Create a Unique Composition in Digital Art: The Full Process with Krita

1. Welcome!: Alright. Welcome, everybody to my new digital art course, where we are going to create this painting together with a completely free software crea. I'm Duplo. I'm an experienced artist and designer from Germany, and I'm going to be your teacher from whom you're going to learn all kinds of tricks and strategies for digital art. My favorite styles are impressionism, abstract art, landscapes, sometimes a touch of realism. I've also done lots of design work, be it web design, logo design, or level design for games. And in my opinion, the best software, by far for making digital art and graphic design is Creta. I mean, it's completely free. It has everything you need, and I've been using it for many years without even thinking about purchasing something like Photoshop. Now, in this course, I want to give you a realistic, practical painting process that you can follow to figure out how to make digital art yourself. So I want to enable you to transform your own ideas into finished paintings that make sense and are pleasing to look at. Because here's the problem. Most digital art education just tells you, this is a nice function, and that is a nice function, and this is how you paint this one thing. But how does an artist actually come up with the subjects? What do they think during the process? How do they make sure the colors look good? Which tools do they actually use? And how can you combine multiple references to create your own unique composition? These are the questions that I'm going to answer in detail in this course, while making this artwork together with you. Yes, you can paint this. I'm going to make sure of that even if you're a total beginner of art. Now, I have to say that this is not a course on how to use Krita specifically. I'm not going to explain every tool and every function there is, mostly because we don't actually need them. But if you are a total software nop, you've never used Krita before, and every time you use a new program, it takes you ages to get used to it. I recommend you take my other course first Krita Quickstart. There I go in depth on the program and give you some exercises to practice it. So check it out on my profile if you need that. This right here is very project based. I'm just going to give you a quick overview for Creta, the basic tools, and then we're going to jump right into it with the artwork. We're going to paint together, and I'm going to explain what I'm doing and what I'm thinking. And don't worry. The lessons are obviously not as fast paced as this intro. We're going to collect ideas, forge them into a composition, make a sketch, and fill everything with beautiful colors and details. And after that, I'm going to give you some personal advice for your art journey. So in the end, you will have one, a very nice painting that you can use as a wallpaper or whatever, and two the ability to create many, many more. Now, what you should have for this course is a computer, obviously that can run Creta, and ideally a drawing tablet of some sort with or without screen, doesn't matter. Make sure that works for you, and then you're going to go with our course. So when you are ready, see you in the first lesson. 2. Why digital art is great: Before we start with the actual course, I thought it would be a cool idea to make a little lesson about why digital art is so great. Why is it useful? Why is it fun? Why should we care about that? Now, you might already be completely sold on digital art, and you don't need anyone telling you you should do it. But I still think that this is good for keeping the bigger picture in mind. There are actually very good reasons for why we should be doing all this, and a little sense of purpose will give you a lot more motivation when we enter the process of creating our artwork. And that's what we need. So let's start with the first and probably one of the most important reasons. Digital art is a way to create that has a very low threshold. I don't think many people realize how big that actually is, but digital art is something that you can always do, and you have to prepare pretty much nothing. Okay, I know for this course, I said that we're going to plan the artwork and find a reference and plan the composition and everything, but that's because we're going to make an actual big painting. But of course, you don't always have to do that. Once you know how the program works, you can always just open it up, make a little tree sketch or a little abstract artwork or pattern or something whenever you feel like it. That is so good. You can just always make something if you want. You don't have to arrange the canvas or look which paints you have in stock or clean up your workspace first. No, you can just open up Krita, right now, scribble with the brushes and see if you can make something out of that. Now, I'm, of course, not saying that digital art is superior to traditional art for that reason. You know, the preparation and the chaos, it's part of the process, and many artists actually like it. But just imagine what would happen if creating was as convenient in your life as consuming. Think about that for a moment. This is what knowing how to make digital art essentially gives you. And I must say, from my experience, when I started making digital art, I just found myself making art way more frequently than before because it's just so convenient. Then the next reason is a more simple one, but of course, digital art is very inexpensive. You pretty much only have the electricity costs of your computer or maybe you buy a course once in a while. But aside from that, you really only need one drawing tablet for 100 bucks or something, and it's going to last for a very long time. I think I bought mine, I don't know, eight years ago, and it still works on day one. I think I'm going to be using it for another eight years. This, of course, depends on the kind of tablet you use and how intensively you utilize it. But the point is just that you pretty much don't have to rebuy anything. In digital art, the relation between how much you have to invest and how much art you can create with is pretty insane if you compare it to anything else. What's also insane is how many options you have when you make digital art from drawing and calligraphy to pastel and painting, you have pretty much everything in Krita, and there are 50 brushes for each of these methods of creation. If you start combining these brushes and you throw in the other tools and filters into the equation, then you end up with so many different art styles and ways that you can depict something. To be honest, it's maybe even a little bit too much, and in the beginning, it can be overwhelming how many options you have in Krita. But that's why we're here, right? That's why I'm going to show you how to pick brushes and how to plan your artwork and everything. And I'll give you a good overview of different methods of creation through our project. So with time, it will become more clear. You will find the brushes you prefer and the art style that you like, which is probably different than what you imagine right now. Because Krita just gives you all these options, right? You can try out everything and every tool, and suddenly you find something that you want to use in 50 artworks. You just never know, and that makes digital art very exciting. You can just use one or two brushes for the rest of your life and just paint all kinds of different subjects with them, or you can try out a totally different art style every time, and anything in between is possible. But what I also really like is that you can always edit everything. You can go back to your old artworks and see what they look like with a different color scheme or with a different filter or if you still have the layers, you can sometimes even move stuff around and rearrange your compositions. And if you then don't know which version you like better, then you can just save both of them because you can replicate digital art infinitely. It doesn't get old and it doesn't go away. So you can always return to a digital artwork that you left due to a lack of motivation or skill. And that takes away a lot of the pressure that you have in traditional art. You don't have to worry about the paint drawing in a bad way and you have to finish something now, even though you're not feeling it or wasting your precious paint. Once again, I know it's part of the process. Many people like that, and traditional art definitely makes you very good at planning your artworks in advance and sticking to the actual plan. But digital arches comes with this convenience that makes it more likely that you actually make art and you make it often, and that's what's so valuable about it. Alright, then what is digital art actually useful for? What are the practical implications of making image files that look nice? That's definitely not a bad question to ask if you don't know much about it, but there are probably more things than you're aware of right now. First of all, you can, of course, always print them out and treat them like traditional artworks. You can hang them up in your kitchen and tell all the visitors that you painted this because it's actually true. So there is that. For example, this is my grandma's dog Nellie, who died about a year ago, and I found this little picture on my phone that I had taken of her and decided to use it as a reference. So I painted this artwork in Krita and printed it out in the print shop, so it actually looks really good now. And then I gifted it to my grandmother. And you can do this with all your digital paintings at some point. You know, they don't go away, they don't get old. You can just at some point, when you have the means or the time, print them all out, and then you have them in real life. And they will look really good if the resolution is high and you use a quality printer. But even if you don't want or need these artworks in real life, they are still very useful because on the Internet on websites and everything, you always need visuals, and if you know how to create them, then you can collaborate with many other people and create great stuff. You can create background patterns for websites or wallpapers or banners or profile pictures. People always need that, and it's not hard to impress them if you know a few basics of digital art and design. Alright, then the last but certainly not least important reason for why you should make digital art is a more classic one that applies to any art from, and that is simply creative output is satisfying and relaxing, right? Even if we ignore all the other reasons, digital art is just fun. It simply feels awesome to make something on your own step by step, and you slowly see it turn into something that looks amazing. That's a feeling that I think we're all looking for, and we're going to get it in this course for sure. So yeah, you should be quite convinced now, so I'm going to stop talking and invite you to the next lesson. So let's explore how to make digital art. 3. Krita overview: Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Krita. This is a program that we're going to use in this course. And in this lesson, I'm going to give you a quick overview of how it works. So if you're already familiar with Krita and its basic functions, then you can skip ahead to the next lesson. Again, this is not a course on how to use every tool and function of Krita. I've got a different course on that, so I'm not going to repeat everything, but we're not going to use that many tools anyways. We're going to stick with the basics and make a clean artwork. So here is everything that you need to know if you have absolutely zero idea how to use this awesome software. First of all, you can download it at krita.org for your preferred operating system. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever. The installation process of Krita is very simple. It will take you through it automatically. You don't have to buy anything and you don't even have to create an account, which is quite impressive for a software of this magnitude nowadays. You can just download the software, install it, and open it up, and then you see this start screen. This is where we're going to start exploring Krita. Now, first of all, you have the option to make a new file or open up any file. If you click on Open Image, then you can see that Krita supports pretty much any image file that you can imagine. So you can pull any image in here, edit it however you like, and then save it as one of these file types. But in our case, let's just click on new image, so we get this little window here and there we can change all kinds of settings about the canvas that we're going to create. But the only thing that I'm usually worried about here is the resolution, the image size, which determines how many pixels our picture will have. Let's set it to 2000 by 2000 pixels and click on Create. Avala, this is the user interface of Krita with our canvas in the middle. So this white box, the canvas is where we can draw and paint and do all kinds of stuff. And the thing that the program will save as an image as soon as we're done. Very nice. You can zoom in and out by scrolling with your mouse and you can move around this canvas by holding down the mouse wheel and then dragging the canvas. Or you can hold down the space bar on your keyboard, and then you can also click and drag this canvas around. Additionally, you can rotate this canvas by pressing four to rotate it left, six to rotate it to the right, and five to neutralize it. Or you can also find this little circle down here where you can also rotate the canvas or zoom in and out on this bar. So this is basically how you can navigate the canvas, which is something that you do all the time when making digital art. So I recommend you do this a few times and get very comfortable with the process. Then the things to the side of our canvas are the dockers. We got the toolbar on the left, all kinds of tools that you can click on and use. Then on the right side, we got the color selector where you can shift around to change the hue. And in this triangle, you can change the value and saturation of your colors. Below that, we have the layers which are also very important for digital art, and below that are the brushes of Krita, which are some of the best that you will find in any digital art software. By the way, if this interface looks very different for you or you want to change something about it, don't worry. You can easily do that by moving any of these dockers around, as you can see, it's very customizable. And you can also go to settings, dockers, and there you have all these dockers that you can additionally show or hide. These are the ones that I have and I recommend. And of course, you can change the appearance of Krita by clicking on themes, and there you have a few nice options. I mean, pretty much just one nice option, in my opinion, but yeah, you can just look around here and see what you like. So yeah, you can take your time here and adjust the interface to a way that you like, and then it is time to check out the tools and functions that we have. We can find those on the left side on the toolbar. By the way, you can, of course, also adjust this and right click and change the size of these icons. And whenever you click on one of these icons, you have the according tool selected. First of all, and most importantly, we got the brush tool for drawing and painting. This is what we're going to use most of the time in this course. Whenever you have the brush tool selected, which you can, by the way, also do by pressing B on your keyboard, B like brush, easy to remember. But whenever you have it selected, you can apply paint to the canvas by clicking and dragging. And you're creating digital art just like that. And of course, you can adjust all kinds of things about your brush strokes. For example, their shape by clicking on one of these brushes down here or the size by sliding here, the opacity, how dense the brush strokes appear here, and also very important, the color by clicking on any of these colors on the color selector. You can also pull up a quick access window for any of these things by right clicking, right click there you can select the color, brush, and do a few things with the brush stroke and then right click again and it's gone. That is a very cool feature about Krita. Now, really, really important, what I'm always doing in digital art, undoing and redoing. You can undo any action by pressing Control C and redoing action by pressing Control Shift C. These actions are so important in fact that I have mapped them to buttons on my drawing tablet. You can do that in your drawing tablet software. Just map these hot keys, Control C, and Control Shift C to any place where you can quickly access them because you're going to need them all the time here. Do that right now and then let's check out these other tools. We have the line tool with which we can create lines that have the exact properties of our brush stroke. So we can change the opacity, size, select a color, select a brush, and then make a line that looks just like that. That is very useful, especially because you can also hold shift while dragging your line to only select from a few given angles and like that, you can make a perfectly horizontal line or a perfectly vertical line like that. Then we got a few more shape tools, like you can make a rectangle with this one or circles and ellipses, and you can also make your own shapes with this tool. You always have a few options for these tools if you go to the tool options, which is, by the way, also a docker that you can activate on settings and dockers. You should always have it, I think. It's a very useful one, and there you can, for example, make your shapes be filled with something or change something about the outline. And that's especially nice if you want to design something. In our course here, we're not going to use these tools a lot. The same goes for these next few tools here, like the multi brush tool, it's funny. You can check it out or these different curve tools. They were, of course, always there, but I pretty much never use them. Let's move on to that one, the transformation tool. This is where it gets interesting because now you can see we can actually manipulate different layers in Creta. Layers are different work spaces that are overlapping. You can view your layers on the right side here. Always, you can create a new layer or right click and delete a layer. You can double click to name your layers. And with this transformation tool, you can move them around and adjust them however you like. And this is something that we're going to use later on to fine tune our composition and keep everything organized and adjustable. That's a very important trick in digital art to always use a few layers. You can also move your layers around with this tool or with the crop tool, you can select an area and then press Enter, and then that's your new image. But yeah, let me undo this. And then we got a few more tools like the gradient tool with which you can make a nice color transition with a color that you have selected. You can just make a line and then along this line, you have a color transition. I often use this tool to create a smooth sky for the background or something. Okay, then we got the color picker tool, which lets you pick any color from the canvas if you want to go back to a color that you used before. But I think this tool is unnecessary because whenever you paint something with the regular brush tool, you can always hold down Control and click on any color on the canvas, and then you guard it. Or you can also view your color history here on the right side of the color selector. You see, there are all the colors that we've used in order up to a certain point. Then there are a few more random tools that are not necessary for this course like this fill the whole area tool or this measure the distance between two points tool. And then down here are the selection tools with which you can select an area. And whenever you have an area selected, you can only edit this area and nothing outside it. So if I make a rectangle here, then I can only draw or paint inside this rectangle. I can also only create shapes here. And yeah, that's basically how it works. Of course, we can make a circle area or our own angular area or free hand area. You can always undo an area by pressing Control, Shift and A, then the area is gone and you can edit everything, or you can go to the tool options and change how your areas interact whenever you make a new one. If they're being added or if they should replace each other or, you can check this out. I usually have it at replace. Whenever I select a new area, it replaces the old one. Unless you hold down shift while making a new selection, then you can always add another one without replacing the old one. So, ladies and gentlemen, I think that is it, for the most important tools and functions of Krita. I hope I didn't miss anything important, but yeah, I think we got it all covered. You should know how to navigate the interface and how to adjust it to your liking, how to navigate the canvas, how to draw and paint and do all these things. And you should have at least a little bit of an understanding of how layers and selections work. If you're still a bit confused, then feel free to take your time and experiment with the software. That's still the best way to learn it. So make a few random documents and just edit stuff about them, make brushstrokes, make shapes, select areas on different layers, and move them around. And yeah, that way, you will get familiar with Krita very quickly. 4. How to get brushes: Now, one last thing before we can move on to the practical part of the course is brushes. We got to talk about brushes a little bit because in Creta, as you can see, we have many, many nice brushes, but at least in my opinion, and in the opinion of many other artists, these brushes are still not enough. We artists are very greedy people. We always want more and better brushes. So what do we do? We download brush bundles and impart them in Krita. Brush bundles are basically like packages or collections of brushes that other people have created that you can add to your brush list. Like, for example, these beautiful RGBA brushes with which you can create very traditional looking brush throkes. It's super fun to paint with those. By the way, you can always search for your brush bundles or types of brushes on these tags here, like all paint brushes or all RGBA brushes or whatever. So how do you get a brush bundle? Well, in Krita, you can go to settings, manage resource libraries, and there you have an overview of your brush bundles and you can activate or deactivate them. These are the ones that I'm using, and I am going to put a link in the course description or lesson description, where you can download these brush bundles. So we're all on the same page in this course. So download them right now, search for the file that says Duplo brush bundles or something, and then you can store them in a place on your computer where you can find them, but they don't annoy you. And then you can go to Krita settings, manage resource libraries. And if you click on Import, you can search for these brush bundles and import them. You may then have to click on them manually and activate them, but they should appear down here in your brush list. If they are not there, then don't panic. Sometimes you just have to restart Krita for the new brushes to show up. But, yeah, that's basically it. You can, of course, repeat this with other brush bundles that you see other artists use on the Internet, but we're going to stick with those that we have right now, especially these Meo impasto brushes. Let me search for the tech real quick. There we have them. I just discovered these brushes this year, and I've already used them so much. These brushes are absolutely incredible. Maybe even my favorite brushes in all of digital art. I mean, come on, look at these brush strokes. That's literally like traditional art. You can mix the paints so well here and create these unique textures, make sure you have these brush bundles so we can use them in our artwork. But before we can start with that, of course, we have to be clear about what we want to create in the first place. In the next lesson, let's collect a few ideas and develop our composition. See you there. 