Owl Doodle - Drawing Fun Using Simple Shapes

1. Drawing Fun Using Simple Shapes Owl Doodle Class Trailer: Hey everyone, my name's Jane and I love sharing simple and easy creative drawing ideas to help you relax, get out of your head and get into that creative drawing space. I enjoy exploring the world of pattern and how everything around us can be broken down into simple shapes. One of my favorite methods of expressing this is through simple doodling with pencil, pen, and paper. My approach is to first divide the page either with a basic shape like I do in my Mandela's or using a simple outline of an animal or a flower. Now the page can be worked on one section at a time. Before you know it, a design is forming and it's taken on a beautiful life of its own. My goal is to share how truly easy and relaxing this process can be even for those who say they cannot draw. In this class, I'm going to show you my method using one of my [inaudible] frameworks. I provide the framework and then I walk you step-by-step through the process of how I fill it in with simple shapes that anyone can create and arrange them in new ways that you might not have thought of. In most my drawings, I work with abstract ideas my Mandela's and botanicals all have a whimsical style and can be somewhat fantasy life. Realism is not our goal here, however, we definitely can use nature as inspiration as my animal frameworks are based on real animals. Most of them are. This is more about drawing just for fun and relaxation. Taking a bunch of simple shapes and putting them on the page in ways that feel good and then watching what appears. It is about the process and the end result is just a bonus. No matter how it turns out. This class is for both beginners and season dryers. I'm going to share my process and hopes that it inspires you to try something new and remember that simple joy of putting pencil to paper. I encourage you to play, be unconventional experiment, and explore and then watch what appears when you get out of your head and into your heart. Grab your pencil and paper and let's get doodling.[ MUSIC ] 2. Set Up and Supplies: What are you going to need for this class? Well, first you're going to want your owl framework. That's provided in the downloads, and you can print that out onto regular copy paper. I just use regular printer paper letter size 8.5 by 11, and I print out my owl framework. The lines are nice and dark. I've made them that way so that you'll be able to see through another piece of paper. What else are you going to need? Well, you're going to need a piece of blank paper. I use the same copy paper from my printer. It's a good weight. It can withstand the erasing and you can also see through it. When you place it over top of your owl, you can see the lines through it. If you were to use regular art paper it might be too thick. You might not be able to see through it. The copy paper that you use for your printer, that regular stack of paper you get in the office supply store, works perfect for this. I have stacks of it, that's what I do all my doodles on. You're also going to need a pencil. Whatever pencil you like to work with, that's the pencil to use. I use a mechanical pencil because I never have to sharpen it. An eraser, a white eraser is perfect for this paper. It erases your lines nicely. I also have a putty eraser. I love my putty eraser. You can shape it in any shape that you want. You can get these in art supply stores. I can shape them right into a point, and you'll see me using it as I go along. It's nice to get into small areas. Once we're done with the sketching, you're going to want some pens for inking. Any pen that works for you is the pen to use. It doesn't have to be an art pen. It can be a ballpoint pen, gel pen, anything that works for you. What I like to use is I like to use them microns because they come in so many different thicknesses. I like to use the fiber cast dough as well, and these are both art pens that you can find in art supply stores. But I'll also quite often use the Sharpie, and this is a fine Sharpie. This is one of my favorite, and you can get this in any office supply store, or department store. I like to have a few different thicknesses, so that I can play around with volcano lines. At least have one pen for your inking. But if you can, get a couple of different thicknesses because that really gives you some variety when you're doing your inking. This whole class is going to be done on paper, in pencil, and then we'll ink with pen. For all my iPad doodlers, this can be done with digital drawing as well. I've included the framework as a JPEG image, so you can download to your iPad. Although this particular class is going to be worked through only on pencil and paper, I will include a short lesson on how to set yourself up to work on the iPad as well, so that you can follow along with lessons using your doodling method of choice. Once you have all of your supplies ready to go, and you're all set up, we can move on to the doodling part. 3. The Framework: We have our owl framework ready to go and I need to place my piece of paper over top so then I can use it as a framework. I take these little pieces of tape and I just use painter's tape. This one happens to be blue. Often, it comes in green, and I just roll them up and place them in the corners, out of the way of the main framework. Then, I take my blank piece of paper and I place it on top, and I mind it up, and then, I just press it down on those corners. That's going to hold my paper in place so that even if I shift around, the paper won't shift. Once I start drawing, I'm going to keep that framework underneath there in the same place. I work these owls over a period of time usually when I'm just figuring them out and just doodling on them. I like to have my paper taped to the framework so that it's always in the same place whenever I pick it up. When I'm drawing it, if my hands get knocked, or the paper in my clipboard fall on the floor, it's going to remain in the same place as it always is for the entire drawing. There's a few ways to do this. I'm going to walk you through each section of the owl so you can draw a line down the center and only work on one half of the owl, which we'll work on one-half of the pieces because my owl is symmetrical. It's going to be the same thing over on the other side, only mirrored. You can do it by hands so it's organically done. You can draw one eye, and then, by looking at that eye, you can come over here and draw the eye again. I do that with a lot of them because the whole point for me is that I really enjoy the drawing process, but if you're doing it to create a piece of art, then it's really important for you to be symmetrical. You can do a few things. You can ink the half that you've done, and then you can photocopy it, flip it over, and drop through another piece of paper, or you can bring it into a digital source whether you've scanned it onto a computer or whether you're bring it on to your iPad as a photo, and then, work it in a digital program where you mirror and trace it with a digital source. There's many different ways you can do this. What I'm showing you today is basically for the joy of drawing it. We're just going to work on one piece at a time. I'll leave it up to you how you want to repeat the other sections. 