Digital Illustration: Coloring Female Characters in Procreate

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Gabrielle Brickey. And today in class we'll be painting female characters in Procreate. Sketching characters is such a fun and enjoyable creative activity. And adding the element of color into the mix, takes it to a whole new level. Using the iPad Pro and the Apple pencil, I'll share my process for sketching characters and show you how you can cleanly apply base colors. Then we'll walk through different ways you can easily manipulate those base colors into endless combinations, creating gorgeous, harmonious color palettes. After that, we'll talk about the five lighting scenarios that work great for character illustrations, and how you can refine your painting with background elements and textures. This class is packed with extra resources. You'll get access to the Procreate brushes I love to use for characters, over 500 doll reference photos, lighting photo and video references, and paper textures. I've created a character art for advertisements, books, and just for fun. With the skills gained from this class, you'll be able to create colorful character designs for freelance work, or simply for your personal enjoyment. I'd love to see you in class. Grab your iPad, and let's get started. 2. Getting Started: Thanks so much for joining the class. You're welcome to draw along with me and follow the steps in this course. But if you're new to drawing characters, I'd recommend a couple classes to watch before you begin. If you want to come up with your own original designs, check out these classes first, to learn basic character sketching techniques. In this class, we'll be using the Procreate app on the iPad Pro, using the Apple Pencil. If you're new to Procreate, I'd recommend watching a Procreate class first, or reading the Procreate handbook. As you walk through this class, be sure to share your work. Sharing is important for artistic growth. You can upload your project on a computer on skillshare.com in the Projects and Resources section. If you have questions or would like feedback, be sure to let me know in your project description. You can share your sketch, your color experiments, or your final piece. Share whatever part of your process you'd like. In this course I also have a ton of resources that you can use in your pieces. If you're watching on a computer, you can find these resources in the Projects and Resources section of class. Or if you're on the app, you can access them by clicking this link, which will redirect you to the desktop site. In the Resources you'll find all the Procreate brushes I'm using in this class, a huge collection of doll reference photos, lighting photo and video references, and paper textures. I also share a few line art, so if you find you don't want to draw and you just want to color for this class, feel welcome to use those. With all that out of the way, let's jump into some sketching. 3. Sketching the Character (First Pass): The first thing we need to do before we begin sketching is create a canvas. I'm going to press this little "Plus" icon in the corner here, and then I'm going to press this little icon right here. Now we can create our own custom canvas. I typically like to do a 5,000 pixel by a 3,500 pixel canvas. This is nice and high-quality, and can also easily fit my reference photo. I like to keep the DPI at 300, and we can see this size canvas can have a maximum of 34 layers, which will work well enough for our purposes here. Now, for color profile, I like to have this sRGB profile selected because it works well for the Internet. These other two categories, Time-lapse Settings and Canvas Properties will come down to your personal preference, so I'll leave those as they are for now, and press "Create", and a new canvas is created. Before you begin sketching, you're going to want to have some of these doll references already downloaded to your camera roll on your iPad. To get these references over to your iPad, you can use AirDrop, your email, or you can access the references directly from that link mentioned on Skillshare. Feel free to screenshot any of these photos if you'd like to just jump right in. These are some of my favorites, and some I use later in examples for this class. I think ball jointed dolls work great as references for characters. For anyone wondering, this is the Mari doll from iplehouse.com. For our main step-by-step demo, I'll be using this image. let's place the reference image on our canvas. We're going to press the "Wrench" icon here, and under Add, press "Insert a Photo". Now, I'm just grabbing my reference, and then under "Snapping", I turn magnetics and snapping on so that when I scale my image her proportions won't get wonky. Now, unzoom in, I grab the Transform tool to move the image around and cut off some of these edges that I don't need. I want to leave as much room as I can for my drawing. Now I add a new layer, and I grab my willow charcoal streamline brush so I can start sketching. I start off by warming up with a couple circular motions with my hand and arm. You'll notice how my whole arm is moving, not just my hand. Don't choke up in this beginning stage and draw too tightly with only your hand. Right now I'm thinking about drawing the ball of the head with the jaw hanging off, and then I attach this little ear to it. Now I draw an arced center line down the face, and a horizontal line across where about the eyes will go. Now I draw the cylindrical shape of the neck, and the basic shape of her shoulders and neck line. Now I go in and start to think about the shape of this hair and what I want that to be. I actually quite like this hairstyle here, so I'm thinking I'm going to go with something similar to what's in the photo. I just try to look at these rhythmic lines that are happening. I'm not copying them exactly, but just trying to capture the essence of the hairstyle. Looking at C curves to help me capture the flow. Now, I'm going to go on with the basic shapes of the eyes, and I want to mention real quick because I think it's so important for your mentality when you're starting your character sketches, give yourself full permission to make this first pass messy. Make it ugly, even. As we move forward with the drawing, we'll be able to refine more and more with each pass. But for this first pass, go wild and take the pressure off yourself as you plan and experiment with your design. Now I'm going in with a simple place marker for the nose and a simple shape for the mouth. There are lots of simple shapes you can use for these features, like circles or an upside-down triangle for a nose, or something like an oval or even a smushed hexagon shape for the lips. Be sure to check out my character drawing courses to go much more in depth with that. Now, I'm still deciding what kind of look she'll have, so I'm playing with the shape of the mouth a little bit, experimenting with a little smile. I was wondering if maybe she'd have closed eyes, but I decide to make her eyes open as I put in the circular shapes for the irises. I know we don't want this piece of hair to completely cover her eye, so I erase a bit of that out. I'm not worried about perfect line art at this point, so I don't mind it being messy as I experiment. Now, I'm trying to define the shape of how I want her jaw and chin to look. No need to copy the image exactly. You can always take artistic liberties where you wish. Now I'm playing with the design of the hair a little more. I'm lowering the shoulder down a little now and drawing some hatch lines to help push that area back in space into the shadows. I typically like a V-shaped shirt line, so I add an indication of that here. Now I'm just playing with that hair, trying to figure out the design. You can see I jump around from one thing to the next, working on the whole piece and bringing it all up together. Now I color in these irises and add a tone to the lips. I'm not sure I'll keep the flowers in at this point, but for now, I indicate them with an oval shape. Now I'm just working on this hair, and I'm using this reference and my imagination to come up with a design. If you'd like to find great references for hairstyles, Pinterest is an excellent place to get inspired for lots of different looks. Now heading back to the nose here and the lips. Now I'm zooming in to add a couple of lashes for the eyes to get a feel for the look. Now I'm going to grab the Eraser tool to bring back some of the white to the eyes. Something important to note when you're making line art is don't use white paint to make corrections to your line art. Instead, use the eraser, or else down the line when you start to color, you'll have random patches of white showing up. Remember to use the Eraser tool to erase and correct things. I'm just continuing to jump around the piece now, bouncing around from features to hair. I'm going back and forth between the willow charcoal streamline brush and the eraser brush, which is also set to be willow charcoal streamline. I think a little piece of hair cutting out right here could be cool to break up that space, so I add that there. Everything's still really messy as I plan out my composition. I will note, I made several different sketches of different characters before settling in on this one being my demo I'd show you guys, so I'd encourage you to do the same thing. Make a few rough sketches like this from different references with different poses and designs, and then pick your favorite. Just experimenting now, adding in some lower lashes. Sometimes I'll add the lower lashes in, and sometimes I'll leave them out. It just depends on the character. Just more work on the hair now, as I try to decide on how this hair will wrap around her head in a rhythmic way. Now I go to Adjustments, Liquefy, and I just want to scooch around some stuff a bit to see if I like the look better. I'm just using the push mode here. I'm just going to rework the design of the shirt here a bit, and now this first pass of the character is complete. I got the basic pose, an idea out on the canvas. Go ahead now and make a few messy sketches like this, or if you're following along with me, join me in the next video where we'll make a second pass on this and refine the drawing a bit more. 4. Refining the Sketch (Second Pass): Now we're going to make a second pass on this and refine our idea a bit more. First, I'm just going to move this down a bit. Then I want to make sure the line art is nice and high-quality. Here under Actions canvas, I press, "Crop and Resize", and I just make the Canvas a bit larger. Then in Layers, I select "Both", tap the "Transform" arrow, and pull the corner out to enlarge. But as you can see, it made the proportions wonky. Make sure Uniform is selected for any scaling. Now I tap to just select the sketch layer, and I scooch it over just a bit more. Now that everything is how I like it, I lower the opacity down. Now I add a new layer, and we're ready to begin on the second pass. Now that my idea is in place, I'm going to get a little cleaner now. I'm going to slow down a little and think about the shapes of each feature. I like to think of eyes like pumpkin seed shapes. Spend time practicing these basic shapes over and over again if you're not comfortable. With time and practice, drawing eyes will become more natural to you. Now I'm drawing these circular iris shapes. I like the idea of her looking towards us, so I go with that. I'm just drawing some little eyelashes. Eyelashes will tend to be triangular in shape. Now I'm just hinting at upper lids with a couple rounded lines. Now I'm doing a few quick strokes for the brows. Then I head to the nose to put in two nostrils and a rounded curve for the ball of the nose. Now, at the corners of the mouth, I put two dots, and a little dot in the middle where the lips part. Then I lightly draw an arcane line to define the top and a soft C curve just at the bottom. Zooming in, I'm working to define the cheekbone and chin structure. I flip my piece and continue on that. I