5. Finding the idea: Every good artwork starts with a good idea, and this is the topic of this lesson. Of course, finding an idea for an artwork can happen in all sorts of ways. You can see something in real life and be inspired. Maybe you make a photo and use it as a reference, or maybe you find an image or an artwork on the Internet that you want to replicate. Or, of course, what could also happen is you have an idea in your head. Just, Oh, okay, I want to paint this. Everybody has their own way to get ideas, and there are so many things that you can make art about that there is not really something that I can tell you here. The idea is synonymous with creativity, and that cannot be taught by definition. So giving you a precise roadmap for how you should come up with ideas like this is what you should draw and paint, it would be a crime against art itself. What we're doing in this lesson is just one way to do it. I hope that is very clear to you. But I think it's a very interesting way, and it will teach you a lot about art. So let me explain. The most simple way to handle the idea phase would be to have an idea, find a reference, and just paint that reference. Very classic. You just open up the image, then you start Creta, and you can immediately begin with sketching. But doing it that way, let's be honest, would be a bit boring because it would only be the tactics of painting from reference, which we'll of course cover later on. But you wouldn't learn anything about composition, which actually is really, really important if you start out making art. So in this course, let's start with a position of, I have an idea, but I don't really know what to do with that idea and how to make a composition out of it. So my idea is to paint a hyacinth macaw, which is this blue parrot. I hope I pronounced that correctly. But, yeah, I recently saw some images of this hyacinth macaw, and I thought it would be really cool to paint one. I'm a big fan of these deep blue feathers, definitely one of my very favorite colors. But also painting something like a bird is just perfect for this course, because you can't mess up as much as in a human, for example. You know, if you paint a human and the eyes are just slightly off, it just looks totally different, like another person immediately. But if the beak of a bird is a little bit too small or too big, we as humans, we don't really notice that. We don't care, right? It's still gonna look like a bird. So yeah, for beginners, I think this is perfect, but I'm still going to need a reference for the hyacinth macaw because I don't have its anatomy perfectly in my head. So let's open up a search engine of choice and type in hyacinth macaw. Now, as an artist, I usually prefer going to a specific stock image site like paxels.com, if I need a reference, because the images are usually higher quality. They've been uploaded by photographers and are not just pulled from random websites like the Google search results. So these images usually have very high resolution and a clean composition. However, in my case, I'm searching for something very specific, a hyacinth macaw. Unfortunately, they're not going to have that many photos of that on a stock image website. So I'm using a standard search engine here to find the reference. But if you want a high quality reference for something more generic, like, I don't know, a dancer, a squirrel or an Italian street, then you will usually find a very good selection of those on something like pixels.com or also pixabay.com or something like that. That's a little hot tip for you guys. Anyways, I think I found my reference for the hyacinth macaw. I like this image for a few particular reasons, and this is where the artist's brain comes into play, so pay attention. First of all, you guys need to realize that a reference is not a clear guideline, but just a tool. When I say, I like this reference, then this doesn't mean that I want to recreate this exact photo. In fact, I pretty much only like the hyacinth macaw. So when I was looking for the reference, I only paid attention to what the blue parrot looks like in the images. And right here, it's really fitting. All the rest, the background and these leaves, the colors, the textures. I'm not really interested in that. I want to make my own composition with the hyacinth macaw, and this particular image works as a reference for that. Parrot is crisp and clean. It has nice details, super saturated colors. And also, there are two types of contrasts that immediately draw my attention as an art and design theory connoisseur. We have, of course, a big complimentary color contrast with this bright yellow and dark saturated blue. That's the case for every hyacinth macaw, but, I mean, in this case, I especially like it because the colors are so clearly visible. Complimentary colors always draw attention to them, and they are naturally harmonious. So a hyacinth macaw is a very obvious and pleasing subject to paint. Now, you might say, but Duplo isn't the complimentary color of blue orange and the complimentary color of yellow purple? Because that's what people usually learn first when they get in touch with color mixing and color theory. And I'd have to say, Yes, you're technically correct, but I'm also right because color theory is not such an exact science that it really matters. You see, complimentary colors are simply colors that are so far away from each other on a color wheel that they have opposing psychological effects and therefore lots of tension between them. And due to the fact that there are slightly different color wheels, this can vary. Depending on which color wheel you use, the complimentary color of this dark, saturated blue is either a little bit more orange or a little bit more yellow. Both is possible. In fact, if I open up this image in Krita and I select the colors, then you can see this bright yellow and this dark blue are on the exact opposite side of the color wheel, which is an RGB color wheel in this case. So if you work with complimentary colors and, for example, search for a reference with them, then you don't have to be super precise. That really opens up many more possibilities. On a color wheel, you can always slightly shift left or right from a supposed exact complimentary color, and it will still be a complimentary color to your color. Looking for a reference that follows color theory in that way is always a good way to start. So I really recommend that you get into the basics of color theory if you really want to develop great compositions. So we definitely already have complimentary colors on our main subject that will draw attention to it automatically, and that's great. But the other type of contrast that I'm seeing here is a little bit harder to spot and more advanced, and that is a shape contrast. I really like the way that this parrot is sitting on the branch because they are very opposing. The branch is very burly and natural. It has like these, I don't know how to say, rough edges. And the parrot is super clean with more geometric shapes that are totally different to that branch. If we soom into that beak, it almost has this mathematically perfect rounding, and the feathers of the tail are completely straight. And that's something that looks really cool to me because it's a big contrast to these round and burly shapes of the branch. So I think it would be a cool idea to paint this hyacinth macaw with the branch that it's sitting on, and we can leave out the background and do something else there. Because if I think about it, this background not only doesn't really provide anything interesting, but it also wouldn't fit with our color scheme of complimentary colors. You see, we naturally have this nice contrast of yellow and blue already. So having this third main color green would disturb the color scheme. It would not be an official color scheme anymore, and it would draw a lot of attention away from this parrot. For example, if we had a more neutral background like black or white or gray, then the colors of our main subject, this parrot, would be a lot more intense because the colors follow a clean color scheme, and I think that would be super nice to have in our artwork. So I'm planning to leave this background out and replace it with something more neutral. Alright. So the idea currently is to just paint this hi synthmcw sitting on the branch. And depending on how big the canvas will be, we'll probably have to extend this branch a little bit, which will probably work because it's not that hard to do that with a branch. That is an absolutely realistic and common way to use a reference in art. It would be a little bit more difficult if, for example, our parrot was covered in some of these green leaves. So if we wanted to leave out these leaves due to them not following our color scheme, then it would be more difficult because we'd have to fill in these empty spaces on the parrot with our logic, which would probably lead to many mistakes. So this reference right here is perfect. We don't have anything covering the main subject. We can just paint it and leave out the stuff that we don't like. So I want you to download this reference right. Now, I'm going to put a link to the website in the description here. Got it. Well done. Now we have a great idea for an artwork. It's not completely done, of course. There are still some steps that we have to take until we can start. But in the next lesson, I want to sketch the colors and see what this actually looks like based on the idea that we have now and if there are a few more things that we can add. But, yeah, that's basically my example process for how you can arrive at a good idea. These are some of the criteria that I'm looking for in a reference, good colors, good shapes, some contrasts, obviously a subject that I like to paint. And I'm already thinking about changes that I could make to the artwork so it looks better than the reference. For example, if it follows color theory more precisely because a reference is just a tool and not a guideline. So I hope you guys are not overwhelmed because this lesson was a lot of theory, a lot of talking, but I want you to realize that in reality, this can happen a lot more quickly. These thoughts are very intuitive if you get into art a little bit more. You know, you scroll on the Internet looking for a reference, and suddenly, oh, nice colors, nice shapes, a clearly visible subject. That would make a great composition. Maybe I can leave out this random element so the picture follows a color scheme, and boom, that's already an idea. So even though this is like a ten minute video now, in reality, this process can happen in a few seconds. So I hope that I communicated some of these concepts and some of these thought processes well, and you understand my decision to use this reference and the general idea for the artwork. So in the next lesson, let's get a bit more specific with less talking and evolve our idea into an actual plan. 6. Planning the artwork: Planning the artwork. Now it's getting a bit more practical. In fact, this is the first lesson where I'm going to pull up Krita and make something. You should know the basics of Krita by now from our overview lesson. So you can participate here if you want. However, it's not necessary because this is not yet part of the actual artwork, but I'm just going to plan the composition precisely by making a color sketch or composition sketch, as I like to call it. Although I should mention if you've never worked with Krita before, this is probably a good way to practice it without any risk. So just follow me if you need that. We're going to put together a great composition based on our reference and a little bit of art theory. And I know at this point, you might ask yourself, is it really necessary to plan that much before making an artwork? I mean, we already have a ten minute lesson about finding an idea. So why are we doing this? I'd say, No, it's not necessary. We could just paint this hyacinthmic from reference, and we'd have a digital art course like any other. But I really insist on giving you this compositional stuff and teaching you frameworks to think about art differently, because this compositional stuff is exactly what separates a nice little painting from an outstanding artwork. So if you understand these principles from the very beginning and always work like this, then you'll have a bright future ahead as an artist. I'm very sure of that. So, listen, right now, we have an idea, but we don't have a composition. So how do we get from A to B? First of all, we have to know what we're making the composition for the format. Will it be a gift card? Will it be a vertical phone background? Will it be a square image? That will obviously be a big factor for how we should arrange our subjects. And I think for us, it makes the most sense to go with a high resolution wall paper that nicely fills out a computer screen, so you can use it as a desktop background or something. For that, I'm going to make a new image in Creta, by the size 3,840 by 2160, so standard for K. That will look really nice and crisp. So let's see what we can do here. I'm going to open up my reference on my second monitor, but you can probably see it somewhere here due to the magical editing of future Duplo. By the way, when you use a reference, the best is, of course, to open it up on another monitor. But if you don't have one, no problem. Use your phone, use a tablet, or print it out. There's also an option. You just have to be able to look at an image, so you should be able to arrange that somehow. I have full confidence in you. Alright, I'm going to block in the rough shapes of our main subject with correct colors. Again, this is not yet a sketch for the final artwork. I just want to see what our composition looks like so far and how we can complete it. So we have this hyacinth macaw, which is dark blue mostly like that. It's round, a bit elliptical, and it has a straight tail right here. Okay, looks pretty good. I just captured the rough shapes of the hyacinth macaw. But we also have a dark beak here. And a little bit of bright yellow here and here. By the way, it doesn't matter at all which brush you use here, as long as you can roughly recreate these basic shapes. Now, the hyacinth macaw sits on a branch, but because the branch is behind it, let me make a new layer below the subject layer by clicking on this plus here and moving it below the hyacinth macaw layer. Now we have two layers, so let's name them so we don't get confused later on. Parrot and branch. Alright, let's roughly paint that branch on the branch layer. Light, desaturated brown like this and many curves. Okay, it's going to look something like this. So I just painted this somewhere. But using the transformation tool, this one, we can now move our subject around and see where it fits best. But because the hyacinth macaw sits on the branch, we have to move them around together. So whatever layer you're on, you can hold down Control and click on the other layer, and then you have both of them selected, and then you can simultaneously transform them with a transformation tool. That's a little crea pro trick. So remember this, hold down Control and you can select trans for multiple layers at once. And using this transformation tool, we can adjust the size of our subject, too, which is, of course, also a key part of the composition. Now, of course, the hyacinth macaw will be our main subject. So I want to make it quite big, but not too big, maybe something like this. And then we'll have a bit more space on the right side to add something else. And now I can adjust the branch, so it comes nicely from outside the canvas and maybe it stops at the bottom with a few more curves like this. So let's say that there will be some ground that these branches can lay on. Okay, so this is basically how you progress through your whole color or composition sketch. This is how it works. You just roughly sketch the subjects and their carding colors, you move them around and you adjust their size. You can add stuff or take away stuff and optimize the colors until you end up with a composition that pleases you. Right here, I have an idea. I really like the small yellow bit because it's a huge contrast to the dark, saturated blue. So what if we made the background very dark? So this yellow can stand out even more? Because right now with this white background, it's not as visible. It's not such a huge contrast. But as I've said in the last lesson, I want a more neutral background to keep the complimentary color scheme. So I'm just going to go with very dark gray or black. And yeah, let me make a new layer below the other ones. Just use the fill bucket tool, very dark gray, click and oh, yeah, this yellow already pops way more, and I think this is a nice basis for our artwork. This dark background looks very cool and dramatic, and it transforms our yellow into a super intense accent. Nice. Okay, but let's maybe make the hyacinth macaw even a little bit bigger. You know, it's supposed to be the biggest parrot in the world, if I recall correctly, and it's our main subject. So yeah, I think something like this should be fitting. Let's see if that also works for the branch. Hm, yeah, maybe like this. Okay, now I think it's good. So what else can we do here? Well, for the ground in the background, I want something very simple, nothing too complicated, so we don't have to work too much on that, and we can keep our nice, dark background to ameliorate our subject. So I think the only thing I'm doing here is just add a grayish color transition for the floor on the bottom of the picture. So there's other stuff that can stand on it, and I'm going to do that on this background layer. Actually, I'm tilting my canvas a little bit for this by pressing four because I'm very bad at painting completely horizontal lines, and I prefer diagonal lines. So like this, I'm just making it easier for myself. And then I'm just making my gray a bit brighter and the brush a bit bigger, and I'm painting a smooth colour transition on the bottom of the image here. Now the nice thing is that we are still following a complimentary color scheme because even though we have light brown and light gray, these colors are so desaturated that it doesn't really matter. They do not disturb the blue and the yellow because they are so desaturated and not very intense. So if you've decided on a color scheme and you work on a composition, then everything that you add has to follow this color scheme. So it either has to be very desaturated or the same colors, which would be yellow or blue in this case. In fact, I could add some very dry desaturated leaves to this branch. But to be honest, I don't know yet if I want that, so I'm going to leave that open for the artwork. Maybe we'll add some leaves, maybe not. Anyways, we definitely need to add something on the right side here. There is a lot of empty space, as you can see, which is not necessarily bad, but I just feel like especially on the lower part here, there is just something missing that draws attention and gives the whole thing a little bit more life. And something that I feel like would fill out this space quite nicely is some flowers. But I don't want to add green grass where they grow from because that would disturb the colour scheme. So I think let's just put them in some flower pots. The good thing about flowers and flower pots is that they are very flexible. You can give a flower pot any color you want, and a flower can also almost have any color. So we can easily stick with our complimentary color scheme if we add the right flowers. So I think I know which kind of flower I want to add, but I'm going to let you guys guess which one it is. Which flower fits well with a hyacinth macaw. Of course, Roses. No, I'm just kidding. Hyacinths hyacinth his I'm German, so apologies, but yeah, obviously, it would be quite fitting to add some hyacinths to this artwork. So let me look them up. And yeah, as you can see, they have this very nice dark blue mostly. So they would fit perfectly. However, before we can pick any of these as an additional reference, if you already have a reference, it's very important to watch the lighting. For example, if the light on our parrot comes from the left and we add a flower pot where the light comes from the right, it's not going to be a very coherent artwork. You could, of course, pick a reference that has different lighting, but then you just manipulate it, so you change the direction of light and shadow to fit your other reference, but it's definitely always easier if you pick a reference that you can just replicate in terms of light and shadow. So let's see. In our first reference, the lighting seems quite neutral. It's not very extreme. If we look at the highlight and shadow areas, the light seems to come a little bit from above and behind our hyacinth macaw, which is good because I think most of these hyacinth references seem to match that. Now, looking at these potential references, you might ask yourself, but wouldn't we have to disturb our color scheme with the green leaves that all of these hyacinths have? And I'd have to say, yes, we definitely need to add a little bit of green in order to make these flowers realistic. But we have two options to minimize the damage that this could deal to our color scheme. Number one, as I've already said, we could desaturate the green heavily, so it's not very intense and therefore, it doesn't disturb anything. But looking at these references, most of them are very saturated, so it would not be fitting to desaturate it. But the other option is to reduce the amount of green in terms of volume. You know, most of the stuff that grows out of the flower pots shall be the blue blossoms. And we could just have a tiny little bit of green leaves between the blossoms and the flower pot, then it would also work. Because if you have a color scheme and you add a few other colors in the details, and they're just in the details, then it will still work as a color scheme. A color scheme only has to apply to the big parts that are important in an image. What you do to the tiny details in terms of color basically doesn't matter. That's another little color theory secret that gives you a lot of freedom if you apply it well. And this, of course, also works with other color schemes like tetradic analogous, split complimentary, whatever. So the more you know, the more options you have. Now let me add a few of these flower pots with hyacinths on top. Of course, on a new layer, so we can move them around. Actually, I don't think I need a specific reference for the hyacinths. By looking at their texture, I have basically internalized what they are supposed to look like, and I think I can replicate them quite well. So the flower pots will just be very desaturated, a little bit light brown like the branch. Then we'll have a tiny bit of green here for the leaves. And then the hyacinths, which are supposed to be a bit brighter on top, but it doesn't matter here for the composition sketch. We just have to remember it for the actual artwork. So we have consistent lighting there. Now, very last thing about color theory because I want a bit of variation in these hyacinths because only blue would be a bit boring here, I think. Of course, we could make some of them yellow because that's part of our color scheme. Let's have a look. Can a hyacinth be yellow? Okay, it looks like it. So let's add one flower pot that