Transcripts
1. Introduction: Once upon a time, if you're anything like me, this phrase stirs up a lot of nostalgia and ideas of fantastical creatures, faraway places and magical happening. In this class, we'll use these themes found in fantasy, focal or inferred hills and add our own personal flair to make a unique watercolor illustration. I'm elated, I feel, or I go by arteriole and my online. I'm a queer artists from rural Pennsylvania. My r is inspired by figure drawing, your representation of body positivity, fantasy, and nature. My art career also started as an art teacher. So I worked in public schools and museums and camps after school programs, you name it. I worked with all sorts of skills, AGE levels as an educator. So I really value sharing what I've learned with others. That's why I want to teach you what I know about watercolor illustration and building fantasy art. Recently I've been focusing on adding LGBT plus themes to my art. I think aren't really reflects our personal identities and I want to see myself reflected in my art. That's also why I want to share this class with you. I want you to learn how to add your identities, your interests, your personality to your artwork. Students had all skill levels can follow along with this class, but it is focused on students with a basic understanding of watercolor art. The main focus is developing your ideas and turning them into a series of illustrations are key lessons will be a review of materials and techniques for watercolors, brainstorming, and adding your own personal spin on your illustrations. Gathering reference materials and inspiration, developing thumbnails to plan out your final project. Different ways you can connect your pieces together to form a cohesive series and sketching, painting and finishing your final illustrations. This class is great for people working on growing their portfolios. Artists looking for new ways to generate ideas are students hoping to gain more experience with watercolor? If you have any questions during this class, please feel free to use the Discussion tab down below. You can add all the skills you learn here to your artist's toolbox. That way you can do the process, the planning, the research, the adding and personality is your art on your own and find a process that works best for you and excited about your ideas, grow. Let's make smart.
2. The Project: Next we're going to talk about the class project. Your goal during the classes to create a series of at least three watercolor illustrations focusing on fairy tales, fantasy, or folklore. This series, I'm continually working on an expanding, I'm focusing on character design based on various fantasy and folklore characters as bands, She's demons and gargoyles. I'm also focusing on fashion and choosing one color palette for each character. This way, I was able to incorporate some of my personality and interests and to my piece, which is something I want to show you how to do over the course this class. Everyone's aren't going to look very different than the ADA depending on what fairy tales, what subject matter, what styles you choose. But I really think you should take something that you're interested in, that you're passionate about and something that is personal to you because I think that's what makes the best art. I'm going to show you how to incorporate your personality during all parts of this class and on lessons. For example, during the brainstorming phase, you might pick a fairy tale left personally resonates with you. We're theme that's important to you. During the illustration phase, you may pick colors that you like, your favorite colors you might pick a style that you're interested in or as meaning to you. In these ways, you can add a bit of personality and your own personal identity that each and every illustration piece you make us laugh, you'll be watching me create. The next piece of this series is of the first celebrities and you're watching as I create the next one. I've recently been focusing on Polish fairytales because of my grandmother's Polish heritage. So I've been reading polish versions and many famous period hills like the frog princess here, I also change the character. So it's two princesses who fall in these ways. I'm incorporating many aspects of my personality and my identity and tell these stories along with this class to create a series of artwork is a great way to expand your portfolio or just create art the head around the house. Through this project, you'll learn a lot about brainstorming skills to complete your illustrations and ways to make your illustrations more personalized. Our next lesson will be about the materials and techniques I use when creating illustrations. During our class. It be great if you could share any work you do in the project section down below. This could include your finished piece as well as brainstorming, planning, and any prep work you do. I'm looking forward to seeing what you create. Now let's get started.
3. Materials & Techniques: In this first lesson, we're gonna get started talking about materials such as the watercolors I use. I'm just gonna go over a brief summary of the materials I use and some techniques I use. I'm going to go in depth about materials and techniques. This class is intended for people who have a basic understanding of watercolor, but this will have some reminders from ideas of how I use them. I might be different and materials I use for reference for the rest of the lessons. You'll also be able to find my material and supply list and the Project and Resources tab. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like you want to be under the projects and resources tab here. And then if you look over to the right, there's a resources area. The link will be down below that. Before we get started, I also want to remind you that materials don't have to be expensive for you to make good art. People can make awesome art with Crayola, with other 2D materials. You find that the dollar store, sometimes we're limited by availability, what's around us and our budget. So I understand that not everyone can have access to the materials I use and I want to encourage you to make the best art you can with the materials you have to get started. I'm going to talk about my pens, pencils, and the eraser. I use my main or the sacra black Pigma Micron pens, the big medium point mechanical pencil and 0.07 and a kneaded eraser. Here are all my supplies spread out and this is basically all I use when I'm doing sketching and outlining. Sometimes I outlined and getting and sometimes I outline at the end. This is the bit pamphlet I usually use. They are trip. I can get them in bulk. I can get them pretty much anywhere. So those are what I use. I've used them for a long time and they always work out great for me. I don't really use erasers on, on, instead I use a kneaded eraser. I tend to like Prismacolor kneaded eraser the best. I've tried other ones and sometimes there's two sticky. You can move them into different shapes like this. So if they're along like this, you can use a ROM against the paper and pick up all the markings pretty easily. I keep a few on hand. So if they get too sticky, if they get too dry it out, I can use something else. Lastly, these are my Micron pens and they're my go-to because they're waterproof. I have five different sizes. Smallest is 0 5, and largest is 0, 8. I tend to go with the O2, which is in the middle. It's kind of a medium point. I feel like it's a pretty typical outlines, very similar to what the pencil outline is. I do change it up sometimes I might use a small one for fine detail or maybe I use a thicker outline for a bigger piece. These are the pens I use the most and I recommend them