Create a vector portrait illustration from scratch on the iPad

1. Create a vector portrait from scratch on the iPad: Hi there, My name is Chris Rathbone and I'm a freelance illustrator. I work predominantly in the sports and automotive industries and I've created work for clients such as Formula 1 the NBA, Red Bull, Puma and Top Gear. My background is in graphic design and art direction. And I made the jump about four or five years ago now to quit my day job and focus full-time on my career as an Illustrator. I often get asked how I go about creating my illustration work, what software I use, and what processes I use. So I put together this tutorial video where I'm going to be breaking down a portrait illustration. I'm going to be creating an illustration solely on the iPad using the Apple pencil. You can follow along and create the same portrait that I'm creating, or you can use this exact same process to create an illustration of your choice. We're going to be going literally from a blank canvas, and I'm going to show you how I go through my process of building some construction lines for my portrait, fleshing those construction lines out into a rough sketch, and then working that rough sketch up into my final line work. I'm going to show you how we go about creating color, adding shading and lighting, and then add in the final details to your illustration to really bring it to life. So let's jump into the tutorial now, I hope you enjoy, and feel free to send over any questions you might have on my process. And let me know if there's anything specific you want me to go through in future videos. So I hope you enjoy the tutorial. 2. Stage 1: Construction lines: As you're probably aware, we're gonna be working purely on the iPad today. The first thing we're going to do, I've just set up a blank document here. I've just set the artwork to be A4 landscape document. Now I'm just gonna go ahead and give our project a name here. I'm going to call it LeBron. And over here on the right-hand side you're going to see our Layers panel. You'll see how we utilize the layer panel as we go through the illustration. It really handy tool for building up your artwork. This first layer we're gonna be working on, we're going to call this build, gonna be a really basic build layer for our illustration. We're going to use really simple geometric shapes and lines just to get a really, really rough plot of where we want our elements to go. And we're going to use this to form the basis of our illustration in which we are going to build from. Now at this stage, we're really not worried about any detail at all. We're not worrying about likeness will let you just use some simple geometric shapes just to plot where our elements go. See where we're working on a portrait is really, really important to make sure that all of our details, the eyes, the nose, the mouth all has the correct proportions and distances. Make sure that I like and this is as close as possible. I like to do. I start off with a circle here, which is going to form the basis of the skull. Months. We've got our circle drawn for the skull. We're going to give ourselves a center line which runs right down the middle, which really helped us make sure that our illustration is symmetrical or as close to symmetrical as possible. And we're gonna run a horizontal line across the circle here, about two-thirds that are way down. And this is going to be where the eye level is. So it's really going to be the center line for the pupils in the middle of the eye. Now we've got those guides in there. I'm going to plot a couple of circles in here. Again, just using the shape tool, really simple. Block up the circles in here for the pupil and the iris of the eye. At this stage where we playing around with just simple shapes. The reason for doing that is that you don't get bogged down with detail and trying to get a likeness straightaway. You can move these elements around and play around the size of them, the scale of them, and the relative placement of them, which will really come to help us further on in the illustration. Once I've got this first I drawn over here, we're going to do is I'm going to duplicate this. I'm going to drag it over here on the right-hand side. Then using our alignment tool, I'm just going to flip it horizontally. Today mirrors our eye on the left-hand side. See where we got our center line down the middle. I'm just going to move this across to make sure the distance to that center line is similar to the distance from the center lines that are left eye. There are walks he told me in the program itself where you can snap and align these things perfectly. I choose not to do that when I'm doing my portrait work really because no phase is really 100% symmetrical. Actually find it gives you a more natural looking drawer. And if you do these things by I and if you've got something that's a few pixels off on either side, It's not really going to make any difference. People aren't gonna notice it. I'm just going to plot in some really rough detail here. I'm going to put a line in which gonna be the bridge of his nose. I'm going to put in just a rough shape here for the actual nose itself. Now again, about two-thirds of the way up this circle, similar to where we had our line, horizontal line for our center of our eyes. I'll put another horizontal line in here and it's going to be the rough line for where his hairline will be. With that knows you really want the nose touching the base of that circle will just near the base of this circle because like I said, that circle is our skull, so that's really where the nose it, so it helps you if your proportions there. Now we've got ozone limits drawn. I can draw in a line here for his chin and his jaw. Now the way that I worked for this is basically I want the tip of the jaw, the bottom, the lowest point of the jaw, to be a similar distance from the circle as the height of the circle itself. Really the circle of the skull is about half of the height of the head here that we're drawing. Let's see, LeBron has quiet, substantial beard. So I'm just going to put a second line in here, which is just going to form a rough layout for where I want the beer to be and how big I want that to be. I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna draw in the years up here. Now with the ears, I take this outline for the years to be pretty much in the same horizontal line as where the eyes sit and with the base of the ear again, you want it pretty much to go down to where the tip of the nose is, where the base of this circle is, which forms part of the skull. So it gives you sort of approximate dimensions here. Now obviously every portrait different, every face is different. So these are really just rough guides. But like I said, because we're using the simple geometric shapes once we've got a rough guide in there, you can then start fine-tuning needs and moving the elements around and scaling them up relative to each other depending on who is your drawing. I'm going to put in just a rough plot for where I want the mouth to be. In this illustration, I went into his mouth open almost as if he's angry and he's shouting. I'm going to plot the mouth in here. Then we're going to move down and just draw in the neck and the shoulder line here. I wouldn't hear mostly in his basketball vest in the iconic Lakers jersey. So I'm just going to put a couple of Essentially semi-circles in here which you're gonna form the color of that jersey. Gonna put in just a couple of lines that are gonna be, well, I'm going to place the sleeves that are jersey wear to Jersey ends and he showed up and the skin essentially starts. Now once I've got that, I think that's looking pretty cool. So I'm just going to duplicate that in the same way I did the spin over here on the right-hand side. And I think that's looking pretty cool. What we're gonna do now is we're going to move on to our next layer. We're onto essentially the second stage of our drawing now. So I'm happy with that build layer we're going to do now is we're going to stop a second layer here above our layer and we're going to call this sketch. Now essentially that build layer is kind of like a skeleton, I guess, of our portrait illustration. So it's really, really rough. We're not really going to use that for much later