31 Days of Doodling Preclass

I’m so excited you’re here and ready to doodle! We’ll explore all kinds of styles in the upcoming month, and I’m looking forward to watching your progress.

Each day, a new lesson will be revealed for you in this course – whatever time of day you sign up is important, because that’s the time of day this class is trained to pop the next lesson here for you! Bookmark your Account Page, or even the main course page so you can get back here quickly.

Flash news! I learned something. I can adjust the time of day the class is released to you! So if you like to sketch in the early morning but didn’t sign up til later, I can change that for you. Just email me with the time you want it set at – but in PACIFIC time, otherwise I might do math wrong. LOL. —Sandy

Before we start…a little housekeeping

I retain the copyright to the content you are learning in class. That means…

1. Do not sell or give away the concepts from my classes – you may not re-teach my instruction contained or created within these lessons.
2. Do not post a video tutorial or step by step photo tutorial of your own redraw of class content.
3. Do not repost any handouts you receive in class.

However…I love to see students making strides and taking this teaching and personalizing it with your own skills.

1. DO make your own designs and develop your own style! I love that!
2. DO gift your creations made with these techniques, of course!

At the bottom of each lesson you’ll see some ways to share your homework and ask questions, so that’ll be handy for you.

Supplies:

The lists below contain alternate options—you dont need all of it. Paper, watercolors, a big and small brush, a pen. How easy’s that? See the link list with further info about items shown in this video.

Paper

You can use whatever paper you like for wash and ink – we’ll be working on small drawings that are on 5″ x 5″ paper in the first pad shown below – there’s also a 4″ x 4″ journal, or a pad, if you’d prefer a smaller size. The number of pages and price per sheet is based on painting on one side only, even if you could do both sides on some. (Each has different textures front and back, so I usually only use the front.)

80 sheets of tear-off watercolor paper in 1 pad ($0.29 a sheet) 5″ x 5″, rounded corners

Pair of watercolor journals, 22 sheets each ($0.45 a sheet)  4″ x 4″

40 sheets of tear-off watercolor paper in 2 pads ($0.25 a sheet)  4″ x 4″, squared corners

But if you’d prefer your own favorite watercolor paper, feel free to chop some up to be ready to roll!

Brushes 

If you’ve already done some watercoloring – use the brushes you have! For this course, to keep the price down during inflation, I’m recommending an inexpensive but nice little brush:

Tintoretto Feltracco Travel Brush Series 1337 Round 8 is a brush that can splishsplash with the best, and also has a small enough tip to accomplish what we need to.

You may want a smaller brush along with it – an inexpensive one is Da Vinci’s Cosmotop Spin Brush Round 2 BLICK | AMZ | JACKSONS

Black Ink Pens

Here’s another place you have lots of flexibility! Whatever pen you love for drawing – use that. Microns, fountain pens, dip pens, anything as long as it’s waterproof. Not water resistant – needs to be waterproof so you can paint over it.

TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen Extra Fine is what I might recommend.

But if you don’t have a fountain pen and you want to invest a little less, I’ll be using the Muji Aluminum pen that was the first one I ever bought. It’s a nice one, and is shown in the video! It’s about half the price of the TWSBI.

Ink that I recommend highly for any fountain or dip pen is Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen Ink.

White Ink Pens

You’ll want a white ink pen – it can be something like a nice white gel pen, whatever brand you get the best results from.

I like a Signo Uniball myself BLICK | AMZ | JACKSONS 

Used in this class will also be an Acrea Paint Marker in white; they’re cheapest on BLICK at somewhere in the $3-4 range; you can get them faster on AMZ for $16! Yeeep. You can definitley begin this class and skip any white pen work if you’d like while you wait for the pens to arrive from Blick; there’s lots to keep you busy.

Watercolor

You can use traditional watercolor – any brand, and any hues. Any of the projects can be done in any colors too – change up as desired! You can also try other watercolor media – like liquid watercolors, inkpad reinkers, or even kids watercolors! 

If you either don’t have any traditional watercolors yet or just want to play with LOTS of color options, try a dot card from Daniel Smith. The demos will be painted using one, as the video shows. 

Daniel Smith Dot Cards:

1. 266 colors  (used in class)
2. 66 colors

Other paint companies now make dot cards too – those are fine. You won’t need to use the same colors as the demos. But these are excellent projects for trying out some new-to-you colors and combinations!

Other items

Graphite Transfer paper can be used to put the loose sketches onto your paper – but you can also just scribble onto the back of the printout so you have pigment to press through to your watercolor paper. Or just freehand!

A compass would be helpful, but you might find a glass or other objects around your studio that’ll help make some shapes. 🙂  

If you’d like to practice transferring an image to your watercolor paper, feel free to download the class logo in the PDF below. It’s placed in a 4″ x 4″ block even though the video showed it trimmed at 5″….I think this will be easier, just center it on your page, scribble on the back, then place the sketch on top of the watercolor paper, and see what pressure is needed to transfer the graphite.

NOTE: The text isn’t included in the sketch, I just did it manually.