because they are waterproof. Next, I'm gonna talk about my paints, papers and brushes. My pants are Daniel Smith, extra fine, Artesia and cure talky. My papers are TCGA and cancer and my brushes or Royal and Mike Nichols Zen series person. We're gonna talk about my Daniel Smith extra fine watercolors. I have a set right here. They come in a set of six. I have a yellow light, a scarlet, a rose, ultramarine of gamboge, and a phthalo blue. This is what they look up up close. They're nice to watercolor in there. A really nice pigmented color. I really like them for my more important work, work, I'm kind of putting more effort into them. This is an example of the artwork they made. I think the colors are much more pigmented and easily to get to a really rich bold color compared to some of the other water colors I've used. My RTs, a water color set. I have a booth in a palette I set up and rate in the tubes. These are all the tubes and here's the box. It lists all the colors, the pigments. And then at the bottom it has a light fastness, transparency and pigment codes, which is also on the tubes. And I got the 60 colors. I recommend a smaller color so you can get used to mixing colors. So this is the inside of my palette and I have them on little wells. This is vermilion red, so a21. And then I can find the little well which I also have marked with little washi tape. So when I need to refill them, they're easily defined and they're all dried out. I just need to add water when I want to use them, but this way can also refill them as I need. I also was our managers use them straight from the bottle in a little while like this. This is an example of a piece of artwork I did with them. I can get very vibrant colors. I really like them. They're easier to work with and they're affordable, which is great. Sometimes I find certain colors need more layers to look more pigmented. Some colors are a little bit chalky inconsistency, but overall, I really like these watercolors. Last watercolor set I'm going to talk about in depth, isn't a cure. Tacky story colors. They are different metallic sheets of gold. There is one that's more of like a white pearl color and the rest are various shades of gold. Mostly I use these on top of other colors to give a final finishing touch of Shrine. Just like in this piece, primarily the piece is blue and yellow. And then sometimes I layered the gold on top and areas to kinda give a highlight and a pop of color. I also definitely want to encourage you that you already have watercolors that are affordable. That are cheaper and you don't have access to these watercolors thing are definitely great to use. These are both student grade watercolors. I have a crayola that I used to use all the time before I upgraded. And I also have this chameleon watercolor set. So use whatever materials are accessible, affordable, and work for you. Next step is watercolor paper. This is my Canson watercolor is 300, which is the standard for watercolor paper. You want to make sure that you're using sturdy, durable paper for watercolor because of the amount of liquid you end up using. It has plenty of pages, is actually pretty affordable and you can get at most stores is blue bound. I prefer glue bound edges. I feel like they're easier to tear out once you're ready to tear him out. I would definitely recommend Canson because it's affordable and like I mentioned, you can get at most stores. I've seen that at like Walmart out my goals, you can order it online. So I think it's accessible and it's a great paper for the price. I do also use our teaser watercolor paper. This one is another glue down it is again the 300 grams. This one has a smooth side and a texture side. So if you're not sure what you like working with the best, you can test this one out and get both. However, I do have a sketchbook version right here. I got it because it was a little bit more affordable. You've got more pages for about the same price, but it has the perforated edges. So you have to rip out the P it is, I find it's a little easier to accidentally tear an edge of a page if you can splurge on any one watercolor supply, I do recommend it's your paper just because if you're using a cheaper paper, a paper that doesn't hold up to water color. Well, it's going to affect your watercolor. If you go with a thinner paper that's not met for watercolors, you might end up tearing your paper. You might end up with pilling on your paper as well. I definitely recommend getting a good watercolor paper, making sure it's watercolor paper, or at least thick enough paper that it can hold up to your watercolors. Like I said, cancels really affordable and I can find that at most stores. And these are my royal and laying Nicole watercolor brushes. They are specifically meant for watercolors, so they hold water and pigment better. I have six different sizes. This is my largest ones. I usually use this one for big areas of washes and then I have a tiny itsy-bitsy one like this that I use for small details. If I really just want to get in there and be precise with my colors, I would recommend getting an assortment of sizes of Russia's, maybe getting a large, medium and small if you're getting started and experimenting with brushes a little bit, any brushes you have will work. But watercolor brushes tend to hold water and pigment better. So I didn't notice a difference when I switch from keeper craft brushes, specifically watercolor brushes, but that might be something you want to invest in them align. Or you can buy these individually in a couple of them instead of getting a whole step. And you'll have a bunch of miscellaneous supplies. So you might want to pause here or check my resources for my supply list, but I'm going to go over each and everyone washi tape. I uses the tape down the edges to get a nice clean white line around my piece at the end. And then you just peel it away. Colored pencils I use when I'm all done with a water color to add a little bit of texture and color. At the end, I use all different brands, but these are our teaser. I also use watercolor pencils, and these ones can work like watercolor. You just add a little bit of water to Libre if you want to blend them out. Uni-ball gel pens, I use these to add a little bit of a finishing touch at the end for highlights and white or does accents and gold. Staedtler fine letters. I like to sometimes add colored outlines at the end. So these are at the very end when you're all done for some outline and finishing touches, I want to draw, of course, for adding water to your paint and cleaning your brushes, paper towels, of course, I have a messy person, but also you want to use them to clean your brushes and eyedropper. They're just cheap eye dropper to add water to your paints. I like to use a brush folder or my brushes roll all over. This one I had custom made by an artist, cute little rainbow caterpillar worm, and it has spots for each brush. And finally, paint palettes. These are my collection of paint palettes I like having all sorts of OEM. I have ones with one well with six swells. This one came with acrylic paint kit. This one is a rose that is porcelain, one of my better ones. And then I have a ton of these as cheap plastic ones. These are just what I use him. It doesn't have to be what you use if you use something else that works better for you, that's great. I'd love to hear about it in the discussion down below. If you have anymore questions about the materials I use or maybe I forgot that covers up then let me know. Now that you have an idea of the materials I use, we're going to move on in the next lesson. And our next lesson we're going to start to talk about brainstorming and coming up with your ideas. See you in the next lesson.