has bright yellow hyacinths. Of course, it doesn't matter if these yellow flowers exist in real life. You're an artist. You can do whatever you want here. But I just wanted to know if these exist. But also we can add a little bit of variety to these blue flowers and make some of them a little bit more purple because one, I think that makes it more interesting and two, it still fits with our color scheme. See, as long as you vary the hue only on one side of a complimentary color scheme, it still counts as a complimentary color scheme. So if we stick with this one type of yellow and don't shift anywhere near orange or green in our picture, then we can actually add a little bit of variation to the hue on the other side. And for example, add flowers that are a bit more on the purple side or, you know, details to the hyacinth macaw that a bit more on the light blue side, which we'd have to do anyways, if we look at the reference. This would also work the other way around. If we made a picture that has all sorts of warm colors from this orange to light green in this range here, and we add this one complimentary to it, which would be the dark blue, then it will also count as a complimentary color scheme, as long as we only have this one dark blue here and no other variations. So in a complimentary color scheme, you can always add a small range of hues, but only on one side. And now we're finally done with color theory. I promise. I just think about it a lot when I'm planning my compositions. Now, just a few last words about the arrangement of our elements. As you can see, I've added a few flower pots here on different layers, so I can move them around individually. So I'm going to do that now. As you can see, I can change the size and positioning of these flower pots, but I can also replicate them by copying and pasting these layers. So we have a few more pots, but we don't have to paint. So let's see what would be the best option here. Obviously, later on in the artwork, you can't just copy and paste elements like these flower pots because the viewers will notice that subconsciously or consciously, and it will heavily downgrade the quality of your artwork. So you should never copy and paste elements if you don't have a very good reason to do so. But right here in the composition sketch, we can do that without varies because some of these flower pots will look very simular and well, we just want to test the composition and see how many flower pots would be appropriate. Honestly, I don't have a good composition rule for that, so I'm literally just testing out different positions and different numbers, and I'm evaluating them based on what they feel to me. For that, you can see me zoom out once in a while, and generally, I'm working with the canvas being quite small, because that way I can keep track of the whole picture, and I can see how the colors work a bit better than if I'm zoomed in too much. That's a common tactic, even in traditional art. So people swear on stepping away from the canvas a little bit, so they can evaluate the composition better. Also, I think we should add two yellow flower pots at max because this yellow is really intense with a dark background. And if we add too many of them, then they might take away a little bit of attention from the hyacinth macaw. But like this, if it's maybe one or two, then they act as a nice balance. By the way, I also don't want to put any flower pots beneath the parrot because there is a branch, and I want to keep that relatively free. A main subject that's supposed to stand out should pretty much always have a little bit of empty space around it. So I think like this, it's pretty good with just this one flower pot on the very left side and the other one being crowded on the right. Also some of these flower pots should definitely be overlapping, like right here. So it looks a bit more three dimensional. All right. That's a cool and basic composition. But to spice it up a little bit, let's actually add a few hyacinths that have fallen on the ground. That's something that could definitely happen here when you have that many hyacinths around. I think I got better at pronouncing that. But yeah, I'm just adding a few yellow and blue and purple hyacinths to the ground just to give it a bit more detail and see what it looks like. Yeah, that's worked out quite well. Now, last but not least, let's simulate some of these shadows that we will obviously have here. Light comes from above, so let's paint a little bit of dark desaturated shadow underneath each of these elements. And boom, there we have it. I think this is a composition that we can work with. It's not too complicated, but it has super nice colors with a complimentary color scheme, but also a few value contrasts with this very bright yellow and the dark background. And our main subjects are clearly visible, so we can add lots of detail to them, and they will look super awesome. For example, in the artwork, we could add some subtle textures or patterns to these flower pots. We'll see about that. But yeah, for now, I think we have a really good plan. So in our artwork, we can completely focus on painting, and we don't have to make any boring decisions about composition anymore and re evaluate everything. That work is done, and it shall not be underestimated, even though we haven't even started with the actual artwork yet. This composition will save us a lot of time and mental energy later on. I'm going to save this composition as an image that I can look at during the creation process, but I'm probably going to put it in the description here so you can download it in case you haven't made it yourself. So whether you participated or not, I hope that you understood this decision making process and the reasons for why I'm doing something like this. If you want an outstanding artwork, it often makes sense to plan it in advance. You want to see how everything fits together, make sure you have good colors and contrasts, some empty space to frame stuff and direct the eyes of the viewers, et cetera. And you can model this with a simple composition sketch like this. So if you think that you understand these core ideas of planning an artwork, you can move on to the next lesson. 7. Choosing the brushes: Okay, guys, one very last preparation lesson before we start with the artwork because we have to choose our brushes. I don't always do this, but it's actually fun and also helpful if you don't already have a lot of experience with Krita brushes, and you don't know which ones are good. So you can get a little insight into what I'm thinking about when selecting the brushes, and maybe you'll find your new favorite ones here. Who knows? Alright, like the colors and shapes, I like to roughly sketch the textures before starting a painting. So I'm choosing the brushes beforehand and adding them to a brush tag. This is so we can easily access our brushes later on by right clicking, and we don't have to search for them. You can see if you right click with a brush on the canvas, you can quickly access all these different brush sets here, like digital erasers, whatever. So let's get right into it. The first brush I want to use is pretty much always this one, this sketching brush, pencil for soft. It's my favorite. I know it works for what I need it for, so I don't need to do any experimentation. I'll just use this brush. I know that already. You see, it's this very smooth pencil brush. You can make thin and precise lines with it, which is absolutely what we need for our sketch. So I'm going to right click on the brush in the brush list, assigned to tag. And then down here at the bottom, you can create a new tag by typing in a name, let's say, hyacinth, and then you can click on this plus and you have a new tag. Nice. So onto the next one. Now we have to choose the painting brushes. You know, the ones that the viewers of the artwork will actually see in the end. So yeah, those are really important. The selection of your brushes obviously heavily depends on the style in which you want to draw or paint. Krita offers you many different styles. But I think I'm going with a somewhat impressionistic, realistic style. So something in between that. So I want some brushes where you can ideally see bristles and textures, but I still want to be able to create clean shapes with them. So I'm immediately scrolling down to this section here where we find the RGBA, RGBA wet and Meo impaso brushes. Because from my experience, these brushes work very well for that, and I already know many of them quite well. Let's look for a brush with which we could paint the hyacinth macaw. Looking at the reference for the hyacinth macaw, I see that it has many subtle color transitions from light to dark. So it would make sense to truss brush that automatically mixes the paint and also creates smooth transitions. So this narrows down our search to the RGBA wet and M Lo impasto brushes. These RGBA brushes are also nice in terms of texture, but as you can see, if I scribble with different colors here, they don't automatically mix the paint, but they just overlay it. But with the RGBA brush, for example, with this one, you can see it automatically creates a transition, and I think that's exactly what we need. This is also the case for these mimi Leo impaso brushes which simulate very thick paint. So let's choose some dark, hyacinth blue, and imagine what we could paint with here. So this one has a really nice texture, but well, it's a little bit too chaotic and it's hard to be precise with this brush. So it probably doesn't work for this parrot. And this one. Oh, actually, I really like this brush. We can create some transitions, and it varies in size a little bit, so we can make some precise brush strokes. Let's simulate a little feather texture here. And yeah, this works very well. I think I'm adding this one to the hyacinth tag. Right click assigned to tag hyacinth. Here we go. And now, if I right click and select this hyacinth tag, then you can already see we got the two chosen brushes here. Also, I think this brush is so precise that it would also work for the flower pots, maybe, and also the leaves of the hyacinth. But the hyacinths themselves, I don't think so. We'll need something else for that. So let's scribble a little bit with different brushes and simulate some hyacinths. For that, I'm already including a few different colors because obviously we'll have highlights and shadows, so it won't just be one color for the hyacinth, but I'm also looking for how these brushes mix the paint and what the textures look like with a few different colors, like lighter and darker ones. So I think I like this one very much, this purple one, very fitting. But yeah, I'm going to assign it to our hyacinth tag. And then let me look for something for the flower pots. Obviously, you can also use multiple brushes in one texture. For example, you make up the feathers of the hyacinth macaw of three different brushes, but that's a little bit more advanced, and it's harder to make it work than if you just stick with one brush because the texture will be more defined, and it might look a little bit too chaotic in the end if you don't know what you're doing, and you use multiple brushes. So let's keep the number low here. In the end, we can always scribble a little bit on top with other brushes and see if we like that. And if we don't be able to undo it. For the base texture of the flower pots, I think I'll be using this RGBA wet brush. Because it's vertical, you can create these very nice cylinders, and that's what we need for a flower pot. And for the background and the floor, I just want a very smooth and subtle texture, and I already know two brushes that work very well for that always. And that's these two Mm Leo impasto brushes. So let me also add them to the tag. And yeah, I think now we got a good selection. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel and test every brushing crea. Sometimes you can also just rest to the ones that you know. So I hope you trust me, these brushes are really nice. And actually, now we are ready to start with the artwork. So make sure you also have this brush tag with these brushes, and then you can move on to the next lesson. I. 8. Sketching the subject: Alright, now we have a cool idea. We found a good arrangement for the composition, and we've chosen fitting brushes. So there is nothing standing in our way, and we can start making the actual artwork. Let's create a new document by the size 3,840 by 2160, standard four k wallpaper, just as we've planned. I'm going to make this as realistic and unfiltered as I can without making it boring. I'm not going to cut everything out, so the process looks artificially perfect, like, Oh, digital art is so easy and fun and everything works first try. No, we're going to experiment, adjust and probably fix a lot of mistakes, just like it is always for every artist at every level. Because digital art is not just about following a plan, but also about flexible problem solving. So I'm going to demonstrate how to do that. And the first thing you should do if you want to make something with a little bit of complexity is sketching. That simply means using a light pencil to sketch the rough outlines and shapes. So you will know where all the actual brush strokes should go later on. This is just as helpful in digital art as it is in traditional. Of course, you don't always have to make a sketch. For example, if you just want to chill and make something simple, or you want to see the composition unfold as you go, like an abstract art, for example, you know, that's also a way to do it. Not every great artwork in history is based on a sketch. So it would be untruthful to say that you always have to make one. However, sketching is still something that I highly recommend because it just makes the whole process so much easier. Plus, having this sketch first makes it more likely that you actually finish your painting, at least from my experience, because while making your sketch, you're naturally already visualizing the finished composition and how everything fits together. So by starting with a sketch, it becomes easier to keep your focus later on because you always know what you're working on and how that fits in the bigger picture. Literally, so yeah, without further ado, let's do the sketching. Actually, because we're going to have a black background in our final artwork, let's already fill the first layer with black, and then we can sketch in white. I think that's really cool because it already sets the mood, and it's really refreshing to sketch white on black once in a while, in my opinion. For that, I'm simply using the fill bucket tool, this one, selecting black as the main color, and then just clicking. So we have our clean, dark background layer, and then we can go to the brush tool right click, select our sketching brush, and then white. But before we draw anything, let's make a new layer by clicking on this plus icon, then double click it and call it sketch. That's very important to remember. Always put your sketch on a separate layer where you have nothing else. Otherwise, it would not be possible to delete it later on without dealing damage to the artwork. Alright. Now we can sketch white on black, see everything clearly, and always move stuff around or delete it if we don't like it. Many artists don't realize that you can actually do this often because they come from traditional art, and there it's very difficult to work like this. You know, you would need a black paper and, like, chalk or something, and it's just not as precise. But in digital art, you can do whatever you want, right? So why not try out something different? I'm going to start with the hyacinth macaw because that's probably the most difficult part, and then we got it out of the way. So I'm opening up my reference with the parrot. I'm going to show it somewhere here with the editing software. And let's go. By the way, I think it's the best if you always watch a bit ahead and listen to my explanation of a step, and then you do it after me. So, are you ready? The first thing I think about inner sketch is always the big shapes. I'm looking at the reference, and I ask myself, how could I break it down into big, simple geometric shapes? You know, stuff like straight lines, ellipses, circles or triangles and rectangles. Right here, our hyacinth macaw is mainly one big ellipsis. I hope you can all see it. So let me draw that very lightly, a rough ellipsis that somewhat resembles the torso of our hyacinth macaw. And then let's apply a little more pressure to make it a bit more defined. So a bit more narrow on the left side like this. And then if we zoom out, I think this is pretty good. So let me use the transformation tool and move it to the place where we want the hyacinth macaw. The transformation tool, in my opinion, is absolutely essential when sketching because you can precisely change the angles, the scale, and therefore, all the proportions of what you want to paint later on. And it's very important that you get those right while sketching. This is also why I'm using undo and redo a lot, as you can see here. Later, when we were painting, I'm going to dial it back a little bit because I think undoing and redoing too much can make you go crazy. But in this sketch, I really want to get all the proportions very good. So I'm really paying attention here. Basically, sketching means estimating distances and putting your best guess down on the paper. You're just looking at the big shapes and asking yourself, how big should this circle be compared to that ellipsis, and what are the distance and the angle that they have in relation to each other. And how long should this line be compared to that line? And what are the angles? You want to roughly estimate and then replicate that for all the important parts of your subject. And so far, it's not really important how big the subject is or where it's positioned on the canvas. As you can see, right now, it's not at all like it is in our composition sketch, but we can change all of that later on with a transformation tool. So right now, we only want to focus on the relative positioning of the elements that we have, the beak and how big it is compared to the head, the head, and how big it is compared to the torso and the distance it has from it and all that stuff. And we do all of that with very light and scribbly lines just so we know where everything goes later on. And naturally, as you're estimating angles and distances and you're putting many, many guesses on the paper, you will have many, many lines. So once in a while, I like to activate eraser mode by either pressing E or clicking on this eraser icon, and I'm erasing all the lines that I don't need anymore because I got a better one. That is a good way to keep an overview because you don't want your sketch to be too crowded with too many lines. Otherwise, when we add too many lines to our sketch, it's going to be difficult to look through it during the painting process because we want to put the paint underneath the sketch. So you pretty much only want the precise outlines and some other important shapes. For example, right here, I still have this curvature of the ellipsis, which indicates where the wing starts because we can also clearly see that curve in our reference, so I want to keep it. When sketching, stay relatively zoomed out or at least zoom out pretty often because that is the best way to keep track of all the proportions. Right here, I think the distance in scaling between the head and the torso is not very good, so I'm simply using this lasso selection tool to select the area of the neck and the head. Like this, Control C, delete and Control V to copy, delete and paste it onto a new layer, and then I can adjust it a little bit with the transformation tool. That's a very useful little trick for sketching. So right here, as you can see, I'm just fixing the angle a little bit. Then I'm merging my two layers together by pressing Control E, so it's on one layer again. And then I'm simply fixing the connection of the lines. Now it's time for the tail feathers, the last big shapes here. But I first wanted to add a bit more detail to the other shapes. So I know where these tail feathers go exactly. I am making very fast brush strokes to get these lines as straight as I can. You could, of course, also use the line tool for this if you want to these lines to be perfectly straight and precise. But I think that would be unnecessary because it's actually quite fun to draw these lines. So now it's time for just a little bit more detail on the bottom part of our parrot. Like the feet, which should go somewhere here. And yeah, as you can see, it's gotten very chaotic again, so I'm once again switching to eraser mode and erasing a few unnecessary lines. Also, the angle of the feathers in the back need a little bit of fixing. Nice. Now, onto the eye, the eye is very important, no matter if you're painting an animal or a human, because if the eye is just a little bit off, your subject looks totally different. So it will probably take you a few goes to position the eye correctly here. Okay, nice. Now I'm going to do some final fixes, maybe erase some unnecessary lines and indicate a few more of these feathers. And actually, I think this is it. This is definitely something that has the proportions of a hyacinth macaw. Just let me scale and transform it a bit so it looks a little more like in our composition sketch. And then I'm going to draw the branch underneath it. Also, very light lines, very scribbly, but the good thing about this branch is that it's a branch, and therefore we can play around with it and adjust it to our liking without making it look off. Around the hyacinth macaw, I'm definitely replicating the shapes of the branch in the reference because they just look super awesome in my opinion, but I'm making it so the branch comes from outside the picture on the left side, and we have a ground in our composition, unlike in the reference. So we have to improvise some branch ends here that fall onto the ground. Don't forget to save your artwork once in a while once you've completed a few steps. Krita creates automatic Save files. So in case your computer crashes or something, you don't lose all your progress. But of course, not every second. So save it manually as a Krita document, so you don't lose your layers, give it a name so you can find it, and then you can continue whenever you want. And you know what? I think this is a very usable sketch. So make sure yours looks something like this. And because this lesson is kind of long, let's sketch the rest of our composition in the next lesson because even though we've now done the most difficult part of the sketching, there are still a few things that are very important. 