Children's Book Illustration with Digital Watercolor Brushes (Brushes Included!)

1. Children's Book Illustration with Digital Watercolor Brushes Intro: Hi, I'm Lenard, and I'm a children's book Istaator and digital art teacher. In this course, I'm going to teach you how to estimate children's story scenes using Procreate and a set of digital watercolor brushes that I created myself. And yes, you will get them for free to use in your personal and commercial projects. This course is perfect for beginners and also for artists who want to explore a creative and easy way to tell stories visually. We will walk step by step through the process of creating a full children's illustration from the first sketch to the final artwork. First lesson, I will introduce you to my handmade watercolor brushes and show you how to use them to get soft traditional looking results. Then in lesson two, we will choose a color palette together. I will teach you how I pick colors that look good together using a very simple method. In lesson three, we will learn how to design characters using just one line and your imagination. It's a creative exercise that helps you loosen up and come up with fun, unique ideas. In lesson four, I will show you how to copy and redraw your character for different scenes while keeping it consistent. Then in Lesson five, we will continue the clean sketch, and I will give you a short and easy explanation on how to draw hands. In lesson six, we will finish the clean outline so our drawing is ready for coloring. Then we will begin coloring using the watercolor brushes. I will show you how to add soft colors and shadows and keep everything looking natural and soft. In Lesson eight, we will add lighting and start working on the background. After that, we will finish the background, add the final details and special touches. And at the end, I will show you how to polish your artwork, review everything we did, and export your final instoration, ready to share or use any portfolio. By the end of the course, you will have a full children's story scene, drawn, colored and ready to go, and you will have the skills and tools to create many more. So grab your ipad, open Bociate and let's start drawing magical stories together. 2. Welcome & Introduction to the Custom Watercolor Brushes: Hi, everyone, and welcome to my course. In this course, we will learn together how to draw a kids books in my way. Of course, I always follow watercolor and pencil textures or style, let's say, on all of my books. But in each book, there is a certain style that I do the most or, you know, I cannot just do the exact same style copy based based from a book to another. So I always change some stuff. Um you know, between one book and another. And I saw some artists that have the same thing, basically, that they follow multiple styles that, you know, they exchange between them from book to book. Anyway, in this course, I will do my own book, The Friend by the Window. I wrote the story, and I made it on in design, and now I'm illustrating it. So the first thing we have to know about any story that it has to be made on in design before. That's, of course, my way. This first way is I make it, I make my own story on in design, and just make the text around the Big that I keep some, you know, empty space in the middle or whatever I want, you know, to draw on. That's the way I usually follow. It's not 100% the only way. So publishing houses want you to do the canvas to draw on it, and then send it to them, and then they will do the text later. I don't do that. Sometimes I do it if they want to. But usually, I ask them to make the beige ready. So the text has to be completely done before we draw anything. So the first thing, no, that's the second thing. The second thing we have to know is deplete and margiin. Usually, if I got a picture like this, it already includes the margin and the bleed. So if the book was seven by 10 ", I already added the bleed and demargin through in design, as I said. So the frame or the canvas that you are seeing right now is completely ready to be drawn on. So what I have to do now is just pick a picture. Let's say this one, and, um, open in or even download or whatever, I'm just going to go to Brooklier because I'm going to, you know, draw on Brookit, and that's it. I did that to all of them before I start drawing, obviously. But if you don't have those beiges ready made, you can do it by yourself, you know, if the publishing house already gave you a briefing. The briefing is necessary for the size, for the story, and for the characters, and also for the details that they want for the margin and the bled and everything else. Anyway, all of those information has to be taken from the publishing house. Sometimes they just want half a centimeter on the corner of the beige, and that would be it. So you can just add half a centimeter or around the canvas. So now, this beige is inserted. If you don't have it, you can make a new canvas from the blast sign, write the dimension centimeter inches or Bixel or whatever you have on the briefing, and then the DBI has to be 300 has to be because it's for printing. If it was 72, it will only work on whip. Instagram or social media purposes, but I always prefer to do it on 300 because we never know. We might print it later, you know. So I just keep, you know, making it 300 DBI, and that has to be the case also in printing. Let's go in. The first thing we have to know is I'm going to make this multiply. It will make the white color basically does exist. If I locked this one and I made a new layer under it underneath. Come on, move. Yep. And I took whatever random brush, it will just already draw and the line will be visible. And if it was on normal, it will just be a normal beige, basically, and you cannot see anything underneath it. So let's just keep it on multiply. And let's delete this. So next, we will do or we will learn about the brushes. I made those brushes myself and in watercolor. The first one is the pencil. The pencil is just a normal pencil, basically. But it has this moose, you know, line, let's say, or feeling. So if your hand is not too straight while you are drawing a line, it can help you drawing really, let's say, smooth lines or straight lines. It helps me usually with curves because, you know, when I want to draw a curve, if I took, let's say, another Brush. I will just be very cracky and funny. So I'm just going to delete this and let's go to my brush. So that's the first one. The second one is eraser. Let's just do whatever. And this eraser, it can be also just a filler, you know. It can be a filler, an eraser. It will be very useful when we don't want any texture when we want to erase something. The next one is the exact opposite. It's just soft brush, but with texture, I usually prefer it to be opacity 50%. Um, and I use it in different stuff, but it's very, very useful, and I use it almost every time. Anyway, this one is very, very important brush, which is the base watercolor brush. I use it to fill with texture. You see? You can just check those brushes. I will give it to you for free because you attended this course. Every student can have also my brushes list, and you can use it on your drawings, just multiple brushes that are only available for my students that attended this course or any course I have. Only my students can use this brushes list for learning purposes and also they can use it on their own drawings. We will work on