4. Ear Tufts and Eye Part 1: We're working this one today from a piece that I've already drawn. Normally when I do these, I draw an experiment and I erase things out and I put new things in, so when I show you today and I just pick up an object and start going for it. It's because I've already tried a lot of things and we're going to do one that as I showed you at the beginning, I already have the Art worked out for it. I've included a sample of each of the owl framework sections in the project and download tab. But again, I never truly draw the same thing twice so these are just a guide. Give yourself the time to experiment and just allow yourself to draw things in and erase things out, that's why I don't ink anything until the very end, because often when I draw in another section that might overlap and I want to erase out sections or maybe I find an element that I've added in I don't like, and I want to take it out and change it. With the eyes that's really common because once I get the whole piece done, it seems to have a certain energy. The eyes themselves can be such a key part in your owl, so often I will change those up at the end, or perhaps I'll just leave the center of the eye blank until something seems to work for me. Let's go ahead and work on the owl and we'll do it piece by piece so that you can follow along. We're going to start with the eye section. Often with a framework, I'll go ahead and start tracing out. I'm going to trace out just the basic shapes of the eye. You can see these are just basic shapes. That's how I create the owls is they're all basic shapes that are filled in with detail. I'm not going to draw around that one because I'm just going to use it as a guide. Let's start with what I'm going to put in this section here. I'm going to put just my little petals, and I'm going to follow along with this guy, that's about how long they're going to be. I'm going to work my way around the main part of the owl's eye. See I'm using that outer circle as a guide to keep my petals in. I'm just starting simple, with no detail yet, we're just getting some basic shapes in place for now. I'll pause here and you can work on that small section and I will meet you in the next lesson, where we will continue to work with more of the eye and ear sections. See you there. 5. Ear Tufts and Eye Part 2: Moving on to this lower part, I would call this more like his cheek. I'm going to go and put more of the same petal work in. You can see that I have his feathers up here. Maybe we'll just draw in these basic feathers first. See, I'm getting these straight from the framework underneath and they're really just a guide. What I've done on mine is I've added in two more little feathers. Line one on top and then lining another one behind. Then now I have my guideline here where my feather starts. I can work my cheek all the way around. On my cheek, I'm just going to put in more of these petals, but they're going to be longer. I'm going over the line somewhat, and again, it's just a guide. The part that makes this organic is that you're not letting the lines constrain what you're doing. They're really just there to guide it. Let's see how I make them smaller as I get around here, I'm coming back in where the line is, all the way back up to the other end of his eyebrow. Again, I'm not putting any detail in there yet until I finish a little bit more of his face. We're going to go up here to his ear, which really these tufts belonged to the ear, but they come up from the eyebrow. Again, it depends on what you're going for. I'm not really going for realism obviously because I'm doing a lot of shapes. It's more decorating, but I want some of the realistic features of the owl to be in place. We'll go up here to its tuft, and I'm not going to trace this one because I'm just using it as a guide. I'm going to put in some more petals. I'm going to use different sections. Because this part of his little tuft here is almost cutting his ear in two. I'm going to work on this part of the ear first. When I draw these curved petals, I like the paper to be in a certain position, so I have to rotate it around. I'm making these curved petals fit this lower section of his ear. Then I have this upper section of his ear, and I'm going to do them a little different. Coming from this point at which I've drawn my tufts in, that's where the next curve petal will start. I'm going to make that a big one, and then I'm going to just draw little ones around it to compliment it. I want to get another one in here. It's a little close. I want the spacing to stay so I'm going to use my white eraser this time. The white eraser does a good job of getting all of the pencil marks off. Maybe that big ones and little on the big side. Let's try a little bit smaller, narrow it up a little, there we go. Then I want to stick another one in here, and then we've got our little tuft still working there. I'm going to put one more little tiny one up here, just to give it some interest. So I've got some basic shapes in here, and this is all on the right side of the page. These center parts, again, I can draw a line down the center, just to sketch it in there that I can erase it. Anything I put on this side, I will probably put on this side. However, when I get into the center part, sometimes I just get organic in there and I don't make things symmetrical. Let's do some other stuff around here before I add it in any more detail. Another thing I like to do is outline the shapes I already have, just to give it some definition. I'm going to work around this section, outline in my petals and bring it into this leaf. That's, that's one section. Then I'm going to go up here and outline this section. I'm going to bring it down right to the petal, curve that out. Then these petals in here, I don't think I'm going to give them an outline, but I will outline out here. We're going to go up and just create a little outline, bring that petal out with an outline. At this point, I could go over and repeat everything I've done. If you're going to do it organically, I usually suggest that's what you do because the more detail you get in here, the more your eye, can't really define how you created those. That's why you get a lot of people when they look at my finished product and go, "How would you have ever done that?" It's because you do it one shape at a time. If you are just going to go back in and draw this by hand, I would use this time to redraw what you've done here over here. Next we're going to tackle a little buddy's forehead, and his nose. I'll see you there. 6. Forehead and Nose: So I have gone ahead and drawn the other half in just by using my eye. Again, keep in mind what you're looking for. If you're looking for perfect symmetry, then just stick with drawing half of him and then either do it digitally or photocopy him and you can trace him. Or if you're looking for organic, which nothing in this life is truly symmetrical, and that's the beauty of it and the joy of drawing it. Just draw what you can and it's not going to match perfectly, and that is the beauty of it. Now that we have our basic shapes in our cheeks, and our eyes, and our eyebrows, and our ears, let's work a little bit into the center here. Again, I'm not adding any more detail in here yet. I want to see how the center of my owl's going to play out. You can refer back to the sample in the download, but I think we're going to play around with these ideas a little bit. His nose is in here and I'm going to draw his nose over top of some of those feathers. I think I want his nose to stand out. Let's figure this out here. Actually the top part of his nose I'm going to leave under the feathers. Yeah. Then the bottom half will play out. We'll just erase some of those lines out from underneath. We'll just leave his little nose. Then inside this guy, because he's just a diamond, I'm just going to repeat the diamond inside and then up in here in his forehead. I have on the framework, I have these lines here. I'm going to use them for something. This top half, I think I'm just going to do more feathers. We'll try keeping it fairly symmetrical by sticking three on this side, and then we'll do another three on this side. See how I use this pedal shape, this teardrop and curved pedal. I use it a lot of places and it works. If you use one particular shape in a lot of places, it really draws your design together and creates a cohesive look. It's also nice because it's your favorite shape, say, and you get to draw it everywhere. All I have left is this center part is his forehead. I think I'm going to throw in another diamond shape. Now I'm putting this in, that's not in the framework. Then on either side we're just going to draw our lines so that they curve outwards. The same over here. In here I have 1, 2, 3. Let's try to stay with that generally. They don't have to look identical, but sometimes just the number count is good. Three on this side, three on that side, never had that in. It already looks like I've got a lot of detail in there, but I'll probably go back and add more. At this point, I'm just going to leave his head alone. Because as I start to work down, sometimes I work in new ideas and I want those to reflect back up into his head. If I get too much into the detail before I even tackle the rest of his body, I may want to change things and it's easier to not have to erase them out now. We're just going to go with these basic shapes. In the next lesson, we're going to move on to his first wing. I'll see you there. 