Transcripts
1. Intro: [MUSIC] Have you ever found yourself
being so busy that creativity just has
to take the backseat. Maybe you wrangling and toddler or two your job leaves you no space to explore your
own creative journey. Trust me, I know how you feel. I'm Amandine Thomas and
I'm an illustrator, and art director, who also
recently became a mom. While life pre baby was
full of creative projects like writing and illustrating award winning children's books, once baby arrived, I barely had enough time
to pick up a pen. Sounds familiar? Then let me tell you
how I managed to carve some creative time back into my life and help
you do the same. Whether you're struggling
with work life balance, going for a big life transition, or simply keen to reconnect
with your creative self. Through batch size
drawing exercises that will easily slot into
your busy schedule, you'll learn how
to stay creative, even if you're really,
really time full. First, I'll give you some
tips and tricks to simply get started because we all know
that's the hardest part. Then I will walk you
through free easy way to reintroduce creativity
into your life. The quick bite, the coffee
break or the lunch box. These fun drawing
exercises will not only help you build a creative
routine from scratch, but they'll also help you reconnect with
your inner artist, and give you a much needed break when life starts to
feel a bit much. By the end of the class, you'll be equipped
with all the tips and tricks you need to make sure you get your daily dose of
creativity, no matter what. Whether you are a busy beginner, looking to introduce
creativity into your life, or an established
artist who just doesn't have time to create
for yourself anymore. This class is for anyone
who would like to use drawing as a quick and easy
daily creative practice. Sounds like something you need? Then gather whatever tools
you can get your hands on, lock yourself away from your kids or your
boss and join me in the next lesson
where we'll look at the class project. See you then.
2. Class Project: If you're here, I know
you're busy so don't worry. This entire class project can be completed in
under 30 minutes. Think of it like this, we all have to eat? Depending on how
crazy our day gets, we can always make
time for a quick bite, a much needed coffee break, or lunch on the go. Well, creativity is the same. Carving out a few
minutes just to be creative isn't as
hard as you think. Not convinced yet? Let me take you through it. In this class, I'll give you free options for your
daily dose of creativity. For those who are
extremely timeful, we have the quick bite. Simply make a scribble
and improvise from here. How can you make sense of it? Five minutes is all you need. I'll give you some tips on
how to make these happen, even when life gets a bit crazy. On days where you can
carve out 10 minutes, we'll have a coffee break. During the everyday, everyday. Fill a page with doodles
from your daily life. Be it the items on your to-do list or an inventory
of what's on your desk. We'll go for prompts, examples, and short demos together, so you can easily be able
to practice into your day. Finally, on the days you
manage to wrangle 15 minutes, we have the lunchbox. Quick, hilarious comics
generated from random words. You will be able to create
your own prompts using the templates available in the resources section
of the class, or play with the ones
I prepared for you. Of course, I'll help
you translate them into super-quick comics
with an in-depth demo. For the class project, you'll go through
all free exercises, and you'll see that each of them builds on the
previous one so that dedicating more and more time to your creative practice
doesn't feel so daunting. Once you've sampled
all three exercises, feel free to share the
results with all of us by uploading your sketches to the project section
of the class. Share your own insights
on keeping created when busy and in the meantime, join me in the next lesson. Where we'll go through
my top five tips to get you started from
the kind of tools I would recommend to
the goals you should set yourself. See you then.
