Digital Illustration For Beginners in Procreate - Illustrate a Motivational Coffee Mug | The Artmother | Skillshare
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Digital Illustration For Beginners in Procreate - Illustrate a Motivational Coffee Mug

teacher avatar The Artmother, Professional Art Teacher and Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:03

    • 2.

      Intro to Procreate Resources, Brushes, Layers, Colors

      9:08

    • 3.

      Technique Practice

      7:41

    • 4.

      The Base

      5:06

    • 5.

      The Front

      3:19

    • 6.

      Shading and texture

      4:37

    • 7.

      Details

      8:22

    • 8.

      Final Thoughts

      1:01

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About This Class

Do you have an iPad, Procreate, an Apple Pencil and played around in the program, but you can't really seem to figure out how to create those stunning textured illustrations you see on Instagram? I've got you! In this class you will learn how to create a textured, shaded and well illustrated motivational coffee mug:)

In this this class I will guide you through an easy-peasy illustration process I have developed for myself, with experimenting, practicing, analysing the works of my favourite illustrators and visiting a Design Academy in Rome to perfect the process with professionals.

I have broken down the process to 4 simple steps: The Base, The Front, Shading and Texture, Details, by which you will get a greater understanding of the build up of an illustrated object that is layered.

If you have ever checked out a working file of a professional illustrator, you have seen that they have few hundreds of them. You might ask WHY? Why to work in layers? You will get answers and a greater understanding of this in the class!

The class comes with 2 of my favourite personal illustration brushes!

So, what are you waiting for?

Come and JOIN ME NOW:) Level up your illustration game TODAY:)

Useful Classes:

After completing this class, make sure to continue on your journey! Choose a class from below:

Character Design for Beginners: https://skl.sh/34IjC1d

Learn to Make Procreate Brushes: https://skl.sh/38Ro6ED

Digital Illustration Workflow Hacks: https://skl.sh/2LysiAI

Learn Shading in Procreate: https://skl.sh/2LhPKRG

Digital Shading for Beginners: https://skl.sh/2JT5Z89

Other Useful Classes: 

Classes on Procreate

Classes on Illustration

Classes on Digital Illustration

Meet Your Teacher

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The Artmother

Professional Art Teacher and Artist

Top Teacher


Welcome! My name is Alexandra Finta - a passionate artist, a happy mother and an enthusiastic teacher - in short The Artmother. I am a professional art teacher with a Masters Degree in Art Education with years of experience in teaching in person and online. As an artist, I am creating in all different kinds of mediums from acrylics, watercolors, graphite and digital. I have years of experience in graphic design and photography.

For more info check out my website here: www.theartmotherart.com

Follow me on Instagram and Facebook:)

