Tiny Worlds: A Creative Drawing Project | Emily Armstrong | Skillshare
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Tiny Worlds: A Creative Drawing Project

teacher avatar Emily Armstrong, The Pencil Room Online

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      0:38

    • 2.

      Materials

      1:59

    • 3.

      Experimentation

      4:28

    • 4.

      Repetition

      9:41

    • 5.

      Drawing A Land Element

      8:23

    • 6.

      Drawing A Water Element

      6:37

    • 7.

      Drawing A Sky Element

      7:27

    • 8.

      Tiny World 1

      9:02

    • 9.

      Tiny World 2

      4:41

    • 10.

      Final Thoughts

      1:56

    • 11.

      Share Your Work

      0:21

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About This Class

Join me for a fun and creative drawing project that explores pattern and contrast.

Use fine-liner pens to explore types of pattern, create different shapes and patterns for land, sky and water and then put them all together in a Tiny World ink drawing!.

Meet Your Teacher

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Emily Armstrong

The Pencil Room Online

Teacher

After finishing a Masters of Art & Design in 2010 I returned to the simple joy of putting pencil to paper and just drawing. Since then drawing has become my passion as both an expressive art form and an enjoyable and mindful practice. In 2017 I started The Pencil Room, an art education studio in Napier, New Zealand, where I teach drawing and painting classes and workshops. In the last few years I have also been building my Sketch Club drawing membership over at The Pencil Room Online.

I love the simplicity of drawing and I value doodling from the imagination as much as realistic drawing. Drawing doesn't always need to be serious, it can be simple and playful and it can change the way you see the world!

WHAT I TEACH:

