Mixed Media Illustration: Paint Your Childhood Home

1. Introduction: In my daily life I was sitting a lot on the computer, so I really enjoyed working analog, just taking the paint and putting them on paper. Hi everyone and welcome to this sculpture class where I will teach you how to paint your childhood home while experimenting with mixed media. My name is Claudia, and I am an architect originally from Spain, but now based in Basel. I work full time as an architect in an architecture office and in my after hours, I do illustration. In today's class we will start your own visual diary by documenting your childhood home. This all started because as an architect, I like to document my surroundings. When I go traveling or I see a building that I really like, I try to put it down on paper, and while doing this, I notice that I was lacking some tools of really expressing the memories attached to these places so I began introducing different materials and I found that through doing that, I was creating more contrast and a lot of texture in my drawings. I hope that you enjoy this class and see you later. Bye. 2. Class Project : In this segment we will talk about the class project. I would love to see not only the finished illustration of your childhood home, but the process. The process of simplifying your sketch and all the mixed media tests that you can do. Also, if you try something that I didn't try, that will be super interesting, not only for me but for the other students. So please post them down in the project space. With this illustration, we will start basically documenting your surroundings with the first place that you ever lived in, so your childhood home. For that, you have to keep in mind certain things. Basically, if there is something that you remember very well from your childhood home, but it's not portrayed in the picture, you can just sketch it in, being a dog, pet, whatever pet you had, a lizard maybe. So whatever thing that you really miss in your portrait, just feel free to incorporate it. Also, if you don't want to paint your childhood home, you can paint whatever other thing that you want. Don't worry if you don't have all the materials that I have, you can simply skip some steps or mix and match whatever you have. If instead of gouache, you have acrylic paint, that's also okay. We will talk more about the materials in the next segment, but for now, we will just focus on painting your childhood home. Hope you're as excited as I am. 3. Material Overview : Now, let's talk about the materials that we need to get started. First of all, if you don't have all the materials that I have here, don't worry. You can always just skip some or use something else. For example, I will use gouache. If you don't have gouache, use acrylic paint. If you don't have the markers that I have, use any market that you have. Really, it's very free. It's about mixed media. If you want to add something different, you, of course, can. Let's start with the basics. We need paper. I would recommend you to use something between 180 grams per square meter to 300. I have here a watercolor paper. There's two different kinds. I mean, there's one with more texture and one with less texture. This one is called press, for example, and that means that it has some texture to it. I would say this one is good for maybe using more wet mediums, but if you're using drier mediums, I would advise you to use hot press paper, which is a little bit more flat and it's better for things like pastels and markers, but any kind of paper you have is basically okay. For testing things, I normally use common printer paper. I don't know. It's just the easiest thing. I mean, when you're testing with paints, you really want to use the paper that you're going to use. I always have some scraps laying around of, I don't know, bigger pieces that I cut down to smaller ones, but any paper will do. Just grab anything that you have, even maybe you have brown paper and that could be cool, too, so use the brown paper, why not? Also, then we will need opaque paints. I really like gouache. I have many different brands. I have this Holbein Artist gouache. This one is from talents. The price range is very different in them, but you really do not need to be fancy with the gouache. You can just get like a starter set and you will be okay. Basically, actually, you just need to have yellow, blue, red, and white and black, and you will be able to make any color. Of course, it's more convenient when you have a cool pink color in a tube because then you don't have to mix it yourself, but I mean, we have mixing palettes for that. You can just buy a starter set of gouache with three, four colors and you will be set. Then, we also have markers. I really like this Posca markers. You can use any other type of marker like the Molotow markers, but I wouldn't recommend Copic markers because Copic markers are alcohol-based and they're quite translucent. You need quite the special paper for them because if not, they will bleed through and they will look patchy. If you have the chance, I know they're quite pricey, but with only a few colors, I don't always use all of them. I always use only a few as accent colors. You can create amazing illustrations. No need to go around and buy the whole shebang. Let's test this out. See how nice the