Create a Magical Realism Painting

1. Magical Realism Painting introduction: Hello and welcome to my fellow artists. In this class, I will define magical realism in art and show you how to come up with ideas to create your own magical composition. Firstly, what is magical realism? Magical realism in art is like adding a touch of magic to everyday scenes. Making fantastical elements blend seamlessly with the real world. It's art where the extraordinary feels completely normal. It mixes magical things with regular life, making them fit together perfectly. It's not about escaping to a fantasy world, but about adding enchanting bits to everyday scenes. Artists use core pictures and symbols to make you feel amazed and think about magic. In normal life, it's like turning the ordinary into something magical and making you wonder about what's real and what's imagination. Let's look at some examples on Pinterest. Here's where to find them, open Pinterest, and search for magical realism. This first example shows a waterfall made up from ebrithial figures. We can see this artist has used many elements to inspire, including a clock, flowers, and a mix of background landscape. This is an interesting composition, creating a hill town in the form of a woman. This artist has created a waterfall out of the woman's flowing hair. This painting uses every day elements in an unusual setting. Like this, imaginative use of the woman's dress unraveling to become a pathway. This is an iconic image. Replacing the man's head with an apple, a beautiful mystical image of a violin player and a young girl. An interesting nature inspired combination. These are just a few of many magical realism examples. Exploring their mop interest will give you some ideas for your own magical painting. In the next lesson, I'll give you more ideas to put together your unique composition. 2. Magical Realism Class Project: Your class project is to create your own magical realism painting. I've made a video of resources to get your creative juices flowing. After looking at other magical realism examples, choose at least three main inspirational objects and re, imagine them into a magical masterpiece. I've included my magical realism painting if you would like to follow along or use my painting process as a guide for your own picture, you'll find my painting and a sketch in class resources. Share your final creative magical realism painting with the class by uploading to your project section. If you have any questions or more tips, please let me know. I'm happy to help and I look forward to seeing your exciting projects shared with the class. In the next lesson, you'll find many creative resources to excite your imagination. 3. Creative Ideas for your Class Project: Class project is for you to create your own magical realism artwork. Need some inspiration for the class project. Here's some ways you can find ideas for creating magical realism artwork. Pinterest. Explore boards and pins related to magical realism art. For inspiration, free photos, websites, browse platforms like unsplash Pexels or Pixabay for high quality images that might spark creative ideas. Art communities engage with online art communities like Deviant Art or Art Station to discover unique and imaginative artworks. Literature and folklore draw inspiration from magical realism in literature or folklore. Explore stories and myths from different cultures. Nature and fantasy combine elements from nature with fantastical concepts. Think about how magical elements could blend seamlessly with the natural world. Artificial intelligence tools experiment with AI art generators like Al E or similar platforms to generate surreal and magical images. Dreams and imagination reflect on your own dreams and imagination. Consider translating surreal elements from your dreams into visual art, film and animation. Watch movies or animated films with magical realism themes analyze the visuals and storytelling techniques for inspiration. Historical art movements explore art movements like surrealism or symbolism for ideas on blending reality with the fantastical museum visits, visit art museums to experience a wide range of artistic styles and periods. You might find inspiration from traditional art or contemporary exhibits. Remember the key is to let your imagination roam freely and to combine unexpected elements to create a magical and immersive world in your artwork. I hope these ideas have got your creative juices flowing and you're ready to create your own unique artwork. I would love to see your magical realism interpretation and encourage you to upload your finished artwork for everyone to enjoy. In the next class, I'll take you through my painting process, creating the Lady and Swan. 4. About my Painting: Now I'll go through my painting process. Firstly, let's look at the painting. I've named the picture Swan Lake Reimagined. I've used a flying ballet dancer reaching