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Um, it's gonna—Not yet. Still says waiting.
Learn a powerful overlooked technique to improve your art by mastering the design process between thumbnails and final paintings.
Key Takeaways
- Drawing difficulties often stem from lack of a clear design process between thumbnail and final painting.
- Simplifying shapes and focusing on design helps create stronger, more effective illustrations.
- Adding excessive detail too early can hinder progress and clarity in artwork.
- A structured approach builds confidence and reduces fear in the creative process.
- Community engagement and live feedback enhance learning and artistic growth.
Summary
- The video introduces a workshop called Sketch Smart that focuses on bridging the gap between thumbnails and final paintings.
- Lee White discusses common struggles artists face when drawing and how many get stuck adding detail without a clear design foundation.
- The workshop emphasizes using design principles to build strong illustrations rather than jumping straight into painting.
- Lee explains how pros use a structured process to move smoothly from initial ideas to finished artwork.
- The session includes live demos and examples showing how to simplify shapes and create clear, recognizable designs.
- The importance of reducing complexity early on to avoid getting lost in details is highlighted.
- Lee and Samantha also discuss the value of community and interactive learning through monthly pro demos and workshops.
- The video covers techniques for evaluating thumbnails and choosing the best composition.
- Emphasis is placed on building confidence through a formalized process and design tools rather than relying on guesswork.
- The workshop is part of a broader series offered by Splearn.com, featuring various art-related courses and live sessions.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Technical Setup
- 03:40Overview of Splearn Workshops and Community
- 07:20Common Artist Struggles and Thumbnail Usage
- 10:43Design as the Foundation of Illustration
- 14:02Simplifying Shapes and Composition Techniques
- 20:50Evaluating and Refining Thumbnails
- 27:40Practical Examples and Demonstrations
- 34:30Q&A and Final Tips
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Yeah, mine too. Do you want me to pause it and go back in?
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Are you talking? Sometimes it's a few seconds behind.
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Oh, I'm on YouTube, I think. Oh, there we go.
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What's up, everybody? We figured it out. You guys, if you ever want to do something like a class or something like that online, just realize that you will always have technical difficulties, so you better get used to
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dancing. I've got balls to juggle if I need to. If we lose sound, I've got a break dance routine that we can do.
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I need to up my game. My juggling skills are subpar. Subpar to Lee.
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Uh, well, what's up everybody? I'm Lee White, and I'm here with Samantha Codell. She's joining me today. Thanks, Sam, for showing up. We, uh, I was just telling—
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I was just talking when I thought everybody could hear, but they couldn't.
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Um, I will reiterate that we normally do these pro demos within our Circle community. So one thing we've built at Splearn.com over the past year is a
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vibrant and robust community where we do a pro demo every month. We have office hours where students ask questions and we answer them live. And we've just really loved this interactive sort of experience, and we thought, hey, let's
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just share it a little bit more.
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Um, so other people can kind of test it. So, we've got some people from our SVS community in the chat here. I've recognized some names. We've got some people from Instagram that have come
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over, and obviously some people from YouTube and other places on the interwebs. So, thank you guys for joining us. Like I said, we do one of these every single month.
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Um, this one I wanted to do live also as a way to
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just showcase. We started to do workshops last year and had a great time doing them. Samantha's doing a workshop in October. I'm doing a workshop. This is a lecture. Today's lecture is from my newest
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workshop. So, we're doing a couple of those, and I'll show you guys real quick. Let me share my screen just in case anybody wants to go.
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Um, let's see. You got to pull it up. Pull up the Splearn site.
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All right. There we go. All right. You seeing my screen? Perfect.
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Okay. Yeah. So this is the Splearn site, and you'll see up here this is the workshops, and as you scroll through them, I'm running a—oh,
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another watercolor workshop that starts pretty soon in like two weeks.
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Um, Graphic Novel Pro, we showcase all our classes up here. That's going to run in the spring again.
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Um, but anyway, this is where these things are. So,
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Watercolor Essentials, the demo I'm doing today is called Sketch Smart, and I'll talk a little bit more about that.
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Uh, Children's Book Pros running in the spring. And where is your Sam?
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Well, it will be up there. Um, so soon, any minute. Should be any day. I'm really excited.
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So, I'm excited for all these workshops. I've taken a couple of them. They're really fun.
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And your upcoming one looks amazing. It's going to be good. And Sam's is about 3D mixing 3D and 2D. It's a—It's definitely a different kind of thing.
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Maybe we can get you to talk about that later. But let's go ahead and dive into this workshop.
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Um, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. I found out this fancy way to share my screen. So, I hold
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on one second while I orient that. Got it.
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All right. Are you seeing my screen, Sam?
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Yes, I am.
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All right. Um, so let's get going. So, this workshop is called Sketch Smart: Shortcut Your Way to Killer Illustrations. For those of you guys who don't know, I'm Lee White.
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Um, and I'm just going to walk you through it. This workshop was born from our community. Like I said, we've been doing contests and all kinds of stuff. We watch students take images from thumbnails all the way to finish.
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And one thing that I noticed is a gap.
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Typically, people start with a thumbnail. Everybody knows to do a thumbnail, right? You have to have something. And then a lot of times they go sort of straight to painting, or the process is just murky at best.
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And so this was the first question I sort of asked myself: Why is drawing so difficult?
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Um, and this is what we were seeing in the community of struggles with students is you get into the drawing and something's not right, and then you just spend hours
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and hours trying to fix it, and you can't figure out what's wrong with it.
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Um, doesn't matter how much you do. And typically that's the solution that a lot of students have is to just keep adding and keep adding and keep struggling. And
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they're trying to do it on the final painting, by the way, a lot of times, which is really, really hard.
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And so I thought, you know what? There is a—there is a problem between the final painting and the thumbnail that we need to try to figure out.
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Yeah. And I think it's about giving students the confidence, and just—I think that's where a lot of the lack occurs is this fear. And sketches is one thing, and that's where I think what you're going to be showing really instills a bunch of
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confidence in it. But I think, you know, I had to ask myself where does the fear come from, and I think it's from a lack of a formal process, not that you need rules because they're not really rules, but a lack of
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tools is really what I saw. And so at the same time, I was wondering about, you know, this is a perfect example, by the way, this sketch is—it's chock full of detail. It's not a bad drawing, but it's not a
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good illustration because there's nowhere to look. There's nothing going on. And that's sort of this—it—it's a good example of sort of somebody who's trying really hard but not really making any headway. So, at the same time, I was
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looking at, you know, I've got an Instagram feed as we all do, and Pinterest. And I noticed that other, like pros, they seem to do it every time. It seems effortless. It's not effortless, I can promise you that. But it seems
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effortless. So why do they—how are they able to go from that initial idea to the final painting with what seems like seamlessly they end up with a good result every time? And so I sort of started to balance out what do
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amateurs do, why do they get stuck, and what do pros do? And how do they get through those phases so smoothly?