I am very passionate about helping very beginners to explore their artistic abilities and to build their confidence in creating art, so I have built an open comm... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi guys. My name is Alexandra Gabor and I'm a professional art teacher, artist, and illustrator. Most of my illustrations were created with watercolors, but nowadays, I'm really into digital. I used to paint in different programs like Photoshop or Alchemy, but I discovered Procreate lately and it just blew my mind how user-friendly that program is. I was able to translate my traditional process in it, but actually it took me a while until I figured it out. I experimented a lot and developed a process that works like a dream. I also visited an academic in Rome to perfect this process with professionals. As I'm an art teacher by profession, I made this process beginner friendly so that you could start your digital illustration journey more easily. In this class, we are going to go through this process together from initial sketches to illustrating a motivational coffee mug. [LAUGHTER] In this class, you will learn how to work in Procreate, it's basic functions and workflow. You will learn the best way to pick your colors so that they work well together. How to work with layers. How to plan your artwork ahead. Also, which brushes I find to be the best. I also provide my personal illustration brushes with this class so that you can use them. At the end of this class, you will be able to create a full layered and shaded illustration of a motivational coffee mug. For the class, you will need an iPad, a stylus, and the latest version of Procreate, and of course, zeal to learn digital illustration. So if you're ready, let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. Intro to Procreate Resources, Brushes, Layers, Colors: [MUSIC] In this short video, I would love to do just a little intro to Procreate. If you have never worked in it, I recommend you to take a full Intro to Procreate class if you need it but I guess this class will also do a good job in teaching you the program. In this video, we will discuss the resources, Canvas, layers, brushes, and color. At first, Procreate is an app that you can download to your iPad only, there isn't a desktop version, but there is a pocket version for mobile. On their website, there is a full artist handbook where you have everything explained from opening the program, organizing your artworks, and all the tools that are available. I really recommend you to get this. I also recommend you to follow Procreate on Instagram, they frequently post tutorials, artworks you can get inspired from the latest innovations, for example, you can now export an animated GIF, which is awesome. If you want to be up to date, this is the way to go. Let's open the program. What I'm using is the newest iPad Pro with the second-generation Apple pencil and I have a paper-like cover on the screen, which really gives a nice experience because it adds a bit of a traditional feeling with its resistance. It is really not painting on a screen, but it adds to it and it's really awesome. It was surprising for me, but it is really useful. Let's get back to the gallery. As you can see, I have a little mess here, so I should just clean up. But anyways, let's create a new file. What I love to use, you can hit this plus sign here. What I love to use is the A4 size. You can create custom-sized canvas but I loved the A4 because it is big enough to be an A4 sheet paper, but still a too big to have a limited number of layers. You can check how many layers you have here in the Canvas information, so hit this orange button, here you have the canvas information and you can see that I have a maximum layers, 57 layers, which is more than enough. Up here, you can find the most important tools, the brushes, the layers, and the colors. Let's talk about the brushes first. The brushes that come with the program are really great. I use them a lot, mainly the 6B pencil, some artistic pencils, and some textures that come with the program, so they are really amazing but you can also create your own brushes if you hit this plus sign and it is really great because it is easy and it is really fun to play around. You can also buy brushes. Let's go to the Creative Market, let me just show you. There's a site called Creative Market. If you search for Procreate brushes, I already have it here, you can find so many brush packs. I found these gouache shader brushes pack is amazing and the Texturizer Pro Procreate brushes, there are 52 textured brushes, which is just amazing. They are not too expensive and I really love to support other creatives, so I say, why not to buy a brush pack? But anyways, the brushes we are going to use here are my own. These illustration brushes, there is a liner and a shader. These two brushes were inspired by two brushes from the gouache brush set I have bought. I really recommend you to get those brushes as well if you're interested but I have customized these to my own needs and I am including these two brushes in the resources section, so now go and download them. Both have nice textures and work together like magic. Now let's talk about the layers. In digital, we work in different layers because it is easier. You can, of course, paint on one layer. Let's see in the gallery. This is on one layer, I cannot move anything around. Why would you paint in one layer if painting your layers makes your workflow quicker? You have the opportunity to move objects around. Let's see the original of this. This is the original and if you take a look, although I have plenty of layers here. If I select the layers with the lettering and I hit move, I can move this around as I want and it is really useful. You can also adjust the colors only of this element. Let's see, I will just put this. You see, I can change the color of the mug, how amazing is that? I'm not affecting any other things on this artwork, so it is really useful, and if I can do this, why not? You do the hard work illustrating once, then you can reuse some elements, repurpose them, recolor, and more. Simply working in layers makes sense. As it ever median, you need to think ahead and plan your painting. You don't necessarily need to make a