towards an oversized swan as the magical portion of the painting with a realistic backdrop. Notice the flying dancer catches your eye as the focal point. This is because of the saturation, sharper lines, and her placement. In her placement, I've used the rule of thirds. You can see that she is almost on that third line. You don't have to make your picture fit exactly on these lines, but they're quite handy as a guide. You can see the mountains in the back go along one of the lines as well. The swan's head intersects with the line. Two, 100% saturation of colors makes the dancer stand out. And I've included a dash of red in the sash. Using red to draw the eye was often used by famous old time painters. The edges are sharp compared with the blurred and soft outlines of the rest of the painting. The hills are the softest and least saturated, the mid ground. Somewhere in between, I've used leading lines to direct the viewer towards the swan, then used a tiny red beak to tie the two figures together. Bear these points in mind when planning and painting your own magical realism piece. I've provided a sketch and the finished painting for you if you would like to paint along. If you have your own sketch, you can also follow my painting process. The canvas size is 2.300 DPI. This allows for the best print, especially if you downsize the image later. I've used a handful of procreate brushes to make the brush selection easier. 5. Painting the Dancer: Welcome back. I hope you're excited and have some great ideas for your magical realism picture. The next step, bring in your reference picture. I've supplied my finished picture, but this reference picture might be anything that you have in your sketch that you can use to pick colors or just refer to as you paint. Now we're going to color block in the dancer, add a layer, move the sketch above that layer. Now the way I color block is to pick the color, in this case white. And go to freehand. And then carefully trace in, trace around the dress, making sure you've got color fill chosen that automatically fills in your shape. Now this color I've picked isn't quite white enough, so I'm going to double click there and just make it whiter. And that is the dress color picked. Then we'll move on to pick a mid tone in the skin color. We'll do exactly the same but on a new layer. Again, make sure the color fill is ticked, you're on free hand, then carefully trace around there. We have skin tone. At this point, I will go into the eraser and just tidy up the edges and then fill in any gaps I've missed. Now I'll carry on blocking in the rest of the woman. Just a couple of other points before I move on. Make sure the background layer off white or another light color but not white so we can see the white of her dress. Also, make sure the sketch layer is locked. Just swipe to the left and lock it. I don't know how many times I've been drawing and found that I was still on the sketch layer and keep the sketch layer at the top. Now as you block in each color, use a new layer. This makes it much easier to put the shading and highlights in later. Now I'll carry on blocking in the woman. The next step is to click off the sketch layer and then go into each layer with the eraser and just tidy up the edges. There we have the dancer all tidied up. Now I'm going to add in the lights, the shadows, the lights and darks. So we'll go to the dress layer, add a layer and choose clipping mask. That means everything that we paint on this layer will go inside the dress. We're going to choose a shadow color. And we'll go with the soft airbrush. We'll start to put the shadows in, then if you wish to, you can choose the smudge brush, making sure it's on the soft brush as well. Just smudge those shadows and creases a little bit. Now we'll move up to the flesh layer, add a layer, choose clipping mask. We'll choose a darker skin color painting. The direction of the curves go to the smudge brush and blend in the darker shade. We'll just put a smaller line to show the separation of the two legs. Maybe go a little darker again, just blend that in. We'll move up to the arms, you'll see because we have it on clipping mask that you will be able to stay within the parameters of the body Bending a little bit for the arms will go a little bit lighter. Just the light hits the body coming from the top left hand side. Now we'll look at the face, add another layer and make that into a clipping mask. Now we'll just choose the studio pen, quite small. I'm going to choose black just to put in some of the features. White for the inside of the eye, may be a green or choose the rose color to make the lips. Now I'm going to go back to the main body, just correct some of the shape of the face, just make it a bit more defined. Back to the face. I'll just delete those lips. So I'm just going backwards And forwards just to make the shape better. Now I've got a clear view back to the lip player. I think