situation, but it's gonna be really handy found next stage, which is a sketch. What I'm gonna do is I'm just going to use that build layer. And I'm really just going to start sketching in some loose lines here. Now again, don't worry too much about how these lines look. Because the sketch is going to be really loose. We want to keep it quite loose so that we don't get bogged down with detail again. What we're doing really just sketch in, in some lines around the eye. So obviously I've got the placement here of the pupil and the iris and the outside shape of the eye. I'm really just working over those to stop building up this sketch. We don't ask skeleton build layer in a light-blue. And the reason for that is that we can see it. But when we start inking and sketch in our black layer, the black lab really stands out versus the lighter blue skeleton lab behind it. Now I'm actually, now I'm sketching in a few of these lines. I can actually see that the pupil and the iris of the eye, not quite where I want it to be. So I'm just gonna move this over slightly. I'm going to sketch in a few more details here around the browser knows. And then moving over to the eye on the right-hand side here. I'm going to start sketching in some more lines. One thing it's good to do is because we've got our layers here. We can keep going back to our Layers panel. I'm from timestamp, we can just turn off the layer that's cloud Build skeleton layer underneath. Just so we can see how our sketch is starting to build up. Just having a couple of registration issues here with the iPad picking on my hand. So you just double tap the screen to undo that. If there's any lines in that you don't want. I'm going to sketch in again very rough, ER, just some, some scribbles almost for the eyebrows. Put some marks around the forehead here, which will essentially be sort of the crease marks and his forehead with these facial expression we're going for. And then we're gonna move down here and start putting in some line work around the nose. Again, I'm using that skeleton layer underneath that we've previously created. Because I was happy with the proportions and the dimensions of all these elements. When we sketch it. Now we know that our sketch is gonna be roughly in the right position for where we want these pieces to be because we were happy about build Lao underneath. I'm going to start sketching in the mouth here. Now again, the outside shape of the mouth doesn't change really too much from our build layer underneath. You'll notice is we're starting to actually put in a few more details around here. So I'll put in a line up here, which is gonna be where the top of his TFR, we're actually going to draw in where the GMB Show because he was a gum showed quite often. So I'm just going to be a gum Hsu joining a couple of lines here for his tongue. Joining some lines for his teeth along the bottom part of his mouth air again from time to time. Just keep zooming out and turn off that skeleton live if needs be. Just so you can see how your sketches come into life. Because it can be quite distracting even though our layers are tilted back in that light blue, it can still be a bit distracting having all those lines there. So it's good to just turn it off and on, just so you can see exactly what you're working on. Now to put a few more creases and lines on his forehead up here. And I'm going to start to draw in his hairline. Now again, obviously had that line there from our skeleton layer for his hairline. I can use that as our guide. And we're going to put some lines in here to form the top of his head. Now what are those key elements are? Looking pretty cool. I'm just going to go in around the mouth HIPPA, a few more details in so I'm going to draw in where he's lips will be. A couple of scribbles in here, which will be really where he's facial hair and his bid will be as well. Again, as you can see, this is really, really loose linework. Almost kind of rational, does not rushed by and purposefully not putting too much detail into it and not worrying too much. Because this is essentially a sketch. I'm gonna draw some detail work in here for his beard on the other side. Just a bit more down here, which will be where the beard is just below his blow, his lip blows mouth. Flip the layers on, see how it's looking. I think it's looking cool. Now I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna draw the underside of his beard. So this is essentially where ways head stops and outside of this, this will be his neck and shoulders. I put it into some scribbly lines in here. Obviously, the beer is not gonna be a fine line like we'd have around the top of the head, around his ears is gonna be a much more scribbly line and just put it in a few lines here, which will be individual hairs. Now moving up to his ears. The previously, I'm happy with the shape of the ears and the position and the size of the years. But what we're gonna do now is we're going to put some detail work in there. So you're gonna have the inner line around the ear and the inside of the ear, which obviously protrudes out from the outside of the year where we look at AIM from square one from the front. Some line work around the bottom of the ear lobe here and just really shaping it. Knew some reference imagery. If you want to just see him by switching off my build Lao underneath. I'm really happy with how that sketch layers come in. Comment about is very rough and you can see where we've used our build layer underneath. And that's essentially how I work up my portraits. I mean, everybody works differently. Some people might prefer and be more comfortable to just go straight in a higher level of detail. But for experience, I've found that it goes right, That's fine. But when things aren't quite working right, and maybe the eyes are slightly different shape or proportion where you want them to be or the noses out or wherever the detail is. This quite often you can get a sketch drawing up of a portrait and something's off, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is exactly that it's not working farm by working through their submit, it probably adds an extra 15 minutes to half an hour so to your drawing process. But it can really save you a lot of time further down the line. I'm trying to work out. If something's not quite working, what it is is not quite working. So as I've been talking, I've just been drawing in some detail here around on the color and on each Jersey. Just added in a few extra lines. We'll see this in detail lines within that color. I've just been putting those in and just working around the sleeves are the jersey game with those extra detail lines in there. Couple of marks on there just to be kind of a crease lines in the Jersey where obviously it's fabric is not gonna be perfect. I'm just going to turn the layer off and have another look. And I think that's looking really good. I'm actually going to just, I think he's looking at almost a little bit cross-eyed here. So I'm just going to take the eyes here, the pupils of the eyes, and just move them out slightly towards the edges of his head. And again, that's the beauty of work in this way, is that it's really simple and really easy to just move these elements around. Now, I think it's looking cool. I'm really happy with that. I think obviously still very rough sketch work, but I think it's looking great. So we're going to save a sketch layer down now and move on to the next stage of our drawing. 