Children's Book Illustration: Drawing Kids of Different Ages in Procreate

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to a new class. We are going to explore how to draw kids at different ages from toddlers to older children. Hi, I'm Eva, and I'm a full time artist and illustrator. We are going to focus on using a stylized approach with simplified shapes and clear body proportions. This method helps you build confidence in your sketches. We will start by breaking down basic proportions and using simple shapes. You will learn how to spot the key changes as kids grow and how to sketch them using simple relatable forms. We will practice with the real life references, sketch a character lineup, and plan out clear composition for our final project illustration. By the end of the class, you will create an illustration featuring kids in different ages in a consistent and stylized way. And whether you are into character design, storytelling or just want to sharpen your visual library, this class will give you tools you can use again and again. So let's get started and see you in the class. 2. Toddler Proportions: In this lesson, we will start looking at the toddler proportions, specifically around age two, and we will start sketching from the front view. And for sketching, I will be using one of my brushes from the sketch set, and I currently really like the expressive pencil, but you can use any brush that you prefer. And I will be using a brown color for sketching right now. And as you can see, I have this, like beige warm background. So you can set up your canvas in a way that you don't start with a white color because a lot of people don't like starting with just white colors. So this kind of reminds me of some old sketchbooki paper. Anyway, so for a start to warm up, I suggest you to draw a few circles because we'll be drawing some head and we will use the head size as a proportion. So I think this is a good warm up, so you feel better about your sketches later on, so you don't feel like rusty or the shapes are not exactly as you want them to be. So just fill the page with more circles and try different sizes. Alright, I think that's fine. I will delete this layer, and I will sketch on a different layer. So for a toddler, we can start with the head because that's big part of their body. Then for the body, I will sketch another circle which is approximately the same size. Then I will draw a few lines, so this will be our guidelines. I just adding lines to the edges of these circles, and then I will create a box And now I will divide this box. So in each of these circles, I will add three lines. So kind of like in the middle, then divide it again the same here. So you don't have to be super precise. All right. Now I will reduce the opacity of this guideline, and then we'll sketch on a layer on top. So for the top part, well, let's zoom in. We can actually make this guideline a little bit bigger. I'll delete this layer so we can see it better. Okay, so on a new layer, let's sketch the head. This will be the top part of the head. And the bottom part, I will draw a little bit wider. Basically, this is a suggestion of cheeks. And a chin. And the eyes will be around this bottom line. So if we want the character to be smiling, we can have this half closed eyes, it's kind of like a cute placement of the eyes. So of course, this is not realistic because normally you would have them anatomically a little bit higher, but this is just cuter. So here we will have nose and the mouth will be somewhere here. Okay and now for the bottom part, we will have the torso in the top part of our bowl and the bottom part will be legs. We will divide this line. We will add one more line between these two lines. Now you will have four, so you can see better here. Now you can draw the torso So it's a little bit thinner on the top and wider on the bottom. So it's kind of like a teardrop shape without the top part. And now I will draw the legs just like this. So basically, like a rounded triangle with kind of gap, so the character can walk, and the feet can be super tiny. So this is up to you how you want to style it. But for this class, let's make the feet very, very tiny. And then the arms will be somewhere here. So they are quite short, and also quite chubby. And again, the hands can be super small. And then you can add some hair on top if you want, but we don't have to. All right. And I have a full turnaround sketch also in the other class. So if you want the turnaround of the toddler, you can check out that class. So for now, let's just sketch a few of these toddlers as a practice. 3. Toddlers in Different Angles: In this video, we will break down how to simplify the shapes and draw toddlers from different angles. Right. So I put our sketch into a corner, and now when you want to draw the toddler from different angles, you can think about the torso as a bean or as a bean shape. So we can play with the placement of the legs and also turn around the head. So if you want to draw maybe the toddler just from the side, you can just start with a simple head, and you can adjust the shape of the head also later. So you can twist the torso. So kind of the bean shape, and we can put the feed here And then you can add arms here. So just placing 1 ft in front of the other and you can see that the head is quite small. When this happens to you, you can always select the head and make it a little bit bigger in your sketches. Then let's say you want the character to be sitting down so you can use the same bean shape and then add the legs here, and then maybe the arm is just here. Again, I made the head a little bit too small, so I can make it a little bit bigger. So let's say you want to draw the toddler kind of from the side. So you can emphasize the bean shape with the belly kind of going out. And sometimes, you know, they have diapers, right? So the butt looks even bigger. And then you can add short feet and then quiet short. Hence. Now, I will reduce the opacity of these sketches and I can adjust the head shape. So we also have the cheek, like we sketched here. I can emphasize the belly here. Okay, the same goes here. So we have also the face shape a little bit, the arms. And smaller legs here, I think works better. And then also some detail here. 4. Age Comparison: In this video, we will sketch and compare two kids, one younger and one older, and I will point out deeps what to focus on while sketching. Now, let's keep this as a reference in the corner and we will sketch two different ages, not specifically with any target age. We will do that a little bit later. So let's start with just two characters, and then we'll do longer lineup or lineup with more characters in different ages. So as we sketched here, we have certain proportions for a younger child. So I will sketch that once again so we can practice. So it doesn't have to be perfect. So we will have two circles approximately in similar or same size, and then try to sketch another circle, which is kind of in between these two, and then we will add one more here. So it's kind of like the warm up that we looked at. All right. And here we will add a half circle. Perfect. Now I'll reduce the opacity of our guidelines. First, as we practice, we will just draw the smaller character or younger one. With a bigger cheek, Now, I will show you very quick way how you can draw these characters if the legs are not in this position, the feet are a little bit wider apart. So what you can do is simply create this type of a triangle. Which looks almost like a part of a starfish. This is really, I think, great way to