those brushes. We will check each one of them while we are drawing. But first, I want to show you one very important brush, which is those brushes. Those brushes are basically paper texture. This one called strong watercolor paper, this one medium, and this one soft. Let's pick the BD one first. Let's just check and take black color like this and make it, let's say, big size. Yeah, it looks kind of scary and weird for now, I know. But we can, of course, edit. I can, of course, edit the colors just a little bit. We can make it a little bit lighter like this or we can just try to do something else. Let's just not change anything for now and try. What I usually do to make a smart layer or a semi watercolor paper, I make this layer as linear burn and duplicate it and make color burn. And then I will just go down on the opacity. Depends on what we want. So let's say 60% here and then 10% or 11 I feel like the texture is kind of you know, I want it to be clear. Of course, if we want, we can just take it and exhale it as much as we want, you know, to make the texture bigger, because the brushes has very tiny texture, you see, just in case you want to look like this to give you a chance to make it, you know, small if you want to. Let's just make the strong watercolor paper for now and as you saw, black and just fill. You can just also make the brush very big and do it faster like this, but do not remove the Apple pencil from the screen because it has to be like one dry because if you went back to draw it again, it will just show you another ugly layer of texture, and it won't look good. Anyway, I will make this, let's say, 40 and the other copy color burn and do it as Satan. Lock and lock our bottom in a group and then one another layer and take let's say I'm going to take this one for now or no, no. Let's just take this one. Rectangle and make rectangle, draw it or, you know, paint it into red. City little. And then I'm going to turn the magnetic and the snapping on and then find the middle like this. You see? It has to be exactly on the middle. And here is the middle of the book that we cannot touch. I mean, we cannot draw on it. We cannot do anything in here, basically. Just keep it clean. We can make it just a little bit tiny bit smaller, just a little bit. And then turn it on again and move it to the middle. It has to be exactly in the middle. Okay, now, it's a lot smaller. Why? What happened? Uh, yeah, because I did uniform instead of free form. So now I can do it. Okay. So we can change the color if you want to. We can just do it whatever green, blue, it doesn't matter what color you wanted. It just has to be clean. We will also lock it. And let's just put this one in the same group as well. Because why not? And let's also this one because I really, really like to be safe. Anyway, now let's go back to the brushes. There is one thing that we can add that's completely optional is down there under the watercolor paper. There are light texture layer and medium texture layer and strong texture layer. We can also pick the black one and the biggest or medium or whatever size of the brush and just go over everything. As I said, do not remove the bin, and we can just do it overlay like this. So when we draw, let's pick the base again and pick another color. When we draw on it. You know, it gives us this nice watercolor texture that we move. I kind of like it with. We can, of course, change the opacity, the way we want, and we will lock it and add it to the group. So let's turn the red line off for now because it started to annoy me. I won't annoy me later when I'm drawing because it will help me, actually. Now since I'm drawing the brushes, I would really prefer to be not there. Anyway, now I'm just drawing with the base brush. You see, it gives the watercolor texture. Now I'm bushing really hard, and now it's very light on the screen. You see, Okay. Again. And also, we have smudge brushes. This one the first one. We can, you know, smudge the corners if we want those lines on the corners, or let's go back back and then go to the other brush. We can also make the smudge a little bit different. So it depends on you and what you want. Anyway, let's go to the next brush is basically I use it as let's say shade to the base color. So I'm just going to take another dark color. Let's say darker, go to another layer multiply and make it smaller and just that's too dark, so I'm just going to make it light still too dark, so I'm just going to change the opacity for now. I cannot change the opacity from here because that would break the texture. It doesn't really break it. We just change the texture. You can, of course, use it as you want. But I usually prefer the edges to be visible. So that's the edges color. Well, that's the edges brush. Go to the other one, just the same thing but lighter. Not really the same same thing, just kind of different m let's go to another brush another layer, I mean, and I'll try it on a normal layer. Yeah, that's it basically. So you just delete those. Those you already explained them just as much, that's texture spray brush, just if you want to add extra texture on the on some corners, we can also make some opacity here to make it a bit natural. And those are stamps. I usually add stamps to the background of each illustration. For example, um, I will make it a little bit bigger. I'm not going to use the entire thing. I might use just one bat, let's say, like this. Whatever I want doesn't matter where or for what. It just depends on what I want it to be for, like this. And I can also, of course, change the colors of it. I usually like it light and not too saturated like this. And if I want to change something specific in it, I will just go to Alpha Look and then pick this soft brush. And let's change some bats. Okay, that's too much. I'll just make the opacity less. And then I change some bars. We can also add some other colors like green or we want to change it using Alpha lock. So we have nice texture now in the background and very, very little work. Anyway, let's go on. Those stamps are basically just the same thing. This one is also a circle. Okay, why is it not okay. It's alpha o. I forgot it. As I said, I'd like it to be bit lighter. That's not doing what I want for now. Let's saturated, please. Yeah, whatever. And, you know, basically, that's it can also change whatever we want and the sizes as well and use it on our restorations. This way, this one as well, gets smaller to show the entire thing, pictures. That we can use on the background. Anyway, I made all of those rushes myself, so you cannot find them anywhere else. And you can use them, as I said, on your stiations or on your books, only you or on the people who are attending my courses. So let's go to the leaf brush. Let's go to kind of greenish, darker color. It's basically just tree. And then another time. And afterward, I can just take another brush like this and a draw. In between them, the you know, brunches. Of course, it will look a lot better. But for now, I'm just showing what you can do with those brushes. Those brushes, I also drew the brush itself myself. So you can also see the bencil texture in it, like this. And it also gives the watercolor vibe into it. The second month is a different kind of leaf. Look how nice and cute. It looks so adorable. Can also make other bars darker or just make a new one and make it opacity less Let's just delete everything and go to another brush. This just another unlock. Not this one. No, definitely not. Where's the other one? Who delete it anyway. So let's go to this one, make it a little bit bigger. Now, after we knew everything about the brushes and how to make the canvas and the textures and everything else, we can start with maybe the palette, the color palette. Yeah, next laser. 