glide. It's amazing. The colors are so vibrant. You also have this one. Amazing. I really like them. Let's try the gouache, which I didn't try before. You can use this red one. For brushes, I have quite a few, but I really think as a beginner, you only need two types. A thicker one around a 10, a 12, a 14 maybe with a round tip and a thinner one, maybe a four or a six. I think that should be enough for creating small details and laying down large pieces of color. Let's use this big one. Then, in our water cup, we mix the gouache with a little bit of water. We have to create a creamy consistency here. It really depends on how thick you want it, but in my case, I really like it opaque. I go for this creamy, consistency and not something very runny. See? It's so opaque. It's super nice. When it dries out, it dries out in a velvety finish, which is super nice. I have to admit, I really like it. Then, in order to clean my brush, I always have a tissue or a napkin because you can clean it in water, but you will never be sure that the tip is fully clean. If you want to get the colors as vibrant as you want, then you really have to tap it out. Let's continue with these guys here. These are wax pastels by Caran d'Ache. These ones are called Neocolor two and they're water soluble, too. They are not as messy as oil pastels, and they have a very creamy consistency. See what nice texture they give? You can do them very harshly, and then, you have also kind of an opaque feel where you can go very lightly, and just use it for shadows or for small details. The good thing about it is you can sharpen it and create a very thin tip. You can do really nice details with it. They are amazing. I really recommend you get some if you have the chance, but if you don't have those, there's also the variation of oil pastels. I find them incredibly messy. You can see from the box, they're super messy, but they're very nice. They're very creamy. The texture they do is quite something. See? You can even see how thick they are. They're like a cream. Then, we have the colored pencils. I have three kinds actually. I have this double-sided one, which is very cool for traveling, and then, I have prismacolors. They are also quite creamy and nice and can do fine details and you can just sketch to your heart's desire. Then, we also have this very cool ones. They're quite heavy. They're called Koh-I-Noor watercolor pencils. I think everyone needs a multi-functional pen like these ones, a watercolor pencil. Let's try it out. Yes. Look at those gradients. Quite something, huh? Now, let's try it with this one. See how nice? They all behave like watercolor. You can go with these paints. You can go as you see from very opaque and textured to very light washes. After seeing all these materials, I have to say I really advise you to create test sheet. Maybe you create a nicer one than this one using the paper that you will actually use because it's very nice to try out the different properties of the different things and also see how they worked together. For example, putting the marker on top of the wax pastel or putting the gouache on top of the marker. I don't know. I think it's very interesting. I spent a lot of time in my sketchbooks just trying out different techniques, and also, how the paint interacts with the paper. That's very different. See? This is a very thin paper. The gouache doesn't really get that opaque. It just seeps into it, but yes. I hope you're excited for your next lesson where we will basically start sketching. We will take your photograph, and then, simplify it. See you on the next one. 4. Sketching: In this segment, we will take the photograph of your childhood home and simplify it into a sketch. I have my house here, I basically took it from Google Earth. Yeah, for starting, you have to know there are two ways of doing this. What I normally do is I just sketch it full frontal, with no perspective. So that if you were looking at it from here like, dead on. You can also do a perspective, a one-point perspective or a two -point perspective. For that, you will need some construction lines. With your pencil, you can just do a horizon line. Then this would be the highest point of your building, going down and then this would be the lowest point of your building, depending on how much of a perspective it is. This is the other side. This would be for a two-point perspective, for a one-point perspective for example, we have this. Then you have your roof. The two-point perspective, you continue it like this, and then you have constructed your little house and you just have to follow the lines. Yeah. But this will be for another class. For now, we will do what I normally do. Which is a full front. For doing this, there's two methods. Basically, you can eyeball the sketch just directly onto your paper. Look at it, put it in front of you, look at it and try to transfer it onto the paper. Or you can use a light box. I have one right here. This is my light box. It was quite cheap from Amazon. I normally use this for quite complex buildings or scenarios, or compositions that have many different small parts. For example, if I'm adding fishes to under-sea scene, then I will first draw the background and then add the fishes through a light box on top. Or if the building is very complex, I will basically