Transcripts
1. Magical Moments: a 10 Day Challenge + Create & Host Your Own Challenge: Have you been feeling creatively stuck, burnt out, overwhelmed, or uninspired artistically? One of the best ways I've found to recharge my creative batteries is an art challenge. My name is Brooke Glaser and I'm a Professional Illustrator in a fun art class creator. My work can be found in places like Target and used on products like kids apparel, greeting cards, gift wrap, and more. In this class, I want to provide an art escape to help you get back in touch with your creative spirit. I'll share my methods for successfully approaching an art challenge. We'll create a plan for your personal artistic adventure, help you light up your imagination, come up with clever ideas for your own challenge, as well as tips for sticking with it when it gets tough. We'll be working on daily prompts to help you get in touch with your creativity and level up your art skills. You can follow along with the prompts I provide. Create your own unique list or you see advice from this class to help you successfully complete a challenge like Inktober. I'll even share my best practices for hosting your own art challenge. Let's get cozy doing for some fun art making sessions.
2. What to Expect in this Class: Welcome to class art friend. Art challenges are one of my favorite ways to get in touch with my creativity, connect with other artists, and to hone my craft. I'm excited for you to embark on this artistic adventure. This class is broken into two parts. In the first section, we're going to plot out our treasure map, our guide to successfully completing whatever art challenge you are embarking on. Whether you're doing inktober or mermay, or your own challenge, we'll craft a plan that will set you up for success. The second half of the class is where we're going to take action. We'll actually draw our prompts. Of course, you're welcome to use your own prompts, or use my prompt list. I'll be demonstrating my drawings using the iPad app, Procreate, but you can use whatever materials you'd like, whether that's watercolors, or ink, or Photoshop. I won't be explaining every single step that I take in Procreate, but if you're curious to learn more about how I draw in Procreate, you can check out my intro to Procreate class, or my how to draw class.
3. What's Your Dream Outcome?: The first thing that we want to declare is, why is it that you want to do an art challenge? What is your dream outcome from this challenge, this creative journey that you're about to embark on? I want you to share your creative dreams on paper because this is going to set the course for where your creative challenge goes. Is your dream to improve your art, maybe get better at drawing faces to build out your portfolio, come up with some awesome new designs? Is it to kick-start your daily creativity? Is it to connect with other artists? Is it the goal to grow your social media following? Your dream goals will help you turn out what you want to do with your unique challenge. If you want to improve an aspect of your art, you're going to choose a topic that will help you do that. If you want to get better at drawing faces, you're going to choose a series of faces that you're going to draw. If your goal is to build out your portfolio, you're going to choose topics that are likely to be something that you can sell. If you want to grow your social media following, you'll want to design the prompts for something that will do well on social media. For example, if you're focusing on Instagram, you may want to record a time-lapse of you drawing a fun angle because videos do really well on Instagram. Declaring your goal for this art challenge is important for more than just helping you decide what you're going to do. It's also important to help you keep on track. There are going to be days where your art isn't going well or where you feel like everything sucks and you'll never be a good artist. Keeping that goal in mind is going to help you continue to move forward and keep making progress. I've provided a little worksheet for you and I want you to write down what your most important ambition for this challenge is. By the way, you might want to do all of those things, improve your art, build your portfolio, grow your social media following, create the new every day, all of the things. I also want to do all of those things whenever I'm working on an art challenge. But I want you to choose one main thing for this art challenge that you are going to prioritize above everything else. Things can get a little messy and scattered if we try and achieve too much at one time. We can try and do all those things while you're doing this art challenge. But you need to prioritize one of those goals above everything else. Anything extra that you get is just going to be the cherry on top, the extra bonus.
4. Creating Your Plan: Chart your course: Create your plan. Great. Now you've professed your ambition for your art challenge. Now let's make sure that it happens. What time of day will you work on this project? In the early morning, the afternoon, late at night? What is the minimum amount of time that you'll work? An hour, 30 minutes, three hours? The first time I successfully did an Inktober challenge, I committed to doing a minimum of one hour a day for at least five days. By committing to that five days, I made myself a buffer. I knew there would inevitably be a day where something would come up, and I wouldn't be able to do my drawing that day, but that meant I would have the weekend to make up for that lost day. Since I worked as a full-time artist, the five-day buffer also gave me a weekend, which is important to me. Everybody needs a break from their work to come back feeling refreshed. I didn't want to be a workaholic and work all of the time. I knew it wouldn't be sustainable. Now, for me, committing to a minimum of one hour was perfect. An hour didn't feel overwhelming to me because I was used to working for much longer stretches than that. It gave me time to get sunk into a drawing, but it didn't feel intimidating. The most important part, I purposely scheduled that one hour slot when I actually had more than one hour free, that way if I felt inspired to keep going, I could work on a piece longer than an hour. I knew there would be days where I just didn't feel like drawing, so what I would do on those days is I would set the timer, and I would sit down and I'd say, "Well, I only have to do this for one hour." Generally, about 20 minutes in, that resistance, or maybe that procrastination, or fear that I was actually feeling that made me not want to draw, that went away as I got into the drawing. Now, alternatively, committing to a maximum time frame might be a better strategy for you. If you have a tendency to overwork or over research you art, setting a time limit might help you work to creating art faster. During one Inktober, I had a really busy schedule, so having a time limit meant that I was forced to get creative and come up with shortcuts that I could create work faster. I didn't have time to overthink or over research my pieces or poses because I had to start a new piece the next day. This constraint made me work in new ways that I never would have done otherwise. For example, I came up with a faster system for pose reference, and I didn't question myself as much. A lot of times when I'm drawing I'm like, "Is that line right? Maybe I'll redraw that." Well, I didn't have time for that, so it made me more confident in my work because I'd make a line and I would stick to it. That was really helpful. Whatever you do, I don't want you to over-commit yourself. If you have a full time job and kids at home, three hours a day might not be sustainable for you. Perhaps 30 minutes early in the morning before everyone up would be more manageable. Do what's realistic for you. This art challenge is for you and no one else. You know yourself better than anyone else. Set the times that makes sense for you and your life. If that means working from midnight to 3:00 AM on the weekends, perfect. Then you do that, you night owl. Whatever you decide, write down what time you're going to work on your art project, and for how long you will sit down and work on it every day. You can use the worksheet I've provided, or you can write it on your sketchbook. Just be sure to write it down. Equally important, where will you be doing this work? Do you have a desk that you're going to draw it or perhaps a couch? Maya Angelou, the famous poet, used to rent a hotel room by the month where she would go and write from 6:30 AM to 12:30 or 1:30 PM in the afternoon. Many of my favorite authors have been known to seclude themselves in an isolated place to do their work, maybe a cabin in the wood or a hotel. I love doing art retreats; trips where the purpose is to spend lots of time creating work, but in a new environment. During the pandemic, I rented a tree house on Airbnb and spent a big chunk of time every day drawing. Now, maybe renting a hotel room or getting a fancy Airbnb isn't an option for you, but maybe you can still create a fun special environment for you in this art challenge. Can you rearrange your desk so that it feels fresh, and new, and exciting? Can you get a special candle that you'll light or some cozy lights? Can you make a special cup of tea every time that you sit down to work so that this time it feels like a treat? This art challenge is a time for you to reconnect with your creative self, and spend time working on your craft. What can you do to make that space feel special? Whatever you decide whether that's working on the couch or the only private space that you have is in the car, wherever you're going to work, what I want you to do is write that down in the worksheet.