sketch characters quickly because you can guess where are these legs. So first, try to practice the proportions so you get it right or it's in your visual library, and then you can sketch characters with these shapes quite easily. So I can just add the eyes approximately in that height as we talked about, and a small mouth. And now for this bigger character, we'll start with similar head shape. Also a little bit of that cheek. It's harder to do the lines from this angle. So I'm not rotating the canvas, so you don't get dizzy. But otherwise, I would just rotate the canvas, so it's easier for me to sketch. So you can do that when you're sketching. Let me erase this decline here. All right. Now for this taller character, let's do this shape just to follow the same approach. I will place the feet in the same height on the ground and I will try to keep the similar proportions. You have two thirds for the torso also here and one third for the legs. So of course, this is a very simplified approach. But I think it's great for practice. Especially when you want to just sketch character poses when you are figuring out your composition. Then we can place the eyes slightly higher and then we can add arms in the same way as we did before. It's a little starfish. But I think it's still pretty cute. So on this one, let me go back. So this one will already have little bit longer arms. Because of course, when the characters are getting older or the kids, they will have longer limbs, right? So this is a very quick simplified comparison. Now let's look at the characters in a longer lineup. 5. Kids Lineup: In this video, we will sketch a lineup of kids in different ages side by side, and to keep things simple and clear, we will use simple shapes, basic proportions, and we will also use the frontal view. Now we will practice drawing characters in different ages, and I created like a overview with the same circles as we did before. So this will be a head side. So you can create file like this for yourself as well. Or I also prepare this as a download, but this is not necessary for you to download if you don't want to, it's just extra thing. If you don't want to create this document yourself, if you want to create it yourself, you will just draw the head sizes and then add simple lines in between each of the circles. And let's start with younger child. I will move here to the side. And the first one, we will do just two circles. So the youngest child, and I will have this here on the side so we can compare them from the distance. So first, I will sketch the head in between these two lines, which is the second and third. And then I will add simplified body Again, this starfish approach. Then the second character will be on the third line. So the head will be approximately the same size as the first one, but the head is a little bit higher like we did with those previous sketches. Then the feet are a little bit longer. I mean, the legs, the feet are just short. Then I will add the arms. The next character will be somewhere here, so you will draw the head in between the third and fourth line. And now we will elongate. So basically, you are drawing kind of like a triangle without a sharp top. And the legs are again a little bit longer than the previous one. Okay. And we can add the arms relative to the legs. I think this looks fine. All right, so we can move on. So the next one will be on the next line, as you guessed, probably. So let's say something like this. Oops. I need a little bit more space. Perfect. Now even more elongated triangle. All right, then the arms will go somewhere here. Let's move on to the next one, which we have the head here. Now, adding the body shape. And when you move on from basically left to right, I'm always elongating the legs. So we are moving the corner of the triangle here a little bit higher. And this is just a guideline for your sketching, which is quite simplified in this way. So you can always sketch on top of this later on. And now when we move to the next one which we can fit here will be placed around here. And we can elongate the shape even more now because we have older child or almost already pre teen And depending on the lineup that you are creating of the characters, you might want to have a variety. So if you have only two characters, maybe there is a bigger difference in age or if you have, maybe siblings, maybe you can take this proportion and this one. So kind of you have variety. It depends on the story that you are creating, of course. So here I just edit some text for me to see what I sketched. You can do the same. So you can write how many heads when you are sketching. I also edit this to the overview that I kind of created. So this will be two heads, 2.5, obviously, three. So kind of you know what you are sketching. And then when you have maybe three heads character that corresponds to 2-year-old child, then when you have 3.5 heads, that might be four years, then if we have four heads, it might be eight years and 4.5 heads can be 8-year-old child, but you can play around with slim limbs or long legs or longer neck, and then the child will already look a little bit older. So with these proportions, you can play around with these like eight year olds or almost pre teens or something like that. Alright, now let's sketch this from a side because there will be a useful exercise for the illustration that we will do as a project for this class. 6. Kids Lineup in Different Angles: In this video, we will sketch the kids in different ages in the lineup again, but this time in different angles. All right. So for the illustration that we will do in the project section, I think it would be nice to have characters which are in different ages. So here I will sketch the character with three heads, proportions, not with three heads, obviously. So I will start in displacement for the head, and then I will create kind of like a side view. So one of the legs will be more in the back and the other one is more in the front with a bent knee, but still creating that starfish shape just for these sketches. And then the torso will be somewhere around here. Then I will create another character here just for a practice and this character will have 1 ft forward. Different running pose and then the other leg will be bend. And then I will add a torso. So if you add feed, we can have feed here. And then if we add the character with the proportions of four heads, We can first draw the torso and then add one leg here. Other one here basically more lifted from the ground. If you are thinking, how do I add the legs? Basically, you just need to decide which leg is in front of another. So if in this case, we have this leg here and these two legs are kind of similar. So they are not overlapping that much. Now, if I add also older child, I will draw the head here So here, I will place one of the legs here more to the back, and then we can lift the other leg kind of a little bit more And here we can create different overlap. So we can imagine that this leg is in the foreground and then this leg is in the background. So very much simplifying, but we'll practice more when we draw from references. Right. And now let's look at a few more tips before we move on to the next part. 7. Neck and Shoulders: In this video, we will talk about the proportions of the neck and shoulders in relation to the body when you are drawing kids in different ages. All right. So now, let me point out some of the tips or things to think about when it comes to the neck and shoulders of the characters after you saw or practiced the lineup, so you will be creating