Sketchbook 101: Character Development

1. Welcome to Class!: What could be better than flipping through a finished sketchbook, admiring all the work that you put in, and reminiscing about all the fun you had exploring new materials and ideas. It's the best. Every page doesn't have to be a masterpiece, will be pretty overwhelming to have that as a sketchbook goal. Instead, let's focus on the sketchbook as a whole, what an achievement. In this third and final class in my sketchbook series, I am going to be putting together what we learned in the first two parts, the basics, and play. We are going to be working on developing our own unique character profiles, and working on a final illustrated mixed media piece in our sketchbook. I will take you through my entire process from start to finish so that you will also feel confident developing your own characters. This is seriously going to be so much fun. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another class, [inaudible] Kristina Hultkrantz. I'm an illustrator and surface designer from Mariefred, Sweden. As I've mentioned in my previous two classes in this sketchbook series, I gave up my sketchbook practice long time ago, and it just pulls me to think about how much fun, and how much it would have developed if I kept it going. I really feel like I missed out, and I'm taking this opportunity to catch up. I'm having so much fun. I'm really excited that I created this class, so I could share all this with you. I hope that you'll get out as much as I have from the sketchbook practice as I have. This is part 3 in a three-part sketchbook class series. Be sure to check out part 1 and 2 to get a run down the sketchbook basics, and fun exercises before getting started in this class, if you'd like. Otherwise, let's just get started. 2. Your Class Project: [MUSIC] For this final class, we've done all the basics in my first part of this series in the first-class. Then we had some fun in the second class. Now I feel like we should be warmed up and we should totally be ready to create a final piece. For the class project you are going to be creating a fully illustrated mixed media illustration of a character that you have developed. This is going to be so much fun. Remember, this is still a sketch book, and it's the sketchbook piece. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, it doesn't have to be the most incredible illustration that you've ever created. It's about having fun developing, testing new things, so no pressure. This doesn't have to be added to your portfolio. It can be a hot keeping it as a hobby like I do, and maybe it will start evolving into your other work like I feel my traditional media playing has done. Pressure is off. This is just for fun in your sketch book, but that's what we're going to be doing. I highly suggest that you upload something to the project gallery just because it gives you a push to be brave and put yourself out there and work hard on your piece. It also is incredible opportunity to get your work in front of me to give you some feedback and an encouragement and your peers as well. Please be brave and upload something. These are just your sketches or your process, or the final illustration, your entire process. It's going to be so much fun to see your work, especially if I've seen your work in the previous two classes and to see how you've developed. I can't wait. 3. Sketchbook Supplies: [MUSIC] The supplies that you'll need for this class are, again, your sketchbook, I have my sketchy sketch book that just has pencil sketches and I'll be using that for the first part of this class where we're going to be doing character development and coming up with characters. This is a great place to just have scribbles and ideas. Then, when we are ready and we're going to work on our final piece, I want to use paper that's a little bit thicker. You can either do this on a separate piece of paper rather than in your sketch book. But if you have a sketch book that can handle a little bit of mixed media, then I would suggest you use that. This again is my art creation sketchbook by Royal Talens and has a 120 gram paper. My other sketch book is from United Office and it has like 80 gram paper. Other supplies that I'll be using in this class are paint, I will be using gouache. I really like the set from Caran D'Ache. To create details and other textures, I love using the neocolor pastel crayons from Caran D'Ache as well. Because I'm very loyal to Caran D'Ache for whatever reason I sponsored her or anything, I just really like the brand. I also enjoy their colored pencils, the Pablo and the Luminance. Those are all the supplies that I will be using. But you can, of course, use your favorite art-making supplies and anything that you have at home to create your class project. 4. Write Your Own Story Prompts: One of the hardest things when you're looking at that blank piece of paper, and you really want to draw a character, is to come up with that actual character. Where do you even start? In this section, I'm going to be sharing with you how I go about creating very unique, fun, interesting character prompts to create interesting and unique characters that are 100 percent me. Welcome to a blank page in my sketchbook. We're going to start developing ideas, and I'm going to show you my favorite way of developing ideas. It requires you to use your imagination, but it's daunting at first if you're just going to sit down and try to think of something. But using this very simple technique that I like to use, is somehow come up with really elaborate ideas. It's incredible to see how your imagination works, and sometimes maybe you need to practice a little bit. I think this is a skill that you just need to practice. On one of your pages, you're going to split it up into three categories. We're going to do person, place, and a thing, and using these three simple prompts combined, we're going to figure out though, little stories that we can create, the little illustrations around. You can create a whole world. You could come up with a whole book