3. Stage 2: Sketch: As you're probably aware, we're gonna be working purely on the iPad today. The first thing we're gonna do, I've just set up a blank document here. I've just set the artwork to be A4 landscape document. Now I'm just gonna go ahead and give our project a name here. I'm going to call it LeBron. And over here on the right-hand side you're going to see our Layers panel. You'll see how we utilize the layer panel as we go through the illustration. It really handy tool for building up your artwork. This first layer we're gonna be working on, we're gonna call this build. Gonna be a really basic build layer for our illustration. We're going to use really simple geometric shapes and lines just to get a really, really rough plot of where we want our elements to go. And we're going to use this to form the basis of our illustration in which we are going to build from. Now at this stage, we're really not worried about any detail at all. We're not worrying about likeness will let you just use some simple geometric shapes just to plot where our elements go. See where we're working on a portrait is really, really important to make sure that all of our details, the eyes, the nose, the mouth all has the correct proportions and distances. Make sure that I like and he sees it as close as possible. I like to do. I start off with a circle here, which is going to form the basis of the skull. Months we got our circle drawn for the skull. We're going to give ourselves a center line which runs right down the middle, which really helped us make sure that our illustration is symmetrical or as close to symmetrical as possible. And we're going to run a horizontal line across the circle here, about two-thirds that are way down. And this is going to be where the eye level is. So it's really going to be the center line for the pupils in the middle of the eye. Now we've got those guides in there. I'm going to plot a couple of circles in here. Again, just using the shape tool, really simple. Block up the circles in here for the pupil and the iris of the eye. At this stage, where we plan around with just simple shapes. The reason for doing that is that you don't get bogged down with detail and trying to get a likeness straightaway. You can move these elements around and play around the size of them and the scale of them, and the relative placement of them, which will really come to help us further on in the illustration. Once I've got this first I drawn over here, we're going to do is I'm going to duplicate this. I'm going to drag it over here on the right-hand side. Then using our alignment tool, I'm just going to flip it horizontally. Today mirrors our eye on the left-hand side. See where we got our center line down the middle. I'm just going to move this across to make sure the distance to that center line is similar to the distance from the center lines that are left eye. There are walks he told me in the program itself where you can snap and align these things perfectly. I choose not to do that when I'm doing my portrait work really because no phase is really 100% symmetrical. Actually find it gives you a more natural looking drawer. And if you do these things by I and if you've got something as a few pixels off on either side, It's not really going to make any difference. People aren't gonna notice it. I'm just going to plot in some really rough detail here. I'm going to put a line in which gonna be the bridge of his nose. And I'm going to put in just a rough shape here for the actual nose itself. Now again, about two-thirds of the way up this circle, similar to where we had our line, horizontal line for our center of our eyes. I'll put another horizontal line in here and it's going to be the rough line for where his hairline will be. With that knows you really want the nose touching the base of that circle will just near the base of this circle because like I said, that circle is our skull, so that's really where the nose it, so it helps you if your proportions there. Now we've got ozone limits drawn. I can draw in a line here for his chin and his jaw. Now the way that I worked for this is basically I want the tip of the jaw, the bottom, the lowest point of the jaw, to be a similar distance from the circle as the height of the circle itself. Really the circle of the skull is about half of the height of the head here that we're drawing. Let's see, LeBron has quiet, substantial beard. So I'm just going to put a second line in here, which is just going to form a rough layout for where I want the beer to be and how big I want that to be. I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna draw in the years up here. Now with the ears, I take this outline for the years to be pretty much in the same horizontal line as where the eyes sit and with the base of the ear again, you want it pretty much to go down to where the tip of the nose is, where the base of this circle is, which forms part of the skull. So it gives you sort of approximate dimensions here. Now obviously every portrait different, every face is different. So these are really just rough guides. But like I said, because we're using the simple geometric shapes once we've got a rough guide in there, you can then start fine-tuning needs and moving the elements around and scaling them up relative to each other depending on who is your drawing. I'm going to put in just a rough plot for where I want the mouth to be. In this illustration, I went into his mouth open almost as if he's angry and he's shouting. I'm going to plot the mouth in here. Then we're going to move down and just draw in the neck and the shoulder line here. I wouldn't hear him Oxley and his basketball vest in the iconic Lakers jersey. So I'm just going to put a couple of Essentially semi-circles in here which you're gonna form the color of that jersey. And we're gonna put in just a couple of lines that are gonna be, well, I'm going to place the sleeves that are jersey wear to Jersey ends and he showed up and the skin essentially starts. Now once I've got that, I think that's looking pretty cool. So I'm just going to duplicate that in the same way I did the spin over here on the right-hand side. And I think that's looking pretty cool. What we're gonna do now is we're going to move on to our next layer. We're onto essentially the second stage of our drawing now. So I'm happy with that build layer we're going to do now is we're going to stop a second layer here above our layer and we're going to call this sketch. Now essentially that build layer is kind of like a skeleton, I guess, of our portrait illustration. So it's really, really rough. We're not really going to use that for much later situation, but it's gonna be really handy found next stage, which is a sketch. What I'm gonna do is I'm just going to use that build layer. And I'm really just going to start sketching in some loose lines here. Now again, don't worry too much about how these lines look. Because the sketch is going to be really loose. We want to keep it quite loose so that we don't get bogged down with detail again. What we're doing really just sketch in, in some lines around the eye. So obviously I've got the placement here of the pupil and the iris and the outside shape of the eye. I'm really just working over those to stop building up this sketch. We don't ask skeleton build layer in a light-blue. And the reason for that is that we can see it. But when we start inking and sketch in our black layer, the black lab really stands out versus the lighter blue skeleton lab behind it. Now I'm actually, now I'm sketching in a few of these lines. I can actually see that the pupil in the iris of the eye not quite where I want it to be. So I'm just gonna move this over slightly. I'm going to sketch in a few more details here around the browser knows. And then moving over to the eye on the right-hand side here. I'm going to start sketching in some more lines. One thing it's good to do is because we've got our layers here. We can keep going back to our Layers panel. I'm from timestamp, we can just turn off the layer that's cloud Build skeleton layer underneath. Just so we can see how our sketch is starting to build up. Just having a couple of registration issues here with the iPad picking on my hand. So you just double tap the screen to undo that. If there's any lines in that you don't want. I'm going to sketch in again very rough, ER, just some some scribbles almost for the eyebrows to put some marks around the forehead here, which will essentially be sort of the crease marks in his forehead with these facial expression we're going for. And then we're gonna move down here and start putting in some line work around the nose. Again, I'm using that skeleton layer underneath that we've previously created. Because I was happy with the proportions and the dimensions of all these elements. When we sketch it. Now we know that our sketch is gonna be roughly in the right position for where we want these pieces to be because we were happy about build Lao underneath. I'm going to start sketching in the mouth here. Now again, the outside shape of the mouth doesn't change really too much from our build layer underneath. You'll