9. Sketching the composition: Okay, we got the main subject. Now we have to sketch the rest of the composition and determine where everything goes. Of course, we already have a composition sketch, so we know pretty well what we have to do. But now it's very important that we find the final arrangement of all the elements and sketch them accordingly. Because after we start painting, it won't be possible anymore to transform all the elements as we wish. If we did that, they would lose a little bit of quality. Let me show you. You can see if I paint this precise color transition like this, look at it, and then I use the transformation tool to scale it and move it around a bit. See, it's not a sharp anymore, and it has a little bit of that blur, and we definitely don't want that in our final artwork. Now, don't worry. You can still move around painted elements. But if you do it a lot, they will pretty much always lose a little bit of quality, and you might have to paint over them. This is the actual reason why I find it very helpful to plan the composition beforehand and then make a sketch. Because the sketch will not be visible in the final artwork, it doesn't matter at all if these lines here get a little bit blurry, so we can freely adjust it. This right here, the sketching is pretty much the final stage in the process where you can freely determine the composition if you want optimal quality in the final result. It's very important that you're aware of this when you make digital art. So let's go. I'll start by sketching the ground, which I will indicate with a simple horizon line. But I want to do it on a new layer, I'm going to call it ground. The ground or horizon line is always something that I sketch pretty much at first because it's easy, and once you have it, it's a really good reference for placing the other elements. But generally, there is no real rule for what you sketch first. I usually like to start with the horizon line or with the main subject, like right here. Make your horizon line very thin and put it right about here. If you hold down shift while using the line tool, which you should definitely do here, then you can make this line perfectly horizontal. Nice. In the end, we can merge all these sketch layers into one sketch layer and then paint the rest underneath it. But for now, we have to find the perfect composition and be able to adjust everything for that. So every new element that you add to the sketch should be on a separate layer. By the way, now that we've sketched the main subject, we technically don't need our reference anymore until the painting. So I'm going to replace it with a composition sketch and look at that for the rest of the sketching here. We could look up a reference for the hyacinths, but I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to handle those by ourselves. We'll just have to think a little bit and fulfill a few criteria. Light from above, some variation in the hues, little shadow underneath, and very little green. But most of these criteria are only important during the painting. So let's just add some simple flower pots, of course, on different layers, so we can move them around. In order to keep an overview, I'm going to rename all these sketch layers to contain the word sketch, so we know exactly which ones to merge together in the end. I'm going to add another layer between ground and sketch called pot sketch one, because I already know that there will be multiple. So we can switch to our brush and add a little pot. So dynamic, roughly symmetrical lines. And it doesn't really matter where they're positioned now because we can move these pots around, of course. But, yeah, it should look something like this with these little curves at the bottom and the top. These curves bend downwards because we're looking from above at these pots as the viewers of this artwork. Alright, time for the transformation tool. I'm going to move the pot here, and then I'm going to copy and paste it onto a new layer and call it pot sketch, too, because I don't want to repeatedly draw this pot with these nice, precise lines. I think this one looks pretty good, so I'm just going to replicate it as many times as I need. By the way, I'm quickly going to the ground sketch layer and lowering the opacity because this line is kind of intense and it annoys me a bit. Alright, now back to the pots. As you can see, I'm simply copying and pasting the original flower pot onto new layers, and then I'm moving them around and changing their size with the transformation tool. So the arrangement somewhat resembles the one that we have in our composition sketch. I think it's definitely a good idea to give these flower pots all a little bit different sizes because otherwise, it's going to look way too monotonous. This is also the case if you paint stones or trees, for example, always give them slightly different sizes unless you have a very good reason to do so. Like your trees are in an alley or you paint humans that are obviously very similar in size or something like that. But generally, if you make up a composition that's supposed to look pleasing, give your elements different sizes because that leads to a natural curve that kind of guides the eye of the viewers. As you can see right here, these pots on the right, they have kind of this downward curve if you look at their top edges. And this is most of the time more satisfying to look at than if all the elements magically align because that can feel very off and just unnatural. Alright, now the pots are aligned quite nicely, so I'm going to scribble a few hyacinths on each according layer, just like that. Very simple. I'm not even sketching the leaves here because there will be very few of them. And technically, we don't have to sketch these hyacinths necessarily because we'll know where they go because of the pods. But I want to see how this detail and this density that these hyacinths provide fits in the composition. Make sure that you add a little bit of variation to these hyacinths and give them slightly different angles and sizes so they don't all just grow straight up in a line. I mean, of course, the hyacinths could have been arranged like that by people, but I think that would be less interesting for our composition. I want a little bit of density and chaos here. And I think this density fits very well in here. Some of these flowers, however, seem a little bit too small to me compared to the parrot. So I'm once again adjusting some of these layers with a transformation tool. But also, I think our hyacinthmac is a little bit too big if we look at the composition sketch. So I'm also adjusting it here. It should be something like that, not too big, so it's still realistic in comparison to these flowers, but also not too small because it's our main subject. So I think this could work here with the tail feathers just barely stopping before this spot on the left side. Okay, let's rearrange these flower pots a little bit more. I'm even copying and pasting one of them because I just want a little bit more detail here. Also, I feel like if we want to add two flower pots with yellow flowers, they should not make up more than a third. So I want seven flower pots in total, at least, because this yellow is supposed to be something special. So I'm also thinking about stuff like that, like how the colors could be arranged later on. But don't worry. That's very specific and just what I'm thinking. So your flower pots could also be arranged a little bit differently. I just think it would be very good if they ascend in height on average, the more you go to the right side. So we have this falling line on top that leads the eyes of the viewers toward the center. So something like this. Okay, now that we've transformed the subject layer, we can see that the branch doesn't extend all the way to the edge anymore. So let's fix that on our subject sketch layer. Remember that branches always get smaller and smaller the further they grow, so we have to make this one a little bit thicker as it comes from outside here. I think this downward curve is pretty pleasing because it somewhat mirrors these curve branches on the floor. And while I'm at it, I'm experimenting by adding a little branch that first grows downward and then upward. So it grows over our hyacinth macaw and kind of frames it. But just a little bit, so we still have empty space there. So just a few smaller branches here, and let's make it grow outside the canvas again. And actually, I think I quite like this. So we could also extend this branch and add a few leaves in our painting. Of course, no green leaves because that would be too much green and disturb our colour scheme, but maybe some dried out desaturated leaves or no leaves and just branches. We'll see about that. So let me just add a few smaller branches at the bottom to keep the style of this tree consistent. And actually, I think now this is exactly the composition that I want to work with. We have some nice lines that guide the eyes of the viewers around. We have some empty spaces to frame our main subject and some additional interesting elements like these overlapping branches and flower pots. We've talked a lot about composition and ended up with a relatively simple sketch. But I hope that you still learned a lot from this. Some people like to sketch more, some like to sketch less. It's all on you and what you can work with best. That's going to show over time with experimentation. Personally, I think this right here is well in the middle between being super rough and very detailed. We get some elements from both wells, I think. Anyways, we can definitely use this to add some nice and colorful paint now. So let's save this and do that in the next lesson. 10. Painting the parrot: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived. We're going to add paint to the hyacinth macaw. Since this is our main subject, it's probably going to be the most important lesson of this course. I mean, okay, that obviously depends on what you're here for. For you, the most important lesson could be the creator overview or planning the composition. That's also pretty important, in my opinion. But from a practical point of view, this right here is the real deal. This is where we are going to score all the points in our artwork. The main subject that draws attention and looks realistic, I hope. And yeah, let's just start. I hope you all have your hyacinth brush tag with these brushes, and of course, we will need the reference. I'm going to do my best and show it somewhere on the screen here, but if that's too small for you, then you can, of course, look at it in another way, for example, by printing it out. In order to start painting, we have to create, of course, a new paint layer, so we don't blur it together with the sketch. But if we look over at the layer docker, then we can see we already have all these different sketch layers, and if we add many paint layers as well, it's going to be quite confusing. So I'm going to induce a little bit of order by clicking on the small arrow next to the plus here and add a group layer on top of all the other layers. And then we can mark all the sketch layers by clicking on the first, holding down shift, and then clicking on the last one, not the background paint layer. And then we can drag all of these layers into the group layer. So this group layer is our new sketching layer where all of the different sketches are. But we don't have to look at all of them at once all the time, but we can just click on this arrow here to show or hide them. So you can still edit all your layers individually, but you can also transform them all at once. For example, by lowering the opacity of the whole group here, which I'm going to do so I can see the paint underneath more clearly. So set the opacity of your group layer to about 50 or 60% or so, just so you can still see these lines, but they are less intense than before. So yeah, I think now this is pretty good. I'm going to make a new layer above the background layer and underneath the sketch layer and call it hyacinth macaw. Now we are all set to right click with a brush and go to our hyacinth brush tag, which you hopefully all have by now and select this blue brush that we've chosen for the parrot. Now we can start by blocking in the base color, which of course is this very dark, saturated, slightly purplish, hyacinth blue. Damn, that was a long description, but you can of course also just look at my color selector. But generally, what you should do now in order to select your colors is look at the reference because all we're going to do in this lesson is try to recreate the higher synthmc that we see in the reference. So you should look at the reference more than at me painting. Of course, still pay attention and listen to these little tips and explanations that I'm going to give, but keep the bigger goal in mind to recreate what you see in the reference and not what I'm painting. This is just my example process for doing that. Alright, first important principle here. Always work from the bigger shapes to the smaller shapes. So right here in this first step, you can see, I'm literally just blocking in the same blue everywhere where the hyacinth macaw is blue. So just filllo the edges that you've defined with your sketch with blue. The precise tone of the blue is also not that important because we're going to add lots of detail on top of this. As you can see, I also switched up midway, but it should represent the average color that you see in the reference. Useful trick, of course, for filling something with a color. Make the brush on the edges smaller, so you're more precise and in the middle bigger, so you're more efficient. Because the sketch is pretty good in this case, I'm simply precisely following these outlines here. But you should definitely sometimes deactivate the sketch layer by clicking on this eye icon to compare your general shape to the one that you see in the reference if it still fits. I think this is pretty good. Let me activate the sketch layer again and add a little bit more blue here where the feet begin because I can see that in the reference. That is the first step that you should complete now. Just put blue everywhere where this hyacinth macaw is blue and make sure the general shape is accurate. Once you have that, let's move on and add a little bit more detail because that is how you always proceed when painting from reference. You add more and more layers of detail to the subject that you're working on. Let me explain this. The first layer of detail that I'm seeing here would be the hyacinth macaw is blue, so I add blue everywhere. And the second layer of detail would be, it's a bit darker blue on the bottom and brighter blue at the top. So I'm trying to find this average dark blue by looking at the reference and then the color selector. It could be like here, still saturated, of course, maybe a little bit more purple. And then I'm blocking in that second layer of detail still with quite big brass strokes. So you can see I'm scribbling here roughly in the direction of the feathers, this darker blue. And then let's make it even darker. The brush a little bit smaller to be more precise. And then let's continue at the head. There I can see right now there is a little bit more defined darkness. So I'm blocking that in right now. And then I'm going back to the torso and putting that darker blue everywhere where I think it belongs. So that's also a little bit on the tail feathers here. And a little bit on the bottom where the feet begin. And maybe like this in the middle. You can see it's probably already too much dark blue, but we can fix that later on. No problem. We're still pretty much just trying to get a feel for recreating the shapes and using the brush. It's always good. If you start an artwork by not thinking too much, just get started, block in those first layers of detail, which are not very detailed, of course, and just try to get used to that brush if it's a new one to you. So once you got that, I think we can move on to the beak, and of course, first fill it with the average color that we see, which is maybe this dark gray here. Even though we are not painting lots of detail yet, we want to get the outlines of the general shapes very precisely now because that's going to help us a lot later on when we want to find out where to place all that detail. So I'm making my brush very small and filling out the beak with this gray, short and precise brush strokes to first define the edges and then fill out the rest with the color. Then the bottom part of the beak, I guess, it's the jaw of the parrot is a little bit darker, so I'm making the gray a bit darker and then putting that color there. Same thing. Okay, and while we're at it, maybe also a little bit of chaos and detail on that other part of the beak. Let me deactivate the sketch to have a look, and okay, that's already going somewhere. You should always deactivate your sketch layer once in a while to just look at the picture and evaluate the proportions as they are, because this sketch can obviously always confuse you a little bit because those lines cover your painting. So right here, I'm already fine tuning the edge of the beak without even having the sketch layer activated because it would cover these outlines, and I wouldn't be able to tell where the beak ends and the background begins, if you know what I'm saying. The sketch layer is important, but it gets less and less important the further you go in your painting. In order to add more detail to the beak, for example, I don't need the sketch layer at all because that one is only useful to determine where the beak is and what the shape of the beak is. But what's happening inside the beak, the smaller details, highlights and shadows. That's something that we have to find out now by looking at the reference, and the sketch layer doesn't provide us with any information for that. It would only confuse us. So you can also break with the tradition of working in layers of detail if you have an element that is very separate from the rest and you feel like you have the capability to finish that element now, like this beak, for example, which I actually think is finished at this point. If I zoom out, I think it looks quite like in the reference. So let's move back to the feathers and continue by making the hyacinth macaw a little bit brighter on top because that is one of the biggest differences that I see right now in the reference and our current painting. That is a very useful question actually that you can ask yourself if you're confused where to continue. What is the biggest difference between the reference and my painting right now? And this is precisely why this is just an example process for painting from reference, because the biggest difference that you see right now could be something totally different, you know? You could now paint the dark feathers on the bottom or the eye or the tail feathers. There is no exact rule for what you should paint first. Just the best thing that I can tell you here is work in these layers of detail. But then you can, of course, also break with that if you feel very confident for a separate element, like the beak in this case. The more I'm painting here, the more I'm understanding this brush. It's a really nice one, I must say. And therefore, my confidence in using it to create detail is also getting bigger. So here and there, I'm already adding a few smaller feathers, where I see them in the reference. You just have to start by scribbling with roughly correct colors in these first layers of detail, and then you will naturally find yourself getting more confident with the brush, and you are ready to add a little bit more detail, usually by making the brush smaller. And that is basically how we are going to proceed through this entire process of painting from reference. Right here, as I'm activating the sketch layer again, I'm noticing that I'll have to define the curve of the wing a little bit more. You see, for stuff like that, the sketch layer is still helpful once in a while. And yeah, currently, I'm not very happy with the hue of the blue on this wing, so I'm painting over it with a slightly different blue. By the way, for selecting your colors, never select colors from the reference. I know there are fancy tools in these digital art softwares nowadays, where you can select colors from elsewhere on the screen, but never ever do that. Always estimate the colors yourself and put your best guess on the canvas until it fits. Because if you just select colors with the color picker tool, for example, first of all, you don't learn anything about colors and you don't get better at thinking about color, but also you might just pick the totally wrong color because screens and images are made out of pixels, and those can look very different even if they're directly next to each other. I'm not going to go into the technical details of that. Just remember, always pick the colors yourself. That's really important. By the way, I hope you don't get confused by me rotating the canvas a lot. I just really like doing that. Feels more comfortable to me. Once again, you can tilt your canvas to the left by pressing four, tilt it to the right, by pressing six, and neutralize it by pressing five. You don't have to do that, but you might find out at some point that you also find this more comfortable. So maybe just try this out for some angles of painting. Alright, at this point, the outlines of the whole bird are very precise and actually very accurate, I think. We even got some more detailed highlights on top and on the wing. So now let me activate the sketch layer again and take care of the feet once again with gray. I'm first blocking in this average gray that I'm seeing in the reference to create the basic shapes. And then I'm adding a little bit more detail. In this case, there is not a lot of detail on these feet, just some slightly different grays. So I'm just really focusing on getting the basic shapes right, and then I'm just putting some slightly different grays on top of that to make it look a little bit more varied. And I'm taking care of the transition area between the feet and the torso as well. As you can see, it's a little bit brighter on the right side. And if I deactivate the sketch, it looks pretty good. So now let's add a few more detailed feathers. And since this brush is really fitting for that, I think I'm going to make it a little bit bigger and paint the feathers with individual brush strokes. So approximately like that, a little bit brighter blue, a little bit less saturated. And then I'm adding these feathers with relatively low pressure on my drawing tablet directly with these individual brushstrokes. I think that works very well here because this brush varies its size and its opacity both at the same time if you vary the pressure on your drawing tablet. Not every brush can do that, so I'm very happy that we chose that one. As you can see, it's really versatile here. And, come on, look at that. That's already really nice. I'm going to admit I think I got really lucky here with this layer of detail, but maybe also this brush is just awesome. So maybe it works equally well for you. Anyways, it should look something like this before we move on to some smaller details. As you can see, we already have a relatively consistent feather texture by literally just scribbling with the correct colors in the direction that these feathers grow, very nice. So I'm looking at the reference now. What is the big difference? Aside from the eye and the yellow part? I don't really want to paint that yet. But yeah, to me, there are a few darker parts that really stand out these very small, almost black lines. So I'm making my brush very small, and I'm trying to place them where I see them. And then I think the edge here needs to fade a little bit into the black, you know, on this tail feather here. And then I'm trying to add a few more precise lines on this hyacinth macaw. As you can probably tell, in terms of layers of detail, we've already arrived at pretty detailed stuff. So I'm adding more and more directional brush strokes to these feathers, and I'm always zooming out to evaluate them. Okay, time for the thing that we've worked on the least yet, which is these long tail feathers here. And for those, you can see, I'm working with very fast and dynamic brushstrokes. I think that's going to look really good in the end. Okay, maybe, like, a little bit of gray detail on the bottom here, as the reference tells us. And yeah, at the top here, there are these two round feathers that really annoy me, and I have to put on lots of layers of detail to make them work. Look at that. Now I feel ready to add the big contrast, the yellow part and the eye. We could have added it a little bit earlier, for example, while working on this beak, we could have directly made this yellow brushstroke here. But honestly, I was in a really good flow for painting these feathers, so I did not want to break it. Now, however, I'm pretty content with the feathers and I wouldn't directly know how to continue them. So that is a perfect moment to move on