Sketchbook Practise - Ruby Doodles - loose watercolour & pen

1. Welcome to my world! :O): Hey there, I'm Holly Tomás anartist, photographer and musician based in the Lowlands of Scotland. I live here with my partner, my daughter, and two cats... with our adult son visiting as often. We're really fortunate here as we've got lots of forests. ... my favourite being Pressmennan... and beautiful coastline, the Lammermuir Hills or the hint of the Pentlands in the far distance... and castles! So I'm often out with my camera taking photos. And I love the ever changing arable land as well... I love of crop field! So I use these images for my art. And this is just one I've done recently on my iPad. And this is just with Snapseed and colour-changing. But I love everything really, I work with layer a lot. I love layering! I've got my Scottish wildflower series on the go, and we'll be doing that soon. Lovely loose watercolours which make beautiful bedding designs, surface pattern designs. Little ditsies.... through to mixed media. And this one is actually house paint and Brusho This one I did recently, and this is leaf printing, but also painting involved and a textural background. But all of these things have one thing in common and that is a celebration of nature. And that's what I really, really love to share with you. 2. Intro...: And let's move on to Ruby Doodles now. And before I start, I just wanted to explain why I started this series of Sketchbook classes for you. And it's not only because I want to foster a sense of confidence, but also to encourage you to create a space for yourself to begin to carve out time. where you can relax and Doodle. As I feel it's when we're relaxed and actively creating, that we enter that flow state and we become more open to learning and developing our skill ...almost without thought. So you may have no experience of painting or be looking for ways to build on your skills by starting regular sketchbook practice. But I'm hoping that you'll join me in exploring shape, colour, value, and pen work In this class. We'll be using a limited palette to help us create a cohesive study. So we're going from deep reds and violets through to pale pink. And then we're going to splash some distilled witch hazel into it to create dreamy effects and then finish with some gorgeous touches with pen. So by the end of the class, I'm hoping you feel more confident about your brush work, open to exploring more unusual techniques like with Witch Hazel. And feel like you've taken a step towards creating regular 'flow state time' for yourself. So sharing and community is a vital part of my work. So if you feel you'd like to upload your sketch book work to our projects section I'd be overjoyed! And I'd also welcome any questions or insights that you'd like to share. How did you like the colours? How did they make you feel. Do you feel you could begin to adopt this idea of making creative space for yourself. And what did you enjoy the most?, the finished study? or the both process itself?. So let's move on to the materials that we'll be using now. 3. Materials...: So running through the materials that we'll need, I am using a mole skin pocket sized watercolor sketch book, but you can use anything that you have. I would recommend getting a watercolor along just so that you can splash that witch hazel and water around and not worry about buckling too much. Paints have chosen. I've got wrote a night genuine and moves matter from my pinks. I've got Alizarin crimson and the brush1 premise on over here. For the center back got Payne's gray and pushing blue. And I'm mixing just a tiny touch a file it with a paint color just a little on its own to add a little bit of variety. And then we've got our guest here, which is distilled witch hazel, which we are going to be splashing about liberally hopefully. And the precious I'm using my size ten SCADA, size five handover, which I may or may not use. And this one I used quite a lot, misses my current dash, size eight. When it comes to the pens, he may use whatever you have. I mean, it does have to be the same as me at all. But I've got here, I pin the microns or one unipolar signal, and I've got to dip pen. So let's move on now and have a little bit about practice run. 4. Practise Run...: So let's just start with a few shapes. I've already got some paints down here, like mixed some of Alizarin crimson with the Russian crimson. Now the way that we can use our brush for these is you can either blotch here, which I'm going to just go right over. You can put points in the middle and then turn the heel round. Loss leaving the middle people rushing the center. But you can do it the other way and have the hill in the center and move the tip of the brush round a lifetime a little bit easier to get more of a scalloped edge during that beautiful iPad. So it's entirely up to you. So let's just do follicle portraits here. And I'll drop some Prussian blue and pressure since we've got to hate in the center. So that's a propitiate moves. That is the way we can do a puppy from the side. So we can do put you, push down point, go