5. How to Light Up Your Imagination: The next thing we want to do is set some creative constraints for our project. Now I know what you're thinking. Limitations, lame, I don't want to do that. I don't want to limit myself. But I'm here to tell you that creative constraints are one of the best ways to light up your imagination. Let's say, for example, that I'm giving you a blank page right now and any resource you want and I'm asking you, what can you come up for me? Make something cool for me right now, draw something cool for me. Endless possibilities can be a little intimidating to come up with a cool idea. But what if I give you some limitations like paint three things that are green or draw something in the room using only straight lines, no curved lines. Do more ideas pop into your head when I give you some creative restraints? When you're forced to work with constraints, you're forced to look at the world and look at the work a little bit differently. It makes you get a little bit more creative. The trick with an art challenge is that you want to find the optimal amount of challenge. It's like playing that the floor is lava. If the floor is lava and you've got to jump to all the different parts of the furniture without touching the floor. If the rule is that you have to do a backflip to get from one piece of furniture to the next, that's not fun. That's way too hard. If the furniture is touching, so you just have to step from one piece to the next, that's also not fun because it's too easy, it's boring. You want that optimal space where it's just tricky enough, like you can do it but it's hard. That's what we want in our art challenges. Now, I can't tell you what are the best constraints for your project because you have your own unique set of skills and what might be a challenge for somebody else, might be easy peasy for you. But here are some guidelines that will hopefully help you set up the right constraints for yourself. Identify one or two, maximum three things that you want to work on. For my first Inktober, I wanted to get better at drawing people and I wasn't that great at drawing people. I gave myself a whole bunch of constraints. I said, one, I needed to create a new character every day. Two, each of the characters needed to have a different facial expression. Three, the character is needed to be interacting with either a prop or the furniture or a background element. Four, I needed to alternate between different background colors. No white backgrounds because I used a lot of white backgrounds at the time. Well, I'm happy with the results that I got from that Inktober, I was trying to get better at too many things at once. Since drawing stylized people was new to me, it would have been smarter for me to focus on, just like maybe drawing a variety of motions or drawing the character is interacting with props or backgrounds. The following Inktober, I focused on only drawing faces instead of the entire bodies. I got much better at drawing faces because I wasn't scattered trying to get better at drawing too many new things that I wasn't used to drawing. Now, for the challenge that I'm going to be demoing in this class, my focus was to learn how to create more of a magical vibe. What I did was I spent some time studying, "Hey, what is it that creates magical vibe?" Sometimes it's because something is floating or it seems to be levitating in the air. Or other times maybe it was because the object had a glow or maybe there was some ethereal lighting or there was maybe a little sparkles or stars surrounding an object. What I decided to do was I was going to focus on making things feel magical and I wasn't going to focus on drawing things that were brand new to me. I stuck with subject matter that I'm most comfortable with and tried to work to make those things feel a little bit magical. Choose your color palette ahead of time. Now, it doesn't have to be your color palette. It could also be your perspective. You could decide, I'm going to draw faces straight on or faces at three-quarters angles. Whatever choices that you can make ahead of time, it will free you up to be more creative with the rest of the challenge. That's why Inktober is so brilliant. You don't have to think about working in color. You're only drawing in black and white. If you're trying a new medium, which Inktober is a lot of times about trying new mediums, you can focus on working on that medium rather than focusing on making sure your colors look good. Try a new medium or a new subject matter not both. Speaking of, if you're trying a new art medium, maybe you want to try out learning wash or procreate or oil paints for this challenge, it's a lot to try and learn how to try an oil paint and draw hands at the same time. It's better to choose one. Likewise, if you really want to learn how to draw something complicated, like a lot of people find hands hard to draw, maybe work with the tools that you're most comfortable with. Set realistic expectations. We talked about earlier about how much time that you would dedicate to this challenge. If you are only doing 30 minutes, five days a week, will you really have time to draw three pieces in a week? Since you won't have a lot of time, maybe you'll decide that you won't make such detailed pieces. You will decide that you're going to draw a simpler pieces, but you're going to crank out a whole bunch of them. What I want you to do now is I want you to write down what creative constraints that you are going to set for your art challenge. You can use the worksheet that I've provided or you can simply write it down and share it in the project here on Skillshare.