to something else, this yellow. So very bright, completely saturated yellow. So it's the biggest contrast possible. And then with some small and precise brush strokes, I am placing this yellow bit, and it immediately didn't work out, so I'm undoing it to try again. For this yellow part next to the beak, I'm really zooming out a lot, and I'm putting in many layers until it really looks like in the reference because I know as an artist and a designer that this yellow will stand out a lot. And if it has the wrong shape or the wrong color, that will be very noticeable in the final result. Bright yellow like this is not only a strong complimentary color to the dark blue, but it's also the brightest hue on the color wheel. So with our black background, it's going to pop even more. Both a hue and value contrast will make all the yellow bits in this artwork stand out a lot. So they have to be on point. And I'm taking a lot of time here, even though this yellow bit is actually just a curve. Okay, then it is time for the I. But you know what? I don't feel very confident in placing it correctly, so I'm going to make a new layer called I. Whenever you add an element where you already know that you will most likely have to move it around and make adjustments, just put it on a new layer to be safe. So right here, I'm first blocking in this yellow for the outline. And then I'm trying to add the black for the eye. Plus, we have a tiny bit of reflections in this eye, which I'm adding with white. Small brush and very low pressure. Now it's time for the transformation tool to put this eye in the right place. That's why I've put it on a separate layer. Always zoom out so you can evaluate better. And I think this is perfect. So let me just add a little bit more reflections in here. That's going to make our bird look a lot more alive. Of course, these reflections should be at the top part of the eye because light comes from above. Now I'm making a few more adjustments to the yellow bit next to the beak. I noticed that there should be a bit more of a curve at the top. So adjust the eye and the yellow part until they really fit. Now I'm pretty confident that this looks like the reference. So I'm going back to the hyacinth macaw and adding more detail. The reference tells me that there are a few dark parts left to the eye, so I'm adding those. Then, in order to add highlights to the curvature of the head, I'm using a few tricks. First, I'm locking the transparency of the layer so I cannot paint over the edge by clicking on this checker pattern on the layer here. So now I can add these small bright brass strokes, and I cannot paint over the edge. That's very useful if you want to just add highlights or shadows to something. But now, as you can see, the curve is not as smooth anymore, so I'm activating eraser mode and smoothening it out. I don't know if that's even a word, but I hope you know what I mean. Nice. Now, look at this. This is already a pretty decent hyacinth macaw, if you ask me. Now I'm going to add just a few more detailed feathers on top with this very saturated deep blue. I think that looks very cool. We're still always doing the same thing. Look at the reference, ask what's the biggest difference, then implement it and create visual consistency by moving further and further like that. Sometimes if you zoom out, which you should definitely do every now and then, you will notice that a change that you've made may not look good. Like right here, all these deep blue feathers, I think they're a little bit too saturated. So I'm undoing many brush strokes here. Remember that you cannot undo as many brushstrokes as you like. At some point, Krita doesn't store them anymore, so it's always better to work in relatively small steps and not add too much stuff at once without evaluating it for a moment. That is one specific important advice that I can give you here. Otherwise, this detail phase is very subjective. You can work in a completely different order to mine here. You just always look at the reference, search for difference that you have to implement, and then implement it. First, concerning the bigger shapes and then the smaller shapes. You just keep going like that and stay patient for every layer of detail until you arrive at a level of detail that you like. And right here, I'm just adding a few more thin lines to highlight some of these outlines of the feathers, just to make them stand out a bit more. And then that's pretty much it for the feather texter. I think it looks really cool. So I am very content with my hyacinth macaw at this point. But I just think it should have a little bit more brightness on top, but I don't want to mess up the detail that I have there by painting over it. So I'm making use of another trick that I really like in digital art. First, unlocking the transparency of the hyacinth macaw layer. Then I'm scrolling all the way up to select this airbrush. Then some very bright blue like this, make the airbrush a bit smaller because it's pretty massive. And then I can just add these smooth highlights on top with very low pressure, a little bit. And yeah, it's already too much. Let me undo that in the middle here. I should probably make that brush even smaller, just like that. Nice. Then let me add a few shadows also with this brush by switching to black, and then I can paint just a little bit underneath here to increase the value contrast. I highly recommend that you remember this brush in case you need some smooth highlights and shadows when fine tuning something. It's very useful and I use it a lot. Now I think this is the hyacinth macaw, isn't it? This looks pretty much like the bird from our reference. We could make some more adjustments, of course, by adding a few more feathers or fixing some edges. But honestly, you don't have to do everything at once. For now, I think I'm absolutely finished with this hyacinth macaw. I've looked at it a lot, and I'm very content with it now. So I'm going to move on to another element of our painting, and then in the end, maybe I'll come back and fix something else here. That is the nice thing about digital art, right? You don't have to follow a super precise plan and completely finish one subject until you move on to the next. No, you can be very flexible and technically do what you want. But I'm very happy that we've gone so far with the hyacinth macaw because now we're done with the hardest part, and we can lean back a little bit in the next lessons. You know, the other subjects are a little bit more chill and we have to be less precise to make them look awesome. So, in all seriousness, if your hyacinth macaw looks something like this and you followed my instructions, then huge respect. Honestly, you can be very proud of yours. I know that was a quite difficult task for the first step of our painting, but, you know, we got it out of the way now, so there is no reason why we shouldn't be finishing this. So, guys, take your time here, make the McCall look good, and then see you in the next lesson. 11. Painting the branch and ground: Here we go, we've painted the hyacinth macaw, and we are ready to paint something else now. So you should all have your blue parrot, and it should look something like this. I hope you're content with it because I am and I'm only going to make very minor adjustments in the end to this. But in general, this subject should be considered done. Now the next element that I want to paint is the one that is closest to our hyacinth macaw, which is the branch that it's sitting on. Let's look at the sketch layer, and yeah, that should actually be quite easy because we got some nice outlines that we can fill with color, first of all. However, first, I'm going to merge the eye with the hyacinth macaw layer by clicking on the eye layer and pressing Control E because now, of course, the eye is well positioned and I don't need to move it around anymore. So do that as well. If you have these layers separate, we want to keep everything well organized here. Alright. Now, I haven't actually picked a brush for the branch specifically, but I'm going to be honest, it just worked out so well with this blue brush here that I think I'm going to use it for the branch as well. So let's pick some branch color, some dark, desaturated brown. And well, let's have a look at the reference first. That's always a good idea. Now, as you can see in our reference, this branch has a lot of green moss on top. You see these light green spots here. And remember what we said about green in our artwork. We want to minimize it as much as possible to stay as close as we can to our complimentary color scheme. The hyacinths will need a little bit of green in order to look realistic. But in this case, I think we'll be completely fine if we just leave this green moss out and make an entirely brown branch. We'll only look at the reference to determine where is the branch darker? Where is it brighter? And we do all of that just with brown and make our own little texture here. That shouldn't be too hard. All right. So first of all, let's put the branch on a new layer underneath the hyacinth macaw. Just branch. And then just as for the parrot, we are first going to block in the base color and get all the outlines right. So vary the size of your brush and just fill out this branch with very desaturated brown. I'm going to start with these thicker parts first, where I can work with a bigger brush. But now, as I've painted underneath the hyacinth macaw, and I compare it with the reference, I can see that the hyacinth macaw is definitely lacking shadow here. We just weren't able to see it because before the hyacinth macaw just had black behind it. But now with the branch, we actually need to do a little bit of fixing here. So I'm going back to the hyacinth macaw layer and deactivating the sketch layer for a moment. And I'm just going to add a few of these very dark feathers. I'm going to try to make it fade out a little bit, just like this. And then as we've now added some bright parts for contrast, we can actually see these feet better, and they need a little bit of fixing, too. So now I can tell that the left foot should be way darker and maybe a bit more precise like this. And, yeah, that's often the case if you change something about the background. You may also notice now that you'll have to adjust the feet a little bit as you've added the branch. So fix them if you have to. Remember that these are just very small details, and in the final artwork, these feet will not be very visible. So just make sure the general shape is right and the colors, and please don't obsess over them. You don't need to add any fancy texture and zoom in really close to the reference to determine where exactly the highlights and shadows are on these I don't know, toes or I don't know how to call it for a bird. But yeah, you get what I mean, I hope. Just don't obsess over these tiny details. Alright, let's activate the sketch layer again and move back to filling the branch with the main color, which I still have here in the color history, that's also useful to remember. So we can just continue exactly where we left. By the way, I also want to work in layers of detail here. So I'm not even bothering about the small detailed branches right now, but I'm just filling out everything where the branches a bit thicker first. That's just how I prefer working because that way I can keep the composition in mind better, and I don't zoom in too much on a tiny part and forget about the bigger picture. Just big branches first, small branches later. So it should look something like this before you move on to the smaller branches. However, before I add them, let me create the ground first because we've said these small branches lie on the ground, so I think it would be very helpful to see where that ground is and what color it has. So let me go to this brush, I think. It's a very smooth one with a nice basic texture. And then let me go to the background paint layer and add the ground. I don't think the ground has to be separate from the background in this case. Make the ground with dark gray just like this, just as we've determined in our composition sketch. For that, I'm once again tilting the canvas a little bit because I just feel way more comfortable painting straight lines at this angle than completely horizontally. And I want to encourage you to at least try that out, as well. It could be a great discovery if that works for you, too. I mean, I use it in pretty much every artwork where I need to, you know, make some horizontal lines with a horizon line or something. So yeah, let's fill this ground until the horizon line, and then let's make it smoothly fade out into the black by lowering the pressure. So if we deactivate the sketch layer, it should look something like this. Very smooth. You might have to do a little bit of fixing by painting over it with black if you went a bit too far, like I did here. But in general, this should be a quite quick and easy process. As I've said, we don't want anything too complex or detailed in the background because we'll have lots of contrast and interesting subjects in the foreground, and they need to stand out. If there is an additional texture or something in the background, then it might be a little bit too much, and our subjects are not being framed anymore. So just this black with a slight transition from gray to black is perfect, I think. Alright, let's go back to the branch. And now I think we don't need the sketch layer anymore. So I'm going to deactivate it. Then let's go back to our branch brush, make sure it's very small, and return to the brown. You should still be able to find it in your color history. But if not, then just select this brown that you can see on my color selector. So very desaturated. Desaturated, of course, because saturated would interfere a little bit too much with our color scheme. So let's just add some small detailed branches. Since the reference doesn't provide us with any of those, we'll have to decide what we want to do with them ourselves. So here's what I'm thinking. The general composition of our composition sketch was pretty good, so I don't want these branches to do something super crazy or be very long and extend this branch too much. I just want them to be a small finishing touch that is a little bit more detailed. If the branches are too long and they go somewhere else, that would change the composition again. So I don't want to take any risks here. Then remember what I've said about the contrast of shape between the hyacinth macaw and the branch, which I really liked in our reference, you know, clean geometric shapes in the parrot and wild disorganized shapes in the branch. Because I found that very cool, I want to continue like that with the smaller branches to intensify this contrast even more. So let's also give them many small curves and make them quite chaotic. Nice. So that's how this tree and especially the smaller branches now should behave in terms of composition. But also, in order to look realistic, they have to follow the basic principles of trees. If you've taken my tree master class, then you know what I'm talking about. But quick overview, branches get thinner and thinner, the further they grow, so they don't suddenly get thicker, make your brush smaller and smaller here, then the branches split up more and more the further they grow, and the style of the structure has to be consistent. So you don't want any outlier branches. They should all be in the same style with these small curves and these small ends. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Also, you can see that I'm making these small branches grow upward pretty much all of the time, because this part of the branch lies on the ground, and if it's been lying on the ground for some time, the branches can pretty much only grow upward. My God, do you see how complex it suddenly gets and how many decisions you have to make as soon as you stop working with a reference? But, yeah, that's also an important part of painting. Only reference would be pretty simple, but also a little bit boring, right? But yeah, that was kind of my intention to cover a few different parts of painting, a few different styles with this one artwork. And so far, it's worked out actually quite well, and you should still be able to follow this. Alright, regarding the branches at the top, just make them look something like this. And very important, don't make them come too close to the hyacinth macaw because that is our main subject. We want it to be framed, so we need a little bit of empty space around this main subject. Okay, once you think that your branch has good general shapes and you feel ready to add a texture, make a quick check first if it really grows thinner and thinner everywhere because that's one of the most common mistakes when painting branches. Right here, I have to fix some parts by adding an extra curve just to make sure the branch is thick enough. All right. Once you got that, it's time to add some basic shadows. For that, we can look at the reference again just to be sure where the light comes from. In order to add shadows, of course, we have to make our brown darker and even less saturated because that's what happens in shadows. And I'm going to lock the transparency of our branch layer so we cannot paint over the edge. That is very useful for adding textures like this. So yeah, light comes from the top and a little bit from behind. So I'm just scribbling on the bottom parts of these bigger branches here. And also a little bit randomly on top of these smaller branches at the ground. There we will have lots of complexity because these individual branches are lots of individual shapes with their own highlights and shadows. But in this case, I don't want to think too much and calculate too much. So I'm just scribbling on top to add this layer of complexity randomly. Yes, that is allowed. You can save a lot of time like that, but only if the things are very small and chaotic, like branches, leaves or any complex plant, basically. Of course, as soon as it gets a little bit bigger like this curve branch here, you should put the shadows where they belong just to be safe. But in the more detailed parts, like also these smaller branches at the top here, the viewers of the artwork don't know anyways how that stuff functions. So feel free to be completely random here. And I'm also going to work like that for the highlights, which I'm adding with a bigger brush first on the bigger branches. And you can see I'm literally just scribbling here that often works well for a bark texture. And yeah, for the bigger parts, just look at the reference to find out where the branch is the brightest and scribble the most there. And for the very small branches, you can once again fool the viewers and create the illusion of detail by scribbling completely randomly. And then I just keep going like that and add a few more layers of more intense shadows or highlights depending on what I think is fitting. One very last important principle to follow here, make sure your texture is consistent on the whole branch. It doesn't matter at all if it's very detailed or just scribbles, like right here, it has to be consistent. If you add very dark shadows somewhere, then they should be everywhere where this branch has shadows. And if you make the texture very detailed and very dense in one part, then you should also make it very detailed and dense in the other parts. So even though this looks like a very, very simple task, you still have to mind a few basic principles to make sure this branch looks good. Alright, in the end, I'm making a few more adjustments to the part that is directly below the hyacinth macaw because these claws or feet, whatever you want to call them, they have a little bit of shadow underneath too. And maybe just a few more basic highlights on top. Alright. Now, look at this. This is definitely a branch. Okay, maybe just a few more bright highlights here because that part is on top and the light comes from above. But, yeah, I think this is solid work now. Make sure that your branch also looks something like this. So very simple bar texture, but correct highlights and shadows in the places that are relevant to the viewers. In the end, we're going to add some shadows that this branch casts onto the ground because those are missing right now, but that will be for another lesson. The branch itself, the subject is done, and it is exactly as we've planned. So in the next lesson, let's move on to the flower pots. 12. Painting the flower pots: All right, right. Next subject on the list, we get the flower pots. Now, if we look at the composition sketch, what we've planned, these flower pots should be very simple. We pretty much only have desaturated brown in the shape of a flower pot. However, in order to paint them now, I am going to highlight another technique to progress through your painting, and that is to improvise some detail on the fly. Very simple subjects like flower pots that can be flexible in terms of texture, this is a perfect choice. We have no reference for these pots, so let's just try to block in some appropriate colors, and then we can see if we can maybe add a texture on top. So let's go. We should definitely activate this sketch layer for this because we've already found some really nice arrangement for these flower pots. So now we literally just have to fill them with a color first. For that, I think it would be the best if we add an individual layer for each flower pot. So we are still flexible and we'll be able to make adjustments in the end. And we should put all of them in a group so they don't overwhelm all the other layers if we switch back to them. So I'm going to add a new group layer. And because we have two now, let's name them. We got the sketch group and the I guess, pot group. Sounds great. So if we select this group layer and click on make a new layer, then this layer should be added in the group. Perfect. Let's call it pot one. All right. Then we can right click and switch to this brush, which we've chosen for the pots. And then let's choose an appropriate color. Maybe like this, very gray, but maybe a little bit of color. And then let's start with this one. Just fill it out as you see it in the sketch with these brush strokes. I'm a big fan of this brush, by the way, for creating a more painterly look, I use it pretty often. If I want to be precise with something, in an impressionist painting. Alright, when everything is filled out and there are no more gaps, let's make a new layer inside that group again and call it pot two and fill out this one as well. And yeah, you get it. That's how we're going to proceed with all of these pots. Very simple. Also, it doesn't really matter in which order you add them. Just don't add two of these flower pots on the same layer. They should all have their own. In order to fill these pots, you can see that I'm usually starting on the edges on the sides because this brush is very thin when we paint vertically with it, so that's good for this. And then I'm filling out the middle with these slightly downward curved, horizontal bras strokes. Downward curve because you can see we automatically get a nice little texture with these bras strokes. And therefore, it's going to simulate the round shape that these flower pots have. Remember, they are three dimensional cylinders, and we're looking at them from slightly above as the viewers of this artwork. So that is the task that we should all complete now. Just fill out these flower pots precisely with this color. Make sure you implement the slight downward curve in your texture, put them all on individual layers, and make sure the edges are very precise. So sometimes you may have to activate eraser mode and erase something when you paint it over the edge. And maybe also implement a slight variation of color. You know, some of these pots a little bit darker, some little bit brighter, but in general, please stay in this very