added above it, it was my B. Eventually I had to complete alphabet of shapes I loved that I tentatively started to use to speak my own language. Two-dimensional design can take you into the dimension of dreams, not just the third, but also the fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions. I love to investigate the illusion of depth on a flat surface. There are so many stories that can be told with motif and patterns, embroidered and woven, printed or in combination. It's an endless tail. A color or a texture or a pattern can become very personal like a Proustian key to a place in one's memory. I love that. She found her language, let's find ours. Here's an overview of what I'll be walking you through during the class. You'll pick your own brain on the subject of vesses, breaking down your understanding of them and their components. You'll compile visual references for inspiration in a responsible way. You'll develop a sketching shorthand for processing your visuals by studying, deconstructing, subverting, and sketching your favorite elements. You'll start to look for patterns you love and what you've sketched and arrange them in a way that works for you. You can use your own system or two templates I built called the Maya pottery wheel and the paint, my own pottery motif builders in the resources section. Then you'll play around illustrating and embellishing your unique vessels. We'll talk about shape, perspective, negative space, and other design considerations. You can even consider creating a finished piece in a medium of your choice, which I'll be doing with pen on watercolor paper. Finally, we'll wrap up posting your project to the class project page and Instagram if you'd like. I wanted the class project to feel fun and low pressure so all you need to do is post a picture or pictures of your sketchbook highlights, either some sketched assets you made or one or both of your motif builders. No need to post the finished piece unless you made one and would like little feedback. If that's the case, that's okay too. When the time comes, here's how you'll post your class project. Give your project a title and a brief description. Write whenever you'd like, like the story or thought process behind the inspiration for your vessels. Or any discoveries are happy accidents you made along the way. Posting your class project is a great way to get helpful feedback and get motivated by your community. You don't have to do it alone and I can't wait to see what you create. Consider sharing it and your process on Instagram as well. Tag me at Erica Catherine design and use the hashtag hone your illustration style. It's a great way to connect with your friends and family over what you've been working on. I love sharing your work and chatting art and inspiration. Just to give you some practical benefits to this class process. On top of what I already mentioned, you can use this technique to help you study any new subject matter, find inspiration to use in fresh ways. Streamline your workflow, focusing on your sketches. And then jumping off point to avoid the dreaded blank page when working solo or faced with a creative brief or commission, develop motifs and unique unexpected ways for building a pattern or a collection. Interior work easily online. Pair low pressure videos of you sketching with final and detail shots of your work to give your friends a well-rounded story of your process and a window into your creative world. How long should this project take? Ultimately, the process should take about an hour. Initially, you could take an hour and a half or so depending on how many sources of inspiration you pull from and how in-depth you go both of your sketches and with organizing them. This is the process I use when I start illustrating a new subject and it's quite quick. I've polish it up a little for this class, for the purposes of teaching it in a comprehensive way. It may at first appear more complicated than it is. Once you get the hang of it, it'll become second nature and should ideally save you time in the future. The key is not to fast or be too precious about your sketches or your illustrations. It's best to play around, put some music on, keep things light and experiment as you go. Remember no need to get it right. Each time you do this, you'll have more fun and be more naturally efficient than the last time around. To help you on your way, visit the projects and resources section below this class for the following downloads and resources, which I'll refer to you as we go. In the next lesson, we'll review the materials you'll need for this class. 3. Gather Your Materials: [MUSIC] Let's get into materials. To sketch, I use three things, which you can likely guess; paper, a pencil, and an eraser. Don't overthink this. Use whatever ones you're comfortable with, that's really the most important thing. I'm going to get into my specifics though because I know that's often something we're curious about. You can use any pencil. I use a mechanical one. This one in particular is a BIC brand number 2 mechanical pencil with 0.7 millimeter lead. I think I got it from a pack that my mum lend me a long time ago from an office supply store. You can likely get them online as well. I'm not telling you to go out and buy this specific one. I'm sure you could find some with a cushy or grip for your hand or whatever. But really, the main takeaway is, I just like having a mechanical pencil because I like knowing I'll always have a crisp line without having to sharpen it. I use a white eraser. As pretty and nostalgic as the pink ones are, I'm sure you've noticed the white ones seemed to work a little bit better. I've heard they actually don't pull the tooth off of your paper. I don't know if that's true, but I really like this one. It's a Staedtler brand, Mars plastic, latex-free eraser. I used to have a little blue package on it but my son picked off. Honestly, any eraser you're comfortable with will do. Then, I use a sketchbook. You can also use regular printer paper. Printer paper might be nice. You could put holes in it if you want to contain it in a binder, or you could just as easily put them in a labeled folder. Whatever your system is. I haven't really gotten specific on a sketchbook that I draw on. I've collected a few over the years. These are just from MyKia. I really liked the look of them, to be honest. Then, this one is a beautifully illustrated sketchbook by Arie is her name, of Atelier Mave. It's so pretty. I love the illustrations on the back. It's totally up to you. I just gravitate to ones that look lovely on the outside because I find I know it's just for me and I'm just going to be doing all my sketches in them. Maybe someday I'll spring for fancy more skin journal. Someday. The other thing is, for this class, I'm going to actually use a bigger sketchbook that I don't normally use just so that you can see a little better. I'm going to be filling this up. It was actually gifted to me by my late grand father-in-law, a talented pastel artists by the name of Jack Nichols and he did this by hobby. He had a number of these, which I was lucky enough to be gifted. I'm going to use this one. It's a little bit bigger. It's a 9 inch by 12 inch Canson brand, bright, white, acid-free paper with a medium tooth surface. In case you were curious, it definitely does the trick for our purposes today. As you can guess, the main takeaway is, use what's comfortable, easily available. You can always evolve things over time. This process is for you and for you alone, so don't get too hung up on your materials. We're going to be analyzing and grouping our sketches. For this, you can use your own system or two templates I build called the my pottery wheel, and the paint my own pottery motif builders. These can be downloaded in the resources section and printed in color or black and white on standard 8.5 by 11 inch letter size printer paper. Also, I'm going to create some final of these illustrations and draw them. I'm going to be using this Micron pen. It's a Sakura brand, Micron pen with a 0.5 millimeter tip and then I'm going to be drawing on this Canson brand, cold press watercolor paper. It doesn't have to be watercolor paper, you can use your medium of choice. If you don't have a medium of choice, you're welcome to use these. I chose these because they were literally the only supplies in my house that I could see framing a picture with. This Micron pen, it's Archival Ink, so it doesn't fade over time and I found this paper, it wasn't too bright of a white, so I liked the color of it. The only other thing you're going to need in this class is some visual references, and we're going to cover those in the next lesson. I'm going to also provide a list of all of these in the resources section so you can refer back to it. The action item for this lesson is to gather your materials. In the next lesson, we're going to do a few brief sketches about what we know so far about our subject. 