out to the left a little bit, and then come out again. And then the same year the science around to the right a bit. And then up and I have one petal and another pet on this way. And then to get a side view and want to kind of a half petal. Gus was seeing it side to interest, drag little petal in like from the side. And just going to use a little bit to that Prussian blue for stem. Then I'd like to do is and this is where pointed brush comes in handy. You want to take a little bit of the excess paint. Hamilton stem, commonwealth. I do those quickly facade shaky hands. Then using the very tip of your brush to stop making little hoops. I guess. We don't have to be perfect. And in fact, you can then do melt patterns well, just to kind of get something a bit different Tim, quickly afterwards, think about it. And then the very simple technique that I use thetas, that nice little sketch with practices. And turn it round here, say C from this angle. As I setup little flowers by drawing a stalk. Some little quirky leaves, just two little hoops like this. And you could come up with your own kind of quirky design. And then just using the shape of the brush. Can I make this more of her illness or in watercolor? And to step down all the way down, get the point here. Top-down, about halfway down the brush, lift up. And you can do the same here. And then you can do one that's not quite touching, not just turned my brush on the side, pushed it to my mouth, turned out, but just a little side one. And that quite pretty odd. Then if we want to add some more pen details, do some various shaped gave sick, do the archetype or countably like this. Or we do. Moreover, I can made in half and that's what I kind of think of it as like a triangle, I guess. This little blobby shapes. And I also like nice long, Everyone's like this and have just little branches coming out Merck loop at the top. Very simple to do and really very sweet when mixed in with all the different shapes and colors. And of course, you can go behind and move the leaf with this. Can vary the length appeal stems and concurrent. Across the page if you like. Just trying to think as any of the shapes that are right, you, they may come to bear so much actually painting. And I wanted to show you very quickly how we could use the chaser is very effective and it makes it look very dreamlike and use it a lot. So if I do that here. And then if I drop this in to link to an exact science, but actually I don't bother about that really doesn't match your Cabo up there because we get so Kitchen wrong. Selection of slice and clean. It will stain because it's Brush. Oh, but we can't take that stuff and you can cover it up with a leaf. So I'll carry out filtering because little mistakes like that. Thin cow. Really good to see where he had been a good practice and then you know how to how to deal with it rarely and hide it, disguise it. So it's not beautiful. It kind of makes it more dreamy. Well not dry. Sometimes you get some few hard lines around what stride, and if you don't like those at this stage, it can go in and just move, you push around. And you can also lift up. Yeah. You feel this tomb which paints on that, does not go to us. And then we wanted, we could add some payments grey to the sector. Quite a thick amount. And what I wanted to travel to far, whoops. Maybe just make tiny little dabs with the very tip of your brush. So those are just a few very simple things that we can do. And if you want to try to nurse is going to be difficult because it's not tried me and I would suggest waiting until it's absolutely dry before going in via your white pan. You can do some little details like little white, whoops. And the Y2K. Thanks. Doc in the center really brings it to lie. Just makes it bit more cutesy slat. And there's also using it to just draw on your pet homes. So just kind of nice-looking line to conflict, pen up halfway up so that you get little breaks and the line I'm not Mexican, look a bit more realistic. Let's say realistic. Consistence can slightly like a fantasy. I think it's very cute, very effective to have all these different techniques and different textures in our pace. So let's go on now and put all of these elements together in our sketch book Practice. 5. Loose Watercolour & Brusho...: Okay, so let's throw some shapes down unless little sketch book here that we have tried to go in and just don't worry too much about what is this firewall rule. Shake of attack hold just going with the flow. You could even exert a little bit of you witch hazel stage makes it nice and dreaming. You could keep coming back to him if you don't like the way that it's settling to Smith, you brush round. So we're gonna do a docker flower here thing coming in. And just put a little bit of paint grey in the middle. And same for drips coming down. I want to keep it nice and loose and I'm so where the even there I was kind of starting to tighten up. So it is not meant to be must pieces, something that you absolutely adore, although it may turn out to be that way of relaxing, just messing about with our past. But this