real plan just to be mindful of what's at the back, what is in the front. If you work in layers, you are free to rearrange the layers as well. That again makes things easy. I can just hold down the layer and just them wherever I want. Now let's talk about the colors, I'm going to return to the original. You have endless possibilities in Procreate, you can import reference images and pick the colors to create your own palette, or you can just randomly create a palette, or just simply pick colors you like as you are progressing in the artwork. What I personally love to do is to gather reference photo, pick the main colors from it and then adjust that palette to my own needs and style, and then as I go, I also pick my own colors. For example, I made this color palette, and then I realized when painting that I need a darker version of this, so I pick this color, go to this classic and I can just adjust the brightness of this color. I recommend you to have a plan, but also be flexible. I already have some color combinations that I find that work really well together, like the blue with its darker version or brown with orange tense. As you can see on this image, it gives it a really nice natural texture. Generally, we can say that to get the best result, you need to combine a middle-based color with its darker version for shading and a lighter version for highlights. For example, like this, if you take a look on this palette, as you can see, I have three main colors, pink, orange, and blue. But I have a lighter and darker version from each of them and it will give us a really nice palette to work with. I will show you the artwork I've done with this palette and this frog is the example. I have used the base color, the darker version, and the lighter version to be able to render things a little bit. I think we discussed the most things in general, let's got to practice in the next video. 3. Technique Practice: [MUSIC] Now you have a document of A4 size. You have downloaded the brushes, and now you'll pick a base color, it's darker and it's lighter version. To make a new palette, click here to the plus sign and go back to this classic, you will have this empty pallet here as it is set to the default. Now you can just pick a color. I will pick a middle range of it, not the brightest and not the darkest, just a middle so that I have a base color. To get the brightest for this highlight, go to the most saturated part and get it a little bit brighter, this is going to be a highlight. Now, the darker version is going to be down here. I have my palette here. You can name this pellet if you want, but let us move on to drawing the shape. Now pick the base color, which is this one. Click the liner. What we are going to do is to draw a shape, I'm going to draw a circle. What I'm going to do is I'm going to hold down my stylus and it will activate the quick shape function, which will find the closest shape [LAUGHTER] to what I have drawn. I wanted a circle and it's writing ellipse created, but I can click edit shape and I can make it a circle, I can then adjust it but okay I want a circle. I want this shape to be closed because I will fill it with color. The way I'm going to do it is drag the color from here. Now, if you take a closer look, you can see that there is a line here. The reason for that is because the liner brush has a texture on it's both edges. It looks nice outside the shape, but inside it gives us these pixels with varied capacity, which is disturbing. What we are going to do is that we are going to go through it again. You can do it with a bigger brush actually, but anyways. We go through it again, I will just erase this part from the shape so that it looks better, add back a little bit of texture, nice, just fill these pixels. Now we have the basic shape and we're going to shade it now. There is a function named Alpha Lock. If you hit Layers and click on the layer you have it here, the Alpha Lock or take two fingers and slide this layer with them, and then it will Alpha Lock itself. You will see that layer is Alpha Locked if there is this checked background, which means that you cannot paint outside this shape that you have drawn or the pixels you have painted already or Alpha Locked, you cannot paint outside them only on them. Now let's shade this circle. I will just place it to the middle. Take the shader brush and choose this darker version of your color. This brush is pressure sensitive. If you press lighter, it leaves light marks, if you press harder, it leaves hard marks, which is really great because you can shade more smoothly. As you can see I already created really nice shading here. The shader brush has a wonderful texture. You can use it for simple texturizing, not necessarily for shading, I use it for both. Now, you can do this shading on a separate layer. As you can adjust it later, I usually don't do this, but if I'm not sure if the shading will remain there at the end, I might want to place it on a new layer. Also if I think that I will have something on this object, I want it to be shaded as well, I would be able to put it under the shading I have just done. Let's do this. I hope you'll know that if you tap the screen with two fingers you will undo what you have done, undo the whole shading. Now click here, select the Layer, now hit the plus sign. It will create a new layer above, but the shape will remain selected. Now, if you paint, you will paint on the shape, but on a new layer. This is also good if you plan to add something later to your shape like a lettering on a coffee mug. You just place the lettering below the shaded layer, and it will become shaded as well and will not be above the shading, which would look artificial. Let's just do the shading on this new layer. Again, get the shader brush and just go like this. Now let's get a lighter color and do some highlights up here, great. If you overdo some of these, you can always pick back the base color and redo or if you are on a new layer, you can erase without losing the base colors. I will just erase and you can see I can do that. Let's try to add a letter into the middle. I will just create a new layer. Do the studio pen, which you can find in the inking. It has the studio pen, which I liked the most for lettering. It is really pressure sensitive, it works really great for hand lettering. Just write a lettering into the middle with a darker color. Put it behind the lettering and you can see that it is already shaded here and here as well. Great. This is basically the process I'm following when illustrating. [MUSIC] I get a base color and paint the shape I need. Then I get a darker color and shade the Alpha Locked shape and get a lighter color for highlights. In the next video, we will do the main project and we will go in more detail how to work with layers. 