Digital Illustration - From Concept to a Finished Piece

1. Introduction: If I would have to describe, what is illustration? I would say it is communication for images. The first step in learning illustration is learning the technique, and developing the ability to depict individual characters, objects, and scenes. The next step is combining all these together to get a clean and readable story. But how, you might ask? It might be tricky to create a sketch that immediately communicates your concept. There are techniques that can improve your initial sketches, observational drawing, shape language, facial expressions, poses all help you to know your characters better, and to be able to express the emotions they are experiencing. Choosing the right props and details strengthen the personality of your characters and the scene and the colors back up the story with their symbolism. In this class, I'm going to teach you how to create an illustration that clearly communicates its a narrative. My name is Alexandra. I am a professional art teacher, illustrator, mother, music lover. But most importantly, I am a teacher at heart. In my work, I love to create cute and stylized characters, use vibrant colors and to depict real life situations sprinkled with magic. One of my biggest passion is teaching and helping beginners discover their abilities. So this class was designed with beginners in mind, if you feel that you are stuck at a level and cannot communicate ideas beyond a single character or scene, this is the class for you. Whether you are a total beginner, or you have some experience in the illustration, you will find the simple explanations and the guidance in the videos helpful. I will be using an iPad and Procreate to demonstrate the techniques in this class. But feel free to use whatever, a material, traditional or different software, anything that you're comfortable with. There will be two different concepts. I will show you the process on. One is already finished, so you'll see the fact or the techniques immediately. I'm going to build up one from scratch in real time to set you up for a successful project. The class comes with a bonus section with my best personal tips and some useful resources. The class is packed with skills, strategies, and my personal tips that will help you to bring your art to the next level and to increase the readability of your illustrations. By the end of this class, you will be able to illustrate a narrative and to translate these techniques to your own work. Leaving your comfort zone might be scary, but in this class we are doing this together. So if you're ready, let's get started. 2. The Class Project: Welcome, I'm so exited to have you in the class. In this video, I'm going to talk about your class project, the structure of the class and the resources that come with it. Your class project is to create an illustration with a clearly communicated narrative. With the help of the worksheets and the guidance in the videos, you will have to build up your own concept. That is, two or three characters in an interaction that is readable with ease. You will be guided through our design process. At first, we will lay down your ideas, decide what your characters will be, and brainstorm ideas about their personalities. Then we will do the research and make exploratory sketches and then improve them with observational drawing. When we have these characters roughly, we will think about a story which consists of two things, the narrator which is the interaction, the emotion and this invisible things that are happening in the image. There is this scene where we answer the questions when and where is this happening. We will think about an everyday life situation and put our characters into it. Then we will create a clean line art after exploring our shape language, facial expressions and poses. Then we will perfect or align art with some prompts and details that strengthens the personalities of our characters. Then when we have a clean line art, we're going to start painting where you will be free to complete the illustration in your own style, with your own techniques and in your own way. You can follow my illustration workflow, but feel free to just observe and then implement tips and tricks that are appealing to you. There will be two different outfits and I'm going to show you the process on. First, I have already completed the worksheets and the process with the girl and the wolf concept. In the beginning of each lesson, I will explain you my choices and show you their effect on the final illustration. Then I will demonstrate the process in real time on a second illustration. By this, you will both see immediately the outcome of the techniques and get an insight to a real-time application. By this approach, you will be all set for a successful class project. Again, I will be using Procreate and iPad but feel free to use any technique or software that you are comfortable with for example, Photoshop or Krita or watercolors. In their resources you will find the worksheets that we are going to complete, but they are not necessary to complete the class. You can totally follow me on a simple Canvas in the size of your choice. These worksheets will include my own sketches that you can actually use for reference. As far the brushes, we will be using mostly the brushes that are already included in Procreate, but I'm also including two of my favorite illustration brushes. At the bonus section, there will be a video where I will explain you how I choose my brushes and give you suggestions for brushes to use. In the bonus section, you will also find a video where I will show you my favorite painting techniques and one for shading as well. Make sure to upload your final illustration into the project gallery. The best would be if you would start building your project right from the beginning. Share the working progress with the us. You can share photos, you can share completed worksheets or sketches in different stages in the process. You could also comment on how you felt, what you discovered, what helped you, whatever your struggles. These all will make your project more complete and more unforgettable. If you have any questions or need more tips, use the discussion tab below, or even contact me. Also, if a review box pops up about the videos, leave me a review so that I know what you think about the class. I think that's all. If you're ready, let's dive into it. 3. The Idea: In this lesson, we are going to get your creative energies flowing. We are going to decide on the characters and brainstorm ideas that you want to capture. Before you start designing, stop and think about what you want to create. What do you like? What's around you that you can get inspiration from? Use the Internet, social media channels, spend some time looking at illustrations and art works. Remember, inspiration can come from anywhere. Now let's take a look on the ideas I had with a girl and the wolf concept. As for the idea, I have thought I would illustrate a girl and a wolf. I didn't really think about the interaction at this stage, but I felt about these characters separately. I thought about a girl who would be a main character in the illustration and I just imagined her. She would have alternate color, she would be a cute, wise, peaceful, and cool. At one time, my inspiration for this was my little daughter and also me as a kid and as a secondary character, I thought it would be a wolf. Now I imagined this wolf to be magical, glowing, small, and wild. Also representing this