7. Wing #1: With all my drawings, I like to work in layers. I create basic shapes and I try to create basic shapes through the entire design. Then I go back in and add details because the details will reflect each other and pull the design together. It also lets me to not worry about getting too intricate too soon. Because then I think, "Oh, there's so much more I have to tackle and there's so much more ideas I have. Let's go down here and work some ideas in and see which of these ideas I can pull into the rest of the owl. Going down here, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to use his toes in this one. We're going to put those in right away so that I realize they're there. Sometimes when you get working on a design, you forget some of the elements because you get carried away. We're going to put our little toes in now so that they will not get left out. Probably won't do much with those. I'm not going to worry about detailing them, they're just there so that I can work around them. I want the toes to stand out so that when you're looking at it, I mean, I don't want them to be the focal point of the design, but I want them to be obvious, so I don't want them to get lost under his feathers in this particular design. I want him to have toes. Now, let's get started on his first wing. In here is where I take liberty. I have this basic shape, but here is we're going to just start throwing shapes in. Let's just work a loopy spiral in here with a little bit of a teardrop on the end. Then let's spread out and make it loop over on this side. Again, when I get into these shapes, I just place one and work around it. That's going to be the one that's going to work all the other ones around. Up here, I'm going to fill in always keeping in mind that I'm working within this wing shape. I'm going to put in some more of the same petals that I love to work with and work them in. Oops. I'm trying to space these out, so I don't want them to touch each other. Let's put one in here just to see if we can fit a few in. See this way. In this particular one, I'm throwing in some small ones and it's probably going to overlap. The other thing I want to take into consideration is that the feathers, the outside one will overlap, the one underneath will overlap the one underneath. It's your preference whether you start with the one on the bottom or the one on the top, I'm starting with the one on the top and then the ones that proceed it will fall underneath it. Let's stick into the design I've already worked out. It's actually hard not to go off and create a new design here. But I really want to stay with the similar to the one that I showed you at the beginning. Just creating some more petals. I turned this so you can see when I'm drawing. Sneak this spiral here work. It's not going to work. Let's get rid of a few that. Let's work this spiral. There we go. Make this spiral work with that one and put some of these loops back in and go this way. Sometimes when you're working these, you're going to think this feels awkward. But what will happen is it'll work out as you add stuff in. It didn't really work. I might change this one up a little because it's not working the same way as the other ones, we'll work it down instead. The other thing is, it's really hard to draw the same design twice. We're going to take some liberties in this one and we're going to add in whatever feels right. I highly suggest that that's the point of this drawing process is that if it feels good, then leave it in there. If it's different than mine, then that's okay. I think that fills in our first one and again, we can go back over here and fill that one in. The other thing I'm going to do with this and what I do with most of them is I outline them. Let's just go around this entire piece. I'm going to make it one big piece instead of separate pieces like up here. Then just come in on the inside. I'm going to leave it tucked underneath his cheek feathers instead of over. Again, it's the way you want it. If you want his cheek feathers to lie underneath his first wing, but I think his wing goes up to his shoulder, and I think is cheek feathers should lie over top of it. That's the first wing. In the next lesson, we're going to move on to wing number two. I'll see you there. [ MUSIC ] 8. Wing #2: In the next section of his body is we're going to move down here, to the second feather wing, and I'm just going outline it because in this one, I'm just going to work random doodles. Instead of it being large shapes like this one, I'm just going to work random little flowers and everything else into it. I do that just by working within these boundaries and drawing little flowers and outlining them, drawing circles and petals from different shapes. I try not to go over the line, I'm trying to stay within. Again, I'm not adding a lot of detail into these yet. A lot of the detail comes later, so that you already have everything in place and then you just can go back and fill it in. I often think adding detail in is like coloring for me, so when I go back in and look at these shapes, I think oh, what detail could I add into that shape. Then you can just do it. It's again working it in layers. Let's just work on this piece right now. We're just going to add in, basically any botanical idea. Often I'll just outline them. I'll put the shape in and outline it. I can add in a few little bubbles and, to the best of your ability, you can overlap these shapes and just work your way up until your whole flower is filled in. You can do larger shapes in here if you want. Again, remember it's falling in underneath the first wing. Any of these won't overlap what's already here, that's going to stay there. We'll just keep adding in more flowers and bubbles. I like to fill in any space that I don't know what to put in there with circles. You can work this whatever way feels best. If you want to start adding in detail to these as you go, go right ahead, it's your drawing. You can work it out any way that you feel works best for you. Because in the end, this is about drawing for relaxation. I'm just here to give you guides on how I work my designs. You can try it out for yourself and change it up to whatever works best for you. See how all these little guys are just filling in this space as if they're falling inside this border only, and it cuts them off. I'll just add a few more in to get to the top of this shape, and we're almost there. I might change this up when I come back. I might change some of those shapes so they look a little bit different. This is really just filling in this space for the moment. There we go. I'm just going to leave it like that. There is the initial fill in, for the second wing, and when you're ready, we'll move onto wing number 3 in the next lesson. See you there. 