desaturated beige territory. All right. Now I think it's a good time to talk a little bit about the order in which we're painting all these elements, because that's actually an important topic. And is there anything that you can learn from this? Should you as an artist, always start with the main subject and finish it and then add the next thing and finish it and then the next thing and finish it? Is that the way to go? If I had to give a general answer, it would be, No, there are many different ways you can make art, and you can proceed through your painting process in all sorts of ways. This right here, the way we're doing it is just an example. We could have, technically, first painted the ground, then the flower pots, then the hyacinths, then the branch, and the parrot, or we could have started with a branch and placed the parrot on top of it, and then the hyacinths and then the ground or whatever. There is no general rule for this. However, I still have my personal reasons for why I did it like this in this particular artwork here, and I'd like to share them with you. Usually, I am a big proponent of layers of detail applied to the whole artwork, which means you first finish the background because that's usually the least detailed part. Then you block in the basic shapes of the foreground of everything in the foreground, and then you slowly add more and more layers of detail to the whole thing. This is usually how traditional artists are working. And I really like that for landscapes and impressionist paintings in general, as well. You know, paintings where everything is more interconnected and overlapping and the shapes are not as clearly defined as they are here, so it makes sense to work in layers of detail there. Layers of detail on the whole canvas are also advantageous when it comes to composition because blocking in the first one or two layers of detail basically just means developing the whole composition. You know, the first layer of detail in a painting that you make that way would pretty much look like our composition sketch here. So that would be something that I genuinely highly recommend. First block in the first layer of detail to the whole thing, develop your composition, and then you get slightly more detailed with each layer that you add to the canvas. However, in this case, you can see that we worked very differently. We started with the parrot and finished it, and then the branch and finished it, and now we're at the pots. But this actually works for this painting because first of all, I think it's better to structure the lessons of this course that way, you know, subject by subject. It's just easier to follow, I think. But also, we already have the composition sketch. We've developed it, and we know what the composition is going to look like in the end. And the individual elements of the composition are very separate. You know, all these pots and the ground and the branch and the parrot, they're all kind of their own thing. They don't flow into each other or something like that. So in this case, it makes sense to work subject by subject and finish one thing before we move to another. I'm telling you all this because I have to be honest about the process. This is not how I always work. You can be very flexible when it comes to your process of painting. It just always depends on the painting, you know? Right here, I'm very happy, though, that we started with the main subject, and we've pretty much finished it, because that is just motivating, you know, we've directly completed the hardest part of the process, the most complex element. And now we're literally just adding some stuff around it to, you know, complete the composition and make it stand out more. That's basically all we're doing. So that is a little benefit of completing the hardest part, which is usually the main subject. First, it's just way easier to finish the painting. You know, I wouldn't want this parrot to just sit in the air. I just have to add some stuff around it and finish this painting. You can probably imagine that the other way around, there would be way more resistance if we first had all the stuff here. And then in the end, we also have to add the super detailed parrot. I don't know if I would complete that step so quickly. Here we go. That's basically all I wanted to say. The process always depends on the specific painting, so you can be very flexible. This is just what I was thinking in this artwork. Maybe it can be helpful. So look at this. Everything is filled out. Now we could say that these are the flower pots that we want. This is the level of detail that we're content with, and we could move on to the hyacinth. But I think I'm going to experiment a little bit with more texture. You know, the hyacinth macaw is very detailed and has all these nice feathers, so it would not really fit if we just left it like that. The level of detail in our artwork should be relatively consistent. It doesn't always have to be completely consistent. That's also a misconception, but at least these foreground elements should be in the same wider category of detail. Let me lock the transparency of all these pot layers, so we can drop a nice texture on top without worrying about painting over the edges. Then let's select this brush, pretty awesome for painterly textures. Make it quite big and bright beige. Maybe like this. And let's just scribble with very low pressure here. That automatically creates this texture, which I actually think is really nice. So I'm going to add it to each according pot layer with a few different overlapping colors, so different tones of beige. Because of the locked transparency, you can also only paint on the correct pot. So let's just make this consistent everywhere. This would, of course, also work with any other brush that has a nice texture. I'm just a big fan of this one. Generally, these Mileo impasto brushes here. They are so good. Okay, I think that is a pretty good basis. Now let me add a little bit darker beige on the bottom part of each pot because light comes from above, so we'll have a little bit of shadow there. Now as we get more details, we actually have to think about stuff like that. But yeah, just a little bit scribbling with this dark, desaturated brown beige or whatever it's called. Alright, I think we can now spice up these shadows a little bit with a hue. So let me actually switch to dark, desaturated purple like this. Very desaturated, though. And I'm just scribbling some more shadows like that. I know purple might seem like a very weird choice here. I mean, shouldn't we just make the beige darker? But that's actually an advanced art trick because colors and specifically hues always shift a little bit toward blue and purple in the shadows and toward red and orange in the highlights. Light and shadow don't just make stuff darker and brighter, but they also shift the colors a little bit. And you can exaggerate that effect in your paintings to spice them up a little bit without making them look unrealistic. The impressionists and expressionists, for example, they heavily exaggerate these effects, and they just make all the shadows completely blue or purple or something like that, and the highlights bright and orange. So right here, I also want a little bit of that, not super extreme, but you can see this purple just makes these flower pots look a little bit more enriched and interesting and it doesn't even look wrong. That's a little advanced art technique that you can pretty much always apply to an extent, even to artworks that are realism based. Alright, that's a solid texture. But I just feel like these flower pots look a bit too two dimensional. So what can we do about that? Well, we could put an emphasis on their cylindrical shape by adding a few more defined curves. So let's try that out. I'm going to switch back to this blue brush because I remember it's really good for painting precise lines. Then let's make it very dark gray, but you could also choose another color here, and let's set the opacity to about 50%, so we can still see the texture through these curves. And then I'm trying to add a few of these curves that follow the shape of the flower pots. You know, a very classic texture for a flower pot with these horizontal lines that obviously look like curves in a three D environment. So try to make them relatively parallel on each flower pot and also vary the thickness. Make some very thick lines and some very thin lines because a little bit of variety can't be bad here. You can see I'm not really the expert for painting these parallel curves, but that's no problem. Just takes a bit more time, but I can just undo and redo until the curves look somewhat pleasing. Also, they don't have to be 100% precise or something like that. The hyacinths will be the main focus here because they will be blue and yellow, very saturated and chaotic. So the viewers will most likely not look at these flower pots super closely. Always keep in mind where the most contrast is in your paintings. What are the things that really stand out and put most of your effort into those things. What we're doing right now is pretty much just a nice little bonus that makes the artwork feel more complete, but not a focus point that stands out through contrast. So I think now most of these curves are appropriate. Nothing amazing but definitely not bad for a small detail like that. Now I'm going to each pot layer with this airbrush and intensifying this dark purple contrast a bit more because I think it works really well here, but still use relatively low pressure and just at the bottom of these flower pots. Alright, these flower pots are very good at this point, but I'm just going to make a few more adjustments. That's very often the case. If you paint something without a reference, there are so many adjustments that you want to make in the end. So one thing I notice is that some of these flower pots in the back, they should be a bit darker in general. But in order to avoid having to paint over them, I'm going to make use of one of my absolute favorite functions in Krita, and that is the color adjustment window. Press, control, and you can adjust the hues and the saturation and the values of the layer that you are currently on. So I'm just going to lower the brightness of this pot here, pot five, and pot 72. If you have a little bit too much purple, you can also decrease the saturation here. But in general, I think these flower pots are actually quite good. So I'm just making very slight adjustments to the values here. So, something like that. And the final adjustment, let's go back to this airbrush and add a few more very dark purple shadows on the bottom of these flower pots. Now we're making these shadows very small and very intense, just to indicate this extra curvature at the bottom that flower pots often have. Because light comes from above, these will obviously be way darker than the rest. But also on these flower pots in the back, I'm going to add a little bit more shadow because they are covered and surrounded by other flower pots, and there is less light reaching there in general. Always think about stuff like that a little bit and implement it, but don't obsess over it if you're not working on the main subject. That is my general advice that I can give you here. So I would say, if your flower pots look something like that, that's what we need. So you got a little demo here of making textures and details up on the way, which is something that you just have to do sometimes as an artist. Of course, we could have used references for these flower pots, but I was too lazy to look them up. For simple elements like this that are pretty much just geometric shapes, you can often just make them up yourself if you follow a few basic principles like correct lighting, consistent texture, everything that we've done here. So I hope that you understood the general process of creating something like this, and you should have some nice and simple flower pots now. If that's the case, then we can fill them with flowers in the next lesson. 13. Painting the flowers: Welcome to the lesson painting the flowers. This is the last big task in our artwork that I'm seeing right now, you know, other than adding some shadows or adjusting some stuff in the end. And luckily, I think it's going to be the most relaxing part of the artwork, actually. If we know what we're doing and we make a few correct decisions, this process is going to be quite chill, I think, because hyacinths or flowers in general are really not that complex of a subject. We just have to scribble a lot with awesome colors, and that's pretty much it. First of all, let's have one last look at actual hyacinth before we start, just to be sure, right? So these hyacinths, they can have slightly different colors, mostly blue and purple, just like we wanted. Then some of them are a little bit pointy at the top, but most of the time they are pretty round. Then, actually, I'm going to look up this word in German, Huertsnton just to get a few different results now. That's a little trick to get some more interesting results sometimes. You know, just look at the word in another language and you get something different. So, yeah, I think I've got a pretty good idea what I want to paint now. So I'm not going to pick out a specific reference here. By the way, I really appreciate that these green leaves that these hyacinths have are very simple in general, just, you know, this flat, green, long and nothing complex. That's exactly what I want. So yeah, I think I'm going to start with the leaves. Let's put all these groups of hyacinths on individual layers so we can adjust them separately from the pots. So on top of pot one, I'm going to make a new layer called hyacinths one. And then for these simple leaves, I think, once again, this brush will be the best choice. Then some dark, semi saturated green like this, just as I've seen it in these references, make the brush a bit smaller, of course. But now, actually, I think it would be better if we move this below the pot one layer. So we can make it look like these leaves and hyacinths grow out of the pot, like this. Oh, yeah, that already looks very good. So let's just make a few small curve brush strokes here and release the pressure in the end so these leaves get a bit pointy. What an awesome brush, by the way. Now let's make the green a bit brighter and just add a few more brush strokes on top, which should then be enough detail for these leaves. You know, just a few dark parts, some bright parts. That's going to be nice. Alright, time for number two. Once again, let's make a new layer called hyacinth two below pot two. And then, oh, that's the wrong pot. Let me undo this. And yeah, here we go. Just the same thing once again. Try to give your leaves a few curves and make them go in different directions. And we're just going to keep going like that for every pot. Just switch back and forth between the two greens in your color history, and you can make everything look nice and consistent. That's the great part. We've done so much planning and so much sketching that we can now pretty much just relax. We know where everything goes, what we have to do. So we're just putting a few nice brush strokes on the canvas. By the way, if you know me from my color theory course, then you know that I'm usually a huge proponent of making a color palette. So why didn't we make a specific color palette for this painting? So a collection of colors that we're going to use? Well, actually, we have a color palette. It's just the composition sketch. But we have planned our colors, modeled them, looked what they look like next to each other with our composition sketch. That's it. A composition sketch, like the one that we've made, replaces a color palette because it's pretty much just a more advanced color palette, right? So this is just for the ones of you who've taken my color theory course and got confused here. Yes, make a color palette, model your colors and see what they look like next to each other. Or if you want to do even more planning, aside from the colors, make a composition sketch. It's the same thing. It has the same purpose. It's just a bit more detailed. Alright. In the end, your leaves should look something like this with one hyacinth layer underneath each according pot layer. Once you've got that, we can move on and add the hyacinth. Remember, we want to do it with this brush. And once again, let's start on hyacinth one, this one. Let's zoom in and select our hyacinth base color. This flower pot here should be dark blue or purple. So I'm going to start here with this color. All right, then let's make the brush very small, maybe like 30 pixels. And then I'm going to start just like this. Small, quick circular movements with the brush. Oh, yeah, this is working. Look at this hyacinth. Just a rough shape like this that gets a little bit thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. That's it. And let's repeat that for the next one, these little dots with the base color that make a shape like this. Honestly, I think this is very fun. Make the hyacinths grow upward like this and make the ones on the sides of these pots fall a little bit, maybe like a slight angle. That's going to look more natural. Also, give them slightly different heights like this. That also makes them look more natural. So yeah, I'm going to work in layers of detail here once again. So I'm first going to block in the base color for every group of hyacinths here, and then we're going to add highlights and shadows everywhere equally. So now these ones are done, we're going to move on to hyacinth two right here. I think I want to make those ones a little bit more purple. Remember that we can implement a small range of colors here in this blue, purple territory. So let's make use of that. Just the small scribbles on top of the leaves. I'm going to do all the blue and purple ones first, and the yellow ones in the end. So for now, I'm leaving out the pots where I want yellow flowers. Just a personal choice here. You can add your flowers in whatever order you want. Just make sure that all the flowers have visual consistency, so the hyacinths should be in the same height range and in the same range of density. Alright, now you know what to do here. So I'm going to explain something theoretical because you can probably see something here. We've moved on from a more realistic to a more impressionistic style. Now the brush strokes are a lot more loose and chaotic. Mixture is good. You know, if the styles fit together to make one coherent composition, only realism is unnecessary, only impressionism, maybe not that interesting. But a little combo like this, we can definitely do that. It is an advanced topic in digital art, how many different brushes and styles you should combine in one painting, because there are many options, and it always depends. It depends on the types of brushes. You know, some brushes complement each other and some bite each other. It depends on how many subjects you have, how big invisible your brushstrokes are, and many more things. Sometimes I make a whole painting with only one brush if the brush is really good. Right here, it might have actually worked with the first one because it's so versatile and we've painted a lot of stuff with it. Most of the time, I use, like, three to five different brushes, like right here. And there are artists that somehow manage to use 20 different brushes. I don't know how they do that, to be honest. What I can say with confidence is that if you're a beginner, definitely limit your use of brushes. A better brush does not make you a better artist. It's just another tool to express. And brushes also have to be learned. So if you always use a brush you've never used before for every single painting, it's going to take you some time until you really understand one and learn to use it in different situations. But still, you should, of course, experiment with different brushes and styles because otherwise you won't find the ones that allow you to make your art the way you want. So a good middle way that I've stuck with is to use one brush for one subject, one brush for the hyacinths, one brush for the ground, one brush for the parrot, one brush for the pots. Sometimes I combine them. It can look really nice, like on these pots here, but it's way more difficult to make that look consistent and not too chaotic. Try to learn the brushes and don't move on too quickly. Don't confuse yourself with too many different styles. Then with time, you will find your own way of using brushes in Krita. That's all I can say here. Alright, I've blocked in the shapes of all these blue and purple flowers. Now it's time to move on to the yellow ones. That's gonna be here, hyacinths five in my case. And then for the color, let's go with this bright yellow. Maybe a bit more on the orange side, like here, because we first want to block in the darker parts. Oh, yes. And you can immediately see these yellow flowers stand out way more against the dark background. By the way, I think it's the best if we stick with relatively low pressure here. So we get all these small gaps here that make the flowers look more detailed. And then the last flower pot, hyacinth three, same thing once again. And yeah, now we already have a pretty good idea what the final painting will look like. All the main stuff is blocked in. Okay, perhaps let me go to hyacinth five and make one of them a little bit higher, just like that. Okay, time for the second layer of detail. Let's go back to this blue purple and make it brighter and more saturated because now we're going to paint some more highlighted parts, starting once again on hyacinths one. Remember, light comes from above, so on top of these hyacinths, especially, we're going to drop all these small highlights. Just low pressure and small circular movements with your brush. And you can see they already start looking like detailed hyacinth, just like that. Then let's add a few random spots on top of this to create more detail and chaos. And then I'm going to move on to the next one, for which I'm going to make the blue a bit more purplish because this is a more purple group of hyacinths. But yeah, basically, it's the exact same thing. I'm just varying the hue a little bit, but same brightness and same saturation. Just these small, nice dots everywhere to create a bit more detail. It might take you some time to get used to this process, but I'm telling you it's actually very relaxing once you get the hang of it. Just be patient and take care of each hyacinth to give it the correct highlights. And if you do that, just take care of the next hyacinth one by one. It's going to be very flowy and simple. Once again, I'm first doing all the blue and purple ones, but it really doesn't matter. Just make sure that when you make the yellow ones, like I'm doing it now, you shift the hue even more away from orange and towards yellow like this and make the yellow brighter, of course. And then it's the same thing again. Nice. Now we just keep going like that with more layers of detail. For these yellow flowers, I think they should be completely white in the highlights, you know, some reflections from the light source. That's going to give them a lot of contrast towards the background, which will look really cool in the end, I think. So I'm just painting very few, very bright highlights on the very top of these yellow hyacinths. And on the other yellow ones as well. After that, on these blue ones on the left, I also want to give them some brighter highlights, but not completely white. That would be too much for these blue hyacinths. And also just at the top here. And you guessed it, we're going to do the same thing for the other ones. Remember to always select the correct layer. That's pretty much the only danger here. Otherwise, there really isn't anything else I can tell you here. Just look at what I'm doing and do it as well. It's a quite repetitive, but also