3. Choosing Harmonious Color Palettes Made Easy: So next, we'll talk about colors. I made this color ballet myself. I just used colors that can fit together. How can we know that? Well, there is a feature in D Create that can really help us. With the complimentary wheel, there will be two colors that are facing each other. Wherever you go here, you will also always two colors that can fit together, and you can make them lighter and larker. But here is like two saturated. So if you went to the classic and you went to those two colors, both of them, you know, you can also change the saturation, and it will still fit. So you can basically use any color in this square and any color of the square and still fit. That's how I used or that's how I biked the colors that I want in this story. But if you want an easier way to do it, you can just go to Bnterst and basically just go to search and go to color palette. And pick what works for you, basically. So there are way too many colors in here that can fit together. If you're going to, you know, do something let's say green pink that isn't too saturated, let's work with this one. And again, instead of just taking or, you know, taking the color, I prefer to. First, let's make a new palette. And instead of taking each color, I will just, let's say, work on this one. Ah, I already copied it. Anyway, let's work on the Bink. Let's go here. I guess it's here. I guess this one. Let's see. Okay, let's turn off the textures and everything else, just to make the color better. I guess it's less saturated. I guess it's very wait a second. I saw this just got there. It's almost the same. Just make it darker. Yeah, you might think, Yeah, why is it necessary to do all of this hard work on something that I already have next to my eyes? Well, it's just fun. Just create the color, you know, not copy them. It just makes it. Yeah, maybe harder, but fun at the same time. Let's take the other one. I guess it's here. I guess so. No, definitely not. Cause it's less saturated than this. Almost but very, very similar. No darker. Almost a little bit lighter. Let's just pick it, okay? No, you delete. Okay. So, let's pick the yellow color. I guess it's this one. It's almost orange, not really yellow. I thought it's yellow. Maybe let's go to the yellow part. Let's go yellowish a little bit more. Yeah, a little bit less saturated. But, definitely not. Let's go darker. And less saturated books. So so on and so on until we basically have the entire palette, or we can just choose those three colors and pick the rest from, you know, our imagination, let's say, or what we really want the vibe of the story to look like. Anyway, so I'll just delete this because it's useless for me, maybe also this one because I have no idea what I use it for. Yeah, I'll just give them. Anyway, whenever you click on one color of each palette, it will just immediately save into the primary palette. Now I will move on the character design of the story. 4. Fun Character Design Using Just One Line and Your Imagination: Let's be honest here. I already made the characters, and I will just show you exactly step by step how I did them. First of all, let's watch the time leaps reply. First, I do random sketches like this, whatever, I will just do it again next to you to know what I mean, and then start imagine shape or a face that can come from this or out of this line. It doesn't have to be exactly on the line. You see this here. It's not completely on the line that I drew at the beginning. I just drew a complete face out of it. But then I just moved the canvas so many times and I couldn't think of any other characters. So I just deleted it. Tried to make a new one, but I still couldn't do anything. Just random faces. Yeah, it can be so many faces, actually, but it's not it doesn't fit the character that I want, you know? The character that I want is just soft and cute. It has nothing to do with all of those faces. Now we'll create a face next to you from one of those shapes but let's continue. I just started drawing the base of the face and then the eyes exactly like this and started drawing the bodies. And then later on, I colored them. I changed the colors again. And after coloring, I started simplifying the shapes to be able to redraw each character easier. This boy has a triangular face, so I just drew a triangle like this and then his glasses, his hair, just simplifying, you know, to be able to draw the storyboard of each picture or to draw it over and over again and to look the same each and every time. And here the second boy, the hair, how his hair looks like. And also the mean boy. Afterward, I copied the face of each character. I put it aside, and then I threw a side face out of it. We can, of course, if we want to work more to make a complete turnaround for each character, something that animation studios do more than us as kids books as the readers. It can be useful. It can be very useful. But for time purposes, I just wanted to do it this way. And later, I can just copy this canvas and flip it to the other direction or horizontally, let's say, to have the other side of the face. Anyway, now I have everything. Even the side of the face, I also simplified it into shapes, and basically, it's done. So let's go here again. Let's turn this off and start something new. Let's just take the pencil and start making random faces or shapes, let's say, Yeah, it can be better. I'm just going to delete this and do it again until I'm happy with something. Okay. Let's just pick this one and make the paste less and go somewhere even beneath or above this layer. I'm going to try to flip the canvas to try to imagine how I could do I'll create out of those random lines. If I couldn't do anything, I can also repeat, but I can do so many things. I'm just gonna pick one of them. I'm just gonna pick this one, okay? Can I make the nose. Okay, the mans can be Okay. This one is good. I can make the nose very weird shaped, let's say. It doesn't have to be exactly on the line, as I said, We can make some round cheeks like this. And then eyes. Let's make them small because he already has a very, very big nose. And let's make his eyebrows very wide, let's say. And then the other side or I'll just keep his other side with nothing, no details. Just try. Better not. After this, I can just make him a very bald head. And then This cheek kind of look weird. So I can make his cheeks small like this? And then his ear very big. Yep. I guess it work better for his character. But So here. And then his body. Like this. Afterward, we can turn this off and start editing stuff that we didn't like, for example, his nose, I guess it's kind of very extremely exaggerated. It can be a good thing unless we want to try something different. And then we can add some details. Of course, it's just the very, very first sketch. So the lines are not completely straight yet or not clear. Let's say, can also make some adjustment here. A little baby smile. And maybe some details on his face. So it can work, you know, every time for me, unless I want to draw something very cute. Sometimes it does work, too. Sometimes I do so many female