characters in different ages. And when you're creating older characters, you need to pay attention also how you change the neck and the shoulders. If I keep this just as a reference on the side, we can start with the younger version. So of course, we have the bigger head as before. And as we created here, the shoulder part and the neck part, is quite small. So what you can do in this part is to create bigger head as a circle and then when you create the shoulders, you can just create a line basically, which is curved and the shoulders are not very pronounced. Now, we can just add yes so we know that it's like a cute, small character. Now, if we create a little bit older character, we can again place the head a little bit higher Now, when you're creating the shoulders and the neck, already there will be a little bit of definition for the shoulders. So you can start with a thin neck and then create small shoulders. What to pay attention here is that the neck is still quite narrow, pay attention to the neck is narrow, and then the shoulders compared to the head are also quite narrow. Let's say, approximately the width of the head that you just sketched. Then if we create a little bit older character again, Okay then we can create the neck little bit wider than the previous one, but also not too wide just yet. So let's say this is like a teenager. So now we can create the shoulders that are maybe a little bit wider, and of course, you can play around with different characters. Some have maybe wider shoulders and some more narrow. So this will be kind of like a young adult. So here we would have the eyes already kind of like a little bit higher, and you can check the proportions in the other class that we looked at. So here, the neck is already wider than the previous one, and the shoulders will be a little bit wider than the head. I will move all of these a little bit to the side, so I have space to sketch the next one here. So here, we can create a little bit smaller head already. So if we are creating suggestion of a head for adult, then we can add the jaw as well, so it's not so round as we sketched with the previous versions. And then here, the neck will be already wider. So if we are drawing adult male, let's say, you can also add more shoulders, and more muscles. So this will be more like adult human. So the older the characters are, you can play around with the size of the neck depending if you want to have the character more muscular, or if it is a female, you can keep more semi realistic proportions and keep the stereotypical thinner neck, which is used often in illustration and semi realistic characters, but pay attention to the width of the neck and width of the shoulders as you are creating the characters from younger to older. And now, let me share another tip when you're creating a lineup of your characters. 8. Arms and Hands: And in this video, we will talk about what to pay attention when you are drawing arms and hands in relation to the body proportions. For this next dip, I will use the lines as a reference. So first, again, as before, I will sketch a character here on the bottom. What I want to point out here is the length of the arms for the smaller kids because that ends usually around the waist. You can always think about this approximate placement for the hands. Now I will just sketch all the character here, but not full character proportion, just the top part. So I'm sketching a smaller head here. And as we talked about a little bit wider neck. And we can sketch a female character with not so white torso. The shoulders are also not super wide. And you can watch, of course, the other class where I talk about the proportions of the joints, torso, the hip placement, and so on. Alright, so when you have two characters going from younger to older character, what you want to pay attention to is the placement of the hands and the length of the arms. With the younger character, the hands will be around the waist area, which is somewhere here, and the relative length of the arms will also end around here. So when you move around the arms, something like this, maybe, just think about how long they are compared to the rest of the body. And when you have an older character, pay attention to, of course, also the neck thickness, the shoulders, but also the length of the arms because now the hands will be just below the hips around the top part of the thigh, and then the elbows will be just above the waist. So think about the placement of the hands. The elbows, the shoulders, and overall longer and thinner limbs compared to the younger character, the same goes for the size of the head. The older the character is, it will make the head a little bit smaller and in toddler proportions, you will make the head a little bit bigger, and it depends on the design of your characters. Of course, you can play around with exaggerating different proportions, but this is something to pay attention to when you are exaggerating and elongating the proportions and so on. All right. And now let's go and sketch some characters from the references. 9. Warm-up Sketches: And in this video, we will look at some real life references, and we will do some warm up practice sketches. So now let's do some practice sketches. You can collect your favorite references, for example, from Pinterest or splash or some other website. So this one is from Envato Elements, and I found a lot of different kids in different poses when running with kites because that's what we will as a project illustration, so now we'll just do different warm up sketches. And I have characters in different ages. So these are a little bit younger looking. So the proportions are closer to these sketches that we previously did. And then I have a little bit older characters. You can see that the legs are a little bit longer as well. And then we have also some boy characters, and I try to collect images from the side view, so it's easier for us to sketch. Of course, the torso is a little bit more twisted, so the perspective is a little bit harder. But if we focus on this kind of a starfish shape for sketching, that should make our life easier. And if you also watched my other class where I draw the adult characters also with simplified shapes, we are taking similar approach here. So here you can see we have also older characters, kind of like pre teens, and I think this one might be young adult, but it's a little bit hard to see from this reference photo. All right, so let's start sketching some of these references. So I will take this character. So I will just start on a new layer. Focus on that bean shape for a torso that we sketched previously, and then one leg in the back. And one more in the foreground. I'm still using the same brush as before, just as a warm up, and then we see if any of these poses work better than the other. So here is our kind of like a star fish shape, even though I'm already adding some knees, but I'm basically using these type of shapes for legs. So it's kind of like a carrot shape, and then I'm adding feet in that same way as we did before here. So here we can sketch the placement for the shoulder and the arm is a little bit higher. So I will do, again, the kind of like a carrot shape, and then the other arm is here in the back. And the face is turned this way. We'll have eyes. We will follow the head placement, which is looking upwards. I will make this sketch a little bit smaller and just move it up here, and I will take a different reference. Let's try a little bit different pose. So this one is kind of tilted forward. So I will start with the head. Then