4. Brainstorming: For this lesson, we're going to talk about brainstorming your ideas. I think brainstorming can be the best or the worst part of creating a new piece. Sometimes you have a ton of ideas and you're ready to get going, and there's no limit to your creativity. Other times it's time to create a new piece and you just don't have any new, fresh ideas that you're interested in. I like to keep paper note that all my ideas, I have a little notebook like this wherever an index and I make lists of ideas for series are challenges. Youtube video ideas, any ideas and I can craft, I just wanna make sure I write them now. And sometimes I keep notes right in my sketchbook. Here's an example from last year's mermaid. I made a list of possible fish I wanted to draw for mermaids. And then a list as a month phenomena of the fishery actually drew and check them off. Sometimes I just add post-it notes or tally marks like you see here. Just so I keep track of all my ideas and my progress for this, I didn't create some worksheets just in case you needed a little bit of help brainstorming, give you a system that works for you. You should definitely use a, continue doing it in that way, whatever that is. And I'd love to hear about it in the discussion down below. This is an example of one of the worksheets. It's an ABC list of fairy tales just to give you some ideas of fairytales, a start thinking of and we'll talk about it more in this lesson. Here are the worksheets. You can print them off as PDFs, just make sure you print them to scale. We have ABC brainstorming, which is different fairy tales. Subject matter brainstorming, which focuses on what happens in the Fareed hills and your favorite things. And theme brainstorming, which focuses on finding an idea based on the themes of the stories. And these are the actual printed copy and I just wanted you to see MSE how they present. I have them printed in color, but you can definitely print them in black and white and it'll look just fine. We're going to go over each one individually just so you have an idea of how to fill them out and what I intended them to be used for. So first up is ABC brainstorming. This is an alphabetical list of classic fairy tales. I have two pages. One of them is filled in with very hill already. The other one is blank for you so you can fill them in. You can cross out, highlight your circle tails to narrow it down to three ideas and pick a final idea. Here's an example of what it might look like. I crossed out varied hills, I highlighted a few to narrow it down. And then I pick three of the highlighted ones are my top three. And then I would have picked a final idea, which is Cinderella. This is just to give you a list of fairy tales to make you started thinking of fairy tales if you're going along and one of these fairy tales really clicks with you or you think of one as you're making your list, definitely just go with it and roll with it and you don't have to complete the whole thing. Next is a subject matter brainstorming where I'm focusing on what's happening and the characters in the stories. So I have one that's already filled out with examples and one that's blank for you to fill out yourself. When you're filling out the one yourself, I would start with your favorite story is write down a few and put them here. And then maybe as you go through, still focus on one of them as you think of the other questions. So first, what if, what if nothing happened differently in your favorite fairy tale? Hey, recruiters may be a creature from that period Hill, or it could be another creature that you bring into your story. And a mash-up where you bring maybe your two favorites together or maybe you asked your favorite up with a totally different period Hill to make something new and interesting. I last is going to be themed brainstorming, where we've focused on the theme and then come up with a fairy tale. So we focus on stuff that are important to us. Examples of this are hears transformation could be the bees transforming and Beauty and the Beast. Royalty could be about the frog princess getting married to the prints. Family, could be when the sister saves her brothers in the wild swans and karma happens at the end of Cinderella one or substances get consequences. Might want to think about things that you want to add. Fairy tales, such as your personal identity, culture, you come from making period hills more diverse. There's tons of things you can think of. Even something as simple as changing the ending are telling us for important and personal to you. So here I thought If them things to fill it out, I have romance, princesses and adventures. Maybe those are things you really enjoy and you like and period heels that happen a lot and you'd like to see more of maybe things you wish you saw are happy step families. Usually it's evil stepmothers, evil step sisters. Maybe the princess is the hero of your own story. Maybe you want to rework a fairy tale so it's more personal to your culture and your identity. Remember if something else that we didn't go over works better for you, for brainstorming. You should definitely do that. This is just to help anyone who doesn't have any ideas. We wanted to generate some ideas. Maybe you just wanted to look at the ABC fairy tale list or some lithium lists. Hopefully this has helped you think of some ideas for your illustration. I would love to hear about any other techniques used for brainstorming, how you want to grow brainstorming either in the discussion tab or under your project details. In the next lesson we'll talk about gathering references for your illustration. Hopefully now you have some ideas and you can find some references that are relevant to you.
5. Gathering References: In the next lesson, we'll talk about gathering references for your illustration. I want to show you some places I gather referential images and how I end up using that when gathering reference images. It's also important to remember that you need to check out things like copyright and make sure you're not using other artists work without their permission. One of my favorite websites to use for references is Pexels. Artists and photographers can upload their images and they choose to upload them. I like it better than Pinterest for that reason because it's the artists that are uploaded in these images. They come from the photographers and then get credit for their work. You can collect images similar to Pinterest. So I'm going to show you how to do that here. This is an image I like that I might use for a reference in the future. You can give it a like or you can add it to a collection. So I'm going to add it to my fairy tale collection so I can look at it later. You can also download it. And when you download it, you get this screen. And it gives links to things like Instagram to Twitter, sometimes to their PayPal, and you can also copy credit to share that with others. This is what the profiles like. You can scroll through the artists images and find other images you might like, or maybe images that are part of a series. I'm going to give them a follow since I saved them their images and I liked their photography, so they'll show up in my feed later. Another thing you can do is collect your images into folders. I do this and collect them into subject matter, into ideas I might have in the future for light wash paintings, I already have a fairy tale folder going. I have a lot of wedding photos. I feel like wedding photos end up being magical and have a fairy tale theme I can use for romance. I also collect images I think might be useful, that might be a little bit fantastical though Here's an example from the images I would collect when I'm trying to get him spray should, I might just go in here and scroll and I might give me an idea. I might not even use the image directly to create my apiece. Just give me idea of a pose of a subject matter. Another resource I use a lot is a Doric facade. They are an artist who take pose reference images for artists, they have a combination of free and paid four paths. So I'll show you a little bit of both here. The free ones are free to use for artists. They're great for all different poses. They have all different body types, all different types of people, all different types of poses. So definitely someone who for look into. And here's an example of that premium packs which are usually themed patch with a ton of photos that you can use for references. So examples are back poses, portrait poses, sitting poses. You can get a full path or bomb for a pretty affordable price. But then there's also their free stock which is housed on media art. Usually the upload one or two images from their packs and eventually sometimes they upload a bunch of