Create an Augmented Reality Sketch

1. Intro: Hi there. My name's Matt. I'm a Digital Artist from Melbourne, Australia. For me, digital art creations started off as nothing more than a hobby, that I'll do every day on my 30-minute train ride to and from work. Now, I'm a professional trainer, specializing in many media creation apps such as Procreate. Procreate is quickly become my favorite art application. It's been an instrumental part of building my website mlloydartist.com and designing the products I sell there including bags, backpacks, smartphone cases, and more. A year ago I started experimenting of a genre digital art that I call augmented reality sketches. It involves illustrating over the top of your photos to add things that are impossible in the real world. It requires proficient use of layers to divide visual elements in your artwork and a clever application of coloring shadows to make illustrations look like they physically exist there in the photo. In learning my style of art, you'll learn some fundamentals of digital illustration within the app Procreate. You'll learn how to use smart shapes and gestures, as well as how to effectively use layers to achieve a flexible and nondestructive workflow which will no doubt aid you in future projects. Augmented reality sketches are not only fun to create, but they can also make incredibly eye-catching YouTube thumbnails, Instagram posts, and online advertisements. This makes them ideal for businesses and entrepreneurs looking to great visuals that'll grab their customer's attention. As you follow along of my class, you get to work on your own augmented reality sketch from either your own photo or, all the one I'll be demonstrating on. This class requires no prior knowledge of digital art creation, or the app Procreate. Although I'll be using an iPad throughout this class, for those who don't have one, you can also get the Procreate Pocket app on your iPhone, which will have all the features we need. Come join my class. I can't wait to see what you create. 2. Class Project: As mentioned in my introduction, throughout my class, you'll get to work on your very own augmented reality sketching. The thing I'm most excited about is seeing the works you'll create from this class. When you finish your work, I'd love for you to post it in the project gallery. By the end of this class, you should end up with your own sketch over by Friday. My illustrations are very colorful and abstract, but I encourage you to try your own style. There are just four steps to creating an augmented reality sketch. Firstly, finding a good photo for your background. I'll explain what to look for and what you should avoid. Secondly, creating an outline. I'll show you three of my techniques. Thirdly, adding color. In the process, I'll teach you some efficient methods for doing so. Lastly, adding shadows to help immerse your sketch into the photo background. In the next video, I'll explain what to look for in a photo background. I'll see you there. 3. Finding a Photo Backgound: In this video, I'll show you what to look for in a photo background for your augmented reality sketch, as well as a few photography tips for when you're out and about. For the sketches you'll be creating during this class, you can use photos you've already taken, or if you prefer, you can use the same photo background I'll be using from the projects and resources section. I find my best background photos on my daily commute to work, but you can find the perfect shot wherever you go, when you go on a walk out with friends or even somewhere mundane like a car park. Inspiration can be found anywhere. For when that inspiration hits, here are a few very basic photography tips. The most important tip I have is very simple. Take lots of photos. Remember, you can always delete them later if they're not very good. The more photos you take, the more options you'll have to choose from later on. Secondly, remember to adjust your exposure. Most smartphones adjust exposure automatically, but in some situations, you'll have to do it manually to get the photo looking right. Thirdly, smart phones usually come with a grid feature. This can be useful for aligning your photo horizontally and vertically. The more you do augmented reality sketches, the more you discover what kinds of photos work. Here are the lessons that I've learned from experience using photos in my own sketches. I'll show you what to look for and more importantly, what type of photos to avoid. Here are three things to look for in your photo backgrounds. A photo with a lot of free space on either the ground or on a flat surface provides you with a lot of area to add your illustrations. Walls and buildings can provide a lot of empty space vertically. Later in my outline video, I'll show you the carving into reality technique, which is perfect for these kinds of photos. Thirdly, an object or post with empty space around it provides us an opportunity to use another illustration technique I call wrapping around reality. Now, it's time to look at things I would avoid in my photo backgrounds. Firstly, try to avoid photos with complex or blurry foregrounds. These become a hassle, if not impossible to erase from your sketches later on when they get in the way. Secondly, try to avoid complex or intricate shadows where your sketches will be. If you cannot draw that shadow, imagine how hard it is when you have to draw it in adherence to the physical shaping and sketch. The last one can be tricky to predict. Avoid oddly-shaped objects where your illustrated shadows will fall. If you know a way your sketch is going to be in the photo, think about where its shadow will land. Is there an object in the way? Will this make it difficult later on? If so, it might be easy to use a different photo and tiling. As you develop more experience with augmented reality sketches, never be afraid to challenge these rules with a lot of effort, and sometimes, manage to make the more challenging kinds of photos work. Now let's recap. When looking for a suitable photo background, look for environments with empty space. This could be horizontally, like on a surface or on the ground; vertically, like on a wall or around an object like a post. Here's some photo backgrounds to avoid. Avoid photos with complex or blurry foregrounds, intricate shadows where you want to place your illustration. If you can see that the shadow of your illustration will end on an oddly shaped physical form in the photo, avoid that too. Before we start our project, in the next video, I'll show you some essential features of Procreate. 