Bring Characters to Life with a New Class from Joe Rosshirt!

https://www.carlasonheim.com/online-classes/from-sketchbook-to-story-bringing-characters-to-life/

From Sketchbook to Story: Bringing Characters to Life
Teacher: Joe Rosshirt

Looking through old sketchbooks is my favorite way to break a  creative block and it is here that I often find little nuggets of gold: rough characters, doodles and even blobs that can become the start of something new. In this class we will use those starts as stepping stones to create a narrative that can develop into a series of paintings, comic strip, picture book, graphic novel, you name it! 

But no worries if you don’t have extensive sketchbooks — we will start the course with some sketching techniques to get you started. Then we will learn ways to simplify and pose characters so they can be drawn again and again, work on techniques in ideation, and then move step by step towards a story. By the end of this class you will have at least one final illustration and, I hope, lots of fun getting there!

Joe

Here are some of my illustrations!

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Class Itinerary

Lesson 1 – Finding Your Character
In this lesson we will learn some sketchbooking techniques and pick a character you would like to develop further. We will then break down this character into simple shapes and play with proportions.

Lesson 2 – Posing Your Character
We will bring volume to the simple shapes we broke down and explore how to use these shapes to create a variety of poses. 

Lesson 3 – Color Studies & Shading
In this lesson we will clean up our character design, experiment with color and create a small completed watercolor piece.

Lesson 4 – Mind Mapping & Thumbnails
Today we’ll do a mind-mapping technique to help us think outside of the box and break away from the first idea.

Lesson 5 – Final sketches
We’ll clean up our thumbnails and develop finalized sketches to help inform the story of our final piece. 

Lesson 6 – Final Piece
Create a final narrative illustration with watercolor and colored pencils.

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Nuts & Bolts 

– The videos for this class are pre-recorded and will be released on the following time table:

Lesson 1 – Tuesday, November 9
Lesson 2 – Wednesday, November 10
Lesson 3 – Friday, November 12

Lesson 4 – Tuesday, November 16
Lesson 5 – Wednesday, November 17
Lesson 6 – Friday, November 19

For more information and to sign up, click HERE!

What is a Good Beginning Class?

Sometimes I receive emails from people new to our site saying they are complete beginners, and which painting or drawing class would be the best to start with.

This is always a hard question to answer, as we are different from many art websites in that we don’t distinguish classes as “beginner” or “advanced” really… almost all classes are suitable for both beginners and accomplished painters alike!

We like to think of it this way:

Imagine going to a movie about Mozart’s life with a friend who knows a lot about Mozart, whereas you know next to nothing. You both go to and enjoy the same movie but for different reasons… you will enjoy learning about his life and career, while your Mozart-knowledgable friend will know the broad strokes already perhaps, but appreciate some of the inside jokes, smaller details, and overall “reminder” of why they love Mozart in the first place. Both “levels” enjoy the movie :).

So I usually ask a few questions to help narrow down which classes to take:

• What are you interested in drawing painting? Abstract? Animals? People? Nature?
• Do you know what media you would like to try? Watercolor, acrylics, mixed media, collage, pencil? 
• Can you list three classes that look most fun to you, and send them to me? Then perhaps we can narrow down a first class!

If you would like help deciding on a class for you, please do email me and I will try to help!

carla@carlasonheim.com