their images from their packs. So, so here are some examples. You can also see they sort them into things like sitting or kneeling, dramatic regions we can find poses you need may also have their usage agreement which you definitely should read through if you decide to use any of these. It tells you how to use them for photo manipulation if you're using it for references. So it's always important to make sure you have permission and make sure you understand what permissions. The last slide I'm going to talk about is a Biodiversity Heritage Library. They collect resources to have free access to biodiversity knowledge. I mostly use their Flickr stream, but they do also have like books and a catalog of information if you need it. But in their Flickr stream, they have Creative Commons and public domain artwork in illustrations from scientific journals, books, and that sort of thing. Here you can have an idea of what kind of things they have it sorted into categories or what book it's from. So you see a lot of birds and reptiles, a lot of butterfly. So I use it a lot since I draw a lot of nature and incorporate a lot of nature into my, and I'll click on one of these to show you a little bit more in-depth of like how the images are arranged in the folders. I'm going to go ahead and pick this butterfly one. I use butterflies a time. So this one only has three images, but it gives you a little more information. You can see all the images. You can download the images and scroll through the different pages of the books. You can also see the copyright. So this is public domain, No Papi rate. So this is free from known restrictions. It's always important to look at this for every image that might vary slightly, you want to always make sure you're using images, you have permission to you. And you're using them in ways that you're allowed to. How should I use these images? So here I might pick this image. Maybe I'm going to draw a theory. So I might be like, Oh, I really like this pose. But maybe I want to change it up a little bit. Maybe I want to do something different for the wings. So I might go to Biodiversity Heritage gallery and look for another butterfly. So I pick this one but because of the wind tree but isn't black and white, but then I can pick any colors I want. But I really like this when trip, I think it'd be really interesting to use those as the wings instead of these like Ghazi fake liens. But as you can see, it's only wakes up photo. So I might go to a Dorcas stock for a sitting polls that I would use. I might look through and just find a simple setting pose like this one here. Then I can have a reference for the legs. Make sure I have a good pose for it. And maybe I decided to have her sitting on a toad stool. And have was full fairy theme if I wanted a full body pictures. So that's a way I can use the three letters together. Hopefully now you have some ideas and you can find some references that are relevant to you. I already created your project. Now's a great time to do that and include your reference images you're using. If you've already created your project, you can go ahead and edit your project here. If you scroll down to the bottom of the next page, there should be a section at the as add more content. You can go ahead and click Image. You get this screen and you can select the image that you want to use and open it up. It'll paste them in text area like this and you can type whatever you are an add as many images as you want. Our next lesson is going to be on using these reference images and your ideas for your thumbnails and your sketching process to get ready for your final illustration.
6. Experimenting with Thumbnails: Why might you want to incorporate making thumbnails into your art-making process? For me, there's three main reasons that I do this. One is playing with composition. You can test it out before committing to it. And others experimenting with color. Same thing. You can test it out before making a commitment. And the big thing for me is making a plan for my piece. And we're going to go over each one more in depth. This is the piece we're gonna be looking for composition. I wanted my next piece to be a fairly capital. You might have seen these thumbnails before in some of my other videos, but these were the last sketches that I made. First are my thumbnails before I made the piece, that piece did end up looking different because of the references I found and ended up using. But give me an idea of what I wanted to include and the kind of arrangement I wanted. So first of all, playing with composition. You can play around with composition before making a commitment. You can make a sketch before committing to on your paper, sometimes sketching any erasing awhile and testing out designs on paper can damage the paper a little bit, especially with watercolors. So this way you don't damage the paper before you're ready. You can also test things out like a landscape orientation, like I did here. Rarely draw IT. Landscape orientation is very often, especially with portraits. So it was an idea I was considering. I did end up going with it, but it's something I'm going to keep in mind for the future. Next, we're gonna talk a bit about experimenting with color. This is another big thing for me. I like to test my colors before I use them. And there's a couple of ways I usually do this. First, I usually pick out the colors I'm thinking of using for this. I picked out the yellow and the blue first, and then I was looking for colors that I thought would match that would complement those colors. Well, so here I prepped the colors and then I just make little swatches underneath the piece. This is a one way I test my colors before using them just to make sure they match and they go together. Well, I usually just line them up in a row like this. And then sometimes if there's a color I'm not sure of, I might do it twice next to a color. I'm not sure it matches like I did with this orange color. I actually ended up not liking these colors together. So then I decided to try a totally different color palette for the next one. In this one I painted everything and how I would like it to look in the final piece. This gives you a better idea of how the colors would look together and how you would arrange them is a little bit more involved, but I still do it very messily. I don't worry about getting everything perfectly or making even layers. I just want to get an idea of how colors look together, where I am. Then it also gives you a chance to add or take away colors that you end up not liking in your composition before you get too far into it. So here I realized I wanted one more pink color. And the biggest thing for me for making thumbnails is making a plan. I think I've touched on already as I've talked about the other two topics. Because making a plan is probably the most important part of thumbnail making for me. This way I don't commit to something and my final piece and end up not liking it. I can think about things like composition and color and experiment with them before committing to them in the final piece, Here's an example of where that could really affect my final piece. I pick this dark green. I expected it to look different with the rest of the colors, and then I realized it was a little too muddy. Everything else is very vibrant and kind of pastel. So I decided I needed a different green. This one I didn't like either. It just didn't have the right kind of tell. And I think I needed a little bit more of a blue tone because of the teal. Then finally I pick this dark blue and I did end up liking this blue-green color. I layered together the best out of any of the colors. I tested it with a background. For me sometimes if I don't make a plan with my piece, even if it's a really rough plan, even if it's just an idea of the colors I'm going to use. I might end up second-guessing myself. During the painting process, you get nervous about messing up my piece and not finishing a piece as quickly as I was like because I'm worried about messing it up. Hopefully now you an idea of how thumbnails might help you out when creating art? The biggest way they definitely helped me out with making a plan. If I don't have a plan in place, sometimes I get halfway through a sketch or halfway through coloring. And they'll have an idea of where I'm going next or what colors I'm using. So it's definitely helpful for making a plan for me. It can definitely be helpful on creating a series because it helps you make a plan, whether that's picking colors or picking a similar composition for your pieces ahead of time. I hope to see some of your thumbnails when you share your project. In our next lesson, we're going to talk about ways you can create a cohesive series.