notice is we're starting to actually put in a few more details around here. So I'll put in a line up here, which is gonna be where the top of his TFR, we're actually going to draw in where the GMB Show because he was a gum showed quite often. So I'm just going to be a gum Hsu joining a couple of lines here for his tongue. Joining some lines for his teeth along the bottom part of his mouth air again from time to time. Just keep zooming out and turn off that skeleton live if needs be. Just so you can see how he sketches come into life. Can be quite distracting. Even though out our layers are tilted back in that light blue, it can still be a bit distracting having all those lines there. So it's good to just turn it off and on, just so you can see exactly what you're working on. Now to put a few more creases and lines on his forehead up here. And I'm going to start to draw in his hairline. Now again, I'll see how that line there from our skeleton layer for his hairline. I can use that as our guide. And we're going to put some lines in here to form the top of his head. Now what are those key elements? Looking pretty cool. I'm just going to go in around the mouth HIPPA, a few more details in so I'm going to draw in where he's lips will be. A couple of scribbles in here, which will be really where he's facial hair and his bid will be as well. Again, as you can see, this is really, really loose linework. Almost kind of rational, does not rushed by and purposefully not putting too much detail into it and not worrying too much. Because this is essentially a sketch. I'm gonna draw some detail work in here for his beard on the other side. Just a bit more down here, which will be where the beard is just below his blow, his lip blows mouth. Flip the layers on, see how it's looking. I think it's looking cool. Now I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna draw the underside of his beard. So this is essentially where he weighs head stops and outside of this, this will be his neck and shoulders put into some scribbly lines in here. Obviously, the beer is not gonna be a fine line like we'd have around the top of the head, around his ears is going to be a much more scribbly line and just put it in a few lines here, which will be individual hairs. Now moving up to his ears. The previously, I'm happy with the shape of the ears and the position and the size of the years. But what we're gonna do now is we're going to put some detail work in there. So you're gonna have the inner line around the ear and the inside of the ear, which obviously protrudes out from the outside of the year where we look at AIM from square one from the front. Some line work around the bottom of the ear lobe here and just really shaping it. Knew some reference imagery. If you want to just see him by switching off my build Lao underneath. I'm really happy with how that sketch layers come in. Comment about is very rough and you can see where we've used our build layer underneath. And that's essentially how I work up my portraits. I mean, everybody works differently. Some people might prefer and be more comfortable to just go straight in a higher level of detail. But for experience, I've found that it goes right, That's fine. But when things aren't quite working right, and maybe the eyes are slightly different shape or proportion where you want them to be or the noses out or wherever the detail is. This quite often you can get a sketch drawing up of a portrait and something's off, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is exactly that it's not working farm by working through their submit, it probably adds an extra 15 minutes to half an hour so to your drawing process. But it can really save you a lot of time further down the line. I'm trying to work out. If something's not quite working, what it is is not quite working. As been Tolkien. I've just been drawing in some detail here around on the color and on each Jersey. Just added in a few extra lines. We'll see this in detail lines within that color. I've just been putting those in and just working around the sleeves are the jersey game with those extra detail lines in there. Couple of marks on there just to be kind of a crease lines in the Jersey where obviously it's fabric is not gonna be perfect. I'm just going to turn the layer off and have another look. And I think that's looking really good. I'm actually going to just, I think he's looking at almost a little bit cross-eyed here. So I'm just going to take the eyes here, the pupils of the eyes, and just move them out slightly towards the edges of his head. And again, that's the beauty of work in this way, is that it's really simple and really easy to just move these elements around. Now, I think it's looking cool. I'm really happy with that. I think obviously still very rough sketch work, but I think it's looking great. So we're going to save a sketch layer down now and move on to the next stage of our drawing. 4. Stage 3: Line work and inking: Everything we've been doing up to this point as being really do some rough. What we're gonna do now is we're going to set up a new layer in here. We're going to call this line work. Now this is gonna be our actual line work and inking layer for our illustration itself. We're gonna set this layer above our sketch and build layer. What we're gonna be doing is using those two layers below that we previously created as a guide to create our final line work. Now. Now final line work is gonna be much tidier, much cleaner. And essentially we won't need that sketch layer. Now build layer once we're done with this, just working around the UI here, I'll put an ellipse in the center for the people at the I, just drawing a line above and below for the outside of the eye itself. And then just a couple of lines in here underneath the eye for the creases underneath the eye in the face. Waves go is expression. Now I'm just using the pencil tool for me so I can get a nice flowing curve to them. I'm going to work in some more of the creases and lines around the top of his nose here. This point, I'm not worrying too much about the brushstroke itself will come to that later stage. So just work with whatever default brush you've got Guide on here. My one-off thing, I've just got 11 pixel stroke on the brush here. Now I'm going to draw in some of the lines around the eyebrow. And we're going to change that instead of being a stroke like holdover lines and it turned out to be a fill. Now I'm gonna come down here. I've got the frame, the outside of the eye and I've got the people in the middle. I'm sure work in some more detail around the eye here. What we also do on this layer as well as creating our linework, that'll be the outlines essentially. We also create some really dark areas, which are our ink in areas. Now you can see we've kind of done that annual eyebrow above, but I'm just going to in the UI here around the eye, what these will be. These are gonna be the darkest points of shading that will have on our illustration. So if you imagine underneath or created this eye and above the eye itself, that'd be really dark shade in there. We're gonna fill this in with black. I'll just work around the eye quickly here to show you what we mean. This really just comes with a bit of experience and a bit of playing around just to see what you like it. It really depends how dramatic you want to go over your light in as to how heavy you make these ink and areas. I just have a play around and see what works. For this drawing. In particular, I'm taking a light sources being above annual front of him is therefore lightened, will be underneath areas. So if you look at the crease of the eye here, like I said, underneath the crease, that's where the heavier areas of this ink and I'll just turn off quickly the sketch layer and the build layer. You can see this in isolation to really see what I mean. Now, you without any brushes or stroke effects applied to the lines, you can already see that this line work layer here is much cleaner and crisper than our sketch layers belief. I'm just going to come back in here and work in a few more creases around the top of the head here. And then I'm going to come across and do the overlay. Now let's keep this consistent. I'm going to duplicate the pupil from the IRB previously done. That way. I know it's