we have the torso. Here we don't see it as much because we have the jacket here. But if I continue with these kind of like a erot shapes for the legs, this is the leg here in the foreground. Then this one is kind of tilted here. So the weight of the character is on this foot. Here we can exaggerate that shape and then the arm is somewhere here and the other one is just here in the foreground and the character is looking to the front. Basically this direction, and then the kite will be somewhere here. And then we can have, like, nice hair of this character floating if we decide to do this character. All right. Let's try a different one. I like that this one has kind of more movement to it. And it's also a little bit older character than the previous ones. So we can make the torso slightly longer. I think I tilted the torso too much. Here, the action line would definitely help. You can also watch the class where I talk about more about action lines and the dynamic poses. That helps you with the characters. Here let's just sketch what we see using those carot shapes or how to call them. Then the other foot is more in the foreground. This other one is in the air, as you can see, but there is this nice movement in this pose and we can simplify these lines by connecting them here, and then the shoulder goes here. And then it flies behind here, and then the other hand is here, there is a little bit of foreshortening with the perspective, so the arm looks a little bit shorter than it is. But we'll not focus on that one just this second because also the hair is covering the face, but the character is looking more towards us and we can make the hair flow even more just to suggest more movement in this pose. I will make all the characters a little bit smaller, so we have more space to sketch, but you can create a new canvas if you want to keep the size of the characters. Let's see. I also quite like this pose, but we don't see the head there. And let's look at the characters. This one has a tilted leg as well. So we can try something a little bit different. So here we can try to sketch this character, which is a little bit tilted towards us, so not all of them need to be from the side view. So this one is a little bit younger. She's looking this way. Then we have this leg in the foreground. And this other leg is more in the background. And then one hand is kind of holding the kite, and the other one is stretched around here. And of course, we have that cute funny tail. And I can do a class about outfits and hair for small characters if you're interested as well. But there are many references you can look at when it comes to kind of toddler and kids fashion. So there are actually quite cool references that you can find. All right, so this is pretty cute. So we can move that here and let's try one more before we move to the next part. So we can sketch a boy character because we don't have that yet here. So I'm thinking which head tilt would be nice. So maybe we can try this one because we have the other ones like looking different directions. So we have the shoulders and the waist here. Then one of the legs is in the foreground, more in the air. But and then this one is still bend, but maybe not as much as this one. This one is a little bit more in a running pose. You can differentiate those. Actually, these poses are quite similar, but then here he has both arms in the foreground. His head is tilted more towards the kite. So here we can add the tilt and pay attention more approximately of the placement for the arms. All right. So I think these warm up sketches are great for now. And now let's start building our illustration. 10. Project Sketch: In this video, we will start our project illustration. We will redefine our sketches and improve the composition. So now I will take the sketches from the warmup exercise and import it to a bigger canvas where I will be creating the project illustration. So you can create a new canvas in whatever size you prefer, maybe a four or a five or even bigger. And when you have the canvas created in the gallery, you can take these sketches from this file by just tapping and dragging this folder away from the layer panel and tap on the gallery. Go to your new canvas. You can open the layers, and now you can drop your layer with sketches into this new canvas. And I am using my procreate file with Aquarel cotton paper. So I will have a background, which I can add later and also layers with ar texture. So that will be eddied to my colors. But you don't definitely need this one. It's just for extra effect. If you want to have more traditional look and feel. All right. So from these sketches, if I zoom out, I quite like this pose, so I can go to Selection Tool and select this one. Then I would swipe down with three fingers and select cut and paste, and I will have this sketch on a separate layer. Then with the arrow or the move tool, I can just move this character to the side because I want to have a variety in these characters. Then I will select maybe this character. I think that works quite nicely because it's different. I will go back to the layer because if you have this one selected, it will not cut out the character. Repeat cut and paste. I will move this one here, go back to this layer, and I think this one is quite cute because again, it's a little bit different than these other two. Then I can place it here and see if that works. I'm not fan of this sketch, so I can just move it away here, exit the arrow tool and then move back this character, and I can check if it's better than maybe this one. These two are quite similar. If you want maybe four characters, this wouldn't be such a bad lineup, but I think three characters are good enough for this one, and then you can also play around with the positioning. For example, if this character is maybe first, or you will create this kind of composition. I think it's also quite nice. Or you can put the smallest character kind of in the middle. And then this one will be in the front, which I think creates kind of nice composition. So you can decide how you place your characters. All right. Now I will select all three and move them in the middle, make them a little bit bigger. Then I can delete this layer because I don't need it. Then I would make sure that all of these characters are aligned, so they are using the same ground. This one can be a little bit bigger. Then I can merge these layers together. I will reduce the opacity here. Then I will sketch on a new layer. For this one, I will take a different brush, which is a little bit more defined or I can create more defined lines, which I can do with this six B pencil. I created this pencil mostly for outlines and sketches. I like to use that one when I'm redefining the sketches. So I think it would be nice if there is a combination maybe two girls and one boy or two boy characters and one girl, you can decide when adding details. I think this one can be maybe a boy, which means I can look at some of the references what these characters are wearing. So maybe this one where we have just shorts and a shirt. I think that's quite nice. So I'll sketch that on top. So I'll just add simple shorts. Maybe they can be a little bit wider. Then the top of the shirt can have a little bit of a curve in the movement. Then I'll just add a line here. Then here we just need to add a sleeve. And here I can create a simple hand holding the string, and then the back will be more or less straight, and then we can add that curve of a T shirt here. Then there is the bend on the shirt. There is a little bit of movement. Then I can