idea with these simple prompts. We'll just see how that goes, so then we're going to add in some spaces here. We'll see how many will do, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, eight things, let me get this one. Come up with eight ideas. That's eight illustrations that you could create if you like how all of them come out. To start off with person, person also doesn't have to be a human person. This could be a character who is a bear or some animal or inanimate object. We can start off, we can do maybe half as people and then have as animals or some other character. You're going to be as specific as you want or you can be very general. You can come up with a story as you go later , but let's see. Well, I'm trying to get into children's illustration, so you should obviously have a lot of kids' characters in your portfolio. We can start off with a kid. We need to give some characteristic to this person. We also have to think about diversity in many different ways, not just race ethnicity, and things like that, but also age diversity, gender, all of that. Also, the diversity in people's personalities, there's so many things that you could decide around your character, and you could go into as much or his other detail. But let's give some characteristics through this kid. I haven't decided any gender or race or anything, but let's say that they are shy, but very stylish or dapper. That gives me an idea already of a character, could be a girl or a boy, or gender-nonconforming. I can see them, their poses, and how they would show how shy they are, but there'll be wearing nice three-piece suits or something. I think that'll be a funny way to show a kid. Let's do another kid as well, a child, and this could be the opposite of that character. We could go really like outgoing and adventures. Hopefully, I'm spelling things correctly, maybe like really happy-go-lucky. Adventurous, happy-go-lucky kid, so then you also get some ideas there. To get ideas for things like this, maybe you still are having trouble getting your imagination going, just think about people that you have in your life. Think about a neighbor that you see every day or people that are in your family and design a character loosely based on somebody like that. Let's add in a couple of more people. I'm a mom, so why not a mom? Can give some characteristics, and then we should try to stay away from stereotypes, but sometimes stereotypes are popular or interesting to write about anyway. We could do an overprotective mom, or overprotective, or something like that. Could be interesting to create a storyline around that, to see how that develops a relationship or something like that. We've given two characteristics to each character so far. Maybe it's overprotective, but very dreamy mom which feels the opposite. That could be fun to explore, and then the last one, I think drawing grandpa is fun, so I'll have the grandpa in here. I think lots of old people, they get the grumpy old man, so we should do the opposite, that this person is really enthusiastic and maybe a lot eccentrics. They get really fun clothes. You also have to think, as we all illustrate, is you want to think about things that are fun to draw and that you're excited to draw. Don't put something in here that you definitely do not want to draw. Then we've done a couple of people, so let's end with some animals. We can keep it simple and not add in the characteristics, so we can just go with a fox. We could do something else, like fox. There's certain animals that have specific stereotypes as well, like fox. They're always sly, mischievous, and things, so it could be a fox that's totally not good at any of that, like the clumsy fox. We're going to write clumsy. It could be interesting. A clumsy fox. A squirrel, so squirrel are known to be really fast and spastic. A squirrel in a different way. We'll just leave it at squirrel and see if another characteristic, the place or the thing can add to that story. But keep in mind may be breaking that stereotype, but it's also fun to play with the hyperactive squirrel. I'm thinking of other animals that are super-duper. I really like the woodland animals, so a hedgehog could be fun. I don't really know if hedgehogs have any stereotypes around them. Maybe they're shy or something, so maybe are very outgoing. Hedgehog, do they live underground? Maybe he wants to live high up or something, something like that. Then the last one, we could do a mythical creature or an inanimate object. You could do anything from a pencil or something like that, but I think I just realized my phone is right here, I'll move that. Let's just do a Yeti because I think they're cute to drive down the road forward. Now we have to jump into a place. Again, you can think about this being really very open and general, or going to be very specific. Again, think about things in your life and things that you like, as well as, I don't know, I've done this many times in my notebook, and maybe you do this while you're watching TV, and you'll see a scene in some show, and you'll be prompted to use that thing. We can do things that are really general and mundane, like an office building. I think that could be fun to draw something mundane, especially if the office was combined with one of the animals. It would be fun to design what an office would look like in a hedgehog borough or something. I'm already getting ideas like that. We can do other really nice things, make nostalgic things like hanging out in grandma's kitchen. I have some nostalgic thoughts about my own grandma, one of them, sitting in her kitchen and what that looks like. I think she had curtains with red hearts, were red apples. Either way, it was really bold, and found lots of red in her kitchen. Other things, we can do some, like one of my favorite things too when I'm thinking about woodland animals is mushroom picking, and we could do a really nice Swedish mushroom forest. The forest in Sweden are so beautiful. Mushroom forest. Then we start thinking a little bit out of the box, maybe, I don't know. They also