Host an Art Party: Prompts & Themes for Drawing with Friends

1. Introduction: Hi everyone, welcome to ladies drawing night. I'm Julia. I'm Rachel. I'm Lia. We get together and meet and draw together. Now, you're going to do that with us today. I am an illustrator and I make patterns and I write books. I'm a children's picture book art director. I also do illustration projects and write children's books. I am also an illustrator. I also work on patterns, and occasionally, books. We enjoy drawing together more than anything, more than working on a specific project. Just drinking wine, talking, experimenting, using each other's materials, giving each other a little bit of feedback. I learned so much from these ladies, just what kind of brushes to try and advice on my work. Your style has changed a lot. My style has changed probably from the influence of some of these nights. We explore our styles, just doing more experimenting than we would do on our client work. It gives us a chance to do that. So what we're going to do tonight is a collaborative drawing project. So we have five sheets of paper and we're all going to work together making team drawings, each adding our own little part to them. We'll just keep passing them around until we think they're finished. At the end, we're going to talk about what we think about the drawings, whether they're bad, or good, or in-between, or what can make them better, or how they came together. Or what we were feeling or thinking about when we're making them or as were making them. So we're going to talk about the paper we use, the themes we use, why we add them, the colors we use and why we add them. Then, at the end, we're going to look at them all and talk about them as if it's like an art class because that's what we're doing for each other anyway. We're all looking at each other's work and talking about it and trying to make it better or making suggestions. So, at the end, whatever we make, we have no idea what's going to happen. We're going to talk about it. We all each have our own style and it's really fun to see, for instance, Julia's tight drawing style next to Lia's washier style or my brushier style, and see how we can counterpoint each other. It's just fun because you have to let go of an end result, really you just have to, it's like improvisation with drawing. We've been doing this for four years, getting together, meeting in these nights. Usually, it goes for three hours. We have wine, we have food. Because we were doing this so much and sharing it online, a lot of people were writing in and saying, "Hey, we wish we could come to a ladies drawing night. We want to be part of this too." So we started doing them with a lot more people and organizing workshops together. Then, that took off and then people in other states started starting their own ladies drawing nights. Then, we decided we could expand it even more, and we made a book. It is 12, no, it is 10 nights of ladies drawing nights with special guests and projects to do at your ladies drawing night. So we're going to do one of the projects from this book tonight which is collaborative drawing. So what's exciting about this is that everybody puts a little bit into it and you'd never know what's going to happen with the drawing. We didn't plan this at all. So we have no expectations, we're just going to come here, make some art together, talk about the art while we're making it, and lead you through what that would be like if this was any ladies drawing night. So, you're here to party, and drink wine, and eat snacks with us too. 2. Collaborating: Approach & Materials: I think a lot of the times when we're just drawing on our own or when I'm drawing on my own, there's a lot of pressure on me to make a perfect drawing or make something that I really like that's really good. I think once you get a bunch of people involved in one drawing, it takes the pressure off and even if it turns out bad, you can just laugh with your friends about it and see what happens and it's always unexpected. Yeah, and I really like it because our styles are pretty diff- I mean, they're similar in certain ways, but we all each have our own style and it's really fun to see, for instance, Julia's tight drawing style next to Leah's washier style or my brushier style and see how we can counterpoint each other. It's just fun because you have to let go of an end result really. It's like improvisation with drawing and it just frees you, it loosens you, and I always figure out something that I wouldn't have thought of by working on my own. Yeah, it gives me ideas for how I could combine different textures or styles in my own work, maybe, but like you just said, I would never have done that on my own. You do have to pretty much let go of the end result even though we are aiming for a good end result, but you really just have to go with the flow. Yeah. That's a good exercise. It just loosens you up. But because you're with your friends, I feel it doesn't really matter, if it's bad, you can just laugh at it. If it's bad, you can blame the other person like you did that part. Yeah, you did that, that wasn't me. Also, we disagree about which ones we- when we've done this before, some of us have really liked certain ones and others are, no, that's terrible, so it's pretty subjective. It's interesting to see what you guys like that I might not like or vice versa. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's hard to get a drawing, look at it, and think, how am I going to add my own personal portion to this thing that already exists that I didn't make? And you have to give up what you might have done and say, "Well, this is what somebody else already did, there's nothing I can do to change that, I have to figure out how to fit my own work into this and go with it." And sometimes letting go of that control and feeling like, okay, this is not my drawing, this is our drawing, and how can I make our drawing better, not specifically my drawing? It's a hard thing to do, and when you do this exercise, you're forced to do that and it's a really good thing to learn how to do for yourself because then, once you're approaching your own work, you do that to yourself too. Yeah. So, I think it's a good exercise also to work with other people, because you're going to do that in life in many, many ways. So, if you can draw together, you can probably hang out together, you can probably be friends, you can probably do some business together. Yeah. It's true. Because we gently talk to each other while we're drawing, and I remember you would say things to me like, oh, are you really going to do that, are you really going to use- Yeah. Come on, are you using the same two colors again tonight, Rachel? Yeah. Exactly. Sorry. Well, we all have our crutch colors, you know. You've mentioned to me, you like that I give you ideas or art direct you, because- I love it. You art direct so much in your life that it's fun to hear- I art direct all day long and it's kind of refreshing to have someone tell me what to do at the end of the day and then just do it, and be the craftsperson. It's a wonderful difference from my everyday life. Yeah. I did just remember, when we did this for the book, we were constantly talking to each other while we were doing it. We weren't just working in isolation, we were looking at what everyone else was doing and offering suggestions and seeing what fit better where. Different people are good at different things, so if a tree is looking kind of too tight because I tend to use like a uniball pen and draw it really tiny, then I say, "Hey, Rachel, draw some blobs here so that it loosens this up for me. Do you mind, just adding some of that on here?" Or "Oh, give that to Leah, she's good at drawing people." Yeah. So, we would count on each other and be a crutch for each other to fill in the parts that needed to be better. Totally. I don't know what's going to happen tonight. Well, I am a master blobber, so- Hopefully, they'll all come together and we'll show you how that will work. Yeah. You don't have to pass the papers around in order. We are just passing them until it feels finished. Also, since each drawing is themed, that's another way to structure things. Limiting things and structuring things helps you not make this bizarre, out-of-nowhere piece of artwork. We limit the palette and we also constrain the theme and that really helps keep things tied together and then the five drawings all end up looking like they belong together at the end of the night. Yeah. So, let's start with how we're going to work. So, right in front of us, we have five sheets of Strathmore Watercolor Paper. It looks like this, just so you can see what it is. It's my favorite everyday watercolor paper. You can buy it at Michael's, I think. Yeah, we chose this because it's just pretty inexpensive. We don't want to feel precious about anything we're making tonight because, like we said, we don't know how it's going to turn out, but it's heavy enough and good enough, and it's going to work with all our paint. I find that actually to be something really nice for myself is that if I work on cheaper materials, I feel much freer. So, it's something to think about when you make your own choices with materials, is do you feel freer if you're not worried about how much money you're spending on the materials. Some of my papers is two dollars a sheet. I know, and I always get a little- when we're working on that. Okay, so I brought my giant bag of paints of fun and we haven't actually- Paints of fun? Paints of fun. This bag is like- All kinds of fun. Hundreds of dollars worth of acrylic wash paints. Those are each like nine dollars, right? So, that's- It's a lot of money, but it is what I do for a living, so I do- That's the kind of paint that you like. -invest in this. Yeah, but for you, you can use anything you want. You can use watercolor, you can use tempera paint, you can use ink, you can use whatever to do your collaborations, you can cut out paper, you can collage, you can draw with markers, you can draw with