4. Mine Your Mind's Eye: [MUSIC] So let's check in with what we know intuitively about our subject of vases. So here's a quick exercise. Without giving it much thought, we're going to draw how we picture a vase without looking at anything first, a quintessential vase. So go ahead and pause me here before you spend a minute sketching it and then I'll take a crack at it. So don't worry, I'll wait. If you're like me you think, I'm just going to do it later. Let's just keep this moving. But trust me, this will be a fun and very important sketch I promise. Think of this as your baseline illustration. A window into your mind's eye before you start your sketches based on any references. Back? How did it go? I wish it could be a little fly on the wall and see what you drew. So feel free to rate me in the discussion section if you want. Now, it's always called a check-in with what our subjective judgments of a subject are. It tells us something about how we observe the world and what symbols, scale and line types we gravitate to. How light and heavier hand pressure is all stuff like that. It's really interesting and there's no wrong answers. You might end up loving what you did or not liking certain parts and decide to lean in or lean away from them as you move on. Just remember to give yourself grace in this process. Don't be hard on yourself with this at any stage. Try to appreciate the beauty of progress. Now, I'm going to give it a try. When I think of a vase, I think of that drawing with the two faces on it, like a little optical illusion. Maybe you remember doing this in elementary school. This should be dark and then that's light. I think when I looked at this later in life, I learned it's called the Rubens Vase, and it's showing how we see both the figure and ground and how these can reverse depending on your perception so it's fun. This maybe tells me something about the illustrations I'm drawn to. I know I love playing with negative space in my drawings to highlight certain objects, so that's something interesting that I learned today. It's funny this is the first thing that comes to mind. Now, let's see if any other experiences or memories with vases or vessels come to mind and we'll spend a minute to sketch those out. So go ahead and pause me and do this quick exercise. Great. Now for me I'm thinking of my grandma's vintage glass had a straw bowl. I call it a vase. Even though I think it's actually was a fruit bowl or something like that. This is how I remember it. I had some shapes on it and then a nice little swoopy pedestal base. So now that we know how our minds symbolizes a vase and past experiences with them or subjective opinions of them, let's spend another few minutes and move on to our objective knowledge of a vase. Because our only constraint here is what defines our subject in its most basic form. So what is a vase? Well, a vase, it's a vessel. It's a container. It holds something in it. Well, or it has the potential to any weight, to hold anything really. In this we might already have our idea of a vessel or vase. But we see this is actually a pretty open-ended definition when we really break it down. This could mean it's any shape. It could be really any scale, could be thinner or shorter and it's likely bound by gravity. But you know what, it actually doesn't have to be. Shadow here. My husband actually pointed out that when he thinks a vessel, he thinks of a UFO, which completely throws everything I had planned my imagination for what I would draw for vessels. But we'll move on, and it just goes to show your perspective can be so different. Now, the main thing is that if we break it down to its essence, they really all have an opening and a base. I'm going to write that down. A base and at least a small section to contain whatever it's holding. So having an awareness of how our subject exists in our mind based on symbols we see or emotional connections we've made, as well as how it exists in the world in its most basic form lets us see where our boundaries lie and push beyond these, opening up more possibilities. Now it's your time to be open and receptive to anything. Be a vessel, so I'm going to draw some ideas. An obvious vessel would be, we'll say pottery in our own home. Any jar or plant pot that we might have. Now, what else in your home could be shaped like a vessel? For me for some reason, vintage ash trays come to mind. Interesting, candlesticks. Another thing would be cool lamp bases, they almost look like a vase. Let's see. Not so obvious vessels could be items outside your window, so you could think about nature or architecture as inspiration for this. Think of containers or vessels built are found outside, so the architecture of fountains. Outside architecture wise, something that's man-made, I would say bird baths, little bird here, so I remember what I was trying to convey. You then you could think about things that aren't man-made that you might find outside. I like things to do with the sea. So Coral, I'm finding, I'm noticing that I like symmetry in my bases of vessels but you might not you might want more of an asymmetric. Look, shells would be another. Anyway, something like that and plants. So you could have sky's the limit. Do like the level. That's the base. Pretend it's. Shade the back-end as if this is the other side here. Then what about people? Personified vessel. Maybe this is where my Rubens Vase comes in, and something like even animals could be vessels, a little fish, a fish vase. Lots of ideas going on here, and I could keep going and going but I'm sure you get the idea. A little side note. You could also list your ideas out first and then sketch them after if you work better that way. But a hot tip to keep in mind, something I've started to learn about myself that when I make lists of things in my sketchbook without any attached imagery, with the best of intentions to come back and draw them. Instead of drawing them later, my brain bypasses these lists as clutter in my sketchbook. Unless I do the list and the drawing in real-time, and also I lose the visual image of what I had in mind. It's almost as if these left-brain, linear language centered lists are too constraining for my right holistic, intuitive brain that presents itself in my sketchbook. So I find a quick sketch no matter how rudimentary is often better when making a list, but accompanying it with sketches and real-time works. I have so many abandoned lists in my sketchbook that I've just stopped making them. You may find this as well. So I'm mentioning this here in case this is helpful for you to consider. So now that we've fully picked our brain on this subject, mining some metaphorical clay from our imaginations, we can move on from this and start to amass more clay in the form of our visual references. Your action item for this lesson is to polish off your preliminary vase sketches and keep them handy. Did you learn anything about yourself? Write it in the discussion section. In the next lesson, we're going to hunt down some pretty pictures and review how to reference them respectfully. 