 Hello there, it's Sandy Alnok and today I'm going to be working on drawing a stick and this is going to be part one of a two part series. So let's get started. Supplies for a sketch are really simple. Paper, pencil, that's it. I've got some drawing paper and a 9B and a 3B pencil, but I wanted to show you this cute little sharpener. It's called a chubby. You can see why it's called a chubby on some websites and I got it for like four bucks and change and I've put links in the doobly-do to that. If you need one, it makes your pencils really sharp, like crazy sharp, dangerously sharp, you might say, but I am going to draw everything on this stick. I realize that's in contrast to the title of this video, so please don't be disappointed, but I will explain why this is part of the process of simplifying. One of my painting teachers used to laugh at me and she would say that I painted the fleas and not the dog, meaning that I was so busy painting all the details, all the little things in whatever the subject matter that I was covering. And I lost total sight of the full painting. And I kept complaining to her that my paintings were just busy and overworked and I had 10,000 strokes on it and wanted to be able to do it in 50 strokes. Like, why can't I get simpler? And part of it was my brush size, but part of it, a big part of it, was that I kept trying to put all the detail in. As you can see by what I'm doing here, I love detail. I love all this texture. I love the bark. I love the different colors of the grain and the directions that they go and all the lichen and the moss and the peeling up. And I love all of this. It's the reason I picked up this stick when I was walking with my dog. It's because I liked all the stuff that was available to me to create on a stick. I know a stick is a weird subject, but it was a good exercise to get myself back in the practice of sketching before starting to paint. And no, I'm not going to be painting on this, but the exercise of doing this is going to help me to figure out what to edit. Because when you start to try to simplify your paintings, editing is the key because you don't need to paint everything in whatever it is that is your subject matter. But once I'm able to really capture all of this detail and get to know it well, I'm going to start to think through what is necessary and what is not when I get to painting the stick. So as you draw, you want to note the most interesting parts. If you were just doing this without a sketch, you would look out at the landscape in front of you and decide, I want to keep that tree in that tree. That one is not important, so I'm going to get rid of that one. I'm going to move the barn over. I'm going to put some grass in front of the tractor because it's just too busy. And you can do those kind of mental edits as you're looking out at a scene or if you're looking at a photograph, you can mentally edit that. But if you were to sketch it out, whether a loose sketch or doing something really detailed like this, you're going to have a better opportunity to figure out what to edit and what things that you can do without and which ones are necessary to achieve what you want to do in the finished work. In this particular case, I got all the thrill of doing all that detail. I loved it. I loved every minute of the hour I spent on this sketch. It was fun. It was it was just my sweet spot and I really enjoyed it. It challenged me mentally to try to create all these textures. It helped me to really know what those textures look like so that when I get to painting them, I can give each section a feel as opposed to trying to replicate absolutely every detail. Because nobody needs all this detail in a painting of a stick. Well, actually, nobody's going to need a painting of a stick, but that's beside the point. It's just an exercise, right? But doing this is also going to help me when I do landscapes. And I'm trying to create tree bark because this is like tree bark on a minimal scale, because it's a small stick. Imagine this just being a bigger tree trunk. And I will have a much better idea how to create those textures because I've done it in great detail here. That is the value of studies. They call it studies for a reason. You're studying the subject, you're getting to know it. You're getting to understand what those shapes can look like. And it's just going to help you to be able to replicate those things a lot more easily when you get to. A different stage when you're getting to your painting or if you're out sketching and you just want to create something that looks like a tree trunk. You'll have all of this in your brain once you do this. I will have the photograph of the stick on my blog. If you would like to try doing your own stick, do a sketch of it. And then after you watch video number two, you can paint a stick as well. That one's going to be in real time. This one is sped up because nobody wants to watch an hour of me sketching the the bark and the lichen or anything like that. A few tips for sketching as I'm doing this. I'm looking for relationships between shapes. I'm looking for circles and ovals and lines that go from one area to another. And how