just put it down, put the sketch down, and then put the paper on top and just start tracing it. But I do think it's much more fun if you eyeball it, because, you're creating an illustration that expresses your own point of view. Really, what better than exaggerating things about your house. For example, my house. It's pretty much cookie-cutter, what you would draw when you're a child. Has two windows, a roof, and a chimney, that by the way is fake. This little entrance gate, and this little door, and two trees to the side, really the typical house. I like exaggerating that. Also, I know the proportions by heart at this point, after 27 years living there. We will just do it like this. I do recommend you to just, go and sketch directly on the paper. But for that, I really don't mind seeing sketch lines on my illustrations. I directly sketch on the paper that I'm going to use. As I said before, I'm going to use this watercolor paper, 300 grams. We'll take one of them. Great. Here we have our paper and we put our illustration in front of us, to look at it. For this step, now, I would recommend you to get some masking tape. Just cover the borders, so we can create a nicely framed illustration. So that it doesn't stick too much to your illustration, just tap it onto your clothes. Then it will get a little dirty and it will not stick that well and it will not break the paper once you take it away. I just line it up with the paper. We take another piece, and another piece, and the last piece. Now that we have this done, let's just sketch it. From here on, in the next segment, we will add some details that will make it a more interesting illustration and that will show our personality and our point of view a little better. 5. Adding Quirky Elements: With our sketch laid down, now it's time to make it more you. I would just add anything that makes it feel more of like your childhood home, or that reminds you of your childhood. For me, it would be first of all, the mountains. Tenerife, the place in Spain where I'm from, is a very mountainous area. It's actually a volcanic island and we have the highest point in Spain. I really want to show these mountains,I will draw the contour of some of them. Even if it's not true, they're not that close to my house, but just to make it more exotic. Let's just add some mountains here, and then maybe they go down here and into the back. Great. In the front it's a little bit empty at this moment, I think I'm going to add some plants. And we have this banana tree in our garden that I really enjoy, I really like, and the leaves are like this. Let's just put the banana tree in there, covering a little bit of the sketch. I like big banana leaves,like this. Then we just put, this is the banana in here, like this. We can add some more plants around and in the front, like this, and there's this palm tree close to our house that is looking out of the mountain, and it's quite funny, let's just adds the palm tree as well, even if it's not in our garden or anywhere near. There you look. You see with a few little touches, it already comes alive and it looks much more interesting now, it looks like a house from a jungle, which is exactly how I felt when I was small. It felt like the garden was so big that I could get lost in there for days, and I would climb all the avocado trees and everything. Speaking of, let's do a little tree behind here. This will be a tree. I think this sketch is ready. I've added the things that remind me of my childhood, which is the banana plant, and of course, all the things that were in our garden, which was very big, and the mountains. And if you feel like you need to add something like a pet or a person, you are free to do so. And please do post a sketch also in comparison to your photograph, because I think it's very fun to see how you transform a realistic photograph in a quite funny sketch. I'll see you in the next lesson where we will choose our materials and material combinations. See you. 6. Testing Material Combinations: For this lesson, we will just put our sketch aside and we will only work with materials. We will choose what materials and how we will use them. It's important to understand that for the base of our drawing, we will mostly only use opaque paints. As opaque paint I define something like guash that you can lay down very thickly or markers that are absolutely not transparent. Then on top of this base layer we would add a texture layer or pattern layer. For this, I like to use something between the range of translucence to opaque. For example, that will be the wax pastels or the pencils and then finally, for the details and shadowing, I like to use something with a very thin point, like especially pencils or very sharpened wax pastels as well. Keeping that in mind, let's start the third trial with some materials and some material combinations. Let's start with the guash, we already have it mixed from before. Let's make a little square. You can see, and we saw before, it's very opaque. It needs a little bit of time to dry. Let's make a very opaque layer, and then let's use some other fun color. Let's use this blue one that I have. I just bought it not long ago. It's all fresh. We will clean our brush and now we make the little paste that is nice and creamy, oh nice blue, and we put it next to this