Sketching with Markers: a Winter Composition

1. Trailer: The winter is a magical time so in this class we will create a festive mood for ourselves and draw a nice winter sketch. We'll go step-by-step from pencil sketch to finished illustration. Then we create from our sketch a nice postcard in Canvas and we will do it in just five minutes. You you use it as a new year card for your loved ones. So, pull yourself around, drink, put on new years music, and we will start painting. 2. 02 class project: As a class project, I suggest you to draw this nice winter sketch. You can use any art supplies you have on hand now. Markers, watercolors, colored pencils, whatever you like. Waiting for your amazing projects. Don't be shy to share your images on Instagram. I'm always happy to see and share your results. 3. 03 pencil sketch: Let's start. We will draw a winter composition and create a festive mood for ourselves. I prepared some reference for inspiration. As I've already have an idea for my composition, I'm going to use my references only for some elements. For example, here I will focus on this tangerine. In these two references, we can see how cinnamon sticks are placed and what color they are. But again, we will use these references just as an example. I'll start with a pencil sketch. I will make the composition approximately in the middle of the sheet. First, I outline the tangerine, it's important to understand what simple shapes objects consists of, for example, a tangerine is essentially a circle. This is how it turned out. Now add the cinnamon sticks. I will focus on the form from this reference and the color most likely from another. Cinnamon sticks are cylinders, so I draw them. I press quite hard on the pencil so you can see better, but of course, it's better to draw with thin lines. Now, I outline a rope which is tight. So we can see bottom. Here I want to add spruce branches, of now I'll outline them just like this. And I'm going to draw them in detail with a liner later. I like the way these anise stars look in the reference. I will add one to my sketch here on the bottom right. This anise also a circle. I draw it, and now I look at the reference and start to draw details. Again, I don't have the goal of repeating it perfectly, I use it just for guidance. Well, my anise is ready. Here, I left some place, maybe to add lettering later. Here I will add some more spruce branches. Now with a soft eraser, I will remove the top layer of the pencil to outline my sketch with a liner. You may begin to make a contour with a liner. I used the thinnest liner, 0.05 thick. I just start to outline my pencil sketch. Here we go. So now I want to add more details to the needles on the spruce branches. This way, the spruce branches will look more interesting, but of course you cannot outline these needles and draw them directly with a marker. So now I will finally remove the traces of the pencil. And we are ready to start working with color. Get your markers ready and see you in the next part. 4. 04 coloring 1: We start working with color. I suggest starting with the tangerine. It's a beautiful and bright. For it, I've prepared a base colors. These are shades of yellow and orange. You can find the entire palette I used in the attachment section. But the basic principle is for each object we need at least three shades of the same color from light to dark. First, I will use a base yellow shade, lemon yellow. I will make the first colored layer with it. Let's look at the reference. The light is from the top-left, which means that there is a light part. Here is the penumbra, and here the shadow. We'll not make this shadow because this is a drop shadow from a leaf on a neighboring tangerine. The tangerine peel has a porous texture. So we work with these dotted strokes. This technique allows showing the texture in our sketch. Here in the lightest part, I leave some places unpainted to keep the highlights. Here, you can use not only a brush tip but a brow tip too. We can apply strokes in this way. You can try both options and use the one that works best for you. For me, it's more comfortable to work with a brush tip. Now we are doing the first layer on the tangerine. Later, we will add darker colors. Here, I work for the second time to darken a little because this part of the tangerine is in the shade. Now I take the next more orange shade and begin to paint over the places that are in the shadow part with the same strokes. The tangerine is essentially bowl. The same rules of light shadow model work here as with other bowl-shaped objects. The tangerine will have an area of light, penumbra, own shadow, reflects, and drop shadow. Now we are working on the shadow with even darker orange tint. I remind you, we don't strive for photo-realism. We're engaged in sketching and enjoy the process. We need to make the tangerine look like a tangerine and show the olive. That's all. In the darkest areas, I go through again. I take an even darker shade, which is already a red orange, and add it to the darkest areas. Again, work with these dotted strokes. Now, there's a yellow orange tint. I slightly mix the colors so that the tangerine peel looks more smooth. With the lightest shade, I will work a little more along the light areas and the contour. I think for now we'll leave our tangerine like this and move to the cinnamon. For the first layer, I will use a base brown gray shade. We apply strokes according to the shape of the object. This way, sketch will look more realistic. The first layer of color is ready. Here, we will have the lightest part, but they will already have a darker one. Now I take a darker brown shade. mine is a Caribbean cacao shade, and start painting over the darker areas. Inside the sticks themselves, under the rope, between the cinnamon sticks and the whole back part is in the shadow too. Again, in the darkest places, I go over a second time to deepen the shadow even more. Because when the marker dries it becomes noticeably lighter. Now I take an even darker brown and continue to deepen the shadows. Again, don't forget to apply strokes in the shape of the sticks. Mix the colors a bit with medium brown tint to make the color transition smoother. I will go a little more with the lightest brown. I also want to add some more of these red brown shade and add it to the shadows for more color harmony. Again, add a little more of the darkest shade to make the shadows even more saturated. Of course, it's not necessary. I'm just starting to give a little more realism than I needed for the sketch. Let's move on the anise. I will use the same colors as for cinnamon. Doing this sketch will look harmonious. I paint over the entire surface of the anise with the lightest brown. Now with my medium brown, I start to show shadow areas. Now work with my details with an even darker shade. Add depths with a darker brown shade. Now take the lightest brown and mix the shades a bit. After the marker has dried a little, you can go again over the shaded areas with your darkest brown. Now let's move on to the rope. For it, I will use warm gray shades. I start with the lightest gray. I have it in WG0105. Dive just creating a first color layer with it. After that, I go through the dark places with a darker warm gray, creating volume this way. With an even darker shade of gray, I have my WG05, I deepen the shadows even more. Now with the darkest gray, mine is WG07, I will carefully go through the darkest areas of the rope. With the same dark gray, I will add some small details to the anise. Ready. Let's move on to the spruce branches. 