4. Procreate Essentials: Before we get started creating our augmented reality sketch, let's go through some of the essential features of Procreate. This screen is our Gallery view where we can see all of our projects. You can also create a new project by pressing the plus button. This drop-down menu will show you your canvas presets, and this button here, is to create a new canvas preset. Here, you can adjust dimensions and other projects settings for a new canvas. For now though, we're just going to use the screen size preset. Before we delve into specific tools and features of Procreate, let's take a look at its user interface. Starting from the top right, we have our Paint tool, Smudge tool, and Eraser tool. Next to those, we have our Layers button and our Colors. The circle shows you which color is currently selected. Towards the top left of the screen, we have our Transformation tool, our Selection tool, our Adjustments, our Action menu, and an option to go back to the gallery. On the left edge of our screen, we have a slider for adjusting brush size, and then another slider for adjusting the opacity of our brushes and the strength of Smudge tool. Let's look at some essential gestures. Pinching in and out on your canvas will zoom in and out accordingly. A quick pinch inwards will snap the canvas to fit the screen. Typing two fingers will undo your previous action. You can go back 250 times. Tapping three fingers is our redo function. If you tap and hold two fingers it will quickly undo many actions until you lift your fingers off. Doing the same with three fingers will quickly redo actions. Now let's look at our Paint, Smudge, and Eraser tools. Again, these are our Paint, Smudge and Eraser tools. Tapping the Paint tool once will activate the Paint tool allowing you to sketch on the canvas. Tapping it again, will open the Brush Library. On the left side, you have your brush sets, these are like categories. When you select one of these, it will show you what's included brushes on the right, tap one to select it, tap outside the Brush Library to get back to sketching. Exactly like the Paint tool, tapping the Smudge tool once will activate it. This tool is great for blending your marks. Tapping the Smudge tool again, will open the exact same Brush Library the Paint tool uses. Your Brush Library is shared between all of your tools. This means you can access the same brushes when painting, smudging and erasing. Tapping the eraser once will activate the eraser. When you use the eraser, it will make the areas that you brush over transparent. The Brush Library is useful for erasing because you can pick brushes and textures that match the ones you've painted with. Now, let's talk about my favorite feature in Procreate, QuickShapes. Draw a line and hold your pencil down at the end. Now your line is perfectly straight, you can now drag it in any direction you'd like. Touching the screen with another finger will snap the directions to 15 degree increments. When you let go, there'll be an Edit Shape option towards the top of the screen. Tapping it will add handles to the ends of your lines, so you can reposition it however you please. Once you've finished your QuickShape, tap outside to set the line in-place. QuickShape can be used to help you draw arches and curves. Just draw your arch, hold down at the end. When you press "Edit Shape," you'll get handles to adjust its curvature. Now, I'll draw a square with QuickShape. Like before, I'll hold my finger down at the end. This will snap it to the closest four-sided shape, touch the screen with another finger, and it will snap to a perfect square. Let go, and it will again reveal an Edit Shape option. Here, there are options to edit your shape further. By grabbing the handles on the sides, you can stretch and distort the shape if you want to, or you could even use features like Polyline where you can adjust the corners and ends of your shape to change it to an entirely different one. Now let's draw a circle and hold our pencil down at the end. This results in an oval shape that we can re-size by dragging our pencil in and out. Holding another finger on the screen will snap the oval into a perfect circle. Once again, tapping Edit Shape will provide some handles to adjust your circle. From here, you can still resize the circle, and by dragging from its center point, you can move it to another area on the canvas. You can even draw a more complicated lines like this one. If you hold your pencil down at the end, Procreate will activate a polyline that can be adjusted in a variety of ways. Again, tapping Edit Shape will bring up some handles that allow you to edit these lines even further. Now, let's take a look at selecting colors in Procreate. In the top right corner of our screen, we have our active color. When tapped, it reveals out color pop over. The jewel swatch at the top right, shows you a current and previous colors. The outside ring is our hue ring. Here, we can select different colors from the spectrum. The inner circle is known as our saturation disk. Here, we can make colors darker or lighter. Here's a tip. If you double tap the top right of the disc, it will snap to the more saturated color in that hue. Double tapping the whiter area will snap to a pure white and the darker area to a pure black. If you pinch out on the saturation disk, it will become larger. This gives you more precision when selecting colors. The tabs at the bottom present other interfaces for selecting color. There's a classic square color picker similar