Digital Illustration Basics: Drawing From Reference Images

1. Welcome to Class!: Reference images can be a great way to get yourself started with a drawing, but sometimes they're intimidating and you don't know where to start or when you do draw it, it turns out awkward, stiff or not quite right, leaving you feeling frustrated. In this class, I'll show you a quick technique to break down the reference into simple shapes, which can then be used to draw the image. Hi, I'm Joe Smigielski, a painter and line artist with a degree in art education. After several years in the classroom, I became a full time artist and have been on that creative journey since 2000. Though my style doesn't lean towards realism, I use references to make my subjects recognizable. And drawing references with shapes allows me to use imagery I might not otherwise be comfortable drawing. Sometimes we stick so closely to the reference that the drawing can be forced stiff and not really in our own voice. Breaking the reference into shapes allows you to draw the image in a more authentic, organic way. We'll begin by taking a look at reference images and define the shapes that form them. Then we'll talk about how best to reassemble those shapes and that becomes the structure for a finished drawing. Next, we'll apply what we learned and have some fun using our imagination to alter the shapes. Taking the drawing beyond what you see in the reference, making it your own. During class, we'll explore two approaches for drawing the shapes. One is more intentional, while the other is more intuitive. You might find that one of these two approaches feels more natural and comfortable. This class is beginner friendly, but created for any skill level. It's designed for anyone who struggles with references or wants to move beyond tracing imagery. While I am using procreate and an apple pencil, you can use your favorite digital illustration app and any pressure sensitive stylus on either ipad or desktop. If you are using Procreate, some experience with the app is needed, as this isn't an introduction to Procreate class. I'll provide the references used in class, but you're welcome to use your own. If you're more comfortable with paper, feel free to use paper. Use pencil, starting light and finishing dark. So are you ready to learn how to use reference images to express yourself and create in your own voice? If so, welcome to class. 2. The Class Project: The project for this class is to create a drawing from one of the references provided or from any reference image of your own, including photos of your pets. I'd love to see what you create, so please share your original reference photo and your final drawing to the project section of the class. You can find instructions for sharing your project in a PDF which can be downloaded from the resources section of the class. Let's begin our first lesson. We'll break our reference into shapes and build it back up into a drawing. Meet me there. 3. Drawing Intentional Shapes: For this drawing, we're taking an intentional approach. It's great for artists who like structure. Shapes are drawn simply and directly. The shapes are used like a framework to build the drawing. So let's begin. Use any ordinary white canvas, as long as it fills the entire screen and choose a pressure sensitive brush. I'll be using the script brush, which is in the calligraphy brushes down at the bottom. The size is about 10%. We will be using black for the entire class. Let's go ahead and grab our first reference. You'll find the references in the projects and resources section of the class. I've already saved my references to my photos. I'll click on the wrench icon. Go to Canvas, and that's where we find the references. Toggle that, there's our reference window. I'll click on Image, and we'll import our first cat. That will be the white and orange cat. You can use your own reference and just follow along if you prefer. Just choose something that's simple, which has underlying shapes that you can pull out. Now let's make this a little bigger, just so we can talk about it for a moment. Now, forget everything you know about cats, this is no longer a cat. See this as a form made of shapes. For example, the head is a circle. We have these little circles here. Triangle, nose, triangle ears, and so on. The rest of the body is also made of shapes. There's this beautiful rectangle right in the center. You can almost make out a circle here for the hind quarters. Even the legs are made of individual little segments. What we'll do is break this cat down. Break those shapes down, and then reassemble those shapes into our drawing. Don't try to draw the cat, Just draw the shapes you see and they will become the cat. Just trust the process. When I draw from a reference using shapes, I like to start with an anchor shape. An anchor shape is a major piece that I can attach other pieces