4. The Base: [MUSIC] I already told you we are going to illustrate a coffee mug, and I thought we could add a motivational lettering on it. Let's call it a motivational coffee mug. [LAUGHTER] You can draw a coffee mug from your imagination. I mostly do that. But if you are not sure how to draw something you can always use reference images. You can open Safari, or Pinterest, or Google. I have Pinterest here. Just search for coffee mugs and find a coffee mug that is in a 45 or less degree angle, because we want to see its side, but also that there is coffee inside. For example like this, or like this, or like this, so that where we can see this part of the coffee mugs. Choose one. I have chosen this one. Open Procreate, and just hold down Safari, or the app you have opened. This image is perfect. Now you have a choice to draw the mug by observation, or drag the image to a new layer and copy the outline. If you hold down to the image and drag it into your canvas it will just pop up here. You can copy the outlines, but it is not the best practice, because if you always just copy you are not improving your drawing skills. If you are unsure you can copy the outlines, but I recommend you to take my drawing course on observation to develop this skill in you. What I'm going to do, I'm going to copy the outlines, because it speeds up my process, but I can draw a coffee mug. Create a new layer. Choose black and a sketching pencil, and just go over the outlines. When you are ready just delete this layer. We don't need this reference image anymore. What is nice trick to see if you were proportional or if you did any mistakes? Hit on the Select button and click on "Flip Horizontal", and you will see if there are something not looking good or something you should improve. I often do this to see if I am proportional, or have something distorted in an angle or something like this. But as I copied this I think this would be okay. But I love to draw mugs from this side, so I will just keep it here. I have drawn the coffee mug, and the next step is to draw the main shape, which we can call actually the silhouette of the mug. To see the sketch we will keep it at the top and set it to multiply. Hit this and the button or letter and hit Multiply. This will make that we can see through the sketch. We need to keep this layer at the top always. When we are going to create a new layer for the silhouette, drag it below it. I will work with the same palette that I used in the practice, but you can create any palette you like. I choose the darkest color for this silhouette, as this is going to be the bottom of this hole. What I love to do is to set the background color to a middle gray. To do this, hit the layers, hit the background, and choose a middle gray, so that you can see the colors better. What I'm going to do is to select the liner again, and I will paint the whole silhouette of this mug with it. I'm just going to speed this up again so that I don't bore you. One more note. If I do something like this I can undo, or just double-tap on the pencil and erase. Now I have a basic shape that I will not shade now, I will leave it for later. [MUSIC] What I'm going to do is to create the front of the mug, and I'm going to do that in the next video. 5. The Front: Here we are, and what I'm going to do is to at first, turn off the sketch layer, and I will see in this main basic shape because I really need this to be right. I will just go around this main shape again and just correct any mistakes in the shape that I find that don't look good or should look better, like these joints here, meeting points. This should be a little bit smoother I guess, this is too pointy. This is just details. I will not go too much into that. Now I'm going to select this layer and create a new one about it. I'm going to do the front of this layer and turn on the sketch again. I will paint the front of the mark with the base color. I will choose the base color, choose the liner brush. I can see that this is not right, so I will just paint this way. As you can see as I am in layers, everything is adjustable. I have so much flexibility in what I'm doing is really worth it. That extra attention on mindfulness of what to put on which layer. That was the most disturbing part when I started to do this, but I will just increase the size of my brush and just repaint the whole. I have a back, I have a front, and I will turn off this again. Let's see if I have something left out. If I have problems with the shape. Nice. Now let's put some coffee into it. Let's create a new layer below this front. Choose a beach color, discolor, but maybe a little bit lighter. I'm again working with this liner brush, and I will just paint the coffee here. I have a copy. [LAUGHTER] Looks nice. Now we have the base of the mug, and the shading comes in the next video. 