the same size, so we make sure that it's nice and symmetrical from that point of view. In March, the same way as I did the previous slide. I'm going to put some lines in here to form the outside shape of the eye around the top and the bottom. And I'm going to work in some of the detail here around the eye itself. Again, just using the stroke tool, the moment not worrying about the field. So let's get our line work in there first. I'm used the pencil tool and just drawing some lines increases underneath the eye itself around here. Where we've got quite a dynamic expression here. There's a lot of movement and energy and his face. I'm just going to exaggerate out a few of these lines, which I think will really help to exaggerate the expression that he's got going on and add a bit more energy to it. And in exactly the same way as we did on the previous ie. I'm just going to go in here and put in some ink in around the eye. So again, if our light source is coming from the top, from above, the areas that are in the darkest layer shading will be around the top of objects because they're casting a shadow from the objects above them, if that makes sense. Sorry, I ran the top of the eye here. I'm just going to fill in the inking in the same way that I did previously. I'm just going to extend that out into a few of these creases underneath the eye itself and around the eye. I'm doing is I'm just extending this inking area out to connect up to a few of the creases around the nose and around the eye. Just because we know that where we've got those creases, there are gonna be the areas where the shading is. Now I'm going to put in a couple of bits just inside the eye here, except that one needs to be, I feel like it's a bit too heavy to be all be solid black. I want to put in a little shape up here and using the Boolean tool. I'm just going to track that format. Now what we can see as we've started to get really nice clean, crisp blinds here and some basic inking around the eyes and the top of the nose here. I want you to do in essence of time. I'm just gonna go ahead and speed up this video. You can see what I'm doing as I work around the rest of the face. Obviously, it's a fairly time-consuming process. I want to do is I'll come back to you want to finish the line work in the Incan just to talk through a few of the areas and explain some of the pieces that I've done. As you can see, we will finish writing can now. We've got some really nice clean line work in here. And we've also got our solid areas of black, which are gonna be a really dark immediately dark areas in our illustration. Now I think this is looking great, but what we're gonna do is we're just going to add some finishing details to our line work itself. Now what we can do is we can go in here and we can select all of our stroke lines. And just playing around with the properties within the stroke itself. We can do some different effects to this. We can change the white of some of these lines are of all of the lines. You could add a texture to these lines. What we're gonna do in this case is are we have some custom brushes that I've created just over the years because I like to have a consistent brushstroke to all of my drawings, so it gives it a consistent style across my portfolio. I'm gonna select all of the lines here. I'm just gonna go ahead and select my art brush. Now what you'll see with the lines here, is there a little bit of finance will thicken those up in a moment. What that does, the art brush I've created just gives a bit more of a tapered line. The line tapers away, it gets thinner towards the edges. So it looks a bit more natural, more hand-drawn than a digital stroke, which is the consistent width all the way through. Just looking at the year here you can see how that line type is weighing it gives it a more natural organic pen line. Now again, there's no real science with this. Just have a play around. I'm going to go through and I'm gonna change all of the lines to be this art brush. And I'm gonna make some of the lines thicker and thinner than others. 5. Stage 4: Colour: No record of our linework and income finished. What we're gonna do now is we're going to add some flat color to our drawing. We're going to set up a new lie here called color. We're going to put this below our inking layer. What happens in any color that we put down would be underneath the ink in. So we're still see the ink and the line work on top. Now what we're gonna do is relatively simple process. We're just going to work our way round the drawer in, filling in areas of flat black color. I'll go a brown color here for the skin tone. We're going to start around the ear, work my way around. And because we're underneath the inking layer, as you can see here, I don't have to go around all of the detail. For example, round his BATNA because it's underneath so I can just cut straight line across, work my way around the color. Come back up. Again. I didn't have to cut around the beard because the inking layer is on top. I'm just going to work my way around the rest of the head here, just around the ear on this side. And again, we're gonna put a different color for the hair, so I don't have to worry too much about going around the hairline just at this stage. Now we've got a skin tone. I'm gonna put you in a slightly darker shade of brown. And I'm going to use this for the hair. So just starting over here on this left-hand side again, I'm just going to work my way up using the pencil tool. And I'm going to start drawing around the hairline again because that layer is underneath. You can see now that our colors are quite nice effective in underneath our linework. And it means that any color that we add to our drawing is not going to interfere with the line work itself. Now this is relatively straightforward process, so I'm going to jump ahead and speed up the video here. Just because like I said, it's very self-explanatory. Just working your way around the drawing, choosing the colors that you want to use. You can either use a realistic color palette or maybe an abstract color palette. But just work your way around the drawing. Put it out with the different areas of flat color. We've got one of our coloring finished, and I think that's looking great. Obviously it looks very basic at the moment because it's just flat base color. But I'm really happy with how it is looking. We're gonna move on to the next stage now, which is going to be adding our shading. 6. Stage 5: Shading: We're gonna be starting on our shading now, I'm just going to set up a new layer here. And I'll call that shadows. Now I'm going to put this layer above the color layer, but below the inking layer. It's important to make sure it's above the color layers, walks away. We can see it, but we still want to be working blowout inking layer. Nothing really goes above that inking layer. Now similar to what we did on the income process. If you remember back to our linework stage. I'm just going to work around some areas that I think will be in shade. Now again, remembering our light source for this, we've chosen a light source to be at the top. That means the objects that are lower down in the face going to have more shading on them because the shadow is going to be costs from the object above. If I work around the eyebrow here and then come down to the eye itself, the creases in the eye are gonna be in shade because they're gonna be recessed into his face so they don't protrude out there, recessed in as well around the top of the actual eyeball here, if you imagine the eyeball is set into the eye socket, into the skin, there'll be a shadow around the top of this I. As we work around some of the crazies under the eye here, the creases are actually recesses within his face. So again, there'll be shadows around those. Now I'm going to set this to black, same color that we use for our inking. But what I'm gonna do is I'm going to select that block of color. Then going to come across to our Properties panel. I'm going to change the blend mode from normal to multiply. Now what multiply does is it allows colors from underneath to come through as we reduce the opacity down here, you can see that all of our colors underneath are still showing through with this shading. Now again, this comes with a little bit of trial and error. Workaround areas