Play With Color: Gouache and Colored Pencil Exercises

1. Introduction to Creative Exercises: U Hi, I'm Polina AK Bokor. I'm a fine artist and an illustrator, and I'm a teacher here on Skillshare, of course. I've been drawing for many years, and I'm still drawing and drawing every single day. I'd say Gratuts my best friend, and we walked hand in hand my whole life, and sometimes we have some misunderstandings. Every now and then, something doesn't go right in drawing or painting, and all I seem to get is rubbish. But at the end of the day, all I really want to is to immerse myself in the world of color. That's why in this class, we'll try out a variety of fun, colorful exercises together. We'll draw simple things, we'll draw and create designs using a ruler. We'll make color swatches, then we'll finish with a glorious, amazing composition that might leave you thinking, Wow, I can do that. Sometimes you want to immerse yourself in the creative process like you did as a child, and then probably present your scribbles to the world. And be pleased with yourself for the rest of the day. So let's try to return to that feeling to get there. I have a special place in my heart for gouache and colored pencils. With these materials, you can create bright and most importantly, quick and simple drawings without any hassle. So grab your paper and your paints, get comfortable, and let's start creating. See you in the next video. 2. Class Project: Your class project. Thank you so much for joining this class. I'm really happy to see everyone here, those who already follow my creative adventures, and those who are meeting me for the first time. Hello. Let's get coffee and start trying. In this class, you'll get to try out different creative exercises. They'll get progressively more complicated and challenging, so we'll move through them like levels in a game. We'll start with simple gouache swatches. We'll also make layout of swatches in a row. Then we'll do a small creative exercise using gouache and color pencils. After that, we'll be ready for more complex composition inspired by Victorian tiles. I'll show you how to creatively use your leftover paint on your palette. And finally, we'll complete our biggest exercise. We'll draw fields with different textures, both using gouache and colored pencils. You don't have to complete every single exercise. You can choose just one if something in particular speaks to you. The most important thing is that you're already here, you're ready to grade, and you're open to trying something new. In the next video, I'll talk a bit more about the materials I'll be using and then we'll start drawing and painting. I hope you're excited, so let's get started. H 3. Materials & Supplies: Materials and supplies. Let's talk about materials. As is often the case in creative classes, it's not so much about which materials you use, but about showing up and developing your skills. I'll demonstrate the materials I personally enjoy working with, but feel free to use whatever you have on hand and love. You don't need to use or have the same exact applies. For materials you'll need some kind of paper. And in this class, I'll be using two kinds of paper first sketchbook. There's nothing special about this sketchbook. The only notice we'll think about it is that it has a thicker paper. It will be more beneficial for painting with watercolors or with gouache, you know, with paint. So for paint textures, it's much better. But another thing you'll need is this gouache paper or some kind of thicker paper as well. And the paper that I use has this 300 grams/square meter. So it works really well with all sorts of different paints and textures. It has really smooth surface without any bumps and texture, like for watercolor. So that's the biggest difference between the gouache paper and watercolor paper. And this gouache paper, as you can see, it works pretty well. This is acrylic paint, and here is some will paint, and it works pretty well, even for will paint. So, that's good. That's something you'll need. Don't feel like you have to have exactly this paper, this thickness of paper. It's fine if you have a smaller thinner paper, sketchbook. It's okay. It will work out for gouache, as well. Just be more careful with water. Yeah, you can give it a try. And the size of my paper is a four, so it's 297 millimeters by 210 millimeters. I'll write down the size and interest on a screen. But yeah, I don't feel like you have to have this particular thickness and particular size as well. The next most important real is, of course, our beloved gouache, and I have this hii Mi gouache set and a palette that comes with this gouache set as well. And if you don't have this particular gouache set, that's absolutely fine. You can use either some kind of different brands of oil paints or acrylic paints like whatever paints you have on hand, or just different kind of gouache paint altogether. And that will be fine. You see, I have different kinds of brands of gauche here. And you can use whatever brand you have on hand. My favorite gouache is. He made me a gouache. So that's why I'll be using this set. I think it has so many interesting, unique colors that I want to play around with. So that's why I'm choosing this particular set. Next, you'll need some water, of course. I have some sea glass inside my just empty jar. And these little stones help me to wash off the paint from the brushes more easily. I can do that. And it just washes off the paint faster. You don't have to have these little fees stones in your water jar container. It's okay if you don't have them. And the next important thing brushes, right? I have a bunch of different kinds of brushes, but I think mostly you'll be using some smaller, softer, soft bristle brushes. I think you'll need maybe some bigger size. This is like a medium sized, synthetic bristle brush. And I have just a set of small little brushes and maybe some even smaller ones for lin art. But, yeah, you don't need to have lots of brushes, just a couple, maybe, like, three sizes would be enough. I would choose these three brushes. Like, some maybe bigger sized, medium sized, and some smaller size. Next, you'll need, of course, a pencil, right? And I have this needed eraser, but you can use just a normal eraser that will be completely fine. But if you have a need of eraser, you know, surely you can use this cool eraser that I use sometimes like a sticky pads or something like that. And to stick something, for example, it works nicely for sticking your paper to the table. But another thing that's really good at sticking your paper to the table is this tape and we taping down. Some of these sheets of paper. I cannot recommend your specific brand. It's just some kind of off brand tape that I don't really like because it sticks to my paper too much, and then sometimes it drips my paper. So I don't recommend particularly this brand. If you have a better one, use that. And another thing that you'll need is some kind of small clot just to wash your brushes and clean them up afterwards. That's what we'll need as well. And another thing that you'll need is a ruler because you'll be drawing some straight lines. It doesn't have to be wooden or a particular size and some kind of scissors as well. These are really cool metallic scissors, but yeah, you can use just your stationary scissors that would look much smaller probably and would be probably as good. For some cool details, you'll probably need a set of watercolor pencils or just colored pencils. These are water soluble pencils. I would not recommend this particular set as well. It's a bit of harder pencils. So they are not professional, but this set is just good enough for our creative task. So that's why maybe if you have en a few pencils, that would be enough. You can choose just your favorite colors, and maybe you don't need a whole set of pencils, but it's just good to have it on hands, right? But that's it, so I'll see you in the next video. So now we're ready to create and nothing can stop us, so I'll see you in the next video. 4. Mixing a Gouache Color Chart (level 1): Let's start mixing gash and get swept up in a wave of inspiration. To begin, prepare your ah, and a sheet of paper. So let's start by exploring and experimenting and having fun at first and then moving on to some exercises. But to be honest, maybe this is the most important exercise to just start to just sit down and explore new ways of painting, explore new colors. So you'll need for this exercise, just a half of your standard print paper and already mark down the half of the sheet of paper. So let me cut it in half. You'll need another half for the rest of the exercises. But if it's not perfectly cut, that's fine. You can just fold it in half and then cut it without marking the precise inches or centimeters. That will be fine. Don't worry. So now let's begin by choosing your preferred four colors for today. Don't overthink it, choose based on your mood today. You know, it's fine if these colors are not your favorite or choose your favorite colors, you know. It's absolutely fine. And I have 24 colors here, but my color palette gonna include all colors except white and black. So for today, I'm feeling like I'm going to use this nude color, then I would like to experiment with this kind of darker ochre, reddish brown ochre color. I think it's really interesting. And now that I have these two warm toned colors, I would like to choose at least one cool toned. So from the side, you know, either one of the greens or one of the blues or purple. At least one cool toned shade because we'll be using this color palette later on in our next exercises. But yeah, still don't overthink it. So I would like to use