pencils. This is not something you have to have to do this project. This is just something we use constantly. Yeah. So, don't. It's not about this. Like your kind of paint is not even what I would usually use and it's not what you would usually use. Not what I would usually use, but we're doing it. But you win. You win. But Julia wins because she has the bag of fun or the paint of fun. So, all right, we are going to pick a limited palette, which basically means, we are constricting ourselves to only using, what did we decide, three or four colors? Three colors. Three colors. We did three last time. Plus black. Okay, and we had talked about maybe doing bright colors so that they show up nicely and everyone can see what we're painting easily. So. So, we really don't know. We have to decide. Well, I'm the best at color. Just kidding. Okay. In your world. I do, I mute my colors too much, it's something I'm trying to fix in my work. So, being around Leah who uses very bright colors has been helpful. Leah, what are you thinking? I think like you like to- I like that one. That's what we're using for these drawings we're doing this week. This is olive green. That's a nice color. Yeah. That's nice and bright. This peach one didn't work. I mean, I think it's hard to see. Shell pink. That's the shell pink, it's hard to see, so. I like- ooh, that could be fun. Well, that's very christmassy. No, no, not with that one though. Well, you know I love blue. Red and it's like a burnt red though. It's not so like- That is not a burnt red. That is a bright, bright red. It's not? Maybe it's just- I do have a burnt red though. Maybe it's just the lighting. Burnt sienna. No. This is yours. What if we did like this? This and this and this. Very bright together. That's too bright. Too bright? I wouldn't mind a bright color with more than neutral. I really like this one, if we paired this with like that or something. That's nice. I like that. We want one more. The green? There's also that yellowy. What about like that? I just feel like this is too- They're too similar. -too like loud, like 80s. Okay, we're not making 80s paintings today. That's what I was looking for. That's nice. It's like that yellow ochre. Okay. So, we've made a decision we all agree on and it's yellow ochre, ochre, yellow ochre, cobalt blue. Sorry. Too much wine already. Cobalt blue. Ash rose. I want to see what this looks like, does this look like that inside the tube? Yes. Oh. It's very nice. I use that color constantly. That's my second tube of it. That looks great. I love it. That's a good sign. Yeah, and black just because I want to draw with a pen so we're going to use black. We're going to use watercolor, because I don't have a black tube of paint because I don't know where it went. Yeah. Okay, so we did that. Okay. Should we use pen? I was going to use pen. You can use pen. Well, Julia draws with pen- A lot. -a lot. That's her style. Right, and I don't use really. I almost exclusively use brush. I'm probably going to use a pen because if I don't, I will feel really lost. Well, you'll be the- Yeah. -you'll be the pen person, then. Well, that's nice because my drawings are more painterly and a little more solid and- You're the mid. Yeah, and then that contrasts with Julia's thinner line and- My crazy line. You go like bigger and fuller and washier. Yeah, I tend to get really washy and loose and subtle and bright and contrasty. So, even though we're using the same materials, it ends up looking so different. All right. Plus you can. 3. Picking Themes & Staring to Draw: Okay, now we're ready for step two. Step two is picking on themes for each drawing. We want to have themes so that we know where to start, or else we're lost, like what should I draw? But with a theme, you have something to start with. So, we sort of picked what we were going to do our themes, but we haven't exactly narrowed it down. I think what did we decide? Do you guys remember? Fashion, architecture, abstract/geometric, and that's three, and interior, or a room, and then number five. What's number five? We decided not to do faces, right? A room. We said not to do floral either, but what about like plants? Floral, we were going to do floral. Yeah, we can do a floral. Okay. Or a plant. But you said that was too typical. But let's do it. Well, let's do it- We have flowers right there. We'll try to make it not typical, how about that? Yeah. Okay, like exotic flowers. Yeah. Yeah. I think also it's something a lot of people love doing, so- Yeah, and so it's fun. -it will be nice to do our take on it. Now we are writing the different themes we came up with in pencil on each sheet of paper on the very bottom corner. So, I'm going to write architecture? I spelled it wrong already. Here [inaudible] It's here too. On this one? Okay. I'm going to write fashion. Yeah, here, I'll pass this down to you. Thanks. What were the other ones? Living room? Yeah. Or an interior? Which one did we decide? Does it matter which- It doesn't matter which side is which. Let's be specific because