I was at Trader Joe’s recently – and happened to go on the day they put out the new pumpkins! The checkout clerk hadn’t even seen them they were so fresh on the shelf. So I picked up a few pretties – and I’ve got a plan for them but….before I do I wanted to use them for a lesson in perspective – yes, with a weirdly shaped object like a pumpkin! Don’t let your eyes glaze over, you’re about to learn some good stuff.

Tutorial: How to draw pumpkins in perspective

Whether you want to draw pumpkins – or just be able to tell if a rubber stamp you’re thinking about adding to your collection – is drawn in perspective …..this video will hopefully be a big help! And if you only want to color them, read on….I have something for you too!

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Exercise 1: putting pumpkins in boxes

Believe it or not, drawing a box where an odd shaped object is going to be can really help with perspective! This works for a chair, a bush, anything that fits into a chunk of real estate in your drawing. If you’re looking for more indepth instruction, the Drawing Jumpstart 101 class is a great one to get lots on perspective! (and its on sale right now)

A great exercise is the one done here: draw a horizon line and give it two vanishing points. Then draw the vertical front edge of a box, and join its ends to the vanishing points. Decide where the left and right side are, and if needed attach them to the VPs.

Then draw pumpkins inside! You can make them look different directions, but you can also just place the faces in front and make it easier on yourself.

Add the meat and ribs

That may sound like a barbecue – but really it’s the names of the parts of a pumpkin! The meat – the thick rind – shows at different amounts depending on the angle you’re looking at the pumpkin. Just google carved pumpkins and you can draw from those, or look at your own carved masterpiece.

The ribs are the sections; some are more defined than others depending on the kind of pumpkin it is. They’re wider apart at the front and closer together at the sides – no matter what direction the face is pointing. The closest part to you is the widest sections and as they wrap around the sides you’re seeing a partial profile of them, so they look skinnier.

Pumpkin Patch Printable Pack

For those not interested in actually drawing pumpkins – you can purchase the Pumpkin Patch Printable Pack and just color them up! It includes a bunch more than my usual digi sets:

1. Five pumpkin images, two versions of each (with and withut faces) – 10 individual png files
2. PDF with:
   1. Samples with backgrounds – one from the Mini Copic Autumn Scenes class and one from the Mini Colored Pencil Autumn Scenes class, both on sale.
   2. A page printout of the Tiny Tutorial seen on IG and FB this week.
   3. Two pages with all the images assembled – print on a paper that suits your medium, or use the individual png files. Your choice!

Tap on the image below to go check out the Pumpkin Patch and get busy coloring:

How many fall cards do you make each year?

I send more general fall themes rather than Halloween; I have 2 friends who are totally into it so I send them spooky ones but everyone else gets happy pumpkins and lots of fall leaves. How about you?

Supplies

• Bee Sketchbook
• Grafwood Water Soluble Pencil
• Sharpie

I’ve seen this animation around for a while – mostly with little doodles in pen and ink of stick people with this silly horn and cymbals music. I don’t like replicating “trends” as-is when I know I can change-up what’s been done, so here it is, with help for you to try it!

Watch the animation below — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube 

Special announcements:

My normal Monday tutorial will be up tomorrow – had a little bug this weekend and took some time to heal.

ALSO: I’m going to try moving to 6am Pacific uploads instead of 3am. Just to see what that does for views – the general advice for best upload times is much later in the day and I may try that at some point but for the moment I’ll just try for when at least all of America is awake instead of just the east coast. 🙂

Tips

If using this tuba audio, it needs three illustrations:

1. One for the first few bars (the original is a dancing girl)
2. One for the horn section
3. One for the cymbals
4. Then let them all play together for the rest of the audio

The way I approached it was drawing the SECOND page in my sketchbook FIRST. Whatever motion is desired on the downbeat, that’s the second image. ie the clashing of the cymbal, etc.

Then hopefully your paper is a little bit see-through, or you can put it up against a window to trace the main elements from the second drawing onto what will be the FIRST page. Then they’ll line up when being flipped. In my case the pumpkins needed to stay in the same spot, and I wanted their facial features in the same place.

For the first pumpkin, the top of the pumpkin is bouncing on his head; in the second frame since the top is UP, the eyes are open. in the first frame the eyes are closed because the top is slamming down.

