Composition Thumbnail Practice in Procreate

1. An Introduction : Hi, my name is Kaitlyn Lawrence, but you can call me Kate. I'm a self taught digital Illustrator based on Long Island New York. Growing up surrounded by nature, I'm constantly inspired by my world around me. In this class, we'll be using thumbnail sketches to learn tips and tricks on making a better composition. Working in a small space such as a thumbnail offers a free pressure environment perfect for breaking out of creative block. 2. Rule of Thirds : And and For our first lesson, we'll be learning about the rule of thirds. It's a typically used guideline in photography, drawing, design, illustration, and painting. I pretty much use it in all of my compositions. So let's get into it. To get started, I'm going to go to my color picker and pick a bright color to demonstrate. The rule of thirds splits an image into thirds vertically and horizontally as seen here in this grid. A. When creating a composition, it's best to place objects on the vertical and horizontal lines. Also the cross hairs. You can see here that I'm circling the church on the left vertical line and the big tree on the right vertical line. Moving on to our mountain the th, you're going to notice a couple of things. Number one, I started the river or the path on the right vertical line, and I ended it on the left vertical line. The second thing you're going to notice are the clouds. They're on the top quadrant on the right and left vertical lines. Okay. And up next, we have our little barn scene. We have our clouds on our top vertical lines. And for this, I wanted the barn to protrude into the middle of the second quadrant because I wanted to be a focal point for this. So you'll also notice that the barn doors are directly on the left vertical line because I wanted that to be again, a focal point when you look at the barn. All right. So we have our little meadow scene here. This is going to be our last thumbnail for this lesson. You're going to notice that the tree is on the right vertical lines, and the sun is in the top quadrant. Now, I wanted it to be very basic illustration in your face, so that's why it's in the middle of this entire thing. And you'll notice that to the left, we have a small tree just to show some distance and some depth. 3. First Wash: For our second lesson, First wash. We will be learning how to lay out colors for our thumbnails. You can follow along with this lesson by using worksheet number two under class resources. In this class, you can choose your own color palettes, or feel free to use my sample palettes above the thumbnails. To get started, we're going to add a new layer above the sketch. I'm using a clear water brush, but you can use wash brush under water brushes. It's in the Procreate pack. So I've just picked a green and I'm starting to fill in from the left hand corner. I'm just making my way ad, taking my time. Now, you want to make sure to do this in one sweeping motion. You do not want to pick up a pen, because if you do this will happen. It's super dark. We don't want that. So we're going to undo that and start again. And if you'd like to speed up the process, you can always make the brush bigger. Without picking up my pen, I'm just taking my time, moving around the canvas, and getting all the white spots. Once I'm done, we'll be right back. Okay, so the grass is complete. The next step is to add a new layer for the mountains. Once we've added our new layer for the mountains, we're going to pick out a color that we like. I'm going with this midnight blue. I think it's py, and we're just going to start from the left hand corner like always. And in one swooping motion, just like how we did the grass, without picking up our pen, we're going to fill in this entire layer. Also, I'd like to add that as we work, we're not pressing too hard, not pressing too light. Just kind of moving the color around, like it would naturally do with regular watercolor. As we work, there is one lesson that I've learned that I'd like to share with you guys. And it's that art always looks worse before it looks better. And I feel like that's a great metaphor for life. Sometimes you just have to hang in there and wait for things to just get better. I'm going to speed up the process, and when we return, our mountains will be complete. The next step is to add a new layer, and we're going to be working on the sky. Now, I picked out a darker color for the sky, but I feel like it's a little too dark. So in true digital fun, we're going to change it up to a Robin's egg blue. I think it'll work out, and we are just going to begin. Note that we're using the same brush for all of these layers because we're not focusing on texture, and we're just focusing on color. When feeling in skies, I typically like working in circular motions. I feel like it gives you a good variety of color and opacity just like a natural sky would be. To complete the clouds, add a new layer and pick a pink or an off white. I typically don't like using starch white for clouds because I feel like it makes them look very flat. Again, we're just going around circular motions to give it a light fluffy look. Using the same color as the clouds, we are going to start filling in the path. Now, you can choose to do it pink like I did. You can make it a river, whatever your heart desires. I just kind of sloppily, just place this color in here to finish up this thumbnail. 