Ink With Me: Sharks and Dolphins

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Elizabeth wag line and I am an illustrator of mostly mermaids and marine life. This is my 11th course here on Skillshare. And the third and my ink with Me series, where we're exploring different stippling techniques and applying them to various marine life. Today we are going to be exploring, inking sharks and dolphins. If you've been following along for this series, you will have already seen my courses, ink with me, jellyfish, and ink with me, Orca. If this is the first-class you're joining me for, you can always go back and watch the other two classes or watch them before this one. Each class is also designed to just be enjoyed individually so you don't have to follow along with the full series if you don't want to. If you choose to follow along with the full flash sheet at the end of this series, you will have a full completed flash sheet of all different kinds of marine life. I've marked this as an intermediate level course, but if you're a beginner and you want to take on the challenge, definitely come join us. Each class in the series, we'll get progressively more difficult with the ink techniques that we explore. So if you are a beginner, I highly recommend starting at the beginning with the jellyfish and then working through this series in order. In this course you'll learn about where to find great reference images to use for your artwork. Materials are best to use for these ink techniques will explore various siblings techniques and styles that you can apply to today's subject matter. And then we will go through inking sharks and dolphins together and adding them to our flash sheet. Also as a bonus throughout the series, I am including different tips about how to monetize the artwork that you're creating in today's class with the goal of creating a whole course on this subject at the end of this series, don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare so that you know when the next course is released so you can follow along with this full series. But for now, let's get started. 2. Class Project: Alright, let's talk about today's class project. So today your class project is to ink a dolphin and a shark, and then upload it to the project gallery so that we can all check out what you've created. Also, if you choose to follow along with the full series and are creating a full flashy, I would love to see the progress that you've made. So right now, this is what my flash sheet looks like. So I have my jellyfish inch from my first course, the orca from my second. And then I'll be working on this sharp and dolphin today as well. Under the projects and resources tab, I've linked to great reference images I'll be using for today's class. I sourced these photos from unsplash.com, which is an awesome resource for royalty-free photos that you can use absolutely free as a reference to create artwork with. I've chosen these two photos specifically, but you're welcome to go on their platform and find other reference images if you want to find your own. I've also uploaded the sketch of the flash sheet that I've designed for this series. If you want to follow along with the full flashy, you can go ahead and directly copy what I've done if you want to. Or here's a list of all the different animals that we'll be exploring in this series. So you can use your own creativity to create a flash sheet with all of those things. You're also welcome to just follow along and practice the right techniques and fully create your own flash sheet with different animals or with whatever style that you want to definitely use your creativity. And I can't wait to see what you all create. So let's now talk about the materials that we'll be using for today's class. 3. Materials: Alright, let's talk about materials for today's class. First, we're going to into paper. So there are two types of paper that I recommend for today's course. The first one is going to be marker paper. I tend to go for the Strathmore brand just because it's easy to find and it works great. Marker paper is great because it has a really, really smooth surface. And then I just feel like it just works really well with ink since that's what it was designed for. I also use this if I'm going to be working in Copic markers or any other alcohol-based marker. Great for that too. The other one that I recommend is Bristol paper because it's a little bit thicker and this is what I tend to use for my final ink pieces. So for example, the flash sheet that I'm inking, that's what I've inked it on. The marker paper I tend to use for practice or for smaller originals and things like that. Then you will also of course want a pencil. Definitely go for something with a harder lead that's really nice and light so that it's easy to erase. Typically I use a for-each pencil, but here I'm using a to H so that you guys can see it on screen a little bit better. I also recommend these really easily click erasers because they are really easy to erase and tight little areas. So that is great. And I also recommend getting a clean brush that you've never used for pain or anything. And using this to get eraser shavings off of your paper so you don't smudge it with