characters out of this shape. Let's turn this off again and use the same exact shape for something else. Let's say. I'm Imagining a side face here. Are very wide. And then hair, very long hair. And then that's just with even more hair, maybe very small ear. I can feel like this character is very annoying. We can fix this character even more by adding more details. Or we can just add a Viking hat. Looks good. So let's try to make a cute character. We can make something out of let's say, Make the ice inst bigger. Okay, let's repeat that. Here's the other direction then. So eyebrows and eyelashes. Maybe some bank. Why not? Can you even add more details, some colors on her eyes, cheeks. So we can make so many characters out of one line. Of course, we can edit and develop the character even more later. But for now, we have the basic sketch of the character you want. We made a young lady, let's say, Viking and also an old man out of the same exact shape. So that's the way or one of the ways that I do my characters. You can, of course, use it, or you can just use the very normal way of character design is just to read the text that they want. If the boy has curly hair, then make curly hair. If they have glasses, then just throw glasses. And so on, so of course, this step need some more understanding to fundamental or the basics of drawing, but it's totally worth it. So let's just put all of that in one group and turn it off. Before we move on to another lesson, let's just make this character pasity very little or, you know, light, and try to make the basic shapes of this character. This character looks like or maybe oval in here. Maybe triangle shape, but the other direction like this and then square, another square. Another square, and a small upside down triangle or even just a curve. Even if you redraw the redraw the nose, it will just still be easier to redraw this shape over just this one. So it will help you always to recreate the character. So now, if I turn this off and I have only this, Okay, so we fork out the eyes, triangle and if we want to draw this again, I'll just use the same shapes like this. I'll get a little bit fatter, let's say, or wider. And now I can turn we can fix it to just a little bit more. We can turn this off. Wait a second. I have to Nope. I have to take this to another layer, turn this off and turn this on, make this opaciti very small, and then start drawing from zero. To be just easier to redraw the character. Using this way, anyway. I can also be done better than this, but I will just turn it off, turn the other one off, and let's move on to the other lesson. 5. Clean Sketching: And so now is the sketch step. After we finished the color palette, the characters and drawing them and designing them, now we need to start drawing the actual restration. So, let's be honest here. I'm going to tell you a secret. Well, it's not going to be a secret for long because I'm going to tell everyone I already drew it. And I really like when I do the sketches before I, you know, paint them because that will make me choose, you know, what do I like to draw next? Or what do I like to paint next? So I won't get bored of a story and I will always be motivated to draw more and more. Even though this illustration is the last one in the story, I still drew it first because it was, you know, I was just excited to begin with. So I just drew it at the beginning. This one is one of my favorites, as well. Of course, the empty spaces is all just the text where the text is. I will just call in here. And I will show you the text around simply. So let's go now to our Illustration and see what I did there. Let's go to the video. Of course, I will use this brush, MM pencil and Time laps reply. I started by turning on the reference and starting with those guys here, the, you know, basic shapes. And then afterward, I will import another picture, which is the character themselves, just like colors and finished to draw the real sketch. Let's just close this and turn the time laps again. And then started drawing around the text. Of course, I have to read the text multiple times to understand what's happening, to understand what each character is saying and the situation and start creating a vision in my head to know exactly what's going on. Here, I was, you know, trying to illustrate a scene in the elementary school, but I didn't really know what to do with those kids that are laughing. And I wanted to make, like, bubbles or, you know, something similar to it, but I found it cheesy and doesn't really fit. And then I wanted to stick them together. And at the end, I thought about making glasses. Because, you know, the guy or the little boy is getting bullied because of his glasses. So, you know, he was saying something back to the bully, which made everyone laugh around him. So I just made glasses. You see, since the drawing is going across the text or through the text, I deleted those parts, and I just kept the glasses around the text, as you see, so it fits perfectly. And after that, we can, you know, start making this sketch together. Or the finished outline and then start coloring it. Those are the sketches. As you see, this one is in black. This one is in gray, sometimes in black, depends on the scene and what I want to later. When I draw in gray, it means that I want it to be less saturated in them you know, end version, or you want them to be like no color at all or maybe light blue to not show them too clear, just to show them as side characters or side scene that doesn't affect the illustration or be visible too much. So that's what I was going for in here. So now, I will make those layers less opacity depends on what is good for me. Let's say this way. This one needs a little bit more. Like this. Of course, I can edit the opacity later, as much as I want and then lock them, add them into one group, and then start above everything with the same brush to draw each character in a very clean line and turn references on and start, you know, copying the, you know, their faces or their bodies or whatever, in a better way. Let's just start for now to show you how I begin. I want to show his feelings while he was saying, you know, whatever he was saying. You see he have an eyelet, so I have to show that here. Okay. So since I don't want to stay here in silence for 3 hours or plus 3 hours, I'm just going to finish this drawing and I'm going to show you the end result and only the outline, and we will color it together because it needs to be explained. So since this part doesn't really need to be explained, just keep drawing, you know. So I'm just going to continue like this with the art with the outline until I finish the entire stuation, I can also go a little bit less on Okay, let's just turn them um can make them, like, very light right now to be able to see everything and try to copy exactly his features with his mocking face. I just gonna keep going through his head. Make sure to always look at the reference and his ear size as well. Go to his here. And so on. So I'll just continue now the same way. I'll turn this off for now. Of course, we can, like, change and fix it's how it is or fix the features. Foot was still looking weird. 