childhood thing. Let's see how I implemented it. Here is the illustration, and as you can see, here is the girl and here is the wolf, both carrying the characteristics are imaging for down, so they had to enter the little girl and the magical little wolf. Brainstorming is a helpful tool for formulating ideas. Think about the characters you've always wanted to draw, but haven't drawn. Relax, take a look on your previous work. Is there a character that you haven't finished or developed enough? Take a look on your own life. Are there characters that are reoccurring? Not necessarily a concrete character, like a fox, but maybe a role like a mother, a farrier, or an adventure. Relax and think about your life and situations you are in. Listen to some music, take a walk, have a cup of coffee, and I'm sure there will be a thought that is reoccurring. For me, these are situations from my motherhood, so probably that is what I'm going to capture. A character of a unicorn is what I'm procrastinating over for a longtime. Maybe this is the time to use this character in the main role of this class. Here we are at the first stage, and let's open the first worksheet. As you can see, we have to lay down the idea at the stage. Taking a look at the worksheet, you can see that there is the main character and a secondary character. This class is not exactly a character design class, our main focus is rather on the whole piece. As again, we are talking about illustration and illustrations tell stories. We are focusing on ways of storytelling. We need to have something happening in our image. There will be an interaction between these characters that we will develop later in the class, but we need some supportive characters to do this action. We will have one main character and one or two secondary characters, don't overcomplicate this. Don't really choose three different kinds of characters for this class. Obviously you can do this in the future, but so that the class project is doable, just keep it to these characters or have two of the secondary characters. As I already said, there will be some interaction between the characters. As all interactions come with some emotions, think about a wide range of emotions that exist and think about which ones you want to implement. My main character is going to be a unicorn and I'll just choose this color. I will create a new layer to write my ideas. It will be a unicorn and as the role of being a mother reoccurs in my mind and in my relaxations stage, I thought a lot about it, I will create a unicorn mother. Two of my secondary characters will be also unicorns, and there will be a unicorn girl and a unicorn boy. It is the same species, so I need to develop the species only ones. I need to differentiate between the grown-up and the kids in a way. But let's just think about the unicorn mother. You can also have the narration in your mind now, so what will they do? I thought it will be something about feeding. You don't really need to specify things, you'll just need to think about the whole scene. It will be a mother feeding their kids. There will be something else also happening. The unicorn mother will be wise, again. I like wise characters. She will be beautiful, she will be dealing with weight problems may be, so she will be chubby, but still healthy, and as she's unicorn, she will be magical. It will be a beautiful, wise, healthy and chubby unicorn mother. For the cat, there will be a unicorn girl who wants to be like her mother, so I will write be like her mother. She will be cute, and she will be girly. A unicorn boy will be a rabble, he doesn't want to eat healthy food. He likes candy and maybe he will be sad or, I don't know, disgusted. My idea for this narration was that she will want to give their kids healthy food and the unicorn girl accept it, but the unicorn boy doesn't, so he will be maybe crying. I'm not sure yet. This is my idea. Again, let's do a recap on what you need to do in this lesson. You need to relax and give yourself time to think about the characters that you want to implement into this illustration. It doesn't really need to be a concrete character but a role, for example, mother or a farrier or a rebel. I didn't know. Give yourself time, let these ideas major in you, listen to music, etc. Then decide on the main character and the secondary characters. Don't overcomplicate this, choose one or two secondary characters. Don't mix up too many species because your job will be a lot harder to develop all those characters. Then think about emotions, adjectives, intentions, and I don't know, a lifestyle of these characters. This is really fun and this is really easy. You don't really need to make lifetime decisions. This idea will develop during the process and you can always change things. In this lesson, we decided who our characters will be. Now we have a better idea on what we want to illustrate. But keep in mind, all of these ideas will grow during the process and may change. Now, let's move on to the next video and do some research. 4. Research: Once you have explored the ideas for your characters, try to visualize them. In this lesson, we are going to create an intuitive sketch that we are going to improve by our research. At first, let's see how the research went in the Girl and the Wolf concept. What I've done was that I went through Instagram and Pinterest. I have done intuitive sketches, so you can see this was the sketch I have done about the girl and about the wolf, and you can totally see that I cannot draw a wolf. It looks like a fox. I've done a lot of foxes. So I had to do some sketches from reference photos, if you can see, I have some here that I have actually traced. I don't really like to spend too much time on this actually by tracing. I already know how I need to improve my intuitive sketch. Here I had to realize that the wolf has a bigger body and it rather looks like a dog. I also observed the front view so that I can see how big his eyes are compared to the nose and the whole head. These observatory sketches are really important because they will give you a better idea how you need to just improve your sketch. As you can see, even though it was a baby wolf, I really had to think about ways, how can I improve its body shape so that it is recognizable that it is a wolf. So my main goal at this stage was to get my characters recognizable. Once you have explored the ideas for your characters, try to find references from real life to help make them more believable. References are great source of information in helping you capturing a real-life event believably and accurately. But remember, a reference is a guide and it is not intended to be a copy. Photographic references will help you with the details of your characters. Before you start developing your idea, it is important to spend some time observing the things you are going to draw, and the best way to do this is to create little studies. As I have never drawn a unicorn, I'm going to do a little research on how others illustrate unicorns. What I'm going to do is to look for keywords on Instagram and Pinterest and see how they are illustrating these characters. What I really like is when someone uses floral elements, and I can see that it can be a really nicely stylized. What I'm doing is, that I go through these and get some ideas and look at some images that I like. I also check out Pinterest, and my intention is totally not to copy these. But I can get a little idea on the body shapes and how they are stylizing it because our job now is to stylize these