flip my piece for a lot of reasons. One reason is just because I draw lines better when I'm going a certain direction with my stroke. Another reason is to get a fresh eye on the piece. You'll see me flip my canvas and unzoom a lot while I work. That's just to give my eye a fresh perspective. If you want to program your Modify button to pull up the Quick Menu too, just go to Actions, Prefs, Gesture Controls. Then with Quick Menu selected, set the Tap Modify button on. Back to the drawing. Now, I'm just continuing to refine these features. If you have any trouble figuring out how to draw your line art, definitely check out my previous class where I share tons of worksheets and guides to help you through learning how to sketch. Now I'm just drawing this C-shaped ear here. Now I'm drawing the curves of the neck. Now I'm giving some attention to this hair. You can see when I draw, I use multiple strokes to express one idea. I work at a steady pace, not drawing too slowly or cautiously. When drawing hair, think in terms of flowing S curves and C curves. Think big shapes. Don't get lost in the details, drawing a ton of lines and making the hair look like a haystack. Here is a great place to be rhythmic. These lines pulling in and out will work well compositionally to bring your viewer's eye continuously back to the face, which is our focal point. With hair, you'll also want to change up the weight of your lines. In some areas, use bolder darker lines, and in other places use thinner lighter lines. This variety is pleasing to your viewer's eye and will help encourage the flow of the hair as well. When I'm drawing hair, I typically use a bolder line quality to express the contours of large shapes. Then the hairs inside those larger shapes will be supporting roles, so much lighter and thinner in line quality. Drawing hair includes lots of trial and error for me. I like to try out different lines until I find one that just looks right. Now I'm going back to my original sketch because I want to erase some of these distracting lines here. Once you've made your second pass, whatever isn't enhancing your piece from your first pass, go ahead and erase. I definitely do like to keep a little of each pass showing through though, because I think it helps the sketch look more lively and not too tight, so don't erase everything. Back on the layer I'm currently working on, I just want to see if I can draw some of these edges a little bit better. All of this planning of the hair will help me in the next phase when I really want to lock these shapes down with clean line art. A lot of this is drawing a stroke, observing to see if it works, and going from there. Now I'm adding a new layer because I want to experiment with adding some flowers, just something simple compositionally to add a little bit of interest to our character. Now I'm going back to this layer to see if I can fix the hair here. I'm not sure that I like that though, so I undo. You'll notice I use the two-finger tap gesture all the time to undo. Once you start incorporating some procreate gestures into your process, they'll become second nature. Now I decide to add a new layer instead to see if I can fix that hair. I'm going back to the flower layer, and I decide I want to move it. I grab the Selection tool and select it with the freehand selection, grab the "Transform" arrow and move it down. This is where I'll call it for the second pass. 5. Refining the Sketch (Third Pass): Now I'm going to screencast this final pass of the drawing. I can get a little more comfortable and get a little closer to my screen. When I draw I typically don't work at a desk. I'm usually on something more like a comfortable couch. Opening up my layers here, I just pinch my fingers together to merge all of those layers. Then I press the end to lower the opacity. Then I actually grab for the willow charcoal streamline eraser brush, and I just want to clean up some of these unnecessary lines before I get started. Here around the neck and on the hair. Now I'm going to add a new layer to get started on this cleaned up version of the line art. I grab my willow charcoal streamline brush and I zoom in to get started on the eyes. You're not sitting here all day, I've sped the process up a bit. But at this point in my process, I'm being more careful with the drawing. Not overly cautious, but now I'm trying to make cleaner lines and more conscious decisions, so I'm slowing down a bit. Now I'm adding a bit of a darker tone to the browser. It's a little too much though, so I knock it down a bit with the eraser. Now zooming in, I work to define the nose a bit more. Drawing dark shapes for the nostrils and lighter curved lines to describe the ball and wings of the nose. Now I darken some of the important parts of these lips, so the center, the two corners, and the top. Now I'm adding some eyelashes. Now I'm coloring in that top lip just a bit more. I'm going back to this layer below to erase out where the hair covers this part of the eye. Now back to my refining layer, I add a darker tone to the top lip. I like to do this because it starts to give the idea of the lighting. Now I'm defining the edge of the face a bit more and moving into the hair. As I work on the hair, you'll see a lot of put in lines in and taking them back out. That's just the nature of drawing here for me. It's a lot of trial and error as I mentioned until lines are just right. Now I'm defining the forehead and the cheek a little bit, and the edge of the neck. Just a bit more work on this hair now. I go ahead to my layers and I just merge that down for now. Now I've got my eraser brush and I just erase out some of this hair lightly. I'm getting there with the flow of the shapes, but I want to try and draw them again with a bit more competence in the design. I'm just working to really map out how this hair is flowing down. Now I lower the opacity of that layer and I merge it down. Now I go to adjustments, liquefy, because I want to push these big clumps of hair around a bit to make them look a little more balanced on either side. Then back with my willow charcoal streamline brush, I work to define the hair a bit more and the neck line. Now I add a tone for the eyelashes, and I add a new layer, put it below that layer, lower the opacity, and just draw a tone on for the lips. Now I add a new layer and I zoom in and add some eyelashes. Now that I'm happy with all those layers, I merge them down to simplify. Now I add a new layer and I zoom in to define the chin. Then I add a little oval on her nose to indicate a highlight. Then I zoom in and I use the eraser to just soften it up. Now I add a new layer and I want to experiment with adding a couple of leaves to these flowers. Flipping my canvas, I also add on a few lower lashes, and I lower the opacity to light them a bit. Now that I'm happy with all that, I go ahead and merge it down. Wherever I'm happy with something in the sketch phase, I tend to just merge the layers. Now I go to adjustments, liquefy. I want to see if I can scooch the eye up a bit, and I like the look of that. Now I'm taking the selection tool because I'm thinking this eye needs to be scooched over a little closer to the other eye. Now I'm just coloring in and fixing that gap with my brush. Now with the eraser brush, I realized that this line in the hair needs to be softened. I softly erase some of that out. I add a new layer to just add a couple more lines in the hair here. I merge that down. I find them happy with the face, but the hair needs a lot of cleaning up. I take the selection tool and I select the face and neck. Then I swipe down with three fingers and press, Cut and Paste. This paste the face and neck on its own new layer. To program this three-finger swipe, head to your gesture controls. Then I go to what's now just the hair layer and I lower the opacity down. We're going to clean up this hair once and for all. But before we do that, I just want to clean up some of the edges of the face layer with the eraser, so I do that real quick. Now I add a new layer and I start to draw the final line work for the hair. Hair is definitely a process that takes some time. When drawing hair, I put harder pressure down on my pencil to get that line thicker, and lighter pressure on my pencil to get the line thinner. This offer some nice variety. Then like I was mentioning earlier, the outline of the bigger shapes will typically have a darker and thicker line quality. I'll put thinners lines on the inside of those shapes which will work to encourage and support the flow of the bigger shapes. I don't get too wild with a bunch of thin lines though. I definitely like to keep it simple. For my style I typically find simplicity works best. If you'd like to see more demonstrations on different types of hair, Check out my class character illustration, drawing female portraits in Procreate. In that class, I walk through approaches you can take to drawing different hair types. You'll find that most hairstyles come down to draw an S curves and C curves though. Get very comfortable drawing that type of line. Now I'm experimenting with drawing a couple of smaller chunks that breakaway from the larger masses. I think these work well compositionally to add a little bit of fun to the hairstyle. Now on a new layer, I'm redrawing the flowers. I want to keep these simple. Nothing too intricate, but just a little elements to add some interests. Now I go back to the hair layer and erase the part we no longer need because the flowers there now. Still on that hair layer, I add a few more details to the hair. Now on a new layer, I want to experiment with a flyaway hair to balance this one out. Heading back to the main hair layer, I erase these couple of lines. Heading back to my top layer, I try to redraw those hairs better. Basically if I'm experimenting with an idea, I'll do it on its own separate layer. But then once I'm happy with it, I'll merge it down. I'm feeling good about this sketch now. I'm going to merge all those layers together by pinching, so it'll be one complete line art. Once you've finished your sketch, go ahead and share your sketch with the class if you'd like. Then jump into the next video where we'll start painting. 6. Painting Base Colors: Now, we're going to put down some base colors. What we're going to do is paint each different colored item on a separate layer, so separate layer for hair, skin, eye color, etc. This will make color experimentation in the next few videos super easy. We're also going to clearly label each item, so they're easy to sort through and find. Go into our layers. I'm going to add a new layer, and I'm going to tap and rename it skin. Then I'm going to drag that layer below my sketch layer. In working with skin color, obviously, there's huge variety. From yellowish to orange to reddish hues. Using two fingers to blow this up a little larger. When I'm picking a skin color, I try to avoid anything too close to bright white, which doesn't give us enough color information or anything too saturated, giving us too much color. For now, I'll pick a mid-tone for the skin right around here. Using my willow charcoal streamline brush, I start by just outlining her face, then working down the neck and back to the face to close in the shape. If you make a closed-off shape in Procreate, you can take the color here and drag it into the area you want to fill. Procreate will automatically fill it. You can also adjust the fill threshold by sliding left to fill in less or right to fill in more. I'll leave it right there for now. If you find you're having trouble and when you do this, it fills up the whole page with color. First, check to make sure your shape is actually closed-off. Second, try adjusting that threshold with the sliding finger, like I just showed. Zooming in now, nothing is perfect, so I just want to go back now and make sure all this is completely filled in. Up here I forgot this little spot, so I make sure all of this is filled in. Something else you can do to make sure your layers are nice and opaque is just duplicate