4. Adding Values : This next lesson will be about adding values or shadows and highlights. Values may seem confusing and overwhelming to some, but when broken down in steps, it's completely manageable. And it's totally important to know because this is the one thing that will bring your composition to life. So stick around and let's get started. Okay. For our second lesson, we are going to be using worksheet number two, so you can open that up. You'll also notice after opening it that I have color picked color palettes that we are going to use. If you'd like to use your own, that's totally optional, and I encourage it. First, let's select a brush. I recommend using wash underwater brushes. Next, we're going to add a new layer. To start with the foreground, we are going to use a darker value green. With the left hand corner of the frame, we will begin to add shadows. When adding shadows, I like to start in the foreground, as it reminds me that the color should be most vibrant towards your physical body and fade the farther away it gets from you. Next up, get ready to blend. Head to your smudge tool on the top right hand corner, and I'm using airbrush soft brush. You can see the brush is quite larger here. I'm moving it along the tips of the shadows, making it nice and smooth. When adding shadows, you always want to consider where your light sources. In this instance, I'm envisioning the sun high in the sky, so I'm starting with the left corner of the mountains, and I'm just adding some darker values where I know they would be. Now, feel free to make mistakes, to zoom out, undo, because that's the whole fun of digital art. Take your time and enjoy. You can see that I'm starting with the tips of the mountains and I'm dragging the darker color downwards. We're just making some rock formations, moving around the canvas. And right now just using our creativity as to where we think maybe some darker values might be. Had over to your smudge brush at the top right hand corner, and I'm just going to move over the areas that I feel are a little too defined. I'm not doing an entire wash to make it all smooth, just soften some of the harsh lines. This is our last layer of shadow work for the mountains. So we're starting with the left as always. We're going to make some valleys, some divids, and I'm making them lead towards the path. We're going to add one in the middle here, and I'm just going to soften it out a little bit. One right next to it. And lastly, one to the right. The final step is to go to your smudge tool on your top right hand corner, and we are going to blend out the edges of the color that we just laid down. Now, remember, we're just doing the edges. We're not doing the middle. If you were to do the middle, it would look like this, right? I'll blurt out. So again, just the edges very lightly. And that's it. All right, so we're going to move on to the little barn scene that I've done my first wash on, and we're going to practice doing more shadows and highlight. First head to brushes, go to sketching and select streaky semi dry gh one. It's a procreate brush, so everyone should have it. Next, we're going to add a new layer. And we're going to add it above the original wash, and we're going to color pick black because I want this to be high contrast. On our new layer, we are going to make left to right streaky motions on the entire roof. This bar needs some TLC, let me tell you. I want the roof to be really dark, but still have texture. Okay, and we're just going to go over the roof a second time to make it just a little bit darker. All right. Now, for some shadows, we're going to do on the front of the barn. We're going to pretend that the roof is overcasting, so we're making up and down streaky motions on the left hand side. And I'm just darkening this again. And a little bit over here in the middle and then towards the right. Now, we're pretending that the sun is coming from behind the barn, so that's why it's so dark. We've completed our shadows on the barn, and we're going to be moving on to the grass. Go to your color picker and select a darker green for the foreground grass. Now, I'm just going to add in some color down at the bottom, and then I'm going to do a flicking motion to make long looking grass. To do this technique, start at the bottom, and while applying pressure, flick the pen upwards. We're going to color pick a light yellow and give the grass some highlights. With the same flicking motion as before, we're going to add yellow to the background of the grass. Now that should give the illusion of some depths to your overgrown grass that totally needs to be mowed. As I said earlier, I want these barn doors to catch the viewer's eye. So with some white, I'm just making a criss cross motion to brighten up the doors. The final touches we'll be putting on the barn will be a loose scalloping. So we are going to be using whoops, you can't even see it. Okay. We are going to be using our colored pencil in white. And we are just going to make some shapes very loosely on the roof of the barn. And also, they're going to get larger as they get towards us. So smaller towards the top and larger towards the bottom. 