6. Concepting Clever Prompts: We're finally to the most exciting part, creating your prompt list. Of course, you're welcome to follow along with the prompts that I do in this class, but you're also welcome to create your own. When you're brainstorming your prompt list, I want you to plan for more prompts, than you will actually complete or that you will actually share. Inevitably, there's going to be pieces that you don't like or that don't come out well, or that you just aren't able to finish. It's a good idea to create more prompts than you think you will be able to complete, and also to create more sketches than you plan to finish. It's totally normal and it's totally okay if you don't finish every single prompt. Just plan for it by making a bigger list than you plan to complete. In my experience, it's better to make your prompts more small and approachable than to make a super elaborate, complex prompt. The reason for that is that you can always elaborate on your art. You can always make it more complex. But if you start out with a prompt that's like super specific or super challenging for you, it can be a little bit intimidating to start. Of course everybody's different and for you that might be different. Maybe it's more helpful for you to be very specific upfront so that you actually do your plan of action. But in all cases, this is about getting in touch with your creativity. This is your challenge. Go for prompts that inspire you. You are allowed to do what you want with this challenge. But what should you actually draw? Well, here are a few ideas to get you started. You could do a series of your favorite places, your favorite food, your favorite movies, your favorite books, music or whatever. Your favorite things are an easy topic because you're already passionate about it. What about a series of travel posters of your favorite places? You could do art based on your own identity. Perhaps you're a millennial. You could do a series of images that are things that you love or nostalgic things from growing up. Or you could also do a series of things that you can't stand, perhaps like answering the phone. The beauty of these kinds of projects is that they're very sharable. There are lots of people who share the same identity as you and they may want to share the art that you've made with some of their friends who also share the same identity. Have you ever seen something in a store and just had to get it for a friend because that was just so them or tag somebody in a post in social media. It's the same idea here. You want to make art that people can relate to. Let's say that your topic is brunch items. You draw a breakfast item that starts with the letter a, b, c, and so on. Now, 26 prompts in the English alphabet. That's a lot. You probably want to share them in alphabetical order to make a catchier presentation. But you also don't have to do the entire alphabet. A through L is still 14 pieces. If an idea catches fire and if people really love what you're doing, you can continue the series on. If you lose interest, well, 14 pieces is still a sizable series and people will get the idea. You can also do a rainbow theme. You could do a similar object but with different colors. For example, fruit, you could start with red apple and an orange orange, and then a yellow lemon and so on. You could do a topic but in several different seasons. Maybe you draw a cat in a different outfit for each seasons. Now, the four seasons isn't a whole lot. You could expand on that by doing different weather scenarios. Similar to the seasons idea, you could do a series of emotions. The movie Inside Out is a perfect example of this. They took emotions and created characters out of them. What a great way to practice your character drawing skills. What do you think that Anger's body would look like? What kind of eyebrows and clothing would Anger wear? My favorite [inaudible] was when I did a series of fairy tales, but with a twist. For each classic, I either did a gender reversal or swapped out the standard white character for a different ethnicity. Or I turned a villain into a hero or vice versa. Taking a topic that people are familiar with and putting an unexpected twist on it is a great way to capture someone's attention. Keep a note for when ideas strike you. I have an apple note that simply titled passion projects and it's full of ideas that I come up with at random times, maybe in the shower or while I'm driving. I don't write it down then, but when I get out of the car, I don't dodge those ideas. There's no idea that's too stupid to end up on the list. I just write them down. Then when I'm looking for an idea to reference later, I can come back to that list. I've got a whole list of ideas that I have found inspiring at some point.
7. 8 Tips for When It Gets Hard: Let's face it, some days are going to suck. You're not going to want to sit down and do the work. Here are eight things that have helped me get through those days. Number 1, batch the work. One of my biggest hurdles to getting started is procrastination. Usually, that is a fear of failure or a fear of, "I'm not going to do something cool," or something like that. The most difficult work is actually the conceptual work. It's figuring out what I'm going to draw and then actually sketching it out and drawing those details like, okay, this is actually what that idea is actually going to look like. What I have found is that it is a lot easier for me to plan a day where I do all of the conceptual work. Well, my goal is usually three sketches per day. When I just sit down with that intention in mind, I have to get over that hurdle for those days to do the sketches, but from then on out, it is easy sailing. I can easily color things in and decide what textures and details, and all of that work gets a lot easier every single day after that. For me, I like to batch the work. I like to do all of my sketches ahead of time to help me get over that procrastination on the rest of the days. I'll let you in on a little secret. For this class, I actually have done the work ahead of time. I have done the sketches. I'm going to be demoing everything from sketch to final art so that you can follow along with the prompts more easily and then I've drawn it on camera, but that's not actually my process. I actually do all of my sketches up front and then every day I'm doing a single piece of art and finishing it to final art. Two, follow your inspiration. Work on the prompt that's most exciting to you. I don't go through my prompt list and do each prompt in order, I choose a prompt that is most exciting for me to work on that day. When things get super regimented, they get boring for me and letting myself choose whatever prompt I want to work on gives me a sense of freedom and fun and exploration, and a sense that I'm just following where my inspiration is leading me rather than being constrained. Number 3, treat yourself. Gather a list of podcasts, music, audiobooks, entertaining info for you to listen to you while you work, something to help keep you motivated. This helps me overcome the resistance on the days where I don't feel like drawing or I'm intimidated by drawing because I have a special treat that I get to listen to. I only let myself listen to audiobooks or podcasts when I'm drawing. It really feels like, "Okay, well, this is the time that I get to listen to that treat." By the way, this is another reason why I like to do my sketches ahead of time because I really can't listen to a podcast and sketch at the same time. But once I'm done with that, I can easily listen to something and do all the drawing. Number 4, create a good pickup point. Stop at a point where you can easily get hooked in when you start again. For example, one day I had drawn the shape of a snake for one of my prompts and I was so excited to get started on coloring in the flowers and choosing the right colors for everything. Since I was close to the end of the day, I just stopped and the next morning I was so excited to start drawing again. There was no fear or no procrastination. The next step was really obvious for me. I knew exactly where I was going to get started, and I had the inspiration to keep going from there. If the next step is obvious for you or easy for you, you can stop there and pick up the next day. This is definitely not a thing that works for everybody, but it's a tip that has really helped me a lot. Number 5, remember, not every single piece that you make will be your favorite. There will be ups and downs. Remember, every piece you create will not be a stunner. Some are absolutely going to suck. Some, you won't even be able to finish and that's okay because by creating enough pieces, you will create something that is worth the while, that is worth the effort. Sometimes I feel really bad because all the work I see from other artists that I admire is