5. Collect Metaphorical Clay: [MUSIC] In the last lesson we emptied what was in our heads about vases. Now we'll expand our view of the subject by looking around. We'll get inspired by pretty visuals and references that relate and resonate and get excited to make our own vase and vessel illustrations. First, some things to keep in mind when sourcing references. We want to find a number of visual references from a range of sources to build a well-rounded set of sketches to pull from. We'll review this in more detail in the next lesson. But keep in mind when looking for visual imagery, we won't be drawing line for line replicas of our references but illustrating isolated elements that personally appeal to us in an individualized, stylized shorthand of sorts. Sources for inspiration could be straight from our imagination or inside our mind's eye like the exercises we did in the last lesson around our home, outside our window, reference images we've taken, reference images free to the public which we're about to cover, and reference images we find in books and elsewhere. Let's review some important notes about using references in a way that's responsible and respectful to other creatives to contribute to our final sketches. What's fair in referencing and what's not? You've likely heard no thought is original. Well, we're definitely swayed by our surroundings. Shared consciousness and groupthink are real for better or worse, it's unavoidable. Ideas and trends circulate for a reason. But where do we draw the line between building on our inspiration and well, copying? Let's talk scenarios. First, a disclaimer. I'm not a copyright lawyer nor an expert, I've just done this research for myself and wanted to share. First, that space between your mind, eyes, and hand expressing on a blank page the exercises we just did, this is obviously fair game. These are your thoughts in your unique sketches. You can use them towards your final drawing. Nature and your own photos are also fair to use as is. What about photography of nature taken by others? The only photography you can feel comfortable referencing directly line for line, in our case we're not referencing line for line but just to clarify. Other than your own are images that are free to the public domain for such a use. Public domain refers to works that belong to the public. There are different types of images that fit this description. Let's review, royalty free images and copyright free images. Royalty-free does not mean copyright-free. It generally means a one-time fee is paid for the rights to use the work. Specially agreed-upon terms are set out on how to use the work. These are called royalty-free images because we only pay an initial fee or the service licensing them to the public does, then we don't have to pay additional royalties to the creator for additional uses. How can we find royalty-free images? You can find them a few ways. You can search for your royalty-free stock photo websites online. Versions I like are Pexels and Unsplash because they have a ton of available images, they're high-quality, and they're free without any subscription. I found other paid sites with a higher number of images and other free sites with lower-quality images. I find these are the ideal option right in the middle. For finding artists credit is optional although it's the considerate thing to do, you're also free to use their content as a visual reference line for line and then sell that work. Each website has more details on all this. You can find royalty-free images elsewhere on the web. I've linked helpful article by Emma Roth via The Verge online magazine in the references section to this class. She provides ways to actually filter your Google images to images available to the public domain under what's called a creative commons license which is handy but I won't go into depth on this. You should really read the fine print for these images before using them and I didn't want to overwhelm you. She also suggests a number of other great resources and databases for legit, library, and museum references you can search. Copyright-free means the term of copyright protection for the image is ended or expired. The work falls in the public domain, meaning it's free to the public to use without permission or payment. The date of copyright expiry varies from country to country. There's no universal way to calculate this period although governments have signed certain international agreements to try to standardize this. But generally, in some countries it's calculated as so many years after the work is created and in others it's calculated as so many years after the creator's death. I haven't provided in-depth estimates or recommendations for this. If you'd like you can do some digging for how to calculate the copyright expiry for older artwork in the specific country that interests you. What if you love a photo you find somewhere else and want to reference it line for line in your work? You could always reach out to its photographer and ask them. Tell them you're inspired, exactly what you plan on doing, and that you'll credit them. If you do this respectfully you never know, they might be super flattered. It's worth a shot. All this to say, unfortunately, it's just not okay to illustrate something as is and say reference image found on Pinterest, source unknown. Well, good art is not objects and vases we own in our homes. We can absolutely draw what's around us. We should still aim to give credit where possible. It's not always a parent who made these objects, especially if it was licensed and manufactured for mass distribution. But I like to give a shout-out where I can. I like to check for an artist's name on the surface or the bottom of the item. Side note, for patterns that inspire you, stick to simple quintessential ones like marble dots, stripes, checks, etc. Putting your own spin on it rather than pulling specific ones from another pattern designer or invent your own. What about art and illustrations made by others or photos you've captured with others' artwork in them? Same deal, when looking at paintings, prints, patterns, or illustrations that aren't your own, even if you've taken your own pictures of them, we don't want to trace or make a replica of what we see. It's their original work, it's copyright infringement and illegal, no. Please don't let all this red tape deter you. Stick with me, I have a couple of helpful blanket suggestions. Put the pencil down. If you're looking at anything in your specific industry, the industry or medium you're making your work in, in this case, art illustration or surface pattern design. If I'm looking at another artist's work, I'm doing it to enjoy it and appreciate it. I'm not looking to sketch elements line for line. What if you're still learning? There's absolutely nothing wrong with studying other's work, especially if you're new. The issue with doing this with a pencil in hand is you could sketch something and not remember that it's another's work when you go back to it later. You might think about having a separate practice page clearly designated for this so you know it's not work you're going to make into something and then put on the market. But you really have to be careful and be mindful not to risk unintentional copyright infringement. A much better solution in this case would be to write down descriptive words about their work like clean lines, expressive brush strokes, heavy use of contrasting colors, things you want to lean into in your own way. I find it's more fun and you'll get more interesting results to create from your imagination or by finding inspiration from nature or other industries out there. In this class, we'll be looking at visual