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Um, so really my class, this Sketch Smart, is about that process. You got a thumbnail, and it's not going to be on how to do
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the final painting because everybody's got a different style for that. I mean, Sam will build it out of paper. I'm not going to do an example of that. It's really how do you get to where, like, you know what you're doing and then you're
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off to the races, and you can have fun doing that final painting. So, here's sort of a three-step process. And what I noticed is students, like I said, tend to add more detail and more detail and more detail, but they get lost in
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the weeds because of that. And I realized there's a lack of design. So, this is really a design class,
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masquerading as a drawing and process class. How do you use design as a basis to build something up? And so,
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are you sharing a screen right now? Just—Oh, are you not seeing my screen?
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I'm not seeing a screen. So, I just want to make sure that everybody else can see the screen. I did see it before.
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Yeah, you're not seeing it on—I'm seeing it on YouTube. So, oh, okay. So, let me know though if people can't see it because I don't want to be talking and I'm looking at it on YouTube. So, it is—it is showing.
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Oh, okay. Okay. Maybe that's—But thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just in case.
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Just wanted to make sure. Um, okay. So, so what you guys are seeing up here is, um, at the top left might be the first step of building a thumbnail, which is just a graphic representation of a layout. Doing adding
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detail is what takes so much time.
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Um, I'm a pretty fast painter now. I can do a full painting within a day. But it's because of the early stages of development that allow me to do that.
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Like I said, setting the stage for doing whatever your final painting is. What we're going to be talki—
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like I said, it builds a strong foundation for painting whatever style you want. It does not I'm not advocating that everybody switch their style to this. It's this is a tool to set you up.
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You could paint realistically. You could build a house out of paper and foam core. I mean, it doesn't matter what you do. Um, this is going to set you up.
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Yeah, it's mine. I I just need to interject really quickly because exactly what you said in terms of no matter what the medium. I'm watching this right now and it immediately is connecting to my own work and that I'm thinking oh when
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I'm doing illustration and I'm not quite sure if these shapes are very interesting just by turning it into this manner you can already get a same like okay in this form how are these shapes looking interestwise and then bringing
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your illustration back into kind of yeah this is already mind-blowing I'm like it's it's it's I mean it really is a game changer once you realize how powerful it is because can you imagine ine especially you line drawers out
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there um because I know a lot of people like for me I just think in terms of paint I always have it's just it's there's sort of you're either one of two you either think a line and it's tough
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to go to paint or vice versa but you got to think like if I was going to do a a you know whole city sort of scene right here well like any of these examples right here how long would it take you to
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line that out even as a thumbnail with line would take forever but man you can just power into these shapes and I'll show you how that works um in actual process in later in this lecture because I'm going through an illustration right
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now where I'm at this exact stage. Um but it's just it's so fast you can bang it out and you can and you know exactly like is this layout going to work? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Um and and the
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best part is uh I guess it's twofold. You get rid of the stuff that you know is not going to work. That's the hard part. Um and then you obviously move towards the one that is.
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Here's some more examples. These have a little bit more line work, but look how much detail you can include. You know, these are going to be good illustrations. There's not a single doubt that any one of these is not going
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to be a great illustration. Um, and once you shift your thinking to this, it's amazing the power you can have. And it's it's interesting because when you start to draw this way as a process, you can go out in the world and you can actually
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start to picture like it's don't do it while you're driving, but sometimes when I'm stopped at a light, I'll I'll just go, okay, what's the not of this? And you can immediately picture the whole thing like this. It's it's I I'm telling
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you, it will change your sort of base way of seeing. That's the best part is it's not a drawing trick.
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It's a thinking sort of trick. Um, and don't you think it could be fun to do that in a way that you introduce yourself to that technique at a certain time of day where it's at first quite obvious with the light and shadows for
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outside and then you use that as a branching point to then train your eye how to see and then it becomes something easier during the daytime. And yeah, it gets harder, you know, like on an overcast day, it's much harder to do
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it. But once you've done it enough, you can say, "Oh, this will group to the light or this will group to the dark." I'll show you guys examples of sort of working through that problem in a second. Um, this is from Hellboy. This
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is Mike Magnola. Some of you guys may have heard of him. Pretty good uh pretty good artist. I figure anything that's good enough for Mike Magnola is good enough for me. Um, and good enough for you, too. This is how he does his rough
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thumbnails. And look how much mileage he gets. There's no lines. There's no It's not vague. It's it's it's very very very clear um on on if it's going to work for him or not.
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And I think expression coming out of there and feeling just from right look at these. Yeah, it's quite intense. Yeah.
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So good. It's so good. Um okay, so the basic idea, let's get into how this works and how it plays out while you're doing it. Um when you see people who have already done it, like these examples I already showed you, it
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looks easy and it sort of is and it sort of isn't. Um, and I'll go through sort of sort of how that works, but the basic idea is you strive for simplicity and shape recognition. Everybody has heard to make good silhouettes when you make a
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character, right? And you know it it this is the probably the third lecture from my class. The first lecture is about silhouette, but we're basically bringing silhouette to everything in an environment, everything in an indoor space, everything in a in a vehicle
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design, whatever you're doing. Um, and you want to get your first step to be so simple as that is a tree. And now it seems stupid to say that or it seems uh maybe basic or naive, but it's the step
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that a lot of people leave off. Like uh, oh, this kid's flying a kite. That should be the first thing. If you make that silhouette, that's the first thing people should think. Oh, that's a kid flying a kite. Um, it's the same thing
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when you when you move to full illustrations. That shape is a tree. If it doesn't look like a tree, like look how we've got the mountain here and then we have a reflection here. That's a reflection. It's pretty easy to grasp it
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and but if people don't grasp it in the graphic sort of representation, that means you need to redraw it.
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Same thing here. So, strive for simplicity, strive for shape recognition. That means you can easily label it. You'd be surprised at how many illustrations people do where you cannot recognize something from its shape. you can only recognize it because of the way
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you painted the inside of it, the detail. Um, so don't let rendering and detail be what describes your illustration. It should be the graphic sort of shape. So these are boats. This isn't a great one because like this one,
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I can tell it's a boat, but look at the angle that it's drawn from. It's it's not I mean it's recognizable because we know there's a the mast is sort of what says, "Hey, that's a sailboat." Look at
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these shapes over here. Not as good as they could be. So, I if I was doing this, I would say, "Hey, I need to change this." Um, this over here, probably a lighthouse, probably a dock.