incredible and I don't always make amazing art. But social media feeds where I see that work from the artist that I admire, those are highly edited. Most artists don't post all of the work that they do. They post the best of what they do. It's not fair to compare yourself to them if every piece that you create isn't groundbreaking. If every piece that you create is magnificent, then great. I'm thrilled for you, that is wonderful. Tangentially, some pieces I love don't get the response of a big reaction on social media. Just in general, social media isn't the be-all and end-all of what you're doing artistically. Number 6, remind yourself why you're doing this. For those days when making art is hard, you need to stay in touch with why you decided to do this in the first place. If I'm feeling like I don't want to draw that day, I find it helpful to rewrite my why down. If you wrote down your why from earlier lessons, maybe that's something that you can start the day off with is writing down why you're doing this. Number 7, accountability. Another helpful way to keep on track, get an accountability buddy. Do an art challenge with a friend, or have a friend who you can check in with each day. A friend that you can say, "Hey, I did my drawing today," or that you're going to have to tell, "I didn't do my drawing today." For some people, posting every day on Instagram is enough accountability. But ask yourself what has worked best for you in the past to stay dedicated and on your goals? Was it being clear on your own motivation for yourself? Was it someone expecting or needing something from you? How can you recreate that for this drawing challenge? Another perk of accountability buddy is that it works well to have somebody to ask for feedback if you're feeling stuck on your art. Number 8, take the time you need. It's okay if your challenge takes longer to finish, than the allotted days that you started out with. The important part is that you are putting the time in every day. Good art takes time to make, and it's okay if it takes you a little bit longer to finish a piece, unless, of course, your goal was to finish a single piece every single day. You may make several pieces of art that you don't really like, or that doesn't resonate with your audience, but it's about getting better at making art. It's spending time on your craft. Every piece you'll make will make you a little bit stronger. You'll learn from each piece. I hope these tips help you stick with your challenge when the going gets tough, but enough talk. Let's dive into drawing our prompts.
8. Social Media Tips for Hosting your Own Challenge: Tips for hosting a successful art challenge on Instagram. Hosting your own art challenge on Instagram is a great way to connect with the artist community, but it's also a great way to grow your social media following. The most important thing is that you're going to need to create a graphic to promote and share your art challenge. It can be as simple as a list with the title of the challenge and the prompts listed, or it can be an entire illustration that the prompt list is integrated into. However you do it, make sure that you include your Instagram handle, the name of your Instagram account on the image, as well as a unique hashtag that people can use for the challenge. This is super important because as people are participating in the art challenge and they reshare that graphic, that information, the hashtag and your Instagram name, are going to be the easiest way for people to get back to where you are and find all the rules and all of the information about the challenge. If you're not doing a full-on challenge but simply 'draw this in your style' challenge where people redraw your art, you can simply use the art as the shareable promotion graphic. Just be sure that you're including your Instagram name and the hashtag. I highly recommend that you come up with a unique hashtag for your challenge because if people are just tagging you, it's super easy to miss that in your Instagram notifications because those notifications disappear after a while. Having a hashtag makes it easy for you to find other people's art but it also makes it easy for other people who are participating to find other artists who are also participating in the challenge. It's a good way to build that community. Come up with a hashtag that's easy to read and easy to spell. Search Instagram ahead of time and make sure that the hashtag that you want to use is not something that's already in use by somebody else. You'll use that shareable promotion graphic to announce your art challenge but you'll also want to reuse it every time that you post your art for the challenge so you can add it as a second image to your art. People don't see every single post that you make, so every time you share a new prompt, it's a good reminder for people that they can also join in this challenge. They could have missed the original announcement. Another thing to keep in mind with that promotional graphic is that you want to make it the same ratio as the art that you are making for the prompts. So if your art is going to be in a square format, make your shareable graphic also a square. That's because for carousel posts or posts where you have multiple images on Instagram, Instagram crops them all to the same ratio. So it's either going to be all squares or all rectangles and you don't want to crop out half of your prompt list. It's important that you explicitly tell people that they can join in the challenge and how they can join in. Don't assume that they're just going to know that it's a challenge and that they can join you in it. They might just assume that you are doing this challenge and they might not participate at all. Write it in the caption, how people can join you, but also I found it helpful to create a graphic slide with the guidelines for having people join you. For those guidelines or rules or whatever you want to call them, keep it simple. The goal for a lot of these art challenge is to grow your social media following and the easier it is for people to participate, the better. You don't want to make it super complicated for them. You get to decide what you find is important and what rules you want people to use when they're joining your art challenge. But what I would recommend is asking them to tag you in the post, use the hashtag and reshare that prompt list so that other people can also join it. You may want to keep your prompts simple so that it's easy for people of all skill levels to join in. If you're running an art challenge, it's really helpful to share other people's art. It encourages people to want to share their art, everybody likes to be promoted. There's a lot of ways that you can do that, you can share people's art every day in stories, you can also create feature posts that you put in your Instagram feed. For my find your illustration style class, I created feature posts where I tagged a whole bunch of artists that were participating. If it's really important to you that you keep your Instagram feed really well curated and you don't want to put other people's art in the front of your feed, you can do what I did for my how to draw class. I just made a cover photo that said, hey, these are inspiring projects but that first image in the carousel post was my own art. Be sure that you are tagging all of the artists in the post because the whole point of this is to promote other artists so it's easy for people to find them. For some challenges like draw this in your style, there are feature accounts that will promote different challenges that are going on. If you can find accounts that promote art challenges, you can tag them in your shareable promotion graphic, hopefully they will spread the word about your challenge. It can be difficult to get people to participate in a challenge if you have a small social media following. One way to overcome that is by hosting a group challenge. So what you can do is you can pair up with artists that are at a similar level as you and host a challenge together. A great example of a group challenge is folktale week. So there are a handful of artists who are promoting the prompts, who are hosting the challenge, and they tag each other. Having a wider reach is an easier way to encourage more people to participate. Finally, do a challenge because you are excited to do this thing alone by yourself. There's no way to predict if people will participate or not and you can't force them to, so make sure that whatever topic you're drawing, it's something that you would be happy to draw regardless. Don't be disappointed if your first art challenge isn't a massive hit and doesn't get hundreds of participants. Not every challenge that I've hosted has been popular. Keep in mind that you're going to learn by doing this challenge and you'll be able to take those lessons into your next.