I'll just use this much tool. Just the eyes too much. That's it, we've just tied it up, the face there. Now we'll go to the hair. I just want to bring it around a bit more, make it a better shape around the face. I will choose a lighter shade. Back to the soft brush, we'll just put texture in there, maybe even a little bit lighter. Now we'll go to the hair, add a layer clipping mask. We'll put a little bit of texture in the hair. Let's have a look. Maybe use willow charcoal. We just a little bit lighter. It's too large and we're just going to add some texture in the hair. Doesn't really show up very much, but we know that we've added it may be a lighter gray put on the front of the hair where the light will reach it. We can stay with the charcoal texture and maybe add a layer above the belt clipping mask. Go a little bit darker and just put some shadows just to give a little bit of texture to the belt. We'll do the same with the yellow, add a layer clipping mask, staying with the charcoal. We'll just choose a darker yellow and add some texture. Let's looking at the woman. What else do we need to do? We need to tidy up the shoes of the ballet shoes. We'll go onto that layer, go back to the studio pen, we're going to just tidy up. We'll choose a darker color. We'll choose the soft hair brush and soften the edges back to the main body. Just filling those gaps there. Now is the eraser just going to sharpen the edge a little bit. That's better. We'll go back on to the main dress and again, the eraser, just tidy up a little bit more. I think we'll leave the ballet dancer there for the time being. What we'll do now is we'll go into the layers. Going to choose all the layers of the dancer, not the sketch layer. We go into press group the group. And then I'm going to the group. We have the dancer and we can paint around her and we're not going to lose any of our work. Sometimes it might be worse when you get to this stage to go into your gallery and duplicate the picture to carry on working. Now we'll move on to the next part. 6. Painting the Swan and Building: In this lesson, I'm going to paint the second most important feature. In my case, it's the swan, that you may have a different second feature. Let's start. I'm going to add a new layer on top of the dancer. I'll go into the Select tool freehand and choose Color Fill. The base of the swan is going to be white. I'll double click here for pure white. Then I'll carefully trace the outside of the swan and color fill. Now I'll go round and fill in any gaps, just one there. And delete any lines that have gone over. Now create another layer on top of the swan. And choose clipping mask, the soft airbrush. And we're going to put in the shading, just gently adding in the shading at the bottom. Choose the smudge tool and just blend that in a darker color. Back to the shading. Now we'll put some shading on the wing. You'll notice the pink colors in the shading to add in again, just use the smudge tool to blend the shading. Now we're going to go back to layers. Choose another layer and clipping mask. This time I'm going to just the studio pen and color in the beak and the face. And at this point we'll just click off the sketch and see what needs to be tidied up. We can see that the swan isn't well defined. We need to go back into soft airbrush, a smaller size, just make some adjustments so we can see the shape of the swan more clearly. Just carry on, fine tuning the painting of the swan. And there we have the swan completed. Now before we move on, I'm going to choose the main layer of the swan. Go into the transform tool and gausion blur. I'm just going to blur the edges very slightly. We don't want the swan to be as sharp as the lady because the swan is of secondary importance. Then go back into layers, choose the swan layers and choose group. Group them together and lock the layer. Now we have the dancer and the swan locked in. We can change them at any time. Now we're going to move on to the background and we'll do the building next. We'll switch back on the sketch layer, add a new layer above the swan. We'll begin to painting our building. First of all, as before, we'll go to the transform tool, free hand and color fill. We'll start to fill in the base color. We'll choose the base color from our picture. We'll fill in the base color of the building. Now we'll go into the eraser and tidy this up. Make sure your pen is on studio pen. Now we'll add a new layer, make it into a clipping mask. Choose the soft brush and we'll put in the shading. We'll turn off the sketch layer so we can see which parts need tidying up back into the eras. Let's size. We're going to do a straight line hold. Press our finger so we get completely straight line. And we're going to do the same across the top. Hold it so we get a perfect arch. Just square off the bottom. Now we'll move on and add another layer, but this time we won't make it into a clipping