3. Top 5 Tips to Get Started: Before we dive into the
practical part of the class, I'd like to help you set up solid foundations for
your creative routine. To do that, I'd
like to demystify creative routines and show you how with the right approach, building one and sticking to
it really isn't that hard. I will, of course, give
you plenty of tips and tricks to set up
your own routine and you'll have the opportunity
to apply them for quick and easy exercises
later in the course. But before we go too far in, you might be wondering,
why drawing? Well, if you watch
my previous class, Find a Creative Style, you'll know that having a regular sketching
routine has played a massive part in establishing
my own illustration style. But my sketchbook has also always been a great
creative outlet, especially when I feel
like I don't have time for my own projects
and that's not it. Drawing can also be an
amazing self-care tool. It can give you five minutes in your own focus
thoughtful bubble, no matter how much chaos
there is around you. To me, it's almost
like meditating. I can forget about everything else and just focus on drawing. That's why it's
perfect for busy, overwhelmed, potentially
burnt-out people. If that's you, I'd like
to start by sharing my personal philosophy around
creativity in general. If you've watched my
previous classes, this will probably
resonate with you. In French, we have a saying. It means best is the enemy of good but it's
commonly translated as perfect is the enemy of good. Now, how does this
apply to creativity? Well, sometimes when
we aim for perfection, we end up not even trying because we're too
afraid to fail. To be honest, we
probably would too, because creating something
perfect is just not possible so we end up missing out on just
doing something. Throughout this
class, but also on your own creative journey, I really encourage you to
adopt this philosophy. Doing just good or bad is
better than not doing at all. For example, when my
baby Lucie was born, I had this grand ambition
to create one witty, funny comic a day
about the experience. I ended up creating one
comic only and I got super frustrated with myself and I almost gave up on
recording anything at all. But once I reminded myself of. I downgraded from one comic a day to a simple sketch
every other day. Much more manageable with a
newborn and good enough too. Now that we have our
guiding philosophy, let's look at some
practical tips. I'll run you from my top five, which hopefully will
help you set up that healthy foundation
I mentioned earlier. The first thing
you need to do is to create space in
your daily schedule. Now you're going
to tell me that's the biggest challenge,
and I know, that's why we need to
tackle it first by identifying blocks of passive
time in your schedule. I call passive anytime
you might have in your schedule where
you are technically busy, but not actually actively
engaged in what you're doing. In my case, it was the time I spent
expressing breast milk, which was a lot. But it could be your
first five minutes in the office if you get there early or while your
kid is taking a catnap. Once you identify these blocks, you can decide to dedicate one or several of them
to being creative. But it has to make
sense in your schedule. Otherwise, it's going to be
way too hard to stick to it. For example, don't plan creative
time before work if you know it's not
reasonably going to be achievable for you
to get there early. My next tip is don't
be too ambitious. Whatever you do, pick
an achievable goal. For example, don't expect to
finish something every day. Instead, break your projects
into manageable chunks. If you pick an unrealistic goal like I did when my
daughter was born, you'll end up
feeling disappointed and frustrated with yourself. Keeping it short and sweet
will help you commit to being creative every day while setting
yourself up for success. Of course, this means that
you have to start small, pick, easy projects that you can achieve with what
you have around you. Now it's not the
time to launch into daily oil painting or
writing a children's book. Instead, commit to something simple and fun
just for yourself. It doesn't even have to be
particularly meaningful or even lead anywhere as long as
it gets the routine going. We're trying to establish
a habit here and actually the free exercises
we'll go through later will be the perfect
starting point for this. Now, this may seem obvious, but staying practical is
key when you're busy. For example, by
having your tools always ready and accessible in the right spot and
by limiting setup and clean-up time as
much as possible. This means you'll
probably have to use easy techniques
and simple tools. There won't be time to reap
up paints and canvases, but a small notebook and a pen will have your
drawing in seconds. For example, at the moment, I keep this notebook and this pen just by my
baby's play area. That way anytime she's
happy entertaining herself, I can reap it out
and start drawing. Finally, yes, anytime spend creating is
worth celebrating, even if you produce
something horrendous. I have quite a collection
of ugly sketches myself. But you know what,
It doesn't matter, because at least I gave it a go. Remember, better is
the enemy of good. Could I have produced
something better? Sure. Would have done it if I was to attach to the end result? Absolutely not. I never got to do my one
witty comic-a-day project, but I do have a sketchbook
full of drawings. These small, often quite
misshapen sketches are what kept me sane in these
crazily busy early weeks. Hopefully, you can see how
each of these tips relate to our guiding philosophy of
better is the enemy of good. Once again, I really encourage
you to keep it in mind as we move into the
practical part of the class. Don't worry too much
about the end result. Just stick with it
no matter what. Starting with a quick bite, the first of the free exercises I will share with
you in the class and the topic of the next
lesson so gather your tools, make sure you have
five minutes to yourself, and see you then.