9. Magical Moments Challenge: All right, now we have a game plan, and in the next part of the class, we're going to dive into the fun part, making the art. Here's my prompt list that I'll be illustrating. Now in the next set of videos, I'll be showing you how I approach these prompts, along with tips and insights that I gained from doing each piece. There are several ways that you can join in with me. You can do your own unique interpretation of the prompt. There's a million different interpretations out there for each of those prompts, and I'm sure you will come up with your own awesome version. Or you can create your own version of what I've created. Kind of like a draw this in your style. If you've been feeling particularly burnt out, this can be a really easy way to approach this challenge. Of course, you're also welcome to work from your own prompt list as well. However you decide to approach your challenge, I'd love to see your art. Add your work to your Skillshare project and you can update it every day with new pieces. Pro tip. Choose your favorite piece as your cover photo, and don't be shy to update that cover photo if you make a new piece that you love even more. I love highlighting student work in my social media, and e-mail newsletters, and Skillshare announcements. So if you'd like a chance to be featured, make sure that you include your Instagram handle in your project. So when I credit you, people can find your work. Remember, have fun doing this art and take time to connect with the other people who are doing this challenge by commenting on their pieces. Let's get started.
10. Prompt 1: Witch's Ingredients: What I got really interested in that first year was creating different unique bottle shapes. I wanted to have like really tall ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones, I wanted to play with things that were more angular and things that were more around, so I was really playing around with these shapes. I also wanted to play around with different styles of stoppers. Some that were thicker, or fatter, or maybe a round one like you see here. I also wanted to have some repetition in the art. These flowers, they have like a bell shape to them, and I wanted to use that same shape in the mushrooms. I also had a lot of fun playing with skewed perspective, so you can see with the liquid, sometimes it really dips down in a maybe unrealistic perspective, or forced perspective. I also did the same thing with the stoppers. They also have like a forced perspective on them, and the bottom of some of these files as well. With the leaves and the flowers, having them one solid color seemed a little bit boring, so I wanted to add a little bit of variation in the colors in there, I just thought that brought it to life a little bit better. Remember how I was talking about wanting to have repetition in a shape, so I'm really defining those mushroom shapes so that they reflect what the flowers are, so that when your eye bounces around the Canvas, it's like, oh, these are the same, and that's fun. Now, here in the mushrooms, you'll see that the legs of the mushrooms are a really pale pink, and they blend into the white of the vial of the bottle behind them. One thing I can do when those colors are too close to each other, I can create an outline. I'm going to outline the legs of the mushrooms here. Mistakes happen to all of us, somehow I drew a red line over all of these leaves, so I am erasing it and fixing that, happens even in digital art. Sometimes when I'm drawing, you'll see me shrink something down really low, and that is so that I can see how would this look if this was a tiny thumbnail on Instagram, or on my website. Would everything contrast with a stand out really well? When I see this really small, I think, you know what, actually these bottles shapes and the pink background, they're not super strong, so I'm going to create an outline around these bottles, and I'm also going to add a little bit of texture and darkness to the background to help create a little bit more contrast between the background and the bottles themselves, and I thought it would just be fun to add some little dashes and little lines in the background and some texture. Finally, there was a little bit of dead space around the bottles, and I thought some tags on these [inaudible] would look really cute, and fill up the space a little bit better.
11. Prompt 2: Moth: For this moth drawing, I'm going to use Procreate's tool symmetry so that I can draw both sides of the moth at the same time. I'm going to go into the wrench icon, the Canvas tab, and I'm going to turn on the Drawing Guide on, and then I'll go to the far end which says Symmetry. Now, every time that I'm looking at a layer, it needs to say drawing assist on or off. If I tap on the Layer and I tap Drawing Assist, it will let me draw with symmetry. If that is off, which I sometimes forget, I'm going to have to draw both sides. That is something that if you are following along in Procreate, you may want to pay attention to. There are so many beautiful and fun moths out there and I had a lot of fun researching different kinds of moths. In fact, I came up with plenty of different sketches with all kinds of different moths. I decided that a luna moth was my favorite. I really love the color of them, I love the shape. While I took most of my inspiration from there, I also did my own designs on the center of the wings. It's really important to point out here, I'm starting a new layer so I have to turn that Drawing Assist back on for the new layer, otherwise I'm only going to color on one half of the Canvas. Believe me, I forget it all the time and it's very annoying when I finally realize it. The goal to make this moth look magical was to create a glow so that the moth looks like it's glowing, iridescent almost. I created a gradient that you can see where it's lightest towards the center of the body in the moth and it gets darker towards the edges. Then it was all about a balance of creating delicate little details in the wings, and that I had a lot of fun with just coming up with my own little designs. Since it's a luna moth, I figured out lunar, moon shapes would be good. Also, why not flowers and mushrooms since that seems to be a theme that's running through all my magical prompts. Also with the mushrooms, I also wanted to create a glow. You'll see me turn the sketch layer on and off quite a bit here. While the sketch layer is great for helping me decide where I'm going to put my base color and my actual final art, when it's on, it also makes the edges of everything look really crisp and clear, whereas they might not actually when the sketch layer is turned off. I turn it on and off a lot to check for that. I'm really into flowers lately. I have a garden for the first time in my life. That's probably why I'm doing so many different kinds of flowers and drawing so many flowers in these prompts because trying to grow flowers from seed and learn about them has been really exciting and inspiring for me. I'm just adding the final touches but really the most important part here is creating again that glow. It really feels like this moth is glowing in the night and that's really what feels magical about this piece to me. The final thing I'm doing here is a compositional thing. These yellow flowers, they were a little bit too close to the top edge of the Canvas, so I just lowered those down. I'm so excited to see your interpretations of this prompt moth. Be sure to share them in your projects.