draw the other arm here Maybe it would be nice if the other arm is here on the top, or we can place it here, it's on our reference. We can do that trying to keep the same length and the position of the hands are basically they are under each other. Mm. Combining the curves and straights, I think here this line can be more straight. I'll adjust that. Perfect. Now I will add the legs and I think I'll just make them a little bit more skinny so they don't have to be so round, but this is more design choice. Of course, you can make them also more round. And here we can just add simple shu. And then the same goes. Here, I think it would be nice here to add pokit. Um, And here, I'll just draw the other leg a little bit off the ground. So I'm just adding it a little bit lower. And then first drawing the sole of the shoe and then the rest. Then make sure that the feet are the same size. I'll just make this one slightly larger. Then check if everything works. Here I need to actually adjust this part because it doesn't look anatomically correct because we want to have it attached to the rest of the body. I'll just do this. So here I'll create new lines, so it looks more realistic but still keeping this type of pose. If you want to have it more realistic, we can move this leg higher. I think that will work a little bit better. Let's compare it with this one. Then it's very similar We can keep it here. Then here first, I will make a ear just to see the placement of the eyes will make closed eyes. Then I will create messy hair. And then you can make them happy and smiling. I can move the eye a little bit lower here. Perfect. And we need a little bit more hair here. All right. Now on to the next character, which is this small girl. This is definitely easier because we have the dress here so we can make the dress kind of floaty as well. And then these lines of the dress. This is pretty cute already. Then we can make the leg a little bit skinnier like some of the more skinny kids because we have that big head, that's pretty cute. Then we need the other leg, which is here. And maybe we can even give her a simple small jacket, which can be cute. And then we can draw the other hand. And we still need this one, so we can add a few fingers and the thumb. And, of course, I have the class about drawing hands if you want to kind of refresh your memory. I think this cute bony tail is nice. I'll keep this haircut here as well. As you might know, I also have a class about drawing hair, the decisions, how you can stylize the hair. If you're interested in that, you can check out that class if you want to practice more. And here, you can either actually make the dress a little bit longer or you can give her leggings, which I think that's pretty cute as well. So now let's do so let's add some details on the last character here. I think dress is quite nice because you can add more movement to the fabric compared to some of the when you just have jeans. I will create the dress also for this character from that perspective that it's nicely flowing or you can add actually shorts, which could be nice too. Here, I'll just create the dress. Or here I can actually add skirt, which is nice. We can add some movement there. And here maybe she will have a shirt. Maybe the shirt is open here, and then there is another a shorter shirt just here, and then we can add the dress. We can add more movement to this shirt. I'll swap to Canvas for now. And then add a movement here to the shirt and the skirt. Then here, we'll just add the leg the same as with the other two characters. This one because it's a little bit different, maybe I can move the leg even higher or we can do it for this character. Let's do it for this character, and then this one will have the leg more stretched. Here, I'll just add the second arm more behind the character. Just to simplify the silhouette, I think that works fine. Here we can add some nice floaty hair. Maybe I can add ponytails almost. I think that adds quite nicely to the overall movement. Maybe I will change this arm. I'm still not sure because I think it might be nicer, but maybe we can just hide this other arm behind the silhouette works a little bit better. I think it's nice like this. Here we can maybe add stripes on the shirt. I think that would work as well. I think work quite nicely. Maybe she can have a hat. Maybe a baseball cap that could be quite cute. And then she's smiling as well as the other characters. So we need this one. So the thumb but All right. This will have the strings. Perfect. We just need to decide how we do the strings. I said, I wanted to change this leg. There is more variety in the poses. I think this is quite nice. Maybe this is too high. I think this works. We need to adjust, of course, the pants here, and then add the knee, and then we have the foot here. I think this line can be a little bit pushed because when we look at the small preview, it doesn't work that great. Okay, I think this is better. And I can also move this part a little bit. All right. So I think this works quite well, and now we can go into coloring and also ed the kites. 11. Adding Color: And in this video, we will start adding colors to our project illustration. Now let's add some color. Here, you can use your favorite color palette or you can use similar colors as I'm using. I thought for this illustration, it would be nice to use some colors which are inspired by summer and primary colors. For example, I think using red color might be nice for the character outfits and for the skin tones, you can experiment with variety, of course. But I thought for this color palette, I think the mid orange tones would work nice with this bright red color and so on. All right. From the brushes, I think I will be using the gouache brushes which work quite well. Again, you can use any other brush set that you like. So for the first part, I will be using a brush which has more opaque look, and then I can experiment with textures on top of these shapes. So I'm using the brush number 23 from the gouache set for the basic shapes, and I will be following the sketches that we prepared. Until now. So in order to do that, I will reduce the opacity of these sketches even more, and I will set these layers to multiply so I can sketch under them and to access the drop down menu, just tap on the letter on the layer. I will also rename this layer and I will sketch on that layer. For the hair, I thought brownish colors will look quite well. I will start with those and then I can adjust the colors later on as well. I'll just follow the sketch that I prepared. When I have the outlines, I can just drag and drop the color into a shape. Then if I have some gaps, you can always adjust the threshold or fix some of these details. Then for the color here more in the background, I will use darker brown and I will draw on a separate layer for the objects which are behind each other. So it's easier for me to add some shading. Make sure that the objects are closed, and then you can drag and drop the color and with sliding adjust the threshold. Now I will go and take the bright red for the head, which I think it's quite nice and I will draw on a separate layer. Here, I will go back to the layer with hair because here we have the hair. We will outline the face. Perfect. I'm keeping an eye on the smaller preview, so everything is aligned. Now I will create another layer for the outfit, and you need to keep an eye on the amount of layers that you have, and I can always duplicate the canvas so I have more available layers in case you are running out. So here, I'm using the same layer