your hands or get your any dirt or oil from your hands on your piece. Also just makes it super easy. I love using it. It was such a great tip. Also in terms of a fine liner pens to ink with the Micron pens are my absolute favorite. I use these all the time. I go through them like crazy. This little travel pack here has all the sizes that they offer. In black. They do come in other colors if you want to use other colors for today's course, totally an option. But there are tons of other brands of fine liner pens. Just make sure if you've never worked with them before, you want to get a whole range of sizes so that you can try out different sizes. And Steve, what's comfortable for you and what style you might like to ink in. I tend to stick with a really small ones, but I'm really pushing myself to work with some larger sizes as well. So highly recommend me is that there are really great. But there are tons of other brands out there. Especially if you're a beginner, you don't need to pay a lot of money. It's pretty easy to pick up a pack at any art supply store. In our next video, we're gonna get into some stippling techniques. 4. Stippling Techniques: Alright, let's get into some stippling techniques. So the first thing that you wanna do, especially if you are working with a brand new set of pens or pencils you've never worked with before is just to test out all the different sizes of pens that you have just so you can get a feel for what each of them looks like on paper. So I'm just going to run through a quick test of that now, especially for our beginners who aren't familiar with fine liners yet. This will look familiar if you've been following along for the series. So feel free to skip ahead if you want to. But I'm going to be starting with this 00 A5 size of micron. Best thing to do is just lay down a couple of dots and then I do a couple of different lines to as kind of a little test and then write the size next to it so that you have that for reference. And then we're going to do the, oh, one. Size is really just going to depend on what style you want to do for your pieces. And it can be determined by the subject matter that you're working on or the scale that you're working in. So it's really personal preference, but there's a lot of different ways that you can use the size to create different effects. Right up to the 0345, jumps up to 08. Grabbed one of their graphic ones to this one just has kind of a bullet tip, but they have some chisel tip ones too. The reason I grabbed this one is because sometimes it's great if you want to do an outline of something. I don't really ever use it for dots, but it's just great if you want to just do a thick outline on something, or maybe you want to color in a small area. It's great to have this to do that with. And then I realize I just wrote O eight, O one. Whoops, see, there is our little pen test. And now we're gonna get into actually practicing some techniques. Alright, so first thing I want to do before we get into actually practicing some tip link techniques is I'm just going to draw a bunch of different boxes. Our piece of paper here, they don't have to be perfect. You can also draw whatever shape you want. If you want them to be triangles, they could be triangles. And you'll want a bunch of them because we are going to use them to practice different techniques. I'm probably just going to start with that many and then we can always add more if we need to. All right, so for our first two boxes here, we are going to practice both working from light to dark and then dark to light. Which ever way you decide to work is just totally up to you and your process. I personally like to work from dark to light usually, but there's just two different ways you can work. It's totally up to you. I'm just going to choose. I'll start with the O three size. So we are going to go from we want it to look light at the bottom and really dark at the top here. So what you wanna do is start down here and place your dots however far apart you want. In areas like this where the dots are far apart, it's just up to you how very regularly spaced or a radically space you want to make them. That's just a style decision. As you move up a little bit, you are just decreasing the distance between those dots. To get it to look a little bit darker. Then I will continue to get a little bit darker here. And then these practice squares, you can kind of envision it's whatever you want. You could have started at this width, the dots down here at the bottom and made it really, really dark at the top. It's really just about practicing kind of what your flow is going to be worth working with this technique. We're just going to continue to decrease the distance between the dots. That is what's going to give the effect that it gets darker at the top here. Alright, so we can see we went from lighter down here to darker up here. So that's the first way that you can work in your stippling techniques. So now let's work from dark to light. And I'm just going to switch up my pen size just because I think I'm gonna go with the five signs that it's optional if you really want to start with a very black first edge, you can always do an outline like this. So that really gives you