one. See when it starts drying. It gets this very nice velvety look, and it dries outlet. But of course, if you don't have guash, just feel free to use acrylic paint. I wouldn't recommend oil because it takes too long to dry. Let's try another color. How about this, yellow, and then we have our primary colors laid down. Creamy, creamy, nice. Now next to it, let's do the same with our posca. You have to shake them up quite a bit and sometimes you have to push down on them. For markers, there's also this modal markers that you can use. I have never, I've only tried them in the store and I have never actually used them myself, but I've heard they're good. Now let's use the same thing in the blue. See this one is also quite opaque, but the colors are not as vibrant as the guash. It does also have a matte finish however. What we're basically creating, it's like a catalog of different materials just to see how they first look and then how they interact with each other. Now let's use the wax pastels. See what a nice texture it does. Quite different. You can already see even if it's the same color, you can create so much different depth with them. Now the yellow. Nice. I've been going a little bit up. That's a problem that artists have sometimes. Now let's use the pencils. Start with the red one. I mean, depending on how you use it, you will, of course, create different textures. But you can see it's more of a translucent layer that you will use on top of the others. Then our last one, the yellow, and as a bonus, but it's not a must if you don't have any of these ones, but you have oil pastels. You can also put those oil pastels in there. They're extremely messy. Like already my hands are full with them. I don't have a similar blue, but I have this very bright one. These three colors actually look very nice together. Let's see what happens when we put some wax pastels on top of the guash. Let's use our contrasting color. Let's use this blue. As you see, it's very nice. It's still vibrant but it lets it go through a little bit and it kind of combines itself with the red. Yeah, I really like it. When we put it on top of the posca, it's even brighter because the posca really dries as a one layer. It doesn't have almost any texture. This one, you have added something to the paper. See this one is way more. Mixing them with each other, you actually create a new color. See this is turning into lilac. On top of pencil, let it's texture shine through and on top of these, wow, just turn blue. Incredible. I mean green. This is quite amazing, is like you're rubbing it away. So you're taking the pastel with you when you paint with it, you're kinda scraping it. So now let's try something different. Let's try the, the pencil on top of everyone. This one is still drying, so I will let it dry for a second. On top of the posca I think it's more like, for example, to create shadows. We can use this and then it will look like almost a 3D element. It incorporates quite nicely to it. If we do it on top of the wax pastels it just mixes it around. They get very dark. It's like you're scraping the pastel away. Of course, pencils on top of each other, usual combination. Now we're going to use the posca pens. Let's use this light, I'm going to use them. Remember you have to shake. We're going to use them on top of everything. On top of this incredibly vibrant color, on top of itself, and not much reaction with each other. In this one it starts to fade away. We can create maybe some interesting effects. Remember, this is the wax pastel, this is the pencil and this is the oil pastel. The oil pastel has a very interesting way of incorporating itself into all the other materials. I think you can spend hours doing this, just looking what happens when you put one on top of each other. But for me, the best is to always use the most opaque paints as bases, and then build on top of them. Use the wax pastels and the pencils to create different textures and different patterns. If you want to add something special like an oil pastel, it can look good, but I would not use it in a very big area. I would always use it in smaller spaces. Another thing that you can try is to see patterns that you'd like. For example, I have tried here stripes and little things but there's also like you can do the waves or just the experimentation will help you just make new ways of creating interesting illustrations with a lot of depth and a lot of contrast. My sketch books are just filled with this kind of experiments. This is my sketchbook. I use it to try new materials out. I use it to document my surroundings. I use it just to keep some thoughts or memories. I make a lot of list of things I want to paint and then I just put everything and anything that I have painted inside of here. Yeah, it's actually like a little agenda of ideas and just materials I like to use. It's as you see here, I have some small paintings that I did as tests and some pieces of paper, maybe some small illustrations. Also one that are done on extra pieces of paper. Like here, lots of lists always, because I like to have a pool of ideas in case I run out of inspiration one day so I can always like take from there. I would love to see you do this. Please for me and for everyone, post this in the project space and in the next segment we will learn about