9. Wing #3: What I've done in my design is my third wing, I've filled again with large shapes and I've overlapped this second wing. So what I've done is, in my original, I made this bottom wing stand out more, and this second wing is the one that's tucked in behind. Let's go ahead on this third wing and in this one I just put in a whole bunch of spirals. Let's just work. It's really hard for me to duplicate spirals that I've already done, they literally just flow. So I'm just going to throw some in here. They're one of my favorite things to draw, but almost impossible for me to duplicate what I've already done. Let's just throw some in here. Again, I think I worked it into this bottom tail, and there, here we go. A little more up here, just throw another one in up here, and again a little bit up here. I'm starting with this basic twisty vine of spirals, and I'm going to work off of this like a botanical. This one's going to be, I mean, they're all kind of botanical. They're all petals and flowers, but this one is going to be like a vine. So I'm going to work some more petals and some more leaves into it, within this third wing shape. I'm going to go ahead and work in some basic shapes. The detail is going to come in later. Some leaves coming off my spirals and put some over here, put some more over here. Again, it's just working like a vine, just add in those leaves. If you want more ideas, I have specific classes on botanicals with shapes. If you just want to get into the simple ideas of how to draw your shapes into vines and flowers. Now they have all these leaves in here. I've got all these extra space. I am not going to get again into too much detail, but I am going to add, for these ones that I have all teardrop, I had an extra line in there, and it gives a little more dimension to these spirals. See how it creates almost a three-dimensional as if it's flipping over here. That's as simple as just adding in an extra line to your curve. We get kind of a three-dimensional look to our spirals. Then again in here, let's see, I can add a few more of these kind of petals, wherever they'll fit. Sometimes they're going to come in in different directions. This is if they're tossed there and you just see what else, when I ran out of ideas, I just added circles. Circles of different sizes, and they just fill in the gaps. Again, I can do diminishing circles here, and a few more here, bigger one there, smaller one, and I like to work, so a little circle working its way out of this spiral into a bigger circle. There we go, and maybe a few more here. So bubbles, circles, whatever you want to call them. I can add in a few more here just to round out this feather so that, three of them there. The last part of this one is again, I'm going to be outlining the shape. If I want to define something, I'll usually put an outline around it, so that when I go into the next section, this section has its own definition. It doesn't stand out that much, but it does help me. When I'm going into the next section. No, what I just drew and what I've meant to belong with the other section. There are over three wings, all done a little differently, but all fitting into each other quite nicely. At this point again, you can repeat everything you see here, over here, and then we can work down the center or if you're just working half at a time, we can go head into the center in the next section. 10. Tail and Toes: Now at this point, I have gone ahead and filled in the other half of my owl for the wings. The first wing, the second wing, and the third wing; and if you look really closely, they're not identical. In this case, I'm doing the organic, just doodling it in, and I'm using this as my reference so parts of it are similar; I still have these spirals moving in the same direction, but I've added the leaves in different places, the bubbles, the circles. This whole section here is filled in differently than this whole section. Like I said, there's different ways you can do this. This is a more relaxing process for me because I'm not so worried about it being identical to the other side, it kind of takes me back into my head and I'm trying to use this drawing process to get off my head. We're trying to be a heart-centered, not a mind-centered, and if we go into the direction of needing it to be perfectly symmetrical and to match perfectly, you're defeating the purpose of just being able to doodle. Now again, if you're doing this for design purposes, then you may just want to do one-half, and as I said before, flip it as a photocopy or do it onto a digital device and then you can create a nice symmetrical design. But at least half of your owl will be organically done. Now that we've reached this point, we have our choices of either doing this center section, his lower body or his tail. I think I'm going to choose to go to his tail. Again, you can choose any section as your pole two as you move through this process. Let's work on his tail. It's a fairly simple section, and here we have just this center diamond that I'm going to trace; [inaudible] put this up so you can see it better, and that's what I'm going to work with. I've outlined the diamond so that I can work with it. Really, this is the only section I'm going to work with because these tail feathers I'm going to do separate. I'm just going to do a simple design of creating a diamond within a diamond, echoing the shape within itself, and then again, another one, and then one more time. I think that's probably enough, and with the feet themselves, I'll probably just add a simple little bit of design here to them, just creating a little semi-circle to one side and again, reflecting it back on this side. That's how easy that one is, short and simple. Next lesson, we're going to go up into the center of our owl. See you there. 11. Chest: I think at this point, I'm going to jump up and do his chest. The thing with this center part is you can go ahead and create center items, or you can draw a line down the middle and do one half and then create it over here in the other half, or you can just outline an entire section and fill it in randomly. There's many different ideas you can do here. For this one, I think I'm going to again mirror the ideas to each other, but I'm going to pick a central focal point right in the center of his chest, right around where the heart lies, and I'm going to do just a simple flower. I'm just eyeballing it here because I'm watching how the points all kind of come down the center. I'm eyeballing the center right around there, and I'm just going to create a simple flower design. Again, it's not going to be a symmetrical flower, It's just going to be whatever I end up sketching. These, again are initial ideas because as we go back and add in detail later, we may change some ideas, we may erase some parts out. I'm going to make this flower a little bigger, by adding another petal behind the first petal, and keeping them all generally the same size. If you want to be perfectly accurate about this, you can draw a circle into the complete size you want this, and just keep working it out until it matches that circle. I'll just put a few little petals inside the larger petals. I think I'll work one more set, just so this flower gets to be a little bit bigger. I want it to fill out this space nicely, and then I'll work around it. What I love about this pencils, I can just sketch these in and then later when I come back with the ink, I can eyeball them out better. Once they fit into the entire design I'll know whether I like it the way that I did it. Again, we want to work up here around his upper chest and neck. I'm going to stay within this line because this section I'm going to do a little bit different. The simplest thing for me to do is just add some basic petal work in here, kind of works its way out and there may be a circle. Again, I'll just mirror that over here and filling in that last part, I'll just do a circle. Then down in this lower section, because this section actually goes down to here, underneath here, again, let's turn them upside down because I love working my petals in a specific direction. Here is his center, just lightly putting that in, and I'm going to work my petals upside down away from that center, and then one that goes right over top of it. Then again, on this half, I'm going to mirror those petals, there we go, so I got four on each side. Flip them around again. This petal here doesn't come directly down. I want those petals to reach up a little bit more, so I'll put a little more of a curve on them. Take out those bottom ones a little bit. I'll work a little bit more of a curve on those, but not too much, because I want them to be similar to each other. That'll do, so that fills in his chest area. In the next lesson, we'll move on to his neck. I'll see you there. 