12. Prompt 3: Magic Potion: This prompt was magic potion and so my end goal was to create a interesting-looking bottle to put the potion in and how could I make that actually look magical. I think the goal for me was create something that glows. I was really enamored with the idea of having some cosmos or some different world looking inside of the bottle. Like what you could bottle up the stars and the moon, so that was my emphasis. But having just the bottle by itself seemed a little bit dull, I thought it would be really nice touch to add some flowers around there. One of the keys about the flowers was that I wanted to create a variety of shapes, so I didn't want them all to be exactly the same. That's why you see me drawing these three smaller flowers down over here. But at the same time those two top flowers, I figured those could be basically the same thing. In fact, what I did was I duplicated the layers of the flower that I first drew, and I had drawn each element. I drew the background color on its own layer, I drew the color full center on its own layer and the highlights and shadows on their own layer. When I duplicated those over, I was able to really easily change the colors. It looks like a different flower, but it's basically the same thing. Sometimes I like to use little shortcuts like that by just not having to redraw everything the same time, but also making it a little bit different. A big part of making this potion look interesting was creating that glow. I want to create a movement by creating this splash around the corner and then I needed to create a gradient of color to create that glow. Then after I had made that gentle glow, I could pop in my stars and my moon and really emphasize behind that. Once I had finished the bottle, I felt like it was a little too close in color to the background, so I added a stronger outline around it and some highlights to really make it feel like it was shiny. Then finally I came in and created some more details on the leaves and lightened that color up so that they were not the same color as the bottle.
13. Prompt 4: Skull: The first thing that I really wanted to focus on was making sure that I was creating a cute skull because skulls can be creepy and I don't really like making scary art. My strategy with this was to make something that was cute, but maybe a little bit creepy, maybe a little bit darker. A big part of focusing on that was making a really rounded, friendly shape for the skull. Part of that is making the eyes really big. Things that have really big eyes tend to be really cute. I also made the nose a little bit of a heart-shaped because that's also cute. I want to get into the details, adding more than just the skull because I think it would be just boring to have a skull as the artwork. One of the things that I really focused on for the candles was creating these waxy drips. I felt like the waxy drips added, first of all, visual interest to this illustration, but also that those curvy drips, they feel like something I want to touch and grab. That's how I feel about candles, and I was like, wax, this is fun to play with. I felt like that added a lot to this piece. When I'm filling in the shapes with their base color like the white of the skull. I like to move my brush in the direction that I'd like to see textured marks. I use textured brushes so the color isn't all one solid mass and sometimes part of the background shows through and you can see the brush strokes you would be able to with physical paints. I use a curved motion at the back of the skull and I'll use an up and down motion when filling in the candles because the skull should be curved and the candles are really upright. Another key thing I'm thinking about is creating the right amount of contrast between colors. Like the purple color on the inside of the eye sockets or the drips on the candles. They need to be lighter than the dark pink of the candles, and also lighter than the background. It looks like I'm a genius in picking the exact right color, but I'm actually redrawing this piece. I spent a lot of time playing with the right color for the candles and the background and the wax while working out the sketches for the original piece. A lot of my pieces, I've added really textured background, but for this piece, I really liked how dark the background was against the white skull, but I felt like it was a little bit heavy, so I thought it would be fun to add a lighter blue texture around it and create a little bit of a fun funky border to create a little bit of movement as well. It's not just a straight line, really curvy this light purple outline. You'll see me really fussing with the flower here, and what I really wanted to do with these tiny little details is create some visual contrasts. I want to make sure that I'm drawing something that's thick and thin. The stem is thin and the leaves are thick to create visual contrast. Then to make things feel magical, I really wanted to create a glow around the candles. The candles I created a nice purple background behind them, but also I added some little sparkles and stuff to create this glow, maybe like little crackle sparkle effect. The most effective part of all of this I think was creating the glow around the skull. I really concentrated on making the lightest portion of the skull, the brightest part where the candles would be hitting it. I also made a little bit of a line on the jaw because the jawline would be sticking out a little bit. Here I'm just fussing with the colors in the skull. First, I felt the skull was too purple and not pale white enough to stand out against the background, but after lightening it, I realized I needed the glow from the candlelight to be more distinct. I'm drawing a sharper line for the white highlights. Hopefully, it'll show up more strongly. That's how I approach making a skull that was dark and mysterious and magical, but also cute.