for the arms and the face. And I will fill in some of these gaps and then of course, draw the legs based on the sketch. So now, again, dragon drop and the clothing, I will draw on a separate layer. So it's above the face, creating new layer so I can always rename them so I'm more organized. For the dress, I will take a blue color just following the outlines as before. Then I can drag and drop the color into the shape. Then I can check and turn on the textures which I had on the paper layer, which I think it adds very nice detail. For the shirt here, I think we can add lighter blue shirt, maybe with stripes or actually darker blue would work quite well, I think. I will create shirt on this layer. Again, drag and drop, adjust the threshold. Here I will add a little bit darker color. So it's more readable. But we can always adjust that part. And now another layer for the face. And for that, I will take darker color so we can draw the eyes. Then the eyebrows a little bit darker color to suggest the nose. So basically, we are kind of like drawing the shadow under the nose. And then we'll make like smiling mouth Yeah. I need to add a little bit darker color there to suggest the shadow. Then we can add teeth here on the top. So we just need a lighter color, and then we can always adjust if it is too much. I'm just looking at the smaller preview. I think I can make the mouth a little bit smaller. I think this works quite well. I need to add the neck here as well. And here we can already add the darker shadow under the neck. So it's readable from the distance so you can see what is where. Perfect. Now I can add some gradients to this one so we have more color variety similar like I did in the class about color balance. So let's create new layers on top of these to add textures. If you have a problem with amount of layers, you can always duplicate the canvas. Make sure you are happy with everything here before you enter the gallery. Here, I can select the file and I can duplicate it. Then you can get rid of some of the elements which you don't need. Every time you can merge them. For example, I can delete this layer if I don't want to keep it, and then you can always merge layers which are not next to each other. For example, the face with a shirt, you can merge them because they are not touching. Everything which is not right next to each other, you can merge if you don't have enough layers. The all right, so I will create new layer here. I will create clipping mask by just stepping on the layer. And then from the textures, I like to use a bristly brushes so you can take any other brush that you like. I like this one for some of the additional colors and textures. And then I can actually sample the color from the hair and then make it a little bit brighter. I will add it to a new color palette, so you will have all the colors if you want to use the same ones. And here, I'll just make the brush. I need to move this layer because I was on a wrong layer and create a clipping mask. Now I can add some highlights here on the ends and then I can move it even further and add a few more I think here, what would be nice, I will go to pastel set and I will take something which is even more texturing. You can have two different textures. You can select some brushes from your own that you like that is more bristly and with more texture. I will test these ones. I think that works quite well. I will take this one, which is number 20, just to add additional texture. Then I will sample the colors from the bottom of the hair here, and I will add more texture here. And then I would swap the guh set again, and I will take a sharper brush just to add few lines. In lighter and darker strokes. I will also add a shadow on this side of the face. So I'm adding shadows to the bottom part and under the head. All right. Let's do the same for the hair in the back, creating a clipping mask, and adding lighter on top and darker on the bottom. I will go back to the pastel set and add some of these lighter brushstrokes and also the darker ones. And then take a thinner brush. So maybe from this, I will take brush number one. I think that fits better actually than the previous one. I think that works quite well for the hair. But there are also hair brushes that you can use. But I feel it's a little bit more painterly. If you're happy with the textures here, you can merge the layers, you have all of it together, so you don't need to keep it on separate layers. Now let's add some shadows and gradient to the skin in the same way. So for the skin, I will take the lighter values now so I can add the highlights just here on the top, and then on top of the legs as well. And then darker colors as a shadow here from the skirt. And also here on the arm and a little bit under the head here. Let's see how that works. And then we can add lighter color on her cheeks and then a lighter color on her forehead and top of the nose. And then when we are happy, you can merge these together, same as we did before. And now let's add some shadows and highlights to the dress. We need some darker color here under the shirt and here behind the leg can be a little bit darker here I can take the pastel brush as well again just to create more definition. And now we can merge them again together. Now we can add details to the shirt. I will take lighter color and bristly brush and we can highlight the edge of the shirt at the top of the sleeve and top of the arm a little bit and see how that works here in a smaller preview This was maybe a little bit too light. And here I can just add the darker color in the back then we can merge it if you're happy with all of this, and then I can create new layer and we can add stripes and see if that works nicely for this one. I will follow the shape of the shirt. In creating these stripes. And I need to create the clipping mask as before, of course. I will create the clipping mask for the stripes, for the shirt, and I will follow the shape. Here, I will create the stripes, the other direction. A. I can reduce the opacity of these stripes. You can also later decide if you want to add maybe flowers on the dress, which I think would work quite well. We just need a highlight on top of the head. I will take the bristle brush. The top of the head a little bit lighter. Maybe this can be some kind of logo here if you want to design something, and then the bottom of the head can be darker. Perfect. Now we can move on to the secondary character. 