12. Neck: Now, I'm going to jump up to his neck in this next section. It's a small section up here, but we didn't do it when we did the head and the face. Then we'll go back down and we'll work his lower body and his tail feathers. You're starting to get an idea that by just filling in one section at a time, your design is becoming quite beautiful, quite complex, probably something that you're like, wow, I've done this. Appreciate the work that you're putting into this and realize that it's really as simple as just doing one section at a time. That's why I love this method of creating a framework of anything that you want to draw or doodle. Then working one section at a time, it really narrows your focus down, and let's you realize that it's very, very doable. Going up here to his neck, let's do something simple over here. I'm just going to draw some circles. Like little beads. Almost like a little necklace. I don't really know if my owl is a girl or a boy. I guess it really doesn't matter. No matter which way, they are beautiful. We just follow that division line all the way. These are a little at a whack here. If this is the one at the point, then we go back up here. There we go. That's better. I think what I'll do here is just add in again small petals. Big theme in my doodles, but I use them everywhere and you might think, I'm overdoing it with the petals, but really these petals just work everywhere. They work as great accents to whatever else you're working on. I think I'll just leave that. That is his neck for the moment. Remember, we're going to go back and add in more details, so we're just trying to get a general idea of how we're filling up these spaces. Now, let's move onto his belly. I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Belly: Let's move down and work on his lower body, so we're going in to the section that has this down to his tail feather. This is lower body in here. Let's decide on what we think might work in there. It really helps a lot to have all the other parts filled in as you go because you can see, do I need something really decorative? Or do we need something very simple? Seeing as his wings are all very decorative, we can go with something a little simpler in here. This is the part that's generally tucked behind the wings. Let's just see, I'm going to use the lines of these and work into the next section, and create a spiral. That's going to outline his lower body section. See how I just use the lines that were already there, and turn them into little spiral. They are cutting across another line that's in there, but I don't have to use every segment that I did they're just a guide. So that outlines my lower body. Now we're going to work up in here, and I think we're going to make it very simple and just put in some circles right up the center. Different sizes like going from a large circle down to a small circle. Again we're just going to add in our petals so that it kind of mirrors what's happening up here. We're just going to add them facing up instead of down. I've got four of them in there, so I will try to get four over here. But again, you would be surprised if you don't make things match perfectly. No one notices. People often ask how I get my symmetry so perfect, and if you look really close, it's not symmetrical. There's just so much of it, maybe some key features appear to be symmetrical, and then it makes the whole thing looks symmetrical. So yes, up here he's symmetrical, but I hand drew both of those so these petals don't match these petals, but they do mirror them. So keep in mind that it does not have to be perfect. You'll be surprised when you finish it, how symmetrical it looks. In the next lesson, we're going to complete the last section, which is the tail feathers. See you there. 14. Tail Feathers: I'm going to move down now into the tail feathers which are lying behind everything else. There won't be a lot to them. Let's create a few more petals coming after this. I'm big-time petals with his lower body section. Let's do one that goes up instead. We did two down and the rest are just going to flow. Here we go. We're doing two down, and then, the rest are going to flow around those. Here we go. This whole area is very simple because it's actually complementing the fact that the wings are so intricate. When we go to ink this, we'll define some of our sections with thicker lines. What I've done, when I do go to ink this, I use a thick line around this last part of the wing to define that that stands out in front of what's behind it. Let's continue on with some spiraling. Just as if this spiral here was continuing down and the feet are in front of them. Let's create another spiral, and then, I'm just going to work another one off of that, and then a little one after that. See how my spirals go down in size here? Then, I'm going to work the same over here. The other thing is if you want to draw the same thing, it's usually easiest to draw while you're in that position because you remember what you've drawn. If you try to go back and imitate it, you forget what you were doing. That's close enough. Then, all I have left is this little section in here. I think I'm going to outline this one just to make it stand out a little on its own like it's a feather and that's still tucked behind the tail. Let's just do something really simple here with our large petals. We're going to create some large, and then, just a little one at the end here. Then, I can also outline those, but we're going to tuck those behind that one. Once again, the same over here, large petals and I'll only do three of them. Here we go. Scoop around. See? I'm just using the sections as a guide. These don't match perfectly, but there's a section there and I want to fill it. I've created a tail feather here, a tail feather here, and then, this tail feather came off of the bottom tail feather. I'm just going to leave it like that. I'm not going to fill it in because I like the way that it accents the feathers. There's your basic owl with the basic shapes all filled in. Join me in the next lesson where we're going to talk details. 15. The Eye Detail: Here we have all of our segments filled in, and I've removed it from the background so that we can move forward. The next thing I want to take you to is the eyes. The eyes truly capture the overall personality of your owl so they can change the look and feel of your whole design. I like to work them last because by now I'm getting a general idea of what my owls character is all about. Now, often the eyes can have a mind of their own and I'm sometimes surprised with what shows up on the page as I draw them. You can have a silly look, serious look, or even a downright angry look. Change the size of the pupils, add some highlights, add some eyelashes, put in some fancy spirals, or just leave them simple. You can make them half-closed with eyelids or wide-open. Don't worry about realism. Just put in some shapes and see what happens. I suggest you just play around with them and you'll get an idea of how to get the look that you really want. Let's see what we can do with our owl. In the owl example that I've shown you, I kept the eyes fairly small and I have them looking towards the right. On each of the eyes, I'm just going to draw in a center idea for where the pupils are going to go. They're not going to be identical, but as close as possible. Where the eyes are, that's where we try to keep as much symmetry as possible but everybody's eyes are a little bit different. Once I have that center part in, I've decided I'm going to make them look up into the right. Let's draw the pupil part in towards the right top corner of the circle that I just drew and then I'm going to match it over on this side. Once you've sketched those parts in, just take a look at it and see if it's where you're going. I want to maybe make this a little bit bigger. I just keep sketching over what I'm doing because again, I'm working in pencil so that I can get the idea. See how he's looking up into the right. If I wanted him to look straight to the right, I would bring it more to the center of that circle. I do want up is fine so I'm going to bring the circles down just a little, and again, over here, just bringing them up. So there's a bit of white at the top there. There we go. He's looking to the right. You're