inspiration from other industries in areas like ceramics, fashion silhouettes, and nature. You could look to these or any other discipline that inspires you. Like music, theater, or architecture, the technique we'll review in the next lesson will teach us to isolate singular shapes or elements that we enjoy from our sources of inspiration, then alter and embellish on them for a new application or context. This process will activate your personal tastes and creative instincts to help you make unique work while respecting those that inspire you. This was a lot to cover, back to compiling references. As we touched on, multiple references from various contexts, industries, and even time periods are key to achieve a rich result. Let's review our list again. Here's some sources of inspiration so you can go off and hunt some down. We can dwell deep into our mind's eye, look around our home, outside our window, and reference images we've taken, and reference images free to the public domain. We can find those on royalty-free or stock image websites, reference images we find in books, and elsewhere. Remember to consider creative industries outside your own like ceramics, fashion, music, architecture, etc. Now, we only want to spend a half hour or so on this research. It can be a lot of fun but be aware of wormholes. I know it can be easy to get lost in beautiful imagery and to just start sketching. Hold off until the following lesson and set a timer if it helps you focus. The action item for this lesson is to collect and compile all your visual references nearby for easy reach. I'm excited to see what you'll come up with. In the next lesson we're going to start breaking out what we love from our visual references and experimenting with stylized shorthand sketches unique to us. 6. Shatter Your Matter: [MUSIC] Now that we have our references, we're going to start to build on our preliminary sketches, those we collected from our mind's eye. We're going to take a spin through all the visual references we've compiled sketching as we go. I'm going to start with vases in my home. I've collected quite a few over the years. Made from wood, milk glass, colored glass, and other materials. I'll move on to some books I have related to ceramics, fashion, and home decor. Then we'll follow this up with some images from royalty-free websites portraying more ceramics, coral, and shells. I want you to think of this sketching process as if we're metaphorically smashing existing vessels into pieces. Then we're going to pick up the parts we love, altered in our own hand, then build them back together in new ways with our own embellishments, reshaped, recast, and reglazed, unique to us. Before we move through all our references, I want to show you a little background on how the sketching process developed with the vase pictured second from the left. Now what I've learned is that we can approach sketching our subject a few ways. When I started out, I thought the only option was to draw things by narrowing in to every detail, shading every little crevice and shadow our eyes objectively observe true to life. I would shade rather than draw lines, hold my pencil sideways with my hand loose towards the top. Then I started drawing them, looking at the item as a whole, still objectively, but as more of a fun contour drawing using clean lines, holding my pencil towards the bottom, how you'd write still loose. Drawing how I see the outside of the object. Letting the imperfections or expressions of my own hand creep in, but still staying true to the subject. Then maybe adding lines in as I go. I developed a little more confidence and stared at it enough objects that I later realized by studying them a little longer. First, I could let my focus zoom both in and out at the details and the whole, which allowed me to subjectively break them down into my own rough 2D shapes or 3D forms. Then play with these shapes on paper to recreate them in my own way. Letting my sure, albeit a little wonky hand takeover. I wanted to have more control illustrating them to fit my own narrative, exaggerating some parts and omitting others, rather than being bound to how they exist in the real world. Almost my own shorthand for processing all the beautiful inspiration out there. There's no wrong or right way. But I'm going to show you this last process. I think it has a lot of benefits for sketching to then build your illustrations on. You can always go back and embellish them later in a more true to life form using the former observational processes I mentioned. But by deconstructing your subject into loose shapes and lines, it allows you to get an understanding of your subject and its possible permutations in different perspectives. You can analyze each element, take what you love out of the object and organize what you see in your own way. This gives you creative control to create something fresh. It also helps you internalize things. It commits it to your memory so it's easier to pull your understanding of this subject out of your imagination at a later time. Developing what I call your sketching shorthand for jotting down new ideas from your mind's eye. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary definition for the term shorthand is that it's a method for writing rapidly, substituting characters, abbreviations or symbols, usually in the case of letters, sounds, words, or phrases. More fitting for us, it's second definition is something likened to shorthand like our shorthand sketching process in providing rapid or abbreviated communication or representation. In our case, expressing or processing visual ideas. Let's try following this illustrative process with each of our visual references. What you're going to do is pick the detail or segment that stands out to you most on what you're looking at. Is it one shape, a color, a texture, a basic pattern like marble checkers or dots? For patterns that inspire you, I want to highlight stick to the simple, quintessential ones or invent your own based on nature or colors you enjoy rather than pulling specific stylized ones you see by another pattern designer. Then you're going to break down whatever this element is into basic shapes or details you see. I say you see because we all have a different perspective and what you see might be different than me, which makes this pretty cool. Try drawing it from multiple perspectives. In a flat 2D shape of 3D form with depth or your own quirky hybrid. I'll show you some examples a bit later. Try to exaggerate what you like or omit what you don't need. Consider giving it a new application than the original contexts you saw it in. If you like the top of the vase, consider it as the bottom of another. Also don't worry about the placement or look of your sketches. This is a forgiving process. My usual sketching process is quick, loose, and messy. I polish this up to better explain it sequentially for this class. In the following lesson, we will have the chance to organize our sketches in a way that makes sense for us to turn them into future motifs. Let's start sketching the remainder of our assets. I'm going to take a spin through these visual references, picking out parts and patterns I love. I'm going to work left to right for any visuals that have more than one item. I found three of these vases through vintage sellers. I just love teak and amber tones paired with a nice warm white. For the amber glass vase on the left, I'm going to draw the bottom. I notice it has a hexagonal shape on the bottom with triangles coming up off of that and I like how it's pointy and graceful at the same time. For this next one, I like the upper part. A rectangle that darts in with these curves we could use it as a middle of a vase instead of a top, or even sideways. Now, I'm actually going to use the pattern on the side of this next one. This vase was from target, which we sadly no longer have in Canada. I love the diamond