into. For example, see that rectangle in the middle, that makes a great anchor piece. It's large and these other pieces branch off from there. Think of it as being a LEGO, as the first LEGO we start with, and then we click other LEGOS onto it. Let's go ahead and draw that first anchor shape. That rectangle, just try to get it close. This doesn't have to be perfect. You can see that's not a perfect rectangle. It's not about the perfect shape, It's more about how all these shapes fit together. We're just trying to get proportion and placement down. In fact, this layer won't even be our final drawing layer. You don't have to fuss too much with perfect shapes. What can we attach to our rectangle? You can almost make out a circle if you use your imagination a little bit. Let's go ahead and add that circle. Make your shapes overlap, overlapping shapes show how the body is actually structured. When we understand the structure of the body, we have the ability to move those parts if we want to change the pose later on. Now on the other side of the rectangle, we have this shape. That shape is a little bit harder to make out, but you can see the angle of the chest there. That shape looks something like that. Let's add that once again. I'm overlapping a little bit. That looks close enough. As I said, as we draw these shapes, don't worry about getting them perfect. Don't overthink it, just get them close. We aren't trying to draw an anatomically perfect cat. We're drawing our impression of the reference. So let's add those legs. We have this thigh that starts at the circle and goes actually behind the cat. Then that part comes down. Then we have that little foot, the other hind leg, that's behind, has an angle there. Then there's this angle going that way. In fact, I like to use my pencil to match my angles. We have a nice big shoulder there. Then we have that front leg that comes down at a slight angle. Once again, I'm making my shapes overlap. There's a leg that comes out and we have a little paw there. We won't worry about any of these little details like the little toe beans in the toes. That'll come later. That’s in our final drawing layer. Now, onto the head. The head is a sphere with smaller shapes attached to it. In fact, let's look at it a little larger. I'll draw that sphere. It might be a little bit squashed. That's too squashed. That looks about right. There's a quick technique for placing features on faces. This also works when drawing people in other animals. Once we have the basic head shape, which is our sphere, we can draw some guidelines for the features. Our first guideline is a vertical line, because we can see the way the facial features land on either side of the face. We can draw a guideline the middle to separate those features. That helps us with our placement. But in this case, the cat is looking slightly off to the side. It's looking that way. We'll make our guideline also off to the side just slightly. The reason it's curved is because it's on a sphere. The surface of the sphere is curved. That line follows that curve of the sphere. Next I'll draw a horizontal guideline for the eyes. The eyes are about halfway between the top and bottom. About halfway between the top and the bottom. We have our line for the eyes, that's where we'll draw the eyes. But the cat's head is ever so slightly tilted downward. I'll give my eye line a slight tilt downward once again, because the head is a sphere, it's a rounded surface. That line follows the surface of the sphere. That's our guidelines to map out the features. From here we have these little circles. I go below the sphere, there's the chin triangle. Nose, we said the eyes would be right on that eye line. The ears are a little bit forward on the head, something like that. That's close enough. How are we looking here? That looks good. All we need is some tail. I believe this tail was going downward. I think I'll change it just for fun. That's all the detail we need on this layer. All the other details like the eyes and the toes will go on the drawing layer. Let's go ahead and do that drawing layer. Our first step is to take our shape layer, bring the opacity down. I'm going down about halfway. I want to make sure you can still see my shape layer. You can go a little lower than halfway if you need to. I'll add a new layer. And this is for the drawing layer. Now, we're not tracing around the body. Don't think of it that way. Imagine the shapes are a wooden structure and now we're working with clay. As we add that clay, you can mold it and shape that clay and build the body up around that framework. Think of shapes as a pathway that gives us a general direction to go on. As we draw, we'll add the contours, muscle tone, and make adjustments and so on. We'll bring this cat to life. Looking at my shape layer, these lines tend to be very straight. I'll be looking at the reference to