exactly where you're starting. And then you can kinda disperse the dots from there. That's why I really like working from dark to light, is that you feel like you're dispersing the dots across the piece instead of trying to concentrate them. It also makes you feel like you've gotten the difficult part out of the way because it's more work where the dots are all close together as opposed to where they're all spread apart. You can cover a much larger area very quickly. That's why I tend to work that way. We are going to start with the dots sprite close together here and then slowly start to disperse them as you go up square. All right, So it kinda gotten all the darker parts out of the way here. And now. Job is just to disperse the dots. However quickly or slowly that would happen would depend on subject matter that you're inking. And another note, how fast or slow you do your dots is again, totally up to your style and how you want to go about your process. I feel like I work at a medium speed, but some artists are super, super meticulous with the placement of each of their dots. And then some people really just go at it like crazy and get lots of dots on the page. So feel free to work with however, you feel most comfortable. Alright, and that gives you an idea of working light to dark and then dark to light. Again, just totally up to you how you want to work, but two different ways to approach your ink techniques. In the next two squares, we are going to explore another stylistic choice, which is going to be at whether or not you decide to outline your piece before you fill it in with dots. Again, personally, I really like to do an outline. I just like to create those clean edges and have a bounding box to work within. But there's a ton of artists that do really, really, really beautiful work that don't use outlines. And it has this like almost more organic nature. It's just really, really cool. So it's totally up to you. I am going to start with this one here. And first things first, I'm going to use my graphic marker here. Again, you could use any size. You could create really thin borders or you can create really thick ones. It's up to you. And that's something I do decide depending on the piece. But I'm going to do just some nice thick border here. We have that to work within. And then go with the eight size. I am just going to work from dark at the top too light at the bottom. It doesn't really affect how you're working within the box that much. It also doesn't totally have the same effect when you're just looking at a box. But usually on any subject matter like any marine life, I usually do an outline of the whole animal and then outline things like maybe fins or eyes or things like that. I don't necessarily outline every single thing. But it's just how I like to do things. If you're new to stippling and want to see how other artists work. I would just look up like stippling hashtags on Instagram. You can find tons of awesome artists that just work in such different ways and create really cool different pieces. So it's a great way to kinda get introduced to what's out there and all the ways that you can approach this technique. Alright, so simple enough, another square root of practice, we just practice it with an outline around it. So for the next square, we're going to do it without an outline. And again, there's really two different ways you can do that. If I'm going to work without an outline, I still like to do a dotted border around it so that it still gives me that kind of boundary of where I'm filling in. But you totally don't have to do that. I mean, if you wanted to, you could start in the middle and spread outwards and then just kinda decide where your boundaries are using that pencil sketch. So totally up to you. Use the O4. But I'm going to do it with a dark border to stay a little bit in my conference today. I'm going to have the dark area at the top here. So kind of dots spreading out along the bottom here. Keep it nice and close together at the top and then spread out slowly down the side here. I would also say if you're new to this technique, you can explore each of these options like a 100 different ways. You could fill an entire page of like this with boxes of trying different pen sizes or different ways to approach the technique. So I definitely recommend practicing a whole lot more if you want to. Before we get into the actual dolphin and sharp that we're gonna be inking. So for this box in particular, I do want to wait a second for the ink to dry so I don't smudge it, but I do want to erase the pencil line to kinda give you the effect without any boundary there. To really show off how it looks with no border. Give it another couple of seconds. That's one thing with marker paper, you do have to make sure you go to few extra seconds for the ink to settle into the paper. It tends to sit on the surface of the paper a little bit longer than some other types of paper. So it is a little bit easier to smudge. So be conscious of that when you're working on a final piece or something. Obviously, if I smudge this, it's not a big deal, but just keep that in mind. Yeah. I just watched a bunch of them, but that's okay. You can still tell when you still have