characters. After looking at these images, what I'm going to do is to create an intuitive sketch. I'm going to just draw a unicorn mother and a unicorn baby in the way that it comes out of me. So I'm not going to over-complicate it. I will create a new layer and just start drawing. So it doesn't really look good. This is really just a rough sketch, an intuitive sketch. This really helps me to warm up. I will start improving this. I will just place this little one here below her mother. Now let's just do this real life references. I'm going to look at images of horses as like unicorn is a horse. I am going to go to Google and write horse. I will try to find a side look of a horse. This looked great. So I will just create a screenshot and maybe a close-up of the head. What I'm going to do is to go to the Canvas, Add, Insert a photo, and I will insert it. I will just put it here so that it cuts it to smaller one. I will turn over layer of the intuitive sketch. This is going to be my body, and I will choose the head as well. This will really help me to understand the anatomy of these animals. Now, I'm going to cheat. I don't really like to spend too much time on this. What I need to know is the body shape of these animals. While tracing, it also helps me to understand that. I will just lower the opacity of these images and on a new layer, I'm just going to trace them. Now I have some things in mind that I know now that I need to improve in my intuitive sketch. Let me just put this aside and turn on this. First of all, a unicorn is not an alpaca. So it's neck is not that long. Actually the body shape is similar, which is nice. The face is too stylized. I would really want to implement this part and this part to its face. Yeah, maybe he will have the horn here, and it looks great. I really want to implement these legs, but I'm not really sure. I want to keep it in the middle between this stylized and this detailed shape. About the head, now I understand why this line is usually there in the illustrations I've already seen under the mouth as here. As you can see in the smaller one, I put the mouth in the front and here I put it up here. Which is actually not that bad thing. I can just really combine these two. One thing I also wanted to say, why I love to do these intuitive sketches, it is because this is what keeps these drawings do me, like in my style, because that is me. This is how it comes out of me. I can improve this sketches because they are not the best. But yeah, so I need to mindfully build out my intuitive sketches to a design that represents me, but it is believable. By the end of this lesson, you should know your characters better. It doesn't matter what species you have chosen to be your characters. Using references from real life help us to make our drawings more believable. Let's move on to the next lesson where we are going to combine our intuitive imagery with our observations and create some exploratory sketches. 5. Exploratory Sketches: Now that you have explored ideas with a mind map and have gathered some real life references, it is time to bring them to life. Start doodling different versions of your characters, using your references as a guide when necessary. Play around with the forms always drawing with a concept in mind. Let's take a look on my explorations in the girl and the wolf concept. At this stage, I just got loose and think about the ways how can I improve my intuitive sketch. About girl, I had to think about its body shape. I knew that this part was too big. I had to make it smaller so that she really looks a bit younger. I also wanted to make her a bit chubby, so I worked on her face. At this stage you can work on different angles as well, so that you get to know your character a bit better. I wanted to make her a bit more cartoony, so I worked on her face shape where I had to shape a bit more so it's not just simply round. Then I also tried to make her like, less detailed, but I didn't like that. She looks older, so I tried an older version as well. But then I decided that she will be like somehow like this. Here are the wolf sketches, I tried to improve that body shape. I also tried some different types of lines so that it will be angled with this simplified head or this happy head. But actually by total accident, I have created this expression. This is what I love about exploratory sketches, that by accident you can create and develop amazing ideas. I decided that the wolf will have a head kind of like this, and I need to work on his body because at this stage I just couldn't work anymore. As you can see, I have created this sketch which is pretty nice. Here, he has a bigger body, but still with this cute rounded shapes, he becomes really younger. All right. In the final art work, you can see that I use the accidentally discovered expression of the wolf and the body position of the girl. The things you can discover at this stage can really define your final art work. In this stage, we are going to create exploratory sketches. But here we need to loosen up. This is my main problem. I usually get too stiff with my characters and too direct. I have to just get to this sketching mood. We will start with an exercise where we are going to loosen up the muscles in our hands. The best way to this is to just scribble. Create a new layer to the worksheet and don't do anything. Just scribble, go around and try to fill the space with lines. It will really help you to loosen up, and try to loosen up from your wrist as well, so let us just draw like this, but try to move your whole hand to just go to the mood and the flow of sketching. Try to fill it and do it till you enjoy it. How great is looks like? This can be my exploration as well. Yeah, it feels like it. It is so enjoyable. I should be a line artist. Okay. I'm finished and now I'm going to turn this off. What I need to do now is to do this exploratory sketches and try to combine the idea with their research and intuitive sketch with their research. Now I can just simply take these layers out. Select the two layers, hold down, go to the gallery while holding down, click on the worksheet of exploratory sketches and release, and these layers will be imported to this worksheet. Now I'm going to just build this up and work on it a little bit, and spend time on developing a character. I'm going to discuss my decisions at the end. Okay, so I have done some exploratory sketches. Let's just take a look on the model first. I have traced actually the head of the sketch of the head of the horse. Actually what I've done was, I tried to simplify the lines to most basic lines that can follow the shape of the animal. Then exaggerated this in a loose sketch of this hat that I really like. I really like how this turned out. Then I have again traced the body of the horse, I have traced and somehow implemented the body shape of the horse. Now I will improve this, because I wanted to this unicorn model to be chubby. I will work on it a little bit more later, but this is a great base. Now what I tried to do as well, was thinking about the baby ears. I will try to make them also chubby because babies are chubby. That's what I liked in them. In a way, I tried to differentiate between the girl and the boy. I will improve this as well because this is definitely not my best sketch, but it will look right. I tried to really simplify the face of the older unicorn as well, let me just put it here. Here at the baby is, and here is the mother. This is the final exploratory sketch. I will try to make these also standing. I just wanted to somehow play around with their shapes, but it is again, a nice accident. I really love how they are sitting, so I am going to somehow implement it into the illustration. By the end of this class, you should have one or two versions of your characters that you will further develop. Maybe you've got a pose accidentally or a facial expression, that you liked, keep them in your mind. But actually this is the first time I suggest you have a break. You might get overwhelmed with the process. It is a good idea to step back from it from time to time. This break can be as short as a cup of coffee and not longer than a day. See you in the next lesson and put this characters to a story. 