Hi my loves!
I’ve finally completed the moleskin featured all the way through my ’30 Ways to fill
a sketchbook series’ and I know you all have been eagerly awaiting a flip-through
so here we go.
I initially wasn’t going to have a voice-over on this one, I find flip throughs really calming
set to music, but I anticipated getting a lot of questions about things in the comments
so I want to try and answer some of the ones that come up a lot.
You can see it’s bursting at the seams, it’s been a real labour of love, probably,
definitely my favourite sketchbook to date.
On the cover is just a little sticker of my doberman piece that I made just to see what
making stickers was like.
I’ll probably do more in the future.
Inside the front cover I’ve stamped the date I completed the book with just a regular
shmegular date stamp from amazon, and if you remember in my sketchbook tips video I designated
different books different purposes; yeah, I do actually do that.
I got off to a slow start in here with a few bits stuck in from magazines, some doodles
done in biro and frixion highlighters.
The next page again was a bit tentative, some drawings I did with blue watercolour pencils,
cheap non-brand ones.
And the page started falling out so I taped it.
I won’t say much about the stuff you’ve seen before.
If there’s something I kind of skim over, you can assume I have a video on it, I’ll
have the ’30 ways’ playlist linked below.
Here I tried to draw and paint some desert flowers as quickly as possible.
So one of the first questions I get asked a lot is how long does each spread take.
And obviously it really just depends on what it is, what I’m using and how much detail
I’m planning on putting in.
It always takes longer than I expect, or longer than what it feels like, it’s really easy
for me to look up and realise I’ve been drawing for hours.
But yeah, let’s say like an hour all the way up to like 6 hours.
On this page I was looking at practicing gesture using the book Airborne as a reference.
If you want to know more about that you can check out my recent video about finding and
using references.
I also use online figure study sites, and places like pinterest.
I’ll try and leave some useful links below for you all.
Here I was practicing simplifying landscapes, looking at tonal values and dominant shapes,
These are all backgrounds from Samurai Jack, again another great alternative source of
reference, backgrounds and concept art for cartoons and films.
I don’t use my sketchbook in page after page order by the way so those landscapes
were actually something I practiced after one of my more recent landscape videos, where
I was talking about wanting to simplify the look of them.
Here I made a mess so I stuck one of my test prints over it that wasn’t good enough for
the shop, I also drew these tropical leaves and loved how they turned out so I might use
that kind of motif again.
And at the top is just a paint sample colour that I liked.
Called Swan Dance.
I get a lot of questions as well about bleed through and general page quality.
This is a moleskin by the way, I don’t know if I mentioned that already.
But the pages do wrinkle a little bit in water, nothing too extreme, not enough to bother
me, copic markers do bleed through, sometimes several pages, but overall the quality is
fine for everything I’ve used it for.
These are a couple more experiments in simplifying landscapes.
On the left is a shot from edward scissorhands and the right is from Mad Max Fury Road, which
was recommended to me a lot by you guys for landscape inspiration.
I used the paint, Aqyla which I have a review for on my channel.
I also used a larger brush on a smaller scale.
And it worked perfectly.
I love the Mad Max one.
Here I was just messing about drawing birds, this is where inspiration for my crane painting
came from.
I like how they all ended up looking at this one weird one freaking out in the corner.
Except for this one that's like really trying not to look.
On this page I was trying to work on the consistency and opacity of my gouache paintings so I painted
on a background that I coloured with aqyla.
I recently bought this book full of different types of vehicles, to work on improving my
rendering of them.
I love these DK books more than anything, I have a ton of them on all sorts of topics
just sitting in my amazon basket.
The next frequently asked question is about fixatives or sealing my pages when I’m done
with them to stop them smudging.
It’s not something I do a lot, I don’t have a problem with things smudging.
If I do, I use Winsor and Newton spray, but I can’t say whether it’s the best out
there or not.
It’s not something that I know much about, I’m used to just using hairspray like we
used to do at school.
This was a page that I kind of gave up on.
Not all pages can be finished.
I also get asked a lot about why I draw particular things, or use particular tools.
And the answers pretty boring but I just do whatever I’m in the mood for, there’s
no deep reason for any of it.
I might use a specific paint because it’s already sitting on my desk, or I just think
it’ll look nice.
Here I used the Kuretake Zig brush pens to do more figure drawings from croquis cafe
who I’ll have linked below.
I like how the different colours allow each one to be seen despite the overlap.
I also love that there are different body types represented in the life drawing videos.
I stuck in this old map that I cut out of a book called the dangerous book for boys,
full of info on making slingshots and stuff, and here I drew over random blobs I painted,
trying to create faces and some body parts.
There were some successes.
And some not so much.
This page was actually the breakthrough for me on simplifying my landscapes.
I was trying to abstract a couple of photos into patterns based on their colours.
With the first I went more abstract and with the second I accidentally ended up showing
more of the form of the photo, I was texting as I painted this so not really focussing
at all, and it turned out that’s what I needed to get the look I was going for.
This page, the first in my sketchbook series, I actually had the sketchbook upside down
for.
This is the kind of thing I end up doing when I’m feeling anxious and want to draw but
also really don’t.
This page is just gouache and ink.
People always ask about what I’ve written.
Sometimes, like on the page with the plane and satellite, it’s information on what
I’ve drawn.
Sometimes it’s my thoughts, areas to improve on.
On this one, I just thought the page would look nice with some writing.
I wrote out the first thing my eyes landed on in a book that was open on my desk.
‘twenty short muscles layered within the foot flex, extend, abduct and adduct the toes…'
That came from a great book called anatomy for the artist, I’ll try and have as much
as possible linked below for you guys, but I also used that book as a reference for these
drawings of bones.
And even though I go through my sketchbook at random, sometimes neighbouring pages end
up relating to each other by accident.
These were some Leyendecker studies that were supposed to be quick but actually took forever.
I love how he renders skin tones and also his use of shadow and light.
And he always drew the most charming, chiseled men.
His life and work with his partner Charles Beach are interesting to read up on if you
haven’t.
These were some very quick skin tone studies I did, looking at how yellow, blue an red
feature in the skin and where.
Some blind contour drawings.
I was inspired by a photo I was tagged in on instagram where someone had done their
own blind contour drawings inspired by my video and they had taken it further and coloured
them and I loved how that looked.
These drawings I did with the tiniest black pencil from WH Smiths, on top of some randomly
placed paper scraps and with some gouache paint thrown in.
Another great feature in the anatomy for artists book is a section on bodies in motion, so
I tried to quickly capture some of that.
This is a page where I like the idea and I’ll probably do it again, but not the execution.
Straight after I finished my Georgia O Keeffe study, I realised one of my magazines actually
had a whole spread on her, so I cut out one of the pictures, painted more flowers, some
of them using the one stroke method and also omitted some of the words on the pages headline
to make it instead read, unfurled from georgia o keeffes glorious wild swimming holiday.
I don’t know what it said before.
Another, not feeling great page.
I get a lot of my cutouts from either fashion or home and garden magazines.
This is actually from an advert for a comfortable chair.
More messy pages.
And finally a page of swatches and tests for a few of my most used supplies.
So thank you all so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed this video.
I’m already using a new sketchbook so I can’t wait to share that one with you too.
And if you wanna see these pages in a bit more detail I’ll be gradually posting pictures
on instagram over the next few days or weeks.
If there’s any questions I haven’t covered, do leave them below, just make sure to check
the video description first as it might be answered there.
Aaaand, I’ll see you next time, bye!