bring in some of those contours. Bring in some of that subtlety. I might start down here, I might give that cat a little belly. I'll add a little muscle tone to the leg. Earlier. I said that that leg was a little bit too long. I'm going to shorten it here, while I'm doing my final drawing, This goes up a little bit. I'll make my way to the tail. The tail might be a little too wide. That looks almost like a wildcat tail. I'll streamline it, that's better. Moving along to the back, I'll give it a little dip just to give it some fluid movement. Before we do the head, let's finish the legs. We'll do the head at the very end. That leg can be a little more solid, with a little more structure to it. I don't like the way that foot turned out, but we can always erase things when we're done. Then we have that nice solid shoulder here. Let's give it powerful shoulder, that looks good. Then we have the chest area. You can see I rounded that off. There is more of a flow, a natural flow. We have our paw. We can worry about the toe beans and the toes when we remove the shape layer. Moving on to the head. Let’s add a little texture here. Move up into the ears, mouth. That’s too cartoonish. I'm going to make those a little wider. Let's do that again. That's better. Give it a chin. We'll add the eyes, then we'll add the rest of the details, when we turn off that shape layer. Let's go ahead and do that. I like this part. This is like the reveal. We can see how that cat turned out. This is always a satisfying part of the drawing. I’ll drop that shape layer. Turn it off, and here we are. That looks pretty good. We just need to add a few details. Like the eyes and add some whiskers. Whiskers give it personality. We mentioned adding the toe beans, and so on. And of course, we can erase things too. I might decide that foot needs a little bit of adjustment. That's better. And of course, once we add a little shadow to the ground, suddenly the cat has weight. Now, does it look just like the reference? No, that's not the point. The drawing is an interpretation of the reference. The reference is simply inspiration. For example, the head is much higher, does that matter? Not really, unless I'm drawing a cat who's prowling or sneaking along. But it looks like a cat. The legs are structured in a way a cat's legs are structured. The face is more or less organized the way a cat's face is organized. The proportions are pretty close, but not perfect. And that's okay. We transformed our reference into shapes, which became our final drawing. That is the power of shapes. We learned how to break a reference into shapes and we know how to reassemble those shapes as a foundation for a drawing. You've been drawing shapes your whole life. It's as natural as writing. And because of that, your shapes have your own voice in them, and therefore so does your cat. What if we draw our shapes a little differently from the reference? How would that transform the cat? Let's find out in the next chapter. 4. Altering Shapes: Let's have some fun bending, stretching, and changing shapes, giving that reference even more of our own voice. Let's begin by pulling in reference cat number two. We'll go to our reference window and we'll click Clear Import. That will pull up our library of photos. Reference cat number two. Is this orange cat sitting on a fence, there. It is beautiful. Let's take a closer look at our orange cat, here. Now, that first cat we did, the walking cat, those shapes were spread out. This time, the shapes are stacked up. It's more layered. It's a little bit different way to go about drawing with shapes, but the same principles apply. Let's begin by choosing the anchor shape. To me, the anchor shape is this body shape back here. It's big, there's other shapes attached to it and it has substance and weight to it. It's sitting right on that fence. Maybe you have a different anchor shape in mind. Maybe you thought the chest might be a better shape to start with. That's fine too. Go with your instincts. Let's go ahead and draw that anchor shape. Let's move this back into place. That looks good. We can go a little bigger here. It's a tear drop shape, not quite, but let's draw the bottom of the fence that goes straight up, then up into our tear drop. That one has a tighter curve to it, then it goes up something like that and then that's a tighter curve. That could be a little straighter. I don't want to fuss too much, but that's better. Then from there we have the chest shape that is off to the side. It rises above the top of the tear drop. The top of the anchor, probably right about there. It's a rounded rectangle and you can already see I'm going way over. See the way that hip sticks out. There's no way I'll be able to meet that. That means my rectangle needs to move over as we're doing this. Watch how these shapes work together. We're going for placement and proportion. In