4. The Quick Bite: [MUSIC] Let's dive into the practical part
of the class with our first exercise,
the Quick Bite. Now, this one is for anyone who is really truly time poor, but wants to dedicate five little minutes to
creativity every day. To do this, we will look at something called
automatic drawing. This technique was developed
by surrealist artists like André Masson in
the early 20th century. The goal is to allow your
subconscious to take over and let your hand
randomly move on the paper. We're going to take inspiration from these technique
and push it a step further by starting with
a free automatic drawing, which will complete by making sense of it retrospectively. This will take away
the pressure of having to come up with something to draw by just letting
the idea manifest itself. There is no need to have
fear of the blank page here. Just let your hand run wild
and see what comes up. What do we need
for this exercise? In my case, I'll use my small sketchbook
and a fine liner. Simple, easy tools that
require zero setup. Because sure, dipping
a brush into ink and waving it around artistically
might feel more appealing, but you might not
be able to cram all of that in the
five-minute session. It's better to curb our
enthusiasm a little bit, because otherwise we might
become discouraged by either the difficulty of the setup or the
cleanup afterwards. Dry, no mess tools like
colored pencils, fine liners, colored markers, lead pencils, or even your iPad are best. Know wash up, no drying time, no brushes to scrub afterwards. Now that we have our
tools we can get started. Remember to stay relaxed and
let your hand improvise. Give that busy brain
of yours a break. If it helps, don't
look down at the page, so your eyes won't
influence your hand and your movement can retain
flow and freedom. There is no set
rule as to when you should stop the automatic
part of the drawing. Whenever you feel
like your gesture has naturally run its course, you can stop. Here
is your scribble. Easy, right? If that one doesn't particularly
inspire you, you can make another. You can also draw them on top of each other and change
tools to create interesting textures
or color schemes. Depending on your mood that day, you might end up
creating harmonious, wavy scribbles or
angry, aggressive ones. This is a good time
to reflect on how you feel and maybe make a note
of it near the drawing. Happy? Now it's time to switch that creative
brain back on. What does this look
like? What could it be? Your precious five-minutes
might feel really short, but don't hesitate to
actually pause here. Take 30 seconds to really
look at what you've drawn. You can add the new details in a contrasting color or
keep the same tool. Depending on whether you want to highlight the automatic part of the drawing or rather integrate
it in the final sketch. Right about now, I
often hear the classic, "But what if I can't draw? What if I'm bad at it?" Well, if that's how you feel, I recommend you take a
look at my previous class. Yes, you can draw. A series of quick
and easy exercises designed to help you reconnect
with your creative self. But my main advice
would be to just go for it and be confident. This is meant to be fun
and a little bit silly. In fact, my favorite part of this exercise is to
name each little piece. If you're like me, don't hesitate to check out
each other's project and propose names for your
fellow students artworks. Of course remember to
celebrate the little wins. This isn't about making
something perfect, but building a regular
creative practice. Sure your first sketches
might be a little bit wonky, but drawing is like a workout. The more you do it,
the stronger you get. Once you're done.
Remember to share your sketches in the
project gallery. I can't wait to
give your drawings ridiculously pompous names. But for now, let's move on to our next lesson,
the Coffee Break, where we'll look at more
purposeful drawing. See you there.