it might be easier. Let's do the living room. Living room? Does it matter which side is which for this paper? It's less bumpy on one side I'm sort of going by that. That's the back then. I hate bumpy papers. It's not bumpy once you start working on it. Did I do fashion, architecture, living room? Fashion, architecture, living room. Abstract, and botanicals, or exotic. Exotic is a good word for plants and flowers. I was going to say flora and fauna but botanicals is great. But fauna means like animals too, right? Maybe you're right. Okay, botanicaI. Don't put that on that makes me sounds, I'm maybe- Yeah, let's not do animals. But I don't know what fauna means on camera. It's too late. We're drinking. I'm putting on the glasses. It's style. Okay. Okay. So, now we have our colors, we have our themes, we have our paper; should we start? Let's go. Let's do it. I don't want to start with architecture, that's too scary. Oh yeah, I'm a little scared of starting with living room. Julia will start with architecture. I'll start with fashion. You just start with abstract, Rachel. I should. Okay. Thank you for planting my strength. Okay, I'll do botanical and you can have fashion. So- Oh, wait- -I'm going to start with fashion- Where- -because- -where is that- Oh, no. Where's abstract? Okay, here's the abstract. Okay. Settled? Settled. It's not. Julia and I went to the Jewish Museum on Saturday and we saw the Isaac Mizrahi show. So, I have a lot of photos in my camera from the exhibition we saw, so I'm actually going to use reference to start. I don't know if you guys are going to use reference. I don't know. I'm starting with botanical so I think I'm just going to draw the flowers that we have. I have pictures on my phone because constantly I'm taking pictures of things I like that I see, so at least I have some kind of starting point if I need to look at something and draw from it, makes it a lot easier. I have a lot of photos of living rooms on my phone from when I went just went to Holland, so that'll come in handy with the living room one? Yeah. We're doing horizontal, right? We want- Yeah. Yeah. We should keep on consistent, so- Let's keep it more horizontal. Okay, and let's- I'm starting with abstract. I'm just going to use my palette I guess because I can't really reach over there. This should be interesting with no green. With no what? No green for botanical. Oh, excellent. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that makes it better or different. I'm starting with abstract because I do love to work abstract and just make abstract shapes and swirls and things like that, so. Just one thing what we're not going to do is mix the colors together. Like sometimes, people will say, oh, you're using a limited palette and that allows you to mix infinite amount of colors from mixing the three colors together, but we're going to keep the colors clean. So, we're not mixing between them. We can have a little water, but that's better. You can see the color. So, what happens during ladies dry night as we talk about what's going on in our lives and what projects we're working on? So, if you guys want to really do that, could do that a little bit. Okay. What are you working on? What did you work on today, or what are you working on this week, or what's exciting? That's what we tend to do. Yeah. You go first. I'm trying to finish Food Anatomy, the third book in the series of anatomy books that I do that are like picture dictionaries, and I still haven't finished and everything takes so long, it's like cleaning up and Photoshop is all that's left, but it just takes hours. You'd never guess how many hours I've put into one book. Does Aaron help you with that or not so much? No. So, I have an assistant and he comes- well, he came and helped paint some of the book but what he's painting is just like big fields of color and then I go in and fix it and changed its colors so it appeals to my palate, but he helps with a lot of the work. That's what I used to do for you. Yeah, when Leah worked for me, she worked on the Farm Anatomy book. Then I had another assistant work on the Nature books. So, I always have assistants. I can luckily afford to do that right now. That wasn't always the case, but. That looks nice, Rachel. Thanks, I really, really like this color. What's this color called again? Ash Rose, nice. I'm going to want to use this color. It's like your usual stuff but more mutant. I really, really like it. Yeah, I feel like we're doing the same thing right now where I'm just drawing those hydrangeas from there, but I'm spacing them out. So, it's like elements of a pattern where someone else can go in and their drawings can be evenly spaced throughout and it won't just be like my stuff clustered and then someone else's stuff clustered at it. It will have more of a flow to it. Yeah, I'm trying to think about how not to dominate the whole thing within two seconds, which I think I could easily do right now because drawing things abstractly is so fast. I don't have to refer to anything, it's just very loose. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that too, like I could just cover this whole thing really quick, but I'm going not to do that. Yeah. I'm trying to think about how if someone added things to this, how they're things could balance the composition and add to it. All right, I think I should pass this on. All right, just let it dry over there. Yeah, I'll just let it dry over here. Maybe I should just hand this to you, or you want to start a new one? Architecture or living room. I could start living room. Yeah. Now, I'm going to actually use this living room photos. Here we go. I'm going to use my reference from that show too, then. It'll all be similar designer and over again. You drew the favorite outfit of ours. So far, right now there is a lot of blank space on my page, so I'm filling in between it with this pen, which is really thin to make a contrast to what Leah is doing. We are just using like a thick brush. I think it will be nice to put my lines here and there around the page to sort of complement what she started here, which is like putting random flowers here and there. It as bad as I started, already working on this when we have already- it's still a blank one. But we'll keep going. That's okay. I'll do the blank one next. Okay. Because we want to have them all be worked on in the same level, so you don't want to just concentrate on just one of the drawings passing back and forth because you want to keep them all going at once and at the same time. And switching between them a lot, I think. Everybody can do it differently. Yeah. No, that makes sense. You don't get stuck like you're not focused on one drawing and getting it just right, you go between each of them. I'm acting as if Leah's flowers are in the front, so when I'm drawing I'm not going over them, I'm going behind them. You're ready? Why don't you take that blank one nobody started. I think it's architecture. Architecture? Okay. I can do that, yeah. Yes, why not? Because we were scared? I started the living room but I want to make sure that I don't make the whole picture. 4. Drawing Styles: Rachael, Julia & Leah: The way that I work is I usually don't know what I'm doing until I'm doing it, and then I figure out how to piece together, it's like a puzzle from whatever I start doing that gives me, it's like a clue to the next step. I tend to work really brushy and really, really loose, and then I try to counterpoint that with a little bit of tightness and a little bit of structure. But I try to see how loose I can go without losing the structure, which is a game. I play with myself when I paint. I'll make club little rules for myself and then I'll try to see how close I can come to breaking them without breaking them. It's like using a system. But generally, yeah, I just try to do really loose brushy work and I'm trying to counter point the more tight work with some more loosey-goosey stuff. But always, I don't want to say downside, but the risk of working as loose as I do is that you make a lot of mistakes and I can see offs already. I've done some unintentional color mixing, which is definitely breaking the rules of what we decided to do. So, I have to really watch that because that's very much a part of my style, but that's a fun exercise for me to try not to do that. So, here, I tried to make some really loose very, very light background patterns that Julia or Leah can add on top of once they're dry. That are really, really abstract and almost you're not sure if they're leaves or stems or I'm just looking at the flower, and I'm trying to get the floweriness of it, I'm not really trying to get the exact shapes or the exact details or colors, obviously, not the colors, but I'm really just trying to get the feeling of the flow of it, and the shapes of it, and not necessarily be really strict about it. It's inspired by rather than using it as reference. So, that's the game I'm playing right now. So, basically, I got this fashion one, and Leah had drawn a drawing, and I have drawn a drawing, and we're going straight across. So, I decided to mix it up because I didn't want to just tell women going straight across. So, I turned the page and I started a new woman facing the other way, so that at least, they'll be some different composition than just trying to claw across. I am the only one who works in this very thin pen. So, you're always going to know what I did. I also use paint too, but I mix between the two. I just liked the way that the variation of that, keeping the black line very clean, and then juxtaposing, and against big flat colors. Then, sometimes I'll paint with a paintbrush a line, which I just did right now, which is unusual for me, but it happens once in awhile. So, this one, I have a picture on my phone and I'm drawing what I see, but I'm doing it slightly different. The colors are different and the shapes are slightly different. When I draw from photos, if you put them side-by-side, you would know that I drew from the photo, but you would never recognize that