6. The Story: In this lesson, we are going to put our characters to a story. As you can see, we have a narrative and a scene that we need to describe at the stage. The narrative is describing all the things that are happening in the image, actions, emotions, interactions. In the scene we need to think about a place and time these things are happening. Let's see what were my ideas for the girl and the wolf concept, and how I applied them. After I had the two characters, I had to think about a story. How will they interact? I have thought about a narrative that is actually the story itself. So what will happen between them? At the stage I couldn't decide if they will meet or hug. The wolf, I thought he will be curious or happy, and the girl excited and peaceful. I really wanted to create a scene which does this magical moment of the two meeting, but I couldn't really decide on their real interaction if they will touch, or hug, or just look at each other. Forest cold colors, evening or moon, glowing box, and moonlight, with this I wanted to strengthen the scene itself. In the finale illustration, as you can see, I made the two characters touch. The character of the wolf is truly magical, and everything like the direction of the moonlight and the curves of the wolf are leading the viewer towards this interaction. Now, let's lay down all ideas for a new concept. I will create a new layer where I can write. In the narrative we need to decide what is happening. What is the interaction between these characters? The mommy unicorn is feeding the kids. It is feeding time, it is lunchtime. In the scene I will write a time, so lunchtime or noon. This will give me the light direction. At noon, usually the light comes from the top. This decisions truly help us to build a believable scene. Now the narrative, the mama is giving out food. More specifically, I thought it would be a broccoli. But the two kids are reacting differently, the girl is accepting it. She will be happy, joyful, and then the boy is going to not like it. He will be maybe disgusted over the broccoli, and the whole mood of the scene is going to be a normal family time. It will be a bit chaotic, but peaceful. I really love forests. It will be not in the forest, but next to the forest. Again, it will be lunchtime, so at noon. The colors I thought would be this really colorful, magical, rainbow. Again, give yourself time. Listen to music, drink a cup of coffee, go for a walk, and think about what would you like to recreate in this illustration. What is the narrative, and when and where it is taking place? In this video, we have created a story for our characters. Now, let's move on to the next stage where we are going to improve our character designs with a shape language. 7. Basic Shapes : Shapes are key when conveying emotion as they tell your audience how to perceive characters. In this lesson, we are going to identify the main shapes of our characters and improve our sketch by modifying these shapes for a better expression. In the basic shapes part, what I've done was that at first sketch my characters in a standing position and then identify the basic shapes they have. Based on the ideation at the beginning, I tried to put these shapes into harmony. The wolf for example, he ends and starts in a triangle followed by a circle, and at his body there is a rectangle. These three shapes have different meanings. Circle and rounded shapes express cuteness, triangles and sharp edges express danger, and rectangles express strength. Well, this wolf is cute and young but it is still a wild animal, so it carries danger and strength. The shapes in the girl are curved which strengthens her cute and young character. I modified this sketch based on these shapes to get a nice and harmonious composition. These shapes then help us with proportion and later when we want to put the characters to a pose. At the final piece, you can see that the body shapes really express the personalities of the characters. Basic shapes really help us to express the personality of our characters. I'm not telling basic geometric shapes because these shapes don't really need to be geometric or perfect. We have basic geometric shapes like a circle, or a rectangle, or a triangle, but these really don't need to be perfect. If I'm talking about basic shapes, I'm also talking about organic shapes. For example, a rounded shapes where there are no really edges. The illustration or the character look more cute, positive, young. These rectangles don't necessarily need to be rectangles, it can be a cube, it can be a trapeze, or something like that. This helps us to call the strength, and it can be really used at adult characters. This can be also triangular, so not a perfect triangle. But for example, as we had in the head of the horse. If it is totally sharp, so it can be used in a villain or a bad character or not really positive character. We can make for example from this rectangle, we can make it cute. We'd adding rounded shape, for example. What we are going to do now, I'm going to turn this off here. What we are going to do now is to identify the basic geometric shapes at these sketches and work on them and try to improve these geometric shapes to express the personality of this characters further. If you need help with identifying the basic shapes, you can go back to your research and observational drawings and find the main shapes of the body and head that you can use as a base. What you need to do now is to import your exploratory sketches to the basic shapes worksheet. What I'm going to do is to create a layer below these sketches, choose my color for the base shapes and just draw these basic geometric shapes below them. As you can see, these little kids have the shape of an egg. I'm going to lower the opacity and create a new layer over these. What I'm going to do is to think about my concepts. I'm going to make more definite sketch of these characters, did I can again further improve. What I said I want to improve the body shapes. As you can see, this rectangle is too small. I want to make this woman a bit chubby. Not to use this rectangle but add curves. I will put into a new layer here a circle, and I will use this circle to be a base for my body over again. I place a circle here, I will try to make this curve following this circle. This will define her silhouette a bit more, and I will make her stomach a bit bigger. I will also stylize her legs and make her tail longer. This is going to be my mommy, and now I'm going to work on the kids. I'm pretty satisfied with this act shape, but as you can see I need to play a little bit with the sketches. I will create a new layer, and lower the opacity of these sketches and redo the whole. I have more definite sketch of these characters. It doesn't really need to be perfect again. What the point of these part is that