5. The Coffee Break: [MUSIC] Hi again. Do you have 10
minutes ahead of you? Because we're moving
on to the next exercise, the coffee break. Those 10 minutes
will be dedicated to drawing the everyday, everyday. There are many ways of
drawing the everyday. It could be a good all sketch, my favorite or sprawling doodles filling the pages
of your sketchbook. Regardless, for this
particular exercise we'll focus on the
idea of collection. Whether you decide to sketch, doodle or even give
hand-lettering a go. We're going to pick one
central theme relevant to your day and draw as many
items related to it as we can. What does that look like? Let's say that today
you feel really tired. You might have nothing
but coffee on your mind. Well, you can feel
your collection with coffee inspired doodles, sketches, and even little notes. Anything can spark an
idea for a collection. But if you need a
bit of inspiration, check out the prompt list in the resources section
of the class. No need to be an amazing
drawer for this, just throw as many ideas
on the page as you can without worrying too much about what each item looks like. Once again, this is a great opportunity to
take a little break, reflect on your day, breathe a little, and
of course, have fun. As before, I'll be using my small sketchbook
and a fine liner. I love that both can fit in a pocket or sit on a shelf
without causing clutter. Of course, since we have
a little bit more time, feel free to introduce
other techniques. But I'd still recommend
keeping it quick and easy. Like maybe your
travel watercolors or a brush with water reservoir. For my own collection, I decided to focus on baby mess. Mess is fun to draw because
you can be a little bit chaotic and not worry too
much about the final result. If you're struggling
to come up with a theme for your collection, you can adapt my idea
to your own context. Mess on your desk, mess in the kitchen, mess in your bag, mess
is and amazing subject. But whatever you decide to draw, I'd recommend picking something
you see or do every day. That way you can build an association between
the action and drawing. For example, stepping on your train will act as
a reminder to draw. Once again, I'm keeping my setup and tools extremely simple, so I can spend most of
my 10 minutes window drawing instead of
setting up or tidying up. It might feel a
bit frustrating to stick to the same
parameters every day. But once again, we are trying to establish a creative routine that is sustainable even
when you're crazy busy. We can't be too ambitious. Since we don't have much time, I also recommend
keeping the items in your collection quite
small and simple. Otherwise, it's easy to spend the entire 10 minutes
working on one drawing. That's also fine, of
course in other contexts. But with this exercise, we're trying to be spontaneous and draw whatever comes to mind. It's one of these rare
instances where you actually want quantity
over quality. You might be wondering
how is this helpful? This stream of
consciousness process is not only a good way to
get rid of the fear of the blank page which has stopped many abetting artists from
just getting started. But it's also a great
way to loosen your hand, get a bit of flow going, and stripping down
your drawing style to its essence in a way. There is no time for flourishes or unnecessary embellishments. It's a great exercise
if you tend to be someone who over
works your drawings. Of course, that means
that once again, you have to let
go of perfection. Don't worry about little
mistakes, wonky drawings. Remember, this is your workout, you're alone in your
lounge room doing push ups. Just have fun. That notion of having fun is
actually super important, because if this
feels like a chore, you won't be able to
keep up the routine. Pick a fun subject, listen to your favorite music, give yourself permission
to not be perfect. That's when you'll
get into a real flow. Now you will see as
you take a look at other people's projects
that some of us are super organized and our
collections would be super neat and arranged
in little rows. While others like
me will just have a jumble of stuff in
the middle of the page. Either way, it's totally fine. Of course it's always
super fun to see how each individual person
interprets the idea of collection and what
comes out of it. But in the meantime,
we're going to move on to our last exercise,
the lunch box, where we'll give some
context to our drawings with some randomized
prompts. See you there.
