Transforming Retro Finds into Whimsical Illustrations

1. Intro: Hey, I'm Sha O'Connor. I'm an illustrator and designer, and I run my own studio designed by She in Atlanta, Georgia. My style is all about combining a vintage vibe with modern values. And over the past ten something years that I've been doing this, I have figured out my own art style, and I'm so excited to share tips and tricks that I've learned along the way with you so that you can explore your own style and add that vintage whimsy to your illustrations. In this workshop, transforming retro fines into whimsical illustrations, we're going to talk about how to translate complex three D objects into two D minimal art. I'll teach you how to make inanimate objects feel like they have personality and whimsy and charm. And we'll do that using techniques like shape language, composition, color, texture, linework, and more. I find that anytime that I'm learning a new skill, it really helps me to have a project to practice that specific skill on. So, for our class project, we're going to be finding retro fines in the wild, someplace like a vintage store or online if that works better for you. And we're going to translate those items into one single composition. If you'd like to fact check my work before trusting me with your time, which I totally understand, you can find me on all social platforms designed by She. Let's get started. Oh, 2. Class Supplies: So I want to walk you through some of the supplies and the materials that I'll be using, as I demonstrate, making my own illustration that is whimsical and retro inspired. But I will say that if you don't have all of the tools that I have here, please don't let that hold you back from being creative. Just use what you have. And again, we're going to be doing a very minimal style, so you don't need too many tools, but I just do want to share the ones that I'm using so that if you're trying to capture a similar effect of what I'm creating, you know exactly the type of tool that I'm using. First up are the dual brush pins. These are water based pins, and they come in such a beautiful array of colors to choose from. Because they're water based, I would definitely recommend using mixed media paper or watercolor specific paper. And if you're just looking to start your dual brush pin collection, don't worry. You don't have to get absolutely every single one to get started with. They do have these really fun different packs that come with specific colors on them so that you can just kind of start your collection without breaking the bank. What's really great about these dual brush pins is that they have basically two sides. It's the dual brush pin. We have this flexible brush tip, and then we also have this more smooth fine tip. So let me show you how they both work. So the flexible brush tip is really great for flat strokes of color. And if you're basically putting your lines kind of stacked right on top of each other, you can get this subtle little overlap, which is beautiful. But if you don't want the overlap, then you can just kind of add your color like this. And one great thing about this flexible brush tip is that you can go from thin to thick strokes, which makes it really fun for calligraphy. Now, if you want something that's a little bit more of a monoline option, what you can do is to use the other tip. And that's just going to be very monoline. It's one line width the entire time. But it's great if you're trying to kind of do a little bit more details or a pattern, anything like that. The next art tool that I'm going to be using is my mono drawing pencil. I really like using the two H because it's a little bit lighter, and when I'm sketching, I like it to be light and I can add darker shades to it. But if I'm going to go back and erase these pencil lines later, it's very manageable to do so. But let me show you all of the weights. So we'll go from lightest to darkest. We're going to start with the four To the two which is my favorite. Onto the H B. Then we have B two B. Four B. And 60. And as I was saying earlier, I like to erase my pencil lines later. I don't really need those to be showing. So really good options for erasers are we've got the natural eraser, and it's got this almost beautiful little shell like tint because it's actually made out of seashells. Another good option is the plastic eraser. I'm using the natural right now. But once you let your dual brush pin dry, just give it a couple minutes. Then you can erase over all of these lines, and it's like they were never there. And it's not crazy eraser dusty. It's just not too messy. And then it doesn't lift the color too much either, which is great. Next up is one of my favorite tools, which is the futonsuke brush pin. This is just an amazing tool because it really can give you that thick to thin brush stroke that's going to be a bit caligraphic. Let me show you. So we go thin to a little bit more pressure down on the paper, and it goes thicker, lifting back up for thin, thicker. Now, a lot of people do use this for calligraphy, but I find it works really great for my illustrative work, too, especially if you're doing an outline and you wanted to go from a thin to thick line, maybe like a face. But you can also just hold that one pressure as well and be able to keep it really thin. It's just a super versatile tool, and I find myself always reaching for this one. And then finally, we have the mono drawing pens. Now, these are great because if you want something that's just more of a mono line, the line is just one weight and we're not going from thick to thin. These are going to be your best friend, and they've got quite a wide range of these. Let me show them to you. These are for drawing just one single line. You can also use them to be adding a little bit of fills, and if you have the super skinny ones, you can just get tons of little details. But let me show you how they go from very thin to all the way at the thickest weight. So I'm starting with 005. I moving on to a one. And it's a very subtle difference, but if you're using it, you really are going to notice that. I love using the finer weights for things like fashion illustration or when I just want something to feel a little bit more delicate, we've got 02 right here. We'll move on to 03 next. This is a really good one to start with if you're just wanting to play with these and test them out. I would say that the 03 is going to be really a fun one for you to start with. Moving on to 04 05. But look how different that is. 05 in comparison to 005. Almost there with 06. And then last but not least, we've got the 08. 