6. Clean Sketching + Quick Tips for Drawing Hands: So let's first make this character, and then I will draw the rest. First of all, we have to make sure that we are copying exactly his face or how he looks like. You can look at the glasses. I guess there is a little bit of bigger gap in here. And the glasses are a little bit wider. But we shouldn't touch the mouth here because usually when I draw, I don't touch any other line. For example, this line in here shouldn't or just nose here, shouldn't touch the glasses. That will make it look weird and unprofessional. So we always have to keep each line separate from any other line next to it. And that's exactly what I'm looking for in here. I'm gonna delete those lines here. Still the gap in here is still a little bit wide. So I'm just going to make it a little bit closer or we can just move the entire the entire eye or area here toward the other this way. I guess that would work and make the other one a little bit also closer. The next step would be making the mouth a little bit shorter, even though his face is mocking the bully or the minked. But still, I want it to be a little bit separate from the glasses or further away. And then I will make those lines a little bit thinner. I I shouldn't be too wide. Continue like this, but always make sure that the face looks exactly like the character that we designed. So let's move to the eyebrows. One of the eyebrows is a little bit little or smaller than the other. So I'm just going to make righter fixed shape of it just a little. Now let's look at the full image. I guess it's accurate enough. And then me the neck. We always have to keep looking at the reference because we have to copy the exact same face and character. Follow the underneath sketch and keep going. To draw good characters, we have to get a good understanding on proportion and body measurements in general and definitely drawing basics because without it, we wouldn't be able to make good characters or make good drawings. And now, show you how I draw usually hands. So if the hands is like this and here is the thumb, we have to draw a square first, and then this shape or closer to this line here, make a short line and then connect to the other side, and then a little triangle like this, or we can make it a bit down. And then this shape, just simply this shape connected to this triangle. And then we can start making the fingers but for now, if I want to make it differently, obviously, this shape, we cannot just use this shape for every single drawing because it doesn't make sense. So I'm just going to draw these things foundations here. And then we can just break in the middle of this line or, you know, to start drawing the fingers. And the longest corner is for the middle finger like this and then simply continue. Here on the line, we can draw the bones And then I'll delete or erase the longer I don't need. I'm going to try to fix it because, like, can be it can look better than this. Let's one and go to the other hand. We do the exact same thing. Aquil mixes. And then since I want this lao this lean, I'm just gonna move this to another layer, cut and paste. And Okay, let's put this under the skitch and lock it and then start drawing the head. And So it the sketch layer and fix this one again. I want the corner of glasses clear because, you know, I want to make sense. What is he holding? Let's check on the hand again and miss realize it doesn't make sense. I guess this is good. This unto it kind of cringe. I don't know why. Trying to make it as good as possible. Without a reference, references can always help us. But, I always draw like this and I don't want to make it too different from what I usually, you know, be use references to draw or even to animate, and it's really necessary. That also depends on your style. If your style is we want it to be a bit more, let's say, realistic or they want to be comic like cartoons. And you have also enough understanding of the basics. And then the buttons I have to make sure to count exactly the same buttons at the same places. I will make them exhibit further away from each other. So here it should end the jacket. And then the guns. Now, I guess we still need to put the buckets, but I feel like I don't want to put them because of the hand and also the um, you know, the folds in here. For now, let's say we finished the first character. Let's check the reference. H. So now, after I finished this character, you know exactly how I do it now, and I will just continue with the other characters, and I will come back to you with decoloring Bart. 7. Final Outline: And had And and 8. Watercolor Coloring & Simple Shading Techniques: So now I'm finished with the outline, as you see, all the black color in one layer like this. And I left the other color, the blue color in the background in a different one. So I'll just log them like this and maybe also the dire group. Maybe we can also rename the entire group to maybe outline. And lock it. So the first thing we have to start with is the coloring, obviously, or the base color. First of all, before we start, I will check Dibrotoch. Some stuff are not completely right, for example, those little dots. I don't need them. Has to be okay. Um, it has to be deleted. Just make sure we don't have anything we don't want. Okay, look at this here, can go to the blue one and delete this line that was obviously a mistake. And keep looking. I guess it's fine for now. I will just log them again or maybe log the entire group. And start with the base color. So I will take the base water color brush, and I will start with the skin. Of course, we have to remember what skin color we use for each character, and I'm now going to turn the reference on. I use this picture for reference to pick the dark color of the blue characters here to also draw the background here. And I guess I will use it again later. For now, I will just use this reference if I need any reference for the skin color. I already I already got used to his skin color, so it's the in the middle one here. And the base color, I make it, you know, let's say, suitable size and start coloring. Prefer to not remove my hand when I'm drawing the base, you know? Because if I removed my hand, now I removed it and I tried to draw on top of it, you see it will create another layer of darkor. So I will just go back. If that happened to you in the last last section, for example, here, and then you have to continue here, you can just smudge the corner to fix it. But I prefer to just have the same color everywhere. And I also like to keep a little bit of, you know, white corner on the side of the face. Just because it looks good, you know. You can also skip this. It depends on your style. Then I can remove the corners that I don't need with the erasor brush. It can be also a filler or whatever you like, but I use it mostly as an eraser. I can also use it here on the eyes because I don't need any color on the eye inside the eyes. And then go back to the same brush and do the hands. You can put more pressure on the screen as you see now or light brussre for different effects like this. Here is dark and here's light. And now I will show you here is dark and here's light. So you can also have different effects, depends on the pressure. So now I discovered one little dot here I want to deleted. Those stuff are not even necessary if you want the texture to be as it is, you know, you don't have to fix anything that AR candle want too, so why not? So now let's continue with the base color. As you see, I'm not removing my hand. And also leaving some corners, not all of them, just a little bit. And here, if I went back to some sites, I can just take the brush and mer tacone and to fix it. So it's not