the idea of where that box is. It just has a very different effect than this one here. It's totally up to you which one you like better. And it could depend on the subject matter or when you see it more in use than just on a box on a practice page. Yeah. Alright, the next thing that I want to get into practicing is using varying different pen sizes in the same area. So again, this is another totally stylistic choice. Some artists will use the same pen size for an entire drawing and just use the distance between those dots to create different effects. Or you can use different pens sizes within a drawing or within different areas of a drawing to give it different ideas of textures and colors. And just offer a little bit more options in terms of variability. So in this first one, I'm, again, I'm gonna go ahead and do an outline because that's what I like to do. Maybe we'll switch up the direction. We'll go from dark over here to light over here. And what I'm gonna do is if I started with this O5, that's the dot size I'm going to start with. Because that's really going to be where it is. Dark, thick dots to start with. This first box, we're kind of practicing as if we're using different sizes on a smooth gradient. But then we'll get into practicing a little bit using different sizes to create different textures or different areas as well. We are spreading out these dots here. Sprinkle a few in, and then work. We're going to go back in with a smaller size like this O3. And we'll just kinda start mixing that in. You can see there's a dramatic difference of how much finer those dots are. We can pull them back up into here to work backwards for a second. For me, my nephew backwards for you. Alright, so you can use two different pen sizes like that or more pen size as you could go down the whole spectrum to create just more of like a fine variant versus keeping it all one pen size like over here. Again, stylistic choice, totally, totally up to you. Alright, For our next box over here, we are going to treat it like two different color areas. Hi again. I'm going to do an outline. Let's just say, I don't know, maybe this is a cow and it's got dark spots. And again, you can outline the spots or not. If you've got something like that and the spots or black, you know, you don't want to continue with this O5 to fill in those dots. Again, this is practice. So I'm just kinda making output like, Oh, it's a little bit lighter right here. Just making it up as I go along. I think I'll do a real quick before we get too far, is when I'm sitting, you can use this to color in a small area to like say, this corner of whatever this blob is is really dark. And then you've colored that in and you can just start doing dots right along the border. To make it look like that block is just dispersing out. Instead of having to fill in all that area with tons and tons and tons of dots. One thing I would say with that is just to make sure that you've created a smooth line and you don t have a very harsh obvious line of where you colored versus where you did your dots. Okay, so we've created whatever spots are blobs these are. But again, if we're thinking about it as a cow, when you turn the black spots and now in the background, it's pretty much white or light gray. We could move down to the O2 size. And then again, we're just creating arbitrary darker areas, but the darker areas are on the opposite corners here. You can see what these areas with two different sized dots next to each other. It really gives a really strong effect, show different areas. So it's another way that you can use this technique with using varying pen sizes. Alright, so we're gonna do one more practice with using varying different pen sizes. And then instead of treating these two opposite kinda blobs here, we're going to do it more of a steady gradient ish. So what I'm gonna do is start with a darker color on top or a boulder marker actually. So we'll start with that at the top. So I'll put an outline in. And we're going to imagine that this top half is dark here. Like maybe that's a dark area on a shark or dolphin and then maybe this is like a lighter underbelly or something. So we are going to just kinda Cree the top half here. Pretty dark. The good thing is with sharks and dolphins were still, they have pretty smooth skin, some have different color marketing markings are different textures. But we haven't gotten into any really crazy skin textures. And we're not doing something like a tiger shark or I'm not. You totally can choose to. Where you're really working with. Creating complicated textures. We'll be moving into that in the last few classes in this series. We're not quite there yet. I think I'm kinda thinking that it gets dark again around right here, but it's not a harsh border. Like it's kinda, you know, curving under. I'm going to grab my three or an alcohol go. Oh, four. Then again, it'll be dark right here too. You'll see that there's a very clear line where the sizes are different. So I just kinda creates that divide in your head. Again, this will probably all make much more sense when we're inking the actual animals. But definitely practice these techniques if you're new to this or even if you're an n at an intermediate