think about things that you just want to draw. I would love to draw an ice cream stand. Again, I think lots of these simple things go really well with the animal characters, but of course, you can come up with interesting things to go with the kids as well, the human characters. I was scrolling through Pinterest the other day and this whole she shed idea that's popular now I thought was very interesting and funny. Instead of the man cave, now it's like a gardening she-shed thing that is popular. Have you heard of that trend? Think that could be fun to draw. I'm more into nostalgic things and thinking about Stranger Things and an '80s suburb with kids on their bikes and things like that. I grew up in the '80s, so '80s suburbs. I feel like the 80s, 90s look is really popular right now. It has become a classic look for what, I don't know. The classic look for especially people in my age obviously, if we grew up in that time. Sex Education has become this modern but classic, retro look. It's coming back to the 80s, 90s is coming back which is so funny. Whatever. More stuff, I think there's lots of stories about being different or finding your place. I was thinking about how in America like this houses are all the freaking same. On a block, they're all beige or different shades of brown. If you had a character who lived in a hot pink house on a beige block would be interesting idea. So that's something I would love to draw, hot pink house on a beige block. That's a little bit more in-depth idea in comparison to office ware, I could go into depth, it could be a news office or could be an office for stapler manufacturers. I don't know. Then let's see, we need one more idea. What if one of our characters, my sister's going on a cruise next week or this week. Maybe a cruise ship could be fun and with all the adventures you could have when you're on a cruise. Now we have a person, a place, and now we just need one more extra thing. This extra thing is just going to be a fun thing to draw, a fun characteristic that you can give to your character, something that's going to add to your story that brings it more to life to make it more interesting and to bring something else into it so that you start to brainstorm tons and tons of ideas. Again, I'm just going to go with random stuff. I love remembering things that I remember from day to day life. I have little kids and I met one of their little buddies and he often comes to school with a drawn on mustache, with black sharpie drawn on, a curly mustache. I think we need to start with that. It's so fun to see him when he comes with his drawn on mustache. I wish I was that little kid with drawn on mustache. Other things we can think about, we think about nostalgic things like when I grew up with my sisters buddies in her softball team or T ball, I think it was when they were really little, he refused to wear his soccer shoes and he would only wear cowboy boots. I've always wanted to add cowboy boots to a story especially if it was something that you have to wear, a certain, something else. I could do the whole story cowboy boots instead of soccer shoes, would be really funny. Also, another thing that comes to mind like a weird detail I was listening to a interview with the actress Anya Taylor Joy and she was talking about how when she was little she had this egg that she claimed was a family member. An egg I think would be really a fun detail like a best friend because the BFF/family member, because I thought that that was such a cute character and such a thing that a little kid would do. Let's see. We can just add in some activities or something like that. It was a fun game, we talked about softball but badminton is quite funny. Badminton. Or we can add in other things like a microscope. I also think about things that it seems that I would like to illustrate or are important to me. Maybe environmentalism is important to me. Maybe a tote bag that says the reduce, reuse, recycle. That could become a part of your story. Also on Pinterest when I've been researching clothing and things, I saw these amazing braze that were in different forms or had different patterns on them. Like a beret that looks like a strawberry or with clouds on it. I think one of my characters definitely needs to have a really awesome beret collection. Last step, I think I've been watching Paddington with my kids a lot and Paddington loves marmelade. I think we need to have somebody who likes marmelade. Here we go. That's simple but they have give you a lot of insight or they give you a lot of details, they certainly get your ideas flowing. I went really fast through this, I have done this many times and I've gotten the hang of the ideas that I like to use. Use my ideas as a jumping off point for gathering your ideas as well. Now we're going to start creating stories. We're going to start to mix and match all these different things to create eight separate story lines that we can turn into illustrations. This is going to be so much fun because this was already fun to dream up the different things, but then to piece them together is even more fun. 5. Story Prompts Part 2: Now it's time to piece together these three things and see what stories we can come up with. Again, they don't have to be fully fleshed out stories like a whole book concept, you just have to have something that you could go off of to draw a fun illustration. If it turns out to be something more than that, that would be incredible. You could go across, but I feel like that sometimes they just don't make sense to me and it's fun, a part of the process is to put them together. But you could randomly choose. You could cut these out and pick them randomly to make up your own prompts like that. But I think having this exercise that they're stuck in my book, I have to force myself to pick and match all of these up. All eight in different ones, I think that's a good exercise. Starting off with we can do ones that I feel like really go together, something like that. Some of my favorite things in here, I really love the egg with the idea from