7. Creating A Series: In this lesson, we're going to talk about ways to create a series and tips on creating something that's cohesive. For this last one, I'm mostly going to talk about one of my series that I'm continuously working on is my series or I use monochrome color palettes to make modern-day versions of classic creatures and monsters. A lot of ways to make a cohesive series, but the three ways I focus on a color palette. So having matching or similar or complimentary colors and compositions, we're arranging things in a similar way and subject matter, so repeating the same subject matter, the same focus over the year pieces. So we're going to start with color palette. I started my series back in November, which was a November where you do one drawing a day of one main color a day in any media. I ended up making my own color palette based on the RTs are watercolors that I had. So I will make them up. So I added an idea of the colors I was using a beforehand. And each piece is a monochrome color based on the color of the day. What I ended up doing for this series is I used one color for the whole piece. So like you see here, pink. So I do a base layer and then I can keep layering on top to make the different shades. I also decided I wanted one more connecting color between the pieces. So I picked gold. So I went through and used a gold metallic gel pen and add a little highlight each piece so there was something else connecting them. So that's a way you can do it as well if you want a different colors for each piece, but then wanted a color that connected the whole series together. Next, the composition. So I arranged each piece the same way. I have one piece I haven't finished yet. But here's an example of all the pieces. They each have a central character in the middle. I tried to have them have actually poses, poses where they have some movement. And then I have a lot of negative space around them. I didn't include a background because I wanted the focus to be on the person in the image and also on the color. So on those ways, even though each piece has a different color, each piece has a different character. They all have a similar arrangement of the subject matter. Some other ideas for making compositions that you are unique and interesting and you can pick shapes. So either you can go with the traditional shape for each piece of the paper, or you can pick shaped like diamonds or hearts or anything you want to convey that there are series and they connect and they match. And then that leads us into talking about the subject matter itself. Using the same subject matter across your pieces can really convey that it's part of a series fairly easily. So if you have a series that's all made up of bugs, a series that's all made up of princesses at really conveys that it's a series for mine. The subject matter was characters from fantasy and folklore. I painted them while thinking of fashion and of the color. So each one is based off a different type of creature, like a fairy here or a gargoyles, but they have the same overarching theme of fantasy creatures and characters. These two pieces fit some of the criteria I mentions on those ways that might seem like they could be part of the series, but I think they're very different and I don't think they fit in a series for me. They're both the frog princess, but I drew them differently. They both use cool colors, but I used them very differently and they have a very different composition. So I use the paper more traditional nano left. But I came up with an oval composition on the right. So they end up looking very different. So while they have some things like the subject matter is similar, the colors are somewhat similar. I don't think they look like a cohesive theories. However, these two pieces, I went into it making a series and use the same composition. I arranged them where there's a central character in the middle of the oval. I tried to have the same arrangement of the border with less central image at the bottom, some little decorations and then some florals. I put the castle at the top to tie them together as well. So while these to use very different color palettes, I think these real as a series. I can imagine lining up many of the years, 5, 10, however many. And because of the similar composition they would read as a part of a series. But I do also want to encourage you to break the rules. So these are more guidelines for you. So if you're not sure how to start, if you wanted some tips on how to create a series, I think these work really well, but I wanted to encourage you to make up your own rules. There's ways to then leads to change these. And if you want something to be a series that I didn't cover, it definitely works. For example, I mentioned the princess of the frog pieces together don't work for me as a serious. But maybe the series would be different ways to paint the image or the Princess and the Frog. So maybe each and everyone is different, and that's the series and that's the theme of the series and that could definitely work. And then close that I'm going to get started on scattering my next piece of my series. It's going to be the next in this series. I'll give you a little bit preview here. So this is the next finished piece. And then the next couple of videos you'll see me as I work through this piece.
8. Making the Illustration: Sketching: In the next three videos, I'm gonna be showing you sketching and painting and then adding the final touches to your piece. And this video, I'll be talking through my sketching process and giving you some tips on how I do with it. I've showed it off before, but this is the piece that I'll be working on and you'll see some better views of it soon. This piece goes with this piece and part of a series. Just as a reminder, this a little bit of background on this piece before we get started, she is based on the mermaid of worse off. It was one of the stories that my grandmother and my uncle remembered when we're talking about Polish fairy tales. So I decided it was one I should pay. I spend some time doing some research on Warsaw, Poland colors and plants to use in the piece. And I'll talk about that a little bit more. So I'll be talking about sketching the multiple steps I go through and sketching and inking your piece before moving on to painting. When I get started, I start with a basic outline of the shapes to get an idea of composition. You can see I have the other piece in the series on the left, just to get an idea of the composition of that, TO mimic it. That way the two pieces will look more like a part of a series. I'll get into fine tuning the details of the sketch later. While they don't go into a lot of detail on the face. Yeah, I just give some guidelines, so I just know the tilt of the head, the positioning of the head for the future. I don't want to add anything in yet in too much detail in case I have to erase and change up the composition or a pose. I do end up changing up the post later. So you'll get to see that a little bit. I wanted to show the pose references I used from a Dorcas stack. These are the three main poses I use. The ones on the left and the right, I use her, the body type and then the positioning of the body. Both for the angles of the bodies, the angle of the arms and angle of the head. For the middle one, you'll see me using a mini here because I use it to reposition the hand. I decided the pose I have for the shield doesn't work and I want something that shows off the back of the shield and her arm more. So this is where I decided to change the hand pose. I don't want to block out so much of her body with the shield, so I have it off to the side instead. This is the best time to start making changes because you're doing a light sketch still before you move on to a more finalized sketch. I usually sketch in multiple phases, so I have a very light sketch and then I move on to cleaning up the sketch a little bit. This cleaner sketch is a scheduled trace over it when I do the line art in ink. And this is where I start to add details like the handle of the sword, the shape of the face, the nose and the eyes and the ears. I also start to add in some details like scales on her lower half. The tail fins. A few times. I do use the eraser on my pencil, but if you can see the research pretty sure and smudgy. So if I do use it, it really smarter left my papers sometimes I just have it in my hands. That's what I use. But I really want to recommend you use your kneaded eraser to more easily clean up those extra lines. The kneaded erasers is really good at picking up those lines. And it also doesn't damage or smudge your paper as much as the eraser on a pencil Would. You can see that even my cleaner sketch is still fairly messy. I don't worry about cleaning up completely until I do my ink liner. Here you'll see a section that I end up changing a lot later. Add an end based on reference of Polish architecture in Warsaw. I wasn't really sure how to arrange it because I didn't want a castle on the top or something like a castle. But my reference was very