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Not very descriptive on this shape. So, I'd probably change that. So, you can start to see where some things work and some things um don't work. They they get a little bit lost. I'm going to give you an example of how I had to do that in a
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watercolor painting. So, one of the things we deal with in my class in addition to basic graphic design, basic um value studies, color studies, is how to work with reference. And so, here is a reference image on the left hand side.
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And you can tell these these shapes, we know when we're looking at it in person, hey, these are a bunch of boats in this in this shipyard. But look at how I had to change these shapes to say boat
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because the these shapes are actually not very good at calling out the idea that they're a boat. Look how I changed this boat right here, this blue one to this triangle shape that people are like instantly that is a boat. So pretty easy
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to do. So once I've done that and I do that in the drawing stage, hey these shapes don't read um from your reference. And that's what we'll talk. A lot of people once they get reference, they're like, "Well, it looks like a
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boat in the picture. You draw it like that. It will not look like a boat in your painting." So then here's my first step. A lot of people um don't really work this way, but I do. Uh where they a lot of people
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paint watercolor, they go from light to dark. I just go straight in and I did the no tan. This is the the image from that. So I drew the boats so they're recognizable by shape. I do the no tan
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and then I can just fill in the rest of the colors with watercolor. super super easy and super fast.
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That's great. That's makes it it just makes it simple. Again, that's the whole idea is that we're trying to make things we're trying to take things to their absolute simplest form and then build on them and make sure they work in that simple form,
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right? Um so here's an example of how it works in an illustration. So the basic idea again is make sure your shapes read and the next shape is light shapes over dark and dark shapes over light. I love
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having Sam here because this first image, the real idea is almost like you're cutting it out of paper.
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Exactly. I mean, yeah, this is really fascinating because it perfectly applies to my own medium and Yeah, it does. It does look like cut paper.
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Yeah. Yeah, it works so well. And so, you set this up like, okay, these trees are going to be light over dark and then when the when it transfers over where the snow is, it's going to be dark over
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light. Now, that's how that looks as a graphic representation. What it looks like in the actual painting is simultaneous contrast, which that's something else we'll go over where you have a dark shape and you have a light shape. If you have something that's in
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between those two, it'll read on both of those shapes. Um, so you can add complexity. Again, the goal isn't to stay here, but it's to set yourself up.
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Do I have any comments or anything that I need to answer? I was just about to say you've had a lot of comments mainly about just the kind of mindblowing, oh, this makes so much sense and just just to look at it that way. And I've
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got, let's see, uh, it's funny. The middle-aged man learns to draw his dog. I love that tag. Most of these are landscapes. Can this be applied to single subject illustrations as well?
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That's a question that you've received from him. Wait, say that again. What's the question? says, "Most of these are landscapes. Can this be applied to single subject illustrations as well?" Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll show you I'll show you that as well. And we
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can it can be applied to anything that has a shape. It could be a simple character design.
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It could be the most complex illustration you got you want. I mean, a lot of them the environments are the easiest way to start this. And so that's why I do start with environments. Um, but you can I mean, you can and should
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use it with every single illustration you do. There's no illustration that it will not work for.
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Mhm. Um, okay. So, let me go back up. So, some things to avoid and things to start thinking about. The I the whole idea here is number one, shape recognition, right? That's the first step that we talked about. Second step was making
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sure each individual shape uh um reads. Uh the third step is grouping and connecting. And so, that's something that I look for like when I look at a scene, whether it's an interior scene, it doesn't matter what it is. How can
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these shapes group together? How can I put dark things together? How can I group light things together versus everything being what? I don't know what you'd even call this. It's every in this one on the right. It's just a mess.
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There is no chance that this will be a good illustration. There's no chance because your darks are all over the place. Nothing has readability. I mean, you can tell there's some rooftops in here and you can tell there's some
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trees, but I promise this will not be a good illustration. Um, and that's where this sort of starts to break down is when the um, stuff sort of gets all over the place. And so even when shapes aren't
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connected when and again using reference pictures, sometimes shapes aren't connected at all. You group them together. You move them. Um, that's the beauty of what we're doing is we're not stuck like a photographer is to a scene.
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I can move the boats around. I I can move a character in space. I can do anything I want as long as I'm going to get a light over dark or a dark over light.
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Now, you have a question from Jessica Evans, and I'm assuming that a lot of this is digital based first with the sketching and figuring this out. And she asked, "When you paint dark first, do you get the dark colors bleeding into
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the lighter colored sections?" Um, I uh it depends on what kind of paper you use. Um, and you can seal it too um if you if that does happen. um that but sometimes that's actually wanted because otherwise it'll look like
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you drew everything with a Sharpie. Um and I don't want that look if I'm painting in watercolor. So I I'm actually anticipating a little bit of the bleed, but it'll hold for the most part, but very dependent on your paper.
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We'll be going over that in detail in my watercolor workshop if you guys want to check that out. Um but this is a big one. So try to group shapes as much as possible and I'll do some demos. Um you
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know, answering the question that somebody was talking about a second ago, it doesn't have to be environment. This is more characterbased, but this sort of shows you the progression that I like to think of images in. Um, the first way I
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like to think of it is what is my graphic design? So, is it a triangle, is it a square, or is it a circle? That's all I'm concerned with in the beginning.
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And where are these things and how and what's their relationship to each other? So, I start with the simplest thing I possibly can, which is a triangle, another triangle, a square, you know, couple of lines. Um, and then the next
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one is the notan. And you'll see how that I start to build build that up. Um, and you know, it doesn't mean you have to include every single thing in the not because the not is just a step that
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moves you forward. So, you notice I left the trees out of that. I know they're going to be lighter. If I were to draw the black trees here, it would probably get in the way of this. So, it it is a
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thinking phase. It's not just like um automatic. You know what I mean? You leave things out. you include some things and you change some things sometimes um depending on what it's going to be. You know, I had to think
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about do I want to leave this is a light shape within uh an overall dark um but it's the dark shape of what her um outfit is. And so I had to figure out, you know, do I want to
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leave that dark or do I want to leave that light? I'm going to talk about that in a demo in just a second. So, there's a lot of thinking that goes in to this step and sometimes you'll even go
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against it later, but you're just kind of trying to clarify what the image is and that's that's the whole goal.
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Yeah. A lot of people seem to love this illustration in particular. So, very nicely.
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Thank you. Erin says, "This is super helpful to leave out some stuff to not confuse the process." Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.
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Easy breezy. Here's an example of the things you have to think about when you start to think in terms of not stage or the black and white graphic design stage. Um, so here's a just a a simple cube. We've got a simple background.