this kind of bluish sky blue. And I really like this cobalt blue. I rarely use it. So let's choose this color as well. Yeah, you can choose, for example, these three colors and then add at least one cool toned or choose three greens and then choose at least one warm tone color, right. Otherwise, I think the color palette would become too boring in the process in the rest of the exercises. So now that I have these four colors, let's experiment. At first, we need to just put paint onto the paper. That's our main exercise right now. Sometimes the demo was difficult. You know, we need to get our ball rolling, and just without overthinking, I'm making these circles. That's it. At first, nothing difficult, nothing complicated. And the soccer color. I think I sooner we start with painting without overthinking, without, you know, being in fear of ruining this piece of paper because maybe it's expensive because maybe it costs money and we paint as well, and how precious are those things. It doesn't serve as good. That's not how art practice works, right? Otherwise, you'll not be here, you'll not be painting at all. No place for f here. Oops. As you can see already we're in this piece of paper. It's not perfect. That's exactly what I need today. Now, let's use some white, and we're gonna make these colors watches, and we're gonna mix these four colors together. So we'll start, for example, with placing this color here. And here, right. Don't try to make it too perfect. It's okay if it's a bit dirty, if it's a bit wonky. If there's too much water, if there's too little water, don't worry about it, at least at first. Otherwise, nothing's gonna be done, right? Your exercise right now is to just have a feel for this paint for water, for your paint brush. Even if you paint every day, it's great to start with some kind of exercise to just have a hang just have a feel of what you're working with. Of how the paint behaving today. And then you'll need to start mixing. Let's start by just putting by just placing this paint here first, and we're going to add white to this paint. It's a bit too watery right now, so I'm going to leave it to dry for a few maybe minutes. Maybe seconds. Depends. And I'll bring my palette right here, and next we're going to mix some colors. So let's start by mixing it with does brownish color. And I think it's a bit too too brownish, but that's okay. And maybe maybe even more. Try to mix these colors like half and half. But again, you know, maybe just experiment with different amounts of paint, and your guide today is to find something new, something you haven't explored yet. For example, I never use these brownish tones. I usually usually I am guided by a very strict color palette, and I never use these kind of ochre tones. They look almost like breakdowns. I never use these does because they just don't feel like my color palette. Usually, for this exercise, I'm trying to bring out the child and me back back to the top from the depth of soul. So I'll be able to relax and just play. And as you can see, that's where I added this kind of brown color just without mixing anything new to it. But then let's use next color. It's going to be sky blue mixed with this nude color. I'm mixing this Mute colo together with sky blue. And I kind of get this gray dome. I usually never never make my grace by using these two colors, but it's but it's actually a pretty darn beautiful, gray dome. You see, now we're getting somewhere. I want to add a little bit more of this kind of bluish done to it and see maybe. Actually, I like the one even more. Almost like Jean's color, washed out Jean's color. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's accurate. Washed out Jean toe. Again, I never never before used in my artworks combination of these two colors. And starting from now, I actually want to try using it and look at me and go trying out new colors, even though I paint with guar so often. But yeah, you can actually choose your color palette based, for example, on colors that you never use. As you can see, based on this little container of paint, it's full. It's full because I never used this paint, and I could actually include it in my color palette, maybe later next time, but you can choose exactly example the colors that you don't ever use and maybe add one of your favorite colors and see how your most disliked colors mix together with your favorite colors. And I'm absolutely sure you'll find out something something you've never tried before, at least, right? No, right now, I am mixing sky blue, ochre, and I can get this almost wallet tone. Not quiet, but some really pleasant color. I really like these muted colors. So that's why I get so happy by seeing just gray color. Usually artists like to see bright and exciting colors, and I'm really happy with gray, and I'm really comfortable with this color. So the next maybe I'm going to try to add more blue again just to see how it looks like. Just to get a bit of a different tone. And as you can see, it's really beneficial to limit your color palette to just a few colors. And this time, we're using four colors, but it's great to have limited color palette. Otherwise, you get, first of all, just overwhelmed with the amount of colors you can mix, you can use. And second of all, I think it's not as productive because look at this go by mixing new and expected tones, we come up with new ideas. And you don't need 100 new colors to make something new. It's enough just in this case, we just 44 different colors. So last last color that I need to fill in. And then we'll add white just to see. It maybe you could add some darker though, like black or burn tambor or ultramarine blue and burn tamber. That's my favorite combination of dark colors. So let's mix the nude color. Let's mix this color together with cobalt blue, and I expect it to be blue. On paper, it looks more grayish. Interesting. To be honest, you could just add the same color here because that's how this kind of chart works. But I think it's working. I think it's more fun to experiment in such ways. So that's why I'm either adding more color or more blue color. Let's see. It's a really nice, neutral tone. So next would be mixing this ochre color together with blue. This is an amazing color, to be honest. I really, really like this color. Now I get more of like an indigo color. Or maybe darker jeans color. That's the theme for today. Different shades of jeans. Last two colors, I don't expect anything revolutionary by mixing sky blue and cobalt blue, but, you know, actually, we got quite bright blue color. It's really beautiful, satisfying color. Okay. So far, it looks like this. And now I want to add maybe some white to these tones. Kind of transparent white. Let's see. Let's just experiment. I want to add white in the circle, kind of mix it together. I want to use my finger for that just to see how the tone changes, how it looks like, if I like it or not. I want to do the same process with all the rest of the colors. And by using my finger, I'm kind of trying to mix in these colors together to see how the tone changes. And I expect white color to make all the tones, maybe even more grayish looking. So maybe that's not going to be as exciting, but I think it's a valuable exercise. And please try to not be too perfect with your color palette, with your colos watches because otherwise, perfection gonna take the whole day. It's going to eat up your time. And in this case, it's not going to bring anything valuable because many more exciting things await you. But nevertheless, it's important to just explore your colors once in a while, even if you use them every day, even if you're familiar with your paints with your toes, if you made color swatches, maybe you haven't noticed some of the dons maybe there are more ways of how you could use these colors, new ways, new ways how to make swatches. There's always something new to find and figure out. And if you don't like my technique of adding a dot, a white with a little bit of water in the center, then you can make a different shape. Maybe you could just add a little line of white here on the bottom or at the top of this color swatch, but I really like these kind of almost styles like swatches. I think it makes a really cool pattern. And especially what I like about this exercise that there's nothing nothing difficult, nothing complicated. So this is my beautiful beautiful color palette. It's really simple, but it actually looks really inspiring. I really want to draw something on top of my pencils. So maybe I can allow myself to do that. As for the pencils, choose maybe different color palette. Maybe very similar color palette. Doesn't really matter. Just choose another four colors of pencils to experiment and be familiar with your materials as much as possible before committing to big pieces before working for hours with your materials. Now with your four favorite colors, let's play around with some lines, some shapes. Then just start by pssing your pencil on paper and just do some lines and maybe come up with some kind of pattern. All right. So right now I want to experiment a bit and I want to add this kind of border around each color darker pencil to just have a feel of how these pencils interact with paper. As you can see, these are not the most quality pencils, so these are a bit hard and they don't leave as much pigment. But when they're working on gas and gouaches, a bit textured. It's made. They leave more color on garage than on paper. So that's something interesting to play with. And that's exactly what I'm doing just to see maybe what colors I could use, what colors I could experiment with. Don't be afraid to make any mistakes. Because even if you make a few