3. Finding Retro Treasures: Honestly, I'm so happy to be teaching this class because it gives me the perfect excuse to do what I love most, which is to go to vintage stores all around Atlanta and find vintage treasures. I'm kind of assuming that you love all things retro, too if you're taking this class. So I would encourage you to take this as an excuse to go on a vintage field trip and find all of the fun little retro treasures that you can for this project. Now, if you don't have the time or the resources for that, you can always go to the worldwide web for inspiration. But I do think that you're going to learn more if you can go in person and experience those objects in real life. Hold them in your hand. Witness them in the store and see how the three D object is actually working and moving and you'll really get a better understanding of it. If you're looking at a photograph, the photograph has already translated that object onto a two D surface, so you're not having to do as much of the heavy lifting. But if you're going to find an object in person and you can see it in three D, you have to do the heavy lifting of using your own brain to be like, How can I translate this from a three D object into a two D object on my piece of paper? I'll be narrowing down all of the objects that I found into one single illustration. I'll share my creative process with you so that you can apply it to your own process and create your own illustration alongside me. 4. Minimal Style, Maximum Fun: Why do we want to illustrate in a minimal style? Well, for starters, it's really easy for viewers to engage with your artwork when there's not as much information on the page for them to be overwhelmed by. You can still include lots of fun little details, but your goal is to be as intentional and thoughtful with every single mark you include on the page. Also, when you're drawing in a minimal style and you found a bunch of these different types Treasures and trinkets, they might be from totally different decades. If you're drawing them all in one single style, it's really going to unify the entire piece and make it feel like all of those objects belong in the same world. When we're simplifying three D objects into two D illustrations, we really want to study that three D object and try and figure out what makes it tick. Why does it feel like, for instance, a teapot? What are the things that we absolutely need to include to get the essence of the teapot, and maybe what are some things that we can get rid of that aren't absolutely necessary for it to read as a teapot? We would probably want to include the handle we'd want to include this bolt, maybe a little bit of steam to have it read as a piping hot kettle of tea, we might want to include this lid, and then the body of it, we can make it any shape that we want to. But just only keep the essentials. We might not have to include all the little, like, filigree that is on this teapot. We can keep it pretty simple. But we're really just trying to get our heads wrapped around why does this look like a teapot to us? Thank you to my grandmother for this prop. There's lots of different ways that we can create a minimal illustration. Most of it is really just by subtracting information, so you could use a limited color palette. You could take away some of the unnecessary details on the object, potentially a pattern that is just too busy or a decorative element that just doesn't need to be there. Another great way to make something minimal and organized is to use your white space very thoughtfully. For me, when I go into a vintage store and I find an object, usually it's surrounded by several other objects. But if you use your white space really thoughtfully, it's really going to let that object take the stage. Another option would be to create a really organized composition. This will make it a lot easier for the viewer to understand where to look. So maybe you have all of your objects arranged in a line or maybe they're all very neatly organized in a grid. But when you're being really thoughtful about your color palette, your line work, your composition, your white space, you're really making it a much more fun and engaging illustration for the viewer to look at, and you're helping them know where to focus. That's enough talking for now. I think we're all very visual people here, so I'm going to just show you my process. We're going to walk through it all together and show you what I'm talking about. 5. Sketching: Now that we have found all of our delightful objects, it's time to start sketching them. So I'm just going to start with a teapot. Apparently, that's all that I talk about in this workshop. But what can I say? This 1960s, 1970s teapot really caught my eye. So when you're sketching, it is totally okay to just be completely loose. You can be scratchy with it. So what I'm going to do is just sort of start by actually drawing the objects as I see it. I'm not going to do any distortions or stretch or skew or do anything to the teapot. Just yeah, I just kind of want to try and understand it and get it from what I saw in the store to what is going to be on this piece of paper. The reason I'm doing this kind of as realistically as possible is because I feel like it will help me understand all of the little details that make this thing read as a teapot. And I can understand what's important to include, and then what are things that I can potentially take away. So I'm looking at all of these little flowers. I love this pattern so much. I think it's gorgeous, but it might be a little bit too busy for me. I'm just going to kind of rough it in here right now. And we're just going to take a look at, like, how that might look. I already feel like I'm running out of room to include all of these flowers, and I know I'm going to be drawing this probably on a size of paper like this, so I just don't have enough room to get all of those little details in, so that might be something that's going to go away. There's also just this little extra lip right here, which I don't know is super necessary for me to include. But right now we're we're just trying it. So let me also get the lid. I'm not trying to stylize anything just yet. I'm just trying to get a basic understanding of how this object looks. Now, if you're not ready to just go from the image straight to your paper, sometimes you can always trace over an image, too. Sometimes that's a really helpful way just to start understanding the shapes a little bit. But here is sort of an example of, like, how it could look. But I just don't feel like it has enough personality, and I also don't feel like it's really matching my line work or my line qualities. So I might explore potentially squeezing this line in just a little bit. I might elongate the entire thing. I think I'm going to cut this out. I might just, like, be a little bit more playful. So let me do a really fast sketch and just sort of see what happens. Like, if I kind of go like this, and I'm okay with things being a little bit topsy turvy, too. But just really playing with skewing in the angle. See how the angle used to go like that, and now it's really cutting inside sharp. We're going to just take that whole piece off. And then this, I'm just going to do a simple line just to see what it gets me. Rather than it being just soft little lines, I'm really playing with the angles. And then you can always kind of add little gentle curves on the outside. So it's not too sharp and not too pointy doesn't feel like too in your face, but it still feels quirky and whimsical. And then with