level, you got better by practicing. Go back and add an outline because why not? And again, that's just one more way where you see the contrast of using different pen sizes within an area. Definitely say, do a couple more practice. One, if you want to or if you feel like you need a little bit more practice before we get into the final ones. But if you are ready to move forward, we're gonna get into sketching and outlining next. 5. Sketching and Outlining: Alright, so now we're going to get into sketching and outlining. As you can see here, I have my full final flash sheet, which is already all sketched out. I have my shark and my dolphin already sketched here. I have the outline, sketch the different fins, and I kinda noted some different areas where the color shifts or anything like that. So go ahead and sketch, however you're most comfortable. As I said, I sketched a little bit darker than I normally would just because I wanted you guys to be able to see it on this video. But I recommend sketching very lightly so that it's easy to erase once you start inking. Feel free to trace if you want. As a reminder, these are the reference photos that I've provided. So you are welcome to use those or you can source your own from Unsplash or another royalty-free image platform. If you want to sell your work, if it's just for you, it's totally fine to use any images that you find on Google. Just be conscious of what you're using if you want to sell your artwork. We've talked about sketching. Let's get into outlining. As I mentioned, it is just my style that I like to outline my work. So I am going to start with that. And I want to do, I think probably O5 for my outlines here. And then again, as I mentioned before, it is totally up to you how much you want to outline. The easiest thing to start out with is just that I'm going to do the complete outline of the whole animal. And we will start there. First. We will start with the sharp here. I also will note, usually my sketches are much rougher than this one. I kinda put a little bit more effort and perfected it so that you guys had this as a reference. But typically, I do rough sketches and then I use outlining to clean up those sketches. That's really just another reason that I love to do an outline before I get into my dots. Alright, so now we have our sharp outline. So again, you can choose to outline more if you want to. I am going to put in a few more little outlines before I move on here. The tail has a little bit of a full there, some kind of bring that line out. And then I'm gonna go in with a smaller marker outline. I also gonna do right here. Most of the rest of this is going to end up being an outline that we create with dots. But if you want to outline more, you totally can a black tip reef sharks. So they do have kinda black tips, almost their fins and their tail. But I'm going to actually do that in the next video when we actually get into inking. Alright, so I'm going to move on to my dolphin. Going in with the same marker color or marker size. I'm just going to start with the outline of the animal. Heart rates. So there is my dolphin outline. You can see I pulled the tail up a little bit where that comes from. And then I'm also in a smaller size gonna do the eye and the mouth. All right, so we got outlines there. And then I'm going to do a little bit of erasing. And then the rest of the lines you see here, I'm going to leave lightly at the moment and then we'll use those as reference once we start to actually do our dots. Alright, so now we are all sketch an outline. Again, totally your stylistic choice. You don't have to do an outline at all. But I am already and we're gonna get into doing some dots and next video. 6. Inking: Sharks: Alright, the first animal that we're going to ink today is going to be our shark. So again, as I mentioned, the reference photo that I picked, it is a black tip reef shark, which kinda gives us an easy place to start because I'm going to start with those areas of the shark that are black. I'm gonna go in with my thicker marker and just kinda take care of it with that and color in the edges of those fins because they are pretty much just solid black. Again, you can totally fill them in with dots if you want to. I am just going to keep it easy. Tough, and they're a little tiny bit there. I'm down here. The whole edge of the tail. I am going to go in with a smaller pen as well to kind of get all the smaller areas. I'll have that and then go in and just clean this up. Alright, we've got some ink on our paper. Then it's up to you where you want to start with this piece. As I mentioned in the previous video with the orca, I like to start with the fins because there are smaller area and I can kinda get those out of the way and work towards more of the bulk area of the body in the middle. So I'm going to do the same thing here. I'm going to start with this fin over here. I think I'm going to stick with this O3 size to do most of the sharp here. So I am just going to start with that. So as you can see in the reference photo, this fan is a little bit lighter because it's directly in the sun under the surface. So I'm going to keep it pretty light. But this tip is a little bit darker. And then it