mistakes, you can either redo those exercise or at least you'll be able to learn something from your mistakes, right? And I'm not using black. I'm using dark brown because I'm interested how dark brown would interact with this color palette. I usually never use black. It's just not color that brings me joy. But maybe it's because of my academic background. Teachers never allowed us to use black because you never see real black in nature. I don't know how it draws this information, but that's why I never use black. And I think these kind of little paint studies are really inspirational on its own, because it already looks like a great piece. You could maybe cut out these rectangles and you could use them as cash for your bullet journal or something like that. We're just in your paintings. I think that would look absolutely interesting. I'm not trying to be really careful to my lines or anything. And just good to know. Let's continue trying out different shades of pencils, learn more about your pencils and different colors. But right now I want to do some a motifs. For example, I want to explore maybe some flower motifs and create these doodles, different shapes of flowers, maybe different shapes of leaves, just to see what options are there. Maybe some circles and different circles inside them, maybe repeating this pattern. Just over and over again. Just play around with something that always intrigued you, maybe make some lines and different shapes, maybe make some squiggles or different shapes sample rectangle inside, rectangle inside, rectangle. Just to see what your mind can come up with. There's nothing to lose trying to draw here Sea Holly. So yes, use it as your Creative dump. That's what I would name this exercise our little creative dump. Okay, I'm pretty happy. With how these colors look like, and I feel pretty confident with my drawing skills, so I'm ready to move on. Great job for not being afraid to mix unusual colors. And for finishing your first exercise, y. I'll admit I couldn't resist putting all of my swatches into my sketchbook, and this is how it looks like. I cut each piece separately and glue them in the same order, so I could easily refer back to them later by simply opening my sketchbook. Honestly, it looks more aesthetically pleasing and just need her this way. If you'd like, you can also arrange these watches in this beautiful way. But I'll see you in the next video. 5. Gouache+Colored pencils: Sketching the Composition (level 2): Let's try drawing something a bit more interesting and fun. This time, we'll add another layer of complexity by drawing over the paint layer with colored pencils. Ready? Then let's get started. Let's start with our first grade of task. And for this little exercise, we'll need some kind of small pieces of paper. And I have here, like, bigger pieces of sheets of paper and I have here just a half of this sheet of paper, and that's what I'm going to use. So usually in my art, I'm guided by my strict color palette. And usually that's kind of the same. Dull color palette, and I feel really stagnant in my art at the moment. So I want to bring that childish enthusiasm back, and that's why I would like to make some colorful, unique and fun colours watches. And that's an easy exercise to start with. So let's do that. First of all, let's divide this piece of paper into smaller kind of chunks into smaller pieces of sheets of paper. So I want to make just small and long yeah, maybe around three or 4 centimeters. This will be 3.5 centimeters wide, piece of paper. And I'm going to cut it. Maybe even smaller. We'll see. Let's start with that. Then I want to repeat the same step and just make a second line. Going to make two smaller kind of swatches. So let's cut a piece of paper. Amazing. That's really easy, and I want to prepare the third sheet of paper, and I want to make it a bit bigger, maybe around the size. And I'm improvising, to be honest. So let's measure the wood. It's gonna be 8.5 centimeters and wood. Let's cut this paper as warm. I find it much easier to work with smaller pieces of paper at first, and I really like to divide them. And you can do these kind of small little studies with these pieces of paper, and I like to paint them in some kind of color and then choose a design. And sometimes you'll like something similar to this little piece. And this is my favorite artwork that I created from these kind of small sheets of paper. You know, you just got random sizes, then you paint them in random background color, and then you just try to come up with something creative or probably test your materials or something like that, test new techniques. That's how you can come up with something absolutely unique and unexpected, right? And don't expect a lot from these pieces of paper. It doesn't have to be in the museum, right? So don't worry. You can ruin these pieces of paper, and you'll still be alive, you know. I'm trying to say, so let's ruin it by Catina. Now I want to tape the smaller piece of paper. To the table, take your time. Don't be in a rush. Since you're already here, and I'm really happy that you decided to take a risk and try out something new, try out new techniques, new materials, new lessons to learn. I'm really happy that you're here and you can pat yourself on the back and say, Great job for trying out something new. This is how I tape this little paper down to my table. I want to have this little border around. I think it just looks pretty, and then it doesn't wobble around table. You know, it's just easier to work with. And we'll do the same steps with vegetable or papers as well. But that's later. And our next step is to divide this little piece into rectangles, dividing it into a half. And then maybe another half, like cutting a piece of cake, right? And now we will start with just four. Let's choose some kind of shape in the center, maybe, like, kind of an eye shape or fish shape, almond shape. Right? You can choose star shape, circle shape. You can choose rectangle, circle, whatever shape that calls your soul today. And let's start with filling in this little shape with different colors. 6. Gouache+Colored pencils: Adding Color (level 2): It's great to see you still going strong. You can lightly spray the gouache with water, because now we're going to start painting over our small mini drawing. Let's start with choosing our color palette, and I think that's really exciting. I have this big set of colors, and it's difficult to choose only a few colors that we need. And actually, I don't really like using just colors straight from the like these jars, these containers, and straight putting them on paper. I like mixing my unique own colors, and that takes time. And another thing that I want to agree on with you that this little piece is not going to be in the museum, right? So don't be afraid to rent it. Just start with the first color that calls your name. For me, this is a nude color right here. For this exercise, I decided to use the same four colors as in the previous painting warm up. Even though I mentioned that I don't like using paint straight from the cup, this time, I'm going to paint each square with one of the four colors as a base tone, and then we'll mix additional tones to layer on top of that background. For each base tone, I'll mix in another color to spice it up a bit while still keeping all of these squares cohesive. So the first square I painted with nude color, the second one with a brownish ochre color. And don't worry about painting these squares perfectly. As you can see, my brush strokes spilled over the border of the square, and that's completely fine. Later we'll mix additional shades and cover these areas as well. Next I'm painting one square with cobalt blue, and the last one with sky blue. As you can see, I accidentally chose a complementary color palette. It's perfectly okay if your palette looks different from mine on the contrary. I think it would be very interesting to see and analyze all of the students' color palettes, share it in the project gallery. We can almost be like scientists, study how different colors mix together and then share our discoveries with each other. Now let's choose some additional colors. For the nude base, I'm choosing a deep red and mixing the two colors together on my palette. Then I'm painting around the almond shape, focusing only on the bottom part. For the top part, I decided to make it later by adding white and a bit of pale purple. For the brown ochre square, I'm choosing rose as the additional color and mixing them together. You don't have to choose the same colors, feel free to experiment with your own combinations. The top part, I painted with a yellow green, mix with ochre. If you don't like the color of a shape, you can wait until it dries and simply cover it with another layer. It's that easy. I decided to add more white to the top part because it wasn't bake enough. For the bottom part, I repainted it with a bit of purple, and I adjusted the top again by adding more green. It looks really interesting. Actually, you know what? I want to add more of this green shade to the top piece, as well. I think it looks more interesting this way. So let's choose the rest of the colors, and I want to make another lighter color for the sky blue. And I have a feeling maybe adding some of this nude color. I'm mixing here, some of this color. And I'm using a smaller brush this time. Oops, let's add Sky blue paint on my palette. We adds a little bit of water. It looks a bit dull at the moment and boring. But you know what? We're going to use our childish enthusiasm and maybe let's use some watercolor pencils later on to add some detail to these swatches, these color swatches. And right here, I