Sketch Session: Vintage Bottles

1. Intro: Hi, friends. Welcome to another sketch session. In this collection of short classes, we're going to continue with the sketching sessions we started in my Loose Digital Drawing class, and we're going to loosen up with a quick color sketch which we'll aim to complete in 10 minutes or less. The goal of this exercise is to get used to making quick, confident marks to embrace our mistakes and to push past perfection. In this sketch session, we're going to draw vintage bottles. Let's dive in. 2. Quick Sketch: This is the reference photo we'll be using, which you can download in the resources section. The first thing we're going to do is change the background color. Let's use the medium blue from the palette. And I'm also going to turn on drawing guides and increase the size of the grid slightly. This will just help us make sure our lines are relatively straight and our bottles aren't too lopsided. For the brush, open up the new Procreate library, go to the pencils set, and we're going to use Warata. Okay, go ahead and set your timer for 10 minutes, and let's get started. I'm using the light blue from the palette, and I'm going to map out the placement of the bottles with basic geometric shapes. So we're going to draw a rectangle in the center for the bottle in the foreground. Then the bottom edge of the other two rectangles will be a little higher up since those two bottles are further back. We can use basic triangle shapes for the neck of the bottles. And for now, I'll just draw a line and a circle for the stoppers on the two background bottles. Okay, now we can use that basic framework as a guide to make the shapes a little more accurate. So I'm going to round out the corners, add a lip at the top of that bottleneck, and define the shapes on this side as well. Then I can continue to do the same for the other two bottles. Now, you'll notice that I change the direction of my canvas a lot during this process. It's much easier to make quick confident marks when your arm is at a comfortable angle. So instead of contorting yourself to draw a line in a certain direction, it's best to just move the canvas around as you need to. And here, I'm using the side of the pencil tip to get a nice broad stroke so I can quickly fill the circle to create a sphere on the bottle stopper. Then I can also use those broad strokes to quickly add a few lines to help give the illusion of volume. This brush has actually grown on me quite a bit because you can use a sight of the pencil tip in this way. When I first reviewed it, I didn't really love it for a typical pencil sketching. And I'll leave a link to that brush review video so you can see what I mean. But once I started playing around with it a bit more, I realized that it's actually a great sketching brush. Once I stopped expecting it to mimic the look of a graphite pencil, it was easier to appreciate all of the things it actually does well. Another thing I really like about this brush is how smooth the grain is. So you get a really nice, almost buttery feel. When you use it in color like this, it doesn't even look like pencil. It looks more like chalk or maybe even charcoal. Okay, here I've switched to the dark blue from the palette, and I'm just adding a few of those broad strokes in the darker color for shadow. I forgot to mention that I've included this palette in the resources section for you. You can pull the colors directly from the JPEG image or copy the hex codes. And actually, if you subscribe to my email newsletter, this palette will look familiar to you, and it's because it's essentially the same one I shared in my February email. I just added a couple extra shades of one or two of the colors. Of course, you don't have to use this palette. You can use a completely different set of colors if you prefer. Now I'm using white for a few highlights. Now, the white is pretty stark, so I don't want to overdo it. It's a balance here because I want to be somewhat mindful of the placement of these highlights, but I also can't overthink it because of the time constraint. Okay, that'll do. Now I'm going to draw the labels on a new layer, starting with the really pale green. I decided to do this on a new layer because I knew that getting the shape and size of the oval might be a bit tricky. This way, I have the flexibility to draw it really quickly, then resize and reposition as needed. Again, I'm using the side of the pencil tip to get a nice broad stroke, which just makes it much easier to fill these shapes very quickly. It's already hard to draw circles and ovals, but it seems even harder to do when you're kind of in a rush. Okay. Okay, finally, I can resize and move this into position. These shapes with the straight edges should be a bit easier to draw quickly. Now, as you can see, compared to the reference, shape is not at all accurate. But remember, we're not going for 100% accuracy here. As long as you get the general idea of the shape, it's fine. Again, I'm using the side of the pencil tip to get a nice broad stroke, which makes it much easier to fill these shapes. It's also handy for making quick adjustments to the shape as well. And Now, as you can see, drawing the labels, filling them with color, and adjusting the shapes can eat up a lot of time. So when you're doing this exercise, it might be helpful to start with just one bottle first, see how it goes, and then work your way up to the group of three. Now, of course, I could use the drop fill feature to add color to these shapes, but you'd still need to clean up the edges where the fill meets the outlines. And I just think that the really solid color that the drop fill creates takes away from the loose sketchy aesthetic. Alright, now I'm using the medium green to add those borders on the labels. Round shapes are challenging, so feel free to break up that oval if you need to. And using the sight of the pencil tip is a helpful cheat here, as well, because it will fill that scalloped edge with just a few strokes. The border on these two is much simpler. And remember, they don't need to perfectly match the shape of the labels. Now I'll use the darker green to draw a few simple lines to indicate the text on the labels. And I'm switching up between using the point and the side of the pencil tip, so I can get different widths on those lines. Okay, one more new layer. And I'm going to drag that below the other two layers because I'm going to add a shadow below the bottles on this layer, and I'm using the darkest blue for this. Time's running out, but I'm just going to quickly add some color to each of the bottles using each of the three different pinks. Alright, gosh, that one was down to the wire. 3. Drawing Review: Here's how my final sketch turned out. As you saw, I just barely finished in 10 minutes. So it might be a challenge to draw all three bottles with such a short time limit. So feel free to give yourself 20 minutes instead of ten. Or like I mentioned during the demo, you can start with just one bottle, maybe the one in the center and see if you can get that done within the 10 minutes. I also encourage you to try this exercise a couple more times for practice, because, of course, the more you practice, the more comfortable you'll become with the process. Here are a couple more sketches I tried. This one took me about 12 minutes, and this one took about 8 minutes to finish just the one bottle because the shape and details were a little more complicated. I've included both of the reference photos I used here, in case you want to try these sketches, as well. Just a reminder this exercise isn't about creating something perfect. It's about creating something expressive. I really look forward to seeing your expressive drawings in the project gallery. And if you'd like to try drawing something similar at a slower, more structured pace, you can watch this full tutorial where I show you how to paint this Vintage Perfume Bottle. I'll leave a link for this YouTube video in the resources section. I hope you had fun, and I'll see you in the next session.