kind of has this like very dark area here where it connects to the body. I am just going to make a little dot border. Pretty solid here. Again, I like to have that boundary that I know I'm thinking within. Alright, first Finn is done, doesn't look like much, but it is one place to start. And then we want to pick the next fin to work on. It's totally up to you. I am going to I think do like the bottom and then the tail and then work up at the top. I'm going to grab my O3 size again. This part right here is much darker. And then it has a little bit peeking into the sun. So I'm going to create that border where the tip is very light. And then again it has this very dark border where it meets the white underbelly of the shark. Give us that border as well. And looks like it's the darkest kinda right on this middle area here. And again, you can ink everything as quickly or slowly as you need to. That could be up to your style or just how comfortable you are with the technique. Just up to you. Alright, it kept that pretty dark there. And then I am going to go with the 01 just to kinda contrast a little bit, but this isn't bright white, so we're going to add a couple little dots there, gives us something. Ready. Let's move on to the next one here. This one is actually a lighter right here and then darker around where the block is. That kind of border like the other fins do. More of a gradual look. For now I'm gonna kinda leave it like that and then we'll ink this when we work on the underbelly. Right next up, let's do the tail. And it's kinda darker at the bottom here and gets lighter towards the tip. We will start at that bottom area. And again, this is kinda the border without white underbelly here. So I'm going to ink that in. Again, I am starting with the darkest area, but you can start with the lightest if you want to. Totally up to your process. I'll speed this up a little bit so you guys don't have to watch me do this detail in real time, right? And I'm gonna go in with the 01 for a little bit of a contrast for the lighter area up here. Alright, and we have the tail LinkedIn. Alright, now let's move on to these two top fins here. So they kinda create a heavy shadow with the way that the sunlight is in this photo. So they are gonna be pretty dark. So going back in with my O3, this one kinda has a highlight right here. So we'll kinda create that edge. This one has this like white part after the black tip, so we'll create that order as well. And then I'm going to do the darker part first and then go in and do that part. Alright, so we have completed all of our thins. So the next thing I wanna do is probably create, there's like where it's really dark around the middle here. I think it's gonna be my next step. Alright, I brought us a little bit closer to the page here as we get started to use this as our dividing line to kinda create that dark middle border of the shark. So again, I'm gonna go in with my O3 size. Just work. It's kind of a thin border on here and then it's a little bit thicker here. And we'll kinda do that, work on the head a little bit. And then we can do kind of a lighter gray above and then where it's pretty much a white underwhelmed belly, but will grade that out a little bit with some finer markers. So first I'm going to start pulling it out from the tail. And this line looks a little bit harsh right now, but we are going to blend it out a little bit when we work on the top and bottom areas. But this is gonna be our starting point. Alright, and then right about here it starts to disperse out a little bit. I'm just gonna kinda create that border. And then there we have those dark areas. I'm gonna give my hand a break for a second and then we'll get working on the head. Alright, now let's get into working on the area with the gills and the head. So I didn't outline the gills before, but I do want to go in and do that. Use the O3. Make those stand out, right? And then I'm gonna kinda go up by the head here. I have this line and that's where it's really dark. I guess as they're like eyelid slash highbrow and that kind of area. Pretty dark crayon or that. Now I'm going to kind of fill in the area in-between where it's really dark with the gills and kinda this bottom edge. Alright, now I'm kinda finished that dark border. And then first I'm gonna do the upper area. Alright, so now to work on this upper area, I'm going to mostly stick to the O3 size, fine liner, but I am going to use a little bit of a smaller one in some areas. So I'm gonna go back down to this end of the tail and then work this way again. So again, I'm cutting going to start with blending out this dark line a little bit and give it a little bit more of a gradual shadow, which is what it has in some places. And that's simply because it looks a little bit more harsh. Focusing on darker areas first, the short kind of has a stripy look with the way that the sunlight falls on it. And I do go a little bit slower and more meticulous with my dots in the lighter areas. Because when you're filling in an area, you can do your dots a little more radically, but I like to clean it up in the lighter areas, so keep that in mind. But again, that's totally, totally up to your process. All right, and then in this