used some of my cobalt blue together with the sky blue, and I'm painting this bottom shape. So for this one, I want to use maybe some burned tumber. Let's use some burned tumber and the sobalblue together. It's almost black now. You know, that's okay if it's too dark, if it's not perfect. The most important thing today was just sitting down and trying out something new. And for this upward shape, I want to use some of this rose color, together with white and some cobalt blue. Let's see. A bit too dark, so let's add more white. Now it's like this sky blue color. I'm not particularly happy about that, let's add even more rose color. Looks good enough. Now, let's bring out our colored pencils. Let's choose some cool colors to add some details. I have some specs and lines to accentuate. And I'm just choosing whatever colors that big to me right now. And right now, it's like lemon yellow color. This color as well looks cool. To look at this together with this blue color. It looks really interesting. So let's use that. And maybe this blue color, together with this darker ochre would look cool. So let's choose this pencil as well. Let's choose more colors like around five. So here are all of my chosen pencils. Altogether, there are like six colors right now. Now we'll move on to something simple. The first thing that comes to my mind is outlining these almond shapes. You can fill either the top or the bottom part with vertical lines, and it's completely up to you which section you want to draw over. First square, I'm choosing a different colored pencil. Since I was inspired by the complimentary palette, I'm continuing that team with the pencils as well. This time I added lines to the top section. At this stage, you can either continue with a simple line pattern or choose something a bit more bunkers. Since we're here to have fun, I decided to do something unexpected and draw an IRS in the center of the almond shape. I'm repeating the same process with different colors on the last square. As one of the final steps, I wanted to separate the squares visually and add a frame around the whole piece using this bright lemon shade. Now that everything is finished, let's carefully remove the tape by slowly pulling it in one direction. And here's our final result. I am absolutely delighted with how this piece turned out. Wow, I think it turned out really cool and stylish, and it looks a bit like a bookmark. You're doing great. Let's keep painting and don't rush to wash your palette and wash the paint of your palette just yet because we'll need it in the next video, and I'll see you there. 7. Creating a Color Palette Swatch Layout (level 3): I often find that I have quite a bit of paint left on my palette, and instead washing it, I like to come up with greater ways to use it. So let's make a few more swatches. Let's get started. We'll start by repeating the same steps as before and taping the paper to the table. I'm using the second long piece of paper that we cut out in the previous video. Now you probably still have some paint left on your palette from the last exercise. If not, that's perfectly fine. You can come up with a new color palette of your choice. This time, I'll be using all of the leftover colors on my palette to create a swatch layout. Our task is simply to choose the order of the colors. Right now, I'm starting with the lightest warm tone and making a free hand swatch with no plan, no sketch, just applying the color directly to the paper. I'm moving from the lightest to the darkest shade. This is a great warm up exercise to help you feel more confident about putting paint straight onto the paper. It's a good way to let go of fear since there's no risk involved. I'm trying to use up as much paint from my palette as possible, but it's okay if some is still left. I'm arranging these watches from warm toned colors to cool toned ones. The task is very simple, but sometimes that's exactly what we need, something that reminds us how fun and satisfying painting can be. It helps build momentum so we can move on to something bigger and something cooler afterward. And I realized I could have added one transitional shade between the green and the dark blue color to make the layout feel more intentional and curated. So I mix this color on my palette. This exercise only took a couple of minutes, but look how great the result is. Now all that remains is to remove the tape, and that's it. Look at how clean and beautiful the edges when you remove the tape. It looks very professional. If you'd like, you can add some pencil details on top, but I'll leave mine as it is. It's a very simple exercise, and the result looks very stylish and cool, which is something to be happy about. I hope you're ready to increase the level of difficulty a little bit, because next we're going to paint a geometric composition with many different colours. For that, you'll need both gouache and colored pencils. So I'll see you in the next video. 8. Drawing a Geometric Pattern (level 4): I'm very happy to see you here because we are going to experiment and try something new in this exercise. We'll practice mixing different colors and see how gouache works together with color pencils, and we'll create a pattern that's visually interesting and not worrying to look at. I hope you're ready, so let's start drying. Let's continue with our next one Lle exercise, Blue painting exercise. And this time, it's gonna be Victorian. Victorian tiles, Victorian floor tiles, actually, and I'm really inspired by all sorts of different tiles, but particularly Victorian tiles have such unique patterns that really enticte me to, you know, create something similar. But first, let's tape down a paper. As you can see, and we're using a few pieces of tape because why not? And this time we'll copy the style pattern right here. I have a sketch of it already. So let's start with that. And for this exercise, we'll need a ruler and a pencil again, and we're not going to do precise measurements. So no mats and wolf to be honest. Don't be worried about that. I completely understand that. Mats can definitely frighten sometimes. Your task right now is to make these parallel lines, the angle of the line it's not that important. Just keep them parallel and try to do the same distance between each line, something like that. So next, we need to add more lines, but don't panic, don't panic. Just make sure your ruler right here is at 90 degrees angle. Let me show you right here so you can see it should be at 90 degrees, and then you draw the line. Like so, and then just continue these parallel lines and try to make them into squares. Like similar squares. Since I already shared my manifesto, I'm not aiming for perfection. And right now you can see me adding a second parallel line close to the first lines we drew. Nothing too complicated, which is good. Like so. Then at a 90 degree angle, add another set of double lines. I know it's not looking perfect, but that's completely okay. No worries. If you'd like, you can absolutely measure and calculate everything. But I don't think that's necessary for these exercises, to be honest. Now I'm marking with small dots where another set of rectangles will go. Ideally, these would be perfect queers. But since I'm not measuring anything, they're more like rectangles, and I'm fine with that. I'm placing these dots in the middle of each side of the rhombus. Then I draw parallel lines and connect them one by one. This pattern looks really complicated, but at its core, it's just lines either at 90 degrees angle or parallel. And that's basically it. You know, don't be afraid. If something looks a bit wonky. Let it be. Let it be wonky? Why not, right? Let it live its own life. And by it, I mean, let your piece, your artwork. Let explore the world as a once. Sometimes we try to plan everything in advance, but the piece you're working on and life in general can surprise you. You might accidentally spill paint or tear the paper without meaning to to me, that's part of the creative process. It can feel frustrating at first, but eventually you'll figure it out, right? And these little accidents push you to experiment and try something new. And I think that's truly beautiful. We only learn something new when we are not afraid to experiment and gently push ourselves, but just a little bit, not too much. Look at this. It already looks amazing, at least to my eye. It looks so fun. And you know what next thing we could do at another set of rectangles inside. And by that, I mean mapping out where the smaller rectangle could go, those should be squares, again, since my measurements are all over the place. Those are not squares, but rectangles, and that's okay to me. Since these are not gonna be it's not green flooring. So there's nothing to worry about. Continue filling in these squares with another squares and another squares. And like so almost then. As I said, it looks very complicated, very difficult. But when you start to put these lines together, there's nothing difficult. It turns out. It's really simple. Just make sure maybe that your lines are at least a little bit parallel. So now, I'd say, we're done. So let's fill these shapes with color. Yeah, it seems we've figured out all of these different lines and geometry. As usual, I want to remind you to stretch a little to drink some water and look into the distance for a moment so your eyes can rest. And when you're ready, let's start coloring in these geometric shapes. 