Creative Watercolor Sketching for Beginners

Creative Watercolor Sketching for Beginners

“Now we have reached the end of the course. I hope it has made watercolour fun and playful and you feel confident to use it to create interesting and exciting illustrations. I want to leave you with a few recommendations to help continue a playful approach to using your sketchbook throughout this course and beyond: Find ways to see the mundane or everyday through new eyes. Draw or paint it, play with it, turn it upside down, inside out, collect it together with other unrelated items. Be alert to beauty around you. Combinations of shapes, of colours and patterns. Find a way of recording these in your sketchbook to inspire and influence future illustrations. Break something down by drawing it as separate components, different shapes, seeing how it can turn into something unrecognisable. Don’t be afraid to just start painting, without having it mapped out or a plan. Ideas can often emerge from this process. Or take inspiration from a task as your starting point and then see where it takes you when you explore it on your own terms. I have shown you my ideas and my sketchbook, but this is just an example of what has come from my imagination and surroundings. Use this as a prompt to generate your own ideas - I’m excited to see what images you create and how you combine different techniques and ideas to playful effect. Just as the way we all draw and paint is unique to us, the way we interpret our surroundings is individual too. Try and create something in your sketchbook at least once a day. Creative habits are different for everyone, so figure out what makes yours most fulfilling. Frequent, but brief drawing or painting is so much better than holding out for a long stretch of uninterrupted time - which almost never happens! I’m really excited to see what you create throughout the course and for your final projects. I will respond to your questions and work on the Forum, but please be patient if I don’t always get back to you immediately. I sometimes have to focus on other projects. Here are some of the pages of the sketchbook I created during the course:

When you feel you have filled, or started to fill, your sketchbook with ideas and combinations of techniques, share some of your favourite pages as your Final Project by clicking on "Create your project". Also, if you choose to share your work on Instagram you can use the hashtag #LauraMckendryDomestika for us all to follow and see work in progress or final pieces being created by students on this course. Be generous in your feedback to each other. It can be so insightful and invigorating to hear from other creative students who are exploring the same ground. The Forum can be a really supportive and encouraging community. And, if you’re feeling nervous, I hope you’ll feel confident to share your work on the Forum for this reason. There will be a range of styles and approaches and you may feel your work doesn’t have a place here - IT DOES! Every work has value, and in sharing it someone else may identify aspects which you hadn’t appreciated yourself. Having the confidence to put our work out there is also one step towards approaching the creative process with greater confidence and ownership. Keep creating! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final Project It's the end of the course. I hope you've enjoyed it and that it's made watercolour fun and playful for you. Now I'll go back through the course and give you some recommendations to continue with this playful and fun approach to watercolour. First, we played with our brushes and got to know them. Then, using wet on wet, we identified objects and people in abstract shapes. We explored the possibilities of monochrome painting. Later we incorporated colour to the game. We experimented with abstract transparencies and explored what happens when colours bleed. We then combined all ...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Creative Watercolor Sketching for Beginners

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (2329)
• 99318 students
• 5 units
• 23 lessons (5h 25m)
• 9 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Areas

  Creativity, Drawing, Sketchbook, Sketching, Traditional illustration, Watercolor Painting