Anya. Who should have the egg? It could be anyone. I think some things feel obvious like my excentric grandpa, he could definitely have the beret collection and live in the hot pink house. I think that would be exceptional. That would be so much fun to draw and that's important, so we could go with that. Then we want to make sure that we're not letting go of anything interesting. Let us go for that. Excentric grandpa, hot pink house and berets. Then under that, we could start to write out a little bit more of a story. Let's get back to that, let's put them together. For now I'm going to work the ones that I've chosen already, so I don't choose them again. I would have to think for a second what would be happening there. That one just feels visual to me, it'd be fun to draw, and doesn't necessarily have to be anything else. I think just showing the regular yards that are super plane and the stereotypical, perfect yard with a beach house and perfect, and then there is crazy pink house with a wild garden. Then this cool grandpa with awesome berets with a strawberry beret. Excellent. A clumsy fox maybe would be interesting to include in the office environment. Clumsy fox office, but what should his extra thing be? Marmalade, recycle tote bag, microscope, badminton. He could have the drawn on mustache, maybe he wants to seem a little bit more grown up, so he draws on his mustache. But also the adventurous kid could draw on a mustache just randomly. I'll wait on this one, see what we got going on. Let's see. I like the idea of the shy kid has the egg, so maybe it feels more confident when egg is around. Shy kid, which setting should they be in? They could be in the 80's suburbs or grandma's kitchen, maybe. Or at the ice cream stand, something happens. I think they should be in grandma's kitchen. Shy kid, grandma's kitchen and an egg. The adventurous kid with a drawn on mustache, because I can see the character in front of me, maybe with the ice cream stand. Let's do that. Just go with happy kid, ice cream stand and the mustache. An overprotective mom. We could do in the mushroom forest and she's so afraid that going to be picking poisonous mushrooms, but she's also dreaming and constantly dreaming away because it's so beautiful in the forest, that could be something. She could bring a microscope to the forest because she's so afraid of messing up her mushrooms. That could be something that'd be interesting. Let's do that. Mom, and do forest and microscope. We still remember need to give the fox something. We have cowboy boots, which could be fun for the office environment because he feels it's quite uptight and stuffy, or the regular office stuff and somebody shows up in cowboy boots. Maybe they're too big and that's why he is so clumsy. Could be something. Let's give him cowboy boots. Then we have squirrel, hedgehog, and a yeti. We have she-shed, the 80's suburbs, and a cruise ship as our place, and we have badminton, a tote bag, and marmalade. I think a yeti cruise ship would be a really fun scenario. I think that would be really fun. A yeti on a cruise ship. Either everybody's yeti is on this cruise ship, or a yeti family reunion, or it could be the only yeti on a cruise ship, and things that happen then. Cruise ship, and then we add in marmalade, a recycle tote bag or badminton. Badminton I can see being played on a cruise ship. It feels like it has the same vibe of badminton, I don't know, I see it as an old, retired activity, for retired people, and same thing with cruise ship, so that's interesting. Well, let's wait until we come up with the other ones. We have square and hedgehog. I like the idea of a hedgehog with her she-shed and she's really worked hard on that. We had to come up with some conflict there, so it wouldn't just be a cute image. But it could just be a cute image too. She-shed, then we are left with this squirrel in an 80's suburb environment, which is cute. What would the 80's look like in the wildlife world? That'd be interesting. We have all of them. Characters are called for with their places now we just have to match up the last things. The squirrel in the '80s could be with the recycling because recycling wasn't that cool at all in the '80s. It was just so lame to talk about. We always talk about save the trees back in the day. It could be an activist for saving the trees, especially since these squirrel lives in a tree. I feel that works. Recycled tote bag. We have badminton and marmalade, and I think our hedgehog in our she-shed should have something to do with marmalade. Maybe she makes incredible marmalade from her she-shed it's a marmalade making she-shed. Then the last one we have badminton. Again, I thought that badminton on a cruise ship feels very fitting. We can also add in things. When I think about badminton I start thinking about a Bridgerton or Downton Abbey or something. It'd be like a Yeti cruise ship, really dapper English. English yeti's these on a cruise ship playing badminton. Feel free to write out any of these ideas or anything to add to this. This part takes a little time to think through and think of what you're going to be drawing. But that's even more fun part. You could just think of a very nice image such as my excentric grandpa and his hot pink house. He could just be tending to his garden. That is really wild with tons of colors of flowers and everybody else's yard is just grass. I feel that image comes in my head and I think that is a narrative enough to go for. I think the clumsy fox in the office with cowboy boots needs a little bit more help to make it into a storyline. We'd have to think about that. We also need a storyline for the shy kid and how to make that interesting. It's difficult to show that this kid is so in love with his egg friend and takes it everywhere. But they have a little egg carrier that they wear. Maybe their grandma is really supportive of them in their egg family member, but maybe the rest of their family isn't. The kid feels insecure about that and then somehow learns to deal with it or understand that it's okay to be different. Those