Create a Poster Illustration in Procreate: Keys to Composition

1. Intro : [MUSIC] Hi. My name is Yirandava. I'm a freelance illustrator and designer. Through my creative journey, starting as an award-winning product designer, I always use illustration as a medium to visualize my ideas. I had a strong patience for online teaching and creating digital illustrations over the last few years. I love the freedom it brings. I will describe my style as geometrical, colorful, and patterned. I'm a big fan of nature and you can always spot animal or plant illustrations in my drawings, and today is no exception. While the main focus of this class is the composition in illustration, the product of this class is to create a separate team poster illustration inspired by nature. The first part of this class will be training our eyes for composition and that will help us understand basic layouts, things to do or no-nos, and that will be the key to your success in creating powerful compositions. Then we will practice with creating quick thumbnails with four different main composition layouts: golden ratio, golden triangle, the rule of thirds, and triangle composition. We will practice drawing animals, plants, objects, and fashionable characters, and most importantly, we will learn how to combine all of them powerfully in our illustrations. We will work with the top layers of the rule of chart, the triangle, foreground, middle ground and background, as well as implied lines and symmetry. I will supply with many elements and you will explore the different compositions you can achieve by using the same elements each time. Color choice also has a big role in a strong composition. I will share my tips and tricks on colors to avoid common mistakes and create even stronger compositions in your artwork. Finally, I will share basics on how to prepare your artwork for print. In this class, I will be using Procreate app on iPad, but feel free to use any kind of drawing app. If you're eager to upgrade your compositions in your illustrations, then this class is definitely for you. Join me in this class and enjoy the process of coming up with different unique creative compositions by using the same elements each time. I encourage you to go out of your comfort zone and see how creative you can get. 2. Class Journey: I'm so happy that you have decided to take this class. This class has two main parts. The first part is all about preparation for your class project. With fun exercises, we will train our eyes to create well balanced compositions. Finding invisible shapes, layouts, guidelines in artworks will help us to warm-up. Then with a limited number of basic elements, we will practice creating quick composition thumbnails for four different composition layouts. The Golden Ratio, the rule of thirds, the Golden Triangle, and triangle composition. After that, you will reach four different drawing lessons. This part is optional because I also prepare cheat sheets with illustrated elements for your class project. But I encourage you to take these lessons to improve your skills in drawing plants, animals, objects, and characters. Then it comes to second part, your class project. For your class project, I want you to create separating poster illustrations. We will practice with creating five different creative compositions. I prepare cheat sheets including illustrations of animals, plants, objects, and characters to help you while creating your compositions. I also prefer some composition guidelines for you to use. We are going to brainstorm, have to combine all these illustrated elements in different compositional layouts. Like working at a collage artwork, we spend some time here to create well balanced compositions. We will dive into all the tips and tricks to master the five main composition guidelines that have been used for years by many artists. After you have five different creative compositions, you will pick one that you are the happiest with and finalize it by coloring. We will practice how to shine each composition. We will work on all these little changes that bring them to success. You can find all of these mini exercises, cheat sheets, and composition tablets in the resources section below. Let's dive into our warm-up exercises. We start with training our eyes for better compositions through artworks. 3. Practice with Photos: The first thing to do to improve your composition skills is to train your eyes for it. The best way to do that is to observe. The more you have a look at the great artwork, the better you will practice composition in your own illustrations. There are many composition guidelines used by artists, photographers or directors, and it can be very helpful to look at their work and try to understand how they apply these guidelines to their artwork and that's exactly what we're going to do in this lesson. I prepare a fire full of artworks and photographs for you and another sheet with the basic composition guidelines on it. You can download all and practice finding all the hidden composition guides such as triangles, circles, golden ratios, leading lines, and so on. There are two practice sheets. One we are going to practice together and another one for you to practice even more. Okay, Let's have a look at some of the examples of different compositions. I want you to download the exercise file that I prepared for you and bring them into your canvas, then create a new layer on top of them. Pick a bright color and you can choose any brush. Now try to find composition guides or guiding lines in these photos and draw them in this new layer. There are different types of composition guidelines, and I think the best nodes are the rule of thirds, the golden triangle and golden ratio. These are the first things to search for. A second is leading lines. They can be curved, diagonal, horizontal or vertical. These are the lines that are leading to the one element in the artwork and the viewer's eye are drawn along them. It's time to practice finding all these hidden guidelines or guided lines. I have a few illustration from Cecil Gariepy. This is the first one. In this artwork, you can see that there's a hidden spiral guideline and all these characters position very well along this spiral. This creates a great flow for the viewer. On the other hand, the color is all balanced, dark greens in these two, and the light greens in the other two, and oranges in-between, there isn't a central point in this composition. Another example from the same Illustrator. In this image, the first thing that comes to my mind is some sort of symmetry, but there's more to it. You can see the diagonal lines in here and two more over here creates a perfect golden triangle. Takes to the golden triangle and symmetry, the composition is well-balanced. In this example, I want to talk about coloring composition. Blue and orange are the most dominant colors in this piece and they are complementary colors. If we divide the piece in two, you can see that all the blue tones on one side and oranges on the other side. Composition is divided in two by using colors and it creates a great balance. Here's the last example from the same illustrator. This one is a more complicated scene. There is no central focus on this artwork. All the characters and other elements are in harmony all over the canvas. This is the same for the colors. Besides that, blue creates a great negative space among all the elements. It creates a very balanced composition overall. Let's move to the another artist's work. Here's the artwork from Lisa Congdon. This is a very common compositional style among illustrators and in this work, you can see that all the elements are all over the canvas. Negative space in-between the elements has to have a better composition and you can see that different sizes in elements add a little more excitement to the piece. Plus same colors are used in different elements to add the harmony of the piece. Another example from the same artist. If you use the rule of thirds, we can see that the head and the pan are positioned on the line perfectly. However, the composition guide the artist used more dominantly here is the golden ratio. Elements perfectly lie in the golden ratio spiral. It flows nicely with leading lines. Remember, leading lines are basically where your eyes look and what kind of direction the image guides you in. Like face turns to the plate and then you will look at the tomatoes and reach to the pan. Our last example here, we can see that the image is split into the tiger and the checks, it follows the rule of thirds. You can see the head of the tiger is on the cross-section of the rule of thirds and the body lies on the first chart perfectly than this on the other side, creates a great negative space. That's a great space for the slogan. Overall, it creates a well-balanced composition. We went over many examples and try to understand how the artists use composition rules, leading lines, negative space, colors, and more. Now it's your turn. I want you to download practice sheets I prepare for you, and train your eye by finding hidden composition guys in the artwork examples. Join me in the next lesson where we are going to be practicing creating our composition thumbnails using composition guidelines 4. Practice with Composition Guidelines: [MUSIC] Since we've practiced retraining our eyes for composition guides, now we can pass to the stage where we are going to create our composition thumbnails. These exercises are so important for helping you learn how to nail the composition in your drawings. For this lesson, I created four exercise sheets for you to practice. You will find exercise sheets of golden triangle, golden ratio, the rule of thirds, and triangle composition. I also created a cheat sheet of simple content ideas to help you to focus on composition while your practice. In each exercise comes with three thumbnails for you to work with. You can download them all in the cluster resources section below. Let's start. I create a square Canvas with 300 DPI. Then I bring my practice sheets to my Canvas. I go to settings and insert a photo. Composition is mostly playing with contents, shapes, size, negative space, and color. All your elements should work together and balance. The basic composition guides will help you a lot at this point. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to use them to improve our compositions. This is what we are going to do. We are going to create a scene by simply playing with the elements I gave you. Our main focus will be the arrangement of the elements in our Canvas. In elementary sheets, there is enough content for your scene. We are going to exercise with pretty easy content like a sun, a house, a tree, a plant, a person, and so on. You can pick a few elements and try to combine them in your thumbnail sheets. You don't need anything fancy or super detailed at this practice. Very rough sketches are enough, so don't worry about very clean lines or anything like that. I would like to start with the rule of thirds. Just play with the sizes of your elements and practice positioning your content in balance. We're going to use our guidelines by doing this. Your key elements should fall along the lines or at the intersections of them. In this way, you can achieve a more pleasing arrangement and you make it more engaging to the eye. Outline your composition and try not to overthink. Quantity is way more important than quality at this point. I'm going to draw a little scene of a girl watching the sunset in the city. I will draw a little boat on the sea, houses on the back, a sun, and a girl. It's pretty simple scene. Often illustrators pick one of the horizontal lines as a horizon line. The lower line is usually picked as the one because it's easier to do eye. Since the idea of the rule of thirds places the focus elements along these lines or intersects, I positioned the boat along the vertical line. Then I keep the little houses mainly in the second third. Then I position the sun at the intersection point. Now I draw my character. I want to create a new layer to work with. It's going to be a foreground character. I just use simple geometric shapes, nothing fancy here. I want my character to take place mostly in the left third, and I play with the size a bit. You don't need to squeeze the whole body in the scene, so don't be afraid to go over the lines. This trick might have a lot with composition. I also position my character's eye at the intersection point to attract the viewer's eye. Just some cleaning up and adding up some details. As you see, we just created a very quick, simple but nice composition. You see here there is a tangent, per shoulders and horizon line touch each other. For a better composition, it's also important to avoid these tangents. I just quickly rearrange that part a little bit. All done. For the next example, let's draw a character hiking in the nature. I'm going to start with drawing my character. Since my character is the main focus of the piece, I position him along the vertical line of the rule of thirds and place his head at the intersection of these two lines. I want to add some background and foreground elements. I might have some hills. I will draw them in the lower chart. Maybe I can add some houses and trees far off in the distance. Each element group is set on some of the panels of the roll-off charts. I tried to add different elements to create a more interesting composition. Why we are doing that, placement is one of the most obvious ways that we can use the rule of thirds. Just keep most of the points of interest along with the converging points of these lines, and then place the other things on these panels of the rule of thirds. For the next example, besides the rule of thirds, I want to add a diagonal line as well, just to play a little bit more. I might draw a diagonal horizon with a sunset. Again, keeping one of my elements in the right chart, and my character at the intersect. Maybe a foreground element along with one of the lines. The rule of thirds also works with vertical Canvas. Just nine equal rectangles make the work. Just divide your composition into thirds. For example here, I keep the first third for the city view. The second one for the character, and the third one for the character's dream and of course focus elements along the green lines. The next composition guideline is the golden ratio. My exercise sheet is on my Canvas. Now it's time to practice creating quick sketches with golden ratio guidelines. For the first example, let's draw a bird. I draw my birds along my spiral and try to position the head of the bird at the center of the spiral. This one is a bit tricky to practice, but no worries, just try, and with practice, you will get better each time. Since my focus element is done, I just draw some plants to enrich my composition. All done. For the next exercise, I will draw a girl reading a book in her room. The middle of the spiral is the focal point of the composition. I start drawing her head in here. Then her arm movement follows the golden spiral. Then I might position her book at the end of the spiral. As you see, my character positions along the golden spiral line very well. Now I can add some background elements. All done. For the last exercise, I will try to draw a landscape scene by using the golden ratio as my guide. This time, I want you to focus on the rectangles instead of the spiral. It can be a lot easier to practice the golden ratio in this way. I might draw a house behind the hill at the big right square and maybe another house just crossing with the spiral and a character along the spiral. Then just draw a background, might be some mountains above on the sea. It's up to your imagination. I also want to add a little bird in the middle of the spiral. It's the perfect place since the eye follows along the spiral. All done. Let's move to our last composition type, which is triangle composition. Triangle composition is a very powerful composition. It can add a sense of visual unity. Let's start with having one strong character in our drawing. I use this triangle guide to frame my character. Then we can have our elements around like all these flowers. Also, you can use these flowers as leading guys up to your main character's focus point. Just playing with their forms of it makes the work. Just like that, we have created a great composition. For the next one, I want to add more elements to my composition. Maybe a house, a few characters, and some tree. Let's see. I imagine two friends enjoys their spare time on their rooftop. I start with the house. I position the house inside of my triangle and leave some space for my characters. I can draw a few background elements outside of my triangle like houses or some trees. Let's draw these friends. I position them back to back. In this way, they fit my triangle composition in a better way, creates a very strong image. You can see that the thick lines attract the eye to the characters. I think it's a very powerful composition. Last example, I want to draw a yoga girl in her element. Maybe a little rock that intersects with this invisible triangle and just some other elements around to create a stronger composition. All done. Let's move to our last composition type, which is the golden triangle. This rule is somewhat like the rule of thirds. Just your Canvas divided a little different. I plan to draw a foreground character. With golden triangle, I suggest you fill one of the triangles with your main subject. My character is my main subject, so I draw her mainly in this triangle. I also try to align my character's form with golden triangle lines. I'd like to arm my lines with this line and the flower aligns with the other line. I think it's also a good idea to draw my horizon line along this diagonal line, maybe a house and some trees in the far. I keep them in this triangle. I might also add another character like a dog and position her at this line. Again, it's a simple but nice composition. For my next example, I want to draw two friends sitting in a Cafe and talking. Again, I want one of the characters to be a little bit more dominant. I fill one of the biggest triangles with my character's body. Since the intersection points are the ideal place to position my subject, I try to position her head at this intersection. I use the same tactic for the second character, using the second triangle as my guide. My main subjects are all done. Now, I can just throw some elements for the background to enrich the composition. All done. Just another quick example, I imagine a farmer in his garden. I use the golden triangle lines to guide me to draw his house and his tree. I position my character as one of the small triangles. You can see here that the house and the tree are more dominant than the character since I drew them in the biggest triangles. We practiced with four different composition guides and I think when you master these four, you will come a long way in the composition. Now it's your turn. Use my elements cheat sheet and composition guides cheat sheets and create different composition. Be quick and sketch roughly. Play with sizes and positions while using composition guides. Now that you have exercise with basic composition guidelines, let's jump into the next class, where we are going to learn some extra tips in composition before jumping into our main project. [MUSIC] 5. Composition Tips: [MUSIC] Now, I will talk about some tips for better compositions and also some common composition killers. The first step for your composition is to think about your story. What are the elements that you want to use in your story and which ones are more important for your story? That will help you to figure out your elements, position, size, color, and more. I draw a very simple small scene with a cat, a plant, and a little bird. This drawing is nice but not telling so much of a story. Let's change it a little. For my second thumbnail, I use the same elements, but with some differences. This time the cat is behind the plant and the bird is looking at the cat. It's a small difference, but we can feel that there's a little story here. Maybe the cat is scared of something that we don't see, and the bird is trying to understand why the cat is hiding. Or in my third scene, the cat is trying to catch the bird, but in that moment, a sound distracts him, and the bird is lucky enough to escape. As you see, moving the elements around and changing [inaudible] can change your story completely. Using strong lines built into elements of the artwork, can move the eye to the point