For the second pumpkin, the trumpet moves left to right and the rest of the pumpkin remains as is.

For the third pumpkin, the cymbals are apart on one and together on the downbeat.

To film this, I did it in three parts; I’ve seen a lot of shaky cameras with the person filming while flipping the paper and that’s just too hard – I simply put my phone on a stand and filmed the first bit, then backed the phone up to include the second image, then further to incorporate the third

Replicate my pumpkins

If you want to replicate my pumpkins the two sketches are below. They’re pretty simple! Do leave room on the left side of the sketchbook for your hand to hold the page to lift it up and down.

Or make it your own!

Come up with your own simple theme. Maybe it’s snowmen. Cats. Anything you can draw! Make them dance left and right, roll their eyes back and forth, or do that dance move they used to do in old tapdancing films: arms holding the hat on the head then holding it high above the head!

Get your kids in on the fun, and whoever makes the best one gets filmed for an instagram reel! You can use the audio that’s already there, or have the kids “sing” a tuba or trumpet song to use for your own audio. (Great idea for teens who beatbox, too!)

What other ideas would be cute with a simple 2 frame animation like this? Leave them in the comments so others can try this too!

Supplies

• Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook
• A pencil!

I’ve needed a new channel trailer (a short welcome video for brand new visitors to my channel)….my old one was just old and it needed a refresher. The art I wanted bits of, well…..that changed drastically in the plan! Scroll on down to read a little more about that process and the craziness I dealt with.

New channel trailer!

You can go leave a comment on the YT channel – and read the stories of others there too. Give each other encouragmenet! 

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

That leaf art

I wanted to film snippets of me working….and I had this great idea. Spill ink on a sketch, then create depth just in the areas the spill happened. First the spill was…not great! ha. I guess I need to practice pretty spills! But as is my wont, I did just proceed – I’d already done the deed, so I could at least practice the technique before redoing. This is what the piece looked like before I got out my pen:

And then….a black ink BLOOP from my pen! I had the cap on the back of it and was trying to remove it to re-cap the nib end, and it wasn’t letting go; I mindlessly twisted it, thinking maybe it screwed on the back (I knew that wasn’t the case) so I was actually moving the piston – and pushing the ink out! I wasn’t planning on doing anything but line work in black ink, but that of course changed with the advent of The Bloop. 

That led to adding a lot more black than had been planned! It was touch and go with the amount; I wanted to keep some of the light created by the spill, but to make it look like I meant to use that much black. Did I succeed?

All those videos

In case you missed any of this in about the last year….here are links! Some are instagram short videos, others are full YT videos.

• Train in watercolor sketchbook
• Iguana in Copic plus pen and ink
• Roses in watercolor
• Yellow cart in watercolor marker plus pen and ink
• Leaves in watercolor pencil
• Practice exercise in watercolor
• Snowman in colored pencil
• City animé drwing in copic marker
• Alcohol ink plus doodling in pencil
• Grapes in Zig clean color pens
• Horse in graphite
• Chick in pastels
• Rabbit in watercolor
• Farm in colored pencil
• Hex Charts for Copics, Sketchmarker, Prismacolor, Polychromos, Luminance

Free class is fully posted now!

If you missed out on the free class announcement in the previous video on Monday….there’s a free class on Artventure for you! A new lesson was added each day, and today’s the final one – hope you enjoy making fall leaves!

Supplies

• Pelikan Brilliant Brown ink
• Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen Ink
• Arches Cold Press sheets

I’ve had such fun with graphite sketches all week! Today’s no different….I’ve wanted to create a horse drawing for so long. I used to live on a ranch in Montana, and the owner had horses in our pasture who would come up to see me at the fence (begging for snacks of course!)

But though I’d tried drawing a horse’s mane before, I never knew how to create the kind of rough hair on the mane that one of those horses had. But the electric eraser changed all of that!

Tutorial: Draw a graphite portrait of a horse

I’m glad I filmed this both on my phone (from an angle) as well as overhead (camera)…the camera footage was terrible due to the amount of graphite and its reflectivity! (See my previous post about the pros and cons of graphite and colored pencil.)