getting more of an idea now just from those circles I put it into his eyes, it changes a bit of the look of the pattern. I'm keeping his eyes simple in this one, so I'm just going to see what they would look like if they were filled in. Again, in pencil. This is when you explore and this is when you experiment. That's pretty good. This one needs to be a bit bigger to match that a little more. I think that's pretty good. His eyes in general aren't exactly anyways. This section is a little bit smaller over here. I could bring it down a little just to match. Again, this is where you use your pencil to experiment and make the eyes look the way that you want. I can bring my eraser back in and get rid of some of those pencil marks if I want or I can leave it and when I go to ink it then I can erase it out after. If I wanted to also add a highlight, I would put a little circle just closer to the top corner and that would act as a highlight and I would leave that white. I would just shade in around that and see how that leaves a little highlight in his eye, or I can make that a little more central wherever your light source would be coming from. You can put it in, you can make it a circle, you can make an oval, just experiment with that. You can check out some of my examples as well. I have quite a few of the owls on my Instagram page as well and they all have very different looks to their eyes. That's how simple you can make his eyes. You can get a lot more complicated. In the next lesson I'm going to show you how to add some detail in including some more detail to his eyes. I'll see you there. 16. Detail Work: Now at this point, we have everything filled in and you could even just ink it from this place if you want to. You could use it as a coloring page or just a nice black and white piece of art that you can hang on your wall. But in this lesson, I want to show you how to add in a little more detail if you want to take your design and give it a little more interest, a little more contrast, and a little more depth. I'm just going to show you a few tricks that I use when I'm adding some more detail into my designs. The first thing I want to show you is how to do what I call echoing lines. We'll do that up in his eyebrow, in this section right here. We already have the eyebrow done with these three lines, and an echoing line is adding in lines that echo the shape that they are within. You can echo another line or you can echo the outside of the shape. We would put in a line such as this, and it would echo that line, and it would echo the shape altogether. You can do those within any shape and they just give you a little bit more interest in dimension into your shape. The next one that I would show you is the dotted lines, and they work the same way as the echo lines because the dotted lines also follow the contour of the shape. I can do a dotted line and I can make the dots different sizes. I can make them get larger and then I can make them get smaller again. Again, they're following this line and they're also following the contour of the shape. Again, you've got a dotted line that's acting just like the echo line and again, that can work within any one of these shapes. You can work dotted lines that follow the shape of the petal. You can work dotted lines that follow the outside of an outline. They'll work in many places. The third detail tip I want to show you is using small circles. I've done this around his eye area, and I've just done very small circles that follow along the outside edge of a shape. They give a little bit of interest and a little bit of texture to the shape that's already there and you can do it. I'll do it again over on this eye and that works around the outside of a shape. It also works within the shape, and you can use other things other than small circles, but small circles are my fave, and you can use that within any of the shapes in your drawing. The fourth one I want to show you is thin lines. Now, I've done that up here. I'm going to add in one of those echo lines to match the other side, and then in the top section, I'll do my thin lines, they're very lightly done and they create a shading effect. From a distance, they would look as if you shaded it in a light gray, and that's what a lot of these textured shapes will do, is they act like a shading element. Then I can do the same over here. The lines aren't completely going from one line to the other, and they're done very lightly. Another area that I use that in is down here in the leaf section. Again, I can use the really light lines to act like shading for each of these leaf petals. The closer the lines are, the darker the shading will appear, and the further apart they are, the lighter the shading will appear. The next one I want to show you is contour lines. Those actually help your shape have a little bit of three-dimensional look to them. Where I've used those is up here in these petals. I just put in a nice light line that runs right down to the center. I can do that from each petal so it acts like a vein in the petal. Then the top part of the line can be dots or it can be dashes. But I usually stay consistent, if I do dashes, I try to stay with dashes, or you could even do a dot with a dash, it's patterns, whenever pattern works for you. But it gives this nice dimension to the petals and it makes them look like they all converge at a point. It's all about working with the optical illusion and you're trying to create more depth, more interest in your design. The nice thing what the detail can do, is it can tie in elements from up here into elements that are in the center or lower in your design, because the detail is mirroring itself, even though the shapes themselves might not be. We'll do one last little detail here. That's going to be called the shape within shape. That one is really as simple as just creating whatever shape we have here, you would create another shape within it. I've done that down at the tail. Down here, we've already done the shape within shape. But in the nose area, we can do a different shape that mirrors the shape that it's in. Where I've done one big diamond here, I've done two small diamonds within that. I've divided up the diamond into multiple diamonds. Again, that's shape within shape, and I can do another small diamond, and down here, another small diamond and already, we've created a lot of interest in the nose area. Those are just six different tips on how you can add in a little bit of interest, a little bit of depth, texture, and it also helps you tie all the elements of the design together. I'm going to let you go ahead and have fun, putting in any detail and texture as much or as little as you want into your design. In the next lesson, we're going to go ahead and discuss how we ink our design. See you there. 17. Inking Tips: Here we are at the inking process. I haven't really done much more with my detail, but you can add as much detail as you want in, before you start into the inking process or you can just leave it as a simple drawing and you can ink it in and use it as a coloring page or a simple piece of black and white art. When I go to do my inking, I have a few things that I keep in mind. Because when you ink, you're going to pick up the texture from underneath. If you have a rough surface underneath your paper, the texture will come through as you ink. I always recommend that you put a few pieces of scrap or blank paper behind your drawing before you start the inking. The next thing I also recommend is that you have a flat surface so it's not wobbly and soft or even cushiony because you won't get a nice even line. The other thing is I encourage is a firm surface, so if you're not working at a desk, which I rarely do my inking at a desk. I'll either do it on a clipboard or just any hard surface like a book or anything and you've got the extra papers underneath. They're not only creating a nice even surface for you, they're also going to catch any of the ink that might seep through your paper. Generally, art pens are pretty good about not going through your paper. But different pens react different ways and you just want to make sure that