area here, it really gradually blends out. Focusing on that first. Then getting into the areas up here. You get them creating some of that stripe ***** from the sunshine. All right, there we have pretty much finished the top of our shark. We are almost finished our shark we just have to shade in the lighter underbelly here. So I'm gonna do that with a smaller size pen. I'm gonna go in with the with the O1. As I said before, I was thinking about maybe adding some details in the top part here, but once I step back a little bit, I actually liked the way it looks just like that with the O3. So I'm just going to use this one for the bottom part here. Again, total stylistic choice. But especially with stippling, I do recommend stepping back a little bit occasionally because you get a different perspective when you're a little bit further away then when you're so focused on it up close. So now I'm going to go into the underbelly. So I am going to start at the tail end again. Just shading in from the bottom up. I'm actually going to pretty much cover the whole thing with Dodd's, But it's going to give it a different look just because of the smaller size that I'm using. You can also choose to go in even smaller. There is the 00 A5 size, fine liner. So that is an option. I'm going to pull some dot's kinda out of this dark border here to give it a little bit more of a gradual look in places. Rain and I'm gonna go up here. Alright, I think we finished our shark. So maybe take a break for your hands, grab a snack. But then we will get into the dolphin. 7. Inking: Dolphins: Alright, now it is time to get working on our dolphin here. So again, similar way that I started the shark. I'm going to start the dolphin and working on the different thins to kinda get those areas out of the way. I'm going to start with the dorsal fin up here, which as you can see in the reference photo, is pretty dark. I don't think I'm gonna make it quite as dark as it is in that photo. Um, but I'm gonna start with the O4 size for that area. So first things first, I'm going to create that dot border of where that darker areas stops. I'm just going to be pretty much along the curve of the body there. And then also create a little bit of a line where there is a highlight on the thin. So now we have our little bounding box there and we're going to start from over here. It's the darkest. Again, starting with those dots, very close together and just pretty much filling it in as much as possible. Now I could choose to make this fin darker. And probably if I made any darker, I might have started with a thicker border to fill in with the thicker pen, but I'm just going to stick two dots for this one. I don't think I want it to have quite as much contrast as it does in the photo. Alright, so we've finished our first fin. They're pretty simple. Now. I'm going to shift down and work on this one here. I think I'm going to shift down to the O3 three size again, which is what I use on the shark, has this fin here definitely is not as dark as the one up here. So first thing, it's kinda darkest along this border here. So I'm going to start in that area and disperse. Creating a little dot border here where there's some folds, borders with the body. And again, there's some areas here where I could or you could switch to a smaller pen size if you wanted to. I am going to stick with this one. Alright, so simple enough, we have finished the first two fins. Alright, the next area that I want to get into before I start working on the body is just the tail here. This part is pretty dark around this curve here, and then kind of dark on either side to light in the middle. So again, I'm going to start with my O3. Start with the darkest areas here. All right, and now we have that tail finished. We're going to get into the buddy. Alright, now that we have the fins finish, we have a whole rest of the body to work on. This dolphin isn't really like different colors, like the shark is where it has the black tips and lighter areas. It's all just gray gradients because I just picked a regular old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. But the darker areas are around here. So I think that's where I'm gonna start. Lighter areas or the face here. And again, it has a lighter underbelly. I think I'm just going to start with the dark areas all over and then we'll go back in for the lighter areas. So again, I'm going to stick with the O3 marker size as I start getting in with those darker areas. As you can see, I've sketched out a couple of the places that are a little bit darker. But I'm going to start, I think, kind of up here at along the back. And then I'll kinda do this stripe. And then the area down here as well. So let's get into it. All right, so that gives us a lot of the darker areas here. It's kinda, those aren't really stripes but different areas of the body here. And then it's dark kinda right here. And all down this side. This has a pretty strict border there. Do that. And then yeah, right here is probably the darkest area on the body other than the thin. So we want to make sure that those dots reflect that keeping them really tight. Creating that shadow. Another really dark area right here. Again, pulling all those dots