probably this dress as the dress that appeared in that exhibit because it looks so different. I'll probably add another color to it or my shapes will be a little different. So, it's nice to have something to go off, but I'm not even probably a good enough render to make things look exactly like a photo anyway, so I don't usually have to worry about drawing from photos. If you do something really rendered where you're drawing exactly what you see in the photo, you have to make sure it's your own photo and you're being different enough from the photo. So, that is something to keep in mind because you always want to make sure the copyright of the photographer is accounted for. But when you're loose, you don't have to worry about it, I guess. So, that dress was white with a pink flower and now, it's a yellow and blue dress with an uglier shape. Cool. That's awesome. Yeah. So, I don't usually do a flat color and then outline it in black or that's what I haven't done lately. I've kept my black lines separate from the paint, so it's always like, if there's a line, then it's only on white, and if there's a color, then it's a color without any line around it. So, I keep them separate, so that they're playing with each other instead of being mixing. I don't know. I just like the way that looks. But other than that, I'm loose about how I choose colors. A lot of the time, I choose colors by what they really appear to be in a real space, if I'm drawing from life. Then, if I'm drawing from a photo, I usually just go nuts. Like I mentioned before, my color palette tends to be on the muted side and I'm trying to work through that a little bit. I think that one way to work through it is by picking colors ahead of time like this, only a few colors, and then giving yourself just those to work with, so you're forced to go bright. Also, I love this paint because it's so flat. I like things to be really flat almost look like they're silk screened. I don't feel like that. I feel like it's all lumpy, and acrylic, and shiny. It tries really flat. You're used to it when they're new, which are even flatter. I mean, I like it a lot. I don't have any problem with it. I just always have a hard time when I use this paint and try to scan it. But maybe I just do it differently. Hands are always hard for me, drawing hands. But I think the more you draw them, the better. Hands are hard for a lot of people. But sometimes even if they look weird, it's still okay. Yeah. I think that the mistakes happen, and you go with them, and you don't try to make anything perfect, and then nothing's perfect, and it seems like it's supposed to be like that. A lot of times at figure drawing, people will say to me, "How did you get it so right?" I'm like, "This is not right. This is actually very wrong. The legs were much longer than that, and the torso is much shorter, and she didn't have that kind of face, but I just went with it, and just kept drawing, and then it looks like it was meant to be that way." So, that's something that works. So, I did three different ladies. Okay. I'm going to pass this back. You go to fashion because you haven't done it yet. Maybe I'll take the flowers. Now, Leah. Yes. I need you to draw more flowers around like the outskirts of this. Okay. Because I think we can just fill the whole thing up. Yeah. I think that's what has to happen because it feels like it needs to be some kind of pattern, and then I'll go back in, and then I'll do little stuff or you can put little stuff in here, on the outside, and that's what I would do. I can add black watercolor, which is little washy, just anything like this. These are too close together. They're getting mixed up together. Don't put your paint in your drinking water, that's a good tip. We've all done it. What's going on here? Is that the light? It was a mistake. I wanted to paint over. Okay. I was like, "Please." This is definitely one of my faves. Which one? I love this. This does look on. It looks so good too. Yeah. I think this is close actually. This might be done soon in my opinion, but we can talk about it. You guys are progressed. Looks so good. Should I make it nighttime outside like fill in the window black? I don't know. I like it needs a lot of color somewhere. I just fill it. It's just so white. I can fill it with washing this like this. The back of my chair isn't even like on the floor, that's a problem maybe. That's what I was saying. Let's just paint everything. Black. Kind of. I don't want to fill in all the white because I feel like a white is a color now. Yeah. I think we can fill in a little bit more of the way. I think that Rachel made an extra color by making the rows become awash, and some of the wake, and I'm very light wash of the rows in it. But not all that, like 50 percent. Okay. I can do that. I don't want that. I hate that from you. Can I have the yellow? Do you want the building pass? If I got this drawing, I'm just going to paint all the heritage. Here, take the buildings back. Or the fashion is to get drawn. Who's doing that? Leah, you do it. I know. I can really. I want to do, can someone pass me the yellow though. I want to just use the flowery background. 