Blending in Procreate - How to Blend for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Celine and welcome to this class. I'm blending in procreate. This is a beginners class for those new to Procreate or any other digital or software really. In this class, we'll be going over the most basic ways of blending from the traditional art approach to using the smudge and Burn tools and how pen pressure and choose a brush can aid you're blending. In the end, we'll combine them all in an illustration that you can have a go at yourself. So grab the iPad via Procreate, and let's get started. 2. Exercise One: Traditional Blending: If you look at traditional art, such as oil paintings, blending was accomplished by adding transition shades between the two colors you want to blend. Meaning you will continue mixing and adding more shades in between until it looks smooth or as much as you wanted to from afar. From what I hear, old-school old painters would always add more paint with the stroke and not smear what was already on the Canvas. Which is why I associate this type of blending with being traditional. To practice this, you can start easy by using the light and dark values of the same color. Pressure darkest in one end, and the light is in the middle between gaits. When not to see the full effect. 3. Exercise Two: Smudging: The smudge tool is a very useful feature and digital art when it comes to blending, you can think of it as using a blending stick or your finger to smooth out the edges of graphite on paper. The effect is similar in a need to be mindful of the direction of your smudges as you can analyze, drag straight into your blend. In use, the smudge tool kinda creates the in-between tones of the previous method. But only to an extent. I find that the best blend accomplish with a mix of the two approaches where you add some transition shades and smooth out the edges of them. Another advantage of this much tool is that it can help you when trying to blend two colors are very different hues together, we're finding the right transition tones can be tricky. To practice matching. Place two colors or shades next to each other and see how well you can work the two together to a smooth blend. Okay? 4. Exercise Three: Blurring: Flowing is another tool offered by the Digital Media. Thicker beak used for blending. Using Gaussian blur, you can bend together Kotter's 8 an entire layer, or just sections of it to whatever percentage you want. This method does offer the least amount of control since the act of growing. Also smooth out detail and uses a definition. I tend to use peripheral blending out backgrounds that I don't want to be in focus. Practice blurring, place down colors, and play around with the percentage of bread to find an effect. 5. Exercise Four: Pen Pressure and Brush Choice: Just like when working in graphite pencils and paper, you can get varying opacity by using more or less pressure when drawing. This feature is useful in blending as you can slowly build up color or faded out way you need to. This is a feature I tend to use aladdin layout, process. It trash off brush will also change the result of your blend. So try some different ones and see what expression you like. I tend to use and blending brush formal things as it has a bit of texture and feathered edges, which aids my blend. I like working in either directional strokes, all circles to build up capacity. My boss is simple, made with a preset shape from the Procreate library, but I have also exported it for you and made it available in the resource section. If you want to give it a try to practice Pen Pressure, pick a brush with pen pressure enabled and work your way from dark to light by starting with a lot of pressure and slowly easing up in circular motions. Try it out with a few different brushes. 6. Demonstration: Strawberry: Now, to practice blending, we're going to illustrate this strawberry, which are found on pixabay.com that offers royalty-free images. I went ahead and did the sketch as it's not our focus for today. At the top, I've made a color palette for the basic starter colors. So you can see what I'm working with and will not be using the plot function in this example as it's not something I would use in such a case, like I mentioned previously, my approach to blending in my art tends to be a mix of building up opacity with Ben pressure and my favorite brush. And a mix of the traditional blending with a bit of smudging. So 10 to get around and approaches depending on what it is I'm doing. In my process. I called back and forth between colors and textures a lot, which does look a little chaotic. I started with a rough blend and placing of colors, slowly fleshing out the details and smoothing out the transitions, adjusting depending, go. A quote unquote, good blend is different for each individual person as everyone has their own style and preferences. If you're like a very digital book, then heavily smudging and blurring may be the way for you. Or if you into more like a rough or painterly look, then you may want to stick to the more traditional approach. It's really up to your personal preference and the look of what you're trying to achieve. So there are no right and wrong answer here. Hi. Small areas like the seeds don't need much shading as they're so tiny and the eyes can't we pick up the detail anyway? It's also worth noting that you get better effects in your illustrations if you choose not to blend in some areas of contrast and moral distinction to areas that call fight, areas of texture. It's also important to keep an incorporate for the same reason. Last few final details. A strawberry is done. 7. Final Thoughts and Class Project: Now you've seen a few different ways of blending in Procreate and how I approach blending in an illustration. So now it's your turn. If you haven't completed the previous exercises yet, give them a go and figure out what works for you. Should you want to have a good strawberry I used as my example. I'll include both the reference, my sketch, as well as my blending brush in the resource section for you. Thank you for taking my class. I hope it was useful to you. If you want to see more of my personal art, you can find me on Instagram at saline dot d.org or on Redbubble YSL prints, shirts and more. Have fun creating and bye for now.