5. 05 coloring 2: To begin with, we outline the branches themselves with a light brown tint. Here, add some depths with darker brown. Now, we will draw needles. Let's start with the lightest green shade, right all around with it, creating the first color layer. Again, note that we apply strokes in the shape of fingers. Something like that. Now we go through with the same color a second time in darker areas. Even one more time I'll use the same light green shade. Now we add a more saturated green and work on the needles in the shape, and also in the places that are closer to the base of the branches. Now I'm working on the shadows again with an even darker green tint. Also, you can add a little more brown tint to the branches and carefully work along the needles. It will help us to create a more interesting texture of our spruce branches. I also want to add quite a bit of light brown to the shadow areas of the tangerine to give it even more texture. Now I mix it a bit with an orange tint. Now with a liner, slightly correct the contours where the marker is too blurred. We're almost here. Now, it's time to draw the fallen shadow. I start with the lightest warm gray shade and just outline the fallen shadow for my objects. Then with a darker shade of gray, I have it in WG03, I go a little closer to my objects. With even darker, mine is WG05. Work even closer almost on the objects themselves. The darkest place of the drop shadow is always placed under the object. Now, with a blender of the the lightest brown, blur the color a little. When the marker is dry, the shadows will become lighter. Now you can add some more details. 6. 06 adding details : To make our sketch more interesting, I suggest getting some decorative details with a white gel pen and a white master pencil. With a white pencil, I will highlight some areas on the cinnamon and desaturate with the pencil a bit. I'm comfortable doing it right with my finger, but you can use a soft eraser. A little bit here on the anise. Now add some bright white highlights with the gel pen. These decorative elements will make our sketch more illustrative and add style. I add some dots on the tangerine, spruce branches and the cinnamon. Our winter sketch is ready. 7. 07 making card: Now let's make a holiday card in Canva from our sketch and spend a minimum time on it. Canva is aligned design editor that is easy and convenient to use. If you don't have a Canva account yet, you can sign up and take a trial lesson. Let's get started in the search bar, write something like New year card and start choosing. There are many different options here, and it's held as possible to choose from [inaudible]. For example I like this option, we can customize it. Or see similar options here below. I like this one better, so I will use it, open it. First. I want to remove a fat Christmas tree and the snowman because I will be using my sketch so they kill it. Now I will move the captions on the left because my pictures should be on the right. Now we need to upload our sketch. Click, "Upload," select our image, and now it appeared in Download section. Our shift is right. Now we can edit our immature little bit. Here is that adjust panel, and we can just play with brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, and other parameters like this. Now remove the background with these VG, removing button. Here, we will have to wait a bit. Ready. Now find the final place for our sketch, and we can move to the text. Here in the fonts panel, you can chose a font that you think is pretty. I like this hand-drawn one. I want to write happy holidays. Here we can change the font size. I need to make it smaller. Also, you can adjust the size and position of your texts. Here you can change the color of your text and look. Here the colors from our illustration are shown. I will use one of them. This way my card will be more harmonious. I chose orange. On this panel, you can easily edit text format. I will make it bigger and move it a little. By pressing the right button, we see a pop up menu. I want to bring the text in front. Now we can edit their wishes. I will not change the text, but you can write your own. Here, you can change the letter and line spacing. Now, I want to add some nice snowflakes to the background in the search bar, I write the word "Snowflake" and select graphic section. Let's take this one as an example. I will change its color because its gray like the background is, and drag it over here. Now, using the usual copy paste combination, we will feel our background with snowflakes of different sizes. Also, you can add a different snowflake to the top. Again, I select the snowflake from the search and change its color to white. I'm moving the text to the side so it doesn't bother me and start adding snowflakes again. You can also copy this round snowflakes and add them too. We can send them back or we can leave them in the foreground. Now, I return my text back, move it to the front, and then reduce it a little bit. Our postcards is ready. Now it's time to export it. There are many options here, we can choose the PDF format for printing. Chose the sneak mode to save colors when printing and just save it. As a second option is to save in JPEG format. This way you can easily and quickly send your postcard via the Internet. Ready. Now you know how to please your friends and family with your creative work and not spend so much time on it. 8. 08 final thoughts: Well, we have finished drawing our sketch and even created a nice postcard in five minutes. I hope you had a great time. Recharge the festive mood and perhaps learn something new. Thank you for your attention and your positive reviews. Don't forget to share your results in the project section and of course, see you in the next class.