this, it's funny. When I was sketching, I kind of naturally wanted to taper it in there. So I think I'm probably going to do something like that here. There you go. Bring that down. And then we're also going to have to choose our color palette really carefully and thoughtfully. And I want to draw more than just one object. I found so many fun little treasures that I think I kind of almost want to figure out if there's a way to do some sort of, like, tea setting. I found all these, like, really cool cups, little vase and stuff, but I think this is starting to feel good. And then maybe to still be able to get a nod of the flowers, we could just do very simple, like, five petal flowers. So it was kind of fun to see the before, right here, which is a little bit more realistic. But this helped me sort of get my head wrapped around and understanding how this teapot is actually supposed to translate from what I saw in the store to on paper. And from there, I was able to make this jump to a very stylized, more personality filled doodle of a teapot. The next item that I found that I'm just obsessed with and honestly really regret not buying was this double headed peacock vase. I just thought it was so extra. So I'm going to do the same thing that I did with the teapot. I'm going to draw it a little bit realistically. Just to kind of be able to get something down on the page, and it might look like garbage, you know? Like, looking at this, I'm not pleased with it, but it led to this, okay? So it's all part of the process. And I'm just going to finish the lines. Even though these don't show up on the base. This just helps me kind of connect it. I can always erase them later. We'll do bird number one. It kind of goes straight up. It's interesting because even as I'm drawing this, I feel very stuck and this feels very rigid, so I can't wait to start just playing with it and really stylizing it because I know exactly what I want to do to this bird vase. I'm so pumped. I really just want to play with tapering. And I feel like, you know, because of the material, it's ceramic, they were kind of limited to how much detail they could get and how, like, tidy the tapers could be, as well on the birds. But, you know, this is our own little make believe world, so we can just totally make something new, make our ideal double headed peacock vase. But it's funny. You can sort of see I'm a little bit more timid with my lines when I'm just kind of sketching something and trying to get a bit more accurate versus when I and it's taken me years to get to this kind of a level where I can just jump straight into, like, Ah, this feels comfortable for me because I have figured out what is comfortable line work for my hand. And a good way for you, I know I'm taking a little detour. But if you're still trying to figure out your style, a really great way to sort of achieve that is just doodle on a piece of paper. Don't even try and doodle an object and just see where does your line go? And, like, this is kind of what mine does. So it's sort of a mix of swirly and organic and twirly. But then every once in a while it kind of cuts in and zigs and zags, which I feel like you can sort of see happens here, too. So just find what feels natural to your hand, and it might take some time, but just don't force it because I mean, I've had times where I'm like, Gosh, I wish I could draw, like, this person or that person, but it just doesn't come naturally to me, and it ends up looking forced and looking just, like, a very sad version of what that original artist does. Let them have their space, and I'm going to stay in my lane, and I'm gonna figure out what works for me. Okay, so there's kind of, like, just, like, really subtle scallop edge right here, and I think I might want to, like, really play with that later and just, like, I'm just dotting in the lines of, like, where I would want to put it. I just really want to emphasize that. And then even the base of this is just, like, kind of chunky, and I think I want that to be tapered in just a little bit more. Like, I don't hate this by any means, but I just don't think this is exactly the shape I'm looking for. And then I'm noticing also there's these little feather details here, too, and that actually might be more detail than I want to include. I'm probably going to make mine just, like, a flat color. I can erase these lines now, too. Like, I don't need them. That way you can sort of see the way the vase is working. And also, because it's a vase, like an I love flowers, I want there to be flowers in here. So let's go ahead and start on our quirky stylized iteration of this vase. So I want to taper in everything. I think just having it go from, like, really skinny to really wide and just be super extra with it really that's kind of a super fun way to cartoonize something or just to make it feel like it's got this great personality. Like, I kind of just want to taper all of that in. Alright, let's just go for it. I kind of wanted to do maybe these, like, more fun quirky scallops. Actually, I think I'm just gonna end it on four. It was starting to get a little bit too wide for me. We'll finish it like this. And then let's make these necks of these little peacock heads, maybe just a little skinnier, and I'm gonna have their beaks point down into more of a taper. So that's the beauty of finding all these objects. Like, this peacock face is going to inspire something totally different and new. I don't have to draw exactly what I saw there, but it gave me a great idea, you know? 'Cause I mean, sometimes you can just think of something out of nothing, but a lot of times, for me, I like to go and find inspiration or reference different humans if I'm doing a character design. It just doesn't come out of thin air always for me. Let's just do a really narrow little narrow little base. And then I think it'd be fun to just sort of add some flowers in. I don't know, like daisy or something, maybe to sort of tie into the flower that we have on this teapot here. Get, like, a bit of a leaf in there. I don't know. I think this just kind of gives this base purpose. You kind of understand a little bit more of what it is and why it's going to be in the picture. If I'm going to do a tea scene, I think if you have a tea party, you're gonna have flowers, of course. It's all about, like, setting the table and making it delightful for your guests. And then I wouldn't include this line, I would erase it, but maybe it would be helpful just to be able to show the shape to, like, just show some of these lines here. And it's perfectly imperfect. I think this just has way more attitude and personality than this. Okay, I'm pretty set on this little tea theme. So I think I'm going to draw some tea cups, but rather than drawing the ones that I saw in the storage just one on its own, it might be fun just to add a little bit of personality and stack them. And, you know, right now, I'm just going straight into the way that I would simplify it. I know my style well enough to where I feel like I can do this. And we've talked about how to do this for both of