to other art design software. The Harmony tab, that quickly helps you find harmonious color palettes. The Value tab where you'll find RGB and hue saturation brightness sliders, as well as hex code selection, and then the Palettes tab that shows you color palettes. You can import color palettes as well as make them yourself. Now that we have an understanding of the color wheel, it's time to show you a feature known as ColorDrop. If I draw a closed outline in my canvas, I can feel the shape of color. To do that, I'll tap and drag the active color from the top right of the screen. It's where my closed shape is. Sometimes when you use ColorDrop, it doesn't quite feel the edges properly. As I zoom in, you'll notice what is known as a halo. To prevent this from occurring when using ColorDrop, hold your pencil down and drag to the right to increase how aggressively color will fill the edges. Now, let's briefly look at Layers in Procreate. Tapping the two squares at the top reveals our layers pop over. Pressing the plus button allows you to add a new layer. Tapping and dragging the layer allows you to position the layer above or below the other layers. Tapping once provides a list of options for that layer. I often like to give creative names to my layers. For example, I'll press rename to type my own. Pressing the tick box allows you to hide a layer, pressing it again reveals it. You can also hold down the tick box to show you only that layer. Holding it down again will reveal all the hidden layers. The background layer can also be hidden to give your artwork a transparent background. By tapping the white square, you can change the color of that background. If you swipe left on a layer, you can choose to lock, duplicate, or delete that layer. Now, we'll talk about the Selection tool. By tapping the S icon towards the top left, it brings up S selection options: Automatic, Freehand, Rectangle, and Ellipse. The automatic selection works in a similar fashion to ColorDrop. Tap in a closed-off area in your layout to select it. Drag to the right to increase how aggressively it treats the edges. You can keep tapping other closed-off areas of your layer to add them to your selection. Freehand selection allows you to draw with your pencil around what you want selected. Remember to tap the gray circle at the end to close your selection. Rectangle, lets you select a rectangular portion of the lab, and Ellipse, selects a circular one. We'll now take a look at the Transform options in Procreate. To select Transform, tap the area icon at the top. In the Transform options, we have Freeform, Uniform, Distort, and Warp. With Freeform, I can grab the handle on the side to stretch my selection. I can use one finger to move the selection to another area of the canvas. I can also pinch in and out with two fingers to re-size that selection. If I hold it in the Transformed button, I can zoom in and out while it's in transform. With uniform selected, I can re-size my selection while ensuring its aspect ratio remains the same. With Distort, I can grab this side of the handles to share this selection. I can also grab the corner handles to distort the selection. This is useful when dealing with three-dimensional scenes. With Warp, I can warp or fold the selection, useful for 3D design with rounded objects. If I press "Advanced Mesh" in the bottom, I can bring up even more warp possibilities. With Transform, I also have options at the bottom to flip my selection horizontally or vertically. I have the option to rotate my image 45 degrees. I can also press "Fit to Screen" to make my selection fit the canvas. Lastly, let's briefly look at Adjustments and Actions. The Adjustments menu is found by pressing the magic wand icon. In this menu, you'll see a vast amount of filters and tools that can be applied to a layer or a selection. We'll look at two of these throughout the class. Gaussian Blur, the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. The Spanner icon shows us our actions. Here, you'll find a variety of options. The adds section allows you to add images and texts to your project. The Canvas section provides options to crop and re-size, as well as add drawing guides. The Sharing section provides a variety of Export options. The video section gives users access to a time-lapse replay of the artwork being created. The Preferences section includes customizable program settings, and then a Help and Support section. This video only brushes the surface of what Procreate can do. For more information, I recommend the Procreate Handbook option, and lastly, pressing Gallery takes us back to our project gallery where we started off. In the next video, we'll set up our project for our augmented reality sketch. See you there. 5. Setting Up Your Project: Now that we've learned the fundamentals of Procreate, we'll set up our project in preparation for our augmented reality sketch. The first step to setting up our project is to import our photo background. There are a variety of ways to import your photos into your iPad. For photos taken on an iPhone, the easiest method is to use AirDrop. If your photos were taken on a digital camera, you may find using a cable is the easier method. Depending on your iPad, you may need an adapter to do this. If you've used an Android smartphone, one method is to utilize a cloud-based service like Google Photos or Dropbox. If you have a PC or Mac, you can often use it as an intermediary between your photography device and your iPad. Remember, if none of those work, you may find e-mailing the photo to your iPad a suitable option. Now let's set up our project in Procreate. Starting in the project gallery, press the photo button towards the top right. This will give you the option to select your photo. I'm going to find the photo I prepared earlier for this session. The next step is to create a layer for us to illustrate on. If I wanted to, I could just start sketching on the top of my photo right away. There's one problem with that. If I then want to erase a part of the sketch, it will also erase