6. The Lunch box: [MUSIC] Hi again. Are you ready for
the last exercise? If yes, free up 15 minutes because we're
moving on to the lunch box. Those 15 minutes will be
dedicated to creating quick comics generated from
totally random prompts. Creating comics using randomly generated prompts is a
super fun way to get over your fear of the
blank page and avoid organizing over what
to draw for ages. Because let's be honest, we're way too busy to spend 10 minutes staring
anxiously at our notebooks. Remember that you
don't need to be an amazing drawer to
have fun with this. You can even use
stick figures as long as they illustrate the
prompt you generated. There are many cartoonists
out there whose work has more to do with widths
than technical skills. Since we have a little bit
more time with this exercise, feel free to
introduce more tools or techniques if you'd like. I'm going to stick
with my good old fine liner and keep it simple. Because I personally find
that line-drawing is the perfect medium for
snappy quick comic strips. That's a technique
I've used time and time again in past projects. Now to generate your prompt, you can either use the
lists I've created for you in the resources
section of the class, or you can come
up with your own. To do that, use the template in the resources or create free
columns in your sketchbook, one for adjectives, one for nouns, and
one for verbs. Of course, you can use
words that are relevant to your daily life to
help spark unique, often hilarious ideas
for your comings. For example, you can
see that my words are quite heavily baby inspired, because my daily
life is pretty much 99 percent baby
stuff at the moment. Then you can number your words
in each column from 1-20. To create your prompt, you just have to pick free random numbers
between one and 20. You can ask someone else
to pick for you or use a number generator app or even draw inspiration
from your environment, the time on the clock, your train platform, the number of people in the
office on that day. To pick my free numbers, I'm going to use my baby's
birthday, the 11th, my birthday the 16th, and my partner's the
18th. Here we go. This is my prompt
for this exercise, giggly avocado feeding. Now that I have my prompt, the first thing I
do is write down or quickly sketch whatever
comes to mind. For example, there
is clearly going to be some
anthropomorphism here, since my avocado is both
giggly and feeding. I have to think about
details such as, well, where would an advocate
whose mouth be, its eyes, its limbs? You might also want to
think about the context, why is the avocado giggling? Are there other characters
involved? What are they doing? Take two or three
minutes to think about your prompt in
depth and you'll be surprised by how many ideas will immediately pop
up into your head. Not all of them will
be good or funny, of course, but it
doesn't matter. Just write it all down, then it's time to review
what you've drawn on paper. Does anything stand out? Maybe because it
feels relevant to you or because it has the
potential to be funny. Here I quite like the
avocado sharing food idea because it plays on the fact that 1.5 of the avocado always gets the pit and the
other ends up empty. The pits, it's right where
and avocados belly would be. That's the idea I
will go with today. If you like a concept, but it's not utilizing all
three of your prompt words, don't worry, that's okay. For example, for my comic, I chose to focus on the noun, the avocado, and
the verb feeding, but not so much on the
objective, giggling. Don't feel like you have to
be too literal with this. Once you have your final
idea, it's time to draw. Now remember, this
is an exercise to get your creative
juices flowing, not to create a masterpiece. Try not to focus too much on drawing perfectly,
just go for it. Since we don't have
a lot of time, I would recommend limiting the number of elements
in your image. You can include your
main characters, whichever items you need
to communicate your idea, and quick to the
point dialogues. If you start adding
too much contexts, lots of details and
flowery dialogues, your comic will quickly become less effective, less snappy. Plus you might not have
enough time to finish it. If this happens
though, it's okay. Even a half finished comic is better than
no comic at all. If your prompt is just
not doing it for you, just generate another one. With freely 20 words you have about 8,000 different
combinations, so you're not about to run out of inspiration anytime soon. It's the beauty
of this exercise, you never know what
you'll end up with. For example, you can see that although I picked themed
words for my list, I actually ended up with an entirely non
baby-related comic. Definitely a good way to
keep you on your toes. But if you're all done with our free exercises and
you're ready to keep going, then it's time to take a
look at the next lesson, five tips to keep
your routine going. Maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe a lot more. See you then.