6. Shading and texture: [MUSIC] Alpha lock all the layers, the first thing I will do is to select the base shape. Choose the base color, I will choose this back and choose the base color, and choose the shader brush and make it a little bit smaller. What I'm going to do is to make it more lighter, but make it like this and its side. I'm going to just go through it lighter. The reason I'm going to do that is because I will have this nice dotted texture, with shadow as well. What I'm doing at the top, I'm pressing harder so that I have this nice edge of the mark. If I got this slide, I can connect these two sides of the mark. If I want to get back something from this shader, I will just shade, I will just get back to the shader and just go through it again. The reason it is better to do it like this is because it will really give us this nice texture. I hope you can see what I'm doing. Now let's shade the front, what I'm going to do is to select it and create a new layer above it so that I have the shading on a separate new layer. I'm going to select a bigger brush and just really lightly go through it so that it already has a little texture, then get it a little bit smaller. Make sure that the opacity here is that to the center, it is on 52 percent. This brush works well with this settings. What I try to do now is to get the highlight, I'm going to put this highlight not on the shaded layer, but on the main front layer. The reason is because it will just keep this nice texture, I already created with the brush. I can just work with the base color without interrupting the shading. I will just make this nice blending here. Now, I want to add highlight at the top here, but again, as you can see, I'm below that shaded textures so that it remains like here. I will get the shader brush and do this below it so that it does rendered well. Now, let's select, and I guess that this mug is finished, but I will add more details to it. The coffee is left out. I will just go to the palettes and choose this light brown. I will shade it again as well. I will just go around it and choose a really light version to the middle to make it really nicely blended. We'll get back to this darker part. [MUSIC] It looks really nice. I would drink this coffee right now [LAUGHTER]. Let's make some details in the next video. 7. Details: [MUSIC] What I love to do for details, as you can see, this artwork has no line work. It has some inclusion here, which means that there is no line work in real life. But the general rule is that the things that touch makes shadows and you paint those shadows. If I put my fingers here, you don't see a line here, but you see a shadow here. This is what I tried to do at this illustration. We have this line here, we have this line here. We have it darker here where the coffee touches the coffee mug. It is darker there because there is a shadow. We should draw cast shadow, but it really doesn't matter. But what I love to do with lines in illustrations is that first we are going to create a lettering here. I just create a new layer and put it below this shade layer, if you can see this. This is the shading I have on this mug. I have some shading below it like here, this is the front. I have a layer below this shading, and I will get my darker color and go back to these inking studio pan, and I will just write something here. I like this one. I have smile here. As you can see, some of these letters got really lost in the shading so I'm going to get a darker color, alpha lock the lettering, guide my illustration shader just a little bit. I will just decrease so that it stands out and doesn't seem too dark. What I love to do with lines again, let's deal with the coffee. I will choose a dark brown, get a liner, get it small. You can do it on different layers so that it is adjustable. You can do something like this. I don't like the colors, so where was that milky color? Coffee color here it is. Choose this one. You can do something like this, or there are these patterns that they draw on your coffee. That didn't work out for me. Or you can just be creative with it. I love this floral elements so I draw it like this. You can just add some highlights on to the coffee to make a little bit of texture or as if it was like milk. You can just do whatever you want to decorate it. As if it had some highlights. We can add highlights. I love to put highlights with this lightest color with the liner not exactly the shader. I can go back to this and I can just over the opacity so that it's not that harsh, and also do a little bit of this here. Great. Also you can add some patterns. What I love to use, I will create a new layer below the lettering. One of my favorite artistic texture brushes is turpentine. Let me just show you what it does. I will select it. Select and choose this layer. You can do textured lines for example. I will just show you where I used that, and it looked amazing. This guy is here and his shirt was done with this turpentine brush and it just looks amazing. Let's get back here. You can just do something, whatever you want, just play around. [NOISE] Or you can do dots. I like this one better. Also with turpentine brush. What is really fun to do, I will deselect all this, is to create the steam. We are going to create a new layer from all above, and come here to the organic. You have this cotton brush. Choose white. Let's group this. The way you can group these layers is to slide like this. Group done. Now if I want to move the whole group, I can just move, but my layers remain the same. I will just put it here. On this new layer with the cotton brush and the white color, I will just create this nice effect. It looks amazing. [LAUGHTER] You can just play around with it. As you can see, I implemented some floral things into the steam. You can do it as well if you want. I call this finished. There are so many things you can just do with it, but I think this is enough for now. I really love how this turned out. You can change the background back to white, but then you will not see the steam. As you can see, it becomes too harsh. I really love the middle gray background for it. I hope you like this. I can't wait to see what you create. Post our artworks into the project gallery. Let's see each other in the next video to sum up this class. [MUSIC] 8. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations, you arrive to the end of this class. I hoped you liked it. Don't forget to upload your project into the project gallery. Your project is to illustrate a motivational coffee mug with the process I have guided you through in this class. I would be really happy if you will let me know what you think about the class in a review. I also invite you to follow me on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, check out my website, and don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare so that you get notified when the other classes will be out there. As always, if you have any questions, ask them in the questions and answer section. If you need help with anything, you can contact me personally as well. Yeah. I hope this class will be really beneficial for you. Happy creating, goodbye. [MUSIC]