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We've got a simple shadow. We got a three-sided cube. But you'll notice the light is on the top and this is in basically half light and then this is in shadow. This is in the the front left is
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the half tone. Well, which way does that go? It could go this way where it just goes all dark or it goes this way. Both of them read um equally well, but this is this is the hard part and I'll show
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you how this plays out in a full illustration um in a minute. And here's a fourth one that I've added. So, this is all tone, which is typically how we see the world. Uh and then this is sort
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of a graphic design representation where you do get the benefit of adding some line work. Um, so you can see that this one probably is the mo has the most um information, but it just depends on how much you want to how much information
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you want to add. What do you need to add? You know, sometimes if this is a a building in the background or something like that, I may want to just group these shapes together and not show the differentiation between the front and
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the top. So, it's your choice. You start to get made, you start to make decisions, and it's not always clear-cut, and it definitely is not always easy, but it's fun. It's pretty fun to play.
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So, here's an actual example of the thing that I just did. Here's a reference image. You're going to paint this this uh this piece of wood. Um the first tip I'll give you guys is to reduce the image down. So, if you look
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at this, you start to think about, oh, look at this pretty knot pattern. Look at this floor stains. Look, you know, whatever. When I reduce it small, let's make it even smaller.
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Now, look at it. I mean, this is tiny. It's probably It's tiny on my screen. I don't know what it's like on your screen. If you're watching on a phone, probably infantesimally small, but blur, if you blur your vision, you'll start to
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get a hint of what you should do. That's the first step. If you squint or take off your glasses if you if you need glasses, that is the best art tip you'll ever get in your life. Very known one
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within illustration. Um, is squinting. And and so values when you squint will start to group together.
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Yeah, this is so helpful. And especially for any illustrators out there that are watching right now, this is kind of similar to what I stress for people that are doing character or cover design work, things like that, recognizing that
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most people are looking at book covers and such on a very, very small phone screen. And so you're already kind of helping to solve those problems in terms of making an illustration that you know is going to be legible from a very small
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size. Yeah, exactly. Um, let me try I'm trying to um I for whatever reason don't have my play button that I normally have. This is this is a little movie I was going to show you. It's always something, isn't
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it? It is. And it's so fascinating because the YouTube is on a delay. So, I'm talking to you, but then I see myself talking just prior. So, this is fascinating.
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Um, let me try to I'm going to try to open this again. Um because I really want to uh be able to show you the the movie in a way that works.
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I don't know why sometimes it changes um sort of how the screen is. Oh god.
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There we go. Hold on. I have uh now on the side uh the completely different controls than when I normally build a document. So now I'm looking at it going, how do I play the movie? Hold on.
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So this will be that header alone. I just I want a print of this header.
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It's so pretty. It's pretty. Hold on one second. Let me figure this out. I don't know why it won't let me show it. Hold on one second.
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Oh man. Oh, there we go. I got it. Okay. Sorry. Sorry about that, you guys. Okay. I'm not going to play the whole movie. If you're in the class, the movies will play, but I just want to show you sort
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of the steps that I go through in thinking about this um uh kind of thing.
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Again, this is simple. I'm we're going to go complex really quick. So don't worry if you're like I'm better than this. It's just a box. Um so the first step is obviously think about the silhouette of your shape. That's
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obviously it's a box. Can't do much about that. Um and then you got to decide which side just like we just did with the example with the watercolor sort of cube that I had. Does it get dark on both sides? If you blur your
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vision with the box on the left, it's dark on both sides. It's not really getting light. So I'm just going to go ahead and do that. And notice that's the first step that I do. And if people did
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this with their reference, the the work would get a lot better. You see my my reference photo went from big to very small. Um, and so now I can start to see it a little bit better. Go ahead and
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block in that shape in the background. And I mean, this is just basic stuff right here. And then I start thinking about the shadow.
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Okay. So that's step one is like sort of that's like the basic design that we have, but it's not a wood block yet. And so that's the next step is you start to add the detail. And you want to do that
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at the edge of objects. And so for me, if that is basically I'll add just a little bit. See these little um if you look at the left hand side, you see where the uh little cracks and stuff
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form and the and the knots and all that kind of stuff. That's where you can start showing that at the edge of the object. So I don't need to render the entire thing. A lot of times people spend so much time on the interior of an
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object when really the only time you have to add detail is the outside of the object. So I can add a couple of little little hits on the outside to show the the gaps. Add a couple of little hinset
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circles. And that's going to be all I need to show a note version of this.
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Again, this is a lot. There's a lot of grays in here. There's a lot of detail, but you got to think like what's my fastest method forward? And you can get you can make these images beautiful if you want to. I'm using these as a part
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of my process. And so you're going to see some some nice ones, but you'll also see some messy ones. This is about the level I take them. I don't try to make them perfect, but you can make them
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perfect. And they're so much fun to do. So, the next thing that I noticed is after you figure out, okay, where's my texture? Um, how am I going to show light and dark? And and what am I going
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to show light and dark from? The next thing is, like I said, starting to group things together and simplify. So, one thing that I've noticed from people who do this well, um, both as no tan images and then also as finished illustrations
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is you start to build up a, uh, a very limited amount of shapes that are in your image, even when there's a lot of stuff within those shapes. And so, right now, you have you're looking at a bunch of Note 10 images, some
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characters, you got some landscapes, you got a seascape or whatever. But what I noticed a consistent little thing is five shapes. Five shapes. And so this has become an interesting little challenge for me. I mean it's not like
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I'm again it's not a rule but it's a sort of um what would you call it Sam?
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Like a hallmark where yeah like a framework like a a guide. A guide. That's it. A guide to get started.
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Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, if you if you Google these kind of images or go to Pinterest, you'll see a bunch of people that do them. Pros do these.
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Amateurs tend to not do these. And that's something else I pay attention to is what do most pros do? And no matter what their finished style is, if they're do if everybody's doing something that's good, I want to probably do that that
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thing, too. And but this is just something that I noticed within them as I was looking at different people. 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5. I mean, if I cut this first top left one out of paper like Sam
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would, this black area could just be one piece of paper. Yeah. There would be no cut. Um, and so that's just a consistency thing. So, starting to limit yourself to as few shapes if possible. Um, it doesn't mean again in
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the finished illustration you can't add more stuff within those shapes, but it would be all those things would be dark and all the other things would be light.
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Again, these shapes, one, two, three, four, five. In this, in the case of this one, you could make this whole black shape out of one piece of paper.
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Yeah, you could. Absolutely. It's amazing. It's amazing when people actually get good at it. Same thing here. 1 2 3 4 5. And so, it's just something that I noticed and something that I started paying attention to in my
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own work. Can I make images that have around five shapes? Again, not a rule, but a tool.
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Yeah, it has a block printing look to it. Like you can also picture carving out the shapes too.