5. Finishing the Drawings: I feel like I messed this up because all the bodies Julia drew, and then I started to draw the body, and the line was different. So, I just left it so that you can do the line arms. Do you want to do one more person? I don't think it will fit. It would have to be like a dog. Oh, skinny lady. Just make it smaller? Yeah. Okay. Or the lights could go behind the flower or something, but can you do the head? I don't want to mess it up. Okay. Are they hard to do? What? I really like how this flower went on the dress. On the fashion one. Guess what? Your ink doesn't smear like you thought it did. Oh, good. Hooray. Maybe it's the kind of piping. It happened accidentally. Oh, good. That's wonderful. It's good to know. I was wrong, again. Draw something inside this. What is this? A frame? It's a frame in perspective. Okay, I got it. Here I go. Sorry, I'm such a poor [inaudible]. No, you're not. Okay, floral done. Beautiful. That looks amazing. Wow! Cave. Yeah, it's really good. Okay. Now, its done. So, how's architecture looking? Pretty good. I'm really into that one. Is it close or do you need some more stuff? I'll do some more shapes and you can use mines on them. Okay. Add some things inside this house because I did all of that, so it would be good to add someone else's touch inside that house. No, I like that house. You do like it just like that? I want it really simple. The juxtaposition, which are made super simple and really detailed ones I think that's what makes it good. Okay. Why do these people have faces? Well, I was thinking that too, but I can't do faces in a thick brush because that would be so much stronger than what their outlines are. Okay, so you want me to draw faces? If you want. Or just lips. It feels weird. They have no faces. But, what kind of faces should they be? Regular? Regular faces? What's a regular face? They are like alive now. They're not just like randoms. This is really weird. Every year over here. Oh, it's looking so much better though. It is an improvement. It is. Keep going. Hooh! I like this. That may get crazier. There's a fine line between cray, cray and really bad. It's really weird. That is so bad. It looks like a kid did it. With like a kid's watercolor set. It's fine. How can you fix it? Well, anything, the window could become a little bit more uniform. With the bottom should also be dark. Shut up. Is this finished? I think so. I think we're all, I'm done. Then, this one's done. Three are done. I think I can work on this for five more minutes and then this can be done. This looks really nice. Okay, I'm going to post them since I'm done. 6. Drawing Critique: So, we've finished drawing. We looked at each drawing and all decided collectively that each one is done, even if we liked it or not, and now we're going to just talk about what we like about them to see if we can learn more about what we think. What worked, what didn't. Well, I think we're all in agreement that there's one that didn't work so well. Yeah. Make sure you cover it up first. Let's cover it first, get it out of the way and then focus on the beauties. Okay. So, sometimes there's failures. Sometimes you make stuff you don't like, and that's fine, and that's an exercise, and what did we learn from this? I cut it in half, because I thought, we cut in half and we put it back together. May be it would be more interesting, because, as far as it stood it was just so flat. It was just like a flat boring image. I think we learned that it was too piecey and nothing fit together in the same way that the other ones did, and there's all this white space that. Got filled in with blue. Yeah. I think it looks better like this but it's still not good. I think we learned that, the more not trying to depict realistic space together might be a better way to go, and just do things that are more patternish. But I do have to say in our book, we did do a living room, some more to this, and it was our best drawing. So, you do never know what's going to happen. That's true. It also just got muddy. The color's already together there and here, and it just doesn't. Yeah. Nothing's right. Sometimes this kind of thing is really beautiful, maybe on a larger scale, but, in here it just looks like a mass. If you took this little moment maybe and enlarged it at like 1200 dpi, it could look really pretty on its own. I still think cutting it up, that could be nice. My brain is the composition that's not working and the colors are muddy. Some of them are all muddy, so, I don't know. Yeah. I think it's a lot about how we set up that space and I think that space did not work. Right. So, let's take it off the table, what do you say? Yeah. Bye. See you, I would not want to be you. But these four together look gorgeous together. They all fill the piece, they all feel like they belong together. Very great color decisions, and we're saying as we went that we ended