these. So I'm just jumping straight into how I would go ahead and styleize it. But, yeah, it's like, you can just keep making up how these objects are interacting. The cups were not stacked in the store, but I think it's going to probably add a lot more visual interest to my piece if they are stacked and I can do different colors. That way, I don't have like I'm starting to think almost a little bit of head because I can't help myself. But I'm thinking about how am I going to arrange these objects, and we will get to that. I'm going to be doing some thumbnails here. But right now, it's all about just getting comfortable, sketching all of the items that you found. And for me, I know I want to do T because I just think that's going to be really fun. But for you, maybe you just have to start drawing a bunch of the objects that you found, and you don't know if there's gonna be a theme or not. You just need to sketch it all out to see what is actually looking really cool on paper and what's going to make a really fun illustration for you based on your style. Let's maybe draw that little picture. I think it's so cute, like a tiny creamer picture. Maybe we'll have the line kind of go out this way. And I want the handles to sort of all match. Like, I love this kind of funky angular handle that we're getting in the teapot in the cups. So let's go ahead. If we're making a tea set, let's make it all match together and potentially add some more of those flowers in there. Okay, and then one other item that I found was a tea jar that I would assume holds tea leafs. And I just thought that the lettering was so cool. So I might just, like, kind of play and see how that looks before I actually put it on on the jar itself, I want to kind of understand this hand lettering. It's definitely reading like 60s or 70s to me. And I'm going to go ahead and add the shading in for the lettering because that helps me really understand how much how thick the letters are actually going to be. Sometimes when you do outlines, you can't tell how all the letters are going to interact, and I always find that adding a little bit of shading really helps me get them all to feel a little bit more balanced. Mel, this has a drop shadow, but again, I'm all about simplifying, so I think I'm going to remove that drop shadow and just bring the letters in a little bit closer. I also might not draw all of those flowers, and I might simplify the banner, as well, because the goal is for all of these random objects to feel like they belong in the same world. Oh, my gosh, I'm regretting so much that I didn't buy absolutely everything that I found. But then my home would probably start feeling like a vintage store or a museum, which I'm not really going for that look. Okay, so let's just kind of take a look at the banner. I might not be able to get this, like, all lined up perfectly. I'm gonna simplify it to just have one ribbon going in the back, and it could be cool to have one underneath it and then one kind of coming above it. I think it's this fine quality, which I just love. Fine. Quality. And now I know that Alia left way too much space here, so I'll be paying attention to that whenever I get into the final. And, like, I honestly don't know if I want to include flowers on that. I just feel like that's probably going to be enough. So let's just see maybe what it would look like. I think the curves on this thing are a little bit too soft, so I'm gonna probably do a couple more angles in it just so that it's gonna match with the tea cups in the teapot. Maybe I'll just do a little taper here. And if I want to get I might get a little bit of a curve right in here on the lid. This might need to be almost, like, a little wider or shorter. I think I'm gonna make it shorter. But, like, the text could go kind of here. Just kind of wrote that in. T and then get the banner up top. And then, oh, I need a handle. And I'm just keeping everything a really flat perspective. Rather than drawing the jar, like, right now, I think you can kind of see the top of the litle bit. It's kind of like this. I'm looking sort of down on it, and this would be a little bit more three D. That's not exactly what I want to do for this illustration. I want everything to be a super flat perspective. I don't want there to be any perspective, like how you're starting to see here. This is the more realistic version of the drawing. And I like the way it looks, too, and this might be something that you want to do for your own work. But the way that I'm going to get all of these to work together is that they're all just gonna be super flat. Okay, I think the last thing that we probably need is cake because what is tea without cake? And I found this really cute cake stand online, but it's just a little bit too busy. So I was kind of thinking I might sort of bring in, like, these scalloped edges in or sort of these loop delus. So maybe this is what the cake is sitting on top of, and I just do, like, a little kind of a scallop situation underneath, and then we can make a cute base that might kind of match the base of the vase. And then I love having the glass enclosure over a cake. I think it's supposed to, like, keek bugs away, which is sort of icky, but it's a very glamorous way of getting the job done. So we'll do that. And because I'm going to be using white paper as well, I need to be thinking about that. I'm just going to have this one singular line and represent the glass, and we're going to be using color and using either our pin or the Fudenosuke brush pin to sort of help make this read as glass. But let me go ahead and add just a little piece of cake in here. We could do some up du frosting. To kind of match with that there, and then maybe we have a little bit of icing on top, something kind of like that. So this is just these are my sketches. So look better than others. I'm probably going to go back and keep re sketching and tweaking, but you just got to get started. That's the hardest part sometimes is just getting over that fear of a blank page. And again, you can always start out by drawing the object exactly as it is. Once you have your head wrapped around that, then you can start playing with accentuating, stretching and distorting. Essentially, you're stylizing the image, and that's what's going to start giving your illustrations more of a whimsical feel. 6. Composition: Now that we've fully explored the sketching phase, it's time to start thinking about composition, which is how all of these objects are going to start interacting with each other and how they're going to be taking up space on your page. So a really great way to test all compositions is by doing thumbnails. So just start with some little grids to represent your piece of paper. Now, you could do vertical, you could do a landscape mode. And just for the sake of kind of getting ideas down quick, I am not going to be way too fussy with this. So I've got my teapot, my vase, my cups, my cake, and then my tea jar. So that's about five different objects that I'm going to be including in my composition. And rather than drawing all of these