everything else in the photo was well. This is what I would call a destructive workflow. I'm going to undo that and show you the correct practice. In digital art creation, we use layers to achieve a flexible and nondestructive workflow. Now Layers window can be found by tapping the two squares icon in the top right. I'll now create a new layout by tapping the plus icon. If I tap this layer once, it will reveal a menu of options related to the layer. I'm going to tap rename. This is going to be where I draw my outline. While I'm at it, I'll rename the layer of my photo background. I'll call this one photo background. As you can see, it's important to come up with really creative and original layer names. I'm now going to tap my outline to make it my active layer. With my layer setup accordingly, I can freely sketch nondestructively and erase it later with peace of mind. If I sketch over the top of my photo, you'll notice it can sometimes be hard to see my outline over the darker areas of my photo background. To make it easy to see what we're doing, we're once again going to go into our Layers and then type the letter N in our photo background layer. I'll then reduce the opacity slot to make the layer a little more transparent. Now you can clearly see my outline. Here is a trick if you ever want to lower or increase the opacity of a layer. If you tap two fingers on a layer, it'll bring up a full-screen view for adjusting opacity. You can tell the level of opacity from the blue bar at the top. Dragging your finger left and right will adjust the opacity. Now our project is set up for our augmented reality sketch. Let's quickly recap these two points. When setting up your project, create separate layers to ensure a flexible and nondestructive workflow, and lower the opacity of the photo background so you can clearly see what you're sketching. In the next video, I'll show you the three techniques I use to create the outline of my augmented reality sketches. 6. Outline: With our project setup accordingly, we can clearly see what we're doing and we can now illustrate in a newly created layer. In this video, I'll also show you three strategies I use when illustrating the outline of my augmented reality sketches. My first outline technique is called augmenting reality. This one is incredibly simple, find a surface in your background photo, enjoy your illustration where you want your object or character to be. For my sketch, I'm going to draw some 3D shapes right in the middle of this pathway. You'll notice I use a quick shape feature a lot here. Remember if you want to use quick shape, just hold direct pencil down at the end of your line or shape, and any crooked lines will snap into straight ones. I tend to do the majority of my sketching when I'm on the bus or on the train. There, drawing straight lines it is almost impossible, and this feature has been incredibly handy. Once I finish this shape, I'm going to add a few more behind it. This will add a bit more complexity and variety to the overall image. I'll now add a sphere behind the first two shapes. But before I do that, I'm going to add a new layer. I'm not going to name this one, as it'll only be there temporarily. Once again, I'm going to use quick shape to make a perfect circle. Remember to touch the screen with another finger while using quick shape. I might move this circle a little bit behind the other objects. The reason I've drawn the circle in another layer is so that I can easily erase the parts of the circle that should be hidden by the block in front of it. I'll then merge five first layers. I will try to reduce my layer account every now and then to save memory and to make it easier to manage later on. To do this, tap the top layer and press merge down. I want these 3D shapes to be as inconvenience to pedestrians and cyclists as possible. To achieve that, I'll tap the selection tool, and freehand draw around my shapes to select them. I will then tap the transform tool and move them to where they should be. My second outline technique is what I call carving into reality. Depending on your image, you can choose to do this on a horizontal surface in your background photo or a vertical one. I'm going to show you both options. This technique involves carving a hole into your photo with your pen. You can do any shape hole you'd like. For this one right underneath the stairs, I'm going to draw a more rectangular hole. This hole might not seem too realistic right now, but rest assured, when we add color and shadows in the next video it'll start to look more real. To just draw an empty hole in the ground is pretty dull, so let's draw something coming out of it. I'm going to draw a tentacle coming out of this one. Once again, I'm going add another temporary layer to give more flexibility when drawing. Creating this temporary layer will allow me to erase the outline of the hole that sits underneath the tentacle. Without the risk of removing the tentacle itself. I'll then use my eraser to remove any unnecessary lines, and I'll add a few final lines on my tentacle to edit a bit more detailed interest. Once I finish that, I'll again merge my outline layers to reduce my layer account. With the firewall in my background photo, I'll now show you how to use the carving into reality technique on a vertical surface. This time I'm going to draw some circular holes. Once again, I'll use quick shape to get those perfect circles. I'm also going to show you a trick, using the selection tool, I'll freehand draw around the circle. I will then select transform. Using the distort mode, we can distort the circle to make it more accurately fit the backgrounds perspective. If you want to zoom out while transforming selection, remember to hold down the transformation button. Now you'll be able to see the broader perspective. Once you are happy the way your hole is situated, use the selection tool to select the circle again. Once selected, duplicate it by using the copy and paste button in the selection options. This will make a duplicate circle in a separate layer. Now, if