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Right. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So let's start with an easy scene. So there's I I I do divide scenes into or the ability to do this into three steps basically. Easy scene, an average scene, and a hard scene. Um so the easy scene,
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if you've never done this kind of thing before, this is what to look for. You pick scenes with a good light source.
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That's step one for sure. Look for a few hallmark shapes that make the scene unique. Um, for easy scenes, this is the big one. Look for shapes that are already silhouetted or they don't overlap too much. In other words, these
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trees are just by themselves. There's not a building in the background that I'm also trying to draw or, you know, whatever. Um, or a bunch of trees together where I can't separate them.
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Um, this is easy. So, we've got basically one section here, one section here, one section here, and one section here, and then the water tying that together. So, big shapes and then keeping things simple. Somebody asked earlier, oh, why are you working with
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landscapes? Again, this is the easiest way to dive into this. It doesn't mean it's the only way to do it. Um, I'll show you guys this one as a it's about a five minute demo. I I'll just walk
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through the steps in video. I'm not going to show the whole video. So, typically I um uh if you're in the class, I'll give you the videos and there'll be more demos, too, in the class, not just the ones from the
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lecture. But um I worked with just one thin brush uh and then and then I squared off uh fill brush and has just a little bit of texture just because I don't like that sort of digital look.
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But in this case um I just basically start with the biggest shape I possibly can. That's always my advice for when you're drawing something. If if you stand back and look at a big scene, what's the biggest thing I can draw?
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That's going to always be my recommendation. Um, a lot of times people start with these small little things and then you get lost in the details. So I start with the horizon line is the biggest thing that I can
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draw typically within a landscape like this. And then the the shape of that water is the next biggest thing I can do. And then I just start filling in.
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And that's what that's why this is so fun is because and that's why I like working digitally with this process too is you can just go back and forth between white and black so easily. I do this with watercolor a lot but it's not
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as easy. Doesn't this help too? I've noticed that when people are starting with the tiny details, they kind of get lost in the composition then either goes off the page and doing it this way, you are able to kind of really compose it where you
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know all the elements are going to sit where they kind of need to sit instead of running out of space. Yeah. Yeah. Exa Exactly. Um and so and then you can work on any of the shapes that you want to here. Like I
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mean this is such an easy image. Again, this is an easy one. I'll show you how I do a complicated one in a minute. But really, I'm just, if you blur your vision on the left hand side of the
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page, look at that image and then look at what I'm painting on the right hand side. You'll notice I'm not making the rocks exactly perfect. I'm just thinking there's a big dark shape over here and it's sort of slanted. That's all I
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think. I don't think, oh, it's got to be exactly what the reference is. Um, and how that plays out in illustration is.
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I'll look at a whole city and I'll say, well, that's a box with a couple of little boxes in it. I don't even have to look at the building anymore. I can just draw a box with little boxes in it and
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it'll be close enough. Um, and so, and that's how I think about these shapes is like, okay, that one's going horizontally. I don't try to match it perfectly because we're not trying to make um, copies of pictures. Um, we're
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just using it as a reason to paint. And then I just start blocking shapes in. I think to myself, oh, these these are kind of it's a triangle with with shapes going up. And so you can see describe
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instead of talking about trees and what trees do, I just start thinking about graphic design and which direction things are going and and then just keep keep filling in and just keep painting and like what's the what's again the
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most basic version of this that I can do. And you'll see that you got to decide, you know, is the is the rock going to be w uh white or black? Is the water going to be white or black? Is the
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sand going to be white or black? And that's where it becomes more individualistic. But overall, I try to ask myself, did I hit sort of what the scene feels like? And if you did, you can just move on. Again, this is just a
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stage. Although I think these are really these kind of drawings are really pretty um on their own. And so I tend to do them on my own just for um if I'm going to do actual artwork, I will pay way
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more close attention to u shape and and to what's going to be black and white.
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But sometimes I'll do tests, too. And then we're going to work through that in an average scene. But this is an easy scene. We've got a grouping over here.
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We've got some rocks here. And we got a background here. Same thing here. So easy to do and so much fun.
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Yeah. Well, we've got a couple comments here. Miriam said there's there's really nice shapes in the photo. She sees S curves contrasted with pointy shapes.
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And Hannah Mark said, "This will be so good for me to get out of that quote unquote perfect box." And then Miriam just said, I was just thinking, you're not just trying to make a photograph or you could just take the picture. And so
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it's been, I think, a really fascinating process for people to watch. Yeah, it's it's so much fun, you guys.
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And like I said, it sets you up so good for doing illustrations. Now, here is where it gets tricky. So, this is what I would call an average scene. This one was the easy. Remember, the shapes were all sort of self-contained, easy, light,
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and dark relationship. So, it almost sets itself up for that. And now, like I said, when I'm out in the world, I can recognize when I'm taking pictures with my phone. That's an easy one. That's a medium one. That's a hard one. Um,
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do you have a general kind of digital brush that you use when you're just roughing these out? Is that I've got a couple. It's the same set that I use for our Freaky Friday sessions. If you guys aren't familiar
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with that, uh, me and Sam and Anthony do a live drawing session on it's just a couple of basically it's a squared off brush with a little bit of texture, but sometimes I'll just use the flat, the most basic Photoshop, the round hard
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brush. And I'll show you how to modify that in the class to actually do what we want to do. I'll basically smush that um so I can uh u so it handles more like a paintbrush. I'm just used to a flat kind
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of shape. So that's what I like. Okay. So here's an average scene. Why isn't this an easy one? I mean the shapes are pretty clear, right? Here's the problem.
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If you just look at it, we've got a white main subject. We've got good shadows on it. So that's a easy one, right? It's easy to do the building.
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The sky is light. The rocks are light with dark. And so it are these rocks. Remember, we only have white and we only have black. And don't be a cheater and try to cross-hatch to get a gray because I know I know some of
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you guys are going to do that. Um you want to think in big masses. Don't be don't don't try to get tricky. Um so here's the problem. The rocks are dark.
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Um but they're in the light and then the the ocean is dark, too. And so this is one where I'd be like, I don't know. The boat's easy because there's dark around it. It's a light shape. This is easy
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because it's dark on the light. But this section right here is really tough. So how I treat this is, you know, the first thing I think is what does the overall scene feel like? It feels like a dark
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rock, right? Light building on a dark rock. That's the first thing I'll think about. But I'll go ahead and test these out because these are so fast. I tested one with the light sky, little bit of a gap here just so I could separate those
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mountains. And then I went dark with the water. And I did play with the light that's on the rocks themselves. But in my opinion, this does not feel like this does. Whereas this does feel like what this does by I just went basically
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really dark with most of the rock and have just a little bit of light on it.
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So there's a lot of interpretation that happens when you're working this way. Again, it's not just a carbon copy.
