Creating Cloud-Filled Skyscapes in Procreate

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Susie. Susie Klein designs and welcome to creating cloud filled sky scapes in Procreate. I'm an artist living in the suburbs of Chicago, and I've been a creative person for a very long time, long, long ago I was a graphic designer. Then I took a detour when I finished my master's degree in clinical psychology. And another detour when I stayed home with my youngest son. But I was always looking for ways to stay creative. Luckily, I found nature photography and watercolor. Both of those, I found myself taking a lot of pictures of clouds and painting a lot of pictures of clouds. Then when I found Procreate, I wanted to create canvases with clouds and just wasn't happy with the brushes I was finding. So I created my own. You don't need to be a Procreate ace or a drawing expert to enjoy this class, we're going to create foggy, misty Hills, a tropical sunset, and a winter night scene, or filled with clouds. I hope you will enjoy this. 2. The Project: For the class project, you'll create your own cloud filled sky scape and Procreate. First, you'll need some inspiration. So step outside, take a picture. If that doesn't work, go to Unsplash or my clouds board on Pinterest. I've included links to both in the Resources tab. Or maybe you have another source of inspiration. Then open up your canvas in Procreate and get started. You can start with a simple sky or a complex sky. You'll see in the class how either would work include mountains or hills, trees and foliage. Whatever you need to complete your skyscraper. I've included the brushes I've used in the class. You'll find those in under the Resource tab also, make sure you leave room for your clouds, because that's the most important part. When you get ready to create your clouds, lay down your base layer, then add the fluffy bumpiness. Then if you want, you can add a clipping mask, some shadows and tense of color. There your clouds. Post your steps as you go in the project gallery. But don't forget to post your finished project. I can't wait to see what you create. If you have any problems or any questions, please post them in the discussion board. Thanks, and let's get started. 3. Accessing The Resources: I wanted to show you how to get the resources, the brush set, and the swatches. You find it under the projects and resources tab. But you can only get it on the web version of the class, not the app. You find it on the side panel. Click on it. It asks you if you want to download. I'm using Safari. So it shows up under this down arrow tool. I have mine going to my iCloud Drive shows up under recents. If I click those, it will open up in Procreate and they will be there automatically. I also included the link to Unsplash that we had talked about, and also a link to my Pinterest board. So I hope those help you. Also when it's time to post your project, you do it here under their Create Project. Tab. Upload your image, write your description, and then we're ready to go. And remember you can post the steps as you go along. I'd love to see your sky before you put your clouds on it. If you spent some time making it. And I hope you have some fun doing this. And let's get started. 4. How The Cloud Brush Works: Before we begin the demos, I just want to show you how the cloud brush works. Using the cloud brush and a light blue color. I'm adding percent. You have to use the Apple pencil to get the features of the brush. It's pressure-sensitive. The harder you push, the bigger it gets. I'm going to use a different layer. It's meant to be built up on. The more layers you build, the darker it gets. I start my clouds by building the basic. It's my Cloud. And then coming in and building up the fluffy lumpiness of the cloud. And that is how you make a cloud. When we get into the demos, we'll add shadows and more colors and stuff, but I just wanted to show you the basics. And there we are. 5. Misty Hills: Canvas Information: For our first piece, the foggy, misty hills, I'm doing 8.5 by 11 300 DPI and RGB color profile. That's the first one that's available. Here. All the stats, if you want to copy them. 6. Misty Hills: Creating Sky: We're going to begin by creating our sky. The first layer, we're going to grab that light blue color from the first line of the color palette. We're going to drag and drop to fill that layer. We're going to create a new layer. Then just go grab another light gray color. And the monoline brush doesn't need to be very thick. I'm in about 10%. And just draw a curvy line. And about a third of the way up from the bottom. This is going to be our sketch layer. Let's rename that. Call it sketch. From now on for the next couple of layers, we're going to work underneath it. Let's create another layer. We're going to create the first additional layer of our sky here. Grab that first dark blue and we'll use the soft brush. I'm going to go up to about 20 percent and just go across the top. It looks awfully dark. But when we go to use Gaussian blur, it's going to lighten up quite a bit. We're not ready to lighten it yet, so I'm going to undo that. Grab the second color added underneath. You don't need to go much further than below your sketching layer because this is where the hills and land are gonna go. Grab Gaussian blur. And we're going to blur this all the way to a 100. So we get a nice smooth color. And we're going to create another layer. This