together and then we will connect it to the other areas. Alright, so that's kind of a preliminary start to kinda all the darker areas on the end of the dolphin. Alright. Took me a few minutes to decide whether I wanted to kind of go in with my lighter touch and fill in this area first or keep going with the darker areas. But I think I'm going to keep going with the darker areas on this one to have that kind of all filled in and then I'll go back in for the lighter parts. So I'm going to continue working on this line down here, the border of that lighter underbelly. Start in this corner. Again, words, dark. Another reminder as I'm working on this one that I tend to forget sometimes is even when you're working from a reference photo, you don't have to follow that photo exactly at all. It's really up to you. You can be creative, you can simplify however you want to make it a little bit easier or to have it fit your style. I tend to get so wrapped up in actual photo that I forget that. So here is a reminder for me, undo. Alright, now for the most part we have the darker areas complete. So I'm going to go in and start working on the lighter bits. So I'm going to start with the A3 size again. But I think for some areas like particularly in the middle here I am going to drop down the size a bit. So I'm gonna start with filling in over here. Because these areas are still even where they're lighter, they're darker than what's over here. I'm going to go in with my finer size here. Sometimes I think to just having a finer marker gives me the illusion of having more control and just being able to perfect things just a little bit more. We've finished most of our dolphin and now we're just gonna kinda go in again with a lighter underbelly. Alright, let's get into the last little bit here. So I'm going to go in with my 01 size and work on nose here. I'll clean up the eye a little bit, a little bit more. Love, love that dolphins. I'll click there. Smiling. Alright, and then again, most of this underbelly similar to the shark is shaded in. But I feel like using a smaller pen size with the smaller dots just shows the difference in texture a little bit. To differentiate the two. You could always just use less dots with the same size pen. And then I do think I want a little bit more contrast between that underbelly and the upper part here. So I'm gonna go back in with my O3 and darken up a little bit of this edge. Which totally sometimes you just need to go back and add some more. Totally fine. It's always easier to add more dots. It's a lot harder to take them away. I'm just going to be adding a little bit more contrast. Alright, touched up a few more things, and I am feeling pretty good about this dolphin. We have made some serious progress on our flash sheet. 8. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me for today's class. I hope you had some fun inking some sharks and dolphins. And if you're following along for the whole series, I hope that you are loving it and the way that your flash sheet is looking now that we've done jellyfish, Orca, and sharks and dolphins. So I wanted to talk a little bit about monetizing your artwork, which I mentioned in the beginning. Just what you've created from today's class. Again, whether you've decided to move along with the whole project or you just did some sharks and dolphins today. It's so easy to take what you created and be able to license that work, especially through print on-demand. If you're not a member yet or don't have a shop on places like Society six or red bubble tea public, and there's tons of other platforms out there. I highly recommend starting to get your artwork on these sites. So what I do is you can scan your artwork, you can edit it a little bit in Photoshop, and then you have tons of options on what you can create. So as you can see this tapestry behind me, It's actually a piece that I created myself. So I took the seashells all from under the sea flash sheet that I created a few years ago. I pulled these different elements out on Photoshop and I created this repeating pattern. I've recolored this pattern tons of different times, so I have lots of different options and I've gotten it printed on tons of different products over the years. This pattern in particular, my seashell print, is my all-time best-selling pattern. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, you can find tons of classes on Skillshare, but you can check out my classes, how to get started with print on-demand. And I also have a class specifically about creating repeat prints like this one. So you can learn to do that because that's such an important part of print on-demand. So you can create awesome looking patterns for tons of different products. There are tons of different things you can do. I'm already conceptualizing may be as sharp print that I want to create from what we did today. I'll probably be asking some other shark soon. I'm also planning on doing a course about how to use your flash sheet specifically at the end of this series. So if you want to stay tuned for that, there'll be an entire course at the end of this series, all about monetizing this specific project. So I hope you join us for our next class. And I will see you soon.