you can really get to know your characters by doing adjustments here and there knowing what basic shapes their bodies are following and also you will practice like drawing them more times, and this is a process which really takes away from the fear of doing something wrong. Like I'm personally totally afraid a lot if I'm going to waste my time, but these little adjustments are not really not wasting your time. When designing characters, it is important to think big to small. Don't get stuck at drawing too many details at this stage. These shapes will also help us later when we are going to pull our characters to a pose. By the end of this lesson, you should have a more definite sketch of your characters and know their bodies a bit more. In this lesson we have focused on the main body. Now let's move on to our next lesson where we are going to discover their face. 8. Facial Expression: One of the most important qualities to have as an illustrator is the ability to show how a character feels. In this lesson, we are going to create several versions of our characters face depicting six different emotions. This is one of the really fun parts of the illustration process, I just cut these little improved heads, and put it here, and we have six emotions that we are going to try to create in our character's faces. I will be talking about how to do so in a second. But as you can see, this is a really great way to get to know your character better, and how his or her face will react to these emotions, and you can really practice it. It is a really important stage as you don't need to think about these things when you are illustrating, then you will have a clean line work, and you can just paint. This is the stage where you need to develop your design. What I've done is that I deleted the face that I have drawn, and just added back a face that can represent that emotion. If you take a look on the final illustration, the look of the girl is really surprised, and I actually kept the wolf a bit more stylized, because I wanted his pose to express this emotion, and girl's emotion is in focus. You can also think about whose emotion should be exaggerated more to express the whole interaction. Creating believable expressions takes a lot of experimentation and practice. It is helpful to research facial muscles, but in this class we are not going to go that deep into this topic. We will just do a little exploration, how our characters face would look like in different moods. Let's take a look on the characteristics of different moods and try to draw only the face of your character as an exercise. What I'm going to do is to go out to these basic shapes, and as I have only one species now, I'm going to work with the face of the mother. But as you could have seen in the other illustration, I explored both faces, the face of the girl and the wolf too. What I'm going to do is to select a layer of the sketch of the head of the mother. I will go to the selection tool and select the head of the mother. Three finger slide to take out the quick menu, and hit "Copy", and "Paste". Now I will hold down to the layer of they head, go to gallery and facial expression, and I will just import it there. I will make it a bit smaller, and what I'm going to do is to duplicate it. Duplicate the layer and make it six times. Now what I'm going to do is to take these layers and then put them together, so that it's easier to work with them. The first head is going to be happy. In a happy expression, corners of the mouth go up, cheeks go up, eyes are narrow, wrinkles can go around the eye. Actually in a stylized version, this kind of eye eye is pretty nice. We already have the happy expressions, so I'm just going to exaggerate it a bit, and I will add a little eyebrow here. She rather looks satisfied, but I just try add narrow eyes, like this. She looks happy now. Let's move on to the next one. She will be sad. In a sad expression, corners of the mouth go down, inner corners of eyebrows go up, brow can wrinkle, tears can form, head can point downwards. Let's just do this. I will erase the mouth and the eyes. The corners of the mouth go down. I'll make it smaller like this, and I will just add an eye like this, eyebrows go up like this, and the broken wrinkle, like okay, that's just a detail, and tears can form, and head can point downwards. I'll just try to make his head a bit like this. So cute. She looks really sad. As you can see, these little details, even in this stylized form can really help us with the expression. Let's move on to the next one. She will be disgusted. A disgusted face, upper lip goes up, nose can wrinkle, brows goes up, eyes are narrow, head can lean away. Let's take a look at this. Upper lip goes up, I will create something like this. She has an open mouth. I will try to make it, oops. It doesn't look like that. It is really about experimentation. I will put her mouth like this, brows, go down. She will have an eye, like here, brows go down, eyes are narrow and head can lean away. Let's try to make her head lean away like this. The next one; surprised. Mouth opens, eyebrows go up, eyes widen. Let's try it. I will erase this. Surprised, her brows go up, eyes widen like this and mouth opens like this. Or I can do this kind of a mouth. It was better open. This does not look good. Let's try it. I don't like the mouth. This is going to be her mouth. Now, angry; mouth narrows, lips can press together, eyebrows go down and pull together, eyes are narrow. Let's try it. Eyebrows go down and pull together, and mouth is narrow. Now she is angry the last one; afraid. Mouth opens corner of mouth go slightly down and stretch outwards, eyebrows go up and pull together, upper eyelids go up, forehead can wrinkle. Let's try this. So mouth opens, and corner of the mouth goes down, eyebrows go up and pull together, upper eyelids go, I will add like this and upper eyelids go up, forehead can wrinkle, I don't know, like this. Let's see. She's happy, she's sad, she's disgusted, she's surprised. I didn't indicate the surprise the best way. Angry and afraid. It looks pretty nice. This exercise is really great to get to know your character better and think of ways how you can create the expression of these emotions in the illustration. Now this can be more detailed. But as you can see with these simple lines and placement of lines, you can totally easily express these emotions and it is totally okay if you keep it at this level. It is also good as I'm talking about one species that I tried out, how she had closed eye, how she or her facial features move together so I can express those variety of emotions better. In this lesson, we had so much fun creating this facial expressions for our characters. By the end of this video, you will be able to improve your sketch by adding accurate facial expressions. You can do it now or leave it for later when we are going to create the clean line art. Now let's put our characters to an expressive pose. 9. Pose Exploration: Once you have chosen the designs that work well together think about the characteristics you want your characters to have. In this lesson, we are going to put our characters to a pose that expresses this characteristics. This stage is again, a really important. I have kept my sketch really loose here, and try to put them two different poses. My first was that they don't really touch and I have kept the proportions of the wolf that I have decided on and then I have created this outlines to see how this works. Then created a silhouette. I saw that this silhouette