morals are great. Kids stories without being too obvious or in your face. That ice cream stand within mustache. Again, I feel like that's just a fun image. The kid could be visiting the ice cream stand. I can see them sitting in a really dynamic pose, eating ice cream with their drawn on mustache and just chaotic energy and really cool clothes. The overprotective mom in the forest with a microscope, they would have to have very expressive shocked face and be stressed and have the microscope's station and going into the forest is supposed to be very calming and this mom is making it become very stressful situation. That's my ideas there. The Yeti cruise ship, I already went over that. I see it as being a very fancy, very British situation where it gets a little uptight and maybe one of the Yetis is totally not like that. The rest of his family is really uptight, really buttoned up and this one Yeti is out as a norm. Maybe that's a concept that's been done before many times over, but I feel it's a classic. The hedgehog with a she-shed, I think that just could be so cute to draw like her. His design is really beautiful, she-shed. If you have no idea what you're talking about, you need to look Google, she-shed or look at that on Pinterest, there's so many cute images of these little sheds that you have in your yard and they're so perfectly maintained or they can be a little sofa with really curtains and things like that or it can be all about gardening. I guess she's going to have some marmalade station in there. I wonder what marmalade it should be. I recently made a dandelion marmalade with my kids because dandelions are edible, the yellow petals and the leaves actually. I made dandelions. Maybe she makes dandelion. Make sure, how do you spell that? Dandelion, is it with a I or Y. What else? Dandelion marmalade. She-sheds and everything that she-shed it could be yellow or it could be huge dandelions everywhere. That gives me ideas for that one. Then the last one squirrel in the 80s with recycling and you can be really going for the whole, makes sure to recycle paper and not use too much paper because his trees are all getting cut down for paper manufacturing, there's activist. I think I could have cool 80s style in some way. That is eight ideas for really complex illustrations that I could develop even further I could write full stories for these if I wanted to, but I could just start drawing one of them. Now the hard part is for your class project is picking one of these ideas and figuring out which one you want to work with. I don't know how I'm going to choose. I was really interested in dandelion marmalade hedgehog situation because it just seems so cute to draw. But I also like the grandpa with the beret collection and the kid with the ice cream stand. I honestly don't know which one to choose. I could get started on sketches for a couple of these characters and then see which one talks to be the most. I thought it could also be really fun to share with you some examples that I have written before just to give you and even more, another idea of how I get my ideas. I can go through some of those while I procrastinate making a decision on which story I want to develop. Here are some that I've done. Just old man in a kitchen or two pairs of glasses, ugly sweaters, receipts. Here I have the egg again because I really liked that idea. Here I chose characteristics for people with ethnicity or how they look. Some of my story ideas turned out. One that I drew was, even though Mr. Wiseman always carries two pairs of glasses, he can never find them, especially when he's trying to get out the door in his messy hallway. I use old man, messy hallway and two pairs of glasses to create that story. I wrote them out as I spent a lot more time drawing these or writing these, I get a little stressed when I'm filming, and I have to go through my ideas so I don't want to take two hours of filming where I'm saying. I went through those really quickly in my other example, but if you have time you can sit down and really dream about your situation. Your little illustration, story idea. Another one, Frank might be burly, but he'll never miss a chance to delight in his favorite French pastries in the park. I always think it's a nice contrast when he takes stereotypes and throw them on their head. I think that one was a burly man. Really manly man in the park. A park bench with French pastries. That was a nice little mix and also again, would be really fun to draw. We can do another one. Which one do you think? No, there's a mysterious pie disappearance at the garden café. Good thing Pau always has their detective kit handy. Again, I have no idea which kid this was if it was the Hispanic looking child or an African looking child. Then they were in the garden café with a detective kit. To think about nostalgic themes from childhood and classic stories like mysteries, always really fun. Here's Rosy. Maybe this is the red head little girl, I don't know. With the kitchen and the egg. Rosy's egg is 100 percent most definitely a member of the family. Egg goes wherever Rosy goes, but mainly likes to stay cozy in a corner of the kitchen. The egg den. Here are a couple more ideas from my brain, and I have done these several more times because I feel like even more fun to write out and dream up than actually taking the time to draw them all out. But I have so many ideas to pick and choose from. If I have a blank page and I don't have a character to draw, I have so many ideas. I have zero excuses for not having ideas for characters. Because here I have eight, here I have eight more. There's plenty here. I hope that you really have fun doing this exercise and take your time to put these three things together and write out a little story like I did in my second example or just come up with the prompts quickly putting them together and think of some visual to go with that. Then you have to make the decision of which of these eight ideas to go for and choose from. Again, I think I'm going to go with the hedgehog, with the dandelion marmalade because that's going to be so pretty to draw. Now we've got to get sketching. 