a huge problem if it happened with so I will finish this character entirely, like with all of the steps. And afterward, I will do the rest of the characters in a sweet drawing video or something, or even I can show you the video from here to reduce the time of the course to just give you the most important things. But usually what I do is doing the base for all characters in one layer. Like, after finishing his entire outfit and blah, blah, blah, hair and bands, I immediately move here and start painting him, and then I do the other steps. But now I will only finish one character, do all of the steps, and then continue the rest. So let's continue his hair. I guess this hair, was his hair color. No. And here too, you see this little corner that we draw. We can just smudge from here. And it's not as bad anymore. So next, his eyebrows can just pick the very thin brush like this and then draw over the same thing with his eyes. And afterward, we can take the blue color. And you see exacting. But this time, I did it on a different layer because I want to fix the opacity. Maybe this way is good, a little bit less or more. Yeah, I guess 75 is good. So we can merge it now if we want to, we can keep it in a different layer. If we prefer, but for now, we'll just merge it because there's no reason to keep it in a different layer for now. So I'll continue with this jacket. Of course, depend on the brussure. It can also make it different from, you know, an illustration to another. So some illustrations will look very light, just like this one. The opacity is very low, let's say, and the other one on the reference page or on the reference window, it looks a lot more saturated. So later, I will tell you what I usually do about this. And yeah, we can, of course, fix everything. Oh, now as a solution for the opacity color, we can just duplicate the layer and compare it with the second one next to us here. Is it completely exactly the same or does it need to be a little bit lighter or darker? Um, I think it might be okay like this, but I prefer it to be a little bit lighter. Also 75, I can merge them again and smudge some bats, like here, the brussure here was higher and also to reduce the texture just a little bit. Not too much, in some bats. The texture doesn't look too good. Of course, we can leave everything as it is because some people really like those rough textures as artists. Me, too. I also love them. But for me, I can also have my limits. Now, I guess the base color is fine. Let's see if we can replicate it again. What will happen? I guess too dark now. We can just add 20% more or 10%. Let's compare it to another picture. We can compare it with the one before it maybe use this one as a reference. I will also share it as small sized picture, and I'll go here and use it Okay, I guess it's fine. Maybe I can a little bit more. Maybe also a bit more saturation. Is 50 or 60. I guess it's good. So now we can go to the other icture again because I need the other picture for some parts in this drawing, so I need it as a reference. Since the base is finished, I will just call it and lock it and I mean, rename it and then it, make a new layer, and then go to the other step, which is the edge watercolor brush. This brush, I use it for shading. So you remember I use this color for his skin, so I'm just going to use a darker color now. I can also use multiply type. And I'll try now. Is too dark, a little bit too dark. Maybe we can. Get down a bit thinner. I guess this way, this one is fine. You see this corner on the outside, you can just remove it and then merge some bars on the corners only. And then here, you can also merge it. I'll make another layer of it. Okay. Maybe we can also do the cheeks or the nose. We can take the very pink color and just a little bit here, and we can merge it. This step is optional, but it can give the character some life, you know. So let's pick the same colors this time for doing the hair. I made here a normal layer to see the difference. And go to the multiply and also make shading from the same color. You see? There is, of course, difference. We can choose between the multiply or the normal depends on what we want. The multiply the dark, so just to make it a little bit saturated and lighter. Huh you see this little brown color that is in the base and also covering a part of the skin. If I erase that, I will also erase the skin. I can, of course, erase the outer part of it. But now I will just merge the skin into it. So from the skin part, I will just push it to this place to merge and also to basically replace the brown color with the skin color. Lock it again and continue with the shading. For down, I will just tip the hair as it is and move into the jacket. I will try again the same color on multiply. I don't really have one answer about the type of the layer. Sometimes I use it normal, sometimes multiply, especially with watercolor. It just doesn't really matter. If you want it normal, you can just do it normal and change the colors and multiply it will just be already dark enough as it is, even if you didn't change the color. So you can just do whatever you like, basically. And again, there's only some parts of it. And now to the bends, simple shading and merge some of it. Let's go to the hands because I didn't do anything about them. I can just remove the reference for now. And then I can color some parts like this or shade. Some parts and the burge some of it. I can also choose darker color if I think it to look better. So the next step in shading, I'm going to use this pencil. I will lock this one. I will also call it maybe shade. I will just pick the same skin color and start just shading like this. Of course, I think the color is a little bit too dark, so I'm just going to go to normal again and pick the same color of the skin and start shading. Of course, even though we are using the same color, but the brush is different. So the saturation is also different between those two brushes. The first one is a little bit less saturated than this one. And also there is another layer that we added, which is this one. It also affect the saturation of the entire drawing. But I don't mind it. I think it's good to stay there. I can just continue like this and shade everywhere. And to smug, I will take the same brush. And to erase, I also will take the same brush. Now, if we did it on the same layer as before, we won't be able to erase anything or we have to erase also the shading under it, which we don't want. That's why we used a different layer. Just continue like this. And maybe I will also take a lighter color, even though it won't look too light on the skin, which is what I want. I can also take it a bit lighter, but it will just make a tiny bit of texture on the skin. We don't have to do it too dark, so I'm just going to make it. It's a bit less because I don't want it to look too visible, you know. And if it was, I can just erase some bots. Just continue like this until you think we heard enough. There are some green bats in here. I'll just do the exact same thing as before, merd them together with the skin to remove the green colour. Lock it again. Or no, we have to delete also this part. Okay. So go to the outline just for 1 second to delete dot that I don't like and go to the textures again. Okay, that's too dark. Just make it lighter. Still too dark. A For now, let's say we are done. I go to make some adjustments here and there. I guess for now, it's fine. I can also take the black color since the outline is already in black, and at the same outline shading layer, and since it's normal, I can also add some very dark places. Only if I need some extra details somewhere. Not necessary. We can just get rid of this step. It's totally optional. What do I have to overdo it, I can just do only this much. Now after I'm finished with this step, I can start with lighting. 