relaxing process. So stay patient here and work one by one on these hyacinths. I Alright, right. Look at this. Everything is very bright now. But I'm going to be honest, it's maybe a bit too bright, so I'm adding a layer of very dark brush strokes as well. Again, first on all the blue and purple ones. At this point, you don't have to necessarily follow me, but you can just stop when you think that your hyacinths look good. I want to make that very clear. We're at this stage in painting where we just add more layers of detail until we like it. So there is no clear point where these hyacinths are officially done. They are done when you like them. However, I think it's definitely a good idea to add at least one or two more layers here, like I'm doing it with these shadows because more of these slightly different overlapping colors give the hyacinths more depth and just make them more interesting to look at. At some point, however, it's going to look too chaotic and too weird if you add too many layers. So there is a balance point. But that's a very subjective thing. By the way, can I point out how easy it is to paint flowers like that? I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to be offensive if it doesn't work out for you yet. I can totally understand it. But once you get the hang of it, it's really not that complicated because you're just doing the same thing over and over again. And that's the best part. You can then always add these flowers if you want. It's good to have them in your repertoire for still lives or landscapes or literally anything. These things like flowers, trees, rocks, objects that you can put in pretty much every painting, they so useful. You can adjust them in so many different ways that they always fit your composition. So it really makes sense to take some time to learn and understand them. If you really understand trees, you can always add one that perfectly fits your composition and the branches frame the subject or whatever. And if you understand hyacinths and you're comfortable painting them, you always have something exciting to add to your artworks, and you can technically give them any color so they fit a specific color scheme that you want. Isn't that great. It's just a little benefit that I wanted to point out. You know, these hyacinths are not just for this one painting, but by painting many of them, we are practicing them and getting comfortable. So you have something beautiful and very flexible in your toolbox as an artist. Don't forget that. Alright. For these yellow flowers, I'm just going to add one more layer with orange on top. Technically, these are supposed to be the shadow parts, but if I just made them darker like dark yellow, it would be pretty ugly, actually. It's not a nice color. So if you need to add shadows to something that's yellow, make the shadows orange. That's a little pro trick. So this is what I want my hyacinth to look like. So make sure yours also looks something like this. And then let's add a little bit more of these leaves because we've covered them pretty much universally here, and I just want some of them to be visible. However, for that, I'm going on the pot layers and not the hyacinth layers because now I want these leaves to actually grow over these pots. So it looks like this. Just these little curves here. That makes them look way more interesting. Remember that green is still not a part of our color scheme, and you want to keep it very minimal. Just some leaves that grow out of these pots and over the hyacinth with a few different tones of green. Okay, that's it. Let's look at the composition sketch. If this is the composition that we want, I mean, it looks nice, but yeah, in the composition sketch, we actually have some flowers lying on the ground, so I think we should add those as well now. I think there was a pretty good idea because right now, if I look at this painting, these colors are a bit too concentrated. You know, I would be nice if we had a little bit more of that yellow and purple on the ground, as well. So everything is a bit more filled out and balanced. So let's make a new layer over this pot group called flowers floor. And then I'm just going to start with the green leaves. Let's just put some of them everywhere consistently on this ground. Obviously, these flowers and therefore, the leaves should be horizontal because they don't grow on the ground, but they lie on the ground. Very important distinction. So yeah, we're just going to repeat this process once again just with horizontal hyacinths, blocking the base color, and then a few layers of highlights and shadows on top, and that's it. Oh, one more thing. This flower here is behind the branch, but that would make sense. So I'm going to select this, then copy and paste it onto a new layer and move that layer above the branch layer. So we have a flowers floor front layer where we can put the hyacinths that are in front of the branch. This is very good, of course, to create a bit more depth and three dimensionality. I don't know if that's a word, sorry, but, you know, just these hyacinths should not be all in one line in front of the branch or all behind the branch. We want some variety. By the way, to make this more logical, add yellow hyacinths on the ground, only on the right side where the yellow hyacinths actually grow because, you know, they wouldn't fall like two or 3 meters away from the flower pot where they grow. So I'm only adding them here. And then after adding a few highlights, I'm going to spice it up a bit by adding some individual blossoms on the floor. You know, just small spots, small parts that have been separated from the big blossoms in blue, purple and yellow. And the last step here is to just make the flowers on the ground consistent with the ones in the pots. So give them approximately the same level of detail and the same intensity of highlights and shadows. For that, you can use your color history on the right side here. And that's it. Look at this. This is pretty much the artwork. It's not very realistic yet because we'll have to add some shadows on the ground, and we can maybe fix and adjust a few things. But we can do that in the next lesson. Regarding the main subjects, this is good work. 14. Refining and finishing: Okay, everyone, this is the last practical lesson of this course, the refining and finishing part. As it's usually the case, for this last stage of making an artwork, this is going to be pretty freestyle. So there won't be any structure like, first, you got to fix this, then you got to fix that, and then it's finished. No, this part just consists in looking at your artwork and thinking, h how could I improve this a little bit? And that is, of course, always something different, depending on what kind of artwork you make. So right here, I'm just going to take you through my thoughts and my last actions here. So see this as an example. Now, the first thing that we should fix here, I've already mentioned it a few times is the shadows. We have a light source that comes from above and a little bit behind the subjects, so we need to add some simple shadows to the ground. For that, I think I'm going to select this brush, this flat, smooth brush because I know it very well, and yeah, it's just good. And then let's go to the background layer, which I haven't even named just this paint layer one and then select very dark, desaturated purple. Remember, we can use blue or purple for shadows as we've done it for the pots. That's going to make them look a bit more rich. So, yeah, let's just start. I'm going to make the brush a bit smaller, til the canvas so I can paint better horizontal lines. And then I'm going to scribble underneath these individual objects. Just a little bit. Ight and shadow is a huge topic in art that would deserve its own course. And I'm going to be honest, it's not my field of expertise. I usually just rely on a reference if I have something with complex highlights and shadows, or I make a very impressionist or expressionist painting where I can just scribble the shadows and exaggerate them. A little bit like right here. You can see this is not something that requires a lot of thought and planning. I'm just scribbling underneath these objects that would cast a shadow to just make the parts below them darker. And for this painting, this is definitely fine. We have some simple highlights and shadows that are not very extreme, and the ground is, of course, not a focus point. So it is not super important what we do there. So, this should be your mindset when painting these shadows. Let's just spice it up a little bit. Sometimes when you've added accidentally too much shadow, you can either undo it or select your background color and paint over it and then switch back to your shadow color. So just make sure that your shadows are consistent. So everywhere where there is a object that's close to the ground, add a shadow below it. So it should look something like this in the end. Nice. What else can we do here? Well, if I look at the whole thing, there is actually a little problem that I want to fix because the flowers are actually a bit more intense and saturated than the parrot, even though that one is supposed to be the main subject. So let me select the hyacinth macaw layer and open up the color adjustment window by pressing Control U. So let's increase the saturation of the parrot just a little bit, maybe ten. And let's see what it looks like. And yeah, if I look at the before or after comparison, I definitely prefer the parrot to be a bit more saturated, so it fits the flowers better. Notice that it might not necessarily be the case that you also have to make this adjustment. You also don't want to oversaturate anything. But this color adjustment window for individual layers is an insanely useful tool if you have any imbalances or just generally things that you want to change about the colors. So I'm using it very often in the finishing stage of an artwork to just fine tune everything a bit. Alright, then let's do a little experiment. Maybe you remember when I said that we could add leaves to these branches, just to see how it looks and if that adds anything to the artwork? Well, at least I remember it, so I'm going to try it out. Let me make a new layer up of the branch layer called leaves Question mark, because I don't know yet if I really want these. And let me try painting a few desaturated leaves with this brush. You know, just some dry autumn leaves. And, yeah, maybe this is not the best brush for painting leaves. Let me try this one and just scribble a bit here on top of these small branches. Well, that's also not what I want. Maybe you can paint leaves like this, but I'm gonna keep looking. And this RGBA wet brush, if it's very small, I think, looks pretty cool actually, and it matches the level of detail that we have in the rest of the artwork. So let's just scribble a little bit consistently on every small branch. Also here at the bottom. Remember, we also got some branches there. Alright, then let's maybe add some more saturated leaves just to spice it up a little bit. But of course, not too saturated because you know it. This would disturb our complimentary color scheme. I really like this brush for painting leaves, also in other artworks. Now I think these leaves have become a little bit too invasive to the artwork, so I want to make some of them a bit darker. And for that to just make adjustments to something, I'm going to use a little trick that you should also know by now. I'm going to lock the transparency of the layer on the leaves here, this checker pattern. And then I'm painting over some of these parts with a darker brown. I want these leaves to mostly be in the background, just a small detail. So the viewers will still mostly look at the flower pots and the hyacinth macaw. Okay, at this point, you can decide whether you want to keep these leaves or not. Maybe you succeeded better than me. But I'm going to be honest. I actually think if I deactivate and activate this layer, that the artwork looks a little bit better without the leaves. So I'm going to keep this layer deactivated. I don't want too much going on here. It's already pretty nice. But, you know, that's the cool thing about art and Creta. You can just decide what you like better. If you manage to paint some really nice leaves, then you can also keep them. Just I personally prefer it without the leaves. That is a defining feature of the finishing part of an artwork. It's very subjective and up to your personal preference, but I highly recommend that you pretty much always experiment a little bit if you think that you're done with a painting, whether it's adjusting the colors or adding something on a new layer where you're not sure if you want to keep it or not or checking if you could improve the light and shadow qualities of your image. Or right here, I'm scribbling over the branch texture a bit, and I'm seeing if I could improve it. Just by adding a little bit more saturated brown to spice it up. You know, this texture is very simplistic, so there is pretty much nothing that can go wrong here. You don't want to miss out on easy fixes that could improve your artwork a lot. So always take a bit of time in the end, look at the artwork and really ask yourself, what are some simple things that you could change right now to make it a little bit better? And that's always something different. So it's very exciting, actually. So yeah, this branch is definitely weird, and I'm doodling many times here with a few different colors just to make it look as interesting as possible. And I'm still thinking about highlights and shadows, of course. So up here in these branches at the top, it's going to be a very complex situation with highlights and shadows because there are so many different overlapping objects. And this is good because I can pretty much add these highlights and shadows randomly and define what the highlight and shadow areas are. However, this big branch, as I know from the reference, should definitely be quite bright at the top parts. So everywhere here, Then after that, let me fix a few shadows at the bottom here, once again with this very dark, desaturated purple and the same brush as the other shadows, of course. But yeah, there is not much to do, actually. I'm just trying to get the shadows a bit more consistent. But in general, they're not that important. However, there is another thing that I did forget when we speak about highlights and shadows, and that is the light comes from the top here and these hyacinth grow over the pots. So there should be a little bit of shadow from the hyacinths on these pots, if I think about it. So with that same shadow purple, I'm going on every pot layer and scribbling a few of these shadows. And I'm going to use this brush for that because it's very chaotic and represents the shapes of these hyacinths well. You see, we can just scribble a bit left and right, and we already get a lot of complexity, which is exactly what I want, because I don't want to put in too much effort into these shadows and make them super realistic, but, you know, just something to make it more logical. So let's keep going on every single flower pot. Consistency is still an important factor. If you add shadows to one of these flower pots, you also have to do it on the other ones. Otherwise, nothing makes sense. So let's be patient and scribble. Shouldn't be that complicated. You just want to make it look something like this. Alright, here we go. That looks a little bit more realistic. Even though I'm not a huge fan of these shadows, I think they definitely belong there. But this is how it goes, you know? If you want the perfect highlights and shadows, either use a reference or study highlights and shadows intensively and calculate everything. These are the only two options. Or you settle for something that's maybe not optimal, but does the job like right here. Okay, but now I'm going to move on to something where I absolutely cannot accept if it's sub optimal. And that's the hyacinth macaw, which is, yeah, my proudest work in this painting. So I want to see if I can improve it just a little bit, because here is the issue. Now we've added these flowers, and these flowers have a big value range, which means lots of contrast. You see, we got very dark and very bright parts in these flowers, and that's going to draw a lot of attention to them. And the hyacinth macaw, as the main subject should keep up with that. So I think I'm going to add a few more light purple feathers on top, of course, with this brush. And yet, this purple seems extreme, but it actually works quite well if I apply very low pressure. So the brush mixes these paints together. This is also a good indicator to make sure you're on the correct layer. You know, if you use one of these oil paint or watercolor brushes that mix the paint and they suddenly don't mix with what you're painting on top of, then you are probably on the wrong layer. Alright, look at this. I think this is actually nicer now. But I could also understand if you don't want to take the risk to paint anything on top of your hyacinth macaw anymore, if you are really content with it. It's just a subtle thing that I feel like I could improve here, so I'm doing it. Maybe also a bit of purple on the tail feathers to spice it up a bit. And then some tiny details here on the head, you know, just some very light scribbles. So we have this bigger value range, which gives us more contrast and also a bit more detail, which I think won't look too bad here. I'm not even looking at the reference here. I'm just improving a little bit on the texture that's already there. I think this is very good now with these long, confidently painted feathers and the tiny details contrasting each other. This is my final version of the hyacinth macaw, unless, of course, I discover something else in this finishing phase, but I really don't think so right now. Okay, and then another random little thing, I think I'm going to add a bit more green to these flower pots, so a few more leaves. So I'm going to each pot layer and just scribbling a few more green lines on top. And then I'm doing a quick light and shadow check again. And to be honest, I think that this flower pot here, pot six should be a bit darker because it's surrounded by many other elements, and there are many hyacins growing on top. So probably not a lot of light will reach there. So let me lock the transparency of this layer just to be sure. Then use this brush with which we've painted the other shadows and go back to this very dark desaturated purple. So I'm just going to slide left and right on top here with big brush strokes to make it a bit darker. By doing this, we are getting rid of some detail here. You see these individuals scribbly hyacinth shadows. They won't be visible anymore on the spot after we are done. But this is actually a good thing, and I want it like that because in the shadows, you always see less detail and the colors blend more together. So now, as we've defined that this pot is very dark, very shadowy, also this other pot here, pot seven, it's actually more realistic if there is less detail. So here we go. That's another little tip. Okay, then let me go back to the branch layer and just paint a bit more over this texture. Of course, with that classic brush and brown. As I'm doing that, I'm noticing a little issue with a composition that's a bit advanced, but it is for sure something that I want to fix. There is a lot of empty space underneath where this branch splits and nowhere else on the ground. You can see there is nothing on the ground in this one part, and in every other part, we got details, so shadows and flowers and branches and whatnot. So I want this little area to blend in more with the rest so it doesn't stand out unnecessarily. I think a good way to do that would be to paint another little branch that goes there and fills out the space. So let me unlock the transparency of this layer so I can try that. Maybe like this, still in the same style as the other branches, of course. Otherwise, it would look inconsistent. So we need a few small ones that point upward. And a consistent texture. So I'm scribbling over it with a few different tones of brown. Okay, maybe that's a bit too much in terms of small branches. So let me activate eras them out and get rid of them. Let's make it nice and smooth. Just like that. Okay, now, of course, we have to add some shadows underneath this small branch so it fits in with rest. So I'm going back to the background layer, paint layer one, then to this ground shadow brush, and I'm selecting this dark purple again. Till the canvas a bit because I like that better, and then just scribble some of these shadows. You see, it's just the same thing again. You can change whatever you want in the end, but it always has to be consistent with the other elements, and everything has to fit together. Last but not least, I'm going to make a few tiny adjustments to the branch texture. That's definitely the weirdest part of this artwork because we didn't really have a plan for it, and it was very simple in the reference. But now by just scribbling in a few different browns, we've actually made it look quite interesting. But, yeah, I think at this point, I'm going to stop. This is the finished artwork, and these were the little adjustments that I felt like making. Okay, I'm going to do one more thing that I don't always do, but it's actually kind of fun, and that is adding a signature as the very top layer here. I'm going to use one of these ink brushes for that and select white because everything else wouldn't really be visible here, or it wouldn't fit, you know, if we used bright red or something. That would look very bad. So yeah, for signatures, I always go with black or white depending on whether I have a dark or bright artwork. So yeah, put your signature where you want. The bottom left or bottom right of the artwork is usually the best choice. So for me, that's just Duplo with a line. But yeah, obviously, don't follow me here. Put your own signature there and not just Duplo. Thank you. Make sure your signature is very small and not too invasive. If it's too big and it's white, you know, it's going to have a lot of contrast, so it might distract a bit from the rest of the artwork. So I'm making this layer even smaller with a transformation tool. You might ask yourself, is it really necessary to sign a digital artwork? I mean, you're probably not going to sell it or something, but I think you definitely have the right to do that because you made all these brtrokes yourself. It's your artwork, so why not put your name on it? I don't always sign my artworks, but it can be fun. And that's it. This is the painting. We've made it. And yeah, congratulations if you also made it through. That was a pretty big one, but I hope that I broke it down well, and you were able to follow. Now we have a full painting with many qualities. We have a nice and pretty realistic subject that's been framed with empty spaces. We have lots of value contrasts with the dark and bright parts. We have obviously a hue contrast with the blue and purple and the yellow parts. We have contrast of detail with a background being completely empty and the foreground has many things going on. Then we have lines that guide the eyes of the viewers around with these branches and the different heights of the flower pots, and we have everything on individual layers, also an underrated quality. So you can adjust everything if you don't like it. Look at this process. We started with an idea and a reference. We made it into a composition sketch using art and design principles. Then we made a precise drawing sketch, filled in the colors and details, and now we have this. Save it as hyacinth artwork or whatever you want to call it. Maybe you can give it a more creative name, but my creativity is used up now, so I don't care. Just save it as your preferred image file format, and that is it. 15. Krita documents: Hold up little extra lesson because there is something I almost forgot to say. Always keep your Krita documents. So this right here, save it as a dot PNG or whatever you want to look at, but also keep the Krita document and save it. You want to keep the option open to edit your artworks, even if you think you're finished because this actually used to happen to me quite a lot. I'm done with an artwork. I'm glad I don't have to look at it anymore for the day. I have the image file. But then the next day, I open it up and I immediately notice something that I want to change. And if there is only a PNG or JPEG file left, it's gonna be very difficult in many cases. I've been there. There's something very simple that I want to change, but I just don't have the layers, and I would have to change so much about the artwork that the resistance is just too high, and I don't do anything. And the worst part is, you're going to be stuck with this annoying error forever. This sucks because it's really, really hard to unsee something that you don't like in your art. You, as the artist will always see the bad things about your art first. The viewers actually not. So it's for your own personal benefit that you save your Krita documents so you can avoid getting triggered every time you look at one of your artworks. Trust me, you don't want that. An exception would be perhaps if you are really happy with an artwork, some time has passed and you never thought about changing anything, then you don't necessarily need the document anymore. But as long as you don't have to save space on your PC or something, there is no real reason not to keep your Krita documents around just in case I'm just saying. For example, you can make a folder called Krita documents that's separate from your art folder or something, where you put them all in so they don't annoy you. I have that, and it's a very good way to keep everything organized. And if I want to change something, I can go to this folder and I have everything at hand. So, yeah, keep that in mind. It's useful to save your Krita documents. 