your layer and then you can just go ahead and merge that down into one. Now, I'm ready to move on to the hair. I'm just going to grab a hair color here. Now, I'm going to go to my layers, add a new one, and tap to rename it hair. Now, I'm just going to zoom in and start outlining this hair. I'm just getting the main parts of the hair for now, and I'm going to do the looser hairs after I color drop. Now, that I have a nice closed-off shape, I'm just going to drag and drop that in. Now, I'm going to do the same thing over here. Now, that I have a nice shape, I'm just going to drag and drop that in. Now, I'm just going to do this until I have these main parts filled in and then I'm going to do these flyaway separate. I like to do these hair separate because I like the freeness that a hand-drawn stroke gives and I also like the way the brush can taper and lighten up as you lift off the canvas, so I'm doing that towards the end of the lines. Doing this one now just going back and forth to get a nice flow in stroke. Just going back in now and cleaning up the edges with an eraser. Now, I'm going to draw the flyaway hairs on this side. This one is proving a little tricky for me, so it takes a few tries before I get it right. That's just the nature of hair sometimes and drawing in general really, so I always have two fingers ready to undo. For now the hair's done, so I go to my layers, add a new one, and label this one lips. Now, I'm picking up a nice pinky color, and now I'm zooming in to color those in. Now, I just duplicate the layer and merge it down and I'll do the same thing for the hair since I forgot to do earlier. Sometimes the color layer can just be slightly transparent without you knowing, and this can cause a little trouble down the line if you decided to put in a background color, for instance. I like to make sure my color layers are nice and opaque and duplicating and merging down helps with that. Now, I'm adding a new layer and I'm going to rename this one whites of eyes. Now, I just double-tap around white and that will snap me a pure white. Then zooming in, I'm just going to color in these eyeballs. Of course, you can change the color of these according to the lighting condition. They won't always be bright white. Now adding a new layer, I'm going to call this one eyes. This will be the color part of the eyes. For now, I'm going to settle in on brown. Now, I add in another layer, I'm going to rename this one flowers. I'm thinking about using orange color for now. Now, I'm just filling that in. Now, I make a new layer for the leaves because I know want to experiment with the colors of the flowers and leaves separately. For now, I'll just settle in on this green color for the leaves. Those are the base colors complete. Now, let's head to the next video where we'll start experimenting. 7. Hue, Saturation, Brightness: Now let's play around with the colors. But before we do that, I'm going to go into my painting and I just want to organize this a bit better. I'm going to turn my reference layer off for now. I can always access it again later should I want to. Then sliding right on each layer, I grab all my color layers and sketch, and I use the transform tool to scooch everything to the center. Just pulling this down a little bit more. Now everything is all set up and ready to go. I'm going to head back to my gallery view and I'm going to swipe left and duplicate this image four times. Now we're going to experiment with color using four different methods. Starting with this first one, we're going to play with the hue, saturation, brightness sliders and procreate. I'm going to my Layers and I'm going to tap on Hair because I want to experiment with that first. Then I'm going to go to Adjustments and Hue, Saturation, Brightness. Then I'm going to click Layer because we're going to apply it to the whole layer. Then I'm just going to push these sliders around until something feels right. Hue will basically adjust the color family, saturation will affect how intense or muted the color is, and brightness will affect the value and how light or dark the color is. Experimenting with the hue, saturation, brightness sliders is all about your intuition and going with what your gut tells you looks good. This is all about finding your preferences. Often, I'll just roll back and forth with these sliders until something just hits. I like that, now I'm going to go back to my Layers and experiment with the flowers now. I'm just pushing around these sliders to see what goes nicely with the teal I just put down. When I'm playing with colors like this, I have an internal rating system going in my head, asking myself do I like that more, do I like that less, and going from there. I'm always ranking the color variations in my head because it can be easy to be indecisive with the color experimentation. Now I'm playing with the color of the leaves. I find I like the idea of them being more muted and fall looking. Now I'm playing around with the lip color, seeing how it would look if it were darker or a different hue. I'm going to play with the skin color a little bit and see what would go well with these colors I put down. Now I want to adjust the lips again, make those a little pinker, and I think that looks pretty. Now I'm going to show you how you can adjust the color of your line art to add a little more life to your drawing. I go to my Layers, and on my Sketch layer I swipe right with two fingers. This Alpha locks the layer. You can tell it's Alpha locked because we can see this checkerboard here. As a note, you can also manually Alpha lock by tapping the layer and then tapping Alpha Lock. Now that the layers are Alpha locked, when I paint on that layer, the paint will only stick to whatever is already on that layer, so basically, only the liner color will change. I'll grab a soft brush and make it nice and big. Then I want to experiment with a burnt warm orange color, and I just color over the whole thing. You can see how this adds a nice airiness to the piece. You can also go in and change the liner color around specific things. Maybe these lips, for example, could use something more red or pink. Or maybe around the lashes could be a bit darker. Maybe the nose will be a little redder. You can feel free to change all these colors and have fun with this. You can also try the hue saturation brightness sliders on the whole line art. That's a really fun way to check out different looks. There are tons of interesting colors you could use on your line art, so be sure to play around. I'm liking this color story that's happening, so for now, I'm going to keep it like this. Let's give this another go and see what else we can come up with. Clicking the Hair layer, let's start playing around with that. I'm going through my options, just playing around with all the different properties of color. I'm thinking I want to try something blonde so I stick with that for now. Go into my Layers. Now I'm going to start experimenting with the skin color. Now I'm going to play with the color of the flowers. I'm thinking I like the color pink for now. Now I'm going back to the skin tone to take another look and experiment a bit more. Now to the eyes, play with a few colors there. I really like this earthy green. Now back to the flowers, just playing a bit more. I love pushing around the hue, saturation, brightness sliders. It's so fun to see what your character can become and how the colors can change the mood of the piece. Now back to the hair because it's just not quite right for me. I really like the look of this pink but I want to exhaust the blond options first. I experiment with the value of her hair as a blonde to see if I like that better. I find myself continuously drawn to the pink hair though, so I stick with that. Now it's time to play with the line art. I Alpha lock the layer swiping with two fingers to the right. Again, we can see it's on because of that checkerboard. I'm thinking I want to play with something more orangey. I grab the soft brush, make it big, and just color over the line art. I'm just going to grab a slightly darker orangey brown here. I just like the glow this warmer color gives the piece. Zooming in, I'm going to try making this part of the line art around the flowers are darker green. I just experiment with a dark rusty red around the eyes, and a more saturated red around the lips and I'll leave this one at that. Go ahead and take some time and experiment with the hue, saturation, brightness adjustment and see what you can come up with. 8. Color Palette from a Photo: Something really cool you can do in Procreate is you can create a color palette from a photo. Then you can use that pallete to inform and guide your color choices. To make a palette in Procreate, tap the Color button, then press Palettes. Then press this plus sign right here, and choose New from photos. Then I have some photos stored over here in Recents. Just click on a photo and it will automatically create a color palette for you that you can use as a jumping-off point for your painting. I'm just going to make a few more here from these photos to see what it comes up with. Now, out of all these that I created, I'm really enjoying this color palette here. I'm going to press Set Default and go back to disc view. You can see it's now set there. To begin coloring, I'm just going to grab a soft brush, make it really big, and then go to my layers and we're going to start with the hair. I swipe right with two fingers on the hair layer to alpha lock it. Then I'm thinking, I want to try maybe a purple color for the hair. Using that big brush, I just paint that on. As a note, you can also experiment with colors quickly by using Swash Drop or Color Drop. You can pull from the color in the corner here and drag and drop in new colors. Now, I'm going to play with the color of the flowers. I'm thinking maybe this purply color. I'm just going to go back to my layers and alpha lock it with two fingers. Then I'm just going to color those in. Now, I'm thinking about the skin tone and I'm liking the idea of these lighter pastel colors working together. So I give this a go. Now, I'm going to grab this pink and try that on the lips. This pink is more harmonious with the rest of the colors than that last color was. Now, I'm going to play with the eye color. I like the idea of trying something a little bit cooler to match what's already happening. I'm going to give this blue a go, and I like the effect that's having. Now, I want to change the color of the leaves. I think this golden-yellow could be an interesting pop of color. I think that breaks up the cool purples and blues nicely, and offers a little color variety. Now, I want to play with the color of the sketch line art. I alpha lock that. I want to try a deep pink purply color. Already I feel that adds so much more fun to the piece. I feel that changing the line art color, even just a bit from black, can make the piece more exciting to look at. For now, I'll keep this one like this. Let's do another example inspired by a photo. I'm going to go back to palettes and I'm going to try this one out. I'm going to start with the hair, so I alpha lock that layer. I'm thinking I want to try a more natural hair color this time. So I'm going to go with this brown. Now, I'm going to experiment with the skin color. I'm trying a few of these swatches out, but they're just looking too greenish. Sometimes the photo can just be a jumping-off point to help inspire other color decisions. I decided to push this a bit warmer, and I think that works better. Now, I want to play with this color on the flowers. So I grab this blue, alpha lock the layer, and give that a try. I'm not really feeling it, so I'm thinking I'm going to try this golden-yellow, and I actually quite like that. Now, time to play with the line art. I alpha lock the layer, and I'm going to try out this warm brown. It's too light, so I'm going to push it darker. I'm thinking it's still too light, so I'll push it a little darker. Then I think it needs just something different, so I try out this maroon color and I think that works much better. Go ahead and create some color palettes from photos and see what you can come up with from them. You can use the palette closely or use it simply as a jumping-off point to inspire your color decisions. 