the way that I have sketched them, what I'm just going to do is draw basic shapes to represent them. So for the teapot, I think that's going to be a little bit taller, so I'm just going to kind of do the outline of it, sort of goes here. And then maybe the T jar could go next to it. That's going to be a little bit shorter. This is just a way that I can sort of see how these objects might interact with each other. Maybe I'll do the vase next. I kind of I want everything to sort of be going up and down. I don't want it to feel like it's all absolutely even on the top. I want it maybe with this composition, I want it to be even on the bottom, but I want the top to have a lot of variation within the height. So maybe I'll put the tiny little pitcher jar here, and then the cups could be stacked here. And that's okay, but oh, you know what I forgot the cake, and that I've run out of space on my page, but that's okay. I'm just going to put that here, and then I'll just sort of redraw this line. So that's sort of an option of a layout. I'm not sure if I love the way all of these are interacting. Like this feels like too big of a leap from up here at the teapot down to the cake. So maybe what I'll try next. And without maybe drawing a rectangle, sometimes I just feel like the rectangle can be a little bit restrictive. And if you're feeling like that, too, just draw the objects next to each other, and then you can add the border around once you're done. So I'm going to do, let's see base this way. Rather than the teapot, the teapot can go higher, but maybe not yet. Maybe then we'll do the Tea jar. Maybe teapot would go here. And we could stack a little bit. I might go just to hair. It's like, nothing is the exact same height, so there's a lot of variety within the height. And it might be cute to end on something small at the end, sort of like maybe that milk pitcher. And I really want because there's so many quirky objects, I feel like having a lot of white space in my composition is going to help sort of balance all of the quirkiness that's happening here and make it feel a little bit restful. If I had my composition, like, really tight in, it might start to feel cluttered. But with this open white space, it's just kind of giving it a little bit more of a relaxed feel. So I really like this composition, but something else that I might explore is like they could take up the entire page. So like, let's say that I've got my teapot up here, and I could even do, like, two versions of the teapot, one facing this way and the other facing this way. We can even play with the scale. The teacups don't it doesn't all have to be the same exact scale. The teacups could be bigger. This is just a loose idea. Maybe a cake could go here, fit that in, and everything's just kind of random. That's just another option. Maybe I would want to play with that. Maybe I wouldn't if you're really good at hand lettering, you could do something saying, like, It's teat and that could be a big feature of your illustration. Like, we could use some of the lettering that we found on the Tjar Tea Time. But I would say, when you're doing your thumbnails, maybe set a timer for 30 minutes to an hour and just see how many you can crank out. This is just a good way to kind of dummy check your art before you fully commit to making the final art on your page. It's just a good way to test the waters. Maybe it's gonna be like that. It's tea time. And all of the items could be floating around. I like this, too. I'm really feeling that right now, but I do like this idea of being able to combine some hand lettered elements with some of the inanimate objects. Maybe a little vase here. The vase might not make sense with this illustration. I actually think I'm going to remove that. I think just tea and cake is plenty and maybe the little picture as well. And I can do a bunch of teacups. It doesn't have to be three, like I did earlier, and they can all come on their own little saucers. Actually, kind of looking at that, I feel like two is enough, and maybe the flowers could just take random empty spots in the page. This would be like, so cute on, I don't know, a tote bag or something like that. That's also something to sort of think about when you're making your art. If you are trying to make art commercially, just sort of be thinking, huh, which room in somebody's house could this live in? Like, if this could be a tea towel, how cute would that be? Do I make a repeating pattern out of it? Or maybe it's gonna be a cute invitation for tea time? So if you are a commercial illustrator, it's just helpful to sort of start thinking about where this illustration could go if it could become a series. Just starting to think a little bit about marketing it, but also in my brain, I kind of sometimes think about monetizing everything because this is what I do full time. And that's both a blessing and a curse because I'm really good at making things make sense, but sometimes you can also just lose the joy of creating just for the sake of creating. So it's definitely a delicate balance. But these are some kind of fun, loose thumbnail ideas. I'm probably going to keep exploring them. I might do a cleaner sketch of this before I jump into the final piece. But really, if you just draw a bunch of different empty boxes and sort of see what comes out all of the ideas will kind of keep leading to the next thing. And then who knows? Maybe you'll circle back and be like, I actually really like the first thing that I did. I really like this. I think I'm probably going to move forward with this one, but I might explore this at a later time down the road. So again, set a timer for maybe 30 minutes to an hour, and maybe you're going for a specific decade. If you are, maybe put on some tunes from the 1950s just to sort of get you in that headspace and just crank out as many thumbnails as you can, and they don't have to be beautiful. You just have to get the ideas from your brain onto a piece of paper. You're basically just practicing for the final piece. And rather than jumping straight into the final composition, whenever you break it into steps like sketching and composition, sometimes you just don't even know new ideas will come out and spring forward. And if you just jump into creating a final piece, you might miss something. So really enjoy this exploratory phase. It's meant to help you in the long run. Sometimes it might feel like a chore, but find ways to make it fun and to just take the pressure off of you. So again, listen to some music, put on a show from that time period, light a candle, make a cup of tea, and just make it fun for yourself. 