is not really interesting and there is not a real interaction. I didn't really want them to hug, I wanted to keep them a bit separate. Then I decided that this wolf has to be a bit more dominant and I wanted to implement a really important technique which is curved lines and straight lines and their combinations, because with this and with these line work, you can lead your viewer through your illustration. I decided to exaggerate this back part of the wolf. I created a loose sketch with this pose. Then I again created an outline with the focus on these curved lines and straight lines to see how it is in balance. As you can see, the curved lines and these straight lines are in balance because there is a rule that you should avoid using parallels because they are not that interesting. Then I created a silhouette which works pretty amazingly and really exaggerates and expresses this wolf and the girl. As you can see, I have put them closer together and created the interaction of the girl touching the wolf. In the final piece, you can really see that the pose works pretty well. The curves of the wolf lead the viewer towards the interaction. However, it is not perfect. I feel that the back part of the wolf is maybe too much in focus. But it's totally okay because we learn from our mistakes. Now let's take a look at our new concept. Start by sketching out some thumbnail poses so you can figure out how they are going to look. Keep your designs fairly loose at this stage and do not get too caught up with details. It is important to find the right composition when designing an interaction between two characters as this will affect their emotional communication, varying the positions, poses, and facial expressions can change the mood completely. Before we start sketching these thumbnails, what I want you to do is a drawing a practice. I already taught you that it is good to layer the curves and straight lines. In this sketch, we are going to work on that. What I want you to do as a totally free exercise, I'm just going to draw curve and the straight line in different positions or different angles just to make my muscles remember that a curve comes with a straight line. It is not you have to do this role, but you will see in outlining how it is important. It helps you to loosen up your muscles. I have put this on the same layer. I will just put this on a new layer and turn it off. The next thing is to go back to the basic shapes and get these sketches. Again hold down, go to gallery, go to the pose exploration and just put it here so that you can work with them. Well, I will group them and select and make them smaller. Now what you can do is to, I work at first we this initial sketch. You can play with the placement of these figures. I we'll put her a bit closer. He will be here and I need to do something with the mother, so she will not stand about them. She will be bigger, but I need to do something with her body. I will just copy this, duplicate, and move it next to her and mix them together on one layer so that it's easier to work with it. I will need to make her sit down. So I will just erase her body. What I'm going to do is to try to make her body shape or make her sits or somehow, well, interact with this little guys, I'm going to speed this up now. As I already know that she should be chubby, I made her body look a bit bigger and I worked with the basic geometric shapes I have identified. I try to keep this circle at the bottom and a rectangle up there. I would just do several little sketches and I need to think about how she will give the broccoli to the kids. Maybe with her hands or with mouth, I'm not sure. Maybe she will lean over to them to give them the broccoli, I don't know. Let see. I think I have found great way to place these little guys. What I'm going to do is to straighten it. You can try out different poses. But if you don't feel comfortable trying out like different angles of your characters and you want to stay at the comfort zone, you can just work with what you have and the angles you already tried out and improve those things. Here I tried out giving the broccoli with the hand which I'm not quite sure would be okay. I tried out in if she will lean over the kids and have the broccoli in her mouth, and I think that would be pretty nice. What I'm going to do now is to create a better sketch with mainly not too detailed, but with a more definite lines. I will create a new layer and work on that. I will improve this a little bit more as well and work on details. But what I need to do now is to think about this space curved and straight lines. What I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new layer above it, choose maybe pink. I will just do some outlines. Here's a curve, here's a curve, here's a curve, here's a curve. Let's identify the curves at first. Then choose another one and look for straight lines. If you take a look on this little outline and it still makes sense if you take a look at it and you can identify the whole scene, you're on track. Yes, I think it is imbalanced. I will need to make his body a bit straighter and do something with her hand because it is not cool. What else would I need to do is to create a new layer below the sketch and choose a dark color and just fill it to find the silhouette. I think that the silhouette itself is quite readable and proportionally I can see that this is a grown-up, these are the kids. I really need to do something with her body because this is not good. I need to make this line better. So this is the point where you can see what problems you have in your sketch and then you can move on to improve that. By the end of this stage, you should have a sketch. It is still more definalized sketch. Then try out the curved lines and straight lines to make sure that you have a balance between them and see if the silhouette is readable. In this video, we explored the poses. By now you should have chosen the pose that most accurately communicates the interaction between the two characters. In the next lesson, we are going to work on the details that also help us to back up the story. See you there. 10. Props and Details: Just as the characters are linked with the narrative, props and details tell us a story too. They help us to strengthen the character itself, strengthens their personalities, and also help us with building up the scene itself. In this lesson, we are going to choose props and details that fit our characters. I really love this part because this is the part where I am creating a more detailed sketch now. You can really play with strengthening the personalities that you have thought of at the beginning. So this is the part where you go back to your first ideas and see the objectives you have connected with these characters. I have cool, peaceful, wise, and adventurer, and is magical characteristic of the wolf. I have thought about the props to strengthen these ideas. As I already added glasses to the girl, this will be connected to the wisdom she has. The adventurer, I gave her a backpack, and for her coolness, I have added some fun accessories. For the wolf, I have added some folkloric elements because I really want him to be as if he was stepping out from a fairy tale. At this stage, you decide on the props and create a more detailed version of your sketch that you can then bring to the next level. In the final piece, you can see that the props I chose for the girl really complete her. Actually, I changed the motif of her shirt to a peace sign and also decided to change the character