Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals Carla Sonheim

Children love to draw imaginary creatures and immediately start creating their own when asked to do so. I love these sketches and as a teacher I feel these characters sometimes need to look complete and colorful. Here we get inspirations from three artists and see how they create their own creatures.

Carla Sonheim

If you haven't already tried out one of those Carla Sonheim's imaginary creatures, you should attempt one.  These playful and unique creatures are created from everyday objects and shapes around her. She engages in creative exercises and sketching prompts to get new ideas.

Carla Sonheim is an artist, illustrator, and author from Seattle, USA. She is also a creativity workshop instructor who helps people try ways to generate more spontaneous, playful art from the usual controlled, mindful expression. She has made her art fun and accessible to everyone.

Objective

Our objective here is to create art without having something already in mind.

Carla adopts different techniques to act fast. They are created from one-liners, blob hunting, blobs and drips on paper.

Visit Carla Sonheim youtube channelto get inspirations . You will be able to draw simple, imaginative child-like art. Try her drawing assignments and step-by-step tutorials.

Art Project

Take a good watercolor paper of A5 size. I have used watercolor cakes, watercolor pencils and pigment liner 0.1.

Wet areas on paper in random shapes and then add multiple colors in the area so that they merge on their own. Turn your paper around till you find the direction where you see your character has a meaning. Once you can imagine your character, extend it to look more like the creature you want.

Outline the characters. Then add details and layers of color to highlight areas through shading.I have pinned some of Carla Sonheim artwork.

Julie Miville

Now let's have a look at Julie Miville's character. She is an artist from Quebec, Canada.

When I showed Julie Miville's paintings to my daughter, her reaction was "Oh, that's scary but I want to paint them!" Later I found that Julie calls her characters 'Les Affreux or 'The Dreadful.'
Her characters have unique features. They have a big face that looks straight out of the canvas, one eye is usually bigger or more prominent that the other, no nose and a long line across the face to show the mouth.

Objective of Julie Miville art lesson

In this art exercise, we will create our own characters. We will also learn acrylic dry brush technique.

You will need acrylic paper A5 size, acrylic paints and an acrylic brush with stiff bristles. Fan bristle brushes are also a good choice.
Paint at least two layers of colors. Paint with first a dark color like black. Draw the characters, with a Uniball White Signo Pen or paint and then slowly add the second layer of lighter color on the background.
For the dry brush technique, you will need a completely dry brush. Take small amounts of paint at a time and paint it with circular strokes with a fan brush. Since it is completely dry, you would see the base color in some areas which give the different look.

Notice that the artist leaves spaces around the line from where the base black is seen. That gives a three-dimensional look to the character.

Add details until the picture is complete.

Here are some robots painted in the same style by children.

Paride Bertolin

Paride Bertolin, an Italian artist who loves sketching mysterious characters with his sepia pen. His sketchbook contains a series of goofy characters and monsters of different shapes and sizes. His characters though look bizarre, they have a fun-loving expression in them. When I showed his paintings to the kids, especially boys,  they were immediately drawn towards it and wanted to create one for themselves. He creates characters from anything like a bitten apple, an open box, a road sign, or a clock.

Objective

Create your own characters and shade them to give the depth.

Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals Carla Sonheim

Source: https://www.lilcreativekids.com/paint-imaginary-creatures/