How do you get better at watercolor illustration? In this 7-day daily watercolor practice, you will think more conceptually about your drawings by following a daily prompt, inspiring evocative, editorial food illustrations. By building up a strong idea through the brainstorming and sketch processes, you will create the backbone of the daily project. I’ll also walk you through my own creative process, my techniques and execution of the class projects. Students are encouraged to use the medium of their choice, but I’ll be sharing my tips for using watercolor. At the end of the week, you will have 7 engaging food illustrations to add to your website or portfolio and you won't just draw something but use it to tell a story.

Suggested Materials

Sketching materials (a sketchbook or a couple sheets of A4/8.5 x11, printer paper, pen, pencil)
Watercolor supplies (watercolor paints, watercolor paper, paper towels, hairdryer, watercolor paint brushes) or coloring materials (paints and paintbrushes, colored pencils, or whichever tools you prefer to execute your final drawings)
Breakfast items (each day, you will find inspiration in what you are having for breakfast)

The daily prompts include:

DAY 1: “The Mondays”

Match your current emotion with the beverage that gets you out of bed in the morning. How do you represent this? How do your choices impact the final watercolor? Introduction to primary references.

DAY 2: “Savory Spot”

A spot illustration is a stand alone drawing that doesn’t have any background or context. It needs to be simple and graphic enough to be understood if it’s printed very small on a page. We will create a spot inspired by a savory breakfast food, more specifically avocado toast.

DAY 3: “Anywhere but here Wednesday”

Draw your dream breakfast or an idea breakfast from the past. Where was this? How can you include these elements and other sensory details to transport your illustration elsewhere?

DAY 4: “Think like a food stylist” Thursday

I used to work as a food stylist. This was a really wonderful way to understand how food is composted and created for a photo which means a lot of playing around with color, composition and proportions. In this lesson, I’ll walk you through a few steps to take a basic still life and how to transform this into something that tells an appetising story.

DAY 5: “Illustrate a recipe” Friday.

Illustrating a recipe is the ultimate way to tell a story through food illustration. I’ll walk students through my process of capturing the movement, gestures and energy of bringing a recipe to life.

DAY 6: “Think drink!”

Drink illustration is an important skill to add to a food portfolio because beverage photos can often be mundane and repetitive. In this course, I’ll brainstorm with students to put together a colorful and playful drink illustration.

DAY 7: Watercolor for breakfast.

Illustrate your breakfast using all of the tips learned in this course.

Cassia Mota

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