14. Prompt 5: Books: This prompt is books, and I could go a whole lot of different places with this prompt. There are so many ideas that I have for drawing magical books. I'm an avid reader and I love books about magic, and so I was really interested in drawing something that had to do with magic and books. One of my favorites is books that have portals in them, portals to different worlds. The Chronicles of Narnia, where you have to go through the wardrobe to get to the other magical world. I love that, and also in Coraline. In Coraline, she has this little tiny door that goes in between apartments, but when she opens it, it actually goes into the other world. The idea of portals is super fascinating to me, so I thought it would be really fun to do a bookshelf that is full of different little portals which makes me think of Gumby, I don't know if you've ever watched Gumby the show. But they would dive into these books and they would go into another world, but anyway there are just so many ideas I have with magic and books. But I thought maybe these are fairy doors and a bookshelf would be really fun, kind of like mouse doors. But one of the things that I really wanted to do was explore different kind of styles of doors. I really also like home decor, so I wanted to put a bunch of plants and a bunch of different mirrors of picture frames. This piece was really just pure fun. It was all about trying to find different ways to put lots of things that you could look at and lots of details inside of them. First, I'm just knocking out all the different colors and spacing out the color, so I don't have a bunch of purple doors right next to each other, and balancing out the color palette because the background is pale pink. Having a nice balance of these colors, I'm really focusing on mostly purple accents, and teal accents, and I do want a little bit of yellow pop. In retrospect, one thing that I think makes this illustration work is creating a sense of scale. If I had just made a bookshelf with a bunch of doors, that illusion of them being tiny doors or very doors, I don't think it would have worked. The key was to juxtapose those with objects that are "normal size". Putting in those normal size plants and normal size books were essential to creating this illusion, to create that feeling of actual magical fairy doors. With a piece this busy, I really need to make sure different objects aren't overlapping in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish objects from one another. For example, the leaves in this plant I'm drawing, I want to make sure they can be seen distinctly from the books and the shelves. For example, a leaf that ends at the same edge as the shelf is difficult to distinguish, but I can easily see that distinct shape when it's drawn with a little space between the two objects. Another trick if there's no way to avoid overlapping shapes is to use strongly contrasting colors. I'm going to lighten up the leaf colors so they stand out from the books. Then beyond that, it's all about creating fun details on top of those colors. A lot of this is just drawing extra details on top. Once I have the details, I want to go back in and play with some of the colors. A plain flat color is a little bit boring, so I'm adding more texture to the doors and the bookshelf. Adding a little bit more streaks into the mirror, I'm going to add more details into the leaves because they're so big, and just a flat green is going to look boring. It's all about adding details, and texture, and shading. This piece was just pure fun, I could probably keep going on and on, adding more details. But you got to stop somewhere.
15. Prompt 6: Snake: I drew this snake before sitting down to film this version. This is actually the second time I'm drawing the snake. I think what I spent most of my energy focusing on was creating a nice curvy flow to the layout of the snake. I found it helpful to start with a small thin line to layout where I wanted the curves to lie, keeping in mind that I need to make space for those loops to be far apart so that the body of the snake wouldn't smash really closely together or that will squish together instead of a nice loop or curve. After that, I brought in my thicker line, and I drew it either squarely center on that original line, or as I needed to, I moved it slightly to the left or the right of that original line. In the area near the neck, the snake's body does squash together instead of curving around nicely. What I decided was in that problem area, I just put a flower over that section. The rest of the flowers, and leaves I wanted to weave around the snake's body but not distract from that curvy flow I'd worked so hard on. I wanted the snake to stand out really strongly against the background. I made the background the darkest color, and the snake the lightest. That meant all the color, and the piece was going to come from the flowers since it was all about arranging the colors so that your eye bounces around the piece. I used a slightly darker color under the stars, and smudged it around to create a glow effect. Shading was really important on the snake's body so you can tell which part is in front, and behind. I decided to add the snake's belly underside this long, and curled section, partly because thinking about how snakes move, that seemed likely to be where its body would twist, and push, and not bother itself, but also because it was a blank space, unlike those curled, and front areas, so there was actually room for the belly. There are dozens of creative ways to draw a snake scales, and I played around with a handful of them before I ended up with the minimal version that I used. It might be a fun exercise to do some research, and see how other artists portray snake scale, to get some ideas for how you might want to do yours. The reason I'm drawing these flowers is all a balance of trying to add eye-catching detail without detracting or taking attention away from the snake itself. I don't know if I managed to balance that perfectly, but I did have a lot of fun with this piece and finding new ways to draw flowers.
16. Prompt 7: Teapot House: This prompt for me was really about embracing the things that I wanted to draw. The idea of a teapot fairy house seemed really cheesy to me, but it's just something I wanted to draw, and this art challenge was all about doing the things that I wanted to do. This was me giving myself permission to explore the themes and the ideas that I am interested in. Teapot as a house, sounds fun to me. Originally when I drew this teapot and started coloring it in, it was really boring. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could make it look visually interesting. The best thing that I came up with was to really emphasize the different planes of it. I had areas where it's a brighter purple, and a darker purple, to really make those shapes stand out. I actually spent a whole lot of time with that handle trying to figure out an interesting way to draw it. I've also had a lot of fun, plane stylistically with lines in my art recently, so I really liked creating outlines for a lot of this piece. It really makes the teapot stand out, and I loved adding the dashed lines inside there as well. Another thing stylistically that I've been trying to avoid is simple flat colors. With the leaves and the mushrooms over here, I really added some shading. I made sure that there were lighter colors of green, and darker colors of green, and the same with the red on the mushroom. It's not just one flat color of red, there's lights and darks too. I loved these white flowers, but man, they really blended into the background. I will have to adjust the background later to deal with that. Also had a lot of fun playing with different shades of red. Hopefully, it looks like part of that is in the front, and part of it's in the back., so it's a two-layered flower. I tried to add a darker texture to the background to make those white flowers pop, but unfortunately, it meant that the fun yellow colors that I have there really didn't show up anymore, so I had to change those to a darker orange. If I had any advice, it would be choose your background colors ahead of time. Maybe even do your background textures ahead of time, because if things don't pop, you're going to have to re-edit them.