time, I'm going to use the medium nozzle brush. These brushes come with procreate. The soft airbrush. They're soft brush is in the airbrush set. The medium nozzle brush is in the spray paint set. I'm mad about 20 percent here. Grab the second dark blue and add it across the top. The blue next to it. You notice this one has a lot of texture to it. That's what we want. And then the light blue. Now we're ready for the Gaussian Blur again. This time we're not going to blur quite as much. We want the colors to blend, but we want the texture. That looks good. Then I just want to add a few wispy colors across the sky right here, that'll be the beginning of some wispy clouds. So we've created a new layer. Let's grab one of these pastel colors from the bottom layer. And I'm going to use the leather wood brush, which comes in the artistic set. And I am at about 15%. And just make some wiggles across the sky. Grab the pastel purple. Do the same thing. You're not married to these colors. Feel free to pick any colors you want because that's the fun of this project. Is picking these colors. Go to Gaussian Blur again and blur them out. You don't want them invisible, but you don't want them to be too harsh either. And there we finished our sky. Go ahead and merge those layers. Let's rename that sky. And I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Misty Hills: Creating Textured Hills: Now we're going to add the hills. Let's grab the darkest green color, create a new layer above the sky. Will use the monoline brush, which comes with Procreate and is in the calligraphy set. I'm at about 10 percent. And just make a curvy swoop right about where your sketch layer was. Create a new layer above that. Grab the medium green and create another curvy swoopy line and fill that. Create another layer. The lightest green. In another curvy, swoopy layer, and drag and drop the color. You can look at your hills if you're not that happy with them. Like I'm not wild about that back layer. You can come in with the Warp tool, which is under the selection layer. And you can change things up a bit. I'm pretty happy with that. Double-check to make sure your sides are covered. Maybe I'm going to come in here with that. I'm going to want to just pull that peak up a little bit. And there we have it. Now we're ready to add some texture to our hills. Let's get rid of that sketch layer. So pick one of your layers. I'm going to start with the darkest. I'm going to create a clipping mask above it by creating a layer, changing it to clipping mask. I'm going to change the blending mode to multiply. I'm going to select that color. I'm able to do that with my fingertip because I've come over here to the wrench tool, gone to Preferences, Gesture controls, and chosen that in the eye dropper section. I've given you some texture brushes. But maybe you have some of your own textures that you like. When you use the blending mode, Multiply in the same color. It will appear darker. You can merge that down. We don't need them separate. Do the same thing to the middle layer, add a new layer, Create Clipping, Mask, multiply, blending mode, grab a texture. I want that a little bigger. I forgot to sample that color. Makes a difference. Merge it down, and don't forget to do the last layer. Clipping mask. Blending mode is multiply, sample that color, grab a texture brush. And then we have our texture hills, merge that layer down. In the next section we're going to add the midst entries. 8. Misty Hills: Creating Mist, Trees, & Fog: For the midst, we're going to use the cloud brush. I found that was great for adding mist and fog. And we're going to use this blue color. It's really pale. I don't use white for my clouds are the midst and the fog. I think it's too harsh. The cloud brush I won't for the midst, I'm going to go down to about 15 percent. You want to create a layer below the layer you're going to work on. So we're doing the first layer. And make sure when you're doing this that you're following the right hills because sometimes it's easy to get lost. If you have more than a couple of layers. And just put the color in there. We're going to use Gaussian Blur again and just smooth it out. You don't want it to disappear, but you don't want it to be a stark bright color. Do the same thing with the next layer. Gaussian Blur again. And then i'm, I'm gonna do the back layer to just for a little added interest. But I'm going to blur it out quite a bit just to kinda give it more of a glow over the hills. And there's the mist. Now it's time to start at a trees. We're going to start at the back layer. We want to add a layer above that, sample, that color, and go attack darker. We're going to use the pine tree brush. We're gonna go pretty small. The brushes random. So you never quite know what size you're going to get, which is great for this way of doing it. But you wanna go pretty small for this because those trees are far, far away. And just start dropping in trees. Which gotta watch to make sure that your trees aren't hovering in air. They can stick up a little, but you wanna make sure they're touching a land. It's cool when they pick up behind the hill in front. That's probably enough. We can move on to the next layer, create a new layer, sample that color. Go a bit darker. Mix the tree is a little bigger. Start adding them in. And then do the front layer. Sample the color. Go darker. I like to go really big on this section, but you don't have to, you