15 Minute Procreate Projects: Draw a Dreamy Whale

1. Introduction : Do you want to learn how to use procreate? Would you like to draw animals but don't know how to start? Maybe you have dreams to illustrate your own children's book. Do you want to get back into art but don't have the time? If you answer yes, then this class is for you. In this class, I'll teach you my tried and tested formula for illustrating this dreamy whale in just a few simple steps. You can then take this formula and use it to draw any animal. 2. Draw a Whale Part 1 : This class, you'll need an iPad with the Procreate app installed and an Apple pencil or stylus to draw with. Let's begin the lesson by gathering some reference images. Go to Google Images and type in blue Wheel. Have a look at the images that appear taking a mental note of some of the wheels key features. Save some images that inspire you by holding a finger over the image and selecting save to photos. Let's get started. Tap on the Procreate app to open Procreate and set up our Canvas. Do this by tapping on the plus sign at the top right of your canvas. Choose the little black folder icon with the plus sign and set your canvas to 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters at a DPI of 300. If you want to make your canvas smaller or in inches or pixels, or you have a preferred size you work at, then this is also fine. Click Create to open your Canvas. Let's insert one of our reference photos by selecting the wrench icon on the left, which is our Actions menu. Tap this and then select Canvas. Go down to the part that says reference and toggle this on. A reference box should appear. You can hold and drag this into a better position if you need to. On the reference menu, select image on the bottom menu and then tap Import image. This should take you to your camera roll. Find the image of your wheel and select. This is now displayed on your workspace. You can use fingers to drag on the image if you need to zoom out or move it slightly. The aim here is not to copy this image exactly, but rather to use it to inform our rough sketches. Go to brushes and scroll down until you find the sketching set. Tap this to open. Choose six B pencil to sketch with. Set your color to black or dark gray by selecting from the color library. This is the small circle of color on the top right. Choose your sketching color from the color disc, then tap color library to close. Start to draw out some basic shapes that you see by looking at the animal. My whale has a long oval shaped body. The tail is triangular. I can't see the tail too well, but I know from prior knowledge, it has two shapes that look like this. We can make details more stylized. It doesn't have to be completely realistic here. The whales flippers are a similar shape to its tail. This is a very rough sketch, so don't worry if it doesn't look too great yet. Next, let's define our sketch. Go to layers, which is the icon with two small square shapes. I like to think of layers like sheets of paper. We are going to do a couple of sketches until we are happy, so we will keep each sketch on its own layer. I'll explain this mode in a moment. In your layers menu, you will see your rough sketch layer. We want to tap on the, then drag the opacity of this right down so we can still see it but only very faintly. Now, add a layer above by tapping the plus sign. I'm going to go over my sketch, but I'll refine it slightly and I can take some liberties here with the shapes. If you make a mistake at any point, you can use the two finger tap to undo. To redo, you can use a three finger tap. Pause the video here and continue to refine your sketch. I would set yourself a 1 minute time limit to do this. Don't forget to add in details like the stripes on the whale's belly and the eye. Okay. I'm happy with that, so I can go back to layers, tap on my original sketch, which was layer one, and delete this by swiping left and tapping delete. I'm going to select my sketch layer now and center it. Select the Transform tool on the top left menu. It's the arrow over here. A menu will appear on your workspace, and we're going to choose snapping and then from here, we want to toggle on magnetics and snapping. Both will have a blue circle beside them now. Now, when you move your sketch, it will snap into the center. You can see two yellow lines that appear. Click the arrow to deselect. We have our sketch. Now the fun part let's color. Tap on the sketch layer and find a little N. This is our blind mode menu. Different blaind modes create different effects and today we will set it to multiply. The N is now an M. Let's move the slider to change the opacity, set it to about 30% so that we can still see our sketch, but it's not too distracting. Let's add a new layer to color on by tapping the plus sign. We want this layer to be under our sketch, so drag it beneath the wheel sketch. Let's select a brush. Go to the brush menu by tapping the brush tool. The brushes are organized into sets and within each set, you have various brushes. Head to the drawing set and select Black bourne. I like this brush because it's a textured edge. Look at your reference and observe the main color of your animal. The wheel is blue. Choose a shade of this color from the color disc. Now paint the outline of your wheel. You can adjust your brush on the brush slider at the left hand side. I'm going to put the whale flippers on their own layer to make it easier for me to add shading. I'll leave these for the moment. Now I'm going to use a feature called color fill to color in the main body shape. To color fill, tap on the circle on the top right and drag and drop into your main shape. Because this brush has some slight texture, you may see some little white spaces around the edge. Zoom in by pinching two fingers on the canvas and just fill in any white parts. Go. We can uncheck our sketch layer at any time to get a better idea of how it's looking. I'm happy with that. Now I'm going to go to layers and add another layer above. I'll draw the front flipper here using the same process as before. If it is hard to see what you're drawing, you can go to the wheel body and turn the opacity of