mask. And we're going to paint the flowers at the top. If you go into organic and choose snow gum, that's a really good pen to use for the leaves. We're going to choose several shades. Then put in some really light shades where the reflection of this one would be. Just going to put the size up a little bit to make it a little bit more defined. We merge that layer down. Merge that layer, do, then we're going to lock it, our building stays intact. Then we'll move on to the base, add a new layer, switch the sketch back on. You can see that my painting isn't perfectly in line with the sketch, but that's okay. We're only using the sketch as a guide. Choose a base color, go into the select tool, select the right color selected. And we'll go around and select back into the studio pen to tidy up that base layer. Now we're going to move that base layer below the building, add a layer, the clipping mask. Choose the soft brush and we'll put the shading in. Now, we'll go into the charcoals. Willow charcoal, just to add some texture. We'll just go slightly darker and we'll just add some texture for the shadows. Then we'll go into the smudge tool and just up just blend it in nicely, back into the base layer over there. Okay. We're going to stay in the willow charcoal, make it quite small, choose a darker color just to put in the top of the division there. Let's turn off the sketch, just see if it needs tip a little bit more. Sure, I'm in shading. I think that's it for the base. We'll finish there in the next lesson. Do the background. 7. Painting the Background: Another way you can color block is to go into layers. Click the sketch layer and press reference. Add a layer, choose your color, and simply drag down just a darker color. You have to make sure that your sketch is closed. If not, go back into the sketch layer to unlock it with your studio pen. Just check that it's completely closed. Then try again. There we are. Now I'm going to go back into the sketch layer, lock it again, and take the reference off. Move the stepping stone layer down. Now we're going to add a layer choose clipping mask. Then we'll go back into the charcoals. Willow charcoal and just put some texture shading in. Just changing back to the studio pen to fill this part in here. Back to the willow charcoal, just going to choose slightly darker color. Put some texture in these, with the bottom going to choose a slightly lighter color and put some texture in there. Now we'll switch off the sketch, we'll merge those two layers down, go into the smudge tool and just clean up those white lines there. The only thing with using the reference to color block is that you're often left with white lines from the sketch. That's why I use the selection and fill tool. I think that's just about it for those. Now, we'll carry on with the background switch the sketch layer back on. We'll begin by choosing a medium color for the water into the select tool and select the water layer. We'll just tidy up the edge now we'll place that layer underneath everything else. Now we'll choose a color for the sky. We'll add a new layer. Choose, select, choose a color for the sky. Then we'll put that sky layer underneath. Add another layer. Choose the color for the hills. Add the select tool. Just touch that up a little bit and put that below the sea level. There we have our basic blocking colors. The next thing we're going to do is to color in the sea. We'll go to the sea layer, add a layer clipping mask. We go to elements and choose the brush called oceans. Now we'll choose a darker sea color, have the brush size quite high. Then we'll brush, we'll paint the ocean that ocean creates quite a nice texture. We'll choose a lighter color just beneath the dancer. We'll put some reflected shades, maybe a little bit. Then we'll go into the magic wand. Choose guan below, just slightly blur that we'll look at the mountains. Add a layer, choose clipping mask. Now we're going to find a texture brush the charcoal one again. I think that's pretty much one of my favorites. Maybe we'll try the burnt tree this time. We'll choose a color from the mountains, darker one, and begin to find some shapes. We'll choose another color, a third color. Now before we go any further, we'll go into the transform tool and gaugan blur and blur those colors a little bit. I think I'm going to choose my favorite, the willow charcoal, and just do some more. We'll make another new layer and make that a clipping mask. And just do some more work on these is in the background, make it darker near the bottom and indicate some creases in the mountain. Make them a little bit more three dimensional. I think we'll leave the mountains there. Now let's have a look at the sky, add a layer, make it into a clipping mask. We'll go into elements and choose the cloud brush. Let's go pure white to start with. We'll choose a darker color. Just build up the clouds in a way that you like. Maybe around the