16. Painting styles and exercises: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we got it done. We have made a painting, and it's not a bad one if you ask me. In this lesson, I want to conclude a few things and give you some clarity. Aside from having the artwork now, what did you learn? And how can you use that in your art journey? Just sit back and watch me paint. I promise this is going to be interesting. Okay, even though we had one big project in this course, it was kind of a collection of different painting exercises. Maybe you've noticed that. Just in the practical part alone, we have painting with reference, realism. We have impression and loose brush strokes without reference. We've taken inspiration from references, but they made our own thing. That's quite a few different methods, actually. So even though this might not be your preferred painting style or subject, it has hopefully still given you many insights about painting. Maybe you really enjoyed the part where we painted the parrot realistically from reference, and you want to keep making art like this. Or you like creating the more abstract pots and flowers, and you feel inspired to make more art from your imagination. I've tried to highlight a few different aspects of painting, so it's up to you. And you know what? Painting these still lives with animals and plants is one of the best exercises, no matter what you want to do as an artist. I mean, I also like them as finished paintings. Otherwise, we wouldn't have done this. But even if you don't can probably see how much you have to think when arranging these. You practice color theory by combining differently colored plants or flowers with animals or other stuff. You have to use empty space to frame things. You exercise your vision for contrast and shapes. You create lines that direct the eyes of the viewers. You have to think about simple lighting, even. All of that just because we made something new that wasn't there before this composition. Painting a landscape from reference or a human from reference, it's nice and valuable, but it just doesn't give you the same freedom because you don't have to think all that much. Right here, we thought a lot, and we had to make many, many decisions. And once you're really comfortable with this decision making process, you can create your own compositions with more complex subjects. That's the ultimate goal to be able to create whatever you want, any scene and make it look awesome. And you cannot get there if you just paint bedroom better faces or bedroom better landscapes. Never, you actually have to arrange your own compositions like we did it in this project and manage all the tasks that come with that. Think about color, shape, contrast, space, subject, the lighting, you name it. You have to make your own new thing if you actually want to stand out as an artist. And as I've hopefully demonstrated in this course, it's not even that hard. I mean, there are still many things you have to do and you have to invest some time. But if you break it down into simple steps, it's not that complicated if you make good decisions regarding composition. So this is the core concept that I wanted to highlight. Contrary to most artists, actually, I believe that this compositional stuff is absolutely something that beginners should learn, not just painting something accurately, but thinking about a painting and how it interacts with the viewers. That is the basis of art, in my opinion. I think also making your own compositions is just more motivating and fulfilling, ultimately. You know, we already have photographers and filmmakers to capture the beautiful stuff that's already there. So we don't have to chase behind them as artists and try to make things look more and more realistic. It's not a battle that we're going to win. I mean, it is nice to simply recreate a scene that you like with a painting. I don't have anything against that, and, in fact, I do it most of the time as an artist, but I believe that we as artists can do so much more if we want. And that's the best part about it. So I wanted to give you a strategy that allows you to do that from the very beginning. Don't shy away from creating your own new scenes. This is how you do it. Alright, before you leave this lesson too confused, let me show you some practical exercises that make you better at composition that you can easily practice anytime after this course. Because even though you can apply this process that we've done here to all your artworks from now, it's still a lot. You're probably not going to make an artwork like this every day. At least I don't. I mean, I would like to, but I got other things to do, as well. So in order for you to internalize this process and these principles, I thought it would be a good idea to give you these exercises because they take a fraction of the time that it took to make this artwork. Okay. Number one, you can practice composition through simple subjects and abstract art. Do exactly what we've done here, but maybe with less detail or even easier subjects. The process is still the same, and you still have to think about all these principles. You have an idea, find a reference, make a composition sketch, then a drawing sketch, and do all that. This can be really fast if you just leave out all the complex detail, but it can still be an actual artwork. Because here is the thing. If you apply good color theory and you develop an awesome composition, it will still look amazing. Those things are far more important than detail, in my opinion. I mean, think of an gog, Monet, Picasso. They didn't paint a lot of detail, but they really understood composition and just well, they had good ideas, I guess. So see it as an important exercise to just make compositions with different levels of density, with color schemes, with empty spaces, do the things that we've done here, but with dumped down and simplified subjects or completely abstract, if you just want to practice composition and nothing else. That's also an option. And then if you feel ready, you can combine your compositional practice with more detailed subjects, like we've done it in this course, and this is where your art gets really amazing. But don't forget that you can practice composition alone just by making everything more simple. This is going to improve your ability to even find references. If you know about composition and you understand some basic principles, you're going to find them in other artworks, photos, or even real life. That happens to me all the time. So this is a good one. Or if that's still too much for you to do on a regular basis, you can do exercise number two, which is just make composition sketches. If you don't want, you don't have to make an artwork all the time. It can be great practice to just think about compositions and developing the habit of planning them. The good thing is, you can also make the according artwork later on. The compositions don't go away, but just make them, capture your ideas like that, and create your own new scenes like this. This is an awesome exercise. Then, number three, look at compositions that others have made and evaluate them, ideally based on the art principles that you know. If you like an artwork, ask yourself, what do I like about this artwork? And what do the artists do well here? And when doing that, please try to go beyond the subject. Like, I like this artwork because the cat is cute. Of course, it is. But is there anything else that makes the cat look especially good? Is there some empty space behind it? Does it have big value contrast? Are there interesting colors or shapes? If you know a bit about color theory, look if you can find a color scheme. If you know about contrast theory, you'll often find many contrasts. And if you know about composition rules, you will often find well positioned empty spaces and curves. Just for example, you will see that these principles are everywhere. By consciously noticing them, you will gradually understand better and better what makes a good artwork. And this will give you confidence in your own art, which makes the whole process more fun. By the way, you can also do this with a good photo. Look at a photo that you like and ask yourself what makes it great. There is no difference in what makes a good composition between a photo and a painting. The same principles apply. So look for them and you will find them, and you will gradually understand how to use these principles in your own art. And exercise number four. If all of this doesn't work for you, you probably just have to learn more about art and design theory. It can help you a lot to just understand better what you're working on. There are plenty resources out there that you can use, and many secrets you didn't even know you could learn. For example, in my courses, if I'm allowed to say that. But the point of art and design theory is just exactly that to enable you to create your own new scenes and make sure they look good. If you just draw or paint from reference, you don't have to understand anything about color theory or shape theory. You just recreate what's already there and you don't have to think all that much. But if you get more and more familiar with art and design principles, that allows you to get more creative and make your own stuff because you will see so many options to apply them. That is a common misconception, actually. Art and design theory is not restricting but liberating. This is 100% true. It's not about making all your paintings fit a precise rule set. But by knowing these rules, you will realize the massive amount of opportunities to apply or combine them. And this enables you to create whatever you want in a way that makes sense. That's the point. Recreating a photo every time you make art is boring. Use references, but do your own stuff with them, at least once in a while. Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, that is it for this lesson. I hope it was at least somewhat helpful, very theoretical, but I really believe that this is important to know. 17. Progressing as an artist: Last but not least, I want to give you guys some advice for your art journey. We already here, so I'm just going to do it. Listen carefully and maybe take some notes while you watch me paint this artwork. I want to share with you my general framework to progress as an artist. It's really simple, but it makes a lot of sense, at least to me. I mean, I'm very far away from being able to do everything I want as an artist. There were so many things I still have to learn. But this framework has helped me maintain clarity where I am and what's going on. So I'm just going to share it with you and hope it helps you understand something. So basically, there are four main stages that you go through when you learn art. You can switch back and forth between them, but in general, it always goes like this. Number one is learning and understanding the medium you work with. If you get into watercolors, you should first learn how to mix colors, how to use a brush, and how to make sure everything dries correctly. If you get into digital art, you should first learn the software, how to make and save documents, how to use layers, what all these tools and shortcuts mean, and so on. Because that's the basis. If you don't know the ways to use your medium, you're going to make many mistakes, be very inefficient and get confused. Or you're not even able to make art. You know, if you don't know how to manage documents and digital art, or you forget that oil paint has to dry before you touch the painting, you always have to understand a few basics about the matter you're working on in order to even start making art because otherwise, it's going to be difficult to move on to stage number two, which is, you learn different methods of creation. This should pretty much always be the second step. For example, you learn what crosshatching is or how to use shape tools and selections or how to make watercolors flow into each other, or even how to use a specific brush in digital art. All these options inside your medium that allow you to make art in different ways, the different methods of creation. The reason why you should get familiar with those right after learning to use the medium is because they pretty much define your art style. What's your preferred method of creation? How many do you use, and how frequently do you switch between them? For me, that's currently mainly these impasto and oil paint brushes, many brush strokes of different colors and often these thick paint parts. It works great for me now, but only because I took my time to understand and practice this method of creation. Before that, I often made art by blocking in colors and then using a blending brush to create a fine detailed texture on top. That's also a different thing. There is a pretty much infinite amount of methods of creation, and you cannot ever learn all of them if you're working with a complex medium like digital art. Maybe you can discover the methods of creation of charcoal drawing more quickly, but you never know. People always discover something new. The point is just that you should always look around a bit for these methods of creation. Finding at least one that suits you and allows you to make your art is really important. If you think that all of digital art consists of filling in colored lines to create manga illustrations, and therefore you don't want to get into it, you're wrong, and you're missing out big time. And if you think that all oil painters use thin and precise brushstrokes to make realistic paintings, you're also wrong. There are different methods of creation in pretty much every medium. It's going to be difficult for you to draw anything beyond basic if you don't know that you can tilt a pencil and use it for blending. So whatever medium you're learning, discover the different methods of creation as soon as possible. This is your basis to be able to decide where you want to go. Alright, then stage number three. This is the one that I spend the most time at, I think, because this is learning specific art skills. This is where all the advanced stuff comes into play that makes your artworks better perspective, color theory, understanding light and shadow, or also stuff like the anatomy of humans or the structure of trees, et cetera, all these specific topics that you can dive into if you need them. Most of them are not super essential because there is always an art style that completely ignores one of these skills. For example, in landscape painting, you don't have to understand the anatomy of dogs, or in inking, you don't have to understand how colors react to lighting. So generally, you can choose which skills you want and in which order you want to learn them. There is no exact roadmap for that. It just depends on your art style. There is an infinite amount of specific skills, but there are also some basic skills, and I think that you should usually learn the basic skills first. Basic skills would be the ones that you need most often like understanding colors and shapes. Human anatomy is also really helpful and definitely something that I should catch up with and perspective too. These are things that I really recommend you dive into for some time. The extra skills are then more specific like drawing and painting cats, if you really like those, understanding how to exaggerate light in color, if you really like impressionism, et cetera. Number three is, for example, also what I've taught you in the last lesson, understanding and practicing, making your own compositions. That's a specific art skill that's really impactful, and it's one of the few skills that I also think you need pretty much everywhere in almost every art style. The good thing about these specific art skills is that many of them are medium independent. So you're going to keep them even if you switch the medium. If you know about the anatomy of dogs and cats and learn to paint them, you're not going to start from zero if you switch from watercolors to oil paint or whatever, or from traditional to digital art. So you can take most of these specific art skills with you, no matter where you go. Some art skills, however, are specific to the medium, which is why I put this at stage number three. You cannot practice any of these art skills if you don't have a method of creation. This is a stage where you're going to spend a lot of time because there are just so many skills that you could learn. And if you stop doing that, art just gets boring at some point, at least for me. You know, once in a while I dive deep into a new topic that interests me and I think would make my art better, even though I know my medium and I have my methods of creation for now, I'm going to stick with them for some time, but there are always more specific art skills that I like to add to that. So that's stage number three. And the only thing left after that would be analyzing and improving your own work. Stage number four, the self reflection phase, as they call it. You know, at some point, you might be completely content with the way you make your art, and any specific skill wouldn't really help it anymore. The only thing left is looking at your own art. Does it achieve the right things? Does it feel good to make it? Could it evoke something else? This is where you think about the art itself. All these legendary artists that you know, at some point, most of them didn't care about art skills anymore, but they just thought about their own art and how they could improve it. That is, per definition, something that cannot be taught because it's too individual. But before you can do it, of course, you first need to have some basic art skills, and you need to actually make art with your medium and the different methods of creation. You first have to make something before you can reflect on it, and there is no need yet to obsess about the purpose of your art if you have no skills or no means to express yourself. So this is always the last stage, something that most of us just tap into from time to time, but not our main concern as learning artists. Alright, here's the point of all this. If you get into something new, always be aware of this framework. If your art sucks after you switch from traditional to digital, it's not necessarily because you're a bad artist or you lack a specific art skill, but maybe you just haven't fully completed stage one and two, and you're lacking understanding in the medium, or you haven't discovered a method of creation that works for you. This is often the case, so don't forget that. Don't get discouraged if your skills are lacking or your art seems meaningless. If you get stuck on your art journey, maybe explore a different method of creation. Try out drawing or watercolor brush, or maybe just make an artwork with all shape tools or all selections. That can be a really fun way to create a mood. Or if you're totally stuck, try out a new medium or switch back and forth. It doesn't have to be all digital or all charcoal or anything. But, yeah, I think digital art is definitely a medium that has vast opportunities. You can try out so many different methods of creation pretty much instantly. And therefore, you can get to the skills practice very soon. That's something unique about digital art, and I really appreciate that. So I hope you're going to continue. I hope you can apply many of the teachings from this course, and I wish you good luck on your art journey. It's going to be individual for all of us. At which stage we spend the most time, at which one we maybe get stuck. So just be aware of these stages. It can save you from getting discouraged from art altogether. That would really suck because it's very valuable that we do this. Always keep your head up, doing something new is hard, you're going to get through this. And in digital art, especially, you have so many options that you will always find a way to express yourself. I'm very sure of that. Okay, I think that's it. At this point, I'm literally just rambling. You got your artwork, you got your little advice, so I'm going to conclude this. 18. Outro: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for participating and congratulations for completing the course. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to share my passion with you to make unique digital paintings. And I hope that you're inspired to make many, many more because that's what we need, guys. More authentic, beautiful art, more creation. Thank you. That was a fun time, right? You've gotten better at digital art. I've gotten better at pronouncing the word hyacinths. I think it was worth it. Right now, you should have your finished image file, and you could use it for many things a wallpaper, a print, a postcard, or just something to look at for your personal enjoyment. That's also a thing, right? Don't forget to look at your paintings once in a while and be proud that you made all these brushstrokes look like something. No many people can do that. So even if you're not 100% happy with your artwork, the attempt alone is a huge win. Always remember this. Don't be afraid to upload and share your project here on this website. I'm super excited to see how this worked for you, and I always like to give you personal advice on your project, tell you what's good, and maybe what you could improve, as well. So do that right now, and then it would be awesome if you could give me a quick review and tell me if you like this course or not. It's very valuable for me to know what I could improve, whether it's the style of teaching, the project, the video quality. Please tell me your honest opinion and thanks in advance. Alright. Last but not least, don't forget that I also teach other courses. So check out my profile and see if there is a topic that interests you. Maybe one of these I think they're really good. So yeah, have a good day and keep creating.