5. Adding Details : Hey, guys, so you made it to detailing. Now, detailing is one of my favorite parts, and I'm going to tell you why. Detail work is a way to add your stamp to your artwork. It stylizes. It adds creativity, and it's super fun. So without further ado, let's get into it. You made it to details. If you'd like to follow along, you can use class worksheet number three. To start, go to your brushes, choose sketching and colored pencil. We're going to be using this brush in most of our detail work. I love it. It's gritty texture, and it's easy to draw with. For an editorial feel, a limited color palette always helps significantly. First, color pick the sun, we're going to be using this color for all of our wild flowers. When making our wild flowers, we are going to start with small dots. The closer the dots are to you, the bigger they should be. If you'd like, you can draw them in clusters of threes and fours. I think that looks really cute. I'm just going to continue to fill the canvas with little yellow dots all over the goress. Now that our gots are completed, we are going to work in the foreground making some larger flowers. And again, we're still using the colored pencil brush. Okay, get ready for your procreative. Go to your selection tool on the left hand side and select the flower completely. With three fingers swipe down and hit copy. Next, with three fingers, you're going to sit down again and hit paste. Now you're going to drag over your little flower and we're going to size it down just a little bit, and move it over to where we think it looks good. Cute. Now here's the real tip. We're going to duplicate this flower and we're going to move it over. Duplicate again. Move it over. And we're going to keep going. I think we're just going to do one more after this. Once I'm happy with where all my flowers are placed, I'm going to go back into my layers, and with two fingers, I'm going to pinch all those little flowers together, so now they are on one layer. If we zoom out a little bit, you can start to see that the yellow from the sun and the yellow from the flowers are starting to tie together. We're going to complete the detail lesson with this thumbnail. All right. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to zoom in on the church. I thought it would be fun to do some tight scalloping on the roof. So we're going to add a new layer above our color wash. We're going to color pick black. Go to our brushes and get our colored pencil under sketching, and we're going to make it pretty tiny. We're going to zoom in even more, and we're just going to begin. Now, when we scallop, I like to imagine that they're like mermaid scales. It's tight. They're all touching and the lines go in between each other. All right. We're just making our way. We're making sure that the lines are touching, that there are no gaps, like we talked about before. Now, when we get closer to the bottom, I apologize. My sketch is a little sloppy. We're almost there. I'm going to show you. We're going to zoom out really quick. It looks pretty good. We'll Zoom back in. Now I'm going to double trace the bottom just to give it a shadow effect, but that's totally optional. Alright, we're just going to zoom in on that little bell tower, make some squiggly lines. Really easy. That's it. Looks good. If we want to add more details to the church, we can go to our streaky semi dry wash brush again, under sketching. I'm going to color pick the brown on the roof and add a new layer above what we just did. Similar to how we did the barn before, we're going to do the same texture on the wall here. In an up and down motion, using various pressures, whatever looks good, feels good to you. We're just going to color in that wall, just a little bit here and there. Next, we're going to do the opposite wall. Head over to your color picker, get a nice dark brown, reminds you of a cafe latte makes you want to go to Starbucks. F some streaks up and down on the wall just like we did on the other side, and you're all done. The final detail we will be working on in this lesson is the Sirt Road. We are going to start by color picking the road and dragging down to find a darker value. Then we're going to add a new layer. Make sure we're on our streaky semi dry gah brush. In swooping motions, we're starting from the corners. We're going to make curved lines back and forth, and we're going to do it on both sides. And then we're just going to start to fill in some color remembering that it's going to be darkest towards us and lightest away. Finally, I picked up the color black that we're going to add to the curves. We're just going to darken this whole thing up and give it a lot more depth. I wanted it to look like the dirt road was sunken down a little bit. So that's why I'm trying to build up a wall on either side, and then we're coloring it in the middle just to get some texture and some depth. 6. The Finish Line : Hey, guys, you me to the end of the class. Congratulations. So exciting. In this class, we covered four main topics. One, the rule of thirds. Two, we learned color washing or color blocking. Three, we learned adding values, shadows and highlights, and four, the importance of adding details to your work to stylize, put your own stamp on it. I hope you had as much fun in this class as I did making it, and I can't wait to see you guys again. Also, make sure at the end of this class to upload your artwork to the gallery, so I can see it and enjoy it.