Best seller

Creative Sketching: Fill Your Illustrations with Life and Detail

A course by Mattias Adolfsson , Illustrator

Illustrator. Sigtuna, Sweden.
Joined December 2019

Create artwork filled with intricate ideas while maintaining balance and harmony

Best seller
100% positive reviews (486)
18,020 students
Audio: English
English · Spanish · Portuguese · German · French · Italian · Polish · Dutch

Create artwork filled with intricate ideas while maintaining balance and harmony

Would you like to learn how to merge all your sketch ideas into a single scene with a balanced and intriguing composition? Discover Mattias Adolfsson’s method for creating scenes that invite the viewer to observe its intricate details up close.

Renowned for his playful characters and humorous, detailed artwork, Mattias creates illustrations for magazines like The New Yorker, The Hollywood Reporter, and The New York Times, as well as animation studios like Nickelodeon, Dreamworks, and Disney.

In this course, he shows you how to master composition techniques and organize your sketches and ideas into one detailed figurative piece. If you would like to learn how to get started with your first sketches and ideas, Mattias gives you all the tools you need to become an avid sketcher in his first course: The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art.

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What will you learn in this online course?

19 lessons & 8 downloads

Presentation of Materials
4 minutes, 59 seconds
Choosing the Space
8 minutes, 49 seconds
Choosing the Theme
6 minutes, 39 seconds
Preliminary Sketching of Details
16 minutes, 48 seconds
  • 100% positive reviews (486)
  • 18,020 students
  • 19 lessons (3h 54m)
  • 8 additional resources (5 files)
  • Online and at your own pace
  • Available on the app
  • Audio: English
  • English · Spanish · Portuguese · German · French · Italian · Polish · Dutch
  • Level: Beginner
  • Unlimited access forever

What is this course's project?

Create a highly detailed figurative illustration that gets more interesting the closer you look.

Projects by course students

Who is this online course for?

This course is for those who love to draw, sketch, and illustrate, with intermediate-level drawing skills, as well as experience in perspective drawing and in working with the materials used in the course.

Requirements and materials

Intermediate-level drawing skills and previous experience in perspective drawing is required to take the course.

As for materials, you will need ink pens (fountain pens, fine liners, or dip pens), a pencil, an eraser, a ruler, drawing paper, watercolors, and a sketchbook. For the digital work of your project, you’ll need a computer with Adobe Photoshop and a scanner.

Although Mattias doesn’t teach digital illustration in the course, you can also create your illustration digitally using an iPad or graphics tablet.


Reviews

18,020 Students
486 Reviews
100% Positive ratings

Mattias Adolfsson

A course by Mattias Adolfsson

Teacher Plus
Illustrator

Mattias Adolfsson has been working as a freelance illustrator for over eleven years. While working as a graphic designer in the computer games industry, he started sharing his work on social media, where he began his successful career in illustration.

His long list of clients includes Nickelodeon, Disney, Dreamworks, Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, and other important animation studios. He has also illustrated for magazines including The New Yorker, The Hollywood Reporter, and The New York Times.

Mattias has created a variety of illustration work in areas like product design, for baby clothes brand Atelier Choux Paris, record sleeves, as well as an art commission for the largest hospital in Sweden.


Content

  • U1

    Introduction

    • About Me
    • Influences
    • What Will We Do On the Course?
  • U2

    Getting Ready

    • Presentation of Materials
    • Choosing the Space
    • Choosing the Theme
    • References
  • U3

    Planning, Sketching and Inking

    • Planning Out the Composition and Perspective
    • Preliminary Sketching of Details
    • Large Pencil Sketch 1
    • Large Pencil Sketch 2
    • Inking 1
    • Inking 2
    • Inking 3
    • Wash for Shading
    • Colour 1
    • Colour 2
  • U4

    Finalizing Your Piece

    • Scanning
    • Final Details
  • FP

    Final project

    • Creative Sketching: Fill Your Illustrations with Life and Detail

What to expect from a Domestika course

  • Learn at your own pace

    Enjoy learning from home without a set schedule and with an easy-to-follow method. You set your own pace.

  • Learn from the best professionals

    Learn valuable methods and techniques explained by top experts in the creative sector.

  • Meet expert teachers

    Each expert teaches what they do best, with clear guidelines, true passion, and professional insight in every lesson.

  • Certificates
    Plus

    If you're a Plus member, get a custom certificate signed by your teacher for every course. Share it on your portfolio, social media, or wherever you like.

  • Get front-row seats

    Videos of the highest quality, so you don't miss a single detail. With unlimited access, you can watch them as many times as you need to perfect your technique.

  • Share knowledge and ideas

    Ask questions, request feedback, or offer solutions. Share your learning experience with other students in the community who are as passionate about creativity as you are.

  • Connect with a global creative community

    The community is home to millions of people from around the world who are curious and passionate about exploring and expressing their creativity.

  • Watch professionally produced courses

    Domestika curates its teacher roster and produces every course in-house to ensure a high-quality online learning experience.


FAQs

Domestika's courses are online classes that provide you with the tools and skills you need to complete a specific project. Every step of the project combines video lessons with complementary instructional material, so you can learn by doing. Domestika's courses also allow you to share your own projects with the teacher and with other students, creating a dynamic course community.

All courses are 100% online, so once they're published, courses start and finish whenever you want. You set the pace of the class. You can go back to review what interests you most and skip what you already know, ask questions, answer questions, share your projects, and more.

The courses are divided into different units. Each one includes lessons, informational text, tasks, and practice exercises to help you carry out your project step by step, with additional complementary resources and downloads. You'll also have access to an exclusive forum where you can interact with the teacher and with other students, as well as share your work and your course project, creating a community around the course.

You can redeem the course you received by accessing the redeeming page and entering your gift code.

If you're a Plus member, when you complete a course you've purchased, you'll instantly get your personalized certificate. You can see all your certificates in the Certificates section of your profile. You can download your certificates as PDFs and share the link online. Learn more about certificates.
Creative Sketching: Fill Your Illustrations with Life and Detail. Illustration course by Mattias Adolfsson Best seller

Creative Sketching: Fill Your Illustrations with Life and Detail

A course by Mattias Adolfsson
Illustrator. Sigtuna, Sweden.
Joined December 2019
  • 100% positive reviews (486)
  • 18,020 students