Sketchbook Tour!! Sketch Everyday Challenge

My friends, it's sketchbook tour time. Welcome! I'm really happy to see you here, thank you for joining me. You may be here because you watched my previous video where I challenged myself to sketch for 30 days straight, but if that's not the case and this is in fact our first time meeting each other, then first of all, hi, I'm Brooke, I'm a full-time artist, and second of all, go watch that video. You can do that right here, it'll just give you a lot more context on this whole sketchbook tour. Before we get started, I'd quickly like to discuss the materials I used when sketching. This sketchbook I got at Gersteke, which is a fine art store here in Vienna, Austria, and I'm not exactly sure who produces these because there's no information on that, but I'll link it in the description below. It may just be a product from Gersteke, but anyways, this is the size A6, which is nice and small and compact and easy to carry around. I got the gray variety, so the pages are kind of like this nice warm gray color, and it's 120 sheets. As for my drawing materials, I'm using these Derwent Lightfast colored pencils, made in England, and I chose Mars black and white because since the pages of my sketchbook are already this kind of mid-toned gray color, I thought, cool, I'll just use black for my darker values and white for my highlights, and we will discuss these results in a moment. But a little more about these colored pencils, according to derwentart.com, the revolutionary oil-based core is resistant to prolonged color change and sharing artwork will not fade for 100 years under museum conditions. So without further ado, after 30 straight days of sketching, please allow me to share with you the results. I would like to officially welcome you to my very first sketchbook tour, so please grab yourself a tea, get comfy cozy, and let's get into this thing. It has been a really long time since I started a sketchbook, so to break the ice, here we go, a smiley face. I'm happy I went with the frog for the very first page of my sketchbook. I think that it being kind of this cute and humorous character just reminds me to take it easy, you know? Brings a little smile to my face, and I'm happy with how this turned out, and it was actually a lot of fun to make. What was surprising for me is that I am using black and white colored pencils, and it was a very, I guess, unpleasant surprise to find that when I mix those two, it comes out pink. Which, honestly, not a fan of. I would not have chosen that, but c'est la vie. I learned to embrace it over the course of this month. On to day two and three. Here you can really see the pink, I think. I don't know if it's going to show up as well on camera, but yeah, like these are basically, instead of black and white, they're like purple and white, but that's okay. Honestly, for this day, I was having a big brain fart and I didn't know what to draw, so I just asked my Instagram followers, what do I draw? And I got some suggestions, and here are two of them. Also, when I went to go draw the cherries on my second day of sketching, I came across this issue. Look, oh, I want to draw on this page. Wait, what? Like, I honestly, it took me way too long to figure out. Like, I was running around trying to find something exactly this height to put here so that I had a hard surface to draw on on my desk, like going frantically around and thinking like, what the hell, this is such a design flaw of the sketchbook, until I realized that what you have to do is basically take half the pages and flip them underneath of each other, and there you go. Now you have a hard surface over here and a hard surface over here to draw on. So yeah, I felt like a little bit of an idiot for a while until I figured that out, but anyways, turns out not a design flaw, actually kind of cool that you can do that with this. It's not like one of those ring things, but it's, yeah, just like a flexible spine, which I appreciate. On this day was the drawing from life session at my studio. This was really fun, but also a bit of a wake-up call because I'm not generally used to drawing the human figure. I don't really do that a lot in my work, so yeah, wow, it's actually hard. These were three minute sketches, so we each kind of took turns posing, and it was a bit challenging for me because I was like trying to adjust my camera and catch some footage while also doing the sketches, which was not completely ideal, but overall like, you know, I don't think they're bad, but it was kind of a wake-up call for me, like wow, okay, this definitely needs some work. Here were the 10 minute sketches, so each of these models were modeling for 10 minutes, and I felt a little bit more comfortable here, like I feel like I'm pretty satisfied with how these turned out. I think that after the three minute sketches, it was a really good way to like loosen up and then get into, you know, actually portraying more values, whereas like in these sketches, it was less values and just like more capturing the form of everything. This was really fun for me, and I'm actually really looking forward to doing this at least once a month at the studio. Here I got into some portraits. I really enjoyed doing these because it was super challenging for me. This one, I loved the model because of all these gorgeous highlights all over her face. I was kind of regretting doing the hand because I underestimated my amount of space down here, and I don't really like how the fingertips kind of just like trail off into