Cutie Koala Bears

Big news!! This is my very LAST page in my first sketchbook! I’m feeling so excited that I have stuck with my sketchbook habit, and I’ve really enjoyed making random art for the past 5 months with no pressure on how good it looks. When I have the chance, I’ll make a video where I flip through the whole thing.

Today, I felt like drawing some kind of bear, so I decided on koala bears for this last spread. I started with a couple of looser purple koalas using my ZIG clean color brushes, colored pencils, an Ecoline marker, and a micron pen.

Then, I wanted to do a more finished-looking illustration on the right-hand side. I taped off a tall composition so I would end up with clean edges this time. I sketched out my koala and the tree, and then started filling in areas of color in gouache. I went a little thicker/more opaque with the gouache than I usually do, and I think it worked well here. Sometimes if I go too light on the gouache, it makes it a little tough to keep layering on top because the paper gets too saturated, and this sketchbook isn’t cut out for a lot of water.

I added in details using gouache, colored pencil, Neocolors, and microns. I think the background in this one, again, just doesn’t quite feel cohesive with the koala and the tree. The textures are a little different in each of those, so maybe that’s a problem, and maybe it needs more subtle details (more trees or the hint of some actual leaves somewhere instead of just the texture hinting at those things). I will continue to work on backgrounds!