12. Coloring All Characters: Now let's add some colors to the other characters. Right. If you have a limited amount of layers, you can again duplicate the canvas. So I will duplicate the whole canvas, then take the newest one and I can merge the whole layer of this character, maybe keeping the face on a separate layer if I need to adjust it. So I'll just merge all of these. This will be character one. And now we can create layers for these two other characters and we can color them in the same way. I will start again with more opaque brush and then create shapes for these two characters. I will keep them with a similar skin tone because maybe they are siblings, but you can create different skin tones for these characters depending on your story. I will create shapes for the skin here. So not two. I'm keeping this kind of like a mid tone color. Maybe we can make this a little bit. Darker, but it still needs to work with this red color, which I wanted for the outfits. So we can test it out and see if that works with the red color. Otherwise, we can adjust the hue either of the red or of these mid tone color tones. So you can watch also my other class where I talk about combining different color tones when you want to draw different skin tones versus the hair colors and outfits. So it's just a portrait class which you can practice with. So now I will create shapes for the the same as we did before. Dragon drop the color and continue filling the shapes. You can always adjust the silhouettes if you need to clean up some of these shapes. Now let's move on to the legs, and I'm always keeping eye on the small preview. Now I will combine these two characters into one layer. Maybe this character can have a little bit different skin tone compared to this one, just to differentiate them a little bit. So I'll just drag and drop a different color here. All right. And I can give leggings to this character because she has quite short dress. For example, you can make the dress a little bit bigger. I mean longer or shorter. I saw this type of outfit a lot in North when smaller kids have shorter dresses or just long shirts and then leggings. I'm sure that type of outfit is popular all around the world, but this is basically my reference. Now I will add a new layer with clipping mask. And make the color a little bit lighter and swap the brush I can add highlights easier. So we have this one, so I just need a lighter color for the boy. So now I can just add a little bit of highlight to top of his head and the cheeks, the hands. And you can add a clearer highlight even on a separate layer if you want to have the highlights more defined. Then I'm adding shadows with a darker color around the clothing and at the bottom part a little bit, of course, under the neck and then the detail around the ear, I will use the pastel brush because that's easier for the details here I need a darker color I need to add the neck, of course, to the character which I forgot. When you are happy, you can merge these layers. Now let's create a dress. I will use the bright red color, as I mentioned, which I think would be super nice here. H And then I will add it to the shoes. So we have the same color in more places. So maybe also the band, the scrunchy in her hair can have that color, and then we can add the same color for the boy, maybe for the shirt. All right. Now, the pens can be more desaturated, like grayish color. And actually, I think that could work also for this character, maybe a little bit better. So I might change her shirt for a grayish color tone. So let's see, when you dragon drop the color, you need to adjust the threshold so it doesn't color also the dress. Yeah, that color might work better. So I will import later the character from the other file because we already merged it. And if you keep it on a separate layer, of course, you can change the color easier or you can use the selection tool. So now off to the other colors for the other two characters. And here, maybe we can add yellow shorts. That could be nice. So kind of like a warm yellow and see if that works. I think the blue tones are a little bit better here. So I will swap this to darker blue. So it really depends on the colour palette that you prefer. Now I can add shadows to both of these layers. So I will create new layers with clipping masks. Always make sure that you are on a correct layer. Now I will go to the bristly brush to create a little bit of gradient. And So here, I can just add lighter color and also darker in the shade, kind of in the shadow. The same goes here. And then under the other shirt, and here behind the arm, Now I will swap to the pastel because then it's easier to control the edges. Perfect. And let's do the same for the other parts of the clothing. And then shadow as well. Let's add hair for the characters and the faces. Switching back to the opaque brush. I want to keep the lighter brown or darker brown hair color, maybe lighter for the boy and darker for the girl. Now, I will add the face. I will try this brush number 25. I think that would work nice. I decided to turn the pace a little bit more towards us. Again, always checking this one if that works. And then like smiling mouth. Maybe this is, again, a little bit too much, so I will erase part of it and add darker shadow there and the teeth. And then we can add a little bit of cheeks, something in pink tones. Perfect. Now I need to add highlights to the hair as before. I need the clipping mask. And, of course, darker part as well. Then I will swap to pastel brush just to add some of the details. And I need to adjust this detail because the perspective doesn't work how I want it to be, so I actually need to adjust this part of the hair. Because the ponytail is behind. So that means it needs to have this angle because I turned her face from the previous concept. So the hair bend needs to have more shape like this. All right. Now I will do the same for the boy character with the same brushes. And And of course, I will add the highlights. And also a little bit of darker tones. And then I will add a face Perfect. So I think everything works quite nicely. You can create stronger shadows or lighter shadows. And you can also add some details maybe to a dress of the girl like small flowers and so on. Now, I will add the kites and we'll be almost done. 13. Drawing Kites: Now, let's bring back some of the references so we can draw the kites and fill the composition. So for this new part, I imported the character from the previous concept in case I need layers, but you can always duplicate the content if you need to merge some of the layers if you are running out of the amount of layers that you can use. So you can always merge the layers you might not need, for example, the skin tone with the clothing and you can keep the textures on a separate layer and so on. Or you can flatten the whole group if you need more layers. You will have the characters second and third one and the character, first one, and you can keep them in a separate canvases. For now, I will just rename this one. And I will draw the kites on a separate layer. For that, I will open the references again because here we had some nice kites, I think, as a reference. So you can choose the ones from your reference images that you like the most. I think here, it would be nice to create some kind of flow with these lines. So maybe I can have more side view here in the front and then maybe something like this here in the back, which I think would be quite nice. I will start actually with this shape because I like how this one is floating here. It reminds me of stingrays. For this one, I think I can do a yellow kite. So let me check the other ones if it doesn't have a nicer shape. I also like this butterfly one, which is quite nice. All right, so I actually like this simple one for this character here in the middle. So that's what I will do. But she's holding it more here, so we need to make sure that the line kind of works here. Or we can actually move these two characters forward so we have more space. I can also hide this layer with the sketches. I don't need it anymore. Now I can add this kite. Actually, let's move the kites behind the characters. Here we can add the string from the kite because I think that creates very nice shape. We need to make sure that the kite is straight at the bottom. Then textures on a separate layer as before. So for that, I will go to the pastel. I think that works quite well here. I think this is pretty cute. You can also add other colors if you prefer. All right. Now swoping back to the dry shader, and I will go find the other kite, which was this one. Let's see if I create more straight line here, and then here there will be a bigger kite. So this