oblivion, but I guess the hand kind of gives the whole thing context, so fine, and also the rings were really fun to draw. This portrait here actually ended up looking pretty different from the reference photo, but I like it because somehow it kind of ended up looking more like my mom when she was like in her early 20s, and that just was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Like when I was finished the portrait, I took a step back and I was like, hey wait a second, mommy? This was the day that I went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with my friends and did some sketching, and honestly that was like such a fun artist day, and I'm also really happy with how these turned out. I think that this like staggered head situation is kind of cool. I found out that sketching facial hair from a marble statue is quite challenging. After the museum visit, I was still feeling pretty inspired by portraiture, so I just I kept riding that train, and I drew these two lovely ladies, and this one I kind of cheated a bit because I was unsuccessful in leaving the white dots in the eyes, and so I actually went in and did that with white paint afterwards. Okay, sue me, I didn't use my colored pencils, but whatever. I feel like you have to do those because, I mean, it's just what makes the eyeballs come to life. And I liked drawing this model here because of the facial expression. I thought it was a little different, you know? We got some like raised eyebrows and some closed eyes. I really enjoyed drawing this model. This was a day at the studio where I just decided to draw the cup of tea that I was drinking from, and it also made me realize, wow, drawing vessels of any sort, like cups or vases or whatever, very challenging for me, and so I definitely want to practice doing these more in the future. Like maybe they look okay now, but it took so much erasing to get it right. Like drawing these ellipses is very challenging in my opinion. This drawing over here, not a big fan. I think it's like cute, and I do like how it looks next to the cups. However, I think that I was drawn to the reference photo because of the color. It was like this beautiful green with the red, like nice complementary colors. And then when I drew it, I was like, wait, the whole reason why I liked this reference photo was for the color, and now it's like monochromatic in this weird pink and black situation. So anyways, not my favorite, but I guess it's still cute. Here we get into some more still life. I really like how this strawberry turned out. I mean, the highlights, am I right? I think that that's what drew me to this reference photo, was just like the challenge of capturing like these highlights over here, and these highlights here, and then like the shadow. I think it was just like a very satisfying thing to draw. And this still life over here, these are like mandarins in this funky vase. I love this drawing. I actually really, really, really like how this turned out. I like these two drawings individually. I don't like them next to each other. So I think that like this looks nice on its own, and this looks nice on its own, but together I'm like, oh, too bad. I don't know why I was compelled to draw this clock. Maybe it's because I wanted the challenge of doing numbers, or I just liked the highlights here. But anyways, in my eyes, this is actually kind of a fail. Like I got the perspective totally wrong. Like if you saw the reference photo, maybe I'll put it on the screen now, just so you can see. Like it just, I really, I messed it up. And so then I decided to do 420 on the clock, because I might as well have been high. And then I added this little bug up here, because I just thought it was cute. And I was like, you know what? I don't like this drawing, but maybe if I add a beetle, I'll like it a little bit more. And guess what? I was right. And then after drawing the beetle, and also seeing a really cool beetle on my walk, I felt inspired to just do a page full of cool bugs. So all together, these pages are not my favorite, but moving on. So here we have come to when I drew my bouquets that I created. And honestly, when I look at these drawings, I don't think, wow, masterpieces. But I do think, wow, I had a lot of fun. Drawing from life, I had some dramatic lighting happening, and I was so slow that the lighting was changing, so that was a big challenge. But you know what? I had a really good time drawing these, so no regrets. Still on that still life train, but for these drawings, I really wanted to challenge myself to draw two-dimensionally, and really simplify an image to something that is just a series of shapes, and appears flat. And for me, that was really challenging. But I'm really happy with how these turned out, and I think that if I painted these in like a really juicy color palette, then they would look really cool, and especially kind of like with some texture in the brushstrokes and stuff. So I was just really getting excited about painting when I was drawing these guys here. So here, I was feeling pretty inspired by funky vases, and that's what you're seeing. Some more of these kind of simplified two-dimensional bouquets in really fun vases. Here we have a cactus, and I thought it could be cool to try doing like a detailed drawing of the cactus on this page, and then a simplified version of the exact same drawing on this page, just to see how that process would be for me. And honestly, this was a fun exercise, so I decided to keep rolling with it. Love this chicken. Love love love how this