9. Painting the Geometric Pattern (level 4): You might look at the length of this video and think, Wow, this is going to be difficult and maybe even boring, but don't worry. It's going to be very meditative. We'll color in each shape of the pattern one by one, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the process. Let's approach it the way we did as kids and jump in in all of these different colors. I think it would be fun to make it into a little Rainbow. So we could paint this square with white or yellow colors, then next with, like, pinkish colors, this one with red colors, then with green colors, blue and maybe some darker and some additional tones. Somewhere here on the side. So let's start with putting down first color on the paper, and I'm starting with yellow. For now, we're going to leave it at that. Then I mentioned some pink colors, and I want to start with kind of lighter pink color and then build towards darker colors on top. I think it'd be easier. So let's do that. Next, let's use some red colors. I think this is Panza red. It's a really bright color. Carefully fill it and it's okay if it goes over the line. There's no need for panic at all. Everything is fixable. Nobody's looking if something goes wrong, so I don't think anybody gonna judge you. I think every mistake I can teach something. So let's continue with green colors, and I would choose those kind of transitional green. I think this is a pale green shade. It looks much brighter on the paper than in the In this container, that's okay. I think it would be easier to fill it in not with round brushes as I'm doing right now, but with brushes that have this kind of straight, maybe even rectangle shape to them. If your gouache is a bit dry, you can absolutely use just a bit of water and spray it. And I had any problems with mold on my paint set, but I know some people have these problems with mold. I think for precaution reasons, you could spray just a little bit of alcohol spray, you know, just a little bit of preventative measure spray with hand sanitizer maybe. So next would be this blue right here, and I'll use sky blue. Right now, to be honest, I'm not gonna lie. I absolutely hate the combination of these colors because I usually never use colorful bright palettes. So to me, it's definitely a challenge. I'm more used to beige colors to great colors and that's something unexpected for me. But let's add maybe some transitional tones. Maybe, example we don't really have purple color. So let's add some purple right here. Some of these shades are completely transparent as you see, and those sky blue completely covered up the sketch, but that's okay. As it dries, we can draw another sketch on top. So I would like to use this ok color probably right here the yellow or yellow color and a bit of orange color. Looks nice and a bit of this ochre color. I think right here would be nice place for this ochre color. And I'm leaving these lines right now not colored, like so, and this right here could be maybe maybe rose colored. So these are all of our base colors. Right now, it's your time to experiment, right? To speed up the process, you can use your watercolor pencils and just color some of these spaces. I just gonna be a bit faster. And maybe you could just experiment and see how it would look like together with different colors. For example, here, I'm adding blue. Here, I'm adding a bit of ochre, a bit of red. Alright. Let's do that right now. And you can just choose different kinds of shades of tones. Mix and experiment with different pencils. Don't be afraid to ruin the space because it's a practice piece. And our task is to experiment. A new idea came up into my head. What if we mix this yellow color together with this pink, right? What if we mix this kind of purplish color together with kind of reddish color right here? This aqua colour is already really ogre. Colored like that. And this red together with this blue And we could color in these little triangles as well, and we could mix this green shade right here, together with the pink. Let's experiment. All right, it looks quite fun. Let's choose an orange color. Continue this process. It's difficult to step over our perfectionist brains. It's difficult to try out something new and not be afraid of messing up. But to be honest, most of the times we try to paint something. It looks it looks bad, and we need to be okay with that. We need to brush it off. And continue with experimenting, continue with curiosity of maybe drying out some new art supplies, maybe making some unexpected moves. For example, right here, I don't have any particular color to dry out, and I'm thinking, what if I'll use this blue color right here. Nobody will get hurt, right? If it looks bad, I can cover it up with gouache, but maybe maybe it'll look good. I want to add maybe darker kind of shapes right here later on in the process. Right now, I'm going to leave it as it is right now and move on to covering the rest of the shapes. So for this one, let's cover it up with yellow, wallom, easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, and with green right here. It's like piecing together a puzzle, to be honest. And here it's pink, so let's try some kind of pink shade. Shirt. With darker colors, it could be more difficult. As I said, these pencils are not the best. These are not really soft pencils. So for example, lighter shades, as you can see, they don't leave any color behind. That's okay. These shapes gonna look bad, we can cover them up with more gouache. That's my solution to all the problems. Just keep going. Just keep experimenting. The sun should be blue. And we need some purple. So I would really like to use this golden golden pencil. Looks fun. Maybe let's use some unique and fun colors. Why not? Just don't overthink it. There's no need for that. No need for perfection. Just having fun. If you're struggling, if you're mentally feeling like, Oh, maybe maybe this is the wrong color, maybe it's gonna ruin this piece, you could ask yourself these questions, for example, how to make it, how to make it easier, how to make it 20%, at least, easier for you. And for me, for this task, 20% easier was painting this piece, the rest of these kind of squares food pencils. It's just easier because with gouache, it would take much more time, but we're going to return to Guache. So no worries. We're going to return to it. You can just always ask yourself how to make this task easy, easier for me. How to not overcomplicate it. But yeah, Truth be thud, most of our pieces gonna look like some trash, and we as an artist, we need to be okay with that and somehow even be happy with lots of pieces being worthless and useless. We need to find the bride in our practice. We're going to create something that never existed before I go to try out something new. So how exciting I am still trying to fill in all these shapes. Look at how many pencils there are in my hand. I'm just continuing to fill in all these triangles. Some of these colors are not decided. The outside, the sun could be gray. Why not? And this one could be dark brown, right? Dark brown color. So let's use dark brown. Here, I would really like to use yellow. I don't really know why. I just think it looks exciting. It's okay to mix different shades of pencils together really fun. So let's continue painting all these shapes. So green right here. Some brown right here. I barely see this rectangle underneath the square underneath, but it's okay. So we're almost d to be honest. I hope it's a pleasant and nice activity that you're enjoying. I hope you are having fun with your colors. There are like millions probably of ways how to make color swatches. And I think this one is a really unique, unique way of making experimenting with paint and color and coming up with something completely new. I'm going over with this blue shade right here because I don't like the tone. So these these pencils, especially this green looks really good. So this is a nice pencil. And then blue here. Orange, a little bit of lighter blue. Like, so now let's fill in this yellow right here. What the pink? With the rent, very meditative exercise. Like some maybe a little bit of silver right here. And some stil on the other side right here. Los definitely unique. Just a different shade of yellow. So would be a bit yellow and a bit pink. And a bit purple. A little bit pink. Coloring this little square right here. Don't forget to drink water, to hydrate yourself, right? Don't forget to stand up every, like, 20 minutes. I know I don't want to be annoying, but that's important. That's important, guys. Please listen to your body. So almost almost done. And you'll see where I have a few steps up my sleeve that may be going to surprise you. Let's finish all these shapes at first, and then I'll tell you the next steps. The soon as well. Forgot to color the sun. Kind of brownish color. And maybe even the sun as well. Little bit of brown color right here.'s add some blue. Let's add some green. That's a really bright green. Let's add some pink. And let's add some brown. Yeah, sure. And let's add some purple just to tone down these colors. Otherwise I don't really like how they look like. Tone down those colors. Well, brilliant. Now it's fully done. As you can see, there's just a highlight from my late. So next step is to cover up these white lines. You can leave them empty if you really like how it looks like. I think something is missing here. I want to make it like not a gradient, but I want to make it like beige, white, beige, gray color, something like we have here on our palette on my palette. I'm using a little bit of ochre right here. I'm adding it. Here, I'm using some burnt umber. And I'll be using some otramarne blue. No, it's not ultramarine. It's brushian blue, the darkest blue you have. And it gives us this kind of neutral, neutral color, but we need more white and maybe more earth yellow or ochre yellow ochre color. I think a bit earth yellow, maybe