I teach learn to draw courses an... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: way. Hi, I'm Emily from the pizzeria. If you're in need of a creative outlet in this fund and simple during project is just the thing for you. Using simple drawing techniques, you can create a tiny world just like this one or this one or the one that's yet to emerge from your mind. I'll take you through how to using pins to create interesting patterns and how to use mark making to make your during stand out so grabby base pins and get creating. 2. Materials: for your materials. You only need a few things. I've got a basic pencil here. This is a mechanical one, but you could use a regular pencil just on HB or a to H P INTs or something quite light. You also need some ink peons. If you don't having peons, you could do this whole project with pencils or with a ballpoint pen. But in paeans of really nice to work with the nice and smooth, you get really strong blacks and they're also waterproof, which means that if you wanted to do some water color over top of this afterwards, then you can do so. End. Your inclines weren't to run. I've got two different sizes here. This one's Coptic multi liner in its 1.0, which means that the nip is one millimeter white. This one's gonna be really good for blocking in black areas. I've also got a 0.5 millimetre pigment liner by Stetler and this one ISS half the size of my comic multi liner. It's 0.5 millimeters, and I'm going to use this one for outlining, and then I've also got in a razor. It's This is a party raising, you could use any razor. So this is what I would recommend. Bet be a minimum pencil and a razor. You're gonna need some paper. So I've got my sketchbook here for some experimentation that will take you through. And then it would be really nice to have a decent piece of paper to do the final outlook on in. This is a piece of mixed media paper. Let's go a little bit of texture and that you're going to use the back of it. So it's good if you can find some smooth paid their something. It's a little bit sicker being your average cartridge paper, and there's a nice tone to it. This is off white. Compete to the bleached white off the cartridge paper in my sketchbook. You don't want too much texture because the pink pins won't run so smoothly. 3. Experimentation : So we're gonna start just by testing out at hope Pins or the fine line is that you have simply just makes them lines just so we can see what this looks like, how thick it is, something you have to hold these up on the tip of a little bit. Species. They're getting a bit older so that the bank runs smoothly and you get a nice even line. It's on its side like this. You might get some thin pats and some thick pats. So that's my 0.5. Here's my one millimeter. You see, it's much thicker. You might also have some other sizes. I've got this lovely array of Peens here. This one here is a 0.5 So is 1/20 of a millimeter in its very soon. I'm not going to use this for this one, but just to show you that there's a range of pins you can get if you got really keen on the sort of thing and you wanted Teoh really get into it, the next step is to test what we can do with these pins, and we're focusing on pattern and also focusing on contrast some, starting with my 0.5 and just going to start trying out some different patterns. So dotting stippling, it's called making small doctors a really good one. What we want to try and do with their patterns is, even though we're only using black in the white about paper, I'm gonna try and get a sense off graze a sense of going from dark to light so that when we create our final image that has some three dimensional four minutes for three dimensional form toe work in an image you need at least three times that we've got watch. We've got the black about Pin. Then we want to create the illusion of some graves. So the way we can do that is just to make our patterns dancer. So can you see how is lighter over the side? And then it starts to get darker, closer together. I put these dots the darker it's going to appear. We can also test out doing something similar with lines. So from just making some straight lines evenly spaced apart and then start to decrease the distance between the lines, I could go back this way in increase the space between the lines and again you get that illusion of going from light too dark. We could also use thicker in thin a line. So I'm just going to do a series of lines here, Ural Pretty even. And then I'm gonna get my 1.0 marca and I'm gonna make this last one really sick. So blocking down and in this run a little bit thinner, but center going back to my 0.5. And I'm just doubling over this one in a little bit of this one. So using thicker lines through to thinner lines would give the illusion of light to dark. So have a play around with some different patterns. I'm going to do a few more now and you can copy things. You might be a to come up with your own Israel 4. Repetition: we've tested at how we can create some light through the dark tones with patents. Now we're going to have a play around with repetition. It's amusing. My 0.5 again. It was going to start with one shape, basic leaf shape, and I'm going to start repeating it and Hazara Peter. I'm going to start changing the scale so we'll get bigger or we get smaller. And if you've done in easy entangle drawings before this is a similar principle, remember that this is just a fun, creative projects. So you see, I'm not working with pencil first. I'm just going straight away within pin in, working somewhat in charge of Lee and responding toe. What's there? So it's quite a natural looking person, something that is a little bit more geometric. Could be to start with the triangle and then to start heading on. So every shape I creators a triangle, but I'm joining onto in existing triangle. You get these diamond like shapes. We could just create some kind of blob in similar to this one here in this one was gonna add onto adding on more blobs and to make our repetition interesting, we changed the scale, so some of bigger some are smaller, and I might also try was taking one shape in repeating it. But this time it's not gonna be joined on to the shape that have drawn before. It's I'm just repeating a shape over and over again, seeing how I can fit those shapes to give a with white space between them. So create some repeating patterns are taking one element like a blob in repeating over again, changing the scale, taking the leaf element, repeating it by changing the scowl. I'm taking a triangle, changing SCO, repeating it to grow these diamond shapes and then also taking another shape in trying it with white spaces between. I