fact, let's start on this side. I guarantee I have a bit of, a little bit of hip coming out there, maybe about that high, and we'll come down about there. That's probably not perfect, but it's close enough. We're not doing a perfect copy of that. This is inspiring that. Let's then drop those legs down. They're long rectangle shapes that lead to the little paw shapes. Slightly, a slight inward angle, very slight. That looks great. Then the head is a sphere that comes in about there. Let's move in on that head so we can see some detail. Now let's do those guidelines again. The vertical and the horizontal eye line. Our vertical might have a bit of a little shift to it. The head is not quite straight, looking at us, it's a little bit tipped, just slightly, maybe like that. The cat appears to be looking down a bit. Just a bit, very slightly. We'll have that slightly downward curving eye line again, because we're drawing on a rounded surface. That line has a curve to it. Then from there we have these beautiful mouth shapes. A little circular shape. That little chin goes down there, triangle nose. Here's our eyes. And how do our ears go? They go outward a little bit. Once again, they’re are a bit forward on the front of the head, that's a little small, but I'm not going to worry about it. I think that might be everything, but the back feet and the tail. Let's see how we have our feet going. A foot tucked in here, that foot is behind. I might add that, maybe not, then our tail will be down here somewhere. We'll worry about that when we do the final drawing layer. Okay, let's go ahead and do that drawing layer. I think this looks good. Proportions are good, placements good. Let's go ahead turn the capacity down about halfway, add our new layer. Let's begin at the bottom. Let's go up. I might tuck that line in just a little bit from where I did my shape layer. There's the chest, comes down to the leg. There's a little. Let's do the other half of the chest. Down the paw, to the paw again. And then we add the V to finish that off. That looks good. This goes up like that. Then we have a little foot here. It's hard to see what's going on with the back leg. I think I'll just invent the shape. Then we have the head. I'm going to add just a little texture there. There's not much texture on this cat into something I like to do when I draw cats. Let's make that ear slightly bigger. There's our eyes right on that eye line. Let's add those and the chin. And how are we looking? I never did add the fence, did I? I might be too low. That's good enough, fence posts. I'd like to actually do a brick wall, but I don't want to take the time right now. So we'll just do fence posts. Tail up or down? I actually like up, it's a little more playful. That looks good. Okay, let's drop that shape layer and see how we did. Oh, that beautiful. I like it. So we'll add a little detail, a little personality, such as the eyes, the nose, that's better. That could be a little, that could be a little tighter there. I don't want to play too much with this, but I can't resist. That's better. That's more natural. We can add whiskers like we did earlier on our walking cat and so on, stripes, whatever you want to do from here. That looks like it's wearing a shirt, that's better. Okay, you get the idea. We made that, just by drawing shapes. Transferring these shapes onto our canvas. We went from that to this, not bad. Now, what would happen though if we altered these shapes? How would our cat turn out? Let's find out now. I could alter the shapes that I already drew. But I think what I'd like to do is draw them. We're going to start over. The way I'm going to alter my shapes is by making them a little bit more narrow. The body will be narrow. Going up the chest, same thing. More narrow, I think I'll make the head wide. It'll have a bit of a Mid Century feel to it. Maybe we'll see how it turns out. We’ll start by doing the top of that fence. And the anchor shape was a tear drop, but mine is going to be narrow, something like that. Then we have the body again off to the side. Let's make that a little more sleek, narrow. Should I do a neck? I'm not sure about a neck. Let's try it. Here's our neck shape. We said the head would be wide. Let's do that again. I like that better. Let's add those paws, legs. Come down another foot here. Let's add our guidelines for the face. We start with that horizontal or that vertical line. Rather, this cat appears to be looking that way a little bit. Do something like that. It might be slightly looking upward at the moon or something. We'll give it just the slightest little curve to it to make it appear that it's gazing upward. Then from there, we can add our features of the face. Let's put the nose right about there. There's our mouth. Let's add some eyes. Let's make them long. Since the head is long, maybe it's looking out that way. That's beautiful. What