you select transform, we can adjust the secondary circle to look if it's behind the first one. In this case, I'll move it a little to the left, and then also minimize it very slightly. Once I've got my circle in the right place. I'm then going to select my eraser and remove the part of the secondary circle that would be out of that view. Just like that, we've carved a hole into that wall. But I'm not satisfied with just one hole, I need two. Sufficiently I'm going to merge my outline layers again. Then I'm going to select the hole in my outline. Once again, I'll tap copy and paste in the selection tools, and just like before, I'll have a new layer with my duplicated hole. Using transform, I can just move this hole wherever I want, and in this case, I'll minimize it a little, to add some variety to the image. When doing this, remember your rules of perspective. If something is further away in the photo it should generally get smaller. Although these holes are pretty good, they also pretty boring right now. Again, let's draw something coming out of them. Out of flexibility, I'm once again adding another temporary layer. This means if I make a mistake, I will disrupt the outline of the holes I spent so much time creating. This particular hole, I'm going to draw a bit of slime using animate. I'm quite happy with that. Now I'm going to erase a section of the hole that the slime obscures. That's a good step, now let's focus on the other hole in the wall. This one, I'm going to draw some more slime that's a little bit more ambitious. I want the slime pouring out of the hole and spilling onto the pavement. One of the best parts of digital illustration is that, we can use a bit of trial and error to get the look we want. Some artists call this cheating, they may be right. I'll fix up some of those lines later in the video when we touch up our outlines. But for now, let's talk about my next outline concept. Wrapping around reality. This technique can be used wherever your photo has a pole or objects and some empty space around it. For my background photo, I've chosen this pole for my demonstration. I'm going to draw an impossible vine wrapped around it. This vine is going to be tightly wrapped a few times around the pole, but of course, this is optional reviewing sketch. I'd like to leave some space for the pole to show through vines tight grasp. I do this to emphasize the fact that my illustration is wrapped around the object. As I finish drawing this vine, I'll add a few leaves to add some complexity. These details provide more visual interest to the overall picture. Before we add any color or shadows to our image, I always take a few moments to look over the outline to fix any rough looking areas or broken lines that should be connected. When I zoom deep into the picture and discover a fault in the outline, I'll correct it with a fine brush or an eraser. In regards to the shapes I've polished off a few of the corners where some of the lines have joined incorrectly. With this line, the lines with far from smooth, so I'll spend a bit more time on those. I'll now do the same with the vine. With the vine, there was a section of outline that should have been behind the pole to fix up, I've erased the outline accordingly. Now that I've finished touching up my outline, there is one last thing I need to do. I'm going to erase the parts of the outline that should be hidden by objects in front of it. In this case, that means erasing the outline of the slime, wherever the head rail from the photo background would obscure our vision. Now that we've finished our outline, let's recap. In this video, we explored my three techniques for creating interesting and exciting outlines for our augmented reality sketches. Augmenting reality, carving into reality, and wrapping around reality. These are great techniques to get started, and will help you make really engaging artworks. But remember, you don't have to use all of them in your sketch. Usually I only use one of these methods. Do whatever you think works towards creating a great piece art. Now that we've finished our outline, in the next video, we'll use color to give our sketches some depth. 7. Colour: With the outline of the sketch as complete, it's time to learn some tips and tricks in the application of color. The first thing we'll do is we'll create a new layer. I'm going to give this one a really original name, Base Color 1. To ensure my colors sits underneath my outline, I'm going to drag the layer below my outline layer. The next step is very important. I'm now going to tap my Outline Layer and select Reference. This will make my outline the reference layer. I'm then going to select Base Color 1 to make it my active layer. With my outline as my reference layer, procreates color drop feature is now linked to my outline. Now what you'll see occurring is that even though I'm dropping my color into this new empty layer, my colors are restricted by the closed areas of my outline. Using color drop, I can just quickly fill parts of my sketch with some color. Here is the tip. To access a color you've used before, you can hold your finger on the color you'd like and the Eyedropper tool will make it your active color. Because the circle is so close to the other shapes, and because I know from experience that it's going to require a different approach when adding depth later on, I'm going to create a new layer. This one with an even more original name, Base Color 2. I'm doing this to maintain a flexible and nondisruptive wavelength, which is the main purpose of layers. Now, as I feel my circle, you'll notice it's in a layer separate to the other 3D shapes I have drawn. For some of you, this might not make much sense right now, but it will later on. You'll see why when we start adding depth in the second half of this video. I'm going to switch back to Base Color 1 and focus on coloring in other parts of my sketch. I already know that the slime is going to require a different approach when adding my base color. A little bit of slime towards the right will work