9. Three Colors + White: For this next example I'll demo, we're going to play with a limited color palette. Specifically, we'll be using three colors plus white. What's nice about a limited color palette is when you condense your color choices down to just three root colors, you'll get something that's very naturally harmonious but will still give your eye some variety. Using too many colors can lead to too much variety, which can become chaotic and overwhelming to look at, but three colors plus white offers nice unity with variety. First, we need to create a new canvas and I'm using a 5000 by 3500 pixel canvas, just the same setup as before. I'm going to be using my walnut oil brush included in the brushes in the class resources. I use this one a lot from my more painterly portraits, but it can be used for color mixing like we're going to be doing here too. To get started, what we want to do is pick any three colors. I'm going to start with this orangey color first, I think, and I'm just going to dab that on and get a nice patch of color down. The three colors you'll want to pick should be pretty rich in color. When we start mixing, we're going to be able to mix down to some neutrals, so I go for this vivid blue. For my third color, I'm thinking I'm going to try something in the pinky-purple range. I'll just put a patch of that down here. Now that we have all three, we can just start gliding them into each other and they'll mix together and the white of the canvas will show through making some other colors look like [inaudible]. I like this little color that it created here, so I'll put a patch of that down. Now I'm just mixing this cyan blue with this pinky color and it comes out as this beautiful lilac. Now I'm mixing the orange with the blue and it comes out as this nice neutral blue-gray, almost with a hint of green in there. I just continue on in this way mixing all the colors, picking them up and putting them back down and seeing what I can come up with. A quick note about putting colors down with this brush, I make this motion to put down clean patches, picking up my pencil, and I make this motion to mix colors together, keeping my pencil on the screen. I'm just continuing like this and I'll just speed this up a little while I experiment a bit more. There's lots of beautiful subdued colors coming out of these mixtures. The neutrals really help to bridge the gap between the more intense colors. The neutrals help build the harmony. Right here, I noticed that we had a nice purple in the mixture, so I want to zoom in and grab on to that, then I'm just going to make a patch of that. As you can see, even though we started with three colors, there's a lot of exciting variety happening here, and since we used a limited palette, there's still an overall sense of the unity between the colors. It's not super overwhelming or all over the place, there's definitely a harmony that's happening. Once you feel you have a nice assortment of colors, you can use that as palette inspiration for your character. I'm going to go to my Layers and turn the Background off for now. Then I'm going to take three fingers and swipe down on my screen, this brings up the copy and paste menu, and I'm going to press "Copy". As a quick note, you can use this three-finger gesture too by programming your gesture controls like this. Now back here, I've copied this layer and I'm going to go to Gallery view and three-finger swipe down to paste it to my painting so I can experiment. Then I'll just rotate it and scale it down and push it in place. Now again, I'm going to go to the Hair layer, alpha-lock it, and grab a color. I really like this neutral greenish color that was created, so I'm going to give that a try for the hair. Now I think this color would work well for the skin, so I pick that up, alpha-lock the skin layer, and put that down. Then I'm going to try this orangey-brown color for the eyes. Then I'll give this pink a go for the flowers. But I feel like it's a bit too vivid, so I'll try out a few more options; maybe blue. Now I'm going back to the eyes and I want to try the eyes blue to see if I like the look. Cool, but not quite there. I'm just going to move on for a while and try the lips a different color. That's way too vivid for me. I like that a lot better. Now I'm picking up this lilac color and I try that for the flowers instead. Now going back to the eyes, I make those brown and it just seems to work a lot better. Now I'm going to play with the line art, so I'm picking up a purply color, making it darker, and then I go to the sketch, alpha-lock it, and color it in. Go ahead and give this a go and see if you enjoy mixing up your own colors to come up with a little palette. 10. Using a Color Scheme: Another way you can color your character is by implementing basic color theory. I talk all about the element of color in my class here. But basically you can use a color wheel as a tool for designing color schemes. Here, I'm using a cyan, magenta, and yellow color wheel. Here are a few harmonious color schemes you can use in your pieces. Monochromatic color schemes where you use one root hue and all the tense tones and shades that belong to that hue, complementary color schemes where you use two colors that are across the wheel from each other, and analogous color schemes where you use hues that are side-by-side each other. For this example let's try out a complimentary color scheme. We're going to use two colors across the wheel from each other. I'm going to get started with the hair and alpha lock that layer, and I'm going to push this color to be a bit less intense. Then I'm going to use a big soft brush and paint that on. Now, going to layers and alpha locking ellipse, I'm going to try out this bright red for her lip color. Now for the flowers, I'm going to try something from that red family as well. Now, I want to try something nice and neutral for the leaves. Now, I'm pushing this a bit towards orange to try out something for the skin. Skin tones are really natural to us, so I don't mind that this goes outside the boundaries of the complimentary color scheme. I think this color still works nicely with the rest. Now, I alpha lock the sketched layer to try out some colored line art. I'm going to try out this red burgundy. I think this one looks nice, so I'll leave it like this. Color schemes from the color wheel can work well as a guide. Give this a go and see what you think. A quick note about working with darker tones. This is more difficult to see when working with lighter colors. But when working with darker colors, you may notice that you didn't paint your base colors all the way to the edge of your line art. Just zoom in and make those corrections to the layers that need it before moving on to the next step. Color is so fun to play around with. Try out some of these methods and see which one gives you your favorite result. Be sure to share your color experiments with the class because they're always really inspiring to see. I'm going to be finishing this one. Let's jump into lighting in the next video. 11. Lighting for Characters: Now I have a class all about lighting for portraits and characters. If you'd like to learn more about lighting or if you're very new to the idea of lighting for artists, check that out. It'll break down the basics for beginners and also expand on other scenarios for those who'd like to learn more. But before we move on with our painting, I'd like to go over some lighting scenarios that work really well for character art. Here are the five lighting scenarios that I think work great for characters. First, just basic diffused overhead lighting. The images and diffused lighting that I shot for this class, the doll is getting diffused light from an open window in my room. The light is somewhere between overhead and frontal. Diffused lighting scenarios can also happen outside on a cloudy day with the diffused light coming from the clouds above. This type of lighting results in a softened edge quality of the shadow shapes. Let's take a closer look at those examples. Here under the chin, you'll get a soft shadow shape. As you can see, the edge quality is not as defined as I'm drawing here. It's softer. But this is the general shape you'll get in a diffused overhead lighting scenario. For the nose, you'll get this sort of shape under here. Then the eyes, you'll get some soft shadows in the sockets. Nothing too harsher to define though. In 3/4 view, you'll get this sort of shape happening on the neck with the edge fading into light being much softer than how I drew it. The nose again, we'll get a soft shadow shape like this. Then again, the eye sockets will softly go into shadow. If you squint, you can see some of this stuff a little better. All the rest of these lighting scenarios that I believe work well for characters will be direct lighting scenarios. Direct lighting examples can be found outside on a cloudless, sunny day, or by using a light bulb with no lamp shade. In these direct lighting scenarios, the edges of shadows are more defined than the diffused lighting example. Here in these photos, I actually have two light sources, though. The main source of light that will inform our lightened shadow shapes is the direct light up a light bulb, which I'm moving around her head to different angles. The other secondary source of light is coming through my windows in front of her. This secondary light is a diffused light to fill in the shadows with color information and to give us more to work with as artists. The secondary window light will help to lighten up the shadows so they're not just dark black. Again now, the main light here that will inform our lighting shadow shapes will be the direct light coming from the light bulb. Let's talk about a couple different ways we can angle that light bulb in a way that'll work really nicely for characters. Butterfly lighting. This is when that main light source is above and slightly forward from the subject. This lighting is nice because it results in clear, simple shadow shapes. This simplicity translate really nicely to artwork, and it's one of my favorites to use especially when characters are in front view. Let's take a closer look at these shapes. The first one I always notice is the triangular shape here on the nose. Then on the neck, you'll get a shape like this. You can see how with direct lighting, the edge quality of the shadows is much crisper. Here in the eye sockets, you'll get a darker ton of shadow. Then also here on the cheek structure, you'll see some form shadow. As a personal artistic choice, I definitely like to keep this value change more subtle than it is here. Then under the bottom lip, you'll also get a cache shadow. Then the top lip will also typically be drawn darker in value. Moving over to the 3/4 view now, again, the forming cache shadow on the nose, we'll merge to create this triangular shape. From the neck, we'll get a shape like this. I generally just ignore most of these form shadow shapes here and simplify. Here in the eye sockets, you'll get some soft shadows. Then here where the face turns from front to side, you'll get a form shadow value change. But I like to simplify this sometimes and often even leave it out depending on the piece. You'll get the shadow shape under the bottom lip again. The top lip will fall into shadow in a butterfly scenario. Look for the shadow shapes if you're drawing a character being lit with directly from above. Now let's talk about a loop lighting scenario. This is when the light source is placed above and then pushed a bit to the left or right of the subject. I find loop lighting actually works best for characters who are posed in a 3/4 view, so when the head isn't in a straight on view. If a character was straight on, I would likely choose a different