color theory and we will choose a color palettes for our project. So see you then. 7. Choosing Your Color Palette : In this segment, we will talk about choosing your color palette. First, I want to tell you a little bit about how I find color inspiration. There's a million ways of finding color inspiration. You just have to look at your surroundings and you will see a lot of interesting situations where colors are very important. For me, for example, I like to look at contemporary artists for color inspiration or old masters. Sometimes I even take paintings that I really like, and I swatch the colors in Photoshop. Then I know exactly what colors they used, which is pretty fun. Another way of finding color inspiration for me is from movies. I really like Wes Anderson movies. For example, in his very curated, quite sometimes claustrophobic color pallets, with his pastel hues, and they are charged with a lot of emotion and a lot of thought. I really enjoyed about it. Also his quite architectural compositions in the movies. Another one is architecture. As an architect, I really enjoy a building that is designed with very well-thought-out materiality, and very well-thought-out detailing. Buildings like Barragan's buildings, he's a Mexican architect, that put a lot of thought not only into this play with color, but his architectural theory. He was showing this architectural theory through the form and through the colors that he used in his architecture. That's something that really inspires me. On the other hand, there's tons of books that you can choose or you can look at. I have this thing for collecting old books. This one, for example, is by a Swiss illustrator and book writer, it's called The Poor River. It's about a river that gets contaminated. I really find a lot of inspiration, not only for the colors but for the ways that they use the textures, how they lay on top of each other, and how vibrant the contrast is, and how messy, but still coherent it looks. Books are a great source of inspiration. You can get your hands on some very old books, I really recommend you just flip through them, because they are quite fun to look at. Also, one secret that I have, I think it's not a secret, I think everyone and their grandma knows about this book, is this Japanese Dictionary of Color Combinations. It's very aesthetically pleasing, and you can literally find any type of color combination, from two colors, to three colors in them, to four colors. They all have something very special. If you're unsure of what color combinations, you can always just take one from this book and you're set. Of course, just look at nature. The colors that are in nature, especially in spring with the flowers, are unbelievable. If you just take that as a reference, you for sure we'll have a good color palette. Let's talk a little bit about color theory. As I told you in the beginning, you really only need three colors to start. You need yellow, you need red, and you need blue. These are the primary colors. They are in the center of the color wheel. These colors are primary, because they come from pigments that cannot be derived from any other paint. Every other color in the color wheel is derived from these ones. These are the pure pigments. They are not mixed with anything else. On the second layer of the color wheel, we have the secondary colors. These are colors that derive from mixing the primary colors together. We have lilac, green, and orange. This color wheel, I completely painted only using these three colors, nothing else. As you can see, just by doing that, you get a wide variety of them. In the outer circle, you have the tertiary colors. These colors appear when you start mixing secondary and primary colors together. On this basis, you can make all the color combinations that you want, and also then, all the hues that you want. Because when you take, for example, the primary red, and you add a little bit of white paint to it, you can go from a very light pink color to, by adding black, a very dark burgundy red. If you see, with only these five colors, I have created an extremely wide range of hues, saturations, and a white color range. When choosing our color palette, we are looking for harmonious and coherent visual experiences. When something is not harmonious or coherent, it may end up being extremely chaotic or extremely boring. Our brain likes things organized, so we like high contrast and focal points. This can be achieved through combining colors together. For example, you can choose different techniques of combining the colors. There is the technique of using analog colors, which are colors that are next to each other in the color wheel, and they will create a cohesive color palette. When you want to attract attention to something, however, you might use complimentary colors, which are colors that are opposite each other in the color palette. For example, orange and green, or yellow and blue. For this, these color combinations create the maximum contrast and maximum stability. Of course, then you can play with hues and saturations in order to bring out the best of a picture. Also, any color found in nature or any color combination found in nature, is for us a coherent color palette. Because our brain is used to seeing them in our everyday lives. For example, how a tree turns