To start my life back into art, I wanted to try a course that would get me out of my normal routine and give me some ideas. It’s no secret that my usual subjects are cats, dogs, foxes and hares and then portraits. I switch between watercolour and graphite and really don’t know which one I enjoy the most. I believe my drawing is better than my watercolour. I also accept my present limitations as not having much of an imagination, I use reference pictures, and try to be as realistic as possible.

So my first course of the year was:

Daily Sketching for Creative Inspiration by Sorie Kim on Domestika

Materials that I used: (Not necessarily the ones shown during the course).

• Graphitint by Dwerwent
• Designer Gouache by Winsor and Newton
• Copic Ciao Pens – Grey tones
• Pentel Brush Pen
• Pink Pig A4 sketch book
• Journal By Grierson Studio (I will publish a blog on this – it’s fabulous)

Then comes the materials she uses.  This has always been the dangerous part in any course I follow.  It matters not that the person almost always says it doesn’t matter if you have these exact materials, use what you have. My inner hoarder sits on my shoulder, telling me I just have to have the exact same materials, and very often, before they have even finished explaining why they use what they do, I have the very same on order, ready to be delivered the very next day. 😉 (Am I the only one to do this?)

So the materials she recommended were:

• Midori inserts, 
• Cottonwood Arts, 
• Pentel Colour Brush
• Fine Liner
• Zebra Brush Pen
• Copic Tone Marker.

Sorie starts off by explaining perspective and shadows. This starts with something I feel most of us know and then moves into a world I can’t fathom, that’s not a negative, it was genuinely fascinating to try and understand 2-point perspective and then move on to 3D 3-point perspective and shadow.  Her example was with a hedgehog skull. Seriously 😉 

She showed how to place the lighting, shadows, angles for lighting and how to render the image. She explained about core shadow and how to use hatching to change the tone of the shadow. What was truly fascinating was how to use this to be able to manipulate the image of 3D object you were using to different aspects.  This really is something I would never have thought of doing.

A small note about some of the materials and why she used them.  I have never used Copic markers before, although I did have one in my pen box. I was never sure what the difference was or what its use was.

Going by Mr Google, apparently they are used by graphic artists, are alcohol based, therefore dry quickly and are blendable. Possibly the best part is that they are refillable (with Copic Ink) and you can also replace the nibs.  Me being me, couldn’t decide which was the best pen to get, so I bought the set ;-).

You can see below how they show up. I bought the Copic Ciao Grey tone set. And what I couldn’t find anywhere was whether they were waterproof.  

See pics below.  The one slightly down side I can see is that they appear to bleed through the paper.  I always test pens out in a swatch book, and they bled through those pages; they also bled through my Pink Pig ink sketch book.

Sorie then went on to discuss drawing to document everyday life, and then about drawing from imagination.  That has always been a challenge for me.  So I started drawing snails, and then tried to draw some random fish.

After the above, she explained about adding colour.  This is where I moved away slightly from what she was using.  She used some Winsor and Newton watercolour paints, and she also used some Gouache.   I have a set of Derwent Graphitint watercolours.  I have never really used them other than to swatch them, and they were just fabulous for this exercise. I will certainly use them more in future. They are water-soluble graphite colours, and they work beautifully on more sketch designs rather than a true watercolour.  I also have a set of Winsor and Newton Gouache paints, again, which I have never really used, and this was a perfect situation to try them out. 

The following are a few of the exercises done, I realise very well that they are a bit pants, but I have put them in an attemtp to get away from trying to only post perfect pics that I’m really happy with. These were workings in progress.

And this was my final project piece, absolutely not perfect, but such a complete change for me to try something so different.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this course and felt quite inspired to try out new things. This was just what I needed to break me out of my usual habits and to kick-start my year in art. And also acquired some new toys – which is never a bad thing lol.