Sketchbook Snack: Drawing Goofy Dogs

1. Introduction: Welcome to Sketchbook Snack Drawing goofy dogs. Now, you may be wondering what the heck even is a Sketchbook snack. And no, unfortunately, it is not a tasty treat that comes with this class. It is, however, a short exercise that you can do in your sketchbook whenever you want something light, easy, and fun to do. Sounds nice, right? Hi. I'm Jenny Macklin. I'm a software engineer, turned Illustrator and surface pattern designer. I love playing in my sketchbook, and I'm frequently inspired by my very own goofy dog. Never have I had more fun than when I'm playing around in my sketch book, drawing silly goofy dogs with no pressure to create something for my portfolio or even for social media. That's why I created this class. I know firsthand how easy it can be to feel overwhelmed, burnt out, and just plain, tired of the cycle of creating art and posting it to social media only to hear cricket. That's why creative play is so important and why you should start incorporating it into your routine if you don't already. By taking this class, for example. In this class, I'll be teaching you how to fill a sketchbook page with goofy dog drawings that are uniquely yours. We'll start with a simple exercise to warm up. Next, we'll talk about how you can confidently draw shapes from reference images with a focus on interpreting what you see rather than making a carbon copy of it. These are goofy fun dogs after all. We'll talk about materials, and together, we'll pick out some colors from supplies you already have on hand. And then we'll fill a double page spread in our sketchbook with a bunch of beautiful goofy dog drawings. Join me in class and draw some goofy dogs of your very own. 2. Warm Up - Potato Pups: Before we dive into our final project, we're going to warm up with a quick exercise called potato pups. For materials, you will not need any potatoes. You will, however, need paper, something to draw lines with, like a pen or a colored pencil and something to fill shapes of color with, like marker, gouache, or watercolor. You can do this exercise in your sketchbook or on a loose sheet of paper. Go ahead and pause and gather your materials if you don't already have them. I'll wait here. Got 'em. Let's jump into our warm. So this exercise, we're gonna be drawing potato shapes on our sketchbook page. I'm gonna do about five. I suggest you do somewhere 4-7. They'll look just like this. Use a marker or paint or whatever you want to just make these potato blobs on the page. Okay. Now that you have a page full of potatoes, it's time to make dogs out of them. So we're going to use our pen or colored pencil, anything for making lines, and we're going to use our imaginations to use these potato shapes to create dogs. We'll basically be using them as the main shape of whatever our imagination sees. It might be a full body dog, it might be a dog standing or lying down, or it might even just be a dog's head. Whatever first comes into your head, that's what I want you to draw. And don't worry if you make mistakes like I made on this one. We're not being precious here. We're just warming up and getting our creative juices flowing. So I'll go ahead and speed this up again so you can see how I did mine. And then I want you to go ahead and do a couple of your own. Okay, great. Now that our worm's complete, we'll move on to a lesson where we learn a little bit more about shape and how to find it in a reference image. See the 3. Finding Shapes with Confidence: Talk a little bit about how to pull shapes from reference images instead of our imaginations like we did in the warm up. Or rather let's talk about how to combine reference images with our imaginations to confidently define our own shapes when working in our sketch book. Okay, here we have my iPad with a couple of reference images, and you don't need an iPad yourself to do this class. If you want to follow along, I've provided the reference image for you, and you absolutely can if you just want to get your hand used to these shapes, but it's not necessary. So if you just want to watch and take notes for when we're ready to work on our sketch book, you can do that too. There are a couple of things I want you to look out for in your reference image. First, we're going to identify the main shape in the animal. Then we're going to look for features that we want to highlight or exaggerate. And lastly, we want to remember that we're not trying to make a carbon copy of the dogs. We're just trying to interpret what we see and communicate the idea of the dog on our sketchbook page. That's really the key here, because if you're trying to copy the dog exactly and get every little nook and cranny of the ear in, you're going to get a little bit stiff, and you're going to, you know, maybe lean into those perfectionist tendencies a little bit more than we want to. So in our exercise, we want to stay loose, and we want to interpret what we're seeing. Seeing not copying. We also want to make sure that we're allowing mistakes to happen, and then working with them. Because we'll be working with non erasable materials, you're not going to be able to scrub out any mistakes or tap the undo button like you can on the iPad. So when we're doing these loose drawings, we want to make sure we lean into mistakes. If they happen, it's okay. We just let them go, and then we keep working and we work around them. Okay? You'll see more about that in the final project. For now, let's dive into how I interpret shapes from these images. Let's start with this guy right here up at the top. So the main shape that I see for him is kind of like a blob like we did in our warmup exercise. So I'm just going to draw this loose oval in. And the majority of the animal is captured in this potato shape here. Let's go ahead and go over to this one. This is another dog that has a very defined neck, so that main shape of the long neck is gonna be the one that I capture with this big lose oval. And we're not going to be actually using these shapes when we're drawing. This is just to use in our imagination when we're looking at the reference image and drawing in our sketch books. Now, this dog has a very interesting, almost hour glass shape like this. And that's what I would be trying to emphasize for him where he curves, his head is quite wide. I curves in, and then his body is quite wide, too. So these curves on either side, I would want to capture in my sketchbook. This one is one of my favorites. Look how cute he is. His very long neck is definitely the first thing I see, followed closely by this big ear over here. So I'm going to capture the neck, again, like we did with the other dog in this very long neck. He also has some nice curves here, like the dog we just saw. So when I'm drawing in my sketch book, I'm going to be exaggerating the neck and exaggerating the skinniness of this dog for emphasis. Okay, let's move on to the last one. So the main shape here is his body. Got another little potato. And because he's got such exaggeratedly straight paws, I'm going to add that into because I'm going to want to capture the stiffness of this. He's saying, No, I don't want to go anywhere. So we're going to make sure when we do this. It's not really part of the main shape, but I'm adding it in here because it is such a unique feature, which brings me to the next thing that we want to talk about when we're looking for shape. Some of these animals have very distinguished features. He's got his legs, H head is also quite small. And so we might be able to emphasize that when we're working. This one, we've definitely got these loose fluffy ears. And then the second thing, let's go ahead and do this in another color, so you can see it a little bit better. The shape of this head is so skinny, and his snout is so long that that's going to make a very interesting image in our sketch book. So I want to call that out. Go back to this KD pie down here. He's got a nice big ear. And then I as to really like the angle that's created by his face here. So I'm gonna want to capture these features in my sketchbook. For this handsome boy here, what I really like about his big ears is how loose and floppy they are. So I'm gonna probably just create some very loose lines like this to capture those in a more stylized manner rather than trying to represent every fold and crease inside his ears. And then lastly, for this dog, the big eyes are one thing that stands out, and then also the long, floppy ears for me. So I want you to go through this exercise in your own way. You don't need an iPad to do it. But I want you to take a look at the reference images that I've provided, and I want you to try to see these two things. What is the main shape that you see that you want to represent in your sketchbook, and what are some of the distinguished features that you want to capture to really communicate the essence of this dog? Alright, I hope this was helpful, and I will see you in the next video. 4. Exploring Materials & Color: Warmed up. We've learned how to confidently define our own shapes. Now it's time to talk materials. The best materials for this class are the ones that you already have at home. You don't need anything special to follow along with the exercise. In fact, you only need three simple things, paper, something to fill color with and something to make lines with. You can use your comfy favorites, or maybe you want to take this opportunity to experiment with something that you have, but you haven't really had a chance to try out yet. This exercise is perfect for both. I'll show you some of the options that I have, and together, we'll go through an exercise to help us pick out the exact materials and colors that we want to use for our final project. I'll see there. Okay. Let's dive in. The first thing that you're going to need is a sketchbook or a piece of paper. What we're going to do now is swatch some of our materials and I'll go over which ones you'll need for the project. So let's go ahead and get started with that. I've opened up a blank page in my sketchbook and I'm just going to swatch out some materials we have to test out what we want to use for our projects. The only thing that you're going to need for minimal supplies, and that's kind of what we're going for here if you want to get more detailed, of course, feel free. But the minimum that you're going to need is three materials. You're going to need something to make color marks blocks of color with. You're going to need something to draw lines with, and then you're going to need something to add details and flourish as well. I'm going to stick with markers and highlighters for our testing. So I have this little chunky highlighter here. I'm just going to test it out and it works really nicely on this paper. I think it's nice and smooth. It's easy. I can block out color quite quickly. Then if I wanted to add some details to that, what I want to do is find something that goes with it. If you're not used to color, I would suggest sticking with monochrome pallet. Another green like this, for example, just draw that out on the side. That looks quite nice. I'm going to just drop over it to make sure that the materials can layer on top. And then I have this pen for making marks. Let's try that. So we go a little bit of bleed here and the feathering on the mark there. And I quite like that, but that's something to think about when you're doing that. We have some marks there. That's a nice option. We also have a brush pen. You could do the lines, you get the thin and thick, thin and thick. And it leaves a little bit of texture in the lines. And let's see. We have these zig brushles that we could do this pink, that's really nice. That's darker pink. We could do maybe a lighter, t's see how we mix them. Get a little bit of pilling on the paper, so you want to be careful of that. Then we have neo color. We could go over that with It's nice. Let's see what I'll see some Tambo, purple, maybe some color pencil. So what I want you to do here is just take out the supplies that you have at home. Pick some colors that you like. I have some here that I've got some nice pinks, to go with these, and some purples, some greens like this. This looks blue, but it's more like a mint green almost. That goes quite nicely with this marker here. I think monochrome keeps things nice and simple. So if you want to do that, that's great. You could mix and match. I think these look like they would go nice together. But essentially, you just want to test out all your materials that you think you might want to use like this, see which ones layer well on top of them, and then pick a limited amount for your sketchbook spread that we'll be doing in the final project. I would say if you're not going to go monochrome, I would say probably limit to three main colors. So like, these would be good. They all match in nicely. It creates like a nice fun pop of color. If you're going to be mixing and matching, just make sure that you have some light values and some dark values so that you don't end up with a lack of contrast in your image. Okay, so what I want you to do is continue this, take the materials that you have at home, whatever you have on hand, swatch them out and pick a few that you're going to use in your final sketchbook spread, and I will meet you there. 5. Final Project - Goofy Dogs: Are you ready? It's time to get started on our final project. In this lesson, I'll show you my step by step process for drawing goofy dogs. And the great thing is, there's nothing special or complex about this method. You can easily follow along with me, and your drawings will still be uniquely yours. So grab your sketchbook and the materials that we picked out in the last lesson, and let's go draw some goofy dogs. I'll see you there. In this demonstration, I'm going to show you my three step process for drawing goofy dogs from reference image. The first step is to draw the negative space around the subject to give me a good idea of the general proportion and size of the subject. Then I refine the shape with linework and add the necessary details that tell the viewer what the subject actually is. In this case, the dog. And lastly, I add finishing touches and flourishes just for that little extra something special. Okay, let's get into drawing. I'm going to select a reference photo and pop it up on screen for you here so that you can see which one I'm working on for each of the sketches in my sketchbook spread. And I'm going to go through this first one with you in real time and just explain what I'm doing in the different parts of the process. And then I'll speed up the video for the rest of them so that you don't have to sit through the whole half hour that it took to do this spread. And you can still get a good idea of what the process looks like for me and how you can apply that to your own sketchbook. So as I mentioned, the first step of my process is to draw in the negative space like this. Notice that I'm going pretty quickly. If I was doing a finished piece of work, I wouldn't be moving so fast, but because we're trying to play in our sketch books, I don't want to overthink this too much. So when I'm drawing the negative space, I just quickly sketch in the general shape that I want, and I work with what that gives me. In the end, you'll see I have this sort of stencil like creation on the page, and I'll use that for this step, which is linework. Well, you allow it to guide me in the decisions that I'm making when drawing the dog. And I find this is really helpful because especially for beginners, getting proportion and shape right can be very difficult. And especially when we're stylizing things, we still want to make sure that they are recognizable and that our drawings are done with intention. And I find that drawing the negative space first really helps me with this. So as you can see here, I've started the second step, which is the linework, and I've started to draw in the outline of his face. Some of the facial features like his eyebrows and his big mustache, which are two of the things that I really want to capture and make sure that are a little bit goofi fied. So I've added a little bit of extra fluffiness to them, and I've made them sort of the feature of this sketch. And I'm also going to go in and really just darken the lines a little bit here, add these little extra loops and just do what I can to make them stand out because they are really the part that I want to emphasize in this dog. So next up, I'm taking the marker and going over the outline of the dog, again, just to darken it a little bit. And this is that same thing that I was doing with the lines, where I just really want to make it pop off the page a little bit more. And for me, that's just something that I find makes it a little bit more visually appealing, and I think it makes it a little clearer at the same time. So now we're moving on to our last step, which is adding the final touches and flourishes. And for this one, I'm just adding a little bit of an alternative color to make it stand out a little bit more in the key features of the dog, which, as I mentioned, were the eyebrows and the mustache. So I'm just going in with this lighter purple, which is in a slightly different shade. And that gives it a little bit more contrast and depth, which I really enjoy. And you might want to use a different color, you know, something complimentary or something like that. I encourage you to try a few different things and see what you like. And then this last step that I'm doing here is just adding in little bits of texture. And then I'm just going to add in some little scribbly lines because I'm not really liking how dark the outline is yet. I want to make it stand out a little bit more. It's a little bit hard to see on camera, but we're just adding these little scribbles to really have him stand out. I'm going to go ahead and speed up the rest of the video, and I'll meet you back here in a few minutes. Oh. Yeah. L, here is our final sketchbook spread. Now that you've seen my process and seen me fill up the whole spread, it's time for you to do your own. So go ahead and select any here 5-7 reference images that should be a good place to start and do your own double page spread, and then I will meet you in the next lesson. 6. Next Steps: Congratulations. You did it. You filled a spread in your sketchbook, and you've drawn some goofy dog. How was it? Did you have fun? Did you draw something that made you smile? If so, mission accomplished. Feel free to come back to this class anytime you need another sketchbook neck. With different reference images or even just different materials, this exercise is endlessly repeatable. As a bonus, I've included extra reference photos in the downloads so that you can easily do this exercise again whenever you're feeling stuck overwhelmed. I would love to see what you made. Upload your project here on SkillShare or shared on Instagram and Tag me at Tiny Leaf Press so I can give it some love. If you enjoyed this class and want to hear more from me, be sure to follow me here on Skillshare so that you can be notified when my next class releases. You can also find me on Substack where I run a weekly newsletter and occasionally host live drawing sessions. See you next time