6. Project: Character Development: Now that we've figured out our character and we've come up with tons of different character prompts to illustrate in the future, we have to pick the one that we like the most and we're going to start creating our final illustration. I'm going to go through in this section my entire process from sketch up to the final piece. I really hope you enjoy watching my process, and again, remember that this is just for fun. It's just for your sketchbook, it's for play, it's for learning new things. Maybe it will turn out gorgeous and it can be a part of your portfolio, but maybe not. No pressure here. Let's get started on the creation of our class project. Now it's time to get started on some sketches of my now hedgehog character. Hedgehogs are the cutest. I've just brought up some images on Google. I think the best way when drawing animals is start to draw them realistically version and then see how you can stylize them. I don't think I've ever drawn a hedgehog before. See how this goes. Then with animal characters, you have to decide if they're going to be really anthropomorphic, standing on their back legs with clothes or if they're going to be more animal-like. I think the cutest would be to make my character a little bit more anthropomorphic just because there's more things to draw. But to start off with, I'm just going to do some sketches of hedgehogs to get a feel for what they actually look like, which is pretty much like a ball with a face, which is good, so cute. Let's see. They have ears, little feet that just stick up. Someone decided it was the perfect time to weed whack right now. Also white on their belly and then have all the spikes on the back. That looks like a hedgehog at all. This one has. I'm just going to take some time to explore hedgehogs just to figure out what they look like. The cutest little faces. I've done one page of realistic hedgehogs and started to stylize them. I really like how this one's coming out, this is super cute. If we start to develop more of a character and figure out if they're going to be more standing upright, or what would that look like. Hedgehogs, I love the idea that they turn into little spiky ball. It has to be very round for my field. No, I have no idea I'd put clothes on this because the spikes, they could always have like a not fully clothe, they could just have a hair bow or a little apron or something because this becomes a challenge. Let me see. Also because it's the illustrated world, doesn't have to really make sense. But I like this heart head shape. Ears seem to be in here somewhere, and then the nose upturned like this one. I like really big expressive eyes. I need to make them look really happy. Getting some eyelashes to add to the feminine look because I want this to be first you shared and it's going to be really stereotypically girly, pink. I'm going to marmalade and all that. Here the spikes need add-ins, neck bones. Again, a white belly, really little hands. Their feet look I guess like little feet too. Hedgehogs have tails, and they're just a ball. Here's my main hedgehog look. Maybe the belly needs to go all the way down to the feet. The whole belly is white. It makes more sense to the figure. I like how the face is turning out here, but I'm not sure about the body. Does that look like a hedgehog? I want to make sure it looks so cute. Do they look like from the size? Just like a super ball put in the face. No, it's just like this, and the belly is thicker a little bit. Something like that we could give them a necklace could be cute. Then a little skirt thing, or apron. It's unclear how this is going to stay on their body, if it doesn't go all the way round. But if it's more like a apron, you can have some straps that tie in the back. You couldn't have a front part too because somehow go behind the head. I don't know how a hedgehog is constructed. Again, what's fun about being an illustrator is that you can have some artistic license and make some stuff up. It doesn't have to completely make sense, but this is getting somewhere. I think I just want to continue on my own time when I don't feel stressed about being in front of the camera and just sit here and stare at this hedgehog character. I'll show you what I come up with. I'm going to just explore her a little bit more. I feel like she needs a name. The first name that I came up with in my head, it popped up was Maude. I was thinking about Sex Education. I think Maude would be really nice classic lady's name for her and her she-shed and her dandelion marmalade business. She's a business lady, Maude. We'll keep going with that. Then also have to think about this shed because I need to add that in and then the environment. I'm just going to start doing some sketches, I need to sketch out what dandelions look at. I was looking at dandelions the other day and I realized that the flower don't like, I always thought they were just a bunch of spikes like this. But in the middle of the dandelions, there's these tiny little pieces that have these curly whorlies at the end. I was amazed by that so that's something I would want to focus on details because it looks like it's a chaos. But then the middles and these little curlies, which I thought was really cute. Dandelions are fun to draw in the yellow state, but they're also really fun to draw when you're going to blow it. When you're a kid and you blow all the seeds out. This is just from memory, it's fun to draw things from memory first and then see how you can figure out how to draw them. They sit on all this and there's this the flappers. They have a little foot that they're on. The whole thing is little flat like this. Figuring out how to draw that as well. Do some studies, go outside and pick some dandelions, there's five gajillion outside right now. It's springtime in Sweden. Details like that. Trying to figure out what her apron. The more that you figured out, it's going to be so much easier when we go to our fancier sketchbook, my