7. Color: Alright, everybody. First, let's just do a quick color crash course. If you know your colors and you feel like you want to scoot forward, I totally understand. But for me, even just making this color chart was a great little refresh for my color theory memory. So really quickly, I just want to talk through hues, shades, tones, and tints. So hues are going to be just the origin of the color we see. So everything that's on this ring right here. And then tints are going to basically be if you add white to a hue. So it's just going to be a little bit lighter, so that's your tints. And Shades are whenever you add black to any hue, and then tones are whenever you add gray to any hue. Now, I also want to talk about our primary, secondary, and tertiary colors because it's helpful to see how these colors are paired together. For primaries, we've got our red and our yellow and our blue. So they all kind of triangulate. And then our secondaries also triangulate. So we've got orange, we've got green, and we also have violet. And then for our tertiary colors, we have a couple of them. We've got red orange, yellow orange, yellow green, blue green, and then blue violet and red violet. So this is just a helpful way to be able to just get an overhead view of what all of the different colors look like and kind of get an idea of how they can sort of start playing together or playing against each other. For example, it is helpful to know what some of the complimentary colors are. Now, complimentary colors are pairs of colors that are opposite each other on a color wheel, and they create a really high contrast when they're placed next to each other. So usually a pair of complimentary colors is going to be of one warm color and one cool colors. So an example of some of the primary complimentary color pairs red and green. We also have blue and orange or yellow and violet or purple. So they're opposite of each other on the color wheel, and they're going to be a really high contrast when you put them right next to each other. And so they might vibrate or feel super extra, and maybe that's the vibe or the energy that you're going for within your color palette. Maybe you want something a little bit more muted and chill, in which case, you might do monochrome, which is just going to be all of the varieties of a single hue. So the tints, the shades and the tones. So you would just take maybe, like, one little slice of this color pie, and it would feel really calming. All of the colors are playing with each other because they're all part of the same hue. So it just feels very cohesive and very consistent. Now, another really great way to gather some inspiration for a color palette is as you're out on your little vintage treasure hunt, keep an eye out for some of the colors that are being combined on these objects. And maybe if you're looking at the 1950s, you might see lots of peaches or mint greens. Those are really often paired together in the 1950s. So if you're going for a specific decade within your illustration style, say, 1950s, keep an eye out on all of the mid century items and the color palettes that are being used in those and use them in your artwork. And maybe you could even put your own new spin on it so that it feel fresh and maybe a little bit more vibrant and modern, but still has a nod to the past. So just keep your eyes peeled as you're wandering through all of the booths and vintage stores or as you're looking online. Okay, I'm just popping in really quick to say that if you feel like you need to take a break or step away from this class at anytime, that is totally okay. Sometimes it's really good just to go take a walk, get a little snack, and then come back feeling a bit refreshed. Also, if you're feeling overwhelmed by the information that I'm sharing with you, I'm going to include a lot of stuff in the class resources section for you to go back and refer to so you don't have to try and remember the exact timestamp of when I said what I said. My whole goal is to make this as relaxing and chill and as easy for you to learn a fun new skill. So take a little break if you need, and I'll see you when you get back. The same way that we were testing out all of our compositions with these thumbnails, I want to do the same thing with colors. I want to give myself a couple of options and just do some quick rough color studies before I jump into the final artwork. This is another way just to test the waters and make sure you know you're going to like what you're making in the long run. So one way to start with the colors is to look at the colors of the found objects and see the color palettes that already exist. So what I'm seeing on this teacup, we've got, let's see, a little bit of, like, a pink. We also have W a bright red. We have an orange and then this great olive green also is happening for the leaves. And I want to keep my color palette pretty minimal if I can. I usually like to stick somewhere 5-7 colors, and sometimes that includes the color of your canvas. You could have the white background or the color of your linework, which I'm probably going to be using black linework. Keeping a minimal palette really is going to be super attractive to the viewer's eye. It allows them the ability to focus on the composition versus getting distracted and pulled away, and it helps all of these objects feel like they belong in the same world. So let's start with this color palette and be a little bit playful and see where it takes us in this first composition. So let's say we'll do pink frosting on the cake. I'm just going to start with the pink. Maybe the tea kettle is pink. I'm just giving a little bit of space in between. All of them, I don't want pinks right next to each other. I want it to feel like it's a little bit random and assorted. Maybe add a little bit of pink in the flowers. Let's move on to the red. Red is gonna be a very bold in your face color, so I kind of want to use it a little bit sparingly as if I can. Maybe there's a cherry on top of the cake, and maybe the tea lettering is red. Maybe the lid also. And I think that might be enough red for me. Next up, let's play with orange. I think red and orange looks so great together, so I'm going to throw those there. I want the tea cups to be a different assortment of colors. Let's also make this picture orange and then maybe the base of the cake stand could be orange. I'm trying to decide if I want this to be orange or not because we also have that green that I want to play with. Let's jump into a green vase. And in hindsight, I think I would rather have this be green. This is not going to look bright because I'm doing green on top of orange, but I'm just making a mental note for myself. So this would be color palette one. And just to show you how I'm sort of planning on using the linework, I'm going to use black to show the glass and then maybe do a couple of little details in black. I don't like to fully outline my artwork. I like to use the black as just a way to sort of guide your eye. And if it's not fully outlined, it allows the linework to keep bouncing around and moving and flowing. But you make that decision for yourself based off of your style and your preference. But this is going to be one of my colors. So I just want to see how it's playing with all of these, because if I'm using too dark of a color and the black isn't showing up, it might start looking a little bit muddy, which I don't want. Okay, that's option one. Now, I really do like this color palette, but another color that definitely drew my eye was this