does this section end up attaching to that section? How far over from the place where a branch sticks out is the next branch that sticks out and just getting those kind of proportions generally in order, not really worrying too much about being exact with this. One of the things that I figured out when I started this was that if I were to sketch this directly from overhead, looking at the stick, then I would end up with my head where the camera is and you would not be able to see a thing. So I actually did that light pencil line sketch with my head in place and then took a photograph of the stick, put it on my iPad. So I am actually sitting sideways and drawing from the picture. So that's why some things are a little kitty wampus here. But nonetheless, I'm not looking for an exact replica. I'm looking for that overall effect because I want to be able to paint this. And once I have really studied all of these details, I'm going to be able to replicate them a lot more easily when I get to the painting stage. So I'm working, as I said earlier, with a 3B for some of the lighter work and a 9B, my favorite pencils in 9B. You can actually do all of it with a 9B. Just use lighter pressure. But sometimes I grab a 3B to just get some overall color in there before starting to add in my deeper shades. And I'm looking, as I said before, for contrast, I'm looking for areas that define other areas, looking for places where the bark really peels off and looks like it's in different texture and getting the contrast in those textures. All that kind of stuff is going to matter when I get to doing my finished painting. So just working through the sketch and thinking through it is going to be really important before the painting begins. So it might be something that's a little harder to do for you if you have not done much in the way of sketching before. If you're not someone who does any kind of drawing, but I can tell you that drawing is going to big time, big time improve your painting. And I know a lot of people just want to get to the color. I want to get to the color. I can tell you one million gazillion percent that if you learn to draw, if you improve your drawing skills and you practice that, then every medium you touch will improve. There's a lot of people who want to paint because they want to get all that color on the paper, but they don't want to take the time to learn to draw and they wonder why everything looks wonky and it's cause you need to learn to draw. That's why I teach drawing classes. So get your foundations under your belt and everything will improve. I promise you. So for the finishing of the sketch, I just kind of went through and darkened a few areas that didn't seem like I'd given them enough pencil and also covered over some of the highlights because there is no white on the stick. So I did not need the white of the paper to show through on my sketch. If you'd like to take a turn at sketching my stick, then you can download the photograph from the link in the doobly-doo or from over on the blog, either one, and spend your week making a sketch of the stick. On Friday, I will be back here and I will be painting the same stick from the same angle. And you'll be able to see how I simplified this, but how I made those choices after having done this complicated sketch. And here is a sneak preview of what that painting is going to be. So if you want to see how that was created and please do join me on Friday, I will be using colors that I created during this live video that I did a couple weeks back, maybe it was a month ago or so. Maybe more than that. I don't remember. I'm losing track of time. Anyway, I showed you how to swatch colors in a way that gives you a lot more availability of colors that you have in your palette already that you didn't know you had, because it's just a different swatching system. So please do check that out. And then on social media this week, I'm going to be having fun in my accordion sketchbook, which I am filling with trees, tree bark and tree leaves and all that sort of thing. So I'll have lots more tips for you in that, doing short reels to talk about painting trees and bark. If you have questions you want answered, leave them in the doobly-doo. I'll be happy to take a stab at that. And then la pièce de résistance, however you say that word. I think I added an extra syllable. We will be in a live class on etcher, turning that photograph into this painting. And you can see there has been some simplification here, but I'm going to be teaching you how to make bark, how to paint the leaves, how to do some negative painting to separate the foreground and background, et cetera. Lots of learning to be had in a 90-minute live session at etcher. And it's really inexpensive, so it's a great chance to come and take a class. And I think I'm done talking now because my throat hurts. So I'm going to go. I hope I see you on socials as well as back here on Friday at etcher on Sunday. It is just a tree fiesta in my world. Make sure you're subscribed to my channel. Hit the bell and tell YouTube that you want to see all my videos, so they will give you notifications. And I'll talk to you very soon. Bye, guys.