totally fine when I use color drop. Put the largest slime to the left, not so much. Last video, we erased parts of the outline that would be obscured by the handrail on the photo, because of this, the outline is not closed off and is why our color drop is build all over the layer. To apply a base layer to this particular part of the image, we're going to do it the old-fashioned way. I'm going to select my preferred brush for manual coloring, which is the Round Brush. Then I'll just zoom into a comfortable level and color it in with my pencil. Once I've done that, I'm going to erase parts of the base color that should be obscured by the handrail so that I can see what I'm erasing. I'm going to open up my layers, I'm going to choose the opacity of the base color layer that I'm currently using. Once I've done that, I can just select my razor and finally remove parts of the base color layer to reveal what's underneath. Sometimes it can be hard to see you photo background, and therefore, what parts you should be erasing. One tip is to temporarily increase the opacity slider of the photo background layer. When revealing things like poles or objects with straight edges, you may find it easier and more efficient to utilize procreates quick shape feature to erase entire lines. Now that I've finished revealing parts of the photo, I'm going to bring the opacity slider of the photo back down and then the opacity slider of the base color backup. This ensures I can visualize my colors more accurately as I progress. I'll continue filling in the rest of my sketch with color. Now, I'm going to add the base colors of my holes. To do this, I want to use some of the colors from the photo background. Again, I'm going to temporarily bring up the photo backgrounds opacity slider. Using the Eyedropper tool, I can now grab the color of the wall that my hole is situated on. With that color now active, I'm going to make it a bit darker using the Saturation disk on the Color Wheel and then color drop to fill the edge of that hole in the wall. I can then just drop that same color for the other holes edge. I'm now going to use the same process for the hole in the ground. This time, I'll use a color from the wall next to it. Use whatever colors are nearby that you think will work. That hole still doesn't look too convincing, but it will soon when we start adding some depth to our color. There's just one more elements to color in, and that's the interior of that two holes in the wall. Because the edge of the hole is in Base Color 2 and the slime is in Base Color 1, I'm once again going to do this in a new layer to maintain that nondestructive and flexible workflow. Using color drop, I'll quickly fill in these holes and we can move on to the next stage of coloring in augmented reality sketch. Adding depth. Using color, we're going to add some depth to our sketches. Firstly, I'll go to my photo background layer and bring the opacity slider back down for better visibility. Then we'll create what's known as a Clipping Mask. To create a Clipping Mask, add a new layer above one of your base colors. Then tap that layer once to reveal a drop down menu. Select Clipping Mask. To explain what a Clipping Mask is, I'm going to temporarily make the Base Color 1 layer and it's nearly created clipping mask, the only visible layers. For the sake of navigating and organizing my layers, I'll also name this layer. A clipping mask is a layer that has its visibility restricted by the content of the layer underneath. For example, I've just selected a dark teal color here, and you'll notice that when I'm drawing this clipping mask, it has restricted my coloring within the area of the content in the base color layer. This makes adding darker and lighter tines to our base colors incredibly easy and efficient. I'll reveal all the other layers now that you've seen how that works, and I'll show you my favorite feature of clipping masks. Clipping masks not only work with the paint tool, but also the eraser, and more importantly in this case, the smudge tool. Now I can smudge that dark layer so it appears seamlessly with its base color below. For this part of the sketch, I'm going to add some dark signs to the mix and then I'll blend them in just like I did before. Now, I'm going to do that throughout the rest of my outlook. Beginning of this yellow block, I'm going to use my Eyedropper tool again to quickly select that orange color on the side, and then I'm going to get a slightly darker color to provide some extra depth to the side of this block. You'll notice that I'm adding darker tie-ins to sections of the image where there wouldn't be much light and then blurring or smudging them in for that nice gradient effect. I'll continue doing this until I get to the blue circle. Remember earlier how I created that separate base color layer for the circle? In a moment, it should become clear white. Just like I did with the Base Color 1 layer, I'm going to add a clipping mask to the Base Color 2 layer as well. Once again, I'm going to give this layer a very unique and exciting name. I'll use the Eyedropper tool to quickly select that blue color from the parent base color layer, and now I can easily paint some darker and lighter colors in the circle without destructively going over the red block in the other layer. Now, I'm going to show you a little efficiency trick, but tapping Adjustments and then selecting Gaussian Blur, I can apply a blur effect to everything in this layout. I can then tap and drag my finger left and right to determine how strongly the effect is applied, and just like that, my sphere has a nice move gradient. Once applied, you can still refine your newly created gradient with your smudge tool if necessary. I'm now going to apply some depth to the rest of my sketch. When blending darker tines in to your works, try to also do it in parts of the sketch which would be facing away from the light. For example, with this fine wrapping around the pole, I've darkened the parts of the vine on the left side as the light is coming from the right side. For