you want. Even the impression of a line is effective and our eyes will follow it. Let's try a simple example. I want the cat to be the main subject. Imagine a table from the top view. Maybe my cat inside of a drawing. I draw a hand, the pencils, maybe some flowers. I also add more elements to create a balance. Can you see all points leading to my main subject? This helps my main subject to pop even more. Sometimes there are so many things going on in the composition and it can be overwhelming and unpleasant for the eye. You need to create negative space for your eyes to rest. This will also have to make the important areas pop. Here, another example of the use of negative space. It's good to live negative space in your artwork, in the direction that your subject is looking. It will create a directional flow and a pathway for the eyes to follow. You can just draw guidelines for your negative space beforehand and use all your elements to create this hidden negative space for you. Drawing all these plants can help you to shape your directional flow. Converging lines are when two lines interact in an unpleasant way. To put it another way, they are touching but not overlapping. Like this plant and with this shelf or the cat with the door, or you can also think about the objects next to each other in the same order because this will create a boring scene. In that case, you can easily shift one of the lines or shapes or push back one of the elements. This will help you to create a more dynamic and interesting scene. A few changes and my scene looks so much better. Thinking about how the image will look as a silhouette, can help you allow to check your composition because it shows the main form in your artwork. If you are fine in black and white, then you're probably good to go in colors. What you need to do is creating a new layer, coloring it in black, and then tap on that layer and choose color option. Voila, your artwork is on black and white. Now, you can check the harmony and make necessary changes. The most important suggestion is the last one. Rules such as golden ratio or the rule of charts can be helpful to create a strong composition. But it's really important to see them as suggestions. If they become restrictive, forget about the rules and play around. Work on unstructured sketches and focus on the farm part. We learn all the basics about composition with so many tips and tricks and practice with a bunch of exercises. Now, it's time to get ready for our main project. Join me in the next lesson, where we are going to exercise sketching some elements to use in our composition. Get rid of the sketch, plants, animals, objects, and some facial items. [MUSIC] 6. Drawing Plants: In this lesson series, we are going to draw our elements for the class project. The theme of our composition is safari, so we are going to practice drawing plants, animals, some safari items, and characters with safari fashion. The following four sketching lessons are optional. With these lessons, you can practice creating your elements for the class project, or you can skip these lessons and use the elements from the cheat sheets I prepared for you. We will start with sketching plants. I have a few reference images here from different plants and trees and you can download all these reference images from the Pinterest folder I prepared for you. The link is in the Project and Resources section. Just click the link and download it all and start to practice with me. I choose two reference images from my practice sheet. I have one tree and one flower. For our practice, I only have one reference from each species. But I suggest you gather multiple reference images. For example, if you want to draw a Joshua tree, check multiple reference images from the Joshua tree. In this way, you better understand your subject and be able to create your sketch. Let's start with this cute tree. I want you to lower the opacity of your reference layer and create a new layer on top. First, I want you to understand your tree specific form. Start with retracing over your reference image, like drawing the main outlines and try to simplify it as well. For example, here, all the branches look complicated. But don't worry, you don't need to draw all the branches or every flower. Just focus on a few measures. You can ignore some and maybe add some more from your imagination in different places. For the flowers, first practice drawing some next to your main drawing. Try to examine different petal forms like how they look from the front or the side or the back. I think it's important to understand its unique forum before diving into interoperation. Then you can lower the opacity of your first sketch layer, create a new layer on top and down, work on your interoperation of it. I want to try diagonal forms instead of rounded lines. Don't worry about this specific details, in the end, you don't need to carry every detail to your illustration. I like focusing on a few or maybe just one detail that catches my eye. These are the three different types of flowers I want to use in this tree. Now, you can just work on the composition of the flowers. Start with drawing a few from one type without overthinking. Add some from the second type as well. To save some time, I select all and tap Copy. I continue to copy some and draw some more. Don't forget to add your tat flower type as well. One more trick here is to overlap some of your flowers. That can help you with your composition a lot. I think I'm done with the flowers. I want to add a few branches among them. I want to turn off my reference layer and see how it looks. I feel I can add some more flowers. Just add flowers until it feels like a nice composition. That looks good. Let's go back to the tree trunk now. I want you to reflect on your own style here. Redraw the trunk in a new layer, but this time, go with your own lines. I want to go with sharper lines. Now, I want to add a few more details, like the tree hole here and of course the pattern of the tree trunk. I think my sketch is complete, let's move into this plant. The plant looks complicated at first glance, but I'm not going to draw all the leaves and flowers. Simplifying is your key here. Start with drawing a few ellipse for the flowers. Don't go into details, we will come to that later. As you see, I don't draw all of them. Don't be afraid to create your unique composition, maybe you can change the places of some of them. For the leaves, I try to simplify shapes but keep things recognizable. Try to catch general form of the leaves and create your own composition. Forget about this complex arrangement of leaves in this reference and try to create your composition. Do multiple sketches if you need to. Play with the places of the leaves or flowers until you are happy with it. Don't forget there is no right or wrong in this drawing, it's all your interpretation. Now, I'm turning the opacity of my reference layer back up to 100 percent and I'm bringing it to the corner. I want to work on the details of the flower separately, so I turn off my sketch layer and run back to my blank canvas. Now you can work on your flowers. I'm just thinking about, how can I simplify these details? I try some options right next to my sketch, maybe some little ellipse forms or some triangles. Don't forget, you don't have to be super realistic. Just play around to make it your own while catching the main features from this plant. Let's try another one. Just practice until you are happy with your sketch. I have four different options. I think I want to go with the third one, so I copy it. Now, I bring back my sketch and apply these flowers to my plant. I want to clean unnecessary lines. It looks good. Add these extra details to make your plant drawing a bit more interesting, like these thorns on the edges of the leaves. Here's my final sketch. We just sketch one tree and one plant. To use these sketches in your class project, I suggest you to download them as PNG files with a transparent background. Now it's your turn. I want you to download the reference photos from the Pinterest folder I prepared for you. Practice as much as you can with different types of plants and trees. Focus on simplifying and trying to capture the main characteristics of your plant and interpret them in your own style. Don't worry about producing a perfect drawing when you're starting, just throw many different plants to develop confidence. Join me in the next lesson where we are going to be practicing drawing animals for our composition. 7. Drawing Animals: [MUSIC] Let's practice drawing animals for your illustration. Don't forget these four sketching lessons are optional. You can skip these sketching lessons group and use my sketchy sheets for the class project. It might be your first time drawing animals or you might be trying to figure out how to draw animals in your style. Either way, you need to practice and experiment. Studies about finding the lines and metals that express what you see. This is what we are going to practice in this lesson. The process is first to simplify your subject and then characterize it. Let's get into it. I have a few reference images from different animals here. You can download all these reference images from the Pinterest folder I prepared for you. The link is in the project and resources section. Click the link, download all, and start to practice with me. We only have one reference from each animal here but I suggest you work with more than one reference image for each animal to get the right sense in terms of characteristics, colors, and more. Let us start with this monkey. Let's lower the opacity of the reference layer and create a new layer on top. First, I want you to break it down into simple shapes that will help you to understand the basic structure of the animal. I draw a circle for the head and a semi-oval for the body. I draw circles for the joints and some lines for the arms and legs. I will also try to identify the individual characteristics that make each species unique. For example, a unique shape to their face or a pattern on their body are some of the things to pay attention to. As you see here, the face is very new. I see three circles and the fewer on the cheeks is very distinctive, so I would like to express that as well. All done. I'll