Transcripts
1. Botanical Sketchbook lesson1: Hello everybody. I am Valeria Fustaciillustrator,
and surface designer. I've been working as
freelance illustrator for around 14 years. I grew up in Italy, but
I've been living in New York City for
the past nine years. I love everything that is related to drawing and
sketching and illustration. And one of the best
thing I can do every day is actually sketching. Nowadays, it can be hard to find the time to just
drawn your sketchbook. I work mostly digitally and the deadlines can
be very tricky. I need to work quickly
and efficiently and sometimes I don't even have
the time to start from paper. But I know for sure that I
need to find some time during the week to just sit
down and sketch freely. It is the best activity I can do for my creative flow
and for my practice. It is the right way
to find new ideas, learn new things about things, and keep your hands and mind
open to new possibilities. Like a gymnast that needs to
exercise almost every day, Illustrators need
to keep drawing. It's also pretty
amazing to look at your own sketchbook from
time to time, isn't it? It's also nice to
have sketchbooks to use for social
media purposes. It's a lot of material that
you can use for posts or reels during the year
in a very easy way. This class will help you find the motivation to keep drawing and sketching
consistently. We will focus on
botanical illustrations. But if you want to choose another topic,
that'll work as well. It is going to be
fun and you can learn about my process
and some techniques to use for sketching freely every day or at
least every week. Also, I like to keep it simple, so I decided to have short
but effective lessons, you'll have more time
to actually sketch. It's all for now and I'll
see you in class. How.
2. Tools: Welcome. Let's
start talking about the materials we are going
to use for this class. Make sure to have sketchbook, some pens or pencils. I'm going to show
you what I use, although it's not
always the same. I like to experiment from time to time and you
can do the same. Anyway, what I frequently use is my molly skin sketchbook
and a pile of pen. You don't have to use
the same tool I use. If you have another preference, a favorite tool you
usually use, go for it. The pilots and the
Molly skin sketchbook help me keep it simple and they are also very
easy to bring everywhere. Even if I'm traveling or have a bit of free
time here and there, I can just start
sketching right away. If you never tried it before, just grab a sketchbook with
blank pages and a pilot pen, and you are ready to start. So just to recap everything, the tools you can use for this class are
mainly a sketchbook, any size or paper
type you enjoy, pencil or a fine liner penel
or ink or like me, a pilot. You can also use color pencils, watercolors, or any other medium you like, and this is optional. And then I highly
recommend to have a few natural objects
to draw like leaves, flower, twigs, seed pods, some fruit and vegetables, also. And optional, it's a
smartphone or a camera. So you can document
your drawings and start creating
some materials for your social media if you like the idea to use your sketchbook
for your social media.
3. What to Draw: When I don't know
what to sketch, I just start doodling without
a clear goal in mind, or maybe I look around
for inspiration. So sometimes blank
pages can be daunting, I know, but even a very
boring room can help here. So drawing is a way to see the things around us
in a different way. You'll find that
the more you draw, the more you see things. Observation is the key. For this class, I decided to focus on botanical
illustrations. It is easy to find plants
or flowers everywhere. We will use both real
plants and photos, so don't worry if you don't
have a lot of plants around. I usually like a lot of arwing plants and I
hope you like it too, but feel free to choose other subjects for your
sketchbook if you prefer. You can draw people, dogs, cats, pintur objects, or
even abstract shapes. Everything will work and we practice and stay inconsistent, you will have a sketchbook full of great drawings very quickly. It is quite addictive. For example, I'm
going to use some of my plans like this tiny one or have some of them like this and maybe
you have them as well. Start to look around and decide which subject you
want to start with. So to recap what to draw, we can draw plants,
flower, leaves. This is a subject that
I'm going to use. Or you can open the fridge. There are peppers,
zucchini, tomatoes, a lot of vegetables that
are going to do the trick. You can also use
fruit like bananas, strawberries, oranges,
avocados, the more the merrier. Otherwise, you can always look around in the room you are, and you can find
objects like lamp, vase, different
furniture, books, shoes. If you have a pet,
you're pretty lucky. It's a perfect subject, a cat, a dog, even a fish. Everything works. You can also draw people around
you if you like the idea. It's a little bit
more challenging, but it's really beautiful. And yeah, the list is endless. So if you are more inspired by a certain
subject, just go for it. I'm going to use plants,
flowers and leaves, but you need to
feel free to draw whichever subject you feel most comfortable with.