scenario. But that really comes down to personal preference source experiment. With the subject in 3/4 view, this is actually more specifically referred to as broad loop lighting with the light side of the face being closer to the viewer than the shadow side. Broad loop lighting is a really simple, clean lighting scenario and works great for characters. Let's take a closer look at these shapes. Here on the nose, you get a loop of shadow. Down here you get this cache shadow shape onto the neck. You'll also get a cache shadow from the lip here, turning into a form shadow of the chin. Again, the eye sockets will go a little deeper into shadow. Something really quick I just want to mention here on my characters, I find I tend to leave out that shadow shape that defines the nose bridge. I just liked the look of that better and the simplicity it brings my style. That's just a completely personal decision that you can make as an artist. Taking a look at 3/4 view now, let's take a look at some of these shapes. This is where I think this lighting scenario really shines. Here we have that curved loop of shadow. Here we have this cache shadow from the left that connects to the form shadow of the chin. Then we have this triangular shadow shape on the neck here. Then you can make the eye sockets bit darker if you wish. Then like I mentioned, I tend to avoid defining the nose bridge here. These are the tell-tale signs of a loop lighting scenario. Moving on, let's take a look at an underlighting scenario. This is when the main light is in front of and below the subject. This is a great scenario for storytelling and can really make your audience wonder what your character is all about. Often in an underlight scenario, the light will be warm in color temperature. As a result, the shadowed planes will likely be cool in color temperature. But you can always flip flop this if your main light is cool in color temperature. The downward facing planes in the scenario will catch light, which you can see more strongly at the bottom plane of the nose, around the bottom of the jaw and chin, around the eyes, and at the keystone shape between the eyes. Let's take a look at some of these shapes. This time I'll outline the shapes of lights and those are clear to see. Starting in front view, let's begin with this nose here. It's like a rounded triangle shape. I find the edges to be pretty crispier between light and shadow. Then here the light hits this keystone shape. Or you could think of it as a trapezoid. Here around this area of the mouth and chin, you get an overall soft glow. I'll usually paint this with an airbrush. Then the same sort of thing happens here on the forehead. Then what used to get the cache shadow in the butterfly scenario, will now get hit with light as will the top lip and this part of the chin. The neck will get some light here as well. Moving on to 3/4 view, you get these same shapes. The rounded triangle shape for the nose. Then again you see the keystone shape is lit. This part of the neck gets a glow, as well as the soft glow around this area. Then this area of the forehead gets softly lit. I tend to leave out the more intricate details when lighting characters, like the lighting on the philtrum. I like to leave out details sometimes for the sake of the bigger lighting statement, so that even if you were to unzoom from your painting, it would still be really readable. These are the basic shapes you'll want to keep in mind for underlighting. Now let's talk about nose palpating. This is a name I've personally given this lighting scenario because I'm not sure what else to call it. It's not an official name, but I see it all the time in character illustration, so I wanted to talk about it here. No spotlighting occurs when the light is above and slightly behind the subject. In this scenario, only the tip of the nose and top of the forehead and hair receive the main light. This is a good lighting scenario for cute characters because it captures that cute roundness of a button nose. For this scenario, you'll often see subsurface scattering that happens on the nose where the light hits. Often the color will go a little redder around the edge here on some skin tones. Taking a closer look here, you'll get this sort of shape on the nose popping into light. Also the top of the head will receive light. But usually we'll be drawing hair on our characters. It's a good idea to notice the lighting shadow shapes as they're affected by different hairstyles. But first, taking a look here, we can see the shape on the nose. With some short hairstyles, you'll be able to see this sort of shadow cast on the neck and chest. Some longer hairstyles won't show this though. Then depending on the hairstyle, we can see that the shapes are slightly different up here. Be sure to take note of that when you're painting the light. I've tried to compile a large database of images for you to use as guides. There are lots of lighting references in there as well. Be sure to download or screenshots some of these and use them in your pieces if you find them helpful. 12. Experimenting with Lighting: Now that we know a few good lighting scenarios for characters, let's try some of these out and see which one works best for this character. I'm going to start by duplicating my image. Make sure you do these lighting experiments on a duplicate because we're going to be merging all the layers together. But we'll still need those layers separate for later. I'm just renaming this merged layer and calling it painting. I'm duplicating that, so I have five of them. Then with one finger swipe to the right on each, I select them all so I can make them a little smaller and move them around. I go to Actions, Canvas, Crop and Resize, just so I can read the canvas so I can fit them all along here. Real quick by going to Actions, Canvas, Canvas information. I can go to Layers and check and make sure I'll have enough layers to work with at this canvas size. Twenty-one will be more than enough for this experiment, so I press "Done." I'm going to go to the individual layers and just space them out. Real quick, I want to show you how you can add a reference image while you work. Go to Actions, Canvas, and turn reference on. Then from there, you can import an image from your camera roll. You can drag it to the side and use it as you work. I want to show you diffuse lighting first to keep with the order they were presented in in the last video. Ignore these other layers for now. To start with diffuse lighting, I'm going to add a new layer on top and then tap to press "Clipping Mask." This will make it so that whatever we paint on this layer is going to clip and stick to the layer below it. We'll choose a more specific shadow color later, but for now, I'm just going to grab a slightly darker shade of the original skin color. Then I'm going to grab the soft brush, and I'm going to go to the layer, tap in, and change this blend mode to multiply. I'm also going to lower the opacity down a bit. Now, I just start painting some of those soft shadows that are typical for overhead diffused lighting. Just getting the bottom of the nose now. The edge quality in a diffuse lighting scenario is softer than in a direct lighting scenario. That's why I went for the soft brush. Typically, when painting, I'll go for something with a harder edge. But in this instance, the soft brush made more sense. Just shading a bit around the eyes now. I'm not using a super dark value for the shadows, just a tone a few value shifts away from the main skin color. This is a stylistic decision I usually make. I like the simplicity that springs my character illustrations. For this shadow in the hair, I just changed the value to be a bit darker. I think that does just enough. Having the layer at about half opacity helps. Now, I'm just darkening that top lip. This gives me a good enough idea, so this is where I'll leave this one. Moving on now, let's play with butterfly lighting. I add a layer on top of the one I'll be painting, change the blend mode to multiply, and zoom in. Using the willow charcoal streamline brush this time, I start by putting that shadow shape on the neck. I see already the lighting is pretty intense for me, so I lower the opacity. Then I just clean up and color that in, and I put the shadow under the nose as well. Then I tweak the opacity and put it up just a hair more. Now, I'm playing with the shadows around the eye sockets, making those a bit darker, and then right around her cheek and jaw. Now, I'm ever so slightly hinting at the value change that happens from frontal face to side. Like I said, I personally like to keep this value change extremely subtle. Now, I'm just taking the soft pastel smudge brush with the smudge tool and blending that out. Now, I'm taking a darker value and I'm adding a cast shadow to the eyeballs. I'm grabbing a rusty orange color to define the edge of the cast shadow on the neck. Now, I'm grabbing that lip color and I'm pulling it a bit darker to darken the upper lip. I'm darkening this area of the hair to push it back into shadow. Now, I'm experimenting with making that color a bit warmer too. I'm just darkening around the edge where the hair touches the face to add a bit more dimension. I'm adding that shadow under the bottom lip, and this gives a pretty good idea of what a butterfly scenario could look like. Now, getting started on loop lighting, I add a new layer, select the skin color, and push it a bit darker. Then I change the blend mode to multiply, and I bring down the opacity. Then I get started by drawing that looped cast shadow from the nose. I draw the shadow on the form of the nose as well. Then I draw the shadow shape here under the lip that connects to the side of the cheek and chin. Then I draw that triangular shaped cast shadow on the neck. Now, I'm switching to a different reference to see the effects long hair can have on the shadow shapes on the face. I see that hair can cast shadows here, so I put those in. Then I go right into this darker part of the hair. I'm adding subtle shadows in and around the eyes. Zooming in now, I'm just defining the edge of that loop of shadow and the shadow on the neck. Now, I have a good idea of what loop lighting could look like on this character. Now, let's try out under lighting. I'll set this one up a little different than the others. First, I duplicate the layer. Then I go to my colors and grab a medium tone. Then I grab the soft brush, make it big, and color over the whole thing. Since the duplicate layer is Alpha locked, it will cover the shape of the character. Then back in my layers, I'm going to press "N" and change the blend mode of that layer to multiply. Basically, in this one, we'll be revealing the light rather than drawing the shadow shapes. Now, I'm just bringing the opacity down a little bit. What you want to do now is tap on that layer and press "Mask." This maybe confusing at first, but you'll get the hang of it over time. But basically, we'll be using black paint on the layer mask to reveal the lighter layer underneath and white paint on the layer mask if we need to bring back some of the darker layer. Using layer masks is a non-destructive way of painting, unlike if you were to say, use the eraser tool to reveal the light. Using the eraser tool would be destructive because you wouldn't be able to go back and make corrections if you needed to. I'm going to grab black paint and the willow charcoal streamline brush. With my layer mask selected, I'm going to zoom in and paint to reveal the lighter layer underneath that darker layer. I start off with this shape of light on the nose here. Then I move to white paint to correct the shape. This is a back and forth between black, white, and different shades of gray for more subtle value shifts. Now, with black paint, I'm working to reveal the light on this keystone shape between her eyes. Then I work on the shapes of light around her eyelids and continue to reveal light on the upper lip, the plane below the bottom lip, and the bottom plane of the chin. Now, I'm making