swan, we'll make it a little bit darker so the swan stands out a bit more. I think that will do for our clouds. Now let's turn off the sketch layer and have a look. The stepping stones are missing. We must find those. Bring them up. I seem to have mislaid the stepping stones. What I'll do is create a new layer, go back into the gallery, and open up the previous painting that we saved. Duplicate the stepping stones, bring them out back into the gallery, and import them back in. That's one of the reasons it's a good idea to duplicate your painting. Now and then. I don't know why the stepping stones disappeared, but sometimes these things happen in procreate, or it was probably my error and I deleted them. Luckily, I duplicated my painting halfway through, and so I was able to recover them. The next step is to make a reflection of the building. To do that, I'm going to choose the building. Unlock it. Select the building, duplicate it. Select the building and flip vertical. Move the building down. That's pretty much it. Now, I'm going to go into the building layer and reduce the opacity right down. Then I'm going to go into the eraser and just erase. The overlap between the reflection and the building, I think that might be a little bit too low in opacity. I'll just turn that up a bit. Okay, that's about right. Now, we need to move the stepping stones above it. But then we'll go into the transform tool and choose Blur the Reflection. That's about. All right, a little bit more and Apply. The next step is to turn back on the sketch. Now we'll add a new layer. Choose the select free hand and color fill. Choose a color from the floating fabric. Now we need to put that layer underneath the dancer. Now we'll duplicate that layer on the new layer. We're going to reduce the opacity. Let's move these over so we can see what's happening. We're going to switch off the bottom layer. On the second layer, we're going to reduce the opacity to make the fabric more see through. We'll put that lower layer back on, but we'll go in with a soft airbrush and remove some of that layer. Staying on that layer, we'll duplicate it then again about some of the bottom part. Now we'll choose the brighter color. And we'll go back to our soft brush. Just make the fabric look more like fabric. Now we'll group those together. Match them down into one layer again with the soft eye brush. Turn the opacity down. Turn the opacity further down. Then we'll just make it a little bit more transparent. It takes a little bit of figuring about to get the right look here, I think. Now we'll duplicate that layer and we'll put a screen on the top just to make it stand out a little bit more, Maybe the soft light. And turn the opacity down again, on the main layer, we need to turn the opacity down a little bit more. I think that's about it. Let's turn off the sketch layer. Remove our reference picture and we'll have a look. I think it needs a little bit more brightness. Maybe I'm going to do, going to swipe my three fingers and copy canvas. Make a new layer on the top of everything. Swipe my fingers down again. Three fingers and paste. Now we have an additional layer with the whole picture on tap the N, and we're going to have a look if we can improve the picture with a screen. I like the overlay, but it's much too strong. We'll turn the opacity down, I think about 30% That just gives our picture a little more brightness. There we are. That's how I painted my magical realism picture. I'm sure that yours has turned out really well and I would love to see it. Now. We'll move on to the wrap up. 8. Magical Realism wrap up: As we conclude our exploration of magical realism in art, I encourage you to continue infusing your creative endeavors with the captivating essence of magic. Remember, magical realism is not merely an escape to fantasy, but a transformative journey where the extraordinary seamlessly integrates into the tapestry of reality. In this class, we've delved into the art of making fantastical elements feel at home in the every day. Creating compositions that spark wonder and contemplation. As you embark on your own artistic ventures, use the tools of symbolism and captivating visuals to captivate your audience. Inviting them to question the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. May your artistic path be paved with moments of enchantment? As you skillfully turn the ordinary into something magical, keep exploring, keep experimenting, and let the realms of imagination unfold on your canvas. Thank you for being part of this magical journey. May your creations continue to inspire and amaze. Remember to upload your finished project for everyone to enjoy and get inspired by. To be notified of new classes, please tap the follow button. To know more about me, visit my websiteclorstory.com for procreate shorts. Check out my Youtube channel, Color Story. Thank you for taking my class and I'll see you next time.