7. Maintain Your Routine: [MUSIC] Well done, you've completed all
three exercises. I know what an
achievement that is especially if you're leading a super busy life right now, so hats off to you but now what? Obviously it takes a
bit more than that to build a sustainable
query routine, so how do we keep it going? How do we commit to it not only for the sake of creativity, but also to give ourselves
a bit of a break every day? Because as I mentioned before, creativity can be a
wonderful self-care tool. As an overwhelmed new mom, I definitely felt
like taking 5, 10, 15 minutes to be
creative every day really helped me with
his gnarly early weeks. If you're ready to introduce new query of habits
into your life, here are my top five tips. Depending on how
much time you can dedicate to creativity each day, I would recommend
repeating one of the three exercises
I shared with you every day for a week. You can change the time
parameters of the exercises. For example, take five
minutes to create a collection or 15 for
an automatic drawing, but I do recommend sticking to the same exercise and the same time length
for the entire week. That way, it will be easier to assess your progress by
the end of the week, and notice the ease, the confidence
you'll have gained. Once you've done a week, why not try for a
month or a 100 days? Every time you
manage to maintain your streak you
the habit deeper, and then it becomes
easier to keep it going. Keeping yourself accountable
can be hard sometimes, so how can you make sure
you stick to your goals? I find that sharing
the journey with others either in real-life, on social media, or
human Skillshare can be a great way to
keep the routine going. Ask your roommate to check on your progress or show your golden how you're tracking
with your followers. Involving others in your
journey is also a great way to feel supported which is really
important for motivation. Some of us also need a clear
purpose to feel motivated. Why not compile your daily
musings into a project? For example, when
I was finishing my studies back in France, I worked at a childcare center. I made sure I dedicated
10-15 minutes every evening after work to creating a little comic about my
day with the kids. You don't even have to come
up with your own project, there are many creative
challenges out there like Inktober or the
100 Days Project, both of which have
helped me calf some creative time
back into my life. Completing a project no matter the parameters
will give you a great sense of achievement and cement your commitment to
your creative routine. Just make sure you don't drop it once the project is completed. To avoid that, keep in
mind that it can be easier to keep a routine going if you're
doing it as a group. You can challenge other
creative friends with some of the exercises we did today and encourage each
others along the way. You can also embark on more
ambitious projects with them. For example, one of my 100 Days Project was
a collaborative effort. One of us would produce
a drawing, a text, or a piece of music, and the
other two would react to it. It was a wonderful
way to stay inspired, challenge ourselves,
and stay accountable. Remember, better is
the enemy of good. If you are super
busy just drawing a little bit every day is
a massive achievement. Once again, you don't have to produce a series
of masterpieces. You don't even need to
have a particular purpose either if that puts too
much pressure on you. In fact, some of you will
do better with a project or a purpose while others will
do best in collaboration, and some of you will actually just love drawing for
themselves and never share the results with anyone and either way is totally fine. Allow yourself to
find your own rhythm, discover what works for you, and keep it relaxed and fun. Now you have all
the tools you need to plan for, establish, and maintain your
drawing routine even when all you have to
spare is five minutes, but I do hope you'll share two minutes with me
for our last lesson where we'll recap what
you've learned and we'll wrap up the
class. See you there.
8. Key Takeaways: You did it. That's the end of the class. Thank you for sharing your
precious time with me. I know how hard it can be, so I'm really glad that
you made it through. But before I let you go
back to your busy schedule, I'd like to share
the key takeaways for this class with you. Honestly, if you walk away having only
learned this, I'll be happy. This is absolutely
fundamental for anyone trying to maintain
a creative routine. Just draw every day, and if you draw badly, well, it's better than
not drawing at all, isn't it? Keep it simple. No matter what you
decide to draw, make your life easy, at least at the beginning. A quick setup, easy techniques, no clean up afterwards, and even if all you
do is five minutes, you've already achieved
something big. Take inspiration
in the everyday. Sometimes it's hard
to have ideas, especially when life
gets absolutely crazy. So just draw what's around you. Your kid's toys in the
middle of the living room, mess on your desk, other commuters in the train, nothing is too mundane. Take care of yourself. Don't treat your drawing
routine as a chore. Make it about creating
some quality time for you. This is your chance to take a little break,
have fun, breathe. If it all starts
to feel a bit much and you find yourself
dragging your feet, try to reframe it. Drawing isn't another
thing on your plate, it's a palate cleanser,
a chance to reset. Trust me, you'll feel
better after it. The rest is up to you. Of course, I hope
this class will empower you to stay creative, even when it feels like there is no space for it in your life. Please know I'll be walking
down the road right next to you as this is an
ongoing journey for all of us, including me. If you'd like to
stay in touch with my work and see how I'm fairing, juggling, being creative, and leading a busy life, you can follow me
here on Skillshare or on social media and
check out my website. Of course, I can't wait to see your work in the project
section of the class. If you haven't yet,
you can also check out my other drawing and
illustration classes, which are designed to empower, inspire, and support you
on your creative journey. Congratulations again and good luck with your creative routine. I'm sure you're
going to nail it. Happy drawing.
Amandine Thomas, Award-winning illustrator