the square hole on the ground, I'm adding some much darker tie-ins to give the impression that it goes really deep down. In regards to our slime, because in the base color layout we've already erased sections that would be obscured by the handrail. The clipping mask will automatically avoid those sections too. For the color of the hole in the wall, I'm once again going to select its color using the Eyedropper tool, and then I'm going to do something a little different. Instead of adding another clipping layer which seems a bit excessive in this case is nothing else in this particular layer. I'm going to Alpha lock Base Color 3. To do that, I'm going to swipe right on that layer with two fingers. Alpha lock is similar to a clipping mask because it restricts the way you can paint, smudge, and erase to the non-transparent parts of a layer. The difference is that it doesn't require a new layer. This means it's a more destructive and less flexible method than using a clipping mask, but the benefit is that it requires less memory. With that done, it's time to touch up any rough patches I may have missed and make some final adjustments to my color. I'm now going to show you an adjustment tool that can be incredibly useful when coloring your sketches. For my first example, I'll start by selecting this part of the square hole. Then in my layers, I'll ensure that I'm using the correct color layer. The holes color is in Base Color 2 and then go and tap the Adjustments button at the top, and select Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. In this case, I want the color to be darker, so I'll turn down the brightness. But with these three sliders, I can change any color I have selected into any color I want. I'll repeat the process for the clipping mask associated with this layer. This has quickly made the whole look more three-dimensional. Now, just like I did with the outline layer, I'm going to go through my layers and polish off any areas of my sketch that haven't been colored in properly. I'll also add more colors where I deem appropriate, like on this one. If a color doesn't go all the way to the edge of your outline, just go to the base color layer, and fill the gaps of your Paint tool. The smudge tool can also be used to push colors towards the edges of your outlines. Now that I'm satisfied with the color in my sketch, I can't resist showing you one last trick with color. I'll use my Selection tool to select the vine wrapped around this post. Once I've checked that I'm in the right layer, I'll tap Adjustments and select Hue, Saturation, and Brightness again. This time, I'm going to adjust the Hue of my base color. I'll also adjust the Saturation and Brightness a little. There's no rule here, I'm just going by eye. Now, my base color is an orange color which seems to blend nicely with the purple in its clipping mask. If I wanted to, I could apply the same effect to the clipping mask, but I like the visual effects, so I'll leave it as it is. Feel free to experiment and see what works with your sketch. Now let's recap. When adding color, add your base colors first and use a variety of layers for a flexible and non-destructive workflow. Then add depth using clipping mask and blurring techniques with either the smudge tool or the Gaussian Blur effect. Lastly, remember that nothing is set in stone, you can always adjust colors later with a Hue, Saturation, and Brightness adjustment tool. In the next video, we'll immerse our sketches even more by applying shadows. 8. Shadows: It's time to add the final layer to our sketches to help them feel immersed in their environment. We'll do this by creating virtual shadows that mimic the real shadows in our photo background. Before we add any shadows to our sketch, let's take a moment to analyze the ones already in the photo background. Let's bring up the opacity slider on the photo background layer. This will allow us to more accurately see the shadows in the photo. You'll notice in this photo that we have a lot of soft shadows. This is most evident from the stairs in this picture. The shadow of the railing helps us not only see how strong the shadows are, but they also give us a clear indication of which direction our shadows should be going. Now that we know the direction and strength of our shadows, it's time to get started creating our own. We'll go to Layers and add a new layer. This layer will sit on top of that previous ones. I'll call this layer Shadows 1. Before I start adding shadows, I'm going to reduce the opacity of the layer. This is what we will use to determine the darkness of our shadows later on. For this part of my sketch, I'll select the round brush. This is found in the painting brush set. I'll also make the brush size quite small. I'll start by adding a shadow for this yellow block. I'll draw it so it's pointed in the same direction shown in our photo background. I'll begin doing this in other places I'd expect shadows to be. I genuinely don't try to be too perfect or exact with shadows. The most important thing is to ensure that they're relatively consistent and that they're not going in a completely different direction to everything else. The tricky part of the sketch for me was adding the shadow of the handrail over the top of my slime. Shadows like this can be tricky because you want them to adhere to the physical shape of the object they land on. If you get this wrong, it can destroy the illusion you're trying to create. I've spent hours trying to make realistic shadows of some sketches. If you find yourself in this situation, here's some advice. If an incorrect shadow is dragging too much attention to itself and the image and as a result destroying the illusion, try ignoring the shadow entirely. As a general rule, it's better to have no shadows than bad shadows. I'll now continue applying shadows to the rest of my sketch. If you're unsure if a shadow is required in a certain area, my suggestion is simple, try it out, experiment. Remember this is all in its own separate layers. So if its turns out looking incorrect or just