SHEnanigans

SHEnanigans is a year-long course meant to give you the insight and practice you need to build up your character-building confidence! By recreating 52 of my most intricate characters, my goal for you is that you can take what you have learned over the course of the year and find the confidence and the skills needed to create your own signature characters!

Get ready to build up some serious (Creative) Muscle Memory this year! Muscle memory is simply the ability to reproduce a particular movement without conscious thought, acquired as a result of frequent repetition of that movement. Add “creative” to the front of the phrase and you’ve got the version we are looking for! There are lots of ways to instill creative muscle memory, but this course focuses on repetitive practice.

Repetitive Practice is all about drawing and painting one object over and over. This type of practice allows us to create muscle memory while drawing with the bonus of infusing the object with lots of imaginative detail and color choices. This course focuses on the repetitive practice of drawing. Ugh, I know. It’s your least favorite part of the process! I’ll be the first to admit that drawing on camera is hard and I don’t always get to be as detailed or accurate as I like to be. The solution? I spent a ton of time developing the drawings of the characters in advance to ensure your success. You get my very best work to use as a reference and, in trade, I get to see you grow your illustrative skill-set! All you need to do grab a pencil, print out your weekly packet and copy one of my drawings once a week.

In addition to your drawing practice, you’ll paint your beautifully drawn character using a full-color reference sheet. And to reward for all of your very hard work, I’ll share an in-depth painting video to give you advice on how to take your watercolor skill-set up a notch!

To begin, you’ll receive a welcome packet that includes:

• Character Building handout with basic steps to drawing your characters each week
• Visual Tension handout explaining the process with words and a character drawing
• Creative Practicing handouts that include ideas on how to get the most out of my reference sheets
• Visual Inventory worksheets that allows you to keep track of variations and details for future reference
• Course checklist to keep track of your progress.

Each week you’ll grab a new weekly handout packet that includes:

• Weekly danielle-ish tip, trick or insight with room to document your process and take notes
• Black and white drawing of a highly detailed character to use as a reference when drawing your character
• Color illustration with a core color palette, an insight or two, and the finished character to use as reference while painting your own character
• Printable trading card of weekly character with a name-based haiku to inspire you

In addition to your weekly packets, we’ll get together once a month for:

• A pre-recorded in-depth painting tutorial video of one of the weekly characters.
• A Q+A session in a private group on my site where I’ll answer any questions you may have about the course and content

At the end of the course, you’ll get:

• Class-exclusive print-and-frame character – not available to folks outside of the course!
• Compiled handout of tips and tricks from your weekly handouts
• Creative Practicing handout that includes next steps to creating your own signature characters