haven't really changed scale here, but I could do some small ones around the outside. So we've got these repeating patterns. They're all quite flett. Now we're going to use the experimentation that we did earlier without pins in creating those light to dark tones by using pattern, and we're gonna add the's. And so for this one here, I could play around with dots and have them darker in one corner and then get lighter. This one here, I could play around with curving lines and try and get a sense that these are not just flat circles, but that they actually curved outwards, some starting in the corner that I can find. And then I'm just repeating a line. But it's getting wider as it goes out. This one here. I could try putting lines very close together, and the leading them spread out. There's more distance in the areas rare want lighter tones? Usually it's darker further down where if you imagine, there's light. Coming from the top with is no light using from starting at the bottom of each leaf shape and then making some lines very close together and in spreading them out as I get towards the top of the leaf shape. I mean this one here, I might play around with having some parts of it thicker in some parts of it sooner. So each corner I'm gonna make a bit sicker, maybe one each I could make thicker. I'm going to go through and complete. These are speed up the video so that you don't have to sit here watching me, but you could be working on your own. Watch the video first if you like in the copy mine war, you could come up with some of your own ones, so we're creating a pattern by repeating a motif, and then we're essentially shading it by using some kind of mark making, and with it mak making. We want to create lighter tones and darker tones with the illusion of lighter tones and darker tones. Because we do, any have black and white so that we can get a sense of three dimensional form. Things kind of popping out like an illusion so you can see that the shapes and not quite as flat as they were before. But we want to increase the illusion of three dimensional form. So there's two ways to do that. When is with your three times so your light, your middle in your dark. But the other ways to think about contrast. So the moment these are there is some wide, and there is a little bit of gray. There's not a whole lot of black, except for the single lines, so we need some some boldness, some contrast on there. And you can do that either by using your 0.5 millimeter Penis, especially if you've only got one pin and just going over some sections in making them darker. Well, you might have a sick a peon like a one millimetre pin, and you can use that toe color in some areas and make them bolder. Do you see a really starting to be a little bit more interesting because we got some more contrast in this and black areas. I'm not going around the whole outline. I'm just choosing some areas. Most of them are at the bottom because again, if you imagine light comes from the top, as it usually does comes from the sky, then it's gonna be DACA in those areas where the light doesn't reach this one Here, I might go back to my 0.5 and risking make the lines denser and darker as they come in towards I want them to look like the curving down into a recess. 5. Drawing A Land Element: Super A tiny worlds project. We're gonna need three elements. We're gonna need land element, a water element in a sky element. And to start with, we're going to have a practice of different types of land elements that we can create. So do a few into you could copy mine if you want to, or you might come up with some of your own. So the way this works, is it It is very intuitive, and you start doing one thing, experiment with it, and then it might give you an idea for something else. So don't worry too much about what it's gonna look like at the start. We can build on it. You'll see what does work and what doesn't work. And then we can choose what we like the best. And we could put that into our final tiny will to project some setting with my 0.5, we must out with a land element. So for the land, I'm gonna do mountains. I think they really effective if we can create a sense of rolling hills and different sides , and we can really use those patterns to create a sense of three dimensional form you do three fairly similar formations again, I'm kind of just making this up as I go along, we're going to apply some patterns to these. So if you imagine that there is, ah, light source coming from one side, So it's coming from the side here, then everything else on the other side is going to be slightly DACA. So I'm going to start by putting in, um, some Petain's agonies, the dots to start with and putting them on that side. That would be the shadow side, usually with just bet that I've got a bit more form than I have in these other ones here. These are still looking very flat. They just like lines. This one here, I'm starting to grate a bit of form. Remember, if you make these dots Dinsor closer together, they appear darker when you spread them apart. That Yuri appears lighter. It might be enough for that one. What I could do now is Ed in my black. So I've put in my pattern just like we did in the previous experimentation. Weaken Edinson darker line, Wick, just to emphasize the contrast. So this one here I much ever play around with some line wick, and I think I might kind of create surface area on the top, kind of like creating some cliffs and then done here. I'm going to its in lines, changing the slant of them slightly. Then I could join up those lines at the bottom again. I'm just responding to what I'm doing. So these lines here it's fairly flat. Right now. It's like one type of gray or the way along. So I'm going to add in some more lines and some parts to create another tone. I'm doing this all freehand at the moment. You could use a roller if you wanted to. Who might leave that for? When we get to a final outwork, See, that's created a little bit more in and out. I could just leave the top white. Um, I just it just a few max again just to create a little bit more shape in there. This one here, I might make these really geometric, so I'm going to go with it. Triangle pattern, repeating triangles in the same and the background here. These ones might be smaller triangles because I wanted to look like it's a little bit further away. Same on this one. You see, I've lost the separation between them. So this is again where I might bring in some thicker lines, which was going to give me some contrast. And it's also gonna divide those mountains back up again. Just making some of the corners a little bit thicker as well. So if you make a mistake, I kind of made a few extra lines. He they didn't want to. Um you kind of just got a tune into something if you're working straight with pain. So now I've shaded that pattern. I've decided that I'm gonna go through and shade some of the other parts and as well, it's a really good practice to do it this way, just straight with MP in, So that you know, you're not relying on having and a razor there to rubber any mistakes, and you don't just have to respond to what happens. It makes him corrections, and usually nobody would even know. You know it a bit more black to this one here, it would be like this one. Here is a little bit plane. So what I might do is head into crevices. It's kind of crazy lines. And again, I'm gonna make some areas of those little bit DACA. So these three land elements Knicks, we're gonna have a go it three water elements. 