Drawing Workbook Methodology

Learn an exploratory system of themes and techniques to define your illustration style and apply the results to your projects.
Drawing notebooks are a great way to experiment and stimulate your creativity, but they can also be a useful tool for recording your work and storing references. And for graphic designer and illustrator Manuel Bueno, they are also the foundation of his creative process, like interactive building blocks that lead to spectacular results.

In this course, Manuel teaches you his creative approach and how to work parallelly with multiple drawing workbooks that each have their own set of rules. Learn how to be organized, arrange your ideas, and analyze your creative process to look for ways to improve it. By the end of this course, you will have your own creative archive that you refer to over and over again.

Start by getting to know your teacher, Manuel Bueno. He tells you a bit about himself, his professional background, his interests, and how he cultivates his creative process. He also gives you an overview of the course content and explains the final project.

Jump into the theory by exploring the differences between a sketchbook and a drawing workbook and how to use each one during the creative process. Then, take an exploratory journey through your mind, your memories, and personal references to uncover your interests. Once you decide on a theme, warm up your hand with some exercises to practice drawing lines and shapes and working with colors and textures.

Now it’s time to face the blank page: start drawing in your notebooks and let your creativity take the lead. Remember, this is a progressive progress, so you can’t erase or cross out your work nor remove any pages. Continue to fill your notebooks following these rules to portray an unfiltered vision of yourself, your environment, and your surroundings.

In the last unit, create a dialogue between your work in each notebook to understand how they interact and build on top of one another. Finally, learn different techniques for presenting your work, from digital formats to printed pieces.