is really about relaxing and feeling confident. I think that's the whole point is to build up confidence about slapping, paying down, and just not thinking, not caring too much about everything being completely perfect. The way that you want to have. Inevitably in it, in any peace has usually horn flower one leaf or something that you think shuttle Not differently. But the overall effect is what we're going for. And actually find that most people will notice that the first start looking at it. Let's just talk perfectionism, I think creeping in. But that it's about the whole minutes about how the whole piece comes together. A little bit of a perfectionist. So this is another technique that you can use which adds and pitted texture nuts to scurrying in with a very density brush. So all I'm doing is dabbing my brush. They're taking excess water often just going in, sweeping a little bit flat paint up. We're going to do that there because it didn't decrease anyway. Activity here. Quite a lot of water. There. And I'm liking this a lot and not liking the way that the pegs graze granule acted. So I'm going to do another one of those deep flowers over here. And this is really just the neat brush. The Crimson, beautiful color. With pig to it. Take away the broom mass. It's going to work quite ground. You read beautiful color. And I'm going to draw pins on the map, Payne's gray, I haven't got some a lot of water on my brush. I don't want to travel too far, although if it does, it's fine with me. But I think I'm going to add centers to these. I'm just going to leave. I'm right. I'm bringing in that Payne's gray and see if I can guess clear out with that, that's we can add to this. This is a mixture of all of those three colors. That's a nice color. We can do some different shaped SAS Studio, these little I don't know what I have. My nice kind of structural shape. That's quite sweetheart. My, he could always had those look at paintings. Great. Let's try some without going here. And there I take bits of the painting, the water off my brush now gets a little bit more control level. So added more water to collapse hooks into paler pink, which is quite nice. And also again, using the Payne's gray means that it ran unites. So you get text here without really having to do very much. I feel like I need to do a sweeping movement now. And I might change brushes. So I had been working now with my size tennis Golda, and go over to my little hunter precise phi. And then mix together. This pays grey or yellow does it gets in there. And so to get some guy. So that's kind of a too sleepy movements to sweeps of the brush, although I didn't do very well with that. We have 12. And you could leave a little whitespace because that's quite cute. So getting the points of the brush down on the belly and bringing it around and up again to the tip. And the same year the side a little bit bigger because I get to the bottom right buried the color a little bit to this side, and wage, be brave and just go into a color that's going on here is going to go into sloshing around a bit. Paint. Feels like it needs another sweaty movement, presumably going down this way. So very indicators varying the value really makes it look very cohesive. And we put something going up my nice panel on, I think coming down this way. Do I get eaten? Drop him, painted the base, spice things up a little bit. That's Payne's gray. And something going on here I think, would be nice. Mixing mostly rose Madden and see something quite pinky. Too much water on my brush. When you doing a line, it's much better to go in with a brush that's not too much water on it. Gives you more control that way. And I'm just going to go in with a neat water has to be different from each other. Without start doing painting over the center of the book care. Well, good practice there about learning control, the brush. Not pegged to a perfect conditions. I would think it helps. And these aren't the neatest leaves because I'm working out more quickly than if I was doing design on it and not worrying too much about things being perfect. It's overall feel that IQ act with these little parties, spaces, and learning to let go. Before I started to sketch book practices, I would fulfill a little bit paralyzed by especially the size I was working because surface pattern I needed to work with at least a three signs. And that could be a little bit intimidating sometimes. And it didn't really occur to me in the early days to do sketchbook practice, but it's something that I find very useful now. It just keeps me loose and it allows me to experiment without having a goal in mind, really, really expected too much myself. And that's invaluable as you go through your artistic tyranny. So some liking is all these different values. Because we've got this pinky, Paley won't hear. I want to do something a little bit darker. This is turning into quite nice autumnal, too much war trauma Bush autumnal colors, which is what I set out to do, but actually liking a lot. So remember that is the same as that. We could change that by lifting a coma. You'll find that Berkshire we staining. So you can't lift is completely as you would with WorldCom. But it also, that why that's so good is that it does give a very deep, deep color. So unless I have my switch it up and do really pale, pink, IS women S over, over colors to merge in a little bit. I put a little bit of haze on my brush data. See what lactose to leaves I already have down a still wet. What actually done that before? Just used it flows but not my kidney shaped pithy. So but that's okay. Because I can go in and just correct. Because I was trying to hold pay book. Right. It's really hard to pay into these little, little pits here. 6. Loose Watercolour & Brusho - white pen work: Filter might be nice to use white pen with this one. This is the signal amenable and use it quite a lot. I think a lot of artists use this pen. It's very reliable, but it does have its little quirks. And one of them being that really doesn't work very well unless the work is very, very dry. And so I found, and also that using it lightly rather than pressing down seems to get better results. So it's kind of IOUs in with quarter light touch. But it can just rarely bring your pace to lie, receives little finishing touches. A really sweet. And you don't need to do a lot of really just few dots in the center may be especially against the dark. Thank you. So always really pretty. Some large, some smaller. A few here. The thing I like to do sometimes is my data movies is draw flow within a flower. Just draw a little daisy. So there's quite a few things you can do. Show you've got your own ideas as well about how to use the white pen. But we'll stripes little dots and suddenly piece looks a little bit more alive. Sometimes it's nice to crossover hoisting that looks really good. Very short and sweet. But thought it might give you a few ideas. 7. Sketchbook Practise : Okay, so maybe the king now to put all those elements together that we can add two. So if we add some pen work at the end, and this is just the peak number of Chrome. I've got painted all of my fingers to apologize, for sure gets everywhere. I do love it. So what I've got here is my pressure violent. And I'm going to add some because I've been kinda mess enriched selected here. You see a version of crimson here. Like that. We will get. And I've brought Alizarin crimson, haha, Daniel Smith. Now if we mix those together, let them melody feels like and I consider little bit of Prussian Blue and could use that for the centers. And also worked to premix Some of the Crimson with the environment. So Scott have handled the premise and makes must be told Q. Picking up some of the violent, and we'll do that. So depending on what you want, you can get beautiful in-between the color. And then if you add more scholarships, Parliament will continuously get nice plumbing. To lump these put together. It doesn't have to be Russia, by the way. Any violet, any scarlet, or any crimson, any pinks that you have. Just using a Prussian Blue and a little bit of Payne's gray, which I might use for a center for flowers. So going to start off by just putting down a few loose flowers. And it might start actually with a size ten. Just to get kinda nice, loose glamorized starts off with a linear loved size eight. So I'm going to use them. Beautiful mix here. We've got an hour here to have irregular kind of petals of some longer view of this. And that makes it look like it's, it's not beautiful color. And we're going to be our day with Queensland elements to that. And really compliments what nasal kind of melding together a little bit of witch hazel. And you can move that around. So you don't get hotlines, just want the swimming S. Unless you like. Splash back cauliflower kind of technique that looks pretty close well, okay, I'm not gonna get too precious. And it's just going to put down a few of those that facility like color to have PE and the value of the classical pair. From this time I've got my brush in the center using a third healed around. And I'm just gonna do a full hold on, just gave out this thing and it will take too much of a choice. Every single phyla and diverse Prix de Rome down here. So that mix of Alizarin, crimson is coal. Mines began late summer. What kind of slight will stay tinge to terminate enough. And to add a coda here. And think, I'll make it a very pale pink is how we can use the value to our 2D. Because you can get some beautiful pale pink homeowners ON chromosome. This is got tiny took to fire to them, which is why it's let go just to have a face touching each other. Nicely leaves USA just looking for pet hold. Not less. And I'm formatting for that what we have said that they match intellectual bit, like managing effect is quite nice. It can occur it by dropping a little bit more color if you want. This is dried, has to encourage the, in my case, that's already kind those large elements for the patron to just bring it over to here now. And I think I'm going to bring crimson and do a nice puppy, puppy shape pair. Can pull up any excess paint that's kind of it in the crack. I guy named brush. Just a tiny bit of the chase Lin with that one. Don't worry about any lumps happened because we can cover those Hopis. I want these to be nice, that swimming. Pair one over the slope here fake. So I'm going back up to down. And there's an incredible city which I've got going on on the bots and Hannah random fly here because I want to have the different values going on as well as the different shapes. It'll look very different, but they will burn, they've mapped or plants API moreover, creaminess of mom here. Dock, dock, dock flower here. Which is going to make it nice. Three petaled rama. I'm going to do is on the plus side, the thing that we do. So it looks like they're, it's going this way. Looking back, looking back curvy work and scooping up any excess paint are quite likely assistant fluently. And that's because it would change. So this merged in with the paints late. They got sold very well and I think and when I do pay the one over here as well, because we are going to be doing some pen works and then I'll bring in slightly dark and I might as well become match the same. Flux core. Nice, nice crimson. Payne's gray. We can have that into the bottom as well. So it looks like almost like a point p. And Prednisone flower here. I hope the page. And here all you need to do is just kind of imagine what would happen if the base of the cloud mat. And a way to entertain some pushing blue Porsche. Rookie required like a puppy, which is look like might actually add up to here as well, is dry and Islam, but I'm going to have a red one here is one of my state coef, maybe an elite P1. And again, but to Payne's gray. Or maybe even going onto the page. And some leap second coming down here. We're gonna switch portions in a minute because still my size ten. I do like doing all the leaves as well in this color. So what I'm doing here is setting it up, pull the pen work so they can just go in. And Japan brings a little French life. We're going to want to store this one. We've mostly water because a loop to maintain group dropping some, some paint, just tip to create brushing, not turn on water. And these little touches, do you make huge difference? When p one here, I come to find that microarray network check mark. And towns could we have sets up some leaves here? So I'm going to mix some of that produce and with the why but leaves coming out here. And in this flower here. So we can do that with a pan. Nice setup leaves here coming up into the page, but note card for that. So I'm just going to pretend to be high. We can just suggest things that don't need to paint everything. A brain repairs. Right? Which stage two I stop and append walk. That's going out way. So I just want to encourage that kind of flower coming down this way. And maybe that Kirk split up here. So that's again is not mixture here of the violets and crimson. What's going out to the page and giving us a little bit of a feeling that this exists beyond the page. Fletcher pieces are going to occur, color of hair as well to go over this. So this is watered down, fairly transparent. And I'm going to use the pen to the other. Now I don't want to get overcrowded. And we can always add details, count, we refer, depend hole if am pick the micron. So I'm going to stop there and grades get myself a cup of tea. You could do the same, have the break. B2b, PHP can, and will come back and do some finishing touches. 8. Sketchbook Practise - black pen work: We'll come back and that's get on and do a few details. So I think I might use that pen and some paper micron. So let's start with the printer. Hank got my palate still up here. Now all the colors are kind of merging together, which is gorgeous, stage or painting. So it's good to have a focal points, I think for every pigs. And I'm going to do is to symbolize ago this on here. So I don't follow the exact shape of the pet home. Because quite like the fact that the pattern underneath must slightly different to the pen. So making it a little and perfect, I think is the wage gap. And then I'm just going to do some little scattered, not fully formed a system and in the middle of a character. And I might add some Muslim leaves to this one remark. Here. Pi qd. Maybe honestly here could do the same here. And I'm going to actually go out and find that this is how violence, violent and crimson makes. So when you do stoke, and then I think I'll make this a little bit. Just do it for Alice. Renovate. Suppose if you, what you could do is do a lot of different loops flows like this. And I often have a sheik. You see here a few books on the go. And whilst one is drawing, I start another one. And then you can always go back when you feel like dabbling into the pen work, turning it ramps up front. I can see him doing and what's needed to my slit here. And there's no hurry. Sound scratching for school just means put this behind this one. Might happen. This way. And another one coming this way and is kind of crossing over and going to join me so up, listening to decide which ones I'm going to do a pretty subtle to do all of them. Like this. Almost let loose the seed heads. Depends. Combinatorial, temperamental, mostly beatable. Because the cosine 2pi and create movement in the paste. Another one over here. So he can do timely room creation and exploration of the du x. And this one going this way, that way. So it might be nice to have one coming in here. And I did personally discrete behind that. A thought like that. Court might reshape of that. Maybe another slight into warmer here. Just thinking now what needs to be done. The black pen out now. To join these up, I think wavy line down the middle. The outline of thanks, but I'm going to do on the black pen. I don't know to highlight this one because that looks like it's in the background and I wanted to stay there. That may be on to this one or this one. I'll do this one here. Maybe. Although I like this looking kind of like a domain delineated monks in the middle. And using what mix again as the two commas. This time, we're going to do it. And I've got this letter did I might outline so I just need to keep repeating stage because I got carried away. With this. Get my black pen out again. I might outline. And then going to happen on my scanner needs to go down here. I think similar to this and sweep down. This one to join up. This really is just taking my time. And I quite like this element. So here is where I just kinda misshapen knaves family. Almost we got this here because I set this up to be a patentable as a stem moment. And Florida has a stem and their night make these the Neves. So I don't put my finger on the middle. So those clouds just put bits append mock around that selected these flowers. I love this gripping here. The very same thing. And I'm just wondering if I went in and did a little bit to work on the clouds. So I think I'll do some songs. This one's got something going on, this one, but I won't in the background. So I'm going to use as much capacity going painter, I think. And then you can always add a little color in. And I'm just going to draw some lines along, relieves lightness, quite like. So. You're not happy with the value. We can always add a bit more paint here, push. So I have that because it was a big liked. And you can vary the thickness of your lines. When I do this, I turned out to think too much and I just throw them out like this. Actually bad. So when you don't try to do it to exact well, it still weren't. You can drop some painted them. Both Tim and I really like the way that runs down the lines. It's kind of one of my whole monks environment. Like that sandwich might do that here as well too. So we have a bit of balance. So again, I'm going in with a lighter value just so I know. Right? Dropping in some violent environment to the bottom, right, you can actually just slipped till conducted on diamond cubic more 2p t. Now, this is where I stopped to do too much. They're rarely need to settle down and be careful here I got some good area which is on S one. So might just go to that with pen. Can you see how making smaller pencils with larger ones immediately just makes that look as if it's looking up to the sun and it's so effective. Yeah, appropriate with that now. And leave it like that. This center as well. K Now, this is where we take stock and just see what's going on. Not because some little hole. And I'm not going to do very much, but I am going to go in with some water down. And he said, I'm just gonna do and that'll cooking it from the page from the outside. Like that. I might do one over here. So remember this color, which is absolutely gorgeous, isn't it? Is that mix? But just with less pigment in it. So a lot more water. I actually prefer to put locks and so I'm just going to take some of that back. It's better when you draw or paint it with a panel here. Even if you've got lines will still look as if it's in the background. I might just fill this in, scuffle fail like that. But again, if it's white, it looks a bit more, I think, top of the bottom. And I might do that with one of these over here. Contaminant really in my element. I'll do this one, this condition. And then I'm going to draw Penn bags. And again, if you're not happy with the way it's traveling, lose too much in the way the brush, right? Look, competitor little LBL and switch to a smaller brush. But and so started, I'd like to actually to see if I can manage everything with one brush. That was worlds collide, could just do this with your finger. You are Coulomb but is pressure. Love going out the edges. But no matter, right? I think in the interests of doing less, I should never say anything because I always say one more thing before we put one push down. And we just want to make this bring it out. We make it more of a full petal thing. And if I had clean water chair should really take that. So practicable fiddling. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. I'm going to stop it. So this is our Ruby date or some I hope you've had as much fun as I have because I certainly have had one. And I would love to see your work really worked. So post it in the Projects section and ask any questions that you have. And I'll see you next class. 9. Thanks For Joining Me! :O): Okay.