bigger sketchbook where I like to paint and use colors. If I have more details of what's going on be on my character and how everything looks. I'm going to spend less time on that sketch so I'm going to sketch on that. These are my first character development sketches. I'm just going to keep going and sketch and sketch until I feel like I know this character, but I feel like I've already gotten quite far. I just want to test out a couple of more looks with maybe this ball thing. I've been sketching for a little bit more time now. You can see that I started off with my more realistic looking and then I moved into more of a character. I quite like now how she turned out to begin with, I've named her Maude. Just that was a great name. Let's test it out. Different forms for her body to be like oval, circle, or a rounded triangle shape. I've done some doodles thinking about what her apron, what shape it should be. Little sketches word pattern for the apron, my dandelions, and some marmalade jars. I learned that dandelion is spelled with the E in the middle, I forgot about that. We did some studies about what the leaves can look like. The flowers are made up so that when I go to do my final illustration that I have more of that information. I also collected some ideas for like pots and things that could be. Then I started to sketch out her little she-shed with a sign says Maude's marmalade and I thought it would be so cute if the dandelions were quite large and she's going to be quite tiny little hedgehog and the dandelions are just as big as the house and it's going to be like dandelions all around. Now its just a matter of sketching out some compositions and what we want the layout to look like. If we sketch out what that could look like, we need to have the shed in here in some way and then the dandelions. It's okay to do really messy sketches. This is just to get an idea for the composition. Then I think she should be standing here making marmalade somehow or like holding a dandelion. That's a composition and she can have some table that she's mixing her marmalade in. I think the composition having everything tall is nice because I think that the dandelions that they're going to be taking over the scene could be good. But let's just do one more because I usually always settle for my first idea. Then I realize maybe I could have thought of other things. I really liked how I drew the house to the side, but it could be straight on and could be very symmetrical to have this in the middle and then the dandelions to the side like this. The dandelions are taking over in the background. Tons of dandelions growing back here. We have her house in the middle somehow, the doors open. Inside you could see a little bit better. Nice perspective. Let's see all of her jars of marmalade inside. I'm trying to make it simple because I'm going to do this in my notebook and paint it. I'm more of a digital artist, so I definitely would want to do this digitally also. Need to figure out where she should be. I think the placement to the sides, since everything's going to be really symmetrical. Then again, she should be here in the foreground mode. Again, I really like the idea of her holding a dandelion, because it's so large. Could be looking at the dandelion, probably needs two hands to hold such a huge flower. Something like that and then we could have some cute details, like a little worm coming out of the ground looking see what she's up to or some other bug like a lady bug also on the roof checking out what's going on. Another little grass and things that's quite large here in the foreground. That could be an idea too maybe I like that as well. I like the symmetry of that. To get to know my character even more, I did some expression sketches and I also drew out her final pose. Now I'm just going to set up my other notebook, the one that I painted my larger notebook, and we get our final painted illustration done in our notebook. This is going to be fun. I'm going to switch out my setup here and we're going to start painting. 7. Project: Paint: [MUSIC] Now it's time to get started on the final project. Taking out my pink larger A4 sketchbook, the one that I have used in my sketchbook play class procedure that I like to paint in. Remember these from sketchbook, class Number 2. I have sketched out my Maude's marmalade illustration here very lightly in a erasable colored pencil and a brown color so it won't really affect the paint. I'm just going to jump right in. I could do color tests, and I might do that [NOISE] on the side here as I'm painting. But I like to just jump right in and see what happens. Again, this in my sketchbook is not a final piece. If this were to be a final piece you could do multiple studies in different colors and things like that. But feel free to do that yourself. But I'm just going to jump right in and get going. Because this isn't a painting tutorial, I'm just going to speed this up so you can follow along what I'm doing. I'm not going to teach the whole way through. Let's just jump right into it. This is going to be a fun painting session. I hope you enjoy the process. [MUSIC]. Now I've done the first layers of paint. I am going to do the rest of the illustration by cleaning it all up with colored pencil and new color [NOISE] pastels so that it comes to life. But I've done the first layer of paint and I think it's turning out really cute. I'm so happy with the colors and it's just really nice. It's exactly how I had imagined, which doesn't always happen, but it's good. I guess I've had good luck today. Now we're just going to have fun adding all the details to really just bring it all together. [NOISE] I think that's the super really fun part. 8. Project: Final Details: It's time to start on the final details with colored pencil because it's the way that I like to work, but you can feel free, of course, to do whatever you like if you'd like to do the final details in paint as well. I'm going to be using a selection, I picked up some of my Caran D'ache Luminance pencils because they have such a really