of the folk motifs on the wolf to really make them as if part of his fur to make it more believable. So you can, of course, make changes to these props later if you will need. Adding these details make all characters richer, but be careful. Only add what is needed in showing that the characters are simple, functional, and without distractions. What I'm going to do is again, catch this sketch. Catch the sketch, hold down and again, place it to the next worksheet. Now we have the sketch here and we can think of props and details to help to express the personality of our characters. Now we need to go back to the idea and think about the unicorn mother. She's wise. She is beautiful, chubby, healthy, and magical. I'm just going to write some words here. The kids, let's choose. The girl wants to be the same as her mother, and she is cute. What about the unicorn boy? He likes candy and is sad and crying about a broccoli. The girl is cute and as her mother, and boy likes candy. The main character of this thing is the broccoli itself, so I will try to draw a broccoli here in a second. Then as a wisdom of the mother, she will have glasses. She is beautiful. I will express this with something in her hair, maybe some hair clips. Healthy is going to be the broccoli. As she wants to look like her mother, she will have the same hair clips. Likes candy, there will be donuts around him, and he will also cry. In this worksheet, just try to draw these things or do a little sketch about these things so it is easier to apply. Now we know the props and the details, now you can apply them to your little illustration. So she will have maybe a hair clip somewhere, maybe here. She will have it also here. She has the glasses. There will be donuts around him. Yes, and here is the broccoli. Again, we will refine this sketch in a second. Now we arrive to a stage where we made most of the biggest decisions: their body shapes, facial expressions, pose, props and details, all are put together to a rough sketch. This is the second time I suggest a break to step away from the process. Making all these decisions can be tiring, so let yourself have a rest. In the next lesson, we are going to build a scene around our characters. So when you are ready and [inaudible] see you there. 11. Building The Scene: In this lesson, we are going to build a scene around our characters. This is the part of the process where you can bring this in bit more detail, sketch into the canvas, and sketch and build a scene around it. At this stage, I usually already know where the scene will take place. I just created around these characters, but you can create thumbnails and just really loosely create a composition and build a scene around the characters but really keep it loose. What I love to do is to keep the characters in focus and build them up in detail, and just keep the scene really simple and just paint it loosely in the painting stage. You can also see some lines here, which we'll define the light direction in the image. Let's take a look on the final illustration. As you can see, I kept the characters really in detail and worked on the scene pretty loosely. You can see also the light here, that is coming to the characters. It really helps them with shading to already know where the light is coming from. Also, about the size of the canvas, I decided to make it a square illustration because there was too much off these other interesting space around it, and I decided to cut it off, so you cannot really make adjustments later. This is why this designing processes good because you don't need to worry at all about anything. At this stage we are going to build a scene around it. What we have now is a silhouette or this little sketch. I would love to use this little sketch we have here, so what I'm going to do is to, I can actually copy it and go here and paste. I'm going to create thumbnails. What I thought about the scene, I will just go back to the story and see. It is lunchtime noon, so the light comes from above. It is next to the forest and this color for magical and rainbow. I'm going to create some rectangles, and what I'm going to do is to make it a bit smaller and try to place it approximately to the middle. Think about at this stage how this will look like, if you wouldn't have like a seen. This is going to be in focus, there will be trees in the background, then one above them maybe there going to be trees, maybe there will be a bush here, or I don't know, if it will be a scene, is a scene like this, or you can paste it again. Or you can place this scene to be smaller, something is happening, or a sea or a lake. I'm going to spend some time exploring these ideas and then we can come back and discuss it. I have some thumbnails now, I have tried out difference scene areas. This is a forest scene, but I added a tree to accompany them, then somehow removed it and placed them deeper into the perspective here, I placed them to a hill with a rainbow and this is an experiment of placement to the edge. But what I like the most is this one, because for some reason I like the idea of having the tree over the mother, to strengthen this feeling that she is protecting their health actually with this broccoli thing. I want them to be in focus, and not that deep in the forest scene, so I don't really want this surrounding to be that dominant, so I am choosing this one. By the end of this stage you should have a rough sketch of the scene. In the next one we are going to do a little color exploration. In this lesson, we have composed the whole illustration, and built a scene that supports our story. In the next video we are going to work with colors, and build a color palette that we are going to use into illustration part. 12. Color Exploration: In this lesson, we are going to build a color palette that uses our personal and a universal symbolism of colors. A palette that fits our characteristics and sets the mood in the scene. I totally allowed this stage. In a second, we are going to talk about the symbolism of colors. But what I've done is I've divided to image into three main parts, the wolf, the girl, and the background. I have chosen a dominant color for each of them. I've chosen purple for the wolf because it has a spiritual color and this is a magical wolf. I have chosen orange for the girl because she has this inner fire, she's an adventurer. I have chosen this turquoise for the background to represent this peacefulness of the moment when they are meeting. Then I built color palettes around all of these colors. Now, when building the color palettes, keep in mind to have lighter colors, darker colors. At the girl, I had to choose a skin color that I actually changed later and I needed to think about the background because it is complex. There is a background and the foreground also. I had to think about the colors of the foliage and the trees as well. Now, creating color thumbnails is a totally fun thing to do. You can think about the color versions. Actually, I decided to have this one and the combination of these two. It is a really fun process because you can really see the illustration now coming together and it is totally motivating that, "Oh my God, now you'll have a final illustration in a second." So it is amazing. If you take a look on a final illustration, I kept this color schemes in it. So the girl has this orange and her sock and her hair, and actually, I changed the skin color to be warmer. The fox is magical and the background, it's not really turquoise, but it kept its bluish tint. I really had to think