tall. So efforts, I was really not sure how to mimic that style and show it here. So at first I just added in an extended outside of the page. Later on you see that I changed that because I don't think it worked for the composition. And later on, if I make prints or stickers or anything like that of this piece, it won't work well for that. But I do recommend if you're not sure of something to the sketch it out and try it out. Usually in the earliest sketchy stage, you should try it out and see how it looks. And if it doesn't work, you can definitely erase it before you end up inking and painting your piece. So here for this border, I wanted to really mimic the style of the other piece I may have. So first, I have some plant life that's native to Poland. It's a type of workspace. But then I also wanted things that were really unique to this piece. And I wanted things that reference the mermaid reference, Warsaw in Poland and the fairy tale. So the crown is on the coat of arms with a mermaid. So I want to include a fancy crown. I also end up adding seashells. War thought is on the vicious Yellow River. But in some of the legends it says that The Little Mermaid and the mermaid of Warsaw were sisters and they went separate ways. And the Baltic Sea, I wanted to something that incorporated more water element and had a nod to the Baltic Sea. So here I add my last detail to the shield. I had realized I didn't really know what a shield looked like back, but I added the straps and that's one of my finishing touches before I move on to inking here. I started with the face just because it was Central, but sometimes it could be good to start at the top and work your way down. I use my Micron pens, which are really good at not splurging on, drying quickly and they don't smudge or run with watercolor. I'll mostly let you watch a lot of the inking process, but I pretty much just trace over my cleaner lines with the micron pen. This way I have some nice clean lines for my watercolor piece. Sometimes I do save my line for after I paint, but in this case I wanted it to have nice clean lines to fill in with the watercolor versus having watercolor and then doing the line work on top. This is a section I really wanted to point out and make a couple of changes here. So first off, I add more waves because I decide, are there just weren't enough waves to be visually interesting. And then this is when I decide it's pretty last-minute that this capsule just doesn't work how I have it. So I erase half of it and I redraw it quickly before I ink it. This is really your last chance to redo anything you end up not liking before he kinda seal it in with the ink. Or alternatively, if you sir, painting before you seal it in with the watercolor, remember the kneaded eraser is, your friend is very moldable so you can rule it out. You can squish it into a triangle, whatever shape you need here, erase with. I'm going to be using it a lot for erasing all these extra line because I don't want these extra lines sealed and under the watercolor, since watercolors transparent, you can often see them through the watercolor, especially with lighter colors. And I don't want that. I make sure I erased all. He has extra lines that none of them are there and it's also a great time to see if you missed any places with inking. Usually I have missed a few little details here and there, and then I go back over and quickly ink them before I erase the lines completely. I recommend you take some pictures of your sketching process. I think it's a great way for you to reflect and pay attention to how your pieces coming along as you go. Sometimes you get really involved in that. And you might not realize how far along the paintings come, you might not see their process and you may even sometimes forget what it looked like originally. I really like taking a picture during the different stages. So maybe the sketch, the ink, maybe the first painting, and then the final with all the details so that I can see the different stages. This will also help later when you reflect on your piece, I'd love it if you included some pictures of your sketch to compare to your final piece. Here's a preview of the piece before I go ahead and start painting. Our next lesson, we'll be painting the illustration. So you'll work through painting with me and I'll teach you some tips and tricks I use in watercolor illustrations.
9. Making the Illustration: Painting: In this video, I'm going to be talking about painting. The piece has started in the last video. Once again, this video, we'll be mostly of me working. So it'll be a lot of me working. Spout process of mu painting and some tips as I go along, we're going to get right into painting. Or in a way, you might have noticed I didn't make a thumbnail for this piece. I initially didn't think I needed to because I was basing it off the composition of the other piece. So I pretty much knew the components and how I was going to arrange it. So I knew I liked the colors together in the bottom right. I just was a little unsure how I wanted to arrange them. So I decided to go ahead and make the thumbnail and see how they worked best that way when I start painting, I'm not going to worry about where the colors go. I like to make sure my colors are balanced as well so that they flow well through the painting and they make your eye follow the colors. So the very first thing I do is add a layer of clean water. This way you end up working wet on wet, and this is the best way to get a nice even color. I just do this for my base colors. I work in sections because it's easier to make sure you get those nice even colors. There are some natural sections of the piece. So for example, the face can be one section. The right side of the body can be one sections since there's some lines that divide it from the middle and the left side. So I would use these sections to your advantage because then you're not painting too big of an area and worried about keeping it all wet the same time. It's a little easier to get a consistent color this way. Sometimes I switch to a totally different section as I wait for it to dry and I don't have to worry about the colors accidentally bleeding or accidentally touching a section that's still wet. I can also be a little bit of an impatient person. So continuing to work on this and switching to another section helps me continue working, continue with my workflow and prevent me from getting distracted or from painting a section before it's dry. So I like to switch the brushes. I use a lot to make sure I'm using the right size for a section. I have six brushes. I usually use two of them mainly. So usually I use a medium one the most and then a small on the most. So I made sure to switch the small one and I was doing the eyebrows and then I switch back to the medium one for the hair. If we're using two smaller brush painting, a larger area becomes difficult. It's easier to let an area accidentally dry before you're ready. So try to be aware of what size brush you're using. If you don't have a lot of options for sizes of brushes, I would go with a medium tip and just be very careful. You can definitely get those small details. I holding your brush different, but using the tip and so the edge. But it just makes it a lot easier for me to switch up the size brush I'm using a little bit before, but when you're working, you just want to really make sure that area you're working in is still wet as you paint. That's the easiest way to make sure the whole section has an even color that you don't get any variations in color that you don't want. Maybe you do want variations and colors and that's great too. But for me I wanted a nice even layer of color. So for example, if I'm working on the bottom of the tail, and that's where I'm adding color. I want to go over the top of the tail and then paint down into the bottom to continue the color on and try to get some even colors. You can see that on our side I overlapped a little bit of extra color, ends up working because that's where I add a shadow. But that's the kind of line I'm talking about. When you let something dry, you don't keep it wet, you get that line Rican distinctly see where colored dried. And if that's not something you want, you just want to be careful that keep your section why as you work, you are going to be building up those layers of colors. So if you make a mistake, it's easy to fix later on as you build up the layer of color. It's just easier for me if I make sure my base colors even before moving on. I always keep a paper towel handy. It's great for fixing mistakes quickly and cleaning up any paint and it goes outside the lion. I had a little bit of issue with the yellow bleeding a little bit. So one the color black, I just blot it with a paper towel to pick up the extra paint. If you really need to pick up a lot of paint, you can wet the area you made the mistake and a little bit and then blend it with a paper towel. I wouldn't recommend doing this and areas we've already painted. But if maybe you get a little bit of yellow in the background that you