just bring it to the right. Since we have the main structure, we can start inserting our creative style into it. I create a new layer and lower the opacity of my sketch, and I want to keep my reference image on the side. I turn the opacity back up to 100 percent. Let us start experimenting. I'm very much into sharp lines and a simple look. I like using lots of triangles in my drawings. I kept this in my mind for my first try. I tried to simplify as much as possible. For example, you don't need to draw all the sections of its arms or legs. We also don't need to keep every detail. If you're having trouble drawing a part, you can use some tricks. For example, instead of drawing this right arm in the behind, I can draw some leaves to cover that part. Don't forget, it's your own game. You can always cheat. That's a style. Let's try another one. I bring back my first sketch and I'm going to use it as my reference again. I create a new layer for my new sketch. This time, I would like to experiment with curvy and smooth lines, and I will try to insert different details such as feet, hands or fur. Let's play with the fur. We can exaggerate the fur on sub-parts like on the cheeks. You can illustrate fur in many different ways, just experiment and try to figure out which styles work out best for you. Another one is done. Let's try one more time. Every time I try something different. Maybe I go with sharper lines or maybe this time I draw hands and feet but with fewer details. I might try a different texture for the fur or I can exaggerate the size in some parts. Opportunities are endless and it's up to your imagination. I have three monkeys all in different styles. As you can see, I draw the faces with minimum details. If you want to go with more details, I suggest you practice the face separately. In this way, it will be less intimidating. Let's try to draw some faces. For this monkey, I see three circles on his face, so I'm going to play with this. You can use just one dot for the eyes or you can go with more details. You can even add eyelashes or eyebrows. Try to figure all these details to make it yours. After drawing more detailed faces, you can apply your favorite to your sketch. All here. Now, I want you to choose one of your monkey sketches. I'm going to choose this one. I want you to apply this drawing approach and style in your other animal sketches. If you want with sharp lines, go with sharp lines in others too. This will help you to have a common language between all of your animal drawings. Let's try another animal. I continue with this Tiger. This time I skip the first part where I draw the skeleton. Instead, I work directly on my reference image to find out the form of my animal. It's faster in this way. But you can always go with the first method and start by drawing the skeleton. I'm going to trace it as simply as possible. The trick here is to apply your lifestyle, the style you choose, and the monkey sketch. For me, it's sharp and geometrical, like a circle for the head is something that I can emulate in my other animal sketches too or the characteristics such as fur. How you draw the fur can be very distinctive and create a common language in your animal society. If your animal has a specific pattern, try to figure out how to illustrate that pattern in the best way. I suggest you to practice a few before you decide on your final drawing, especially the pattern on the face can be tricky, so don't forget, you can always practice the face separate from the body. It looks good. Let's try another one. I have a mother and a daughter Cola here. There is no need to be intimidated by drawing two animals together. The key is the same. Try to simplify what you see. Focus on the forum and major characteristics. For example, the nose here is very distinctive, so I make sure that I got that part right. I copied it on my very first call a family sketch. Let's continue with another animal. Here's a bird. When you draw birds, wings and all the feathers can be tricky. But don't worry, even the most complex forms can be broken down into simple shapes. Focus on the forum. Don't get caught up in the details. For example, first, draw the basic shape of the wing, and then draw the feathers. You don't need to draw every feather. Instead, try adding a small group of lines. It looks good. Let's try another one. Here's the last one, a leopard, I start with sketching basic shapes as always. The pattern of the leopard is a star here, I suggest focusing on how to illustrate the pattern in your own style. You can create a box on the side and practice drawing the pattern before drawing on your leopard sketch. We exercise drawing a few animals. Now, I want you to bring all the animals you sketch to your colors and see if they speak the same language or do you want to make a few changes before you go further. As you can see, they all look like a part of a big family with a similar drawing style. It might be hard to get to that point at first but seeing them all together will help you a lot to make the necessary changes. To use these sketches in your class project, I suggest you to download them as PNG files with a transparent background. Now it's your turn. I want you to download the reference photos and start practicing developing your style when it comes to drawing animals, look at the animal structures, movements, and characteristics such as fewer or a specific pattern and make them your own. Join me in the next lesson where we are going to be practicing drawing some objects from the separate team for our class project. [MUSIC] 8. Drawing Objects: We sketch plants, and animals. Now it's time to draw something different. We are going to draw things you can see on a safari trip, like a typical safari car, a local house, a water canteen, or a binoculars. These are just a few examples. There are so many things in this group that you can practice drawing. I have collected a few reference images for this lesson. You can download all these reference images from the Pinterest folder I prepare for you. The link is in the project, and resources section. Let's start with this car. First, lower the opacity of your reference layer, and create a new layer on top. As you see this car is pretty much symmetrical. Opening a drawing guide can help you with this drawing. To activate your drawing guide while you are in your sketch layer go "Settings", and toggle on the "Drawing guide". Down top on the edit drawing Guide option and choose symmetry. In the Guide options, you can choose vertical or horizontal symmetry. I choose vertical. I reorient my reference according to my drawing guide. I want it to be centered. When the drawing guide option is on, anything you drawing on one side of your Canvas will be mirrored in the other side. Before you start, don't forget to check if you are on the assisted layer. Now we can start sketching. I start with the window, as you see my lines mirrored across my car walls. I outline my reference photo, I go for sharp and straight lines. But this is a personal choice. If you want rounded or relaxed lines, just go for it. I don't go for all the details. I choose the one that I think it's worth to add to my drawing, like this lamps. I like perfect circles. For that, I draw a circle and hold my pencil on my car walls. Then on the top in the notification bar, I tap on "Edit Shape" and select the "Circle option". Pretty much done here. I think the wheels look too long, so I choose the select tool and freeform option. I think it's much better now. You don't need to stick with everything in your reference photo. It's your drawing, so change it if something looks off to you, and you can always go for more details. Let's look at the other reference photos. As you can see, you can use the symmetry drawing assist on this binocular and these cute little house. Drawing this binocular can be intimidating since there are so many things going on. What I'm thinking here is to simplify it as much as I can. The photo has also a little perspective. You can ignore this and try to draw it two-dimensional. Start with the biggest parts and then go with smaller parts. You don't need to draw everything, draw the general outline with your lines is pretty much enough, and keep going until it feels right. Just enjoy the process and try different options, and keep trying until you are happy with your outcome. Let us try to illustrate this binocular. Lower opacity of the reference layer and create a new layer on top, and tap on that layer and from the options, tap on "Drawing Assist". Let's turn off the reference photo to see our sketch. I think it looks good, and don't forget you can always turn off the symmetry guide. Just tap on the "Assisted layer" and turn off the drawing guide. You can keep going with unsymmetrical lines in your drawing. We just sketched two safari objects. To use these sketches in your class project, I suggest you to download them as PNG files with a transparent background. Now it's your turn. I want you to download the reference photos from the Pinterest folder I prepare for you, and practice as much as you can be different objects. This practice is a good chance to draw different objects, focus on simplifying, and try to capture the main characteristics, and don't forget to get help from assisted drawing options. Join me in the next lesson where we are going to create eye-catching safari fashion looks for our characters. 