6. Drawing A Water Element: so the water could be, Ah, like it could be in ocean or it could be a river. So if you think I'm going to do is just makesem some kids imagining these a stylized kind of waves or ripples. And then I'm going to start getting some patterns into think play around with curved lines in having them go from thin to thick. It may be go from far away, too close together. I was going through. It's sickening some of these lines set of further down the bottom. I'm working quite quickly, and really, I'm just trying to get an idea of what these air gonna look like so you can see that my lines aren't perfect. Might switch to my one millimeter pain. These lines down the bottom. No, it's on it. Thats one. So it's not perfect. Let's give me a new idea of what it would look like if I used that type of pattern for some . See this one here. I am going to switch to my pen tool because I have an idea I'm going to create some wave Petain's You may not get to see them very well, but what I want to do issues that dotting technique. So rather than have an outline, I'm going to use the dots to create the shapes and having a starts with really close together, really tight download. And then I'm gonna let them spread out as they get to the Crist of the wave. And you see the start to form so you can see that with each new Maya of waves in the background, I'm using the base of it later. Create the top of the layer in front, no outlining anything. I'm just using my dots. You can see that's quite time consuming. Um, but it does have a cool effect if you can be patient and just kicked working with that same pattern. So for each layer of waves, it's darker down the bottom, and then the next light up defines the top off the lay in front of it. And the 3rd 1 I'm gonna do this some kind of river. It's imagine starting fair way in the distance. It's going to come forward. So at the end here, it's gonna be really close together. It's gonna get why did those two lines will get wider to give the effects of it coming forward towards us in receding into the distance. And I could put a few rocks in there and then playing with line, having them get through the away from each other. So it's for the spread out as they come closer. Meneghin just responding. So if you look at what I've already got there and then I could add in some areas what color these parts and black. Maybe some dots for the rocks. Maybe at a bank up here. A swell. - I'm just looking at it and saying where it's missing things and going from there and heading things in. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't energy go toe to another, eat it and change a few things. You have got mo three water elements. These ones are probably well suited to an ocean or a lake in in this one's obviously a river. So next we're gonna move on to some sky elements, getting closer to putting them all together 7. Drawing A Sky Element: this thing you want to think about for The sky is with you want to do night time sky or a daytime sky? Eso do at least one of each. It starts with a daytime sky and to my destroy sketch in a box here so I can contain my son because I got an idea of what I want to do. Skitch in a semi circle. And then I'm going to create Cem Race of life. Any time you doing circles as well, it's useful to sketch and first. Or you might find something circular that you can trace around. It was very basic see musical of a son. It's created horizon line and this is where I think I'm going. Teoh, use my roller. You know, just start ruling out some lines from its sun. So there's gonna be that raise so several things I could do. I could use my dotting, maybe have a doctor at the top and in getting lighter as it gets closer to sun. So you get that sense of sending out rays of light. I could just keep doing these lines around it, and I could make some of them thicker or thinner it might be enough species fits in the background. Doesn't need to be too complicated cause we're gonna have our land in our C elements in front. Or we could just edge Cem some extra contrast. Had a bit of black. This is your experimentation time. So he must have a goat. Adding some more. It doesn't work. Doesn't work. You know that. OK, this is all right. You can always just keep it this stage. There's a daytime. Let's do a night time and I might do moon and some stars sketch out a circle. I'm going to draw some star shapes. So for the moon, I know that I do want to use adults. Think of it decision, type of surface of it. I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and just outline my stars. What? We're going to create just a little circle. It's easier to be white circles and they just hopefully look like stars of the further away . Then we're gonna go with my sick opinion and I'm gonna outline them again. And then I'm going to color in the background. Bleck first outlining begin because it just makes it easier to the in color and around them have been working on this night Time sky. I got my 1,000,000 of Put my stars and then you know it running outlined. Well, the stars. So you draw, you start and then draw your stars. Then when you're ready to shade and the background just go around and outlined them again like that, it's makes it a lot easier to color and your daytime in the nighttime Do something a little bit different this time. And maybe we did this thing that looked kind of like a crystal might create some crystals in the sky using my triangles. I'm just going to create kind of a crystal pattern. You might do another one here. Yes, they could be asteroids or the miscellaneous things floating in space. Do another one up here. I mean, I really like doing the nighttime skies so I might do something with this one head in a few little stars, and then I'm gonna colored and black. And if I wanted to, I could edge some tones onto these as well. But I think probably