ears do we do? Let's do some smallish ears. I think that looks great tail. Where's the tail? I think the tail should also be slender. There we go, I like it. That is our shape layer. I think that's everything we need. Let's go ahead and drop that opacity and then we'll build up that body form on a new layer. Here we go. We'll see what we get. We'll start at the back of the body, move up to the chest area, the legs to the paws. It goes like that. We have another foot there is that narrow neck, little nose again, that's beautiful that I didn't turn out just the way I wanted it. That's better. And we have some ears and I think we might have it. Once again, I forgot to do the top of the fence. Okay, let's turn off that shape layer and see how we did. That's beautiful. I like it. It's a charming little cat. And we can finish it off. That leg is not very well defined. I'll just add something that's better. That completes the cat. Let's take another look at our shape layer. That's where we started. Just by changing a few shapes, we were able to transform this reference into a cat that has a completely different and unique look. We made that cat our own. That is the magic of shapes. In the next chapter, we'll sketch with shapes. It's more of an intuitive approach to working from references. We'll see you there. 5. Drawing Sketchy Shapes: We've explored the analytical approach with intentional shapes, Now we'll use a more intuitive method with sketchy shapes. One approach isn't better than the other, though you'll likely find that one of the two feels more natural to you. It's a good idea to try both with the intentional approach. We built the cat shape by shape, like building a house brick by brick. The sketchy approach is about gradually developing the shapes and organically sculpting the cat. It is time for reference cat number three. Let's go ahead and clear orange cat on the fence and import referenced cat number three which is this one, the seated cat on the street. Here, let's blow that cat up a little bit. There we go. For the first two cats, we use that drawing method for the shapes in which we very carefully drew out the shapes. For example, if I was to draw this cat, I might start with an anchor shape, which is a circular shape, and then I'd add this triangular shape going up the back. Then we have a shape here for the chest. Here's our head, at our legs, and so on. Shape by shape by shape. That works great. I love drawing that way. But let's explore another method. This is the sketchy shape method. The way this works is we just sketch out those shapes. We know that's a round shape. We already said that I'm going to make that circle when it feels right. Maybe I'll work my way up the back. That looks about right. You can see I keep moving. I'm not overthinking things. I can go into my chest area, those legs come down like that, make sure I get that angle right. That's a little better. I'm feeling my way through it. Do these legs look like they could support weight? If I was a cat, would it feel like that's enough support? Does the bottom look like it has weight to it? If I put myself in the cat's body, you can almost feel the weight there. You can feel the street. You can feel the heaviness of the bottom of the cat. Do I sense that in the way I drew this? Let's move up to the head now. It's the same idea, we’re just feeling our way through the shapes. It's looking off to the side. I'll put in that vertical line. It's slightly looking up. I'll do that from there. I'm just feeling my way through it. That looks good lightly with the eyes at first, then darken them up when I think I have the right marks. That's better. Let's get some ears in there. Work those out. Beautiful. How's our tail like, that? Maybe I actually like it straight this time? There it is. It needs a nose, doesn't it? There's our shape layer. It's a very intuitive way to draw. Instead of carefully building it block by block, we're just sketching out those shapes, working our way through the cat. Let's go ahead and drop the opacity, add a new layer, and we will draw that body. That body is already pretty filled out from the first layer, from that sketchy method, but I might need to make very subtle changes as I go. Like these arms for example, I'm not quite happy with these front legs. That leg is fine, but this one, that's a bit awkward. So I'll tuck it back. That's better. Let's do that leg and that tail is a bit flat. I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe that's okay. I did like that line back there. Okay, who before we drop that shape layer, we better. Okay, now let's turn out the shape layer. See how we did, and there's our cat. It needs a little adjustment. You can see there's a mistake there. That's better. I like that we can add eyes and so on. Whatever details we want to add and give it a little more personality. By sketching out those