9. Drawing Characters with Fashion: [MUSIC] It's going to be hard to draw an outfit from just imagination alone. Therefore, I collected a few reference images related to Safari Fashion. You can download all these reference images from the Pinterest folder I prepare for you. The link is in the project and resources section. Each reference image has a different detail that catches my eye. For example, I like the head here, the boots, and the bandana here. I pretty much like this top in here. I also have a few references for character poses. I pretty much like this side view with the binoculars. I would like to go with this figure, so I copy this image to use it as a reference for my character's pose. Now, I want you to lower the opacity of your reference layer and try to catch the post in a new layer. I use basic geometric shapes and lines to define the position of my character. I draw a triangle for the body, some circles and lines for the arms, and some more triangles for the legs. Since our post is ready now, we can get into the most fun part, imagining the clothes. I like this head very much, so in a new layer I draw it in my own style. Now, I use the select tool and bring it on top of my character and then I sketch the hair and the face. Okay, I like the shirt and the bag together here, so I want this combination for my character's outfit, but I want to change some parts and add more details. First, I want to practice sketching the clothes on top of the reference image. In this way, it will be easier to apply it to the character. Okay. Now, I follow the main structure by applying the outfit to my character. Okay, pretty much done with the jacket, so let's continue. I think these boots with socks fit my character perfectly, so I apply them to my character and I imagine very comfy pants. Before going into refining my sketch, I look at my drawing one more time and make a few changes and maybe add more details. Okay, I think the pocket are here pretty cool, so I want to add this to her jacket. These details on the arms are also pretty cool. I'm thinking about how I can apply this to my character's outfit. We can see the pocket on the side, and this detail on the arm makes the outfit more interesting. Maybe she also has a photo machine. Okay, I think I'm pretty much done here. This sketch is pretty clean, but if you sketch roughly, you can lower the opacity of your rough sketch layer, create a new layer on top and refine your sketch. To use these sketches in your class project, I suggest you to download them as PNG files with a transparent background. Okay. Now, it's your turn. I want you to download the reference photos from the Pinterest folder I prepared for you and start practicing drawing characters with different Safari team outfits. You can find the link in the project and resources section. I suggest you sketch different character poses, try different outfits every time you draw a new character. Try sketching shorts or skirts, maybe add a backpack or a water container. Okay, we completed all these exercises and learned a lot of tips and tricks on composition. Now, it's time to put everything together and create well-balanced, eye-catching compositions. Join me in the following video, where I'm going to be explaining our class project in detail. 10. Class Project: [MUSIC] It's time for your class project. For your class project, I want you to create a safari team poster illustration combining animals, plants, some objects, and fashionable characters. We will create our creative compositions using techniques ranging from the basic composition topics to collage. To begin, I created two composition top plates consisting of the rule of thirds and triangle composition. We will combine these top plates with implied lines, symmetry and more. I also created four different cheat sheets as your composition materials. In these cheat sheets you will find sketches of plants, animals, objects, and character special items. You can download them all at the project and resources section under the name class project material. All these materials will help you to get an easy start and focus on composition instead. You can either use your own sketches from the earlier sketching lessons or download the sketch elements from the cheat sheets and directly jump into the composition play. They're all in PNG format, so easy to play with. We will use two different coma sizes in our illustrations; one square and one rectangle comas, both are in a perfect size if you want to hang your illustration on your wall or give it to a friend as a gift. Basically, just like a collage work, you will combine all these sketch materials to create a creative composition. Through the following lessons, I will help you with tips and tricks to create five different types of illustrations then I want you to pick one of your sketches and move on to the coloring phase to finalize your illustration. I choose a safari team with white animals, plants, and safari facial look characters but you can easily go in another direction, such as choosing ocean animals and plants with marine outfit characters. I'll join you with safari team in your first project and the [inaudible] team can be your second project. Don't forget, it's all about your imagination. Join me in the following video where we are going to create our first illustration and our first creative composition is a basic but powerful three element composition. [MUSIC] 11. Three Elements: We practice with many exercises and draw our elements for our illustration. Now it's time to experiment with different composition styles. At our first attempt, we will create a simple but powerful composition. It will be a tree elements very focused illustration. I want you to create 300 millimeters to 300 millimeters and 300 DPI canvas. We will create a little board for one of our favorite elements. The illustration will cause us all well-focused element and two or three more element to combine with. Your focus element might be an animal, a plant, a character, or an object. That's really up to you. You already have many sketches from each category, so our task now is to create many collisions using our drawings. It will be a lot of fun. You can either use the elements from the cheat sheets I prepare for you or from your sketches in the previous lessons. I will go with cheat sheets. Let's start. I want my main character to be an animal, so I bring my animal cheat sheet to my canvas. It's here. I like this leopard and I want this one to be my focus element for my illustration. I choose my selection tool with freehand option and three fingers on the canvas and I select "Duplicate." Just like that, I copied my leopard in a new layer. Now I need to decide the word I want to create for this leopard. For example, I need to decide on all the elements I want to combine in the sketch. I imagined my leopard in her little jungle. I will play with combining my leopard with a few plants from my plant cheat sheet. I bring my plant cheat sheet to my canvas. I think I want to add this one somewhere. Maybe this one true. I duplicate this in a new layer. Now I want you to try different composition options. Imagine like you're creating mini collages. I resize all my elements to create a bigger space to work with it. Now it's time to play. Maybe this plant can go over here. It can be a good idea to use one element in your drawing more than once. I want to copy more of this one. Maybe I can place this one over here. I just play around. Perhaps this one can be in the back and the other one can be in the front. With that in my mind, I clean unnecessary lines. I imagine this plant as a big plant, so I copy more of this element. I play with its size and place. I think the tree's top on which the leopard stands is a little small, so I plan to extend it. I think it looks better. If you see, you can change all these elements as you wish. I think this can be one of my options. Now, I just need to clean overlapping lines to see my sketch. I think it looks great as my first warm-up composition. I only use one animal and one plant and still came up with a powerful composition. Basically you need to decide all the elements you will add to your illustration, play with their sizes and decide if they will be in the background or front of your focus element, or maybe how far off. I want to try one more time with the same leopard. This time I want to combine at least two plants. To come up with more successful compositions, you need to loosen up and try different variations and sketch as many as possible. It's always easier to choose among a few options instead of trying to make your first one perfect. Let's play with another one. My leopard and two plant sketches are already on my canvas. I want to start with the same plant. Perhaps this time the size can be bigger with more flowers. Maybe I can add some extra leaves from my imagination. Now I think I can add my second plant to my composition. There's so much going on on the right side of the leopard. So I want to add my second plant to the left side to create a balance. The tree trunk is very short for my scene, so I will extend it. It looks good. I just want to clean overlapping lines to see my sketch. I keep some parts of the plants in the back and some in the front of the leopard. Maybe this big plant continues at the bottom. I think this one on the back will be a much better fit for my composition. I want to add more from the second plant since the first one is quite dominant. My second drawing is also complete. I want to see both together and choose one to go further. I think the second one is much more interesting with more elements. I picked this one. After selecting your composition, I want you to refine your composition sketch in a new layer with your final decisions and add all the details you need if you use your elements from the cheat sheets, I encourage you to change the sketches in your style too. I want to add some details to the tree trunk and maybe to the layers. We just created a little world for this leopard. As you see, the composition looks well-balanced and quite interesting for only a few elements. Now it's your turn. I want you to create a composition with at least three elements. Choose one element is your key element, and this others as your secondary elements. I suggest you sketch at least two drawings quickly and finalize one. Don't forget, you can always use the elementary sheets I prepare for you. You created your first creative composition sketch. Now, let's jump into the next lesson where we are going to create your second composition using symmetry and triangle guide. 