get keep doing the little trees. If you'd like. I want to go in a way bigger. I like when the trees peak off the page like that. Like you're looking through the forest, that there's a valley in front of you. And there's our layer of trees. I'm going to add some fog around the trees. So behind the trees I'm going to at Fog. So I need to add a layer under that. I'm going to grab the cloud brush again. And that white blue color we used before, I'm going to go up a bit to about 25 percent on the cloud brush. And I'm just going to come in here and I'm going to blur it. I'm gonna make a layer on top of the trees. Use the same brush. Brush size. I like to come off the page and forward again. Not too much, you don't want to lose it. We can combine all of these layers and label it land. 9. Misty Hills: Creating Clouds: It's time to create our cloud layer. Create a new layer. Select the pale blue color and the cloud brush. I'm going about 55 percent. And start laying in your clouds. The shapes you would like. Your first layer will be light. And just a hint of where you want your clouds to be. You can put down is however many you want. There's no right or wrong place. Remember the brushes pressure sensitive. The lighter you push, the lighter, your coverage you're going to get. But the more you go over an area, the more coverage you will get. Once you're satisfied with your shape. Start going over it in areas. To emphasize the lumpy bumpiness of your clouds. And when you like what you see. We can add some shadows to these. Just to give a little more character, create a new layer, make it a clipping mask. Underneath this light blue color is a gray. We're gonna keep using the cloud brush, but we're gonna go down to about 20 ish percent. And you can see these darker colors in here. We're just going to emphasize those will be blurring these out. So don't worry if you think you've got a little heavy handed. Use the Gaussian blur tool. That just gives them a bit more dimension. And I'd like to add a little color. So add another layer and make it a clipping mask. And then grab one of those pastel colors. You can bump up the color of the cloud brush or the bump the size of the cloud brush. Again, I'm up to almost 30. And then I'm just going to drop some of this pink. I don't wanna I don't wanna be too heavy. I just wanted to be a hint of color. I'll drop a little purple in. I'm going to blur that Gaussian Blur again. There's a fine line between too much and almost invisible. So you're going to have to play with it to find it. And then I want to make another layer and make it a clipping mask. And I just want to add a hint of yellow and use a Gaussian Blur tool again. And there we have our misty foggy hills with a cloud filled sky. I hope you enjoyed that. 10. Tropical Sky: Canvas Information : Okay, we're ready to make the tropical sunset with Cloud felt skies. I've set up an 8.5 by 11 canvas with 300 DPI and the sRGB IEC six color profile. Here's all the details. If you need them. 11. Tropical Sky: Creating Sky and Clouds: For this tropical sunset piece, I am using this picture I found on Unsplash. I'll close it up so it's out of our way. I will leave a link for Unsplash in the resources. It's a great place to find inspiration, drawing references. So I hope you check it out. The first thing we're going to do is lay down our sky. I'm going to grab the soft brush. Men about 20 percent. I'm going to grab that blue color. And I'm going to come here across the top and fill in the top third. I'm going to grab the cranberry color. Fill in the medium third, the middle third, and then the bottom third. Going to use Gaussian blur and blur it all out. I'm going to create another layer. I'm going to grab the orange, the medium nozzle from the spray paint, set and come across the middle and create a band. Doesn't have to be neat. And we're not going to be blurring that in. It's time to create our cloud layer. Going to use the cloud brush. And this light purple color at the bottom. Going up to about 50%. And I'm going to just start putting in the shapes of my clouds. The palm tree of head is going to go right here. So you don't need to put a bunch of clouds, they're just build up your clouds. So pressure sensitive brush. Work it more in an area and you get more detail. And then we're going to add the shadow layer like we did before, make it a clipping mask. And we're going to use that darker purple color right next to it. Go down to about 20 ish percent. And just emphasize the darker areas. Use Gaussian Blur. Make it more subtle. And then we have our clubs. Next we'll be making our palm tree. 12. Tropical Sky: Creating The Palm Tree: Now we're going to create our palm tree, create a new layer. Grab the dark purple color with a monoline brush, which is in the calligraphy set that comes with procreate, drag and filth. Going to move it down a bit because I want the head of my palm tree to be in this opening here because that's where the glow is going to go. Using the same color. I'm going to grab the palm tree frond. I'm at about 30 percent. I forgot to make a new layer for that. I'm going to use free-form, change it up a bit, get it into position there. And then I'm just going to use this one as my reference for right now. I made a copy of it and I'm using warp to make the fronds look like they are waving in the breeze. I'm going to make a copy of that first one. Move it, rotate it, get it in position. Erase those ends. You