plain bad, you can always erase it later. When applying shadows to this section of the vine wrapped around the pole, I put my shadows on the edges not facing the line. When you finished painting on your shadows, it's then time to adjust their strength. Because the natural light in this photo isn't very strong, we need to have shadows to reflect that and become softer. I'm going to tap the Adjustments button and then go to Gaussian blur. Then I'm going to drag my finger to the right to apply the effect. Going by my eye, I'm only going to apply the effect slightly. Once you've decided how soft you want your shadows to be, it's time to adjust how dark those shadows appear. Open up your layers and try to position a shadow that you've created with one that exists for real in the photo background. Then experiment with the opacity slider in your shadow layer to test out your shadows being lighter or darker. Zooming out and observing the way my adjustments have affected all the different sections of my sketch, I'm generally pretty happy with how it's turned out. Just like we did with the outline and our colors, it's time to polish up our shadows and add some finishing touches to them. These 3D objects seem a little too bright considering they're not directly facing the light. To fix this, here's a little technique I sometimes use. I'm going to use ColorDrop in my shadow layer to fill the sides that should be a little darker. If you feel that technique has darken your sketch a little too much, you can also drop shades of gray for more lighter tones. I would also prefer to have some more darker, more noticeable shadows on my slime. Just like before, I'm going to draw in some more shadows where I want them. This time, however, before I apply my Gaussian blur, I'm going to tap the selection tool and freehand draw around my newly created shadows. This is so I don't apply the Gaussian blur to everything else in the layer. Because Gaussian blur is already been applied to the other shadows in the image, applying it again would make them far too blurry and as a result, ruin them. I'll also make this sphere a little darker by painting in some extra shadows and then blending them in using the Smudge tool. Then I'll apply shadow to the square hole in the ground and add a few more shadows to the vines to make them look a bit more three-dimensional. Lastly, one more piece of advice regarding your shadows. Don't feel like you absolutely have to make the shadow darkness match the reality in your photo background. Sometimes making shadows darker can make an image look more dramatic. In the end, I decided I preferred my image with the opacity slider at 45 percent, a little darker than what was presented in the photo background. Once again, do whatever you think will result in the better art work. Now that we finished our shadows, let's recap. When adding shadows to your sketch, remember the following three techniques. Firstly, imitate the real shadows presented in your photo background. Secondly, adjust the shadow layers opacity slider to control the darkness of your shadows. Lastly, use either the Smudge tool or the Gaussian blur when you need to make your shadow softer. In the next video, we'll look at finishing up and sharing your content. 9. Finishing Up: Now there's just a few things to do before we finish our augmented reality sketch and share it to the project gallery. Before we export and share our work, I recommend taking the time to touch up your project to ensure that there are no mistakes. Once again, I'll zoom right into my work and repair any broken lines and rough edges in my outline. I'll also ensure my color fills the edges of my illustration, and that the shadow is as smooth and are in the right places. When done, remember to bring the opacity slider of your photo background back up again. Now, it's time to export our work. To export, go to the Actions button and go to the Share tab. There are many different export options. PNG is a lossless compressed format. I usually choose this format for my website or when I'm sending images online. One drawback to PNG is that it doesn't support RGB color spaces like CMYK. If you're doing high-quality prints, I'd select PDF instead. If you're collaborating with others who use Procreate, selecting the Procreate option will create a project file that you can share with others. If that person you're sending to doesn't have Procreate, you can also export all the individual layers as PNG or PDF files. Congratulations, you've now completed your sketch. Now that we've finished our augmented reality sketch, let's consolidate what we've learned. In this class, we've explored how to find a good photo background, my three concepts when sketching outlines, fast and flexible ways to add color and depth, and how to immerse our sketches through the imitation of shadows. When finding a suitable photo background, try to find images with plenty of empty space, either horizontally, vertically, or around objects. When sketching outlines, remember my three techniques; augmenting reality, carving into reality, and wrapping around reality. When adding color, pick your base colors first, then add depth with clipping masks and blurring techniques. If you change your mind on certain colors, use the hue saturation brightness tool to easily change it. When imitating shadows, take inspiration from shadows in the photo background. Use the opacity slider of your shadows layer to control the darkness of your shadows, and use the smudge tool or Gaussian blur to make your shadows softer if applicable. A big thank you to all those who followed with this class, I hope you find it useful in your future endeavors. If you did find this useful, share this class with your friends, family, or your colleagues. Also remember to post your creations to the project gallery. I love seeing work from other people and I can't wait to see what you create. Thanks again, my name is Matt Lloyd. Feel free to follow me on Instagram @mlloydartist, and check out my site mlloydartist.com for more of my artistic endeavors.