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Oh, and a lot of people think that, oh, you're just drawing the shadows every time. Well, it would always look like this if you're just drawing the shadows.
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Um, so it doesn't work like that. You actually have to think, what does it feel like? What's going to be dark and what's going to be light? I needed the dark for that boat to show up, too. Look
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at this big light area. So, I put a lot more dark on this one. And I could play with this all day. I mean, there's probably 10 versions of it that I could do, but super super fun to do these really
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quick and then uh and see which one's better. Um, and each one of these is four minutes long. That's my time frame on these. Four minutes. So, you're not burning time. You're not wasting effort.
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Um, and sometimes you get something better than you could ever imagine. That's the fun fun part of this.
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Yeah, I really like that actually that first one of those two. I really like You don't think it's I think it's too contrasty to me because then everything feels um like the light. I feel like it doesn't feel like rock to me as much as
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Yeah. No, I see that. I see that. I can see that. Yeah. I mean, and some people do. I mean, and you might like the first one.
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That's totally fine. This is like a completely artistic process. There's no there's no right one. It's just which one do you like? Um so, if those of you guys who are saying I like the first one, totally valid. the question comes
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in what's going to happen when you paint it. Um, and so that's some of the questions I'm trying to solve for myself when I'm doing these. Like I said, it's a lot of times it's a test for the
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illustration. And so I'm thinking these are going to be dark rocks in my painting probably. And so I'm trying to lean lean it more towards how I'm going to paint it.
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Yeah. And then I have a question for you. Yeah. You have a question. It says, "This may have missed me. Are there any times that you do a no tan and then during the final illustration you realize that
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certain light shapes don't really make sense given the lighting? Say that one more time.
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Are there any times that you do a no tan and then during the final illustration you realize that certain light shapes don't really make sense given the light?
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Absolutely. Absolutely. Sometimes when I'm doing a note 10, I will know when I'm painting the light shape that it's going to be darker naturally in the painting or I end up changing it. The important thing though is how big masses
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work together. That's sort of what you're trying to solve. You're not saying like, okay, I made it light in the no tan, so now it has to be pitch, you know, stark bright in the actual painting.
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It doesn't. And like I said, I'm going to show you some examples of how of the illustration I'm working on right now.
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Um that deals with that exact exact process. It's an overall dark scene, but it doesn't look that way in the no tan.
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So that's a that's a great question. Um I saw another one. Um hold on another question. Oh, that says, "Is the whole class on not or is this just a single lecture?" This is just one lecture. This is just day one of the of the workshop.
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We go deep into all this stuff. Um okay. So yeah, let me know if there's any uh do you stick with just the black and white when planning or do you factor in different levels of value? That would be
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the next stage. I'm going to talk about that um next and how this works. I'll show you an example of that too. Um but the not really sets everything up. It's the step one and then it sets everything
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up um after that. Um so this is this would be what I would call a complicated scene. Um it's it's got a good light source uh and it's okay. I do want to talk about emphasis. um for a moment. I
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mean, this is just a uh a building and so there's not a lot of story that's going on here, but ultimately we want to be good storytellers and emphasis is one of the things we're going to work on the
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second half of the week in the workshop. Um which is where do you want people to look and what's the story about this? I mean, I always think that if you paint enough from life and from reference, everything does have a story. And so
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when I'm painting a scene like this, I will think to myself, what's the hallmarks of this scene? I mean, every building has windows. Every building has a roof. They might not be terracotta.
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So, that's one little thing. Okay, it's got a terracotta roof that's different than the roof on my house. Um, but I look at this light pole right here, this kind of ornate kind of shape. And I look at this scene and I think to myself,
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this is really about laundry to me, for lack of a better term. Um, so I want to emphasize that in in my um not because that's sort of what the thing is about to me. Um, but it really does become
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about simplifying. I mean, there's so much stuff in this scene, and that's where, again, we can break this thing down so quick and so easy. Um, and so I'll I'll start this little demo.
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Um, this one is here. I'm going to I always start with um showing you guys the brushes and stuff that I'm using.
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So, that's what I always make a couple of marks first. But, um, I'll just walk you guys through sort of my thinking on this stuff. Again, the first step is to make it small and reduce it and and and
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then to squint. And so I start thinking about that. What's my overall graphic shapes? What's my graphic design? And then I think to myself, light, dark, light, dark. And so the sky is lighter.
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Right now, this red is probably a little bit brighter than the sky, but I'm but since the building faces themselves are light, I'm thinking light, dark, light, dark, you know, light dark. And so I'm trying to set up that basically that pattern.
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Um, and so that's what I look for. Again, the first thing that I like to do is set up my bigger shapes. And the biggest thing I can do, and one of the things I do when there's buildings
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involved is I always draw the ground plane first. Your things can change in height and nobody will know. If I make this building too short, nobody unless you're standing there, nobody's going to know. But if I mess up on where the the
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ground plane is, it's hard to place move the buildings themselves. And so I always a lot of times we'll just make a just a general shape for the ground plane. Go ahead and just get your big silhouettes. Again, I'm not this is not
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outlining. I'm basically thinking of what's the big silhouettes in the shot. And then once I've got that, that's about all the line work that I need. Do you know how quick that is? I mean, how long this would take to draw in line
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work? It's just crazy. So I get my basic structure. That's all I need. And then I go right to that big fatty brush and just I if something's going to be dark for sure, I know it's going to be dark.
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I just go ahead and fill it in. Boom. That's like one minute. Super super super quick and easy. I know that's going to be dark against the light. And so when there's something that's known, I'll go ahead and do that
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first. Yep. And Jessica just says, "What do you want to communicate to the viewer?" And everything that does not do that, leave it out. Right.
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That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Um, and remember I was talking earlier about connecting the shapes. So, see this little space right here? I've definitely made sure that that shadow goes into this shadow.
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And I do that everywhere. So, now that shadow goes into the building shadow. That shadow connects to the upper deck or the upper roof on that smaller building. Each one of those shadows is connected by a line. Don't want to go
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into too much um detail. I'm not able to connect that shadow too much right there between the between this roof and this roof because it's a bright shape. Sometimes I'll just use a line if I have to do that. But look how
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good this is. It's just such an easy representation of it. And this whole painting I think took eight minutes. Um and then I just go okay that's this is the benefit of using a big fat flat brush. big fat flat brush is you can
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just make sometimes you can just make shapes by pulling them straight down and just making a it just makes a a somewhat of a square. And so um so that's all I do is just make a just a quick pull down and that's my
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shape. And then I can go back and forth between white if I need to clean up an edge.
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Hooking that shape together down there. A couple of bars there. Luckily there is a dark gutter right here actually in the scene. So, I grabbed onto that gutter and just added it right there.