teal blue that I saw on the peacock face. So let me pull out something like that and see if we can add this to the mix. Let's try a little bit on a cup. Let's actually make the vase blue, the same blue that we saw. And maybe that would just be enough because it's a very bold color in the same way that that red was a bold color. And actually I think maybe I might take out the red this time, since the blue is definitely going to be a prominent color. I really liked the idea of the pink teapot. That was making me happy. And the pink icing on the cake. That helps Rita's cake. It feels very fun and festive and tea like. Do a couple of pink flowers, and then maybe we do some orange flowers as well. I like the warm colors for the flowers in the cool vase. That is reading nicely to me. Do maybe a little bit of orange there. Perhaps the lid of this jar is orange. And then maybe I can still bring in the green. I wonder if maybe you'll play with a brighter green this time. This is a little bit more olive. Let's just brighten it up. See how that feels. Where else would I like to put that? Maybe the cake stand. So the green is anchored on both sides. A couple of leafs. Hmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this green and this orange being tied together. Part of me wants to include a yellow because maybe I could do that on some of the flower details on both the picture and on the teapot. But this is a really good option, too, and we're getting somewhere, and we're kind of helping to eliminate some of the colors we don't want. Like, I just don't think that I want the red in there, and I think that I like this brighter green. The next one that I do is just going to be a culmination of everything that I've discovered from options one and options two, and we're just going to keep refining and tweaking. Now, this teal was a little bit too dense of a color for me. It was a little bit too bold. So I think I'm going to try a different teal, maybe something that's just a hair lighter. Yeah, I think that's gonna work well. So I'm going to do the same exact spots of teal. It's not fighting as much. Like, when I'm looking at this composition, this is the color that just, like, is very heavy to me, and I think that it's not playing as nicely with the lightness of the other shades. So if it's just a hair lighter, I think it's all just gonna balance out a little bit better. I still like the places that I put the orange, but I do want to kind of be thinking about potentially adding in a yellow. Again, you can always take away. You can always change your mind, but it's just a fun exploratory face. Let yourself explore. It doesn't have to be perfect. This is why This is why I'm sketching these so messily so that nothing feels precious and I just don't spend too much time thinking about it. Let me go ahead and grab a yellow. I want one that has maybe a little bit of warmth to it. Yeah, it's almost got a tiny tint of orange in it. So let's say that the petals would be yellow. And let's do ooh, yellow and orange feels really good there. Let's get that pink back in for the teapot. And it would be kind of going around the yellow flowers, pink cake, still for the wind, some pink flowers. Let me get a bit more of that green in for the picture. I think I want the middle mug to still be green also. And then a couple of leaves. So we have green balancing throughout. We also have pink balancing throughout, and then we just have our little pops of blue that aren't quite as heavy as that. So this one's feeling pretty darn good to me. But I think for the next thumbnail, I want to try just something completely different just to see how it feels. I'm thinking it might be fun to play with some softer, maybe pastels. So perhaps still using this light pink, but then we could bring in a lilac, perhaps a very light teal and maybe a bright yellow. This is a very kind of springy, pastel, very fresh feeling. So I think it's going to express itself a little bit differently than the rest of these color palettes that we have, which are a little bit bolder, a little bit funkier. And I do love that about these, but sometimes you just have to see it so that you can A, B and compare and contrast. And it's almost feeling just, like, a little bit bland. I think I need another color that's going to have the weight of this pink so that this isn't the only strong color coming across. Maybe something like this. Yeah, that has a little bit of a heavier feel, and I think that those could play together nicely. Maybe instead of this color, it could be this. And then perhaps perhaps I'll bring in maybe a little bit of an orange, but a lighter orange. Okay, I like that. So I think what I'm going to do is remove that color and have these five colors be my new palate. And you know what? I've done a pink cake absolutely every single time, so let's change that up. Let's do a teal cake. And the vase has been teal, so I want to change that. I've also done a teal tea cup. Maybe everything that was pink will now be this light teal. Oh, that's gonna be a helpful way just to solve it. So everything that was teal will now be pink. Alright. Let me get these to the side. Everything that was orange can now be this darker purple. And then everything that was green can be this orangy color. It's kind of a marigold. Maybe I'll add some of that in the flowers, and the leaves could be this light teal color instead of the bright greens. And then I guess I'm gonna keep the yellows yellow, but it's a very light yellow this time. So this just has a completely different feel than this one. And you know what? I still think that I like the funkiness and the boldness of this, but now I know I can confirm this. 8. Texture: Now, we've got our color palette sorted. We know our composition. But before jumping into that final artwork, I do want to talk a little bit about texture because this might give you some additional ideas to add to your artwork before you create your final piece. Texture can just add a bit of visual interest and depth to our artwork if it's feeling a little bit too flat. So some of the basic ways to achieve texture are through shading, dots and lines. An example of how you could start adding shading would be with your pencil, where you go from a heavier pressure to a little bit of a lighter pressure, and it just gives you this kind of nice gradation. Another way that you could add shading would be to use one of your dual brush pins, and you can actually use the same one. So let's go ahead and do a little bit of color here. And then once it dries just for a moment, then you can keep adding a little bit more color. And this is just a subtle way to add shade. You also could do a darker color on top of the dual brush pen if you want it to be even darker than that. So this is another way to add just a little bit of shade, and it feels subtle, but it adds a little bit more depth. The next one that I want to talk about are dots. So something that you might see in vintage ephemera or vintage packaging would be the use of a half tone. What is a half tone? It's basically a technique where you use