that you think are gonna be in shadow, whether they're recessed into the face itself or whether they have a shadow cast. And then because of an object above, just pull out some areas that you think will be in shade. You don't have to go too crazy with this at this stage because these are really the very dark points of shadow. As I move over to the year here, mostly the insides of the ear, inside the ear lobe, this will be darker. The inside of the top of the ear, and then also around the bottom of the ear here. Because if our light sources coming from above, then it's going to be casting a shadow on the bottom sides of this ear and on the inside of the year. So again, we're going to set that to multiply. We're going to bring our opacity down to about 30%. Again, it doesn't have to be exact. You can go for a more dramatic and more extreme lighting if you wanted to. You could have those shadows darker and deeper. But I think around 20, 30% is generally where most of my work is. And that's I'm really working on an extreme sunrise or sunset scene where the sun will be lower in the sky and the shadows would be more prominent. Now again, this comes with a lot of trial and error. Just work your way around. It really depends on the subject matter that you're drawing, how extreme you want your shadows to be. But you can't really go wrong with this. It just depends on how much and how big you want those shaded areas to be. I'm going to work around the bottom of the nose here and into some of his facial hair, coming back up again, obviously, the nose generally protrudes out from the face. We're going to have a shadow underneath the nose, whereas casting a shadow on the face. And it's also going to have shadow around the base of the nose itself because I see the nose itself is a 3D element, is not flat. There will be shading around the bottom of the nose as well as underneath the nose, whereas casts a shadow on the face below. Now I'm gonna work around just in somebody's creases on the nose and extend those into the creases underneath the eye with the ultimate goal of taking this into the eye itself, similar to how we did the I on the other side that a face. I'm just going to work around some of these creases. Now this process can be quite time-consuming, obviously dependent on what you're drawing. You might have a lot of detail to go into in the face. I'm just going to speed up the video so you can see what I'm doing. And then I'll come back to you when we've got our shadows completed. We've got our shadow is completed. I think it's looking cool is coming along nicely. I'll see it still looks far from finished, but you can see how from our flat color, just adding those elements of shadows can really help add some depth to the drawing. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna move on to our next stage, which is gonna be our low lights, which is a very similar process. But I'll talk you through how we go about adding some more depth to our drawing. 7. Stage 6: Lowlights: Now we're coming on to our low lights. I'm gonna stop new layer here. I'm going to make sure that we are below our inking layer. And I'm actually going to move this layer below our shadows layer. Now as we discussed, we've got some basic shading on there, which is definitely helping to add some depth. But I think we can go another level and add even more depth to our drawing to really help it come to life. This is the exact same process as we did for the shadows. But what I'm doing is I'm just extending these areas out. I want to work off. I'll start around the eye here. So I'm just going to work out somebody's creases. Now, this is almost like contour lines. If you imagine somebody's recesses are gonna be quite extreme recesses, in which case our second layer of shading are low lights is going to be very close to our base layer of shading that we previously got. But in other areas that have a more gentle slope to them, we don't need to be so close with our shading. As I come around the left eye here. I really don't want to go up that high because the shading around the eyes, I want it to be quite subtle on to blend out. I don't want all the shading tight. This layer is much wider and less detailed, less intricate really. Then our shadows that we had previously. If I walk around the top of the nose here and into the other eye on the other side of his face. Again, as I come under the eyebrow here because it's quite a gradual curve. I'm keeping the distance much greater between this layer and the previous layer shading. But as I come around to the actual eye itself, I'm going to turn that back up again. So it's gonna give us a nice blend. Now we've got our complete, I'm just going to work in here in the same way that we use a Boolean tour. If you remember back to our inking, just some extra bits around the nose. I don't want it to be all solid. And I'm also going to draw around the inside of the eye here because I don't want to how I in shadow. Again, it's just gonna be the top side of the eye, which is going to be in shadow from the eyebrow above. I'm just going to draw some shapes in here, which I'm ultimately going to use to knock out from our outside shape, from our main shape. I'm going to select all of those. I'm gonna go across to my Boolean tool and use the divide to split them out. Now in the same way that I did for our shadows layer, I'm gonna go into the Properties. I'm going to set the blend mode to multiply. And I'm bringing the opacity down, but it's not going to bring it down a little bit more. I'm gonna come down to around 20%. So that way we got a software layer shadow. Because this is low lights. It doesn't need to be as strong, as prominent and as heavy as our shadows layer are low, light is much softer, just adding a bit of depth to the drawing. Again, this is really kind of trial and error. It depends on the subject matter that you're drawing. It depends on where you want your light source to be. It depends on how dramatic you want the lighting to be on your image. And I'm just gonna go ahead and speed up the video. So I'm going to work my way around the rest of the head. You can see everything I'm doing and I'll come back to you. The end were not completed their low light stage. Now we've had low lights completed that second layer of shading. You can really see how we've got a lot more depth to the face and he's starting to come alive a lot more. It's looking less flat. There's more depth to the drawing, and it's a bit more dramatic. Now we're going to move on to some highlights. 8. Stage 7: Highlights: We're moving onto our highlights now so our shadows will complete, I think is looking great. We've got a lot of debt fatty to the drawing. Now, you're starting to come alive. Now how I lights are very similar to the shadows in principle, but it's really just the opposite. If you think about, you've got light and dark, you've got the light in the shade. We're gonna be applying the same kind of process, same kind of technique, but which can be working in the opposite way because we're focusing on our light now. So the areas that are being hit by the light, I'm going to set up a new layer here called highlights. I'm going to make sure that that layer is above the color layer. Still work in below the inking and the shadows and low lights we've created previously. What I'm gonna be doing now is I'm gonna be drawing in areas that I feel will be caught by the light. So if our light sources coming from above, previously, we have our shadows and our low lights. We've been looking at the areas that aren't in the light. So the areas that are gonna be in shade or C for our shaded, this is the opposite we're going to be drawing the areas in now, they're gonna be caught by the light that are in the light. Let's start around the nose here. Obviously again, as we said earlier than those protrudes out of the face, the nose is going to be catching a lot of light. We can start drawing and around the nose here. And I'm gonna take some of those lines out onto the cheeks. Because again, the cheeks will be catching a little bit of the light as well. Bringing those lines backup and connect our shape. Now because we're looking at highlights, we don't want this to be black. We're going to put this to white because it's gonna be the light source is coming from our light