what I'll do is just backing up some areas so that not quite so fled 8. Tiny World 1: So here we go. Really? To create our final piece. I've got a nice piece of paper. Got my two champions, got my parents or my razor, and I probably use a ruler as well were equipped with all that experimentation we did. So we know about how to create tone with different patterns. And we know how to repeat shapes to create patterns as well. And then we also know about adding contrast, adding black to really make things stand out and to increase the illusion of three dimensional form. So to start with, we need to draw a basic shape. Could be a circle. Could be a square. Could be a triangle. I'm going to start with a triangle and I'll take you through this one and then the next one I will just dio speed through it so you can see a couple of different variations of a triangle one in. Then I would do a circle one. I'm gonna roll out my triangles and now is when we can use our pencil. We're going to sketch everything in just very loosely. So just the basic elements to see the sky and the land elements not worry too much about, um, heading patterns. And yet, so we'll do that. Just free him. So if you're really concerned about this being perfect, or if you don't have much time than you could just quick sketch beforehand. But I would really encourage you if you have the time to just go with the flow and see what happens. And I think that's a really good way of learning how to deal with those eras when they come up just by going for it and experimenting, responding to what's happening in making corrections, if you need to. If it doesn't work, doesn't work. You can always do another one. It's really good, meditative exercise as well. So I think, Oh, start off by doing and night scene. So I'm going to draw on my land element and it's a triangle. It's very symmetrical, so I'm gonna think about keeping it, sent it doing this quite small. You could make it bigger if you want to. I'm just gonna skitch in mountains, very angular, to match the passion of the triangle, and then I'm going to add in my see element. I think I'm gonna go with those curves that we did. Then we're gonna add in a sky element, and I think I will do. And Moon got me Mountain coming over the front of it. I might make it a little bit lower, actually. So that's probably all we really need to Skitch. And then we're gonna go straight in without 3.5 fine liner and start out binding, start heading patterns and then heading contrast, Going to start with the mountains. Actually, what I might do a fist. It's just put in this sea line here. You can think about what needs to over Lech could use a ruler for this if you want to. That and I quite like to do it free. INGE. So I made my moons. It's slightly wonky, but I can fix it up when I color in the background. So it's gonna be a sky. Sorry. It's gonna be a night sky. Make that adjustment now. I think it's really nice to not have an outline, depending on what sort of patterns you've got some things you might need an outline, but I'm going to do this one without actually outlining and pin. And then I can rub out pencil Max later on. So it means that we night add in these patterns here. We kind of careful that only go to the pencil outline that I've got. I'm gonna make my mountains a little bit more interesting by heading in those triangle geometric shapes. Even then, I'm gonna add in some stars and sky. So that's my tiny wield outlined. And now I just need to go through an ad some of my patterns needed had some contrast. And I need to black in the background way . So that's that one done. You can see that I made a few changes. As I went, I added in a little bit more black. I had a star beer that I took out. So you can really respond to what you've got on. The last thing to do will be to specialise it really dry in inter arrays for the pencil. Max 9. Tiny World 2: so I'm just going to do one more really quick and simple one just so you can see another vision and this song into sickle. So just trace around this roll of tape here and again. I'm just going to respond. See how we go. And you might see me make some changes if there's anything that thinks not working But remember the process we're gonna skitch first, just lightly sketching now, now land water in sky element. And then we're gonna think it with an outline. And then we're gonna start adding some patterns and try and get that range of tones from light, middle and dark in the illusion of three D form and so so many different ways that you could do so many different outcomes. And I hope that you'll see your project at the end. Okay? 10. Final Thoughts: So there's in May 2 tiny wheel to get triangle one got the circle one night time, one daytime. One Last thing I need to do is just for about some of these pencil max, and then they will be finished. So just remember that process. We started off just sketching in the basic elements and then thinking in the lines and then starting to head out Piton and just responding to it. So you would have seen me darken up some lines at some point, and it's been quite a bit of time here, so just stepping back and taking a look to see how much more darkness that needed in there if you wanted to, you could add extra elements, so it could be that you had some houses or some trees. They probably take a little bit more planning. And for this project, I just wanted to be fun and creative in quick so that you can just go for it and not have to worry too much about what it's gonna look like. And if we keep it simple, we can do that so we keep just a sky element land element and a water element mean we don't need to worry too much about getting a perfect shape for a house or or are trays or looking to even in unnatural, so you can see the variety in these two that I've done myself. Imagine the variety there's gonna be in the ones that everybody who watches these videos does. So I'm really hoping that you'll show your project at the end. Be great just to see the variety and see the difference and peoples different styles as well. So you might find that you have a more scratchy kind of style with European or you might be much Tidier than may. You might use a ruler for everything. And so it's gonna be a lot of variety there and a lot of creativity as well. It would be really cool to see that the thanks for joining me and happy during 11. Share Your Work: It's been really cool seeing the different drawings that have come out of this class. If you want to be part of the Tiny Worlds Project, you can share your out, work with me on instagram at the pencil room online or use the hashtag tiny Worlds project . I look forward to seeing what you come up with.