even a bit of nude color as well to make it warmer, more pleasant. Looks like that. Wait. So now let's let's see. If it looks bad, that's fine. Feels like grouting the mosaic tiles actually really appropriate since this is a floor mosaic. So grouting could be very appropriate. And just take your time with this step. I'm just dragging my arm on the table, and it gives me this straight line. Maybe let's add a little bit more water. But you need to keep in mind that one of the problems so gouache is that it dries down to a darker shade. So as you can see on my palette, it's a little bit lighter than it dries down. If it doesn't look good or if you don't like the color, you can take out the color from paper by just adding some water and then by using cloth or a napkin and just trying to take out the color and this is a result, maybe it's too gray now. I decided to remove some of the paint to make these lines a bit lighter because they were starting to look too heavy. I carefully lifted the wet paint with a clean clot. You can do the same by adding a little water first and then gently dabbing the paint with a clean clot or a napkin. Now I'm going to add even more parallel lines on these edges that follow the line of these rectangles right here. Then I'm just continuing the wine down here. Okay, let's do the 90 degree switch and add these lines as well. Penlor lines right here. There's no purpose in making this perfect looking great. Another thing I decided to do was add an additional square in the center that I wanted to paint in a lighter color. All these small details are optional. So if you skip a few lines or shapes, that's completely fine. But all of these little additions can make the composition feel more unique and interesting and fun. But don't feel any pressure to add more details. For this, I'm using white paint and a small brush to fill in these tiny square. This time I'm using the white straight from the cup, and I know these shapes and colors won't look perfect, and that's okay because I'm here for the process, and I'm simply filling in all the centers with a lighter color. If you'd like, you could even add a darker.in the center of each square, but again, that's totally optional, and in this case, I'm not even doing this addition. Now the last shapes I want to fill are the lines that I divided into smaller sections. I'm binding these spaces with a dark brown tone. For this shade, I used some burn tamber and just the leftover paint on my palette. For this step, I switched to a larger bush to make the process faster, and I'm just repeating the same steps until all the shapes are filled. Just color these in a swiftly manner. That looks very interesting. If you're not happy with the chosen color, just use a napkin. Make sure I surface is clean, so don't use the same kind of side of the napkin twice for taking away the paint from your paper. E I'm just repeating the process until all these shapes are filled in. Just like that. We're almost done, and actually we're done. Now that I'm stepping back and looking at the whole composition, I can see that it needs a bit more contrast. I wasn't sure whether white or black would work better for the empty squares. So I tested white first, but it didn't add much, so I wiped it off with the clot. You could paint these areas directly with black, but I personally don't like the tone of pure black here. Instead, I mix burnt dump and push in blue to create a very dark, almost black shade, with a more natural tone. With this make sure I filled in the remaining squares. But to be honest, at the end, I didn't see much difference between black and this more neutral, darker tone. So you'll be fine with painting just with pure black. No, currently with a small brush fill in these little squares. And it's done. Let me remove the tape, and let's see how it looks like. As a final step, I decided to add some additional pencil lines on top to make the contrast even stronger and more visible. Like so. And here we go. And it looks absolutely unique and interesting. One of a kind kind of pattern. And those are just watches, can you imagine? And we've came from this to this to this. You've done such an amazing job painting all of this. I'm sure your work looks colorful and inspiring. And since we still have some paint left on the palette, I'll show you another creative way to use it instead of washing it down the drain. I hope you're curious and I'll see you in the next video. 10. Say NO to Wasted Paint! Painting with Leftover Color (level 5): And we've already painted so many different things, but I'll show you something else interesting you can do with leftover paint. I think this exercise will inspire you, and then whenever you have leftover paint on your palette, you can create small studies just like this. So let me show you what to do. So let's use up our leftover piece of paper. And there's a lot of paint left on the palette. Sometimes I leave this paint for, like, another practice session, but most of the times I'm just washing my palette, right, to create a new color palette to use it up. You could just take your brush and just take some of these colors like one by one without thinking too long, without you can just add some water with some clean water. Maybe it's going to be faster and just add these kind of splotches of color from our palette to paper. And don't be afraid to make any mistakes. This is completely experimental piece. So no mistakes. And that's why no fears, right? There we go. And as you can see, another kind of con of not using the tape that the paper kind of bends in an arch form. It's okay. And this time, I just wanted to fill in the whole shape without leaving any white spaces. But if you like how it looks like, you absolutely can use your tape and tape that down to the table. But sometimes, you know, it's beneficial to to not be guided by any rules and then maybe understand why these rules were there in the first place. So I'm just adding more color. I'm taking smaller brush, and I want to just add some kind of doodles with the leftover paint. And what would you like to do with your leftover paint? You know, I want to draw wiggly lines, kind of spiral wiggly lines, right? And maybe maybe some dots. Maybe some smaller dots. And some bigger dots and just add as many dots as you'd like. What else you could do? You could do some lines like that. You could do some like brush strokes, cross brush strokes, right? You could do more shorter kind of lines or drops. I could do maybe some leaves or something like that, and I would like to use maybe a darker color right here and add some leaves like that. Just re hand fun little drawing. How often we do that, right? How often we allow ourselves to just fully experiment without expecting any result, some kind of an abstract painting, maybe some arches, like that. Experiment as much as you can. And I'm just painting some weird shapes, adding just blobs of color with no particular shape. Just some kind of blobs. All right. And maybe here, you could draw some kind of flowers or more leaves maybe some circles. Maybe another circle here. Like half of the circle. Like so. Just continuing to draw circles. Paint circles and to paint maybe More circles. Just adding some wines to my little flowers. Maybe some more dots. Maybe more circles. If you're asking, What's the plan or what's going on? Why does it look like that? No worries. I'm gonna explain really soon. Just adding a few more colors. Right here. The leaves. Looks like that. Let's see if there's any empty space that we could use. And now let's wait for it to dry. So I'll give it a minute. And while it's drying, actually, let's sketch a little bit. So here's my little sketchbook that I have, and you can do that on any kind of paper like, and you could just race around the shape, like, roughly, it doesn't need to be Perfect. And then let's put this little piece aside for it to dry. Let's try to figure out maybe there's shaka flower that comes to your mind that you would like to draw or paint. And to me, what comes to my mind is to lip shape. And we're drawing a sketch here. Not sure about this particular flower shape. So that's why we are practicing. That's why I have this little drawing right here. I can try it out with a different color on top to see maybe other shapes other than this one, maybe some other kind of creative, you know, shapes that would look great. Maybe it could be like a multiple head flower. Something like that with the swine going from one side to kind of another side and just a few leaves here and there, let your creativity guide you, whatever feels interesting, whatever feels unique. You can look up some references if you find this task a bit difficult and kind of complicated. Absolutely understandable. So you can take a little bit extra time with planning these shapes. Maybe instead the spiral. It's gonna be just another flower So I took a little bit of time and finished this composition right here. I traced it with blue and a little bit of added on top, some red colored. So I would be able to see, and I'll be able to show you the flower heads that I created and then some leaves, additional leaves and the stem. This little piece is almost dry now, but I'm not really satisfied with it. I'll get it dry down to kind of a dull color, and it doesn't excite me as much anymore. So I want to, uh make these colors come back a little bit more, and I want to add brighter shades, brighter colors, and maybe just add more doodles with pencils, just to play around. Don't think about it too much, maybe some yellow, like adding pink right here, adding pink right here as well. It's just there for you to play around to create something interesting and unique. So don't