from being green to red. That's a cohesive color palette for us. Anything other in nature that we can see, we can put down on paper and it will create a cohesive and harmonious composition. For us today, we will start choosing three main colors. For me in this case, I have pre-chosen them, and I have chosen this teal color, this bright red color, and this pink. After choosing these three colors, which are going to be the ones that appear the most in our illustration, if you can see it compared to my house. In the house, there's definitely some reddish orange and this teal up here, but I have chosen a third quite contrasting color to create a more fun illustration. Then, we will choose at least four secondary colors that we will use more for details and accents. I have chosen a light yellow, orangey-red, an olive green, and a deep purple. I think this color combination will work quite well in our illustration. I will just keep this little test sheet by my side and look at it at anytime that I need a reference, or that I'm stuck with my color combinations. Please post this in the project space. I would love to see which colors you start using. In the next segment, we will start finally doing our drawing. Let's keep it going. 8. Testing Your Color Pallette: Now before painting directly on our sketch, we will create little thumbnails in order to just test our colors and our color combinations. In the palette I have already mixed the colors that we discussed beforehand. I have the red, the teal, here is the olive green, the orangey-yellow, the cream yellow, the pink, and that's basically it. Now using our sketch as a reference, we will, quickly just with a small brush in a scrap piece of paper, we will just slightly start doing some color tests. For example, I think I want to use the creamy color as the main body of my house, because my house is white but I don't want to leave it completely white. I'll just do like this, then I might use the red for the roof. It's turning out to be a little bit more pinky than I expected. Actually, I wanted it to be more reddish red so maybe we will add a little bit of this other red, which is a vermilion red. It's quite vibrant but I think it's going to do the trick so we'll add a little bit of this and now let's test it again. We will test our yellowish, lay it down. Let's do a few of these so that we already can let them dry and practice on them. Clean our brush completely. Now let's try again with a red. Yeah, I think this is going to be better. Definitely. You don't have to be two precious with the thumbnails, I mean, they're just for you to practice and get a little bit more confident with the colors that you're going to use. I think the pink, I really want to use it for the background. Let's see, this was the one that we're currently using. Let's just see what happens if we use it in some places. I think it's quite nice. Some accents with for example be this color here, which we can also use for the background. We of course have to leave some white space because that's what makes the composition interesting. I quite like it like this, I think. The question is, where would the lilac accents come in? This one's will for sure be part of the house, this for the door and maybe some of the vegetation. Let's do some little swatches here and there and let's see what happens when we add the lilac. I'm still not very sure where to add it to. Maybe also is part of the vegetation. Yeah, I think it could be nice. It's part of the vegetation and then finally, our little orangey color. This one I think we will also use here for the plants. I mean, I'm not 100 percent convinced by the pink so maybe we'll do a variation of it. Let's try again. Let's try with a little bit of red. Let's try with a little variation of the pink. Not that heavy pink so something more along these lines and this one was very, very pink, pink. We can still use it, I think, in some parts of it. Maybe as a gradient. Then again our red, now the ink is coming in. This happens when you're not patient and you don't let the color dry. Also this teal. Maybe we will not do green on the sky, but we will do this orangey. Yes, I think this might look better. Well, see now we've tested our three little thumbnails and I mean, you can do as many tests as you need. For me, I think I found more or less what I want to do with this and I know what different colors go well where and then by using this and using my reference colors in my picture, I think I can have a solid basis to start my sketch. In the next lesson, we will do that. We will start laying down the base colors and we're on the way to completing our illustration. 