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Just rough in some windows. I don't even care how many windows are over here. All I know is, remember, that's a square shape with a bunch of little squares in it going in a certain direction. And that's all I really care about. I add
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the that little light pole and I reverse it out next to this window so it shows up.
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And then I had just a little even though this isn't in light, I felt like there's too much. This is just too big of a dark shape. So I go ahead and pretend like this balcony is getting hit with a
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little bit of light. And then I'll start to add laundry. The laundry is not white and light in the image. The laundry is in the shadow. If I was painting it, I sure wouldn't paint it this bright, but
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I sort of need to tell the story of the laundry hanging across there. And um and that's enough again for an eight minute drawing picture. If you're just sketching on location, you got eight minutes. Pretty good representation of
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what you're going to do. And the best part is with this information, just like that boat image I used earlier, if I go home and I draw paint this in watercolor and I paint this scene and just splash
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um any kind of color in there, I've got the scene. So, I can use this as a guide when I go home pretty easily.
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Pretty fun. Pretty fun. I mean, I used to spend so long when I'm when I would be drawing um on location and now I don't have to. So, how does this play out in um in illustrations? This is sort
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of how it plays out. I know there's a little bit of gray here, but this is overall sort of the graphic design in the sense of what the class is about is thinking in terms of design, overall darks and lights. You know, how do I
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think in terms of contrasting shapes and contrasting colors, a bunch of dark circles with a triangle shape that has color to it ends up being an illustration like this. And so that's how one thing plays into the other.
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Here's the image that I'm working on now. And um this is sort of the process that I use. So here's my reference up here in the upper left which I did just a straight note 10 painting of I don't
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have that in here but that's the image in the upper left hand side. And so I looked at the things that I like about it. Um I like this sun kind of filling in this the silhouette shape there. Um
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and I just love this building just anyway. And so I thought it would be fun. My concept would be this kid who's befriended a ghost. I don't know. We're coming up on Halloween. So, this kid's befriended a ghost and he's coming over
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to play in this sort of deserted, you know, empty house or whatever, old Victorian house. Um, and now I'm just playing with this. And so, this is just a fun way that I start my day just by messing around. So, here's my notense.
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I'm not trying to make this for you guys. I'm not trying to make them pretty. This is just what I do. And I can burn through a hundred of these in an hour if I needed to. Um, to test
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composition, to test whatever. And so, now I've got the here, let me zoom in a little bit. I can show it to you a little closer.
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So, I've got my house. I've got my mansion. Um, I got my dark group of trees. And notice here, I've got my light shape on dark. There's my kid who's coming to play with the ghost.
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There's my light shape on a dark background. That's my ghost up in the upper right hand side. We'll talk a lot about setting up compositions and that kind of stuff. But here's my first one, and it's closest to the reference in
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terms of where the mansion is, but it's too it's too centered for me. And so I thought, what if the what if I flip the house and just move it over there? And so um so I can get rid of all this. Just
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paint in the trees going this way. I still at this point I still have the um the shadows going across. But it sets up pretty well. Light shape over dark.
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Light shape over dark. Light shape over dark. Dark shape over light. And so I can test these compositions. I tended to like um I liked this upper right one. I switched it to a vertical format, but I wanted a little bit more house in there.
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And so this is sort of the one that I ended up going with. Then I'll burn through a bunch of color studies. And for a little while I thought it would be cool to have a moving truck there. Like
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maybe maybe this kid is moving in and doesn't know there's a ghost there. So I tried that out a few times. Um and then I'll start to work. These are still color studies. So I haven't done this is
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not finished by any stretch, but um but I'm just testing out like where's where's my ghost going to be? Where's my kid going to be? What's my light source?
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Is am I going to stay warm in the top or cool? And so I'll start doing these these kind of color studies and that's where I'm at. But I can get all this information done um in uh a very fast
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way. I mean this is just one sit really one sitting couple of hours and then and then you're ready to go. And so there's still some decision that I need to make.
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I need to figure out which one I'm going to do. But that's sort of how this process lives within my process.
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Um okay. So some things to avoid if you're doing all this stuff. You want to avoid camouflage. Um, you would never think that people would paint this scene on the left hand side. I put it on the right to be juxtaposed against it. Um,
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but uh, I mean, you can see how clear our shapes are, how clear our light dark is. Now, you wouldn't think people would paint this way, like I said, but they do. And I'll show you an example. The
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the worst paintings I've ever seen in my life are of the Civil War um, battle scenes.
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They put everything into these kind of paintings. Um, and they're horrible. Um, and you can see, you know, it's not quite uh camouflage, but it's pretty close. Look at this on the left hand side. This may as well be
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camouflage with all these people. Um, there's no focal point. Remember, we're talking about emphasis. There's no This mountain gets as much attention as the people down here. It's a disaster. This one's a little bit better in that if you
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squint your eyes, the guy on the horse becomes your main character and and everybody else is basically pointing at that, but it's centered in the composition. It's totally terrible. Um, you can play paint complex things, but you have to orchestrate them. Think
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about a conductor, a cond music conductor conducting a very difficult symphony. It's everybody's playing, but they can't all be playing at the same volume, at the same speed, at the same, you know, everything. Um, so you dial back some instruments, you bring some
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instruments up, and that's how you get something that actually works pretty well. So that's what I call camouflage is if you're just painting a bunch of shapes, there's no organization to the shapes. Um, think about how hard it
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would be to do a notan version of this one on the left. It would be a nightmare.
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Um, so again, going back to sort of what we learned um here today, and it's what the emphasis is here. clarify your design, improve your readability, strengthen your visual impact, guide your viewer, think about where the emphasis is, and then build a strong
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foundation for uh what's going to come next, whatever process you um you're using. And then what what we're going to do in the workshop, what comes next is value studies, color studies. How do you do this from your imagination? How do
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you work from reference in a way that's usable without getting too attached to it? Um how do you control your emphasis?
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Um how do you control your composition? and then how do you put it all together?
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And so that's what this whole uh workshop is basically about. It's up right now if you wanted to sign up for it at splearn.com.