shapes. Anytime I want to remember a pattern or a finish, I draw it in a little square. This tall one is actually a turned wood candlestick by John Ward from Lanark, Ontario near me. I'm going to draw these three square shapes stacked on top of each other. I really like their repetition. I looked up quadrilaterals recently and relearned that these diamond shapes are also called a rhombus, which sounds like a dance. This artist has actually a cool analogy comparing the lyrical shapes of turned and handmade wood forms to musical scales, which I thought was super interesting. Though this isn't a vase, the shape and the process that this candlestick was made is actually similar. It was made on a machine called a lathe that turns it similar to a pottery wheel. For this last one, I like how the bottom is a triangle. But I also like how the top almost looks like a shower cap, organic, almost like fabric. I'm going to draw a frilly vase top in a couple orientations. These milk glass vases were either passed down from my grandma or my mom or found in secondhand stores. I really enjoy how many shapes they come in and how versatile they are to mix with other objects in your home. I love filling these with lilacs in the spring from a tree that lives outside our front porch. I like the dots on the first one, but I want to put my own spin on them. They remind me of little buds with leaves. Here's my first attempt. I think I need to workshop this a little bit. I might make these shapes more angular. The second one reminds me of the Michelin Man. I'm going to draw that. I feel I crossed over into drawing this one pretty literally. I like the cushion square pattern on this side. I'm going to try deconstructing it even more, little squares. For fun, I'm going to try adding some lines to the first one I drew to give it depth. I really enjoy the feet on the one beside it. I'm thinking we could do all kinds of feet for our vases actually, different types of shapes. I love the petal-like shapes around the top of this next one. I'm going to try this in a couple of angles. Really liking this flower vase. For this next one, I'm thinking it looks squat, like a little mushroom. I think I'm going to do that. Hobnail ceramics always have my heart, especially white ones. I think because of their fun graphic nature and all the little circles and then their subtle gray scale when you look at their shadows. I'm going to try to highlight that here. On the far right I like this fan shape. I enjoy the little frill at the top too, but I think I'm going to highlight that there's these little triangles on top of the fan and then give those frills. It just helps me isolate it a little better. I found these colored vases from all over. This playful cat jug is by K. [inaudible] via anthropology. I enjoy how angular it is and the fact that it's an animal shape. I'm going to do my own interpretation of an angular animal. We'll draw it from a flat perspective and we'll try a little bird out as well. This gray one reminds me of the main arteries of the heart. It was a good home sense gem, I think it might be one of the two asymmetrical vases I own. What you own can tell you a bit about the drawing style you gravitate to. If you can remember one of my observations sketching earlier, was how I tend to draw symmetrical vases to. Earlier we looked at how a rudimentary vase has an opening, but in this case we have three. I'm going to play on this drawing something asymmetrical and organic with multiple openings. I'm going to make one smaller, so it's not too bowling ball like. The min vase is from a thrift store, and I really see the two triangles here. We can choose to draw them from a flat 2D perspective, a 3D perspective, or what I call a hybrid. The yellow and purple vases were our grandmas'. For the yellow, I'm going to narrow in on this diamond pattern. It gets small to big as it moves down the vessel. We'll try it a couple of ways here. The purple is the one I drew from memory in our first sketching lesson. For it, I'm going to draw the pretty top, that reminds me of a scallop shell. Now, these are my pattern vases, I wanted to show you how you can narrow in on pattern options, which we've already done a few times. We're going to draw these little square swatches to put the patterns in. The white floral vase is from home science and these are actually shells. We could draw these in a few ways in varying levels of abstraction so let's try that. I think I like this last one. I accidentally skipped this lovely thrifted blue dish here. For it, I would draw this rigid half oval or arch pattern. That you see on what I'm going to call the three pedal sections on the side of it. Or maybe let's try a scallop pattern. Now the marble; another home science find. To depict this, I hold my pencil loosely up a little higher towards the top, this makes it so that I have a little less control and I can let the striations or scribbles in this natural stone fall where they may. I also vary the pressure a little bit, so you have darker variations of your lines. Now the blue pattern vase is from a thrift store and it looks like it's been sponge or block painted. It makes me think of reward shock or inkblot test. What I'm seeing is little faces with prominent noses for some reason. This process is actually a lot like an inkblot test, and that it's so subjective. For all of these, you might see something totally different than what I'm pointing out. This brass one is from an old Moroccan tea set of my grandmas that I used to play with as a kid; I rarely actually never really studied the etchings on the side. I notice it's a floro and I'm going to put my own spin on it. There we go. I pick this book up in Barcelona when I traveled with a dear friend on a work trip. I read it home on the plane and it really deepen my love for ceramics. This work is by Jessilla Rogers. I love her playful shapes and her philosophy on creativity. I also really loved these round novens that she has on top of this one. I'm going to re-purpose them as a vase base. I should mention you could study some work by classic potters. The ones I like are Josiah Wedgwood or Picasso or you could look up contemporary potters like Sophie Alda or Jonathan Adler; just to name a couple. I bought this lovely Kate Spade book at a bookstore near me. I want to show you how other industries can inspire your work. In this case, dress silhouettes. I love the gentle but graphic scallop on her sleeve hem. Notice the triangle shape of the sleeve. Let's try flipping it over and sketching it as a vase. Why not? The quality of this photo isn't great; the photos great. Anyways, because the lace is blurred, it almost implies a pattern that was there on her bodice. I'm going to take my own liberties with this pattern and guess at it for my sketch. We're going to do something similar we did with the last one. We're going to flip it around and turn it into a vase top. The outside of this book by Domino magazine is as pretty as its insides. I could have run with so much inspiration from this book but I decided to narrow in on an oddly shaped umbrella stand to show you how you can look for inspiration in spots you wouldn't expect. Let's try flipping it over. I like the brass detail repeated on the top and the handle of the umbrella stand. I'm going to try to repeat something on my base and I'm going to repeat these oval shapes to mirror these half ovals on the bottom. Here we have some coral. I'm going to pull a few shapes from the bottom right hand corner and re-imagine them into a vase. Just to mix it up a little bit. Now I wanted to show you some possible patterns from nature. I like this almost frilly stripe pattern on these shells. The stripes are different thicknesses so I'm going to draw that here. I think that that would actually look lovely on the side of a super square base almost juxtaposing the pretty frills with a really angular vase. Now let's whirl