9. Applying Solid Colors: Now that we have done our tests in these little thumbnails, we are going to just apply the first layer so a real illustration. So we're going to start laying the base colors, which are the opaque colors such as the gouache and the markers. On top of that, we will build the detail and the shadows and all the patterns and textures that we want to add to it. So let's get started. Here we have for reference, the house, the little thumbnails, and my color palette. So with this thickest brush, I'm going to just wet it a little bit, and I'll start adding the first pink layer. Let's add a little bit more pink to this. With gouache, even if it dries, you can just re-wet it and will reactivate. Is a little bit like watercolor, even if it's on the paper and you don't like something or you want to change the opacity of it. You can just add water on top of it and it will reactivate and you can reuse it again. So now let's do a little test on a piece of paper, think I really like this color. So I'll start by using it on the mountain in the background. I'll apply quite a quick layer. You don't have to be too precious about the details. So you can always draw on top of them with another color. The good thing about gouache is that it's very opaque, and also it's very easy to layer it. You can really just cover it with any color that you want afterwards. Once you see that your brush is too dry, you just add more color and keep filling up the blocked out parts. Keep filling up the lines that we had previously drawn from our sketch. The thicker the paint, the more opaque it is. If you want a really light wash, you can also add only a little bit of water to the mixture. But always remember to keep the mixture of the gouache with quite a creamy consistency. Even if you want it to be really opaque, I would suggest just to keep it as creamy as possible. So you don't want like a very thick paste, you want kind of a creamy layer. I'm going to leave this stripe here as a sort of a white space because I think it's nice to have some white in the composition, and also it could be interpreted as a cloud. Don't worry if you go over the border. That's why we have the masking tape. We will create a nice even separation from the paper. Painting is for me, like some very reflective art. So I really like creating a cozy atmosphere, and just thinking back at the things that I lift in this house and all the interactions that I have with the different elements. Like I remember a time where those trees, we're really out of shape, they were looking very, sparse, and now nowadays they're doing very well again. Now we will add this default color to other elements for that, as they are smaller elements we can add them using a little brush. With this, we're done with the base layers. Now we just have to let it dry, or if you're not patient enough like I am going to go in, use the hairdryer on it. Just be sure that there's no like big water puddles because if you put a lot of air on to them, they're going to go everywhere. So just let it dry a little bit or just do it very gently with the hairdryer. In the next lesson, we will do the texture layer. So we will add different textures and different materials on top of each other and we will create more depth and contrasts. 10. Applying the Texture Layer: In this lesson, we're going to apply the texture layer. We're going to apply mostly crayons and Posca pens, creating different patterns and textures on top of the base colors that we have already laid down. So let's start, for example, using this red crayon. Just going to start with the roof, making this kind of wavy motion and I'll continue the next rows. That's very nice. Now, I want to add some texture to the rocks. I'm just going to use this kind of pattern, little lines and then we'll add it to all of them. I think I want to try and add a white texture with the Posca pen on top of the pink. It is looking a little flat. Let's just do the same kind of pattern here. You can do the lines pretty organized or just very randomly, depends on what kind of effect you're looking for. Don't forget to cover all the parts of the picture. I'm going to draw some lines on top of the banana tree. Now we can take this lilac crayon, and we're going to very quickly overlay it on top of this plant here, for example, creating a very loose texture on top of it. Same thing goes to here, then we do some lines. You can't be quite rough with it and quick, so it's more expressive. Here we can do some circular motions. With this pink crayon, we're going to create some dimension for the palm tree. We're going to do some lines and then also some [inaudible] Now you want to create a little bit of shadow, we can overlay this two colors together. So from here, just like that. I would like to introduce a little bit of blue to bring a little bit more of the focal points towards the middle of the house. I'll just do some very thick lines like we've been using on the stones and on the background. I'll paint the tree and this little base. Sometimes I feel like the color needs to be in other parts of the drawing in order to tie it together, so we'll just add it. The fun thing about this wax pastels is you can layer them on top of each other and then make seamless gradients. I will add some other lines to this plant here, as well as some dots to this one. Now let's paint the bench and emphasize the end of the roof, as well as the chimney, now a little lamp. I'm not sure about adding some texture to the graph, so we will try it out on this paper. I think it could be nice to add it sometimes, just on some spaces for it not to be so plain. I'd like to add texture to the trees in the circular motion, I think it's quite nice. Then if you go a little bit over the border. I think we have finished doing our texture layer, overlaying colors with each other, trying different patterns and just bringing the drawing to life. In the next lesson, we will add the finishing details and some shadows. 