my brush bigger and revealing the light on the neck. Obviously, the edges are too hard in certain places. I'm going to grab the soft brush instead and use it to reveal that soft glow of light that happens around the mouth and chin. Using the smudge tool, I'm going to grab the soft pastel smudge brush, and I'm just going to soften the edges here by dragging this into the darker area. I'm just continuing to soften up with the smudge tool. I find these edges between light and shadow tend to be harder, so I try to keep those edges a bit crisper in comparison. Here's what the layers look like at this point. I just want to select the layer that's the light because I want to adjust the color temperature of it. Typically, in an under lighting scenario, you'll find the light source is warmer and the resulting shadows are cooler. Perhaps, the light source is a camp fire, or a candle, or something similar. Of course, this isn't always the case, but that's what I'm going to go with for this. I want to adjust the colors of the light and push them a little warmer. All my light layer, I go to Adjustments, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and I adjust the layer to be a warmer temperature. I push the saturation up and I push the hue a bit more yellow. Then I switch to my shadow layer and I go to Adjustments, Hue, Saturation, Brightness to make the layer a bit more cool blue. Now, I go to my layer mask and I use my willow charcoal streamline brush to clean up the edges a bit more. I decide that this area needs to go lighter, so I use black paint on my layer mask to add that on. Then I use the smudge tool to soften it up. I experiment with the cotton ball smudge tool as well. Now back with my brush on my layer mask, I use black paint to reveal some light on this area of the hair. In the references, this is actually in shadow, but it's just an artistic choice I wanted to try out, almost like there's another light behind her. Feel free to experiment with your lighting. I'm adding some light to the bottom of the irises, and I'm just adjusting the values around the eyes. I'm grabbing the soft brush and I'm just softening some of the edges around her face and hair. At this point, you might need to use grays instead of pure black and white to find the subtle values you'll need. Using a hot pink color, I just make that top lip a bit lighter to really get that effect of the light. This gives me a good idea of what under lighting could look like. Now, let's play with nose pop lighting. I'm going to duplicate the layer and grab the skin color and paint over the whole thing. Actually, I'm going to go a little darker. Now, back in my layers, I'm going to change the blend mode to multiply and lower the opacity. Then I'm going to click the layer and press "Mask." We're going to do the same thing as last time to reveal the light. Black paint will reveal the lighter layer underneath. I draw this circle on the nose to reveal that pop into the light. Then I paint the shape to reveal this part receiving light. Now, I'm using white paint to correct and refine that shape. These are the two main shapes of light for nose pop lighting. The majority of the character will be in shadow unless, of course, she had shorter hair. Go ahead and experiment with some lighting scenarios and see which one you like the look of for your character. 13. Painting Light & Shadow: When I'm painting light, I don't typically experiment with all five scenarios like we just did. But I wanted to show you a few options you can play around with. For me, my typical go-tos are simple butterfly lighting or sometimes loop lighting if the character is in three-quarter view. I find the simple shadow shapes of these scenarios translate really well to our pieces. I decided I'm going to paint her in a loop lighting scenario. Let's begin on that with the file that has all the colors broken down into separate layers. First, I'm going to color-pick her skin color so we can use that as a base to build off of. Then I'm going to go to Layers, click on "Skin", and add a new layer on top. Then I'm going to tap that layer and select Clipping Mask. This will make it so that whatever we paint on this layer only clips to the layer below it. The shadows we draw on her skin will only clip to the skin layer and won't go outside that shape. Now in colors, I'm going to pull that color down a bit in value and then I'm also going to shift around the wheel to change up the hue. This is typically how I pick the shadow color. I pull the value down a bit and shift around the wheel a bit to change the color temperature. But you can always change this color later too. Then with my willow charcoal streamline brush, I just start painting in those shadow shapes for loop lighting, starting with the triangular shape on the neck. Then I get that loop of shadow on the nose. Now I'm working down the side of her cheek and chin and connecting that to the shadow under her lip. Now I'm getting where the hair would cast a shadow on the face. I'm using the eraser now to just lighten a few of these shadows up. Now I'm grabbing a slightly more saturated version of this shadow color and I'm just crisping up the edges of the shadows and places. Zooming in now, I'm just adding a very slight value change to the bottom plane of the nose. Now I'm just refining the shadow shape on the chin a little by using the eraser tool. Now I go ahead and tap on the eyes layer and add a new layer on top. It's a little difficult to see, so I'll zoom in and I just draw two cast shadow shapes where the upper eyelids would cast shadows on the eyeballs. Now back on the shadow shape for the skin, I add a slightly darker value to the eye sockets. Now I go to Adjustments, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and I click on "Layer" because I want to play with the value and color of the shadows. Now zoomed in, I just add a slightly darker value to the bottom plane of the nose. Now I'm ready to work on those shadows in the hair, so I select that base color. I go to Layers, click on the hair and add a new layer on top. Then I tap that layer and press "Clipping Mask". Now I just drag the value down and shift the hue of it. Then I just start to color in these shadow shapes. I see already it's a bit too green and saturated, so I'll have to adjust this later with the hue, saturation, brightness sliders. But I do find that the value change, hue shift is a good place to start when picking shadow colors. Now with the hair shadows layer selected, I'm going to play with the hue, saturation, and brightness sliders. For now, I try out something a little more cool, and I lighten up the opacity as well. Now I'm refining the shape of the shadow a little bit. Now I move to the sketch layer here and I turn alpha lock off so I can make some corrections to the sketch. I feel like this area of the cheek needs to be more defined, so I darken up and define that area a little better. Moving back to the hair shadows layer, I alpha lock it, select the color, move the value darker, and then I just go in and add some sketchy lines. I think this adds a nice traditional feel to the drawing so it's not so digital-looking. Now I go back to the sketch layer and I just see I need to do a little bit of clean-up on the line art here. So I'll just do that. Now in layers, I select the skin shadows layer and add a new layer on top. Then I select the skin tone and push it later in value. Then I zoom in and add a little highlight to the nose. Now I want to add one to the lips as well, so I select the lip color and push it a little lighter. Then above the lips, I add a new layer and put that on. Then since it's on its own layer, I can move it around. Now back in layers, I select the skin shadows layer because I want to adjust the colors. I go to Adjustments, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and I push around the hue slider. A good rule of thumb is, if the lighting is cool, the shadows will be warm in comparison. If the lighting is warm, the shadows will be cool in comparison. I feel her base colors are quite cool in color temperature, so I want to make the shadows warmer in comparison to that. Now back on the layer with the cast shadows in the eyes, I want to experiment with darkening this up a little. I select a purply gray and I zoom in to darken those up. It's a little too much for me though, so I just go to my layers and lower the opacity a bit. Now I select the lips layer, grab the base color, and push it a bit to make this top lip darker in value. With that, the lighting is finished. I have a couple of quick suggestions if you're more of a beginner with painting characters. First, I'd suggest painting your character in butterfly or broad loop lighting. These in my opinion are the easiest scenarios to paint while still giving a great light effect. Also, a tendency for beginners is to paint with a fluffy airbrush. But I'd encourage you to avoid the airbrush unless you're painting a diffuse lighting scenario or if you're adding a soft gradation somewhere. I'd recommend using the willow charcoal streamline brush instead as it will result in more efficient lines. Also, don't feel the need to copy all the value shifts that happen in a reference photo. The doll photos are just meant to guide you. For this style of illustration, simplify wherever you can. You can even get away with just drawing the shadow shapes of the nose and neck and butterfly in loop light scenarios. So don't feel like you need to over-complicate the lighting. All right. With that aside, let's get into refining this painting. 14. Refining the Painting: Now let's work to finish up this painting. The first thing I'm going to do is add a little bit of blush to her cheeks. I'm going to go ahead and add a new layer over all the skin layers. Then I think I'm going to select this color from her lips. I just push it a bit more saturated. Now I'm going to grab the soft brush, make it a little bigger, lower the opacity, and paint that on. It's a little too small though, so I'm going make the brush bigger. That looks better. Just add a little bit of blush, a little bit of color to her cheeks. Now I'm just going to push that a bit redder, and I'm just going to add a little more over the nose. Now I'm finding I want to refine the shape of her upper lip. I'm going to go to Layers and add a layer, and grab my Willow Charcoal SreamLine brush, make it smaller, and then I'm going to drag that new layer all the way to the top over the sketch layer. Now I'm going to zoom in here and define that upper lip. I just felt it needed to be cleaned up a bit. Now back on the sketch layer, I just want to use the Eraser tool to take out this little line. I think that looks better. Now I just want to tweak the cache shadows on the eyes a bit. I just want a little less shadow. I erase a bit out. Now I want to play with the line art color a little. I'm going to go to my Layers and tap on the Sketch layer and make sure it's alpha locked. Then I want to try and make the line art around her nose a little more red. I grab the soft brush, and then I just color on top of the nose. That was a little much, so I bring the opacity down and try it a little more subtly. Just going to push it a bit more saturated. I like that. I'm going to try out the lips. I'm going to push the color this way, towards pink, and give that a try. It's pretty cool, but I think I'm going to leave the line art more purple for these lips. Now I'm going to go to my Sketch layer and I want to turn alpha lock off, so I can correct the line art of the lips. I just think the edge here needs a bit more definition. Right now I'm just labeling some of my layers so they don't look like random unnamed smudges. If you'd like to, take some time to do this to prevent confusion down the line. Now I want to add a design element to this piece. I add a new layer, and rename it background. I'm going to add a circle background behind her because I think that'll work nicely to frame her in. I'm going to grab this neutral color for now, and the Willow Charcoal StreamLine brush. Then I'm just going to make a round circle and close it off. I'm going to pause for a beat at the end, press Edit Shape, and then press Circle. Then I'm just going to drag that to a better spot. Now, going to my layers, I'm going to drag that down to the very bottom and fill it in, but as you can see, that didn't work. What I'm going to do is duplicate that ring and merge it down, and try again. That time it works. Now I'm going to grab my Eraser tool, and erase out this part I don't need. Now in my layers, I want to select everything and move her down since she's gotten a little close to the edge of the canvas. I want to leave a little more breathing room. Now I want to experiment with adding some rim light around her. I'm going to add a new layer and rename it Rim Light. Then I'm going to grab white paint and my Willow Charcoal StreamLine brush, and then I'm just going to zoom in to add light to the rim. I'm just using several smooth strokes to place that on. Really, this works as a compositional element to help break up the subject from the background. Actual rim light would probably be a bit thinner than this and would include some flyaway hairs, but I'm using this more as a design element. Now I'm using the transform arrow to drag it in a bit on the left side, since the lines were a bit thicker there. Now I'm going to the background layer because I want to experiment with the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness slider. Now on the rim light layer, I just want to pull the opacity down a little bit, to make it lighter. Now back on the background layer, I just continue to tweak the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness slider since I'm not happy with that color just yet. I'll continue to work that out in the next video. 