And don't worry. If you don't have
anything at all, I will, have a bunch of photos
for you that you can find in the class descriptions
that you can download. So sometimes, I use some photos because you cannot always have a subject
in your house. Maybe you're drawing
some exotic birds, you cannot find in
real life there, but you need them to draw them. So you need to
research some photos, and I'm going to share with you a few photos so you
can start from there.
4. Inspiration: Oh, hello again. I want to dedicate a bit of time about the
inspiration topic. So inspiration is
not easy to find and sometimes we are lucky and
I have a lot of ideas, but more often, we don't know what to sketch
on our blank page. What works for me is usually
taking a stroll outside. If you live near a park or just a tour of
your neighborhood, looking for something
interesting to draw that can make the trick. Also, fresh air usually helps
when you are feeling stuck. I highly, highly
recommend to stay away from Google and Pinterest. Yes, I know it's hard, but they can be tricky
for two reasons. We can end up copying
things we like, which is not always better
if you are still learning, but remember, you need to
respect the copyright. Or we can end up
being so amazed at what there is out there already
that we don't even start. That's too bad ins. So if you don't want to go out, or maybe you can't to
scroll your camera photos. I'm sure you have photos of your last vacation or
things you found so interesting that
you wanted to take a picture of them. You
can start from there. I usually find easy and
appealing to draw plants, leaves and flowers,
as I told you before. I don't necessarily need
to have plants around. Sometimes I just love
to go with the flow and invent some flowers,
shapes or leaves. It always depends on
what the final goal is. Usually I keep a sketchbook as reference for my illustrations
or for my patterns. I don't need to have a super detailed and precise
reproduction of a plant. My goal here is to
make it clear that you are allowed to draw
without pressure. So just doodling
random tin is great. It is a great exercise. The more you doodle,
the more inspiration you'll get for your
next project. Trust me. So collect some items
you will love to draw or just go for a walk and bring your phone to get
pictures to use later. And if you are super lazy
or you don't have time now, I provided some photos
you can use for starting. So just click the link in the class description
to download them. Now, I am pretty
excited to start the next lesson because we
are actually going to draw. So very quick recap
about inspiration. Take a scroll side in a park
or just your neighborhood. Collect plants, leaves, interest things you
can find and grab, if you can, or just take
photos of those things. Try to avoid
pinterest and Google. If you cannot go outside, scroll your own photos instead. And you can always just
use your imagination. It's an awesome exercise. You can try to remember things, shape of things, and draw them.
5. Let's Draw!: Hi, welcome to the class. These are some of
the plants that I'm going to use today that
I wanted to show you. I also have a bag full of all the leaves and
branches that I used for some botanical
illustrations project because I was following New York botanical garden botanical illustration
plaster in the past, and I collected in the weeks a month a lot of things that I keep because
I can always use them. I always reference to them. This can be a nice thing to
have if you want to try. You can always
collect some specimen to have this also is
very nice to have. If you want to draw
something like that. And then I'm going to have on
my desk here my sketchbook, which is very simple, as I told you before, molluscan notebook with blank pages, and I have my pilot pen here. Which is my favorite.
I'm going to use this. It's ultra fine point
permanent type, it looks like this, and I really love the effect that
it gives to my sketch. I'm happy with my sketchbook, and as you can see, a lot of pages already filled, but I'm still
working on this one. I'm going to choose
a new page here. W I work with this
kind of sketchbook, I usually keep a
piece of paper to put behind the page
I'm going to work on because it's the pilot, it's pretty like the
ink can go through the pages because this kind of sketchbook has very thin pages, but it depends on
your sketchbook. That's my trick. I don't
waste another page. When I keep this
one on the back, I am sure that the second one is going to be clean for
the next project. This is all you need to start
and so it's pretty easy to start and we don't
need to be super precise. I really want you to enjoy the practice
and have fun drawing. That's the main
goal. You can keep doing every day or every day. When you have fun,
you keep going, you try to find more occasions
to do what you like. This is the best trick for me to keep a sketchbook, make fun. So we can try to
reproduce some of these plants and leaves
and see the effect. So let's start together. So as you can see, I made the
video a little bit faster, so you can follow along, but also this sequence
can be very long. So I think that works. You can see how I'm drawing. I'm just looking at my
plant, at the leaves, and I don't pretend to
do an exact copy of it. I just need to go and
sketch and have some ideas. So I sometimes turn the
plant and, you know, just draw different leaves or the same leave in a
different position and try to fill the space in the
sketchbook in a nice way. But it's not really
necessary at this point. It's not really necessary to think about the
final composition. So this is just for fun. It's also a great exercise
to learn how to draw, to learn how to observe
things around us. And leaves usually these kind of leaves of leaves are very easy to observe because they
don't have 10,000 details, but still they give
a pretty nice effect when you draw when you
drew many of them. And now I'm passing
to the second plan. So you can see two
different type of drawings in the same page
that can work as well. So, yeah, I hope
this is something that can help with
your exercise. And, well, we have our
first page already done. Our first page of our
very first sketchbook. So what do you think? Do you
like what you draw? Yes, no. But it's not really
relevant, keep going. Tomorrow, you can try with a different subject or
maybe the same subject, but you can change the tool or you can do the same subject, same tool, but just a
different way to draw. The possibilities are really endless and the perfect thing to do is experiment until you find the
right thing for you. If you find that a tool or a
way to draw you use today, for example, you like it a
lot, I will stick with it. It means that you are finding the right way to sketch for you. If you are enjoying it, you can keep going
day after day, you create more
doodles and you end up with a fantastic sketchbook.