know is going to be blue. You can just pay a little bit of water over that yellow spot and then blot it with the paper towel until you pick up as much paint as possible. Again, you can see here that I'm working on the background sections. I just want to remind you it's so much easier to do it this way. The composition of the piece just naturally sections off areas. You can also see I continue to move around the piece of law. I just don't want anything to bleed into each other. I wanted nice, clean colors that are distinct from each other. You won't see it here, but I do take breaks between sections sometimes to just to get up, to do stretches, to get a fresh cup of coffee. So I just want to encourage you to take breaks if you need it. Break's can definitely be helpful because you can come back with a new perspectives, come back refreshed. You'll see here that I forgot to ink a little section. There's another section I forgot to ink earlier in the piece as well on the arm. But if you noticed that just take a minute and Inca quick. My Micron pens are really great at drawing quickly, so I don't have to worry about inking and then painting over top of them right away. If you're using different waterproof pens, you might find that they take a little bit longer to dry. So just be aware of how quickly your pen dries and how quickly it is. Waterproof. Watercolor is all about building up those layers. So to get the very bright colors, the vibrancy leaves the hues you want. You just want to keep building up those layers. I realized that the yellow I had was just way too pale. And I keep building it up until I get this nice vibrant yellow. Either the same thing with the hair, with the background. So you'll see me continue to build up the colors throughout the piece. Like I mentioned earlier when I was working on the thumbnail, I wanted to make sure that I balanced the colors throughout my piece, but I wanted to carry the red throughout the piece, so I added a little bit at the top, then there's the hair and then there's the shells. I ended up going with all primary colors which naturally look good together. The main reason I pick them was because the Warsaw city crests is red and gold. So I wanted to make sure I used red and yellow and the Mermaid. And then I pick blue because it was unnatural color to pick for the water element. So then based on the three main colors, I picked the blue, the red, the yellow. I picked another shade of blue and another set of yellow to accept those colors. Initially to edit, really realize I painted her hair red, but then ended up making sense for the lore. Because the mermaid of Warsaw is, in some versions, the sister of Little Mermaid who often has red hair because of the Disney depiction. So I really liked how that worked out, even though I didn't distinctly plan that. So here I start adding a little bit of detail. I'll do more of that later on by add a layer of the same color to do things like shadow, to do a little bit of fine details like the fractals adding a little bit of shadows and a little bit of color variation can really give your piece some depth. Colors pop. Here's another example of me really building up those layers of watercolor and ends up taking quite a few layers of the blue to get the color I end up wanting in the end. So this is the basic painting. I did add some details here that you saw which make it pop a little bit. But right now the piece is looking a little bit flat. And in the next section you'll see me go in and add more details and I'll add a little bit of metallic watercolors are really finish up this piece. At this point in the painting, I've pretty much painted everything. I've reached a nice space painting. It looks pretty good. I have my colors, how I want them and where I want them for the most part. But it looks a little flat because I have added in all those details in the next lesson, that's where I add some more depth and details to the colors. So for example, you'll see me work on the hair a little bit more and the background a little bit more. When you share your project, feel free to include some pictures of you painting or your painting process. So in the next lesson we're going to finish up your illustration on hostile Some of the final details you can add.
10. Making the Illustration: Finishing Touches: In this video, I'm going to finish up my piece I started last two. For the finishing touches I covers mostly adding those final details that really make the piece come to life. And adding some metallic watercolors. I think adding the finishing touches, those little pops of metallic or those little fine details and little lines and layers of color really make your piece vibrant and lively. So the first thing I did when getting started with tests some of my brushes out and to see what kinda marks I could make in which I like better for the scales that I was going to add. First, I tried this around watercolor brush and made very precise lines, but I wasn't sure if I like them. So then I tried this flat brush, which is the one I ended up using it just as small craft brush, but I just liked the type of scale marks they can make better. So I just layered scales and Rose. They kinda look like blotchy little marks. And I just wanted some dimension and some texture to her scales. I did this all over the darker mustard yellow color. So her sides and her tail, just to give a little bit of variation in color, a little bit of variation and texture. After that, I went on and I added just a little bit of texture to the seashells. It's based on a realistic texture of seashells. But I just wanted to add a little bit of detail, a little bit of dimension to the colors, so it wasn't just flat red. I also went through and added some simple shading. Even if you don't add a whole lot of in-depth shading or doing a whole study of shading. I like to add a little bit because it gives your piece a little bit more 3D, factual bit more dimension. So you can tell our body parts overlap and where the figure is in front of something. And then again, before starting in on the actual piece, I just tested some brushstrokes on my little thumbnail. I ended up going with the brush I picked and doing it the way I had tested on the thumbnail, so it didn't take very much time. I'm just adding in some strands of hair and layering the colors, just others, a little bit of difference in the hair color. And it can look a little bit texture. So here's my set of story colors by courier tacky. There my metallic colors. And this is just to show you how they shine and catch the light in the pallets. There are six colors total and our various shades of gold and on he get him Latin. They really just look like molten gold in the pan. I had considered using my gold gel pen. I use it a lot because I like how easy it is to get precise lines with it. But I decided to go ahead and use my watercolor. Sad. I test each color on the paper to see how it looks. And then on top of the yellow, I always find that they'll metallic show up better on top of a layer of watercolor rather than to some half of the paper. I know they show up really well on black paper. If you ever happen to use black paper or using black paper for your piece, I mostly use two different trades. A gold, one was the one that was like the most yellow gold, and the other one was more of a sheer gold. So I added that to details on the crown, the details on the shield to the, of the sort. And then some little details on the castle at the top. Like with all the other colors, I wanted to make sure I continued the metallic throughout the piece and it wasn't just in one or two spots. So here you can see I make a little mistake. I wanted there to be a little reflection on the tip of the sword, but I added him. I just don't think it looks good. So I've handled was thankful this happens so I can just show how easy it is to fix a mistake. A lot of times for watercolor, I can just use a white gel pen. But I found that the gel pen was kind of making the metallic golden run a little bit. Instead, I ended up using the Sharpie paint pen and I just covered up the mark. You could also use whitewash, which I do sometimes I just don't have it handy, so I just want to add own uses white paint pen. The last thing I do is I decided that I wanted a little bit of variation in the background. So I did every other wave a darker shade of blue. So here you can see how the metallic reflects in the light when you're all done with the piece. I really like how it looks is really a shimmery. It might not scan the best because you don't get the metallic glow, the metallic shine, but it looks really awesome and person and in videos, and I have a few close-up scans of the final piece. The colors are very vibrant in the scan. I really like how it turned out one thing I did record as I went back through and I retrace all the line work. Sometimes I take a few close-up picture to those final details and those would be great to see you in your project page. On the final lesson, we're going to focus on some reflection and looking back at our progress.