through these last few more vases. I really enjoy their handles. I like the idea of using graphic shapes for handles either filled in or outlined, maybe in a bright color. Illustration is a constant dance, moving back and forth between drawing what you observe objectively and what you perceive subjectively to be there. A push and pull between your reference and your imagination, between realism and abstraction. Once you own the skill to recognize and channel either mode, you can do some really interesting things. Also, it's a good practice I find to learn to be forgiving of little mistakes and quirks in your hand, it all adds to the character of the piece. I used to study a little quirks in artist's work, mid-century artists especially, like Saul Steinberg just to name one. I would think, why did they choose to do it that way? I slowly realized the secret. That perfectly imperfect look comes from letting your hand do what it wants, rather than any intentional decision made by the artist. The action item for this lesson is to create pages of rough sketches of shapes and finishes to use for building vessels from all your reference imagery. In the next lesson, we're going to discuss ways to organize our various sketches together. 7. Pick Up Your Pieces: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to arrange all the sketches, "broken pieces we isolated" in a way that makes sense to us. Analyzing your sketches or assets is helpful. It allows us to notice patterns and what we like. The mere act of objectively observing and grouping things together helps us gain perspective on our style. We can look at our subjective tastes, objectively. Organizing your assets is helpful too, it let's us put them in a new context, which helps us remove biases for how we might have thrown them together without spending time to notice other cool options. This way we can visualize possible arrangements, we may not have noticed. We can also see a range of options at a glance. It gives us a go-to set of building blocks for making new polish work streamlining or workflow, it helps us evolve or motifs and style. You can more easily build on what you have rather than reinventing the wheel, you can objectively grow your body of work over time. Another nice benefit is you can make a large number of similar motifs based off of a similar shape or style, varying minor elements, ideal for cohesive pattern building. To review and arrange assets, let's experiment here with templates I've developed which I'm calling motif builders. As mentioned, I've linked these in the resources section. I made them based off of much less organized groupings I had in my sketchbook, any excuse to tell a story and because our subject is vases and vessels, I've made some narrative illustrations around that theme. I don't expect you to make a narrative theme every time you make sketches about a subject, I just couldn't resist making these for this class. One is called My Pottery Wheel for organizing your vase assets, your, "bits of clay, " and the other is called Paint My Own Pottery for organizing your pattern and finishing assets. Your metaphorical paints or glazes, you can use these templates or create your own. The main idea is to find a system that works for you. Now let's start looking for patterns among our sketches and assets, we were subjective in illustrating what we loved our way. Now it's time to be objective and look at all these assets from an outsider's perspective. In mind, I notice a lot of frills, diamonds, and triangles, I also tend to draw things in a smaller scale. You might notice a lot of circles in yours and maybe you tend to draw a larger scaled pieces, everyone's unique. It can be surprising to see what you gravitate to all in one spot. Let's start plugging our items into our different anatomical parts of a vase. I set it up this way based on the basic elements we outlined in our first sketching lesson. How vessels have a top, a bottom, and a middle. I added optional handles and a catch-all other section. I also added some prompts in a box on the lower right corner, which we'll review in the next lesson. Remember to look at your first baseline illustration of a base that you made. Do we want to include that or something you learned from that. I think I'll include it in other to remind me that I like to play with negative space. Over time as you internalize these observations, you'll be able to rely less on visual references and can experiment more with ideas from your imagination. There'll be able to rely on certain symbols or motifs that you're drawn to. Let's keep moving sequentially through them. You can also add at this point any new sketches that this sparks. I'm going to add a trapezoid shape because I want to remember the option of having a more graphic angular vase. Notice how I don't enter all of them into the motif builder, but ideas that stand out, this further turns our inspiration on its head, putting our ideas into a new context. Let's do the same for your patterns and embellishments. As with my last motif builder, I notice a lot of frills and diamond shapes, as well as some flowers. Sometimes I'll take an old pattern I've made and shrink it down into an object in an illustration, let's try that here. Another option to work with. Think of looking back through any patterns you've made and consider trying them out in this new context. I really like these little faces so I'm going to add a bigger single one. I figured it might be something nice to put on the side of a vase. Some diamonds and some hub nails, I'm going to workshop this floral to make it more graphic. That's not quite right, let's try again. Yeah, that works. I also noticed I don't have a ton of graphic, high-contrast patterns, more organic, flowy ones and I know we like a mix, at least in my home. I'm going to color in a graphic harlequin pattern into this one. I like to try building this pattern two ways, shaped by shape versus doing it with crisscross lines. You can give two very different effects, I like the almost wonky handmade version a little more. I'm going to color that one in, I want to mention it can be tempting here to want to analyze and categorize for a long time before moving on to actually making any of your own work and we want to avoid this. Think of this as a living, breathing palette of ideas that you can always come back to an ad to over time. This is just your place to experiment. Please don't get too caught up on using your motif builders. They're meant to be a help not a hindrance. While having things in one spot is nice for all the reasons we discussed, it's not required for some of your best creative work. I don't want you to think you have to track down these subject-specific templates before you can draw or sketch new ideas or new experiences around your subject. Neil Gaiman, famous author of stardust and other literary gems, does a masterclass. In it he talks about how he catalogs inspiration for his books in a notebook that he carries with him in his lovely British accent, which I'm about to butcher. He says, "Throw it on the compost heap." I often hear that his lovely voice in my head. I just love thinking about this analogy for my sketch books. You might not know when you'll use an idea, but you can always documented as you go, then let all of your ideas percolate and fertilize each other until you're ready to go back to them. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think it's good to maintain this open, spongy state without too many right angles. This space is where the peculiar ideas tend to pop in. Sometimes they're fully formed, sometimes needing a bit of refinement, sometimes paired with something on the opposite end of your sketchbook. Other times, something in your mind that you're barely able to pin down. I know that there are seasons for things and my compost heap often looks a lot more like my scrappy analyzing notes and not always like my organized categorized notes that I've cooked up for this class. Consider this process and nice addition to your evolving practice. Let's keep going with it before we move on to our next lesson, don't forget to take a picture of either your sketchbook assets or you're finished motif builders for your class project. The action item for this lesson is to create your own motif builder or builders in a way that helps you make future work. In the next lesson, we'll create a finished vessel motif. 