6. Class Project: Hi. So now it is the time to talk
about the class project. I would love for you to
upload a few pages of your sketchbook so I can see your drawings
and your progress. The class project is a good
way to keep going and commit. Sometimes it is good
to have a deadline or someone expecting
something from us, so we can actually
accomplish the goal. I don't want it to be stressful, but think it as a milestone for something you want
to achieve and I'm looking really
forward to seeing. You can decide for
a main theme or just send me the best
pages of your sketchbook, the one you are most happy with. Upload the images here on Skillshare and let
me know how it went. I would love to know more about how you found the process. You can also give yourself
a timeline, for example, seven days for seven pages of your sketchbook or one
doodle a day for 30 days. For the class project, just
upload two or five pages, and I hope to see your
drawings very soon. So let's recap. For the class project, I would love to see two or maximum five pages
of your sketchbook. So first, take the time
to draw a few pages. Then take a photo of
two of the best pages of the best drawings or what you like the most to a
maximum of five, upload them on Skillshare
as a class project, and then let me know
in the description how it went, what
you like to do, or what you didn't
like when you were drawing or if something
didn't work for you. I would love to know
more about the process. And then wait for my reply. I'm going to reply to
everybody, so don't worry. And then please keep sketching because it's a
great exercise because that's the trick to improve and
because you want to have fantastic sketchbooks
that you can refer to or that you want
to show to the world. So just keep sketching. This is the best exercise
for an illustrator, for a designer, for
a creative person.
7. Bonus: Social Media: Hey, if you're here, it means you have
already a few pages of your sketchbook ready to use
for social media purposes. Congrats. That's amazing. I frequently use some of my sketchbook for
social media purposes. I don't always have new final illustrations
to show or post, and sketchbooks are
a great resource to show the behind the
scenes of your job. Usually people really love to see these things and it gives a more precise idea of what the entire
creative process is. You can use the pages of your
sketchbooks in many ways. Here a few ideas for you to try. I mainly use Instagram
and Tik Tok. You can find me
searching for my name, Valera Fustac and I posted the link in the
class description. I usually create reals or posts or stories where
I show my sketches. Idea one, while drawing
on your sketchbook, record yourself while you're doodling and show
how you do that. It is always very, very nice to see how artists and
illustrators draw. Idea number two, create a
reel of your last sketchbook, filming yourself, holding it, and going through the pages. I draw. Idea three, take a few photos of your best drawings
and post the sequence. It creates curiosity and usually people stops to see each photo. You can find many
ideas on how to create interesting contents
with your sketchbook. You can start your
own new profile by posting one page of
your sketchbook every day. I saw many profiles doing
that and it's super amazing. This build trust with your
followers and always checking for new posts from you and
also help you stay consistent. Let me know if you're going
to post your sketchbooks, your drawings on
Instagram or Tik Tok, and remember to tag me so I
can re share on my profile. I would love to do that. It was really a pleasure having you in class and I hope
to see you soon. Happy sketching. H. Last quick recap
about social media. If you want to use
your sketchbooks, your drawings for
social media purposes, posting on Instagram or Tik Tok, these are three ideas
that you can use to try. So idea number one, while
drawing on your sketchbook, you can record yourself while doodling and
show how you do that. Usually, it is always nice to see how artists and
illustrators draw. Idea number two, create a
reel of your sketchbook, filming yourself, holding it, and going through the pages. This is really nice
because shows your work, but shows also yourself. Idea number three,
take a few photos of your best drawings
and post the sequence. It creates usually curiosity, and people always stops
to see each photo.
Valeria Frustaci, Illustrator and Surface Designer