source. What we're gonna do is we're going to use a blend mode, will open up for parties, and we're going to use a blend mode called Color Dodge. Now Color Dodge works in a similar way to how multiply works for the dark shadows Color Dodge works in a similar way for the lighting, allows the colors to come through from underneath. I'm going to set our opacity back on that as well, that we can see our color layer coming through underneath. Now we're gonna move up to the forehead here. Obviously the forehead is going to catch an awful lot of light on the work my way around here underneath the hairline. Now I don't want to work directly underneath the hairline because if you think this hair again protrudes out slightly from the top of the skull. We'll see their heads cut quite short-term goal here, but it's not completely flat to the skull. So there will be a bit of distance if you imagine the light hitting the hair before it hits the actual skin of the forehead. We just start working our way around, just leaving a little bit of distance there. It'll give us a much more realistic image with a bit more depth. Just got a bit of pen recognition issue here. I'm going to continue work in that light around the top of the forehead, making sure I don't want to cross at no point on my drawing should my highlights or shadows cross because you're not gonna have an area that's both in the light and in the shade. What we're doing now is we're working around, stand away from those shadows. And depending on how severe and how extreme you want the light and B, that will be determined by how close you put your highlighted areas to shadowed areas. If you want a really soft glow, you'd have a much greater distance between your highlights and your shadows if you want quite an extreme dramatic shadow, which is what I'm really going for here because I want to add to the energy and the emotion in the face. I'm going to emphasize that with some extreme lighting. So my highlighted areas got quite close to the shadowed areas around the top of the eyebrows here. Again, we're gonna change our blend mode color, dodge, tight, you opacity back. I'm just going to work into the eye here in the same way. So where the top of the eye was recessed into the face and it was gonna be in shade from the eye socket above it. But light is going to be catching the bottom of the eye, which can add in some light in there. Again, we'll select those. Change our blend mode color dodge, and take the opacity down there. Generally, your highlights would be a lot lower in opacity than your shadowed areas. Just because the y is a much brighter color. But again, just have a play around the opacity until you get the levels that you want it to be. I think this process is quite self-explanatory. So I once again, I'm just gonna go ahead and speed up the video. You'll be able to see everything that I do. And I'll come back to you at the end when the highlights are drawn in. And I'll finish with our highlights. Now, you can really see now that our drawing is starting to come to life. Photographer, if I bring up the layers here, I've just talked with these through one-by-one, turn them off. You can see how each stage, each layer that we've added is adding more and more depth to our drawing. If we go back to just the flat color that we initially started with, then we start to bring these lazy and one-by-one. So bringing in our shadows, bringing in our low lights, and bringing in our highlights. You can really see how much more depth is added to this drawing. 9. Stage 8: Additional lighting: Now I'm just going to stop a new layer here above our highlights. And I'm gonna call this layer glows. Now what this is, if you remember back to our shadows and low lights, we had two stages of shading for our shadows. We need to replicate that with our highlights and introduce a second layer of highlights, which we'll call glows. Now similar to how we were with the shading process, what we are going to be doing is just putting our areas within the highlighted areas that we think are gonna be getting just that extra little bit more light than the rest of our drawing. So I want you going to put out a couple of areas here on the top of the skull of the, where our light source is coming from above this of the corners, almost obviously it's a curved object, but essentially the corners of that skull at the top, they're gonna be catching the most light. And then maybe here where the eyebrows protrude out slightly from the face as well. Maybe there'll be some light just catching the top hair a little bit just on the bridge of the nose up here. And obviously the nose is quite prominent area itself, which protrudes out probably the furthest on the face in any other part. I was going to put some highlights around, some grows on the top of the nose and the bridge of the nose. Now again, we're going to set this to color dodge. And we're going to bring our opacity down again to about 20, 30%, but have a play around depending on how dramatic you want that light source to be. What you can see, nice, relatively subtle, but it just adds that extra bit of depth to the drawing. It makes it feel a bit more three-dimensional. I'm just gonna work around the edges of the ear here, really not pulling out too much. Just a little bit on the ear lobe and a little bit on the top of the ear because there'll be the bits that will be catching the most light a little bit on the lip. And then we're going to work into the teeth because as his mouth open, see the top of his mouth is going to be quite dark and in a lot of shadow, which we've already got drawn. But its teeth and around the bottom of the mouth. I just gonna catch just a little bit of light. We're getting it's kind of almost a less is more approach with this because you don't really need to go too over the top because we've already got two layers of shadows and we've got our highlighted area already drawn. This close layer is really just pulling out some subtle bits along the top, especially around the top of the shoulders here, the top of the skull, top of the forehead as we talked about, around the nose and the edges of the years. Just as those parts will be sticking out more than the other parts of our drawing. And I'll just be catching that extra little bit of light. Once again, set our Blend Mode to Color Dodge bring your opacity down to about 20%. I think that's looking cool. 10. Stage 9: Rim lighting: Now we're really on the home stretch of our drawing. I mean, there's an argument to say that you could leave it as it is, because I think this is looking great. We just have a flip for our layers here. So we've got our inking layer. We go back to see our sketch layer and our build layer that we had at the very early start of this process. You can see how we've bought up our inking layer from their introduce some flat color in our shadows and our low lights. And then boy in our lighting for our highlights and our glows. Obviously what we're drawing is a three-dimensional object. And at the moment, although we've got a lot of light in depth within the drawer in itself. The drawing is still quite flat in terms of where it sits on the background. So what we're gonna do now is we're going to add some rim lighting now, rim lighting is really, if you imagine this was in a real space, the lighter it'd be catching the edges of his face and his head and his body. Because there's distance between him and the background. What we're gonna do is we're going to replicate that by adding in some real lighting. I'm going to pull up, I'm gonna use a very light yellow for this. You can use why I like using a light yellow because ultimately any light is not going to be pure white, is going to have an element of warmth to it, especially if you're using the sun, for example. Use a light yellow color here. With our rim lighting. We actually want to put this again below our inking layer because we don't want to be drawing over the top of our line work just on the edge of the ear here. And again, this is really subtle, even more subtle than now, glows layer that we previously created. We don't really need to do too much with this at all. We just want to have some really small flashes of this extreme color here. We're not gonna put any blend mode on it. We're not going to knock the opacity back at