 Hey guys, how are you today? So we are going to do a few new series here on YouTube this year. One of them is going to just be one where we just do some sketching. So I have a moleskin little journal here. It's a moleskin. Is it called a kaie? It's just the simple, it's got the sewn binding blank pages. It comes with blank pages or lined pages. Now I went through on quite a few pages already and I did kind of a light kind of splattery splotchy watercolor thing on the pages. It did wrinkle them, I'm not too worried about that. I used some acrylic inks that I got for Christmas and I just thinned them out with some water and I also added some of the white acrylic ink that came in the same kit together with it. They were Dr. P. H. Martin's I think. Oh no, Bombay. So I got this for Christmas. So I used the white and then mixed it with some of the teal. I used the magenta and I used the brown. And I got some washy light colors that I then applied to my pages and I let it dry. And I did just a little bit of it but just a little bit of it went a long way and I I'm distracted by these oranges. I smell good by the way and they're out here for a reason, I'll tell you in a minute. Just a little bit went a long way. I did almost half the book which is cool. So you need a journal and I really wanted something that had something on the background. So not something that was a blank page. So in this case, but something that was light and not too dark, then you're going to need a couple of pens. Now if you're really concerned about things bleeding through, then you might want to coat your paper with gesso or make sure you use a pen, you know is not going to bleed through. Now this is a Sharpie. I actually just got this today. It's a stainless steel Sharpie fine point black marker pen. And I got to tell you guys it feels really great to hold. It will bleed through just a tiny little bit. It's supposed to be no bleed through but I did a practice sketch on a piece of scrap paper and it bled through a teeny little bit but not very much. It came in a package like this and I got it at Target. I also have this Micron Pigma Graphic One Archival ink pen and it is it looks like a round tip. Number one. Just number one, that's all it says. It bleeds through again a little bit but not too much and we're going to just draw everyday things that you can find around your house or your studio and we're going to just practice doing some drawing. If you follow me on social media, you know I do something like this almost every evening. It's really good practice if you want to be better at your art. I was cutting up some oranges we haven't eaten to put the slices in the freezer because we like to have sliced oranges or lemons in the freezer to put into like our iced tea and things like that. So as I was cutting them I thought oh we should do a sketch video on drawing the orange slices so that's what we're going to do. You don't have to draw the whole orange, all the orange slices you can just draw one orange slice but you want to have something, an example of something in front of you. It could be you know a paint brush, it could be anything. In this case we're going to do orange slices. I am going to try to take a picture of the orange slices from the angle I'm sitting at and how I'm seeing them and I will try to post that at the end of the video for you all and or on my website somewhere for you guys to download one of those two things. I'll let you know in the description below. Look at the description below. All right so we're going to draw the orange slices and I'm going to just use light, sketchy pen strokes. I'm not too worried about having too many lines and I'm not, you notice I'm going right in with the pen. I didn't even try and go in with a pencil. I didn't. I'm just going right in with the pen and I'm really I'm just I'm drawing the shapes that I see on the little cutting board that they are. It's actually a little sushi plate but I don't make sushi that much and I like the size of the cutting board. So then there's a little like a piece that's down here. Let's see and I'm just tracing the shapes that I see. There's a slice behind here and I'll probably just do the three slices. I like my compositions to be grouped in odd numbers. Three makes a good composition. Okay now we're going to go and we're going to put in our details in our orange slice. Again I'm doing lots of sketchy lines. If I get a line in the wrong place the first time I'm not too concerned about it. I'm just going to let that give some interest to my composition. I'm continually looking over at the orange and seeing where all the lines and veins and things are in the slices. You'll see that there's you know you can see the black lines through the other side but this pen really doesn't bleed through. I love this. This is my new favorite pen I think and it's a Sharpie. It's nothing fancy just a Sharpie. Now this is waterproof ink because it's a Sharpie marker so if you wanted to do something like this and then watercolor over it or go over it with any wet media really the ink well if you let it dry the ink shouldn't run so now we're going to do the same thing we did before. I'm going to though when I do after I do this first line I'm going to sort of get my center ready here. The smell of this orange is making me hungry. I'm doing this in real time. I'm not fast forwarding for you guys or anything like that. We're just doing this in real time. I do have a little bit of a fast forward here that we'll do at the end where you'll see me putting the color and the inks on the pages and then sort of drawing them with my heat gun so I do have that for you. I'll put that at the end of the video and I'll give you some ideas of what you can do if you're going to do a little journal like this so I'm still just working on sketching my shapes getting my shapes in and having them look the way I see them. Again we've got this little you know center of the orange it's actually the end of the orange but having just a little you know sketchbook like this that you just practice in and play in this is good there's only way to get better is to practice to do it. There's no shortcut and you know making yourself develop a routine where you just do some kind of little quick sketch every day just a little five minute sketch so now I'm going to I'm going to darken this up just a little bit with a few pen strokes make the edges a little darker I'm going to put a little bit of a shadow we've got a little bit of a shadow going on down here and I'm you know I'm not pushing my pen hard on the paper I'm just really barely touching the paper I like those basic lines now I want to go in with a white gel pen this is something I do on a lot of my sketches as soon as I find my white gel pen it's in here somewhere you know I put it away I don't know why I put it away but I put it away it's black I've got a lot of black gold silver to the white one let me find my white pen I'll be right back I've got it so I'm going to go in here and I'm going to brighten up some of the areas of the orange with by adding some white maybe I got too many black lines on there maybe it's just part of the orange that should be lighter and brighter maybe you want to add some white highlights or white accents to your doodle because that happens to be landing on part of the page where there's some of your little background colors so just get in there with a white gel pen or white paint pen and then I'm going to get in here with my micron pen and I'm going to add some darker lines to my orange slices firm up my shapes a bit again I'm not pressing very hard on the paper I'm not necessarily concerned about having you know one smooth even line either if it's sketchy I you know I like that I want it to look sketchy and imperfect so I'm okay with that see there's hardly you can see the lines through the paper but there's no bleed through so I like that I'm going to um write on here I like the way that looks with two lines on there so let's do that again I like that now the other thing you can do on these little sketches this is a bible high glider it's a gel highlighter crayon and these are oranges right so you can use this now don't color all of it in you're going to you lose that fun sketchy quality if you color the whole thing in but you can add some of this to your sketch to your drawing to emphasize to the viewer what it is they're seeing I love these are my favorite like gel crayon high lighter things by the way thanks Michelle for telling me about them because I love them so there you go I like that that is really cute so think about it draw some oranges I will include the picture of this or these oranges as they are right now for you it'll be a free download on my website I just decided while I was sketching go out and practice your orange sketches and we will be back with in the next episode with another sketch I want to fill up this whole book this year with just sketches all right I'll be back don't forget to go out and have a great and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later