turned out. I don't know what it is, but right now I'm just totally enthralled by chickens. You know what? Perfect subjects for art. Like so many intricate things in this creepy, weird, crazy face. And so this, I still was doing the like whole detailed and simplified version, and just kind of neat to see them side by side. Here we have the same situation with the detailed version up here and the simplified version down here. I really love how this plate of lemons turned out. I think it was like, I actually like both the super detailed one and the super simplified one. I think that both of them make really nice sketches. And same thing with here. Though I think that with the crab, I think I like the detailed one a little bit better, but also because I kind of messed up this claw down here. And what sucks about this sketchbook, I do really like the fact that the pages aren't pure white, but when you do erase, then it kind of like takes away some of that gray, and it makes that area lighter than the rest. So it's really easy to see where you are erasing. So that kind of sucks. Okay, we have now entered the funky section of the sketching journey. And the reason why I wanted to draw a budgie on this day is because a budgie flew into our backyard randomly while we were outside eating dinner. And I fell in love with it. It was the cutest little thing. And we asked all of our neighbors if they had lost a pet, and nobody said that they did. And I was like, oh my god, we need to adopt this bird. It's so sweet. But we ended up doing the responsible thing and calling like the animal services. And they told us that if she doesn't get claimed by her owner in the next 30 days, then she'll go up for adoption. And I'm just like, she was just the sweetest little thing. So anyways, I decided to draw this little sketch in her honor and just trying to manifest her arrival back to me. But obviously, if she gets claimed by her owner, I would also be happy about that as well. And here I decided to sketch this beetle that I found in the forest because it was really beautiful. And I wanted to try a little bit of a background. And I don't even know what this style is called. Honestly, I'm really bad at like defining what different art styles are. But I thought that this was kind of like a fun sketch, actually. Like I had a really good time doing this. And for me, it was like loosening up a little bit and trying something new. And I feel like that's what the beauty of having a sketchbook is, is just trying different things and not, not putting too much importance on everything. So I decided to roll with it a little bit more. And that's where these sketches came in. And I really like this spread. I think that like the snakes on either side in two different patterns kind of turned out pretty cool, if I do say so myself. And when I look at these, I think, wow, this would be really cool if I could go in like later, at a later date with some colored pencil and actually make these colored sketches. Because they're cool right now as they are in black and white. But I mean, imagine with a beautiful color palette what these could be. So my colored pencils are currently in Canada, and I will be retrieving those soon. And I think I will color these in for fun and just see how that looks. So I'll keep you updated on that. Oh, and that brings us to the last pages of this month of sketching. And what can I say about these pages other than the fact that I wanted to do another still life and also draw a goose. I really like how this still life turned out. I know I didn't exactly nail the cup situation. I feel like the perspective is a little bit off. But I do like how I kept the napkin more simplified where the rest of the drawing is more detailed. I think that kind of adds a little bit of interest. And what? Okay, I just wanted to draw a goose. I think it's really cute. And I debated on actually putting some text in the background like victory or like success, like something to, I guess, like, kind of commemorate the last day of my month of sketching. But then I realized I'm actually not very practiced in drawing text. And I didn't want to ruin this cute little sketch. So anyways, maybe text is something that I will practice in the future. So that's it, you guys, there are still so many more pages of the sketchbook to fill. And you know what? I look forward to it. Hi, I would like to thank you face to face for watching this sketchbook tour and also for accompanying me on my self conducted month long sketching challenge. Again, if you have not watched the previous video, which is basically a vlog about the challenge, then I highly recommend going back and watching it because it'll give you a lot more context on the sketches in here and also why I did this in the first place. And honestly, it's a really fun watch. I think you'll like it. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this video. And I also hope that you find some time to enjoy the process of creating your own art, whatever that may be. And just for your information, because I do get a lot of questions about what materials and equipment I use for making my videos, I always leave all that information in the description of every video, as well as some other resources for artists like my digital studio notion template. So if you're interested in learning more about that, all you gotta do is scroll down. Thank you so much again for watching. I hope you're having a great day and that we can see each other again soon. I'm Brooke Cormier and I'll see you next time.