12. Triangle & Symmetry: [MUSIC] Let's play around to create our second composition. This time we will go with this somehow from composition guidelines for this lesson, we will create our composition using a triangle shape. You can use a triangle composition template I prepare for you. As always, you can find it in the Project and Resources section, or you can draw a triangle at the center of your canvas. Let's start. I want you to create a 300 millimeters, so 300 millimeters and 300 DPI canvas. For this composition, you can go with a few elements just like our first composition, but I encourage you to go with more elements. This time, I plan to add characters to my composition besides animals and plants. To begin, I bring my element cheat sheets to my canvas. All here. I turn off the layers for now. Now, I bring my triangle composition guideline. As I said before, you can use either this template or draw your triangle. I get rid of the title and lowered opacity of my template. This triangle will help you to place your elements into your composition. Another method that we are going to use for this composition is symmetry. I want you to draw a straight line from the top corner of your triangle and lowered opacity of this one too. I will use this triangle as my guide and experiment to place my elements inside of it. But that doesn't mean that there will be nothing outside of a triangle. Leaving some parts of the elements on the outside of the triangle will create a grid dynamic. I want you to keep that in mind before you begin. To start a composition, you need to decide which word you want to create. We know our theme have a guideline and lots of elements to use. The only thing you need to decide is what you want to communicate with this drawing. Then you will experiment with the size and place of your elements. For my illustration, I imagine two friends on a separate trip. I want to create a little word that reflects what they experience on that trip. Let's start. I want my character to be the focus element in my piece, not drawing all the attention of the viewers, but still being the center of my drawing. I turn my character cheat sheet on and copy my character in a new layer. I play with the size and bring it to the center. I want to play with the symmetry here, so I duplicate my character and flipped position them back-to-back. I suggest you keep all your elements under the same group. To do that, I just drag my layer on top of the other one. We have mirror symmetric two characters here. Symmetry is very pleasing to the human eye, but I think it can be a little boring if it's overdue. I like to spice things up a little. If I draw two characters like here, I like to vary the elements a bit to make the piece more interesting, like changing your characters hairstyle, a few changes in their outfits. They can also have different accessories. I'm going to make these changes now. I'm going to change left one's higher to straight. Maybe this one carries a vault or can tin or a small bag inside of a camera. Think about all these small changes you can to make your character more interesting. Now it's time to add more elements. I want you to just start with animals, so I go to my animal cheat sheet. Maybe I can add the other front door, mama and baby elephant. I copy this one to use in my composition. I just tried to imagine the verge of these two characters on the separate trip. I think I might look good at the corner. I just want to play with its size. The elephants are quite big. I think they will look much better on the back of my characters. At the moment, elements on top of each other looks complicated. I want to clean up a little. I don't want to read my elephant sketch with an eraser cause I might want to change its place or size further in my composition. Instead of using the eraser tool, I will just paint the unwanted parts with white color. I will do that in a new top layer with the Clipping Mask feature. In this way, all the lines are still there when I need them. While I'm painting, I also keep in mind that elephants will be in the back and characters in the front. Let's add more elements. I go back to my cheat sheet. Maybe I can add this cool tiger somewhere, so I've copy it. I keep collecting every element under the same group. Since the tiger is also a big animal, placing the tiger on the other side can create a balance for our symmetric composition. The trick here is to think about your elements, mass, shape, and size when it comes to balancing your composition. Now I need to decide if it's going to be in front or back. You can try both and go with your favorite, this tiger doesn't cover much of my character, so I think I might keep it in front. I just cleaned intersect lines. As you see, there is a space here, so I want to search for an animal that I can add here. I go back to my cheat sheet to see what I can choose for that spot. I think either of these monkey or these colors can fit in that spot. I want to try the monkey, so I copied it. I just play with the size and place it on that spot. The trick here is to avoid tangents at all cost. Just leave some part of their own key on the back of my character. If you miss it, I talk about tangents in the composition tips lesson. Let's start to add some plants. I think trees are too big for my composition so I just copied all these little plants and see which ones can fit better to my drawing. I'm still using my triangle as my main guideline. That means I tried to keep all my elements many inside of my triangle. My monkey is already on a branch so I can add some leaves here as a start. I think this plant sketch might fit here. Maybe more leaves. It looks good. It might be good to add some on the other side as well, so I copy this. Maybe I can add some behind the elephants. I'm careful to change some and not exactly use the same one, too much symmetry in your drawing, looks great. I want to add different plants too, maybe I can add this one right behind this tiger to create its little [inaudible] I see a spot next to the the elephants, I think I can use this plant on that spot to or even you can sketch new elements just from your imagination. Like I imagine a little rocks here and maybe one more plant. I tried to balance the symmetry here even though I use different elements on both sides. In that case, I tried to see them just as shapes inside of figures that will allow you to focus on the balance of your composition. I continue to create my composition just like creating a little collage, mixing my sketch elements. This collage [inaudible] will help you not get over than with sketching at this stage. But don't forget this is not the final. You can always delete some parts of your elements and make them [inaudible] to your composition. I think it looks quite good. I want to add something on top to copy my triangle composition. Just go back to your animal or plant cheat sheet to see what you can add. I think this word can be a good fit on top. Let's see. Yes, I think it fits perfectly. Let's turn off the composition top layer to see our final composition. I feel like I can add some dots as flowers to my plant to have some more fun with my drawing. I feel like I'm confident with this composition. Just check how your final drawing looks on your canvass. You might want to rearrange its position or its size on your canvass before diving into refining your sketch. After that, create a new layer on top of your sketch and finalize your drawing. Make all the small changes you need to make. Now it's your turn. I want you to create a composition using the rule of triangle and symmetry as your guide. You can find the elements and composition guide cheat sheets in the Project and Resources folder. Try to use at least four to five elements in your composition. After finishing your second composition with the rule of triangles, join me in the following video where we are going to create another composition by playing three different areas in your illustration. Background, middle ground and foreground. 13. Foreground, Middle Ground, Background: [MUSIC] Now it's time to create a composition that includes all the areas in your canvas. The background, middle-ground, and foreground. When you create an illustration, you might want to make sure to create a sense of depth. To do this, you can use background, middle-ground, and foreground elements to comprehend each other to make your artwork feel rich and deep. This composition style works well especially with the landscape drawings. In this lesson, we are going to create a landscape drawing together. First, I want you to think about your story. I want to create a scene where my character takes a photo of a cool tiger enjoying its stay in its environment. My main focus will be the tiger, but then also the character. In this type of composition, the action usually happens in the middle-ground and foreground. I will use these areas for my focus elements. I suggest you start your sketch with these two areas, the foreground, and middle-ground. Let's start. I want you to create 300 millimeters to 300 millimeters and 300 DPI canvas. It's here. Beside composition with background, middle-ground, and foreground, I also want to use the rule of charts in my drawing. I can either quickly divide my canvas into nine, or bring the rule of thirds composition cheat sheet to my canvas. My guideline is here. I lower the opacity and quickly delete the title. All set. What I want to do right now is to bring my first focus element, my tiger to my canvas. Okay, here's my animal cheat sheet. I'm just going to copy the tiger. Now I'm thinking about positioning my tiger on the top-left intersect, while also keeping it in my middle-ground. The middle-ground is a space accruing between the foreground and the background, like here. I leave my tiger in here and continue. This is not the final, so I'll try not to overthink here and just roughly position your elements on your canvas. Maybe this tiger is in front of the bushes, so I'll roughly sketch them. It looks great. Before getting into details, I want to jump into the foreground to position my foreground elements. The foreground of the artwork is generally closer to the bottom of the composition. This part of the scene is closest to the viewer, so the objects appear to be larger. This is important to keep in mind for this composition type. In the foreground of my composition, I plan to draw my character while taking a photo of this tiger and maybe it's among the bushes. Since the tiger is on the left, I plan to draw my character on the right, right here. I'm going to sketch my character very roughly. It's going to be from the back. I use simple shapes, a circle for the head and some basic lines and triangles for the body. I don't go for the details. The important thing here is to position your character on the canvas. If you are