up with a fourth color, which is the wash of the pink. It reads in-between. The wash and the brown is turned to pink. The wash of the blue turned white-blue, like here and here. These are very different here. Like there it's not one, it's a little more similar, or a bigger gradient. I loved that about them. I still think this one could have used a half hour of work, just to fill it in more. Yeah. I would have taken this color and put it in a solid shape back here and then the shoulder would have popped out. I agree. It could have used more work, but we were running out of time tonight, and it felt like it could just go on forever, so we decided to stop. Yeah. I think it got a little weird too, if some of the abstract shapes that ended up in there that I just put in because I didn't really know what to do. You're not crazy about these flowers. Sorry, did you make those? I made those. I love how that became an outfit, that's so cool, I wouldn't have thought of that. Oh no! I put that there. Oh! It wasn't like that flower existed and I drew around it. I thought that was what happened. Because one flower's on there. Because one of those eyes and the dresses had a big flower on it. Right? And you just abstracted it. Yeah. I was trying to build on this flower. That makes sense now. Because at first I was like, "Why are there flowers on one of the clouds." Yeah. It would have been better if they were more abstract, because then I'm starting to see it as it's own thing. Right. I wanted to just focus on the clothes and the people and not to be just fading into the background. Also, once we put faces on them, it got a lot better. Because before it was a little hard to relate to, latch onto. Yeah. The cityscape I think it's beautiful. Yeah. I do have to say before this shape was here, I liked it better. Because I think. I don't know, it felt a little more open, and then closed up the whole thing. I got it back and I was like, "Oh! What's different?" And I realized that, because this was in the open, and I felt maybe it could have been simpler, like bridge or something, because it made it feel everything's blocked in now, and it is more of a pattern when before it did feel more landscapy. Yeah. But I like that there are buildings from all over the world. It's not really one place, it's an amalgam of the world, or different places, or an imagined and real. Right. And I think our line work, we didn't mix our different styles in this one. I definitely know this is Rachel's style of drawing, and I know this is Lia's, and I know what's mine obviously. But I think that because they stuck in their little containers, it worked together nicely. It felt like all these different kinds of buildings not mushed up. Mushy. Yeah. I really enjoyed adding my little windows on top of whoever made this shape. Because it was something really constrained with something loose on top of it. Good one. Good one. Yeah. Love it. Should we talking about the abstract one? Now for the best two. Are we going to pick a winner or is not how this works? I think these two might be the winners. These two are the winners. I don't think one is better than the other. I think they're both really great. I think we've done this before, and we've seen it before though. I think the colors are interesting. Have we done this before? Not us per se, but I've done a lot of patterns of flowers, and I've mixed a lot of flotations. I think this is good because it's a subject that we're all really familiar with, and I can do this in my sleep, like lumps with leaves on them. And this was something we never did, or I don't ever do, and I felt very natural to do. Because I was not scared of. I think I just hit putting in big shapes was okay, because I knew we were going to keep going, going, going. Yeah. I think you really took this one to the next level, because after Rachel went, I just mirrored what she did, because I wasn't really sure what else to do. Because you're so good at abstract, it's like your thing. I think I was maybe a little nervous to push it, and then you added all those really flat graphic shapes, and then I did the black and it really just went from there. Yeah. I think either one of these would make nice scarves, or anything really. I mean, you make five drawings with your friends and you wind up with two that you love. That's not bad. Not bad. A couple you like, and one you hate, I think that that's a pretty good score card for this project if you want to think about it. Totally. You're going to have a throw-away for sure, and you're going to have a favorite for sure. Maybe you only going to have one favorite, maybe you're going to have only three you just like, and no favorites. Yeah. I think it's really cool we got two really great ones. Because, I feel like we could replicate this and not get anything good. But we stay supportive, and just kept going and talked about when were frustrated, and drank some wine, and enjoyed each other's company. We did it. We did it. 7. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: