Sketchbook Snack: Painting Sweet Strawberries

1. Intro: Hello, and welcome to the sweet strawberries class. In this class, we're going to use relaxing painting techniques to get loose, de stress, and have a little bit of fun in our sketchbooks. If that sounds like something you could use, come on in. Hi. I'm Jenny Maclyn, the artist behind Tiny Leaf Press and the creator of the sketchbook snack series. Created the sketchbook Snack series because I know how it's all too easy to get stuck in our creative practice. Maybe you're burnt out, overwhelmed or you just don't have a lot of time for your creativity. Sketchbook snacks are designed to be light, easy, and fun to do. No longtime commitments, pressure to create a masterpiece, or complicated techniques here. Just creative play and a smidge of siliness. In this class, we'll be creating a relaxing faux pattern of sweet summer strawberries. First, we'll talk about materials, the ones that I'm going to be using and how you can substitute from whatever you have on hand. Then we're going to jump right into our final project where I'll walk you step by step through my process for painting a soothing spread of sweet strawberries. Do you want to relax, destress or just have a nice chill painting session in your sketchbook? Join me in class. 2. Materials Needed: In this lesson, we're going to go over all of the materials that I used for the final project. Just a quick note that all materials and colors can be substituted for what you have available. There's no need to go out and buy new supplies unless you want to, of course. For example, I'll be using traditional non acrylic gouache for my painting. But if you don't have any of that, you could use acrylic wash. You could use acrylic paint or even watercolor. You could even use markers, colored pencils, or crayons. The idea is just to create this fox pattern and have a little bit of relaxing time in our sketchbook. So if you don't have my exact materials or even anything like them, just follow along with whatever you have on hand, and you'll still have a great time. Hey, so first up, I have the different types of guash that I used for this project. I used a little bit of paint from my CarendashGuah set, which is paint pans full of guash. It's the dried kind, not the tube kind. And then for my main colors for the strawberries and leaves, I'm using Turner Guash in rose violet and cobalt blue. I also use these paint brushes by the pigeon letters. I really love these brushes. You'll see me using them in a lot of my classes because they're my go tos. I'll link those below so you can check them out. Any paintbrush is going to do for this, okay? And then next, I used three different colors of prism colored pencils. Any colors or brand of colored pencil is going to be fine. You could also use pen if you'd prefer a black line over a colored line. I also used a white pasca pen for a little bit of details, and then lastly, the sketchbook that I'm using is this Strathmore soft cover watercolor journal. This is one of my favorite sketchbooks to use for wet media. It holds it really well, and it has a very nice texture on the page. You can use any sketchbook or loose leaf paper that you want for this project, make sure that it can hold up to paint and wet material. Alright, so that's everything that we're going to need for the project. Go ahead and gather your supplies if you don't already have them because we're going to jump right into the next lesson where we're starting our final project. 3. Final Project: Intro and Sketches: Alright, it's time to start our final project. We're going to break this final project down into four parts. First, we're going to lightly sketch our motifs on the page just so we can spread our strawberries around the page nicely and not accidentally run out of room. Then, using the sketch as a guide, we're going to paint in our background. Next, we'll add in our motifs. In this case, the strawberries, leaves, and vines. And finally, we'll add some finishing touches and details. Ready to start? Alright, the first thing that we're going to do is draw the quick sketch of our strawberry motifs. And I'm just drawing, like, very simple outline of the strawberries here and placing them, you know, sort of random spots around the sketchbook, but I'm really just trying to get a little bit of space in between each motif, keeping in mind that we're going to want to put some secondary motifs like leaves and vines in here later as well. So I'll just go ahead and fill in my double page spread with these strawberry sketches and try to space them out as evenly as I can so that it will look nice at the end once everything is all painted. I will see you in the next video where we're going to start painting in our background using this sketch that we're creating now as our guideline. Alright, I'll see you there. 4. Final Project: Painting the Background: Alright. Now that we have our sketches on the page, we're going to mix up a little bit of our paint. Whatever color you want to use for your background color is what you're going to want here. And because we are covering the entire background, essentially minus these spots where the strawberries are going to go, make sure that you mix up enough paint so that you can cover that whole area. Otherwise, you may have some color inconsistencies if you run out and have to start a new mix. You're not mixing your own color, of course, you don't have to worry about this. So if you're just using something straight out of the tube or straight out of the pan. For my background, I'm going with this light blue, almost periwinkle color. So it does have a little bit of pink in there that's giving it a purple undertone, but it is essentially just light blue. So I've mixed my colors with a little bit of white gouache and some water in order to get a painting consistency that I like. So I'm going to go ahead and painting the entire background. I like how it has these, like, streaky spots where you can see where the paint brush has been, but I do want to have full coverage. So if it's anywhere where it's very thin or light or the brush is super dry, you'll see me going over that. I'm going to speed this up so you don't have to watch the whole thing in real time. And then it will be your turn. And while you're waiting for your paint to dry, why don't you come back and meet me in the next lesson where we're going to start painting our strawberry motifs. I'll see you there. 