this layer down or hide it completely by unchecking this box here. Now color fill the flipper. Zoom in by pinching and fill in any white bits. For the other flipper, we will add a new layer and then drag this below the body of the wheel because we want it to sit behind. Again, trace your sketch and color fill. Zoom in and paint over any white parts around the edge. Turn back on all layers so we can see what we've got. O. 3. Draw a Whale Part 2: I want to add a white belly to my wheel. I'm going to select the main body shape layer and then tap the plus sign to add a new layer above. Click on this layer and select clipping mask from the menu. You should see a little arrow. This means anything we do on the clipping mask layer will only show on the wheel body. Added details like this on a clipping mask means we can always go back and change at any time. Change the brush color to an off white by selecting from the color disc. I am selecting a bluey gray shade. Then trace over the belly part of the sketch and fill with color. As before, zoom in and fill any gaps in the color. Turn off the sketch layer for a better view. That's looking good. Now, tap on the white belly layer and set to Alpha lock. We are going to paint some stripes onto the belly and now they will be locked onto this layer only, and we don't need to worry about going over the edges. Set your brush color to a darker blue gray and make your brush size smaller. Trace along the lines of the sketch to add some nice detail. Experiment by putting different pressure on your lines to create different effects. O. Now let's add some color variation and texture to the whale body by selecting it in the layers menu. Tap on this layer and select Alpha ok. We can select the color of our whale body by holding a finger on the body. I now appears in the color circle. Tap to open the color disc and select a lighter shade of this color from the disc. Now, go to the brush menu and scroll down to the textures set. Select Dove lake. Increase the brush size and apply some color over the body. You will see a nice subtle texture. Go back to color and choose another shade of blue. Go even lighter this time. Again, paint on over the body. You can play around with the brush size. Once more, change the color by choosing an even lighter blue. You can also change the opacity of the brush on the bottom slider to see what effects this achieves. Remember to do a two finger tap to undo anything you don't like. You can go back to brushes and try another texture on top of this one. I like to add lots of texture to create interesting results. Grunge is a nice brush to use, and if you use it in an off white and apply it to the top of your wheel, it looks like nice highlights, giving your animal more depth. Pause the video and spend a few minutes adding some different textures. Let's do the same now to each flipper. Choose the front flipper from the layers menu, then tap on that layer and set it to Alpha ok. Go back to the dove lake brush and select the blue color by holding a finger on the flipper. Now in the color menu, select a lighter shade and paint over some texture. Change to grunge brush and add some highlights with an even lighter shade of blue. Now do this with the back flipper. Select this and layers. This is the one at the bottom, tap and set to Alpha k. Change the brush to dove lake. Select the flipper color by holding down a finger. Then in the color library, select a different shade and paint over some texture. You can add the grunge brush in a lighter shade for some highlights. I'm pleased with how that looks. I'm going to go back to the brush menu and I'm going to scroll down to find the spray paint set. Choose the brush set called flicks. I'm going to set my color to an off white and I'm going to select the main body layer. Next, I'm going to tap on the body shape with my pen to add some flicks. This brush is a bit unpredictable, so you might need a few goes to get it looking the way you want. Remember, you can undo using the two fingertap now do the same on each flipper layer. Next, I'm going to paint on the whale's eye. I'm just going to add this detail on the body layer. Select this layer and tap to bring up the menu. We will need to turn off Alpha ok, click on this to deselect. Go back to brushes and go to drawing set and select Blackburn. Turn the brush size down, and then paint on an I. A simple curve will do for the eye because we are going through a stylized look anyway. If you want to change the background color, simply go to layers and tap on this. Then choose a color from the color disc. To add texture to your background, you'll need to add a new layer above the background. I like the industrial set. Select the brush called rusted decay, and paint over some texture using a slightly lighter color for this. Finally, you can choose a white and paint on some stars using a brush from the inking set. I'll use my star stamp brush for this. You can download this free stamp brush in my class called Illustrating Acute Stack of Books. Our wheel is complete. I think It looks lovely. 4. Final Thoughts: Hope you can apply the skills you have learned in my class today to illustrate some other animals. I have included some examples in the project gallery to inspire you. Please do post your project in the class gallery. Head to the Projects and Resources tab within the class. From here, click Create Project. Follow the prompts relevant for your project and then click published when finalized. I really hope you continue your Procreate journey and apply these new skills to create your own unique works of art. I can't wait to see your finished project. If you enjoy my class, then please give me a follow to stay up to date on any future classes and announcements. Click the follow button next to my name on top of the video lesson player on your profile page. You can learn more about me on my website and Instagram too. You can share your work on Instagram if you like, but please tag me so that I can reshare and leave a comment. Finally, if you enjoyed my class, please leave a review. It helps me to improve and it helps my class to gain traction. Thanks for drawing with me. See you soon.