8. Sculpt Your Vessel: In this lesson we're going to take our completed motif builders or similar templates and use them to play and experiment with ways we can illustrate vessels and our sketchbook. Andy J Miller AKA Andy J Pizza, Illustrator and creator of the Creative Pep Talk podcast, says in order to make creative gems it's important to mine, refine, and shine. I think we've done that in a sense with this process. We've mined our imaginations and personal tastes to inspire our sketches. We've refined our style, analyzing what we love from an objective perspective in our motif builders and now it's time to create work that will shine. We know others might see more of the shiny work you put out, but we know proportionally there's a lot more mining and more or less refining going on behind the scenes. Hopefully this process helps you dig deeper. We're going to make a page of vessel combinations picking elements from each category of the my pottery wheel motif builder. We'll then embellish as many as we'd like with a pattern or line work from the paint my own pottery motif builder. You can add some flowers or other elements, interacting with them, whatever you'd like. Then you have the option of choosing one or several and making a final piece in your medium of choice. If you want more tips on style, you can even watch my last class, decorate like an artist to work your piece into your decor. Let's play, and illustrate different combinations. We're going to experiment what these prompts on the bottom right hand corner. I'm just going to go ahead and pick the first options from the top, middle, and bottom. We'll play with different scales for the top and middle. Let's try a tall version, a wide version, and from different perspectives we'll try a flat 2D version from the side, a formed 3D version from the top. What I call a wonky hybrid where it's drawn as a flat shape, but our lines suggests form. Depending what you're going for or what context you're putting your basin, you can pick and choose. I'm going to go triangle crazy; [LAUGHTER] just crazy, and pick the shape from each box for the whole vase. Let's see what we come up with. Let's try something more angular. I'm getting ahead of myself, but let's even add a pointy pattern to this one. Cool. I could see this as a vintage etched glass, maybe in a collection of other colored glasses. Let's actually try softening it up a little with some different handles very [inaudible] like this one [LAUGHTER]. Let's keep playing with shapes. Let's try mixing a triangle, circle and square. In some combination. I just realized I don't have a typical square up here. Just to add that in, let's try it one way and another way. We use a half circle here instead. Let's do one with feet, maybe quadrilateral, or middle or another half circle. Cute. Let's try that one a different way. We'll throw a frill detail on the bottom just to be a little different. Notice I'm drawing these mostly in a flat perspective to get the shapes down, but we always have the option to draw them at other perspectives later. Let me show you some other examples. I'm going to draw this square vessel then I'll show you how you can use this perspective prompt with any shape. I'll put this little cube here then we're going to draw this phase in a whole new vantage point. Give them some little handles here. Varying perspective when drawing multiple phases together is an elegant way to convey depth. Another thing we can think about which we've already been doing, it's just stacking shapes. You can add as many as you'd like to your middle really. Here's an example. There, it looks like a smart looking candlestick. Let's try one of our knob end bottoms on this one. Too far? To make these work, we could go back and vary their perspective and scale. Maybe make the middle part bigger and the bottom a little nub and stained here. Anyway, let's experiment with some quirky items from our other section. Let's try a personified vase. I'm drawing mine from the side. You could try this or head-on. Let's embellish with some frills. Now, is this her shirt or are they scallops on a vase? I like moments when your eye can take something multiple ways. We'll give her an earring or is this a handle? Let's play with an organic asymmetrical shape now. I'm going to push myself out of my comfort zone of symmetry. We'll keep it organic and misshapen. This time, less nebulous and more angular. We'll add our opening to give it a purpose and some lines to define it a little. Let's draw some herbs to give it a purpose. Our girl is getting in the way here. I like how these motifs are interacting now. Maybe I'll pretend she's smelling the herbs. [LAUGHTER] This can grow into a whole pattern of herbs-smelling ladies. Maybe she's not a vase after all. Here we have rosemary. I'll make a note to remind myself. I may or may not come back to this, but I love how playing around makes for happy accidents and unexpected stories. Now, let's do some more playing around with negative space and try a figure-ground reversal illustration. I'll pick a random combination of shapes to show you then I'm going to color around the vase. We can pretend it's on a tablecloth or another cool surface. Normally positive space refers to the subject and negative space refers to the area around the subject, but by reversing the tones it draws your eye to the shapes around the vase enhancing its silhouette. I like using pretty painterly textures in this area then the empty negative space becomes the positive space and it's a fun way to treat your eyes. Now, let's paint our pottery and do some experiments with our patterns. Let's start with marble. Just like our last couple of lessons, we'll hold your pencil nice and loose. Hold it sideways. Mimic natural marble whose lines aren't perfectly lined up to the object it's made into, will vary our pressure. I'm going to stop there. Sometimes less is more. Don't forget negative space speaks loudly too. Now, let's try out these arches. We'll give a little structure to the vase top here. Now, let's do some florals somewhere. I'm going to show you another perspective I didn't expand on yet. We talked about what I called my wonky hybrid of 2D shapes with 3D lines. Another way of saying this is forced perspective. It's a way of manipulating visual perception by varying scale with the viewers' vantage point. I like using this trick to show both the top and side of a table especially if they're pretty details I like. Or in this case, both the delicate dainty silhouette of a vase along with the contents inside it. Employing forced perspective along with figure-ground reversal might just be two of my favorite techniques. On top of this, since we're showing off pretty sides of things, let me use this to show you two ways you could apply your pattern on this vessel. We could draw flowers as if they're a pattern on the vessel. Adding depth to our subject to cement them into it. In this case, you could add something on top if you wanted, like ice cream or some food, or who knows? Or leave them floating inside the vessel to show they're separate from the vessel. Another way of stacking shapes on top of each other. In this case, from an aerial perspective versus flat. Maybe they're potpourri. Sometimes it's nice to play double duty and have things work a little bit harder. I'm going to add this new pattern that this exercise sparked into my motif builder. What