you're not going to end up inking something that has some value to you, like a good book or that kind of thing. The pens that I use, now any pen I say that works for you is the pen to you. You can use ballpoint pens, gel pens, or art pens of any kind. The markers that I like to use are, I use the Faber-Castell. That's an artist pen and you can get that in art supply stores. I also like to use the Microns. You can also get those at art supplies stores and some department stores carry them as well. These are my two favorite art pens that I like to use. One of the ones that I use a lot for a lot of my inking is just the plane Sharpie pen. Now this one in particular is the fine Sharpie pen and you can get this one at department stores, office supply stores. This one is really easy to come by. I buy quite a few of those. I tend to keep my pens as long as I can. I have an entire container here of pens. I rarely throw them out because the other thing with them is, I like to have a variety of widths and the artist pens do come in a variety of width. The Faber-Castell has letters and the Microns have numbers, and you can see I've worn through these quite a bit. But if you keep your pens as the peter out or as the ink starts dry up, they get thinner and thinner and that works really well for fine detail. I tend to keep all my pens until they literally do not work anymore. You don't have to have a whole lot of pens. I usually recommend about three different widths. But what I really like is to have, thin ones for the thin detail and I like the thick ones because for either filling in sections or going around memes that I really want to stand out. For example, his feet down here, I would do those with a thick line because I want them to stand out in front of all the feather work behind it. His eyes, I also like to do with a thicker line because I want them to stand out as well. Then in this case with his wings, I would do the wing that's going to be standing out on top with a thicker line, so that it stands out over top of the one that's behind it. Thick lines make things stand out, thin lines make things recede. Thin lines are also really good for a detail work that you just want to be very subtle, but you really don't want people's eyes to be directly drawn to that detail work. You just want it to enhance the rest of your drawing. Those are my tips for inking, but when it comes to the actual inking, I would encourage you always to work away from where you've already inked. You really don't want your hand to be rubbing across something that you've just inked because you take the risk of smearing what you've done. Most art pens are pretty good about not smearing, but you don't want to take that chance because after all the work that you've put into it, you really don't want an ink smear across the middle of your design. Always work from one corner to the other or one side to the other. The nice thing with working with a loose piece of paper is that you can rotate it around so that you're always working away from where you've just inked, and the nice thing with the pencil is once I got the ink in, I will erase the pencil and I will wait until it has dried because I don't want my eraser to cause smears. But most of these pencil marks will come right off, once I've allowed my ink to dry. This is a very relaxing process. I love to just be able to ink because everything is already on my page and I really don't have to think about it. All I have to do is go over the lines themselves. Choosing whatever ink pen that you are interested in and keeping in mind that art pens can have a little richer color than a department store pen. But all of that works really well because I'd like to also add that interest in to my drawing. I literally just follow the lines that I already have in place, and I will work with my thick pen for the lines that I know I'm outlining, and then I will switch over to a thinner pen. It doesn't matter, you can mix up your types of pens. Then I'll just kind of add in the lines in the middle with a little bit of a thinner pen. I can go really thin and often when I want to do these little ticks that are just acting as shading. I'll use a pen that's almost dried up because they really give you the lightest line. I don't want to have to go out and always search for a super thin pen. I literally will use a pen that's almost dried up and it works just great for me. The other thing I often recommend is to have a piece of scrap paper beside your work, under your work sometimes that why I use the sheets underneath to try out the pens before I use them. Because sometimes you can mistakenly read a pen, you think it's a thick pen or you think it's a thin pen and it's the opposite and now you've used it on your design, not where you wanted it. The main binder that I use often when I'm coloring or drawing in front of the TV is just this one and I turn it inside out. It always used to have this sheet of paper in it with all the line paper, but I use this as all my scratch. Whenever I'm inking, you can see that it's come through a lot, and I also use it here just to figure out what the pen is going to look like. I like to have one of these underneath what I'm working with. Basically the inking itself is just drawing over the lines and in whatever way that you like and that too comes with practice. As you start to ink, you realize how you like to use your pens, which are your favorite pens. That's the way to do it. I'm just going to let you go ahead and ink the way that feels good for you. I always say practice is the way to learn your style of inking. But those little tips should help you on your way, and my little ideas on how I use my pens, what pens I use. I hope all of that helps you. Good luck with your inking, and in the next lesson, I'm going to share some tips and tricks for all my iPad doodlers. After that, we're going to wrap it all up and you can get working on all owl designs of your own. 18. IPad Doodling: Now I want to show you a few tips and tricks about how I doodle on the iPad. I'm not going to go into great depth, I'm going to use Procreate. I have other classes to explain the tools. I'm just going to give you an idea of how I set this up. I've included in the downloads the image of the owl framework as a JPEG, and it is set up on an 8.5 by 11 inch paper so that you should be able to just bring it straight into your document. The document I create at the beginning of the Procreate, I create a brand new document and I choose an 8.5 by 11 inch at 300 DPI. I think you may have to create your own. I don't think that's a preset. You just go in and create your own Canvas at 8.5 by 11 inch, which is letter size, and a 300 DPI is what I use so that I can print it out at a nice quality. Once you have the document, you will add your framework in as an image. You would go into your setting and you would add an insert photo, and it should pop right in because it should be the right size for your document, but you can resize it if you want to, then I would go into my layers and at this point your only layers you would have, would be your inserted image of your framework, and you can rename it framework if you want to up here with rename, and that would be it. I would do at this point, I would add a layer above, and you can choose to draw by pencil or by pen, whatever brush you want. In order for me to see what I'm drawing better, I go into my framework image, I choose the N is how I get to the opacity. I lower my opacity down quite substantially so that it's really just a ghost of an image of the framework. It's really just a guide for me and that's all I want from it. Then I would go to the new layer that I've created and I can start drawing. I would go in and choose whatever brush I want, and they have some nice sketching pencils in here.. Choose the sketching folder, and there's all kinds of pencils in here. Just an HB pencil is good and I would go in and I can zoom in and I can just start drawing wherever I'm interested in doodling. That's the basic idea of how to get you started. Now, there's a few tricks and tips along the way. What if I want to draw in symmetry? What if I