might find this tedious. I find it kind of meditator. Make sure you do them all in different directions so they look different. I think one more should do it. But then you have to go back to the original one and warp that one. And I think that looks pretty good. I'm going to tweak the trunk a bit. Just made it a little broader. Make sure it stays off the side of the canvas. Guess sometimes it has a tendency when you're warping to pull in. I think our palm tree looks very good. Let's see if I can pinch these layers. And let's call that palm tree. Must rename that layer. Sky will group it and call it Sky. Oops, I meant to call it clouds. And there we have the palm tree on the cloudy sky. And in the next step we will put in the glow. 13. Tropical Sky: Creating Glow: And then we're going to make our glow. So right above the sky, create a new layer. Choose the lightest yellow from the second row in the color palette. We're going to use the soft brush from the airbrush set. I'm at about 15 percent towards the top of the palm tree. Make like a half circle off of the canvas. Grab the darker yellow and just fill in color across the canvas. Not make sure you don't cover that. The lighter yellow. And we're going to grab Gaussian Blur. And you're going to blur until you get that mark between the yellow and the orange. There's too much elbow. There's not enough yellow. So just pay attention. Just want that that kinda glow coming through. It's not quite like what you get here, but you get the idea. 14. Tropical Sky: Creating Distant Clouds: Now we're going to create some clouds, often the distance here at the bottom of the piece, grab this dark grayish blue. The cloud brush at about 10 percent and just add some some wispy for blobby. They're so far away, they have no form. And then we're going to use Gaussian blur to make them even more formless. And there we have our tropical sunset with cloud filled skies. 15. Winter Night: Canvas Information : We're ready for the winter night piece. I've set up a canvas 11 by 8.5, 300 DPI. And I'm using the color profile, sRGB, IE, C6. 16. Winter Night: Creating Sky and Snow: The first thing I'm going to do is create my sky, which this time is just a single layer of color. I'm grabbing the darkest blue on the third line from the color palette and dragging and dropping. I'm gonna make my canvas just a little smaller so you can see the edges. Next, I'm going to create my snow. Grabbing the second color, that light blue. I'm going to use the monoline brush about a third of the way down. I'm going to draw a curvy line and then drag and drop the color. And there's our snow. I'm going to create a new layer, make it a clipping mask. Can you use the medium nozzle brush from the airbrush set that comes with Procreate. I'm going to grab that dark gray color next to the light blue. I met about just under 20 percent. Now I'm going to go up to about between 20 and 25 percent. And I'm going to start dragging in color. I'm going to emphasize the dips and the hill. Snow isn't flat. It isn't clean. And I'm going to blur out the color. With the Gaussian Blur Tool. I'm going to create another layer, making another clipping mask. Grabbing that lighter gray and doing exactly the same thing in different spaces. There's no right or wrong place to put this color just wherever you feel, it would look nice. And then I'm going to merge these layers down. And I'm going to rename this layer snow. I'm going to rename this layer sky. And then we'll move on to the next step. 17. Winter Night: Creating Moon and Clouds: Now I'm going to create the moon. I'm going to pick the color I used for the snow. But I'm going to pull it a little towards the white. I'm going to use the monoline brush. I'm gonna make a circle shape. Then press my finger down on the canvas, which makes it a perfect circle. Drag and drop to fill. I'm gonna make a layer above that and make it a clipping mask. I'm going to draw the craters on the moon. I'm going to use that dark gray color. And the medium nozzle brush, which is in the airbrush set that comes with Procreate. I'm going to go down to about between 10 and 15 percent. And I'm going to start drawing in the Moon craters. Don't forget to go off the sides. And then I'm going to use Gaussian blur to blur that. If you think it's a little dark, you can use that lighter gray color. But if you use the darker gray color and you don't like it, lighten the opacity a bit, maybe I'd like, and then a little too much. The moon layer is too perfect. So I'm going to go in here with Gaussian Blur again. And I'm just going to soften those edges a bit. For me between five and 10 percent works. I'm going to leave it there. I'm going to merge the crater layer down onto the moon layer. I'm going to move it into the corners. And I'm going to make it a little bigger. And then just push it over here into the corner. And there's our moon. Now it's time to make our clouds. I'm going to use the blue we used for the snow and the cloud brush. Right around 50 percent, between 50 and 55 percent. I'm going to start drawing in the shapes I want. There will be pine trees in here. So you don't necessarily need to put clouds in that area because you're going to be covering them up. Then once you have your shaping, you go in. Reinforce the shape by building up the lumps and bumps. The texture of the clouds. I'm going to just take this down a bit so I can get a little more smaller details. And then once you're