9. Adding Light Effects + Starting the Background Colors: Now after I'm finished with this step, I can start with lighting. So since they are now indoor, which is in the school, I have to be where the light source is. I guess the light source is from above, which is the lamp that they have indoor. So the lighting in general should come from above. So just to add layer like this. And then with this yellow light. I can just take this soft brush textured soft brush and start trying to make some shade. But this color looks kind of more like the sun. It doesn't really like it looks like indoor lighting. So we can also fix it into the color of the light. If the color of the light was blue, we can also make the light blue. Let's make it darker to like this, of course, we're not going to make it blue. But I'm just saying that we can change the color of this layer depends on the light source or the color of the light source. For now, let's just make it white. Even if we made it like gray or black, it will also stay like this, a darker kind of white. So I'm just going to be gray for now. We also don't have to overdo it since it's indoor, so the lighting indoor is a bit easier. Also, the glasses have to make the coorers white. I usually don't overdo the lighting. Sometimes I overdo it way too much. I can show you some examples. But for now, I just would like to keep it clear and soft since I'm following this path since the first page, so it doesn't make any sense if I just change it now. It depends also on the style that you want to follow for your story. No. I guess for now, it's fine. I don't want to do more than that. By the way, we didn't use this brush, but we can use it also for the shading, which is here. We can also use it at the same, you know, way if we don't want textures on the corner, you know. You see this movement, it won't be there. So it depends on what you want. You can use either one of those brushes or both of them. Now, behind everything, the base the shading and also and I'll also rename this to pencil and go to the last layer here and the big one of those. We can check on the shape of the texture of all the damp from here, from the brush. I guess this one would be good. I guess I would like the floor to be bluish, something like that, maybe. I can just make it big like this. I will flip this one sway because I want it to be big as big as possible. It's a bit bigger. Yeah. So now I will clip it this way and then change the Okay, I guess this is fine. Now I'll take this one and take a dot from here, and the here, no ended here first, and then end here. Okay, I will just leave it for now like this, and then I will go Alpha Look and then go to this texture soft brush and that disc white color. Maybe I can make it in this capacity and then start erasing some words of it. And then I can. Yeah, I guess this way is good. We don't need the texture to be, like, too much, as well. And now we'll make a mask and then delete everywhere where we don't want the color to be. Take the black color as an eraser in the mask. So the black color actually is used as the eraser. If you want to erase what you erased, for example, you painted black inside the mask where you want to still show, you can just pick white color and remove what you did. But for now, I'm just going to finish this. And also here, maybe I can just remove the little boy and keep the background of it. Instead of this, I can also use the select. But for now, we just do it this way I'm almost finished anyway. And then I will also delete those other kits because in watercolor, we need the background to still be white, you know. We don't want any texture or color behind it because it will affect the result. As you see what happened here, exactly the same thing. I'm just too worried, so I'm just going to use the free hand selection on everything. You see, it's a little bit faster. Just a little bit too much. There are also some bars that I didn't select, so I have to edit those parts later manually. I guess I can just already dig the black color in then just fill everything. Now you see this part here. I will just take the white color and go back because I need the texture here to stay. Okay, I guess the sway is fine. I'll also delete the hair. Of all look again and detect your soft brush to change some colors and take the blue one that we really wanted and make some barred blue. And white some other places where you don't want it to be. Okay. So dark blue somewhere here on the corner, here on the other corner, can also add some smack this pink, of course, a lot lighter because this is too too dark. For now, I'll just finish with a little bit of white in the middle. So now I will take this cockpit, paste it somewhere. Perfect. Now I will just lock this one because I will need it later. And now I can lock this. Perfect. So I will use this. But maybe later, I will just make the rest of the characters, and then I will do the background. 10. Finishing the Background: So I changed my mind. I want it to the glasses now and also I want it to the background in here, the little kids in blue and also the closets. First of all, I will just keep this as I said. Okay, that looks kind of weird. But let's just keep it for now. And let's go with the base color again and make the glasses. It doesn't matter if you painted on the girl or not. That's why we kept the black cutter. So we don't have to repeat the mask as we did last time. So if we want to give the texture on the corners. So let's do the exact same thing on the other side with the base color The mistake I did right now is not showing the entire area that I want to color before I start coloring because as I said, I don't like to move my finger from the screen before I finish the entire area. Now I have to repeat it, and we have a corner that we don't want. So I'm just going to go to the brush nal and smudge tool and just fix this area. I will take the eraser again and like, extra brush on the corners here. Extra texture on the corners, I mean, and make the opacity a lot less. Like maybe 30. Now I will take this one, copy it, turn it off, and make a mask here, and then baste. Okay. So since there are some weird stuff that we don't want to see, I'll just pick the white color and remove them from the mask. Now, I will copy this one again and base it somewhere else, which is here, and then here can merge it because we already have another copy of it. And now we can also exchange or change the opacity again. I will this one, and then I will start with the background under the glasses. And now I will use a reference, which is this one. I need to see the kids here, how they are colored. Yeah, I guess it can be a little bit darker than this. I'm gonna try doing it under the glasses here. Just want to see how it would look like. Cut and paste, and then the paste a little bit lighter because it's different from the other one. And then the leg. It's just so light in here. And now we can use a different color for the shading, so I have to lock this one and then make this multiply and use the same