don't want a free form everything, maybe I only want a free form half my owl and I want the other half to be symmetrical, then you you would use the drawing assist. I go back in here and I'm just going to clear this up for a moment and go into the wrench tool up in your top left. Go to Canvas and go to drawing guide and turn it on. Now you want to edit the drawing guides. You go into edit drawing guy, and here you have your Canvas. I currently have it set up the way you want it, but I'll show you how to get there. You want to go down here and choose symmetry, and then you want to go into options, and in here you want to choose vertical. You don't want rotational, but you do want assisted drawing. So turn that on, and we go. You can make your opacity of your guide, which is the line going run down the middle here. You can change the opacity of that and you can also change the thickness, and up here you can choose a color along this color line here you can choose any color. I have it set up as pink. That's simply how we set up the Canvas cemetery guide. Then when we go into our layer, it doesn't have that. It should say assisted if that's what it's going to do. I'm going to go in here and choose drawing assists, see how it says assisted. Each layer has to say that. If I were to add another layer, it doesn't automatically do that. I'd have to go in and say drawing assisted. I like to create on multiple layers so that if I decided I don't like an idea, I don't have to go in and try to erase around what I've already drawn, I can just delete that layer. In order to draw on that layer and make it turn symmetry, it willn't do it automatically now that we have the Canvas setup. Let's go and try again. We're going to just draw around our eye and see how it's now drawing on the other side of this pink line, exactly symmetrical, exactly mirroring what I just did. That is how you can doodle only half the owl and get the other half to doodle automatically. Whatever I do over here will happen over here. That's a little bit of a cheat factor that you can do when you're doing things digitally. It's fun to watch it just appear on the other side as you draw the idea's over here. That is one option for drawing on the iPad. I'm going to clear that one off. The other thing that I do is I will bring in, instead of working on the framework, I might doodle on paper. We're going to turn off our framework and then I scan my sketch or I take a picture and I add it in as a picture in there it is there. I have the opacity down on that. I bring the capacity up for the moment for you to see, and this is my paper sketch Donna on letter size paper. I bring that in and now I want to ink it. Let's say I decided to do the doodling on the paper, but I want to do the inking on the iPad, and maybe some extra detail too. I go in, I've got that picture now. I can lower the opacity if I want to ink over top of it and I don't want it to distract me. Again, I would create a new layer and I could do symmetry or not symmetry. Whether I use drawing assistant not, totally up to you. What I've done up here as I've already done that, and I have created the sections themselves now not off this sketch because they're not matching. But I have created them up here. Let's just go down and turn off our sketch. We can turn on our framework because they fit, and I have each of them on their own layer and I've named them so I know what I'm doing. I've only drawn one. The other thing is, let's say I've drawn one and I think I should have drawn that in symmetry, now I want this one over here. If you were just to choose that layer, go to the Transform Tool and try to flip it horizontally, it would flip it in place, and that's not what I want, we want to reset it and go back out. I want it to flip so it's symmetrical on the other side of the page. Now this doesn't have any effect on my Canvas. I can turn my Canvas drawing guide off for this. Wouldn't matter if it's on or not. I go into my layer and I'm thinking I want us to flip on the other side of the page. Now, I've done this in my other classes, but I'm going to go over it again here. What I do is I create another layer that I have down at the bottom and I fill it with white. You just do that by creating a layer, touch the layer, you want your color to be white. First-off, touch the layer, it doesn't have to be white, but it stay other way, that way. Touch the layer and fill it, and it fills it with a color, but it's underneath everything. Hopefully, it won't show. You want to select that layer, so it's dark blue and then scroll up to the one that you want to flip, which we're going to do the eye. I actually want to duplicate the eye because I want this eye to stay here with another eye over here. Duplicating the eye that I want is selected, make sure that your fill layer is selected. Just slide it to the right and it turns blue, but it's a lighter blue. Now I have two items selected. I go to the transform and the way that you know that you've got way once selected is these dancing little dots. Dashes are all the way around the other side of my document. That's what I want. Now I'm going to choose the flip horizontal again, and it flips my eye to the other side, perfectly symmetrical the other half of my owl. You can do that one at a time or you can put them in a group and flip the whole group. That's a simple way to just ink on one side, and then when you like it, then you can flip it to the other side. There's many little tips in tricks, the Procreate lets you do that is different than what you do on paper.. Whether you prefer digital or whether you prefer paper, or whether you prefer a combination of the two, which is often how I go. Paper is great for when I just want to kick back, relax and I don't want to screen in front of me. But this digital pirate, I find this really fun too. Often I will bring in my sketch and I will go over it digitally and add in things that I can't necessarily do on the page, like using my special brushes that I have or special textures. You could even color stuff in using some of these textures and colors. Lots of ideas you can do on the iPad, and Procreate isn't the only drawing app. There's quite a few out there that you could bring your sketch into and play around with. I'm going to leave that with you to have fun with. There's lots of ideas there and I'd love to see what you come up with. In the next lesson, we're going to go over a few wrap-up tips and then you're off and running making your own animals. I'll see you there. 19. Your Project: Here we are at the end of this class. You now have all the tools and hopefully the inspiration to create not just one but many owls. Once you've worked through the lessons, set yourself up with a new page and try working an owl doodle that feels good to you. Experiment and explore with simple shape, and allow yourself to relax into the process. Take the expectation off, and just let the owl evolve on the page. If you'd like to share your finished owl with us, I encourage you to upload your doodle to the projects page. If your owl is something you'd rather keep for just yourself, then share with us in the project section how the experience of just doodling for fun and relaxation was for you. Again, it's all about the process. If you're enjoying this simple feel of your pencil filling in the sections, then you're well on your way. If you want to showcase your owl or have it be a bigger part of your life in some way, you can upload it online to a company that prints them and create a mug for your morning coffee, a poster for your wall, or so many other ways to share your owl. It can be used on a set of gift cards, even as a coloring page for yourself, your friends, or your family. I love keeping my owl doodles all together in a binder and I revisit them often. They are my confidence as they each were there for the highs and lows I experienced in my life as I was drawing them, and every time I start a new one it's like making a new friend. Thank you for joining me in this class and I would love to hear how you are using creative drawing to bring some calm and relaxation into your life. Enjoy and happy doodling.