be afraid to ruin it. That's kind of the point. Don't do as much as you'd like, you know, let your and our kid just have fun. Just do crazy shapes, crazy crazy designs. The last almost last step is left is tracing this composition to this little kind of bookmark. To be honest, take your time to kind of transfer your composition of flowers or one flower to this little paper right here. It's okay if it's not perfect. Remember that? It's not going to be in the museum. This is my composition, as you can see lines on my paper. And now, can you imagine that? We can use a white paint and cover up all of the background details, for example, here, and just with the thick white gauche layer, maybe add a little bit of water to it with thick gouache layer, cover up any background areas, unwanted areas. It's almost like you're carving out of wood. It's like the opposite of collage. To be honest, you could just use your scissors and just get it out and then glue. Okay. Don't be afraid to cover up anything special. That was the plan all along to do something unexpected. To do something unique and fun one of a kind. Kind of artwork. I think the key here is to not be too extremely perfect. I like how there are empty spots, empty places around the flowers around the leaves. Like, it's not perfect. And the white paint is not perfectly opaque. So let's finish covering these empty spaces. Like so. And here. Like so. Kind of like how one whole leaf looks like here like that. I think it looks absolutely cool, very creative. Very unique. Very, very fun. At least that's my definition of having fun. I hope you enjoyed this creative task and will take a note of it and use it occasionally when you have extra paint on your palette. It's not necessary to draw on a separate piece of paper. You can create these illustrations in your sketchbook directly. That way you won't waste any paint, and you will fill in the pages of your sketchbook with something experimental, unusual and most importantly, very beautiful. I hope you're feeling warmed up and ready to draw something even bigger. If so, join me in the next video. 11. Sketchbook Layout: Drawing the Composition (level 6): Can you imagine how many creative exercises we already completed? You're ready for a small challenge, like a final test, and I'm sure you are. Then now we'll create a full sketchbook layout and fill it in with something beautiful. I hope you're ready. So let's begin. Now let's move on to the last exercise. Our sketchbook, you can paint that on a piece of paper. You don't really have to have a sketchbook to do any of these exercises, as you can see on the contrary, you could do every exercise in a sketchbook and just fill in your pages as you do these exercises. And I think it would look fun or you can glue them to your pages. And right now, we're going to do these kinds of fields with textures, with different patterns. Let's begin by just marking down some of these hills. Like so. And they don't have to be perfect as always. That's my favorite phrase. Just experiment with different sizes. Don't really like this line right here. Let's see if we can change it to something else. Maybe something like this. Look good. So now let's start by mixing some colour thinking maybe adding something here. Yes, I think it looks better that way. Now we have all these different kinds of textures and swatches, and you can choose your favorite color palette from these exercises, and you can choose either these four colors or maybe you'd like to choose these five colors or maybe just these four colors. I think my favorite colors from this whole exercise were these kind of four colors, but with added different tones, I'm thinking about just coloring these heels with some of these colors that I have here. But don't try to make them perfect. As always, just continue experimenting with different colors with different textures. I'm going to add here some clips too. Just hold pages. And I'm gonna mix some of these colors and then come back to you with or the premix colors. The same thrones that I have here on my little little paper with swatches. The first step is done, and all that's left is to paint, and that's it. But first, on a clean palette, I mix all the same colors we used in the previous exercise to save you time. I did this off camera. And remember, you can choose any colors you like. So prepare your paints and colors, and I'll see you in the next video. 12. Sketchbook Layout: Painting the Base Colors (level 6): Now, I mix all these colors on my palette, as you can see all these same tones from this little study. Now, you need to fill in these spaces with different colors, right? So I'm going to start by just adding random colors in random order. And then on top of that, we're going to add some texture. Oh I really like these textured brush strokes on the surface of these colored fields. I think it adds an interesting detail. Looks like that. Next, I used a mustard color to paint the second section. I chose the one next to the dark blue because these colors look good together, in my opinion. I almost never use actually, I never used p color in my painting practice. Next, I'd like to make this right here the sun kind of boring color, but I think we could add fun texture to it later on in the process. And I would suggest using colors with different levels of lightness and darkness, so you'll have more variety later on. Next, I would like to add this blue tone right here. Next this purple color right here. Actually not sure it looks good, so I want to remove it. I want to add the different kind of shade, maybe even the pinkish one. I think it looks much better this way. Making a little mess right here. That's okay. So this kind of brick, ochre color could be here. N light blue color could be down here at the bottom. Looks good. I really like it already. Next purplish color could be actually maybe here. I really like this technique by just holding my palette with the same color close to the other colors on paper. And then it's much easier to see if it's right fit or not. I already looks very unique. So the remaining color you add here. The pinkish stone there. Amazing. Now. Just a few more. Go love to fill in, maybe darker and there. Maybe another blue color here. And I want to combination between these two colors and applies here. And then this I'm going a slighter kind of blue shade. And then the one should be maybe kind of color between ochre and those nude. Y. Like so. Now that everything is colored in, wait a few minutes for the pages to dry. And as usual, don't forget to stretch and grab something to drink. And when you're ready, let's start filling in these areas with different patterns. 13. Sketchbook Layout: Adding Patterns (level 6): Reach the final part of this class, our last task. Now all that remains is to fill in our colorful section with bright and interesting patterns. You can make them as detailed and as interesting as your time and energy allows. That's why this video is a bit longer, we'll be focusing on adding detail. But don't worry. I'm sure you'll find the process both captivating and rewarding. So let's finish our final illustration. For a couple of minutes until these pages, we're dry, completely dry, as you can see, and right now I want to experiment a bit more and I want to add another layer of details using gouache. And only then we could move on to pencil drawing on top. I want to add some of these textures, some of these, you know, studies that I've done here and use it. As you can see, you could use, for example, this kind of texture right here I think would look cool. And these kind of little blobs would look cool here, you know, and maybe these kind of lines could look really interesting here or these kind of drop shapes. And yeah, the creativity just goes on and goes on. And before I put my paint brush to paper, I want to explore some of these textures, some of these patterns on the other side of our kind of exploratory color and texture a little page. I want to grab a different kind of brush, maybe smaller brush, and I have idea of making maybe lines with darker color here. So let's at first experiment on this little paper here, and then you could decide if it looks good or not. And how could you maybe make it better? I need to have more paint my palette. That's what I learned to make it happen. So let's do that. Okay, let's test it with another brush. Maybe it'll look better. Kind of like it better with this brush. Well, let's try it out. Try out different brushes, different patterns, different techniques. And if you're afraid, try it out on a piece of paper. And then the side of it looks good, it looks bad. If there's anything you can change to make it better. Now, I'm taking my time and just exploring the front lines, making some lines shorter, some some thicker. And just exploring the front bush strokes. And I think it looks really nice now. Such an interesting pattern to look at. Yeah, looks very, very creative, very interesting, like, some kind of pattern of an animal or the shell. Great. That's exactly what we want. Next, I would like to maybe make some blobs over here. I'm going to mix more of this green shade add water to it. And I want to maybe make it into a circle pattern or a blob pattern. I like this pattern right here. So that's what I'm exploring here. I think these two colors look really good together. And let's try out different sizes as well. Why not? I always have this fear of ruining this piece, and it doesn't help right. So we need to fight with the sphere. Just put this paint on the paper and however it goes, just let it be. Even if it looks bad, at the end, let it be, let it live its unique life. Now it looks like some sort of alley and