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It's um it's up now. So hope you guys uh got something out of that. I I can now finally check the chat. Is there anything I need to Well, I would let you know, but I got I was just I disappeared for five minutes
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because it crashed me out. Well, I saw you I saw you were missing. I didn't know if I if your window was gone or I didn't know. Uh yeah, so it just completely left. So I'm trying to join in smoothly and casually. And uh
Speaker A
let's see. Uh I have a feeling you did you notice anything, Lee? Let me look. Um I agree in terms Well, you know what? I will let you look because I don't want to jump in in case I missed and I'm off step, but
Speaker A
it looks like people are very excited about what you've shown today. Yeah. Uh Tasha asks, "What's the deadline for signing up?" Um, it starts u I think around the I don't know what day it starts on. Um, all the way up until when
Speaker A
it starts. Let me look and see when that is. Starts in 45 days. That's October 25th is the day that it starts on. So, you have up until that day. Um, John Doe was saying is that detail in the not I don't
Speaker A
know which one um he's referring to. Um, it doesn't mean you can't add detail to a not. That's not what the goal is for a Note 10. The goal of the Note 10 is to space and place everything where it's
Speaker A
going to be. You could go nuts on a Note 10 and do a finished illustration if you wanted to. Um, but it just it clarifies where where your silhouettes are and how your shapes break down. Doesn't mean you
Speaker A
can't add detail. I've seen some gorgeous gorgeous ones where they are basically little illustrations in themselves and you can just keep going, you know, till your heart's content as long as the overall holds up. Um, I always say if something works well as a
Speaker A
postage stamp, it's going to work well as a poster. And so that's the test is like every one of those, no matter how much detail it had, uh, worked well small as it did as it did big.
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Laura asks, "What is the feedback structure of this course?" Um, it's a it's a couple different components, and that's one of the benefits that we had from already running the watercolor workshop this way. Um, there's three live sessions
Speaker A
where we are live with each other. I can paint for you and draw, you know, do demos or do drawovers of what you're doing or whatever. Um, but then I'm live every single day live. I'm I'm uh active
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on the there's a there's a private forum for the group for the class and everybody's posting images in there asking questions and I'm just going in there multiple times a day doing drawovers or saying, "Hey, look at this
Speaker A
or here's another resource." And so it's interactive in quite a few different ways. So, you get the pre-recorded videos, the interaction daily on the forum, and then three live sessions.
Speaker A
Sounds great. I'm going to do it. It's super fun. I mean, that that way of learning actually works really really well because it's it's sort of hitting you at all the different ways to learn.
Speaker A
The video you can go back and watch multiple times if you miss something. Um, the interactivity on the on the forum's nice and from the watercolor workshop, everybody ended up uh becoming friends and sharing resource. There's so many resources that I I could not
Speaker A
believe it. Um not just from me but from the other people that are in the class.
Speaker A
Love Yeah. I'll take this last question before we wrap up because it's 205. So just to let you know but the question is do we retain access to the videos afterwards?
Speaker A
Uh for two months they'll be live after so you can watch whatever you want for two months. The only reason we don't leave them up in their entirety is um space for all these workshops costs so much money that we can't uh we can't
Speaker A
keep them up and it just takes up all of our um server space and all that stuff from all the memories because these videos are huge. They're all filmed in 2 to 4K. Um so two months and that tends
Speaker A
to be enough for people to get everything they want. I should add this does come with a little workbook. Um, so some of the principles for each section, we're going to go through a little bit of instruction in the workbook, but then
Speaker A
a place for you to put paste your own images that because there's homework in each one of these um exercises. I give you very very specific homework in order to sort of guide you through this.
Speaker A
Assuming that you have no knowledge of this kind of working method or or or whatever. So, you can be a beginner. If you're a pro, you're going to be able to use this stuff really really quick. But it does come with the workbook. It's
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just a PDF that you're going to be sort of building along with you. So that way in like two years after the workshop's over and you've forgotten all about me, you can go back and open this document and say, "Oh yeah, that's the step.
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That's the process that I did and that's that's how we did it." Perfect. Sounds great. This was really informative.
Speaker A
Um, so Reiki is asking a a great question. Um, if you make a hundreds of no tan thumbnails, how do you choose the best one? That is a fantastic question.
Speaker A
That's where we start talking about storytelling and emphasis. So, if you tell me, hey, like in my my scene there, I want the boy to be the main emphasis, um, the one with the ghost, and then I want the ghost to be a second read. So,
Speaker A
as long as I know that, then I can start saying which one highlights that the best. Um, you know, is there going to be text in there? Do I need to worry about anything else? Um, so you start going
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through saying, uh, if you know there's a color palette, which one's going to fit the color palette that you want to use the best? And so, and then sometimes that's the best thing you could do is like have three or four of those no 10
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images and tell people what the emphasis is going to be and post them in our community and say, "Hey, which one do you guys like best?" Typically, people gravitate towards one in particular. Um, so you don't want you're I mean, it's a
Speaker A
great question because you don't want hundreds of images and then and then you uh it it's just sort of random. I learned that I used to teach the entertainment track at the Art Institute of Portland. So, we would have a
Speaker A
character design assignment, for example. People would come up and they'd learn, "Oh, I got to do good silhouettes, and that's what that's what the teacher wants." They'd hand me a page that has a hundred silhouettes on it. And I'd be like, "No, no, no, no,
Speaker A
no. You have to do some work here. Tell me which the which are the best five, and let's talk about those five and why." Um, but that's a good good problem to have. If you've got a hundred images
Speaker A
that work from a notan, you know, sketch session, you're doing it right. That's great.
Speaker A
Yeah. This is great. Wow, this was amaz Thank you, Lee. This and I think people really enjoyed having you share a little bit of this class today. And yeah, this was really really enlightening.
Speaker A
I need to go to my 3D illustration now. I'm looking at my 3D sets in a totally different light. I was like, I should have been looking at it with a no tan way. That's my challenge for you guys is
Speaker A
um that's my homework assignment for you guys today who are joining us on the on YouTube on this stream is go go look at the last two illustrations that you did and see can you picture what the notan
Speaker A
would look like. Would it work as a notan? Did you not use any of these principles and now you sort of know where to go? Um so it's always so fun to sort of look backwards and I'm going to
Speaker A
ask you guys to do that a lot in the class. Okay, here's a principle, here's an application. Now let's look backwards and see if you did it. It's and it's not the idea isn't to be like a gotcha. Oh,
Speaker A
I knew you didn't do it, but to say, oh, here's where I could have improved that and then move forward from it. So, it's always kind of barely looking backwards and then looking forwards on how to implement some of this stuff. Um, all
Speaker A
right. With that, you guys, uh, have a wonderful day and thanks for joining Sam and I. Sam, thanks for thanks for coming. I know I've been talking a bunch but Yeah. No, this was fun. This was fun.
Speaker A
This was good. All right, you guys have a good day. Bye. Bye. All right, we did it.
Speaker A
Are you off live now? I think so. Let's make sure. Let's make sure. Let's see. I'm still see me on uh on YouTube, but I'm still seeing it.
Speaker A
Um it's it's always behind. Oh, no. We are still there.
Topics:art techniqueillustration processthumbnail sketchdesign principlesart workshopLee WhiteSamantha CodellSplearnvisual storytellingart education