5. Final Project: Painting the Motifs: We are ready to begin painting in our motifs. So the first thing that we're gonna want to do is pick a color for our strawberries. I'll be using this hot pink mix, which is just a mixture of the Turner designer guash that I mentioned with a little bit of white gouache mixed in. Free to use any color that you want or even to use a couple of different colors, maybe an analogous color scheme for your strawberries. I'll be using the same color for all of them, but don't let that stop you if you want to try out some multi colored strawberries. So go ahead and get your strawberry paint and fill in the base layer of all our strawberries where we have these gaps in the paint. And then I'm going to go ahead and speed this up just to show you how I did it, and then I'll meet you back here in a second for the next step. Alright, we are just about wrapping up the first layer of our strawberries. And if you're using paint like me, you might need a little bit of time for your paint to dry before going on to the next step. So pause here if you need to and come back when your paint is dry for the next step. H Okay, now that the paint for our strawberries is dry, it's time to add some strawberry tops. I'll be using this ultramarine blue for my strawberry tops, as well as for the vines that I'll be adding just in a minute here. But go ahead and grab your paint color that you want to use for this and join me in adding in these nice leafy extras. So I'm going to speed up once again so you don't have to watch each individual leaf being painted, and I will meet you back here in just a second, and then we'll add in those vines. Okay, we are all done with our strawberry tops, and now we're going to go ahead and add in some more background interest by drawing some vines that are looping around and connecting all of the different motifs to each other. The way that I did this was I just sort of chose a path throughout the different motifs and painted a thin line with my paintbrush. We'll be adding a little bit more leaves and details to these vines in a later step. But just go ahead and get that base line down for your background. Real quick, before we continue on with our vines, we're just going to add a little bit of detail to our strawberries and paint in those seeds. Now that the paint is fully dry and we want to give the leafy details a little bit of time to dry as well. I'm using a bright yellow for the seeds, which is a little bit hard to see on camera, but it does show up quite nicely in real life. You could also use white or light pink if you're following the same color scheme as me for something that's gonna show up just a little bit more and have a little bit more contrast than this yellow that I've chosen. So while we're waiting for those leaves to dry, we'll go ahead and add these little seeds in, and then as soon as that is done, we'll jump back over to our vines and finish those up. I'll see you there. Alright, it's time to finish up our leafy elements. So we're going to switch back over to the ultramarine blue that we used for our vines, and we're just going to start adding in these very simple teardrop shaped leaves and adding them wherever it feels like there's a little bit too much white space. We're going to add in even more leafy details in our final lesson. For now, we just want to add these in where it's feeling a little empty and we want something that ties that background really together. I'll speed this up once again, and then I will meet you in the next lesson where we're going to add in all those delicious finishing touches to our fox pattern. I'll see you there. 6. Final Project: Finishing Touches and Flourishes: It's time for the finishing touches. In this lesson, we're going to add those little bits of extra detail and just really add a little bit of flourish and sparkle to our piece. The first thing that we're going to be doing is going over the motifs with a colored pencil in a slightly darker color. So I'm just doing this to add a little bit of an outline to each of the motifs to make them pop off the page a little bit more and add a little bit of extra sharpness. If you prefer to do your outlining in black or another color, go ahead and do that here. It's whatever your personal preference is. And then I'm going to speed this up. I'm gonna switch color pencils in a second. So no difference there, just the color change when I go to the leaves, but I'm gonna speed this up so you don't have to watch that whole thing in real time, and I'll see you in just a second for the next step. Okay, remember how I mentioned earlier that we would be adding more leafy elements to our vines. Well, we're going to go ahead and do that now with the colored pencil. And I'm going to copy that similar simple shape. But instead of doing a full leaf filled with color, I'm just going to do the outline with a simple line down the center like this. Just adds a little bit of differentiation between the solid painted leaves that we have and adds a little bit more visual interest. Feel free to add any other leafy flourishes at this stage if you'd like. You could try adding maybe little flowers with your colored pencil or some larger leafy elements. Set your imagination free here and draw whatever additional leafy elements that you'd like. I will see you in just a second where we're going to add the very final touches in a little bit of sparkle to our piece. I have switched over to a white paska pen, and I'm going to be adding just little bits of sparkles and dots all around the page, wherever there's a little bit of white space that I think needs a little bit of extra something. This step is totally optional if you like your piece as is. I just always like to add that little bit of extra magic to my pieces, and I think it really ties everything together. And makes it just a little bit more special. And after we finish that, that is it for our final project. You did it. You completed your relaxing faux pattern, and you should be so proud of yourself for taking the time in your day for a little bit of creative play. So I will see you in the final lesson in just a second, and we'll talk about next steps. See you there. 7. Next Steps: You did it. Congrats on completing the class, and congrats on taking some time for yourself in your creative practice. It's not always easy to do, so you should be really proud of yourself for taking a little bit of time just to play in your sketchbook and have some fun. Now, one of the beautiful things about this type of project is that it's always there for you when you need it. You can repeat the exercise anytime you're feeling stuck in your sketchbook or you just want a relaxing painting session. You can switch up the colors, the materials, or even the fruit to keep it new and fresh each time. I hope you enjoyed class and had fun painting your strawberries. I would love to see what you've made. Please share your project to the class gallery here on Skillshare. It's very easy to do. Snap a photo of your sketchbook, head to the project and resources tab under this class, and click Submit a project. I look at and respond to every single project. It's one of my favorite parts of teaching. You need another sketchbook snack, check out my full list of classes, which I'll link below. And lastly, I'm always working on new classes. So if you'd like to be notified when a new one comes out, be sure to follow me here on Skillshare or sign up for my Substack newsletter where I share tutorials, silly comics and sneak peeks at my upcoming classes. It's completely free, and I share something new every week. Thank you so much for joining me in class. I hope you are able to have a little bit of fun and relax at the same time. See you next time.