15. Refining the Painting (Continued): Continuing on, I'm going to go above all the skin layers and add a new layer on top. I want to try adding some light highlights at the inner corners of the eyes. What you can also do is add some sparkly eye shadow dots here, but they're not showing up so I'm going to drag this layer all the way up above all the layers. But I think I like it better with just the inner corner highlights. I'm just going to lower the opacity a bit and rename it. Now I want to go back to the background layer and alpha lock it. I'm just going to try dragging some new colors in. I think with this color, I'm finally happy with the way it harmonizes. Back in my layers, I'm going to add a new layer at the top and rename it Dots. Now I'm going to grab white paint and the willow charcoal streamline brush and add a couple of dots here. I like this as a small compositional element to add some interest. Now, adding a new layer, I'm going to rename this one Freckles and then using the freckles brush and a brown color, I'm going to add some freckles to her nose and cheeks and go into the transform tool. I'm just going to move those around a bit, make them a little bigger and now I'm just erasing out some I don't want. Just a couple more adjustments here to the freckles, making them bigger and tilting them. For now, I like that. I'm going to go to Layers and I'm going to go to Lips and I want to play with the hue, saturation brightness sliders. I want to make them a bit more vivid. Now I'm going to go to the hair and add a layer on top, but as we can see, I maxed out with layers. At this point, I have to merge a few things together. At this point, I'm pretty set on the leaves and flowers, so I'm going to go ahead and merge those down together. Then up here, the dots and eye highlights, I feel comfortable merging together so I'm just going to rename those with a clear description. Then the lip highlights, I'm going to go ahead and merge down with the lips. Now we're going to jump in and add a new layer above the hair. I want to play with a little bit of subtle lighting on the hair. I'm going to pick up the shadow color here and go into layers, I'm going to lower the opacity. Then I'm just going to add some subtle shadows, Here here under where this chunk of hair would cast a shadow, here where this form might go into shadow as it goes around the head. Up here, there'd be a value change. I'm just lowering the opacity a bit more because I really like to keep value changes on the hair quite subtle. That's just a personal preference for my art. Then right here there might be a shadow cast from the hair above. Then over here, this chunk of hair moving into the shadow would go darker. So I'm just pushing these values a little bit to add just a bit more dimension but nothing too wild that would be overly rendered for the style. Now with the smudge tool, I'm just softening up this edge. I'm using the eraser to define these parts in the light. The shadow is dark and everything but I really prefer this hair color here so I just want to lighten up everything and I do that by bringing the opacity down here. Then on the main hair base layer, I'll adjust the value with the brightness slider, a little more with the opacity here and I think that gives more of the original effect. Back in Layers with those shadow shapes selected, I'm going to go to adjustments, Liquify, because I want to try and tweak some of these shadow shapes. I think that works a bit better. Closing out the refining stage, I want to add some final tweaks to the liner colors. I'm going to go to Sketch, alpha lock it and I'm going to try this more brown color on the hair. I'm going to try some of this pink around the flowers, then a couple more purpley strokes around here. So now let's move on to adding texture and wrapping this painting up. 16. Adding Texture & Final Edits: One of the final things I like to do to my pieces is add a paper texture. What I'm going to do first though is make a duplicate of my image. I'm going to swipe left and duplicate. Then what I like to do on my duplicate is merge all the layers together. I'll delete the ones I'm not using and then just pinch and merge. Now everything I've painted is on one layer. Now I'm going to add a paper texture on top of this. I'll go to Actions, add, insert a photo, and then from there I navigate to the paper textures I have saved to my camera roll. You can find these in the class resources and use them if you'd like too as well. I'm just going to go ahead and add in all five. I'm going to select them all with one finger swipe right. Then using the transform tool, I'm just going to make them bigger. Now I'm going to switch all the blend modes on these papers to multiply so we can see our illustration below. I'm going to turn these on and off and see if there's one I like. I zoom in and out to see how it looks close up and far away with the texture. This is all just personal preference here and seeing what you like the look of. I like applying texture to the whole painting, so it looks like real paper. I usually do this at the end of a piece because when I'm still in color picking mode, I don't want the colors to be affected by the paper's tone. I apply a paper texture at the end of my process. You can also adjust the opacity and bring it down a little if you want a little less texture. You can also play with other blend modes. Sometimes I like to use Linear Burn as well. There's another texture I really enjoy using, and it's made by a creator named CatJello. I'll put a link to it in the projects and resources section of the class if you'd like to purchase it. But I really like using the bright white paper included in the pack. I've just set that to Linear Burn and I just really like the texture that, that gives. I like this texture a lot, but I just want to adjust the hue a bit since it's a little bit cooler than I'd like. I'll go to hue saturation brightness and adjust the whole layer. I'm thinking a little bit warmer and a little bit lighter. Now I'm just going to see if one of the other textures pairs nicely with that. You can use one texture or combine multiple, totally up to you and what you feel looks nice. I'm liking this so I'll leave it at that. As a quick note, something else you may want to play around with is adding noise to your pieces. I typically just add the paper texture, but sometimes I'll experiment with noise. I'm just going to duplicate my image and then go to Adjustments, Noise, Layer. Then from there you can drag your finger to the right and to the left to add more or less visual noise. Then of course, you can experiment with the settings at the bottom as well. I'm just going to leave my painting with the paper textures though, since I'm liking the look of that. But I do notice that the textures are placed just a little too close to the edge here, so I want to fix that. First, go into my layers, let me just delete these ones I'm not using and then I'm going to select the ones I am using and use the transform arrow to adjust the placement. Just leave a little more breathing room up there at the top. Now that I'm looking, I'm seeing that the same thing is happening at the bottom here. I'm just going to adjust that again. I just don't want anything too close to the edge of the composition. Now that the pieces coming to a close, I'm thinking she could really do with a couple of eye highlights. I'm just going to turn those paper textures off for now and add a new layer above her and zooming in I'm just going to add those highlights in. Now I turn the paper textures back on and I like the look of that. But I think I want to move them just a bit. So I use the transform tool to do that. Now I think just this one needs to move. I select it and push it down. Now would also be the time to make any hue saturation brightness adjustments that you'd want to. I'm liking the look of the colors though, so I'm just going to keep everything as is. The final step would be to crop your image and I like to do that on a duplicate. I'm going to go gallery view and then swipe left with one finger to duplicate my painting. Then in the duplicate, I'll go to Actions, Canvas, Crop, and Resize and I'll pull in the corners to crop it in. Then when I'm finished, I'll press "Done" and that's the painting complete. 17. Saving & Sharing Your Work: Now that the piece is finished, we want to save and share it. Go to Actions, Share, and I press "JPEG". You may want to use PNG or another file type, but for our purposes here, JPEG will work great for sharing to the Internet. Now from here, press "Save Image". Then if you go to your camera roll, it should be the most recent there. Then from there, I press this button here where you can AirDrop it to yourself, message it, email it, whatever you prefer. I'll typically AirDrop to my computer or iPhone since I use Mac products. I'd love to see your work, so please share it in the class. On Skillshare, on a computer, head to the Projects and Resources tab under the videos to upload your project. Share your ideas, sketches, or color experiments as you go along. It's always fun to see works in progress, or simply share your final piece. The project section is your place to share whatever you want about your project. If you'd like a critique or if you need advice, be sure to ask for help. Sharing is important for personal growth, so don't be shy. I can't wait to see what you create. 