mushroom. And I really like this pattern right here that I created. So maybe this one could have this interesting pattern. So let's do that. It's kind of knit pattern. Maybe you'll add more colors on top. Either way, if something goes wrong, you can always coord off with more gouache paint and fix everything just in a few brush strokes. So there's definitely no risk here, right. And that's actually the paradox of, you know, having fear. It makes us feel like we will create a better piece if we have the sphere inside, but to be honest, when we do things without fear, maybe we mess up sometimes, but one piece, you make something revolutionary just because you did these pieces without any fear. It's not only in painting as well, just how life works, and fear works. So I really, really, really like this tone together with this one. So I'm thinking of how I could play with these two kind of shapes. This time, I would like to use the small brush and I would like to do something more creative. Let's see. I don't really have any idea what else I could do. So actually, I could do these little drop shapes. Here we go. That was fast. Maybe I could do them in different sizes and different patterns. Like so. I think it looks really unique and interesting. Looks so fun. Now, the key here is to not overwork it. Los looks very interesting. I really like it. You don't have to paint some texture on all of them. You can just leave some empty. Or you could, you know, draw on top with some pencil later on, and maybe you could add even different kinds of layers of pencils and the inspiration from these little squares and just have absolute fun. I really like the combination of this and red color together with this blue. So I think that's what I'm going to do right now or those blue. I'm going to use this red pencil to add a line here. Like so, and then I could just draw these lines right here. Experiment with different kinds of wines. Maybe maybe you don't make them straight, maybe make them different thicknesses. Just making sure all these lines connect together. I think it looks cool. The ticker tops right here. Yeah, that looks even better. You see, that's how creativity works. I think your mind being lost in this vast field of different kinds of textures, different kinds of patterns, and maybe even being afraid a little bit of making the bad choice, but at the end of the day, there'll be something new you'll learn about yourself and your art practice and your art pieces as well. Making some of these lines decker just to make this piece more interesting. They looks so good. I'm really happy how those turned out. Then I return to the previous dark blue section that we filled with green circles. It had dried while we were painting the other one. So now I can add a second layer by painting another blue circle inside, each green one. I use a small brush for this task and carefully filled in each circle one by one. And you can also change the colors of these circles. I think that's a fun idea. So they would look more colorful and unique. But this time, I'm making all of them the same color just in different sizes. And we will come back to the circles once they are dry once again. Then I decided to switch it up a bit and draw with pencil first. Chose a darker blue pencil for a blue field. And now it sounds unbelievably boring, but this is just step one. I started with small bean like shapes and then drew around them, adding as many lines as I could fit. I kept circling around the first shape, then the second, then the third until there was no free space left. And I added a few additional sources, if you can say so, or centers for these ripple like lines. Then I chose nude gouache to paint over this section as the next layer. I painted strips, and I discovered that because my pencils were quite hard, they didn't fully absorb the water down gouache, which created this kind of unique texture. This turned out to be such a pleasant surprise, and because of that, this became my favorite pattern. Then I continued with brown ochre on top of the new colored section. With a small brush, I filled it in with random blobs, lines and dots until everything was covered. These patterns started to remind me of underwater life, like the front fish, corals, octopuses. So I tried to continue that them by creating similar patterns for other kind of fields or shapes. But this pattern is quite simple. It just takes more time since we're adding lots of details until there's no empty space left. Go here is to draw regular, longer lines and then fill the gaps in between with smaller lines or dots. Then I return to the blue field. Now that it's dry, we can add more details, which is exciting. I chose a red pencil to draw another circle around the green ones. I filled in the gaps with more green circles, and then I repeated the process until I was happy with the pattern until all the gaps were filled. Next, I continued painting with brown ochre, mixed with a bit of rose on top of the blue section. And I painted these kind of vertical lines of different sizes, and they remind me a bit of worms, maybe. It's really simple, but it looks quite interesting, and that makes me happy. One of the later sections I decided to fill with scales. I chose ochre pencil to fill the whole field with fish scales without leaving any gaps, and then I wasn't happy with how boring it looked. So I tried to make the sizes of the lines varied and thickness and then tried creating a gradient by filling in each individual scale. For now, I left it like that, but I will come back to this section later. Some of the smaller fields I filled with simpler patterns. For this one, I'm just drawing horizontal lines on top of the nude colored background. Using the same method, I filled another very small section with vertical lines this time. I didn't even change the colored pencils for this one. Then I decided to fill the right blue field with ovals of different sizes, and I painted with a small, soft bristle brush. I didn't try to make them perfect on the contrary. Some of them look more like blobs. I started with the larger ones and then filled the gaps with smaller ones. After that, I filled in the remaining gaps either with more ovals or painted them with white. And don't focus on making these patterns perfect or the paint layer completely opaque, or the lines perfectly smooth. These and perfections make the work more playful and more unique, of course. Then I fill the brown ochre field with regular lines as well. As you can see, we have a common theme here, this time inspired by fish. Here I'm not trying to fill every empty spot. I'm leaving larger gaps between the lines and dots. One of the smaller sections I filled with simple ovals and a dot inside each one using red pencil, and that's it. But it looks quite good. The last empty section, I filled with a swirl pattern that reminded me of coral reefs. I used a small brush and sky blue gouache and painted spirals and swirls. Next, I came back to the knit pattern because it looked too simple, in my opinion, I decided to add more pencil lines on top and create a gradient, first with the red colored pencil at the bottom, then with the sky blue colored pencil at the top. I tried to draw between the gaps of the previous pattern. Then I thought another color wouldn't hurt anybody, so I added nude colored pencil marks in the center. Now, almost at the end, I returned to the previous field. Once it was dry, I made these pearls more prominent with the darker blue pencil, and that's almost done. As a final step, I went back to the scale pattern. Since it still looked a bit boring, I added another color, sky blue, and I'm placing small dots at the bottom of each scale until the whole pattern was filled in. I didn't want this section to stand out by how boring it looked and because it lacked contrast. M. And that's finally it. This is how the whole sketchbook layout looks like. It brings so much joy to my heart. It looks incredibly colorful and fun. And I learned so many new patterns. How exciting. You did such a great job. I'm so happy you stayed with me through all this. We worked hard and created so many beautiful things. How could we not brace ourselves? Thank you for being here with me. Before I say goodbye. I'll see you once more in the final video. Oh 14. Class Wrap Up! Yay!: It's so wonderful to see you here at the end of the class. We've created so many new things together. We played with colors and made several swatch layouts. We experimented with gouache and colored pencils, first and small compositions, and then larger geometric ones. Then we discovered creative ways to use leftover paint, and most importantly, we filled an entire sketchbook layout with beautiful patterns. I'm very happy with the results, and I'm truly proud of you. It was a lot of work. Now creating illustrations or paintings with gouache and colored pencils will feel much easier because you're more familiar with these materials now and don't forget to upload your project to the project gallery. And if you'd like more detailed feedback, don't forget to mention that in your project description. Also, if you are interested in working with me one on one and completing more detailed assignments, more personal assignments, I offer individual sessions you can sign up to. Thanks to your support and comments, I'm able to create new classes. If you enjoyed this one, I'd be very grateful if you left a review, and don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare so you don't miss any future classes and updates. Let's stay in touch. Until next time I am so happy we shared this creative journey together. But for now, that's it. So I'll see you and maybe one of my other classes. Bye.