Week 31 // Making Art Everyday // Year Two • Bardot Brush

Week thirty-one

We’ve made it to the last week of Character Camp and what a journey it has been!

I hope you have learned a lot and challenged yourself to try something new. This last week might be one of the most challenging, but from what I’ve seen of the work you’ve shared, you are definitely up for it.

My head is already buzzing for what the future might hold for Character Camp. Who is up for another round of camp in the future? I know I am! At least now, if you ever feel like creating new characters, you’ve got a solid process to help you. Who knows, maybe you’ll illustrate a picture book one day, or come up with the next great animated character!

And in case you are just tuning in, Character Camp is a series of prompts, guides, and tutorials to help you design and draw your own original characters. This month we’ll be exploring a variety of character types: humans, animals and creatures, and even inanimate objects.

Here’s what we’ve done during the month of July:

Week 1: Creating a human character, one piece at a time
Week 2: Creating characters from animals and creatures
Week 3: Creating characters from inanimate objects
Week 4: Aging a character, from infant to elderly
Week 5: Character emotions and actions (current week)

If you’ve missed any of the lessons, or want to start from the beginning, visit the Character Camp page for full details!

What to Do

This month has been a LOT of work. My only extra direction is to look back at all the amazing work you’ve created in Character Camp and be filled with pride! You are awesome!

live tutorial!

This week, I’ll be live Wednesday at 10:30 am PDT

I’ll be going live again this week, drawing a fun animal character! The best place to watch is on the Bardot Brush YouTube channel. Below is a direct link to this week’s stream!

July Prompts

CHARACTER CAMP!

Emotions & Actions

Any good character should be able to show a range of emotions as they respond to their story’s events. Our final week of Character Camp will put your character to the test! You’ll get to prove that your character can show the expressions and do the actions that would carry them through a story.

This week you will draw your character expressing 6 different emotions. Based on your character’s personality, you will need to imagine some scenarios that would cause them to feel these emotions. This is a great opportunity to draw your character performing an action. Look to reference photos of the action to guide you. For example, if your character needs to run, look up pictures of people running.

My recommendation is to use the same character for the entire week. You can use a new character, or one you’ve created previously in the month. Whatever you choose, you’ll want to have flushed out a profile for this character. The more you know about the character, the easier it will be to imagine up scenarios for their different emotions. Use my free Character Profile Template to define your character.

To learn more about depicting emotions, check out my Emotions & Expressions tutorial from the People Skills series!

Here’s how to approach this week:

Monday: Brainstorm what would cause your character to feel joy, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, or surprise. Reference your character’s profile to tell you what they like and dislike, what they are afraid of, etc. Decide if you want to include any additional props, accessories, backgrounds, or environments. Sketch out some very rough ideas for each of the emotions. (Remember, you can scale back the difficulty by focusing on drawing just your character’s face expressing the emotion.)

Tuesday-Sunday: Complete a finished drawing for each emotion.

Don’t forget to visit the Character Camp home page for more details!

Week 31 | July 27 - aug 2

emotions & ACTIONS

Mon: brainstorm & sketch
Tue: joy
Wed: sadness
Thu: fear
Fri: disgust
Sat: anger
Sun: surprise

Psst…Be sure to use the Character Camp page as your guide this month!

You can access each week’s prompts, with links to reference photos, at makingarteveryday.com

Making Art Everyday // Bardot Brush

We’ve got a Facebook group just for participants of Making Art Everyday and all things Bardot Brush! Come join our group of supportive artists of all skill levels, share your work, ask questions, and be a part of the community!