18. Bonus Examples 1: So now I'm going to share some more examples. These will be time-lapse recordings. But feel free to slow down the speed and pause as you need to if you'd like to draw along with me. So starting with this one, I start with a messy sketch. I really liked the tilt of her head, and the hairstyle, and mood of this reference. So I decided to give it a go. This is one of those things that's so nice about digital sketching. You can make a really rough sketch and then just lower the opacity of that. Add one on top and continue to refine your idea. It really gives you a lot of freedom to take chances and make mistakes. and it keeps you from being timid. I think earrings work well with this character compositionally, so I add those on. Now, I lower the opacity and work on my third pass of the sketch. Getting tighter and tighter with each pass. If you find Character sketching difficult, definitely check out my class, Character Illustration, Drawing Female Portraits in Procreate. I have tons of worksheets there to help you through the process and to help you feel more confident in your drawing skills. Now, I'm liking the look of the sketch, so I'm going to go in with some colors. Just filling in the base colors first on separate layers. Now, I'm experimenting with an ombre hairstyle using a big soft brush. Then I use the willow charcoal streamline brush to add some supporting hairs. I'm thinking for the lighting scenario, I'll go with a butterfly lighting scenario. Butterfly scenarios where the direct light hits from above are one of my favorite ways to light characters because it's simple, effective, and usually flattering. With butterfly lighting, you can pull the shadows longer for a moodier look, or keep the shadows short for something more standard. Some artists including myself, will take artistic liberties with this lighting scenario, simplifying it even further. Simply showing a triangular shadow shape under the nose and the triangular shadow shape on the neck. Ignoring the deeper shadows that happen around the eye sockets and jaw area. I've heard it said as long as the lighting is believable, it can work but it doesn't have to be a 100 percent scientifically accurate lighting statement. You can take some artistic liberties with your lightning since at the end of the day, we're not lighting real humans here, but illustrated characters. Working on the second character now, I start by loosely mapping everything out. I'm just trying to put down the idea of the pose versus stressing myself out about being exact. You can see even the eye socket for now is represented by a big, simple shape. Now, I'm experimenting with the idea of having a printed head scarf. Usually, if I get an inkling of a creative idea, I'll quickly draw it out and see if the idea captures my inspiration. In this case, I think I like it better without it though so I take it out. Now, I'm feeling pretty good about where the sketch is, so I lower the opacity, add a new layer, and start on the second pass. Side profiles can be a challenge, but this process frees me up since with each pass, I can refine a bit more. This hair really took me a while to get the flow of, but this is the time to plan it out. Make sure you're happy with your sketch before moving on to coloring because things like this can be harder to correct down the line once colors are involved. So I took my time in the sketch phase until I was happy enough with it. Now, I'm making my third and final pass on the sketch. Usually, I'll need three passes to come up with the line art but you can refine as many or as few times as you'd like. A lot of this comes down to preference and style. If you like the sketchiness of your first-pass, go for it, bring that version to color but if you need more than three layers to create your line art, that's fine too. There's no right or wrong way. Now, I'm playing with the direction of the eye but I think straightforward looks best, so I keep that. Feeling comfortable with my sketch, I begin to add base colors. I decided to try out blonde hair first, but I can always change it later if I want to. Now, I'm experimenting with adding some purple streaks to the hair but then I decide to try and ombre look instead with the soft brush and I also changed the line art color as well, which I like now a lot better. Now, I'm working on refining by adding some makeup. Now, I'm adding a little circle background element but you can use other shapes too, like a square or heart, or leave it blank if you want. I used hue saturation brightness sliders on the hair and I find I really like this new pink purple hairstyle. I keep that instead. Now, I'm using the sketching pencil from the brush set to add a little bit of texture to her skin. I do this on new layers so I can adjust the opacity of it. I like to put in these texture-y lines sometimes to give it more of a traditional field. I also add this paper texture and little hearts in the background for some compositional interests. With that, this one's finished. Now, let's move on to this character. I start as always with a basic sketch. This time I'm thinking a bit more about how I wanted to have a little bit of a smile. So I start mapping that out in my sketch. You can add a lot in terms of expression just by manipulating the direction of the brows and the corners of the mouth. Even the slightest change can make a difference in the emotion portrayed. So play around with the expression of it in your sketches if you want. You can use expression to tell the stories of your characters. Here, I'm using the cotton ball smudge brush to fuzzy everything up, which is fine to do in the first pass. Now, I'm workshopping a few ideas. Trying out headphones, earrings, bangs, a little heart tattoo. Just experimenting with different accessories. Now I like this, so I'm going to go ahead and make my second pass. The expression got a little moodier, so I'll have to remember to bring that smile back later. Now, I'm moving into the third pass. Making sure to vary my line art. Making some lines thicker and darker, and others thinner and lighter. The liquefy adjustment is really nice for making subtle changes to proportions and expressions. So am experimenting with the eyebrow a little bit here. In drawing this pony tail, I'm trying to make sure all the hairs flow back to where they're bunched together in that ponytail holder. I'm just trying to curve and pull them all there. Now, I lift the corner of the mouth a bit with the liquefy tool, and then I go on with base colors. For her I think I want to experiment with light pinks and purples. Now, I change the line art to a more purply color too. I think that works nicely. For this one I'm just keeping the lighting really simple. Kind of hinting at loop lighting. You really don't need to do much. I find a few shapes go along way. Now, I'm experimenting with her shirt line. I'm thinking something sort of costuming with long gloves that go up the arm. Now, I'm adding a few thin flyaway hairs and I'm working on the eyelashes. Now, I add a background color and I decide to deepen her skin tone so they're slightly more contrast. Now, I add a circle shape behind her and add some rim light. Now, I'm experimenting with some paper textures. I'm just playing around with the design of a shirt line a bit more. For now, I'm going to call this one finished. 19. Bonus Examples 2: Now, I have a few more time-lapse examples for you. Again, feel free to slow them down and draw along with me if you'd like. Starting with this one here, I began with a rough sketch, mapping everything out with a thin brush. Now I thicken the brush up and keep going. I use the liquefy tool to adjust proportions, and then I lower the opacity and work on a second pass. Now I'm experimenting with different types of earrings. Earrings are a fun place to add some personality to your character, and now I'm going in on the hair. I think I'm going to draw a high bun with pieces falling out. Now I adjust for proportions with the liquefy tool, lower the opacity, and continue to refine. Here I duplicate the face layer to make it a bit darker, and then I get started on color. I really love pink hair, so that's a typical go-too for me. In this piece, I'm definitely experimenting with more colorful line art, and I though that helped the look for this one. I think it adds a lot of life to the illustration. So definitely experiment with the color to see what works best for your character. Now I'm playing with the idea of adding blue highlights to the hair, but I end up taking them out. If you ever want to experiment with an idea, just do it on a new layer, and then just delete the layer if it doesn't pan out. Now I'm adding some darker shapes to the hair to add a little character. Now I draw on the rim light, which I think helps make her pop from the background, and I add on a paper texture and some noise, and this one is finished. Now, moving onto this one, I start by drawing out the shape of her eye sockets, and then I work to the rest of the face. You can see how messy this first pass is, so let yourself relax as you get started on your piece. Now, I lower the opacity and work on a second pass. I decide for her, I want her to have curly hair, which can be intimidating to attempt, but I decide to simplify, always thinking first about the overall shape versus a bunch of the individual pieces. Now I go in and start adding my colors. I really like experimenting with lots of wild color for the hair, but that's simply a personal preference. Now I'm playing with adding in the background circle element, and here, I'm just reworking the silhouette of the hair. Now I'm adding some shadows in the hair, and I'm working to define the side of the face a little more. This is one of those cases where my line art may not have been ready for coloring when I started. Perhaps I should have done another pass before going in with colors, so I'm having to rework the line art a bit now. I'm keeping the value transitions low contrast on the hair as a stylistic decision, but you can experiment with this for yourself and see what you like. Now I'm adding the rim light, and with the paper texture, this one's finished. Now, moving onto this character, I start with the basic sketch. Sometimes I start with eyes for my characters, and sometimes I'll start with the shape of the head. I think either approach can work for character illustrations. Now I'm just experimenting with the hairstyle, and now I lower the opacity and work to refine the painting. Character drawing is such a fun and creative outlet. I love drawing and just seeing who the character becomes. Now I'm reworking the hair design a bit more. Now I'm experimenting with different accessories. Even just a little accessory can add much more personality to your character. Ultimately, I decide on these skinny glasses and appointing color. Now I'm drawing the ends of the hair, and then I go in with color. Now I'm just adding a few subtle shadow shapes for the lighting. Now I flipped it, added a texture, and this one's complete. Now, on this one, I start by drawing a ball with a jaw, then I work into the hair, and I start placing the features. Now I lower the opacity and begin on the second pass. For now, I'm thinking that the hair will be long, so I'm experimenting with what that design could look like. Lowering the opacity, I begin on the third pass. Now I'm experimenting with adding a choker necklace. I decided the hair is not really working for me, so I make it a short hairdo instead, and I experiment with a different pose as well. Now I've selected the neck area, and I lowered the opacity just of that, and I worked to refine that a bit better on a new layer. Now that I'm confident with the sketch, I paint on base colors. I experiment with a few colors before deciding it should be a blonde. I'm adding in some subtle lighting effects, and some brush. Now I apply a couple of paper textures, and this one's finished. 20. Closing Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining this class. I hope through watching this course, you were able to learn something new about character. Use the class resources found in the Projects & Resources section to guide you through your project creation. If you have questions, please let me know in the Discussion section of class or when you share your project. Also, feel welcome to tag me on Instagram @artworkbygabrielle so I can like your post there as well. If you enjoyed the class, I'd be so thankful if you could leave a review. That helps more eyes see the course, and I would really appreciate it. If you liked this class, please also consider following me and joining me in my other courses. I have tons of art classes on drawing and painting characters and portraits, and I'd love to see you in those too. Thank you so much, again, for joining this class. I cannot wait to see what you create. Until next time, happy painting.