shapes, we're able to get this cat onto the canvas. Let's see how we started with it, that's how we started out. This method is all about placement in proportion to, it's getting an accurate overall feel for the attitude of the body. How is that cat seated? How is the weight of the cat distributed? Does it feel natural? Does it feel comfortable? Is it convincing? We could keep going. We could add some of the shading and even bring out more of that definition, more of that contour, life, light, almost sculpted feel. But that's for a different class. When our cat was sitting on the fence, we changed just a few shapes and that completely changed our cat. Let's change a few shapes using the sketchy shape method. I'll go ahead turn off that layer, add a new layer, we'll sketch out the shapes once again. But this time I'm going to make the back more arched. It's almost going to have a cartoonish feel, very exaggerated, a very distinct curve on that back. That's the only change I'm planning on now. If as I'm doing that that inspires me to change the head somehow or make the pause differently, then maybe we'll do that once we see things unfold. But for now, that's the only change I'm planning on. I'll start once again with that anchor shape, very lightly. It feels good, has some substance to it, some weight. We said the back is going to be arched. That's a pretty serious arch. I wasn't planning on doing a narrow neck. But let's go for it. We're going to have to do some long legs there. They'll end about there. I'll do my endpoint. So I have something to aim for. Let's tuck that one back there. Those are quite long, aren't they? That's ridiculous. Well, let's keep going. Now to me, it looks like the cat's looking downward. I mean, it has to be, right? Let's draw that vertical line. And then the cat's looking downwards, so this eye line bends downward. And then that nose, eyes and the ears might be going back a little bit. The cat is looking downwards. What's it up to? Let's think about that. It is looking at a mouse. Of course, it is. I could get a reference drawing of a mouse, but I think I'll feel my way through the mouse as well. It's not that tricky to draw, the small feet, mouse tail. Speaking of tails, let's do that one. Going like that this time, because the cat is curious. That's a curious looking tail. I like it. I like it, very cartoonish. Let's go ahead and drop that opacity down. Add a new layer and add the body. Here's arched back for sure. I want some texture there. I love that stuff. Do I add texture? Do I have enough room? The head's turned. I guess I could put a little bit in there. Sure. I'm not happy with these legs, but what are you going to do? Huh, I think what I'll do is bring them in a little bit, we'll see how that turns out. Once we turn off that shape layer, we can always adjust them. There's our tail to add our little mouse. I think that's everything for now. Let's go ahead and turn off the shape layer and see how we did. Okay, not bad. You can see the legs are a little bit awkward. I might have to fix those up. I don't want to take too much time doing that right now. But let's see, that might be in front, our foot is going to go like that. It's a little shading down there. You have our mouse shadow our eyes. Let's make it, looking at that mouse. Beautiful. Let's take a look at that first layer. That's our shapes. That's where we started just by changing one thing, the shape of the back, that made the head a different position. Which made us think that there must be a little mouse involved. By changing the back, it led to a whole story. When you're working from references and you decide to change things, just keep an open mind. Change one or two things because never know what's going to happen. In this lesson, we explored the sketchy shape method. We stayed loose, we stayed in motion. We gradually felt how each shape would be formed and organically, those shapes soon turned into the cat. Then just by altering that one shape, the whole cat changed and the drawing became a story. That too was an intuitive process. Let's move on to our final cat where we'll take on a more challenging pose. Drawing shapes will make that pretty simple. It really will. We'll see you there. 