17. Prompt 8: Cauldron: Today's prompt is Cauldron. A fun trick for drawing the cauldron is to draw a low flat oval for the body of the cauldron, and then draw the lip of the cauldron in the neck that it connects it. Of course, when I think of cauldrons, I think of witches and cats. It felt natural to draw a cat, instead of the traditional black cat, I figured it would be fun to try doing a white cat. Well, honestly, I also want to try it because the cauldron is black and a white cat makes this piece pop out even more. Creating the swirls of steam and smoke was really fun here. I spent a lot of time trying different versions of steam and smoke but in the end, I chose this formation because I liked how the different spirals are pointed inwards towards the center of the piece. But my favorite part is probably all of the bubbles. I didn't just draw the bubbles all the same size though. To draw your eyes and mouth, I drew the bubbles smaller as they move downward. But I always vary the sizes because that contrast in sizes is a little bit more interesting than just bubbles that are exactly the same size. Also, aren't these little splashes at the lip of the cauldron so cute? Those little droplets were very fun to draw.
18. Prompt 9: Cosmic Coffee : Today's prompt is cosmic coffee or tea, whatever your favorite beverages. Cosmic coffee just sounds better than cosmic beverage of choice. I wanted to draw a surreal looking waterfall of tea spilling into a sparkling cup. One tip for getting that way the cup, I initially drew a cup as a normal round oval cup and then came on top of that to draw wavy lines. I really match the lines going from the center of the cup outwards. I actually did the same thing with the plate. They drew an oval for the plate, drew a circle in the center of the plate with lines going out from that center. Then drew arches from each line to create a scalloped plate. Now I'm just filling in flat colors for everything. After I added a flat colors to everything, I started adding some texture to the background, and I purposely drew some very light colors around the cup. Hopefully that creates a misty look. Then it comes down to details. Of course, I get my sparkling stars in the coffee and missed. Then the waterfall was really fun to draw. I actually reference waterfalls for drawing this, so it would look more like water falling from a waterfall instead of just a pouring single string liquid. Those little light brown U-shaped dashes that follow the curve of the waterfall are key to creating that sense of movement. I also made sure to have light and dark streets to create that sense of flowing movement. Now, while creating the shading and the structure of the cup, notices white lines going up and down, they line up with that Kearney golden rip. They reach for the sections that is in the upside down U part, the part that would be going towards the center of the cup. Next, I'm adding shadows to a bunch of places, so I'm creating a new layer and setting it to multiply, and adding shadows not only to the tea-cup, but also those flowers as well. It's important to note that I'm drawing the shadow not only under the flowers, but also slightly on top of the flowers too. There's a little bit of shadow on the edge of the stem and underneath the stem, same with the petals and the leaves. That really creates a sense of depth, and there you have it. You can take a really simple concept like a cup of coffee and turn it into something special with lots of interesting details.
19. Prompt 10: Palmistry: If you're intimidated by the idea of drawing hands, I've got a really easy trick for you. Take a photo of your hand and trace it. Having your palm flat like this, is probably the easiest perspective to draw. As you're tracing it, use it for proportion. You don't have to trace the hands perfectly. A simple tapered finger will translate easily. Since the prompt was palmistry, I included interesting creases in the hand. I actually referred to a lot of palmistry charts and learned a lot about reading palms. In the end, the lines didn't make the piece feel magical enough, so I added flames to the fingertips. Flames are lightest where the heat is hottest, so I drew a little gradient in them. I also drew the light reflecting on the fingertips of thumb. When drawing the flowers on the left side of the painting, I started by drawing the general shape I wanted the flowers to take up. Then I drew the petals starting at the center of the flower and working outwards. Once I have the shape of the petals finished, I can adjust the base layer and erase or add any shape as needed. Then I'm adding shadows and highlights to each of the petals to create the illusion of them layering on top of one another. As I'm drawing the tiny red flowers in their center on the right side, I'm then matching them facing either right or left or straight towards the viewer. The whole spike of flowers is creating a round shape. I'm also thinking of that as I add the highlights and I'm only using the brightest highlights on the side of the individual flowers that are facing the flames. With this yellow flower, I'd already drawn the shape of the base underneath, so I spent a lot of time creating the petal shapes. I love the idea of the petals curving around instead of laying flat. The trick with the ribbon is to draw the whole thing and then erase the bits that I want to be behind the hands. Then it's as simple as drawing dark lines where the ribbon curves that it makes it appear that it folds around itself. Finally, I'm adding a flower to fill out the space in the upper right-hand corner. Some shading and texture to the leaves. Adding a bit of texture in the background, and finally some fine white flowers to make sure that I'm balancing out the amount of white and red and yellow on each side of the piece.
20. Final Notes: Congratulations, you made it through all of the prompts. I want to say a big thank you for joining in on this challenge. Especially all of you who joined me and participated with the live version of this class. It was such a treat to see you updating your work throughout the challenge. If you haven't already, please be sure to share your art with us in the project gallery. You can do that by using the Skillshare website and clicking on the Projects and Resources button below this video, on the right-hand side of that page, you'll see a button that says create your project. Or if you've already created a project, you'll be able to click on your project and you can edit it and update it with your latest art. Be sure to check out what other folks are doing in the project gallery as well. I'll also be sharing your work on Instagram. If you want to share your work there, you can tag me @PaperPlaygrounds and be sure to use the #MagicalMomentsArt, so that I can find your beautiful work. If you're interested in the digital brushes that I use, I have a list of my recommended brushes on my website. You can also sign up for my newsletter where I share tips and resources for artists as well. If you're interested in learning to level up the color in your artwork, check out my color theory class. I've also got classes on how to use Procreate, how to draw, and even how to make a living as an artist. You can find all of these on my website or my Skillshare profile. I hope you are able to spend some time getting back in touch with your creative spirit and enjoying the art-making process. If you enjoyed this class, please do leave me a positive review or even a thank you in the discussions tab. Your kind words mean a lot to me and you inspire me to keep creating classes. Thank you for spending your time with me and I cannot wait to see your art.
Brooke Glaser, Illustrator