11. Reflection: This final lesson is going to be a bit of a reflection and some wrap up for the class. I think taking some time to reflect when you're done with a piece is really important. And it's also I encourage you to take pictures along the way so that sometimes you can look back and see where it started, where it was in the middle and where you ended up at the end and be able to look back, see your process and see what you worked really hard edge even reviewing the photos can also help you see what you did well, maybe areas you want to improve. So I'm going to work through a little bit reflection on my fees, maybe some reflection on class overall. And we're going to wrap up the class and thank you for joining me in this class. So first we're gonna take a look at your work as part of a series, since this was about creating a series and that's going to be a big part of your work. So I'm going to talk about some things that I thought worked well and maybe some things I could have done differently. So first of all, I really like the castles up tap. I think they tie the piece together really well. And I answer the composition. The one thing I wish I had done, which I can go back and do on the piece on the left is I really liked that. I added a background color behind the castle to the piece on the right. I also think the way I painted into the law, there's a bit of time between these two pieces. So I feel like the piece on the left is less saturated in the piece on the right. I also feel like the composition on the piece on the right is a little stronger. And I think that might also be because of the colors, but a piece on the right seems more bowl weren't clear in the piece of the left seems a little dull, a little unsaturated. But I think that has to do with things like the colors and the size of the characters where I really made the Mermaid the focus on the right. I feel like I'm a left because the characters are a little smaller, they kinda fade into the background a little bit more. And I think that also has to do with the colors and then the border elements. I also think that piece on the right was more successful on the border elements. The pieces are a little bit more clear. I think they read a little bit more clearly as seashells and crowns and the piece on the left, where the piece on the left is supposed to be lily pads and a lotus flower. I do think this part of the PES ties them together really well. So I'm glad I did it for both pieces. I think overall the mermaid piece was more successful than my frog princess piece. And I also think that's because I've had more practice and Sam and I had a clear idea of what I was doing with the series. Naming your piece can be important too, and that plays into being part of a series as well. I'm just gonna go with a really simple names for my series of the title of the fairy tale. Just so it's really clear what fairy tale it is. I like to keep my title is pretty simple. So just when I post them on things like social media or my website is really clear by the title of the subject matter is and what the pieces about. I think one of the most important pieces of reflecting a celebrating your successes. I think as artists and having to look at our work all the time, It's really easy to be critical of what we do. So I think it's really important that we take the time to look at our piece, reflect on her piece and think of things we did well, things we enjoyed doing. Overall, I'm super happy with my piece. I really like how all the elements work together, how all the colors on the metallic work together. I really like my composition and I'm proud of it because I see how I've improved. I think this is an improvement, like I said from my other piece, I see how my watercolor has come along way, how my style has come along way in my composition. So overall, I'm super happy with this piece. Other ways you can celebrate is by sharing it. By staging photos. Here is a setup of me working out. Some staging at probably will include my metallic watercolors and some seashells. And I painted gold just for some interest. But I really want you to celebrate. You will let you enjoyed, celebrate what you did well and share it with others. I think that's one of the most important parts of reflecting is seeing what you enjoy it and seeing how you can continue to do that in the future. I do think looking at your areas of improvement can be important as well. And I want to focus on them as areas of improvement and that things you did poorly. I haven't really embracing the fact that I'm always gonna make mistakes. I'm a bit of a messy artist. You can see here on the left, I have some random splash marks. I'm not sure if they're from a pen or from the pain. Because of making a mistake with my shading in this area, I ended up having to redo my linework. I was kind of messy and painted over my line work. And then with the amount of layers I use, it just covered up the line work on our side. So I ended up just redoing the whole line work because just doing it in that one section made it look very different than the rest of the piece. My lines aren't the cleanest because of that. You can see things where maybe I have an extra line here and there, but I'm not going to let these little mistakes take away from how much I like this piece and how much I enjoyed creating it. It's so easy to focus on the negative, but I really want you to embrace what you did. Well, look at these areas and think of ways you can use them for your next piece instead of critiquing this piece and making it out to be a negative experience. So I'm thinking of that you can start setting up your future goals. I've already been thinking of what I'm going to do next. So I only have two pieces of my series so far and I want to create my third, and I decided I want to make mine of the Glass Mountain, which I've already done a piece of already. And maybe bring the things I liked from the first two pieces together. So I think I'm going to have Q characters again and see if I can improve the composition with two characters. Also, remember to make sure you share your work on Skillshare. It'd be really great to see what you make and I'm going to make sure to come on everyone's peace who shares their project. If you have any questions you can post in the discussions and I can answer questions or other people can answer your questions if they get to it first. And also you can share your project in the skin products, look at other people's projects in my projects and comment and talk to other people about the work. Thank you for joining me in my first ever Skillshare class. It's been a lot of fun to make and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I can't wait to see all the awesome things you've created.
Alaina McNeal, Fantastical Illustrator