all. We're gonna leave this at 100%. Then you should be able to see and get an idea of what we're talking about. So again, you can see it's very minimal amount that I'm actually draw it on here. It doesn't need to be a lot. I'm just pulling out some of the extreme edges of his head. We've just some touches of light. Now get onto the nose, as we said a few times, I'll see the nose protrudes out quite far from the rest of the face. And then coming down to the shoulders. Shoulders are really be the main part because obviously as he showed his taper out from his body, they're going to be catching a lot more light on the top of them then any other part of it really? I'm just going to draw in some rim lighting on biography shoulders here. Now we could go into detail and draw this against the jersey, but essentially where that yellow and we've already got highlights on there, you've probably not really going to see the rim lighting. So what I'm gonna do instead is I'm just gonna put a couple of bits out just where we can see some of his skin on his shoulders before it hits the Jersey. What that will do is that will give you the impression even though we haven't drawn it on the Josie itself, it gives you the impression that his shoulders are now stuck out from the rest of the drawing. We can see it's very subtle. But as we said, it just helps lift him from the background. Flip that on and off. You can see it just makes it feel a bit more freedom mentioned. 11. Stage 10: Final details: Now we went to the very final part of our drawing. We're going to stop a new layer and we're going to call this detail. We're going to set this above our inking. This is the first and only layer that will go above our income. Now this is really an extension of our rim lighting. What we want to do is where it has hair of the rounded top of his head and on his beard. We're gonna put out some really small parts of this. It doesn't need to be a lot just using the pencil tool, just going to print out a few edges around here using that same light yellow color that we used previously for the rim lighting, but where we're drawn above our inking layer now, these lines will be above our income. Get on the line about the brush stroke or anything at the moment, I'm just brushing in a few pencil lines here. It doesn't look too great just in a moment. But you'll see when we add the brush stroke to it, they already start to come to life. I'm just going to add in a couple of lines just in the eyebrows themselves as well. Because again, the face is a curved objects are those parts will be sticking out further than the rest of the head. And as I mentioned earlier, as we come down to the beard, I'm not going to draw in some pencil lines into the beer as well. Got a few registration issues here with my Apple Pencil. So apologies about that. But I'm just going to work in, as you can see, a few of these brushstrokes. Again, it's not exact science to this, just for a few bits out. The important bits to put out here are gonna be where the beard is actually a bug in front of his neck. Because that's the bit that looks quite flat at the moment. We've got a lot of lighting on his face and on his neck and shoulders, but the beard is essentially just a flat black objects in a moment. So by adding in somebody's brushstrokes, going to help define the edge of the beard and give a bit more depth to that area. So now I've got what his brushstrokes drawn in like say that's on the greater the moment. So we're going to select all of those. And if you remember back to what we did for our line work at the very beginning of the drawing. I'm just going to go across here and play around with that stroke. And this particular drawing I'm going to add in my art brush, which I've already previously created. And I'm just going to make sure that all the rim lighting objects, we apply that same brush to it. They got a nice tapered line to them. You can play around with the tapering on those. What you can see now is around the beard and the edge of the hair added to the rim lighting that we put on the previous layer. You can see it's added an awful lot more depth to his face in general versus the background. Now we're talking about and finishing details. So we're really getting down into the nitty-gritty details here. Now again, his beard is essentially just a black objects at the moment with the exception of the rim lighting bits that we pulled out. So what I'm gonna do is just using some brown. I'm going to print out in this very similar way to how we did with our rim light. And I'm just going to put out some brushstrokes around the edge of the beard. Just putting out some detail within the beard itself so that it doesn't just appear as a flat, solid black object. Which adding in a bit more detail to give you a bit more depth. That's looking cool. I'm just going to make sure that they all use the same brush for the rest of my drawing. And in a similar process, I'm going to go into the hair around the top of the head. Now. I'm going to use where we cause some shadows and low lights in there. From our previous layers. I'm going to use the black that we use from our inking layer inside those areas. Because essentially theories is almost black, is a very dark brown black color. I want to get bit of variety in there. So I'm gonna put in some black brushstroke lines. I'm going to work those around within the shadowed and low-light areas. And then as I come out near to the edge of his head, there's gonna be a little bit more light on those areas. Instead of the black, I'm going to substitute in the lighter brown color similar to what we use for the beard. Around the bottom of his head. What you'll see just gives a bit of depth and a bit of variety to the hair. Again, it's not just a solid block of color. And again, I'm just going to select those, all of those strokes. Open up my stroke properties and select my art brush. Slight taper on them against they taper away. Nothing as you can see now it's really starting to come to life. And now I'll draw in standing out from the background. We're pretty much done. One final thing I'm going to do is because we've been talking about is light sources. We've been working our way for our drawing. I think it's only right that we actually put a light source into the drawing, which will really just help to exaggerate the shadow or shading and lighting that we put on it. So just working on my color layer, I'm just going to put in a simple white circle. I'm going to knock that back behind his head and shoulders. Now what that does, we looked at it that really starts to add the depth to the drawing, lifts him and separates him from the background. Just going to play around with the size and the position of that. I don't want it to be too large by just wanted to be there so that we get the light source. And especially if I've rim lighting now, it makes it a lot more sense that we've got with this room lighted areas where the light sources is essentially coming from behind. 12. Project overview: That brings us to the end of the tutorial. If I just flip back between all these layers, you can see how we started off with a really basic build layer which we use to then create our sketch. We then used our sketch to create our income. Once we're happy with our linework and our income, we added in our flat color. Then we started adding in layer by layer, some shadows, some low lights, some highlights. And then we put in our glows. And then we add our very final layers of our rim lighting and our detail, which really add just those extra bits to the drawing to make it feel that a little bit more lifelike. As I said, that brings us to the end of the tutorial. I've had fun creating this piece. I really hope you guys have had fun following along and I hope it's been educational for you. Like I said, this process, I don't know if you've seen any of my other videos, but you will see this process is the exact same process I use for almost all of my work. Because you're following along to create this exact piece or whatever you want to create a piece of your own and use these skills that you've learned along the way. You can really apply this to almost anything you want to draw. Thanks so much for following along. I really do hope you've enjoyed it and I'll look forward to seeing more of your work.