patterns of evenly spaced out dots to create the appearance of colors and shade. You can have the dots closer to each other, and that's going to give you a little bit of a more dense appearance. You could have the dots further away from each other. That's going to be a bit of a lighter appearance. And you could even go from dense to light if you want to kind of add almost that idea of shading, but using dots instead. So let's start a little bit denser and then we'll stretch out the dots just a little bit further. And you can see how it's starting to get a little bit arier and lighter towards the bottom. Another thing that you can do is to use different size dots. So these are all the same size approximately of dot. But let's say that we had really heavy thicker dots, and then they started shrinking in size a little bit, as well. That's also going to give that illusion of something becoming airrier and brighter. And this brings me to my next one, which would be stippling. And you might see stippling in something like a vintage tattoo, and you can go from really dense to really light. And you can be doing all of this stuff on top of a color. It doesn't have to be against a white sheet, but this is just an example. Another way that you can add texture is through line work. So one example of line work would be cross hatching, where you basically have parallel lines here, and then to add a little bit of depth, you start going on top of those lines. And so this kind of technique can give off almost a Victorian feel, sort of like those vintage etchings. But rather than scratching into metal like they did, we can just use pins for that. And same with how the half tones worked from denser to lighter, you can do the same thing with your line work. So let's start with these parallel lines again. And go from here to a little bit denser. And it gives a totally different effect than this right here. Another great way to use linework is with your outline. So let's just outline this, for example. You can either outline the entire object or you could just partially outline it. Sometimes that's what I like to do. I like to keep my line still just flowing. I like a little bit of openness. I think it adds a bit of movement to the illustration, but that's something that you can decide for yourself. Now, when you're thinking about using your line work, think about your line weight that you're using, and that kind of comes back into, so we've got these mono pens where you've got the different line weights. We went all the way 005-08, or you could use something like the food ando suke brush, where you're doing a very thin monoline, or you're doing a very thick monoline. Or you go from thin by having lighter pressure to thick by doing a little bit more pressure. Another way to add texture would be to do something like paint splatters or something that feels just very organic and natural and less contrived and organized than these techniques. If you want to do paint splatters, it really helps to have some kind of liquid. You could even use tea and just, like, splash it on your canvas. But you can also do something a little bit chaotic with your dual brush pens where you could just like add texture like that by doing random smudges and dashes to give sort of the idea of maybe a paint splatter. Another way to do splatters with a dual brush pin is to put a little bit of water on a palette. Dip your dual brush pin into. And again, add those random lines, but you're getting a little bit of more undulations and differences in the color. It goes from a darker to a lighter. And with that wet look, it just has a bit more of a splatter to it. I'm going to add a little bit of a darker color so that I can make sure you're seeing this. You can flick your paintbrush to get all these really fun little splatters. Might make a bit of a mess, but it's worth it, and then you can even scan some of this into the computer and you can have it as a reference for later. Ooh, I just remembered one more thing about linework that I want to talk with you about. So the line doesn't have to be just one continuous line like this. It could be a dotted line. It could be a dashed line. You can do zig zags, squiggles, all kinds of things. And this is a really great way to add maybe some decorative touches. I'm definitely going to be playing with stuff like this in my final illustration, little dashes, outlined dots. This sky is really the limit. I'm sure I'm not thinking of absolutely every single type of line here, but I do just want to give you some kind of examples. You can have one very smooth line or maybe if you're doing an outline and you don't want it to be perfect like that, maybe you do something a little bit scratchier like this. Oh, and now I just remembered one more. Another way to add texture would be to add rather than this very neat tidy cross hatching. You could even kind of just scribble a little bit. This is kind of the stippling version of the half tones. It's a little bit messier, but it might just give the energy that you're looking for for your illustration. Okay, I swear this is the last one, but I just thought of this. Another way to add texture is to use pattern. So it's whenever you have the same element. It doesn't actually have to be the same element, but it could be to add just a little bit more pia and a splash of visual interest to your composition. Here's an example of all of the same element in an organized pattern, but it doesn't have to be like that. We could have different elements like this and a circle and a star. But this could be a really fun little detail on some of your objects to include. For example, I'm gonna be doing maybe a little bit of a floral pattern on my teapot or on my picture. Another option would be to make a pattern out of dots, which is sort of what was happening with the half tones. You can make something even like a plaid pattern. And you can play with different line weights for that, too. Heavier one, lighter, they're closer together, further apart, even heavier. That's a fun stripe, but we're gonna turn it into a plaid. You could even do squiggles as a pattern. Me doing this right now just made it really feel like funky. So let's say that you were doing a 1970s inspired illustration, it might be worth looking at vintage 1970s wallpaper patterns to get some ideas of ways that you could add cool funky patterns to your own designs. 9. Let's Make Art!: And now for the moment we've been working towards, I'm going to create my final artwork. I have my nice sheet of watercolor paper. I have my colors all picked out, my pencil is sharpened, and I have my drawing pins ready. 10. That's a Wrap!: Ya, we made it to the end of everything that I have to share with you. So now I would love to see what you have to share with me. I really want to see what you've made. So please share your projects here and also share them on social so that other people can see them. And I really want to see it. So please tag me at Designed by She. Thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me, and I wish you all things creative and sparkly.