one can be also this angle. Actually, this would work quite nicely, maybe a different shape here. I will change the shape of this one. For the composition, probably this one work better. But let's first sketch this one and see if that works. So this is quite interesting shape, I think, but the kite needs to be higher for the lines to work. So imagine the wind is coming from here, so the lines kind of need to make sense. So it looks realistic. I think this is nice. I will swap back to Canvas to see the shapes. I think here what is nice about this kite is that it's quite angular. So it's a nice contrast in composition. So now let's look at the references again. And I mentioned this classic kite look, at least that looks more classic to me. And then I will add that approximately to this height, I guess, and see how that works. So basically, I will swap back to the canvas so I can see how everything looks. So here I think the line should be shorter. Yeah. I think that works. And here you can, of course, use the help of Procreate when creating the lines. Perfect. I will change this middle kite to be more like a triangle composition because I think it will fit better here now after seeing this composition here. So what we need to do is just to adjust the silhouette, and of course, then we can change also this other part, which I think works quite nicely. For now, I'll just delete this part and we'll create that triangle. So we need to move it a little bit because the line is attached kind of sideways. And I think if we create a little bit better, bigger size, it can also work well. All right. So we need these parts to be aligned with each other. Then the lines connect to the middle of the kite. Now we can add some of the details. I will take the bristly brush and we can play with those shapes. We can actually create the same coloring as we see here and then we can adjust. So I'm adding some highlights here based on the reference. And you can play around with the design of the kite even more if you want to. These are just the basic designs that we see in the reference or they don't have to be basic. What I mean, we are not being super creative when drawing these designs. Here, I'll just add the red Approximately again, how it's on the reference. I think this works quite well. Anything I like more just two colors on the kite. So I'll just adjust this one. I think that works a little bit better to reduce the complexity or maybe if you want to add even more colors. As I said, design a different kite. All right. Let's add color to this last one. I reduced some of the details here, maybe it's actually nicer if there is less detail on the kites. A little bit less complexity on this one, and I like this color combination more than with the red because then we can have more focus on the characters. So you can really play around with these designs. And depending what is your inspiration, you can just add simple shapes. So for example, we can keep it more simplified. Alright, so I like these abstract shapes a little bit more. So you can explore what type of shapes you like for the characters. And as I said, when you're happy, you can merge the layers by selecting the group and just flattening them if you are happy with everything, and maybe you copied the canvas. Now, if you want to add simple grass, you can take a green color, and we can add a simple detail here. So I'm using the pastel brush. You can combine these two brushes to sketch the grass, just to have a simple background. And basically here, it's also a foreground, right? I can create another separate tutorial just to create the environment for these characters because this would take, again, a little bit longer if you want to create more details in the environment. So here, I'll just add a little bit of the grass, so we can kind of place them here. And then I will add maybe beige color. So it's reminding us of beach, and I will need to move this layer behind all these characters. So you can imagine a beach here. And here, I'll add also a little bit of the lighter color and a little bit of the shadow under the characters. And then I can add few longer blades of grass just with a darker color. And I can merge the grass layers. All right. So I would call this illustration done for this moment because we have all the characters and simple details. If you want to take the illustration further, you can add details on the outfits, as well as maybe on the kites. So you can add, small dots or flowers, and then you can also add a full background, maybe a be with waves or you can add a sand castle in the background, which we created in the other class. So you can watch that class and you can add a background of the sand castle or other ideas that you might have. And I will also create full illustration for this one, for the background, and then if you're interested, you can look at that one as well for the inspiration. All right. So I hope that you enjoyed drawing these characters and I see you in the next video. 14. Characters in a Scene: And in this video, I will show you an example on how you can implement the characters into the full environment illustration. And now I imported the characters into the other background from the class about the kid illustration. And there I also showed you how you can achieve this kind of sand castle simple background. So you can watch that class if you want to create this type of background for your characters. And other than that, I will also create another video where we create a different background for these characters specifically. And I was thinking maybe a nice river and maybe nice cloud. Anyway, that will be a different video. And as you can see here, I also adjusted some of the colors. I tested out different versions and different color combinations for the characters and the kite. So you can play around with different color combinations, and you can try different colors as well on the sketch level. If you want to just color the characters. Also, the other option to test out different colors is to go to layers and then when you have enough layers in your canvas, you can just drag and drop the colors into the shapes for the characters outfit like we did during the process. If you don't have enough layers, you can always merge the layers which you are already happy with and you will not change anymore and you copy them in a different canvas in case you need them later in the future. So here, what you can do, you can just flatten the background, and that one is on a separate layer, and that gives you even more layers to work with if you want to play around with more things in the illustration. So here, I will just keep it as it is. And here, what you can also do is to activate also the paper layer for the file, if you worked with the same paper cotton, procreate template as I used for this illustration because that adds super nice texture and more traditional look and feel, which I currently enjoy a lot. I can deactivate the paper as well, and just zoom in on the illustration. So it depends on the look that you prefer. Alright, I hope that you enjoyed creating this illustration with different characters in different ages, and I hope that you learned something new and I can't wait to see your illustration. So either please upload them in the project section or when you share on social media, please don't forget to tag me so I can reshare your illustration and artwork with others. So how did it go? I hope that you enjoyed learning something new and creating this project illustration. Thank you so much for watching, and see you in the next class. Bye.