11. Adding the Details and Shadows: We're so close to finishing our illustration. Now we're going to add the final details using mostly pencils, and maybe still some of this crayons. Of course, If you have to add some details using push cuppings or more gouache , feel free to do it. You can of course mix-and-match how you apply the mediums. You can start doing a layer of crayons first and then apply gouache onto them. It's everything up to you and the experiments that you have tried out. I think I'm going to first of all, start defining a little bit the sections of the house like this here and this, and this beam underneath the roof and maybe adding some sunlight shadow to it. Also the step. We can add some shadow to the ground. I also want to add a little bit of a frame to our windows. You can actually see the partitions on them. Do it with this and also to the door and here. I think the windows need a little bit more texture. I will just quickly do like this with a pencil and also define the lamps. For the roof, I'll add a light shadow along the base and along the sides. Maybe some spots along the way. We'll also add shadow to this plant. Sometimes, when using the same color shadow, because it's the same brightness, you cannot see it. I like using a different color as a shadow. In this case, we're going to use this lilac. Same thing here. You can use the lilac for this and for the top here. Also maybe we can do some lilac shadows of this little stones in here and with the green we add some more texture to the grass. Just like doing big circles. [inaudible] Doesn't matter if you go on top of what you've already drawn. It will look very nice. Now we'll also add some texture to our tree, especially along the margin of the house so that it looks like a shadow and along the chimney. Now we should take a look at our illustration and see what's missing. If there's anything missing at all. Take it from far away, look at it. Maybe they want to add some white dots to this plant. I think it turned out very nice and it has so much depth and texture and it will be a great present for your parents or your siblings, or just to hang in the middle of the Christmas dinner to show everyone, or even to post it on Instagram. Now we have to take away the masking tape. For that, I will recommend you to heat it up with a hair dryer. You just directly take the hair dryer and heat the masking tape up and while you're heating it, you peel it off because that will make the glue be softer and then it's way easier to peel off and you will not rip the paper. In the next lesson we will sign it and then I'll say goodbye. 12. Final Thoughts : Congratulations on finishing this class. I hope you're very happy with the illustration. Now it's time to sign it. I will use the lilac color. This will be a perfect present for my parents. I hope they like it. One thing that you can take away from this class is that by using an experimenting with mixed mediums, you can create new illustration processes and you can create new types of illustrations that you hadn't done before. Also while experimenting, you can find a technique that works for you depending on the place you are. If you're at home, you can use as many different mediums as you want. Or if you are on the go, you can choose just up to two and combine them in such a way that you can create a wide range of illustrations. Never be afraid of trying silly things out. Experimenting is the biggest part of the creative process for me. I really enjoy trying to showcase emotions or just any memory that's attached to a place just by using different mediums. This is a playful and childish illustration, which is supposed to showcase what I felt being a child surrounded by all this nature in my little Island of Tenerife. You can do the same with yours too. If you lived in a concrete block of the 70s, you go, you do it all in gray and monochromatic colors and just add that one pop of color that is your football or your doll or your hula hoop, anything. If you don't want to draw your childhood home, you can just start by drawing a building by a famous architect that you really like, your neighbor's house or just a landscape. I hope that with this illustration you can start your own visual diary and you can start documenting your surroundings. I hope that you fill your sketchbook with many different places and you go travel and you take all of this new mediums that we have tried out today with you and create amazing illustrations. Please share your results in the project space down below. I would love to see the final illustration compared to your real house. A side-by-side photograph of your house and the illustration that came out of it. I will try to tell you where your house was, if it was a cold climate or warm climate. I hope that by using the colors that you used, you were able to bring that out. Thanks for joining this class and taking a look at my creative process, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you want to know more about what I paint or what I do, you can find me over on Instagram at Claudia Melchor del Rio or on my website, www.claudiamelchor.com. I'll see you there and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I wish you an amazing week, weekend, day, night, evening, depending on where you're watching this. Bye guys.