6. Working With Tricky Poses: What happens when we have a reference that's more complex or in a tricky position? The approach is the same. Break it into shapes. Draw the shapes, you see. We'll draw the first intentionally. In the second, using a sketchy method. We'll stretch our sketchy shapes just a little bit this time, to bring out a feeling that's already in the reference. I've already gone ahead and pulled up our final reference. Cat number four is our stretchy cat. We've done the side view of cats, we've done our front view of cats. And now we're doing a three quarter view. And that appears a little more tricky, right? It's going back into space. It's coming out into the room. and your mind might be saying, you know what? This looks way too challenging, but that's because you are looking at it, as a cat. Remember, this is not a cat, this is a collection of shapes. So don't worry. By breaking this reference into the shapes and rebuilding them here, we'll be able to draw that cat. Trust the process. It's very simple. It's not a cat, it's not even a pose. It's just a bunch of shapes for this cat. Let's go back to that first method we used, where we drew the shapes, not the sketchy shapes, but those more carefully drawn out shapes. Our anchor shape will be the head. It's very central. We have the head, then we have a body shape going backwards. We have arm shapes. Going forward, we need to leave room for the arm shapes. And we need to leave for the body, the head. We're going to put right about here. I'll carefully draw the head shape, not quite as sphere. This time it's more squat then the body. What shape is it? Draw the shapes you see. Don't think of it as a body. Think of that as a shape. What shape is it? It's almost an oval. Gets a little more narrow towards the bottom. It's a little off to the side and a little bit at an angle. It starts about midway there from the top of the head, it comes back down, something like that. We can almost break these arm shapes up, so you can see a circle there. Why don't we try that. Let's add that then. We can go ahead and add those rectangular arm shapes at an angle. They come way out. We'll just do circles for the paws. Now that paw may go a little further out. Something like that. Then we have this little leg shape, very simple. It's a tiny little rectangle. Then we can add our little paw down there. Draw the shapes. You see we're not drawing a leg. We're drawing a rectangle. Little circle. Same thing here. We're not drawing front legs. We're drawing shapes and more shapes. Add them all up and you have a very fine looking cat leg. Now let's move on to the head, our vertical dividing line for the features. I'd say the cat is looking slightly that way. You can see there's more head there, than there is here, slightly. In fact, if we imagine a dividing line, you can see it starts about there, it comes down somewhere in that area. Once again, make it curve because that's a sphere. Follow the curve of the head. The eyes, it's looking straight ahead. We can begin to add the other features. Here's the mouth, little nose, and those eyes are closed a bit. The ears are a little bit forward on the head and outward. That looks pretty good. We'll add the details like the little paws and the claws and all that later. The tail. I could go that way. I could go that way. I like that actually. Why don't we try that. That's fun. All right, we'll see how that goes. That's our shape layer. Let's go ahead drop that opacity down and add a new layer so we can draw that body. Once again, think of it as working with clay. And we'll fill out some of these areas here. Let's start here. I like how you can begin to see that hip. We didn't add that, so let's add that. Something like that. Comes back down some comes back up. Those are quite wide. Actually, let's widen that out a little bit. That'll look more natural. More toes. I'm not going to add all those toes right now. Back leg. Let's bring this up a little bit. There's our nose. Make that mouth a little wider like we did with our other cats. You can always improvise as you go change things around on this layer. You know how I love that? All right. I'm still not convinced about that tie. Do I like that better? No, I don't. Let's do this. Let's give it a little more curve, we can add more detail, of course, once we turn off the shape layer, in fact, let's go ahead and do that. Let's see how we did. That's a pretty good looking cat. There's a few little things we can adjust, but we won't worry about that right now. We're able to do a good version of this. We broke it down. We didn't worry about trying to draw things in perspective and struggling with angles and all that. We simply drew the shapes we saw. Draw the reference shape by shape. Why don't we play with our shapes? Let's alter some of these shapes and exaggerate that stretching. Let's go ahead, turn off those layers and start a new one. We will exaggerate the shapes using the sketchy shape method. This time we'll draw that same pose, but we'll just exaggerate things a little bit. Maybe the legs will be a little longer, the paws a little bigger, face a little more blissful looking, and so on. So we'll use that sketchy shaped method, starting with our anchor shape. The head, we go very lightly at first, just trying to feel our way through that shape that feels about right. It might be a little bit wider than that one, but that's okay. We're doing it our own way. We'll do just the guidelines for now. Once again, it's looking off, it's tilted a little bit that