nice and sophisticated color palette. A lot of these really great neutral colors that are difficult to find sometimes in the usual colored pencil set with all the primary colors. I've picked out some colors like that, that I think will add some nice texture and details to bring this to light. Again, I'm just going to jump right into it and you can follow along what I'm doing, but in the time-lapse form. I finished my final illustration in my sketchbook and it turned out really sweet. I love how the fluffy dandelions turned out. I was so happy, surprised that I didn't mess up Maude's face and I just think it was really fun, it was really nice. I've had such a lovely afternoon doing this with you and I hope that you feel the same that you're excited to paint in your sketchbook, especially if you haven't been doing it for very long and if you are a digital artist like me. It's such a nice way of getting back to your materials and learning more about color choices and be more consequent because I'm so used to being able to press the back button or undo or change colors so quickly. This is an incredible exercise for me and it makes me feel more confident when making artwork, even though this feels out of my comfort zone. But it's just so much fun and I can see myself working on this more, maybe one day I'd like to incorporate more hand-drawn textures or hand-drawn features in my artwork. This is just like steps towards that. Who knows? Being an artist is fun and I can just test out different things. Again, I really hope that you enjoyed watching me bring this illustration to life and my process, and how I go about using a sketchbook in this three-part series. Thanks so much for watching. I look forward to seeing your projects in the project gallery as well. 9. How to Keep Going?: That's our class project finished. We just need to keep this sketchbook practice going. I really hope that you've gotten obsessed, and you want to keep this sketchbook practice going. I hope that my class has helped you to be inspired again to keep a sketchbook, and to help develop your style further and help it evolve so that you can continue to stay creative and never have that block of what that you don't know what to draw. That's my biggest hope, that you've got a lot out of this series, and that you feel comfortable working in a sketchbook, and you can be that artist that bring their sketchbook everywhere. Can sit on a park bench and dream up different characters, and you can bring it to a cafe, and work on developing those characters, and who knows what can happen with those later, they can become portfolio pieces. You can bring them into the digital world like I will later, because that's how I create my finished artwork. I really hope that you can keep this momentum going. Just get a little obsessed, have lists of things that you want to draw. Make sure that you're doing different exercises and taking other school share classes to keep your mind going and your creativity calling. Make sure that you also set up time, so you have a specific time where you're sketch booking, maybe a 30 minute warm up for when you start your day. Or you bring it with you, and you sketch at any time you can. Or, dedicate an entire day like I do, fun Friday to playing in your sketchbook. Also again, I want to mention that I created a resource, my sketchbook, trying to do this where I've listed out tons of different things for you to work on, objects to draw, so that you always have something to draw, and you never have that blank page staring back at you. Also create character checklist so that you always have different checklists of character development that you can work on. Again, my best advice is just to keep going. You're going to get better. Your sketchbook is going to be filled with more and more information, this is valuable and so much fun. Such an excellent route for reference for you in the future when you're creating final artwork. It's also an incredible excuse to go out and buy yourself a new sketchbook. It's a great motivator to get the sketchbook that you're working on finished so that you can jump into their new crisp one. 10. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] That's it. Thanks so much for watching this series with me. I really hope that you've gotten a lot more out of this class, as well as the other two previous classes in this series. I really hope that you're obsessed with sketchbooking and that you found that is impact your art-making and your creativity as a whole. I certainly feel it has for me personally and I'm really excited for you as well. Please make sure to upload your final character illustration in the project gallery so that we may all admire your progress and it would be so exciting to see your progress from the first class onto this one, to see how your work has changed and how much you've learned. I really can't wait to see what you guys come up with. Please make sure to follow me on Skillshare so that you'll always be notified when I upload more classes. Please make sure also to check out my profile page where you can see all the other 20 plus classes that I've already published here. If you'd like to hang out with me outside of Skillshare, the best places to do that are on Instagram @emmakisstina and on my website emmakisstina.com. I've also created a private Facebook community that's really warm and welcoming, where we have weekly prompts, I do feedback sessions for free, and I have lots of other content there. If you want to learn with me in between my classes. I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks so much again for taking this class with me, I really appreciate you as a student and I'm cheering you on with your sketchbook practice, your number one cheerleader right here. That's enough. Thanks again. Bye. 11. Check Out the Rest of the Series!: [MUSIC] If you somehow missed the first and second part of this sketchbook series, I highly suggest that you go check out those classes as well. They'll be linked in the class description and you can find them on my profile page.