color. Okay, next step is shading with a pencil. I can also try multiply for now. It's too much. I'll just do it on normal. Still too much. Can we make it lighter? Now I will delete the parts that I don't need inside the glasses and also here, I guess, here as well. And now I will just turn your friends off and take this one copy. I have a problem here. It's already filled with white, so I'm just going to go auto automatic selection and go to cut and paste. I want to see. Okay, good. Now I have it without the white background. I don't know why that happened actually. That's almost maybe the first time Eva. But for now, I'm just going to delete the extras. And then I'll just copy it, turn it off and go to displace mask paste. Good. I now. Do the other ones mask. So it will only delete the black color in this layer. So now we made sure that all of the characters doesn't have any colors in them, so we can color them freely. So now let's put all of those in one layer for the background at the back And this one, we have to put it inside as well. So just to I will just close this group and then bush this one. I'll just name them. And now after finishing this, I might also add some, you know, extra lines here and there. You know, just to make it a little bit clearer and better. And then I will finish the characters, and I can come back to you to show you the final result and also to share the final stuation. So I will do the other characters exactly the same way as this. So it won't be new information, exactly the same. Base color, duplicate the layer, make it as saturated at the other as the other character. And also as the other illustrations, we also don't want to forget this. And then the shading, the lighting, and the outline shading again. And yeah, that's basically it. So see you in the next lesson. 11. Final Adjustments, Review & Exporting Your Illustration: So now I finished the illustration. I did exactly the same steps for all characters, as you see here as well, um green, which is the main character. The base doubled it twice, shading pencil shading and light, red, which is the red character. Base, I also doubled it. Maybe soften the texture a little shading, pencil shading and light, exactly the same steps, base, but I duplicated this layer. I also made the opacity a little bit lower since I don't want it to be completely the same as the first layer and shading, pencil shading and light. But also the bends. If I want to duplicate the layer or not, sometimes I do the opacity 60%, sometimes 70, sometimes 80. It doesn't really matter. Depends on what we want the color to look like. I also made a new layer, which is pencil shadow. It's just black color, and I just made extra shadows in some places, not more than that. And here with the text and without the text. Of course, before we share the installation or export it, we have to turn this layer off and also this one. Some publishing houses wants only the characters and the colors without this texture, you know, without the paper texture, but only the textures that we have in here. In that case, we have to do a mask like this. But in this case, it's just black. So what we can do is, first of all, just paint everything in black that we still want. Of course, that's going to confuse some people who know what a mask does, but I will explain it soon. So just paint everything you need or you want to still be visible in black, just for now. Why in black? Why not in white? Because I want to see where I'm painting. But white, it might be a little bit difficult since the background is also white, so I'm just going to do that. Then also here where I want the Baber texture to stay. And also here, of course. That's, of course, optional. Depends on if you want it or not. Sometimes I do it, sometimes not. So it just basically depends on the project and what you want. And also, those little boys or those little bodies, let's say, then maybe I would like to keep this texture in here just because. So now I guess it's enough. Of course, we can still, like, fix some places like here. And then make a full layer in black, make it under, and this one, it invert, and then we merge them together like this. Now we copy this like this and then turn it off and go to textures, go to this first layer mask and base and merge mask, based I'm not going to merge it because I'm going to delete it later. I forgot about this, but if you want it to stay like that, you can, of course, merge it. Now it will delete the texture, as you see. You can continue this step on all layers where we have texture. But since I'm keeping the texture in all iterations, I just don't need to do this step at all. Can do it everywhere where you don't want to the baby tecture to stay or anything else. So now let's move through the layers one by one, just to know what we did and what we have. Here is the red rectangle to know where the middle of the book is to not touch it, or to not draw important things on. Then that's, of course, the texture, that's the text layer, and that's extra texture. That's before and that's after. This mask that we just did, we can delete that if we don't want it. I'm just going to delete it because I don't need it. Blue gray is the guy. That's the lighting. That's the two layers of shading, one pencil and one watercolor shading, and that's the base twice. The same thing over and over again on all characters. So now you exactly know how it is done. And that's the background, the glasses, and the blue colors and also the texture. And this last group is just the base skitches that we don't need anymore. Just go to turn that off. And let's watch the time laps replay together. Here's the sketches. I already showed it to you. And the glasses idea was about what I thought is him looking at the other direction. So those characters are behind the red guy and he was looking at them, you know, laughing. So that's the just to also fill the empty spaces with something, you know, support the idea or the text. And here the outline or the clear outline, and then the coloring, the shading that we did together. And now the bulk guy, the red guy, here I made the base. I also softened the detecture just a little bit and also made a copy of the base softened detectures on some bars a little, and then the shading, the watercolor shading, and then the ncel shading and then the lighting. The exact same thing on all other characters. And yeah. And also the events are shading somewhere else, like on the counters, I mean, on the on the closets or the doors or even in the shadows of the boys in the background, if you see. And then we did the mask. That's the optional part, of course, and that's it. Now we go to share TIFF. I usually go to drive and save Drive, of course, keeps the quality the same the exact same. So we don't have to worry about the quality not being good enough for printing. And TIFF is the quality I always use or the type I always use for those kind of files to just import them and design and then just continue making the layout, maybe fixing the text a little until I have the end result, the end book, and basically, it's done. And that was all for this course. I hope it was helpful for you. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me through Instagram or the question section, whatever you want. You always can find me here at manal dot MOV on Instagram. So I always welcome you there if you want to contact me for any reason and yeah, see you in the next course. Bye.