way. There's more head here than there. I want it a little higher. Let's exaggerate that motion. That's too high. Maybe like that. That's the only details we'll do for the head. At this time we're laying out the head shape, the body shape, the arms, and then we'll go back and add more detail. It's just a better way to build a drawing. Start with bigger forms, then add the smaller forms, then add the detail. I'm going to keep moving here, let's bring it up to the body, something like that. I'm just feeling that, forming the curve, feeling the motion, feeling the dip of the back, I can almost feel that sunlight hitting that cat. Then we're moving down into the arms once again. Let's do those upper arms as a separate shape then. See how I'm filling out the width. Fill out the width a little bit. Let's put some big old paws on there. Really feeling it. Then we have our little leg. What I'm thinking about here is does that leg. Does this leg feel like it supports the weight? I would come down about like that and then anchor it with a nice paw. Does that feel like it would support the weight? And actually it doesn't. It feels like it's wobbly. I'm going to start that one over. Let's give it a little more substance. That's better. That's more convincing. It's sturdy. And the tail, how shall we do the tail? Like to go straight up but I ran out of canvas. Let's just do some luxurious curve. Yeah, that's not bad. I like it. Let's move on to the face. I'll sketch out the mouth area again, very lightly. And then as you get it closer, you can press a little harder, give it some definition. That's why we're using that script brush. That variable pressure, that pressure sensitive brush gives us that varied line weight. We can go very lightly at first and then you can bear down a little bit, give that line some definition, some feeling. Now, that's a surprised looking cat, isn't it? That's not blissful. There we go, That's better. It looks a little sad. I might fix that up in our final layer. There's our ears, beautiful just by slowly and gradually feeling out those shapes. We got the head and we felt the sway of the back. That beautiful curve. Same thing with the arms are just feeling the direction, feeling the flow. It's about flow. It's about movement. Very intuitive, almost emotional. Then we added the face the same way, feeling our way through it. This looks good. For now, let's draw that body over that shape layer. We will turn our rapacity down on the shape layer, add the body layer, and let's start with this foot. We went up into the back of the body there, that leads to our arms. Let's do some nice big paws. I wanted these legs to be a little wider. This time I made them too thin in my shape layer. Big paw. There we go, add that tail. Then we need to do the head, that's better. Moving on to the head, I want to make that mouth a little wider. Just a little bit. That makes the cat look a little more pleased with that wide open, that wider face. That wider mouth. I said I wanted to adjust the eyes. They were looking a little sad. I'm not sure how that's going to turn out until we turn off the shape layer. Okay, that looks great, lovely. We were able to take a tricky pose and exaggerate and alter it just by changing one shape at a time. Going shape by shape altering the shapes, that transformed the reference into our own cat. In this chapter, we learned that the brain sometimes sees things as being complex forms, being very intimidating, difficult, beyond our ability. Sometimes if you ignore your mind and just follow the shapes, draw the shapes you see, let go of all those other concerns, you find out that it's not so difficult after all. That’s the power of shapes. In the next chapter, let's wrap it up with some quick closing thoughts. Meet me there. 7. One More Thing...: Thank you for drawing with me. I enjoyed having you here in class. Remember, a reference image is just information. You don't have to recreate it point by point and line by line. Find what feels like a natural voice in how you interpret it and then develop that. And drawing with shapes isn't limited references. Their a good way to build any drawing from a single subject to an entire composition. If you can draw shapes, you can draw with shapes. If you enjoyed the class, please leave a review. They sharpen my teaching and help other students discover the class. And again, please share your project. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the discussion below. Be sure to follow me here on Skillshare. So you'll always know when my next class is published. You can also find me on Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest. And I invite you to join the creator Collage, which is a friendly online community for digital artists of all skill levels that I host along with my wife and fellow teacher, Tracy Capone. I look forward to seeing you in the next class.