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Refined Linseed Oil

I didn’t end up mentioning it in the video but the new refined linseed oil I bought recently is pretty fabulous. It’s nothing like the stuff I got at Lowes! (ha!) It doesn’t stink like that, and it doesn’t get…..gooey. Yay! More testing ahead.

ICYMI

In case you missed my sketches created this week – here you go!

Your ideas?

My list of must-do ideas is finally lightening up; 2022 has been a prolific year checking a lot off! I’d love to add some of your ideas – subject matter, techniques, etc? Leave a comment and your idea might be added to the list!

Supplies

• Caran d’Ache Grafwood Pencils
• Stonehenge Drawing Paper:  AMZ –  BLICK 
• Glassine sheets 
• Kneaded Eraser
• Electric Eraser, Mont Marte
• Tombow Stick Eraser 
• Tombow Mono Zero Eraser, round
• Winsor and Newton Refined Linseed Oil
• Cotton balls
• Small brush
• Qtips
• Blending stumps
• Blending stump sanding block

A prospective student emailed a question: can he use a black colored pencil for one of my drawing classes instead of graphite? 

We had a bit of a back and forth about it, but in all honesty I was going from what I know about both, not having tested them side by side. Today’s exercise did confirm what I believed but with a little less of a difference than I thought they’d have. But read on to see my assessments of each aspect tested.

Tutorial: Graphite vs Colored Pencil – pros, cons, and tips

The left side of the sketch is in graphite, mostly 6B; the right side in black Polychromos pencil!

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

More related tutorials:

• Electric eraser and powdered graphite
• Electric eraser w colored pencil to make texture
• Electric eraser to make clouds
• Getting started with colored pencil

Line weights

Graphite comes in various hardnesses; the harder the pencil the lighter, and those pencils can also get very very sharp. Great for tiny light details. Softer pencils make heavier lines.

Colored Pencil only has the one pencil, and typically a manufacturer uses the same hardness for all their pencils. Making different weights is done by the sharpness of the pencil as well as the amount of pressure used.

Color

Graphite can get dark but when compared directly with colored pencils, it’s more of a deep grey. Colored pencil can be deep black; but I can’t speak for cheap pencils, those may not be really really black—many of them release little pigment.

Erasability

Graphite is quite erasable; unless it gets really overworked (layer upon layer with blending solutions) it can often be erased mostly to the white of the paper. 

Colored Pencil is less erasable, leaving more pigment adhered to the surface of the paper. Electric erasers can sometimes lift more than others can but also may destroy the paper. Both are paper-dependent; some papers will erase better than others, so test it out.

Smudging

Graphite is so soft that it smudges very easily! That means it blends well, sometimes even when you don’t want it to. Protect your work with glassine under your hand – if you don’t have that, use the shiny side of freezer paper against the graphite to keep it from smudging.

Colored pencil smudges less, but only by a degree. Once blending solution is “set” (ie has dried completely) it’s less likely to smudge, too. 

Reflectiveness

Graphite is reflective – making it hard to photograph sometimes. It gets a sheen to it that catches light. Colored Pencil is less reflective.

Paper

Graphite can work on any smooth paper – even computer paper! I still do like a little texture myself; Stonehenge is what I like for all kinds of pencil work. Some swear by hot press watercolor paper, but I haven’t had as much success there.

Colored pencil likes some tooth – not necessarily “texture” (like a cold press watercolor paper or something). I have a picture in my mind of a microscopic look at the paper’s surface scraping pigment off the pencil, and whether or not that’ss the way it works, it’s what makes me like a paper with a little grippiness to it for colored pencil.

Cost

Graphite pencils are typically less expensive than Colored Pencil, but a lot of that depends on brands as well as whether you buy a set or not; sets bring down the price. 

Got questions?

Let me know if anything’s unclear – or if you disagree! I know plenty of artists who like different papers, pencil brands, techniques….that’s what makes the art world go round!

Supplies

• Stillman & Birn Gamma Sketchbooks
• Pencils:
  • Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils
  • Polychromos Pencils
• Erasers:
  • Tombow Mono Zero Eraser, round
  • Electric Eraser, Mont Marte
• Sharpeners:
  • Afmat Long Point Pencil Sharpener 
  • Dahle Chubby Pencil Sharpener
• Blending solution:
  • Gamsol Blending solution
  • Blending stumps
  • Blending stump sanding block