satisfied with how your cloud layer looks, we're gonna do shadows again, create a new layer. Make it a clipping mask. A lot of the sky color peaks through and spots, so we don't need to do as many shadows this time. I'm going to grab that light gray color. I'm going to take my cloud brush down to about 20 percent. And I'm just going to come in to a couple of places to reinforce some areas. Smooth it out with the Gaussian Blur. And there's our Moody cloudy, moon filled sky. 18. Winter Night: Creating Snowy Pine Trees: It's time to add pine trees. I'm going to grab that dark blue color we used for the sky. Darken it up a bit. I'm going to select the pine tree brush. I'm at about 60 percent. I'm going to create a new layer 0. Before we move on, we should merge the shadows onto the clouds and rename that layer clouds. But on our new layer, let's start building pine trees. We want to make sure the pine trees are above the snow layer. With a selection tool and free form. Create a shape that you're happy with. Good erase and make sure you have monoline chosen. And erase the the trunk. Make sure you're small enough because we want to get up there and you want to make sure that when you erase It's a jag and so it doesn't look too fake. Create a layer above that and make a clipping mask. When I have been doing this, I have been making five trees, five separate trees, adding the snow. It takes a really long time, so I'm going to show you a shorter way of doing it. So you don't have to sit and watch me make five different snow filled trees. I'm going to choose the blue that we had for the snow. Lighten it up slightly. Run our clipping mask. I'm going to use that leather wood brush from the artistic set. And I'm going to add snow to it. I'm gonna go pretty low. I'm going to go down. I'm at about 7%. You wanna make sure you hit the tips of the tree because that's where the snow would hit. And there we have one tree. Merge that layer down. Duplicate, actually duplicated four times. And then start moving your trees around and arranging. The tree is not symmetrical. So if you flip it horizontal, you'll get a different look. And just rearrange your trees. I erased the stems because they would all be buried underneath the snow. So we didn't have So we didn't have to deal with that later. So I just erase it off the first one. Then when you have what you like and are happy with what you see, you can combine those layers. Make another layer, make it a clipping mask, and then just add snow in different places so they don't necessarily all look identical. But you also want to add snow to the very tips in these right sides of the trees because that's where the Moon would hit it. And on the edges don't be so stark with it because we're not going to blur this. So try not to make a harsh line. Smooth it out on your own. You wouldn't add a lot of bright snow to the front part because the moon isn't hitting there. So when you're happy with that layer, merge it down. And then we're going to move the whole thing over. Slightly off the page. Make sure you stay on your hill. And there we have our palm tree. There we have our pine trees. Sorry about that. 19. Winter Night: Creating Shadows and Stars: Now we're going to put in the shadows for the trees. They're coming this way because here's our moon. I'm going to start with the light gray. The soft brush from the airbrush set. We need to make a layer beneath the trees so that it goes behind them, underneath them. And just start laying in some color. Don't make a smooth line across there. Because the trees aren't smooth across. Make sure you get far enough over. So you, your tree doesn't look like it's hovering, but you don't necessarily need to come all the way over because this branch is curving up, will smooth that out a bit. Then we're going to make another layer on top of that. We're going to make this one a clipping mask. And pick the darker gray. We're making it a clipping mass so it doesn't accidentally go past this part. And you get some runaway shadow. I'm going to take the brush down 56 percent and go in here close to the tree. And we'll smooth that out a bit. And there are shadows. I think the sky needs just a little bit something. So I want to add some stars. I'm going to grab the snow color. Go lighter. I'm going to grab the glimmer brush from the luminance set that comes with Procreate. I'm going to start out at about almost 50 percent. And I'm going to drop in some color. I'm going to bump it up to about 70 percent and put in a little more. And I'm going to go up to a 100. And every once and awhile, I'm going to put in something ones, I put in a lot of stars. However many stars you want to put in is up to you. But we didn't do a lot to that sky. But I think it just needed a little something extra. And there is your your winter night with cloud fields guys. 20. Thank You: Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this class. I hope you're ready to make some clouds. I hope you feel more comfortable with the Gaussian Blur Tool and the warp tool, please post your projects in the project gallery and include any steps you made along the way. We'd love to see those. You can also post them to social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter as Susie Klein, include the hashtag Susie client designs so I can find it. If you liked this class, please leave a review and follow me for updates on upcoming classes. I look forward to seeing you again.