else? Remember, I said I liked the idea of adding this frilly pattern on the side of this angular vase. I'm going to do that now, it's nice to juxtapose these things. Mix hard with soft, circular with angular. You get the idea. At any point really, you can also go back and add any patterns you might have overlooked for your pattern builder. I forgot to add this square cushion pattern here, which now reminds me of gemstones, almost like emeralds. Would that be cool, an emerald studded vessel? You can see how it's easy to get shiny object syndrome with this playful process, figuratively and literally in this case. Now let's add some hobnails on this one, which we could color in later. I'm going to add a few more vessels here that I think would complement some patterns I have. Working backwards, I guess. It's good to add some darker contrasting elements to show value and give interest as well. Let's add another. As you can see, I only scratched the surface of all the endless base combinations and perspectives you could illustrate. Even without using our motif builders, we came up with some fun vases in our previous sketches. I should say, for this floral and these patterns, another way to show it's been applied to the piece versus floating on top is to draw it cut off by the edges and into the corners of the piece versus floating inside it. Now I'm going to choose vases to illustrate for our final piece. I picked three as threes are odd numbers are pleasing grouping and I couldn't really settle on just one. I like how this check floral and marble compliment each other. They're all rounded and flowy but have varied patterns. Now I'm going to do a thumbnail sketch, a little mini sketch to see how they work best laid out in either direction. I'm going to be stacking them in a portrait orientation. Let me add in the darker values here so I get an idea of their visual weight. Let's see. This way, or this way. I like the second option with the darker value as a foundation. Next, I'm going to mark lightly where they go. Then we'll sketch them out. Now, there's wonky and then there's a visual imbalance. I'd like to embrace the hand quirks. Then a final piece, you still have to keep your overall composition in mind. You want the negative spaces to be as visually pleasing as the positive spaces where your subject is. This was initially a little too off-centered. We're not going for perfection, just balance, which can be applied in all areas of life really. Let's make this official, shall we? I know one of these has less ink, so don't mind me just testing them out here. I'll be using my micron pen on my watercolor paper. Deep breath, big circle. I find moving your arm rather than just your hand helps with those. Same applies to straight lines. Now we'll use the same principles we covered to recreate our marble. On a whim, I'm going to add a darker opening to this vessel to add in a little more value contrast. Now, I held off on embellishing this piece beyond the lines and patterns as I wanted this class to be more about process. We'll save color and everything else for another class. As I'm making this, I realized I added a line on top that I didn't want. I prefer to imply edges with my pattern. This is a gestalt principle called closure, where you imply lines with pattern or a change of color. As you can see, it's nice to take a minimal approach and do less with more. Instead, we're going to turn the top into checkered scallops. I also realized as I was making this in pen, I didn't give their perspective much thought in relation to each other. I was more concerned about value. Had I put them in the opposite direction that I'd considered with the floral on the bottom and then checkered on the top, they would've looked more as though the bottom was on a table and the other two on stacked shelves beyond it. It doesn't bother me much either way, I like things a bit off. They're abstract anyway. But if I wanted it more true to life, I could look at bringing these into photo-shop or procreate and repositioning them, or playing around with them a little further. Let's add some lines to these top white pieces to mirror the dark ones next to them. It's necessary in this case because there's no value contrast here to imply them. If we had alternated each frill in a different color then we wouldn't have to add them. I'm going to put a photo of this in a frame dark vignette mock-up I made to see how it looks. You can feel free to frame yours or do the same. If you want to develop your interior decor style, frame your piece and photograph it. The first half of my last class, decorate like an artist, will help you with this. Then if you want to enter your work in the frame digitally instead, you can watch the second part to learn to turn this photo into a mock-up. As you can imagine, you can now use this process, studying just about any subject via your sketches. Let's take the process we learned and use the same steps on a random example of dogs. Empty what's in your head about it. Find its basic form or definition. Decide the basic parts needed to make your own. Find additional inspiration that speaks to you in some way from various sources. Keeping in mind how to reference sources respectfully. Pick the part or parts you love most. Break that down into shapes, drawn in your hand and the perspective and scale you want. You can consider subverting it by giving it a new application. Objectively observe and group your sketches to help you notice patterns and symbols that you like to gain perspective on your style. Embellish it further with patterns, shading, colors, finishes, all that good stuff. Your action item for this lesson is to experiment with motifs. Your optional action items include creating a finished piece and a medium of your choice and styling it in your home. In the next lesson, we'll wrap up. 9. Congrats & Thank You!: [MUSIC] Congratulations, you're done. Thank you for coming along with me on this journey, learning this new process. I hope you took away plenty of inspiration to spark your imagination, hone your stylistic shorthand and design vessel assets. Maybe even a final vessel or two, as well as the technical knowledge to observe and sketch what you love in your own way. When building your assets more than anything remember to have fun. That's the main thing. You know what you like and what makes you happy. Follow that. Give yourself the space to experiment and let something take shape with your shapes. That's where the magic happens. Remember to also post your class project, photograph either your sketchbook assets, your motif builders, or if you'd like, a finished piece of one or more of your vessels and a medium of your choice and upload it to the class project section. Give it a title and a brief description. Write whatever you'd like if you're feeling up to it, share the story of some of the inspiration behind your vessels or any discoveries or7 happy accidents you made along the way. I'd love to hear more about you and your story. If you have a question, there's someone else in our community who likely has a similar one so please leave it here. I'm sure we'll all learn from each other. Share pictures of your process on Instagram and tag me @ericacatherindesign with the hashtag hone your illustration style. I love cheering you on and connecting over art and inspiration. I can't wait to see what you make. If you enjoyed this class and want to stay in touch, sign up for my lipstick love letter newsletter. It includes free printables, a free PSD mock-up, and some other freebies. I'd also really appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave a written review of this class. I'd like to make more classes that provide you with the most value possible and this will help me do just that. If you want to be one of the first to hear about future classes, please give me a follow on Skillshare. Until next time friends don't be a stranger.[MUSIC].