having problems with drawing your character, just get help from the reference photos as we did on the earlier character drawing lessons. I roughly sketch the bushes on the left bottom. Later I'm planning to use elements from my cheat sheet so at the moment, there is no need to think about which plans do we want here. Since they are in the foreground, you should drop down much larger compared to the tiger. My foreground and middle-ground work quite well as an image. To make it a bit more interesting and put in a scale, I want to create a background. The background is the furthest away in the scene, and it gives some context to the scene. Items in the background might appear far away. They are much smaller in size, duller in the color and contain less detail than objects that are close to the viewer. Now let's put all this knowledge into practice. Since my character is on a safari trip, I want to add a tree, a sun, and some animals in the background. First, I want to decide where this little scene is going to be. I think I want to keep it mainly on the right vertical. I start with my horizon line, and then I roughly sketch my elements with very basic shapes. Here's a tree right on the vertical line. Maybe a little animal family here. I just position them by using some circles, just thinking about their masses. Maybe a sun on the back of the tree. Since they're in the background, I keep them smaller. All done. As you can notice, the composition is divided into three, background, middle-ground, and foreground, and there is a comparative sense of scale here. All these elements comprehend each other to create my story and create a sense of depth in my composition. Without the background or the middle-ground, the character in the foreground wouldn't make much sense. Since their positions are all set, now I can choose elements from the cheat sheets and position them in their place. For that, first, I lower the opacity of my composition sketch layer and create a new layer on top. Now I'm ready to finish my illustration. All done. When you complete your sketches, I want to have a look at your composition one more time and change some parts if it looks overcrowded, or maybe add more if it's needed. I also encourage you to draw the elements with your lines, as you see all the elements are positioned in their own space but still create a story altogether. If you notice the background and middle-ground elements overlapped, this helps them to reengage and improve the overall balance of my composition. Now it's your turn. I want you to create a composition sketch based on a story combining foreground, middle-ground, and background elements. You can also use the rule of thirds as your second guide. First, focus on positioning the elements with rough sketches. Then you can use the elements from the cheat sheets. Join me in the following video where we are going to create another composition using scale changes and negative space. [MUSIC] 14. Scale Changes & Negative Space: [MUSIC] This style of composition is somehow one of my favorites. It's basic but still very effective. We will combine all the elements related to our story in a basic style, no rules, no leading lines or shapes. Let's start. This time, I want you to create a rectangle size cover 300-400 millimeters and 300 DPI. My canvas is ready. First, I want you to bring all the elements you plan to use in your composition to your canvas. I bring my cheat sheets. All here. I suggest you try to use elements from each category, adding at least one or two characters, a few animals, plants, or objects will bring your composition a lot more excitement. I'm going to look at my cheat sheets one by one. First animals, I will select a few quiet randomly. I want to select this elephant, this tiger, maybe this cute little monkey. By using the plus sign on the left bottom, I can select all of them together at once. I just copy them in a new layer. Now, let's have a look at the plants. I copy a few from here too. I just think about which elements can look good with each other. But these are not final decisions. You can always go back to your cheat sheets and change the element you use. I want to add a character, so I just copy that one. I keep all the elements under the same group. This will help me to bounce between my drawing and my cheat sheets. As of last the objects cheat sheet, maybe this house or car can be a good idea for my composition. As I said earlier, these selections are not your last decision, so feel free. You can always go back to your cheat sheet and add another animal, plant or object. Now I bring all the elements I chose to my canvas. All here. Now it's the most fun part. We are going to experiment to position them next to each other in a most pleasing way. In this type of composition, instead of creating one stroke focal point, we create many soft ones. In this way, then we can look at your illustration as a whole instead of focusing on only one element. This will create a routine. Now start positioning them to your canvas without overthinking. First, think about their position on your canvas and their size very roughly. Let's have a look at what we have so far. I know that I want to keep the character in the corner, maybe this side or maybe the other side. Since she is the only character in the composition, this can be a good idea. She also looked through a binocular so it might be like she's looking at all of them from the corner. At the moment, plants are grouped on the one side and the animals are grouped on the other side. I suggest you mix all the elements as much as you can. Let's keep these in mind and try to shape our composition. I want to turn off some of the elements to create some space to work. I start moving my character to the other side. Now the animals. So far so good. Let's add our plants too. I want to play with this monkey sketch a little, don't forget you can always play with your sketch elements and make them a better fit for your composition. Here it feels a little empty, so I'm adding more leaves. I want to play with this one too and make it stronger. I think it looks great. Let's continue. One of the keys in this type of composition is to aim for variety in the scale. This allows you to issue a more dynamic composition and better balance illustrations. Instead of keeping all your elements in the same size, I just play around and make some of them bigger or smaller. I don't care about the reality here. I can make a bird way bigger done a tree. Another key is to leave enough space between the elements, variety comes to play here one more time. Don't forget you can also add some elements or details from your imagination. Like you can draw some little plants or animals anything related to safari team. Or like little dots, lines or it's totally fine to leave it empty between them. I feel like I'm confident with this composition. As you see, we created a strong composition with the safari team without having a focal point. Now you can create a new layer on top to finalize your sketch and do all the little changes you need to do. You can redraw all the elements in your style. Maybe you can add with more soft and rounded lines instead of my sharp lines here. Now it's your turn. Create a composition of plants, animals, characters, and objects using size and placement. Don't forget to leave negative space between your elements. You can use the elements from the cheat sheets. We already created four different compositions. Now join me in the following video where we are going to create our last drawing using the rule of thirds. 15. The Rule of Thirds: [MUSIC] Now it's time to play with one of the most common composition guidelines. The Rule of Thirds. This time, I want to create a rectangle size canvas 300 millimeters to 400 millimeters and 300 DPI. My canvas is ready, now I bring the rule of thirds composition guideline to my canvas. You can draw your canvas into three horizontal parts and three vertical parts. Basically dividing your canvas into thirds. As we already practiced in the earlier exercises, the main idea of the rule of thirds is to place your elements of most interests where these lines intersect. Placing focal points at this intersection will create a great sense of balance and harmony in your illustrations. Since this is our fifth composition, I want you to experiment with creating a more complex scene and use lots of elements in your composition. I'm thinking about illustrating a busy forest scene that is going to be much more complicated than earlier ones. A strong foundation with the rule of thirds will help us to come up with a powerful composition. Let's start to practice. First, lower the opacity of your guideline and then bring all your cheat sheets to your canvas. All here. I want to start with placing my focal points. First I will choose the animal elements that I want to use in my composition. I definitely want to use the mama and baby elephants somewhere in my illustration. I want to use my koala family as well, and maybe this monkey. I just copied all. I want these animals to be my focal points. Therefore, I'm going to position them at the intersects. I think I'm going to place the elephant on the left bottom intersect. I'm thinking about positioning the koalas on the top-right intersection. I think I place my focal point elements on my composition. You can see all the elements perfectly lying on each of these cross-sections of the rule of thirds. For the monkey, I'm thinking about creating a small word in one of the charts. I think top-left chart looks great. I think elephants can be larger. All positioned. I am basically laying down rough ideas on a very basic level. Just placing them on my canvas like a collage. What I would like to do right now is to add secondary elements to create a whole composition. That means I'm going to add lots of plants. As you see my koala s and my monkey is already on a branch, so I'm thinking about sketching the rest of these trees. I'm having a look at my plan cheat sheet, if I can find something to use. This branch looks great, I can definitely use this one my tree. I just copy it. Getting inspired by this sketch, I'm going to roughly sketch my trees mainly in the top thirds. One around the koala and one around the monkey. Let's start. I want to work on a new layer. I'm creating small environments and keeping down mostly in their own charts. This will help me to create a little order on this crowded forests and balance my composition. As you see I'm using the cheat sheet element as my reference and drawing very random leaves on my trees. I think it looks great. Let's continue with the monkey's tree. I pretty much draw the leaves as before but I'm thinking about making a few changes. I can add different flowers or little trees like here. The key here is even though you draw pretty much similar things in different spots of your illustration, make sure that you add different details. This will bring your composition a lot more excitement. I think it looks great. As you see, I don't try to squeeze everything inside of my canvas. You can only see a small part of this big trees in my illustration. I suggest you try this tactic in your compositions. You don't need to show every part of your plants or animals in your drawing. This will create a great dynamic in your composition. I think the elephant looks a little small, so I want to play with its size. Much better. I think I want to add a water to my drawing, like a smaller river. For that, I can use another guideline, maybe a diagonal line on my canvas. Just sketching everywhere very roughly. So far so good. I want to create a combination of plants on the bottom thirds. I go back to my plant cheat sheet and copy some more planets to use. Maybe this one is on the right corner. I suggest you play with your cheat sheet elements to make them yours and a better fit for your composition. Perhaps I can sketch some rocks as well. I want to go back to my plant sheet and see what else I can add. Try different angles and sizes. I want to add one more plant for the left corner. It looks great. I suggest you try to use many elements in this composition. Just experiment with combine and many objects in a balanced way. I see a spot right here, try it another animal. I want to add the snake, but maybe around on a branch of this tree. I'll try to imagine different ways that you can use all these animals. I also want to create an environment for this mama and baby elephant. Maybe they are in front of a small tree or a big plant. I roughly sketch a plant from my imagination and mainly keep it on the another chart. You can always use reference photos or another plant from the cheat sheets. We position our main elements in all these thirds of the rule of thirds. It still feels missing to me around the river. Maybe I can add some fish. I position my fish group on the horizontal line of the rule of thirds. I'm adding some bigger ones too. Always go for diversity. Some last touches. Looks great. But these two trees still look similar to me, so I want to add some flowers to the right one. I think even though this composition is very crowded, it still looks well-balanced, takes to the rule of thirds. Now it's your turn. Create a composition of plants, animals, characters, and objects using the rule of thirds. Experiment with using many elements as much as you can. We created five different composition with the [inaudible] team. Join me in the next lesson where I'm going to color one of these illustrations while giving you some tips on colors in the composition. 16. Colours in Composition: We sketch five different composition with the same team using almost the same elements. Now it's time to color down and create visually compelling illustrations. Color, if it's used wisely, can bring new heights to your composition. There are so many ways to organize colors in a drawing. In this lesson, we will talk about my process in coloring and some tips on creating fabulous compositions in color. The first step is color pallets. There are a few websites, and one of them is Adobe Color, that you can experiment with creating your color palettes with their tools, or you can even choose one from the trending color palettes. You can easily apply this color palettes to your Procreate. I have a few lessons about creating your color palettes, or how to color with Procreate tools in my earlier classes. You can check them out and learn more in detail. Here's one of my compositions. My first tip is to always start with your background color. I suggest you experiment with both lighter and darker tones background colors in your compositions. You will get a different feeling in both, so think about the message you want to convey. Use a fixed number of colors. A fixed number of colors can really help set the mode. You can use different shades to hues of your chosen colors. I like keeping my color palette on the corner of my canvas. I suggest you work with at least two color combinations before working up as your final. I like keeping my thumbnail small. Sometimes I go even smaller at the end and see if my key elements pop even in a small size image. Here are my two thumbnails. I want a strong image, so I will go with this contrasting color combination. I always start with my focus element. First, I outline my element and fill the inside. If I want texture, I use the clipping mask feature. Create a new layer on top, and choose the "Clipping Mask" feature. Now I don't need to worry about outlining my tiger. Another trick in my process is using the same color in different spots. Sometimes I like using them as underneath texture in some parts. One more trick I always use is checking my colors in gray scale. Just create a black layer on top and select the "Saturation" option. Now you are able to see if every element is readable in your piece. I will continue to color this illustration and all the other four, then I will show you how they look in colors, so we can talk about all the color tricks for each composition type. Here's the first one, three element composition. I wanted the tiger to stand out so I used complimentary and saturated colors like blue and orange. This is the second one. This one is softer compared to the first one. For the symmetric type of composition, I use the same tactic in colors, just like sketching. Look at the characters, catching similar outfits with jacket colors, but differentiating in skin tones, pens colors and more. Use similar green tones in different elements overall the composition to create harmony. The third one is about deepness in the composition. For this type of composition, it's important to use lighter tone in the foreground and the darker tones in the background elements. The fourth one is all about balance as a whole. The color palette is limited and you can spot a ton of yellow or blue almost in every element. I tried to keep all the elements at the same level with my color choices. The last one, most complex composition, darker blues and green tones are all over the canvas, almost like creating one dark blue and green layer, and they are lighter tones for your focus elements to pop. We learn many tricks on coloring to create harmony in your compositions. Now it's your turn. Color at least one of your illustrations to the last, and try to create at this color blocking thumbnails for the rest. Join me in the following video where I will share how to prepare a print ready artwork. 17. Create Print Ready Artwork: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will talk about a few things you need to know for printing. The first thing to think about is resolution. The standard DPI for printing is 300 DPI. If you are planning on printing your artwork and want to print to reproduce well, set your DPI to a minimum 300. The second thing to think about is color profiles. The color profile for printing is CMYK. So make sure that you set your color profile to CMYK. Don't forget, you can change the color profile of your artwork anytime in Procreate. If you use Illustrator, I suggest you to finalize your settings in Illustrator. I think it's much better to add bleed and margins to your artwork in this program. However, if you only use Procreate, that's what I do to be safe. If you want your art print in the size of 300-300 millimeters. I will suggest you to create a canvas 270-270 millimeters, that is 30 millimeters smaller. So I create a new custom canvas, CMYK color profile and 300 DPI. I bring my artwork to my canvas. Then I go Settings and click "Canvas" and then "Crop and Resize" and change my canvas size to 300-300 millimeters. Resample and snapping are both deactivated. Done. Now, I just need my artwork to be centered. Now that I have white borders around my artwork, I avoid any problems, plus it can be useful for framing. You should share your artwork as PDF file for printing and for the PDF quantity I suggest you to choose best. Now your file is ready to print. Join me in the following video where I will share my final thoughts about the composition in illustration. [MUSIC] 18. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this class. I hope this class help you feel more confident in creating your compositions for your illustrations. We learn a lot about basic composition guidelines that will help you achieve the perfect balance of composition and color as you sketch your illustrations. We also practice drawing wild animals, plants, adventures, character outfits, and objects. We talk about several tips and tricks along the way. Now we are ready to create more well balanced compelling illustrations. Just practice more and more and you will get better each time. Never be shy to use my composition guidelines and [inaudible] to come up with different compositions in your illustrations. I always love seeing what you guys come up with; so don't forget to post all of your composition and exercises and five different separate team compositions to the project section below. You can also tag me if you share your work on Instagram. I always share a collection of my student's projects on my Instagram. If you tag me, I can see your projects and re-post them. I also have two classes on drawing characters with fashion which can be interesting if you'd like to learn more about drawing eye-catching characters for your illustrations. Another class on creating GIFS and getting them on Instagram. This class can help you learn basic animation in Procreate and add some moment for your new illustrations. Thank you again for watching my class. I will really appreciate it if you give me a review and see you in my next class.