about how the light works on the foliage, so I added this light colors to them. Your chosen color palette should reinforce the concept and emotions. Once you have the final design, start to build your color palette according to the features of your characters. Color has the potential to communicate so much about the character, and they are also great to express emotional symbolism that can vary from one culture to another. I would also say from one person to the other person. Colors can express the time of the day, a certain season, or climate. Think about your scene and the colors that are related to it. What time of the day is said? What season is it? Where in our day? In this story narrative, here, we decided that it is going to be a lunchtime. It is colorful, magical, rainbow, next to the forest. But as we have the broccoli, it has to be like summer. So it is summer, the sun is shining, everything is going to be green, and colorful, and beautiful, and calm. It is also good to research images that feel in a particular way, and then think about what causes that effect. It is also great to create a separate color palette for the character and the background and see how they work together. When placing characters in the background, it is important that the background is designed with the characters' feature in mind. Choose color palettes that highlight the characters and ensure that they can be seen clearly. Here's a little selection of colors that is in no means a 100 percent description of that, but it may be a great starting point. I'm adding my personal feelings about these colors and maybe it would be great to describe them for yourself as well. Turquoise is a peaceful color, with a positive vibe. It is often associated with calm seaside scenes. Orange is very energetic and intense. It evokes images of fire and sunset. It is the color of autumn, so maybe has a bit of a melancholy and wisdom. Brown is associated with nature, wood, stability, earth. It evokes the feeling of safety, home, and comfort. Yellow is so vibrant, it is connected to joy, positive energy, and sun. Purple is the color of magic, spirituality, and creativity. Red is maybe the most versatile color with a huge range of different emotions. It is the color of love, passion, but also fire, anger, and danger. Green is representing life, growth, and nature. I suggest a little task here. Choose three emotions that you really want to have in the scene, and then close your eyes and think about the colors that will present those feelings. For me, it is purple as unicorns are magical and the whole motherhood is magical, and I really want to have that magic in the scene. Then I want to express peace and nature as everything that happens in motherhood, even the bad things like kid crying is a natural part of it. I want peace to be represented as well, so I choose green and turquoise to represent these thoughts. Last but not least, I want to have light in the scene. I want it to be joyful to look at, therefore, I want yellow in it. This is what I imagined. Now let's take a look on these thumbnails. What I'm going to do here is that I will differentiate between the characters in the background. Here will be unicorns. Let's differentiate only the background. What I'm going to do at first is to choose a dominant color for these to present the symbolism. This is a magical creature, so I choose again, purple to represent it. For the background, I'm choosing brown to represent this comfort, and nature, and stability. I will choose a nice brown. Now I will build the color palettes around it. As these are unicorns, they are white and they need to be like this light. The boy will need to have blue, let's see, bluish greenish color. The girl will need to have this pink, and also, the mother will have pink in their hair. I will choose a lighter and darker versions of these colors. So I will choose light turquoise here and darker pink, maybe. For the background, I will need to have foliage. I will choose some colors. I want it to be rather this green, and turquoise again, and this dark. For the tree, I will need a light color. I'm not sure. Let me go with the gray, choose this dark. I have chosen some colors that I felt like they will be good. What you need to do is to create a layer below the sketches and just feel in the main shapes. You really don't need to go into detail just to see how these colors work together. You can adjust these color palettes as you wish. Obviously, when painting, you will change colors. I forget about the light. So I will need to have a light. I'm going to speed this process up again. I'm going to just fill in these thumbnails and see which one works the best. I have my color thumbnails. As you can see, with the same colors, with different combinations and dominances, we can create different moods. For example, this one looks a lot more like a night scene. This is really bright. I tried out actually different colors for the mother so that she is differing a bit from the little girl. I'm not quite sure if she will have this purple or darker hair. What I choose is basically this combination because it's really is bright and as if noon as we had decided on. So I'm just going to circle this and yes, but maybe I will try to make her hair a bit darker and as she has to express that she is more magical and older because she is the wise mother. As you can see, this is really just a rough thing and this is an amazing exercise to get to know your scene better. It will really help you when illustrating to know which color will you use and you will not get stuck in, I don't know, what color should I put here and there. These colors may change, but basically, the overall layout of the colors will be something like this. In this video, we have chosen the colors that we are going to use in a final illustration. By now, we really made all the decisions so you can relax. In the next lesson, we are going to refine our sketch to get a clean line art to work with. 13. Line Art: In this lesson, we are going to refine or sketch to really get everything ready for the painting part. At this stage, you have the possibility to improve your sketch further, to work in more detail because it will help you with the illustration stage. Again, keep the foliage and the background really loose at this stage, and work with a thin pencil so that you can really work on the details. This is the time where we create our sketch. This is the time where we need to put together everything. We have explored the characters based on observations and we created a rough sketch. You can have already a finished sketch that you would love to illustrate. But this is me, I love to keep everything till the last step when I put everything together. What you need to do is to apply the facial expressions to the characters. Then keep in mind these curves and straight lines, add the props and details, and build a scene around your characters. Now, I'm going to select this. I will go here and insert my sketch, make it bigger. I'm going to turn on the worksheet and place my really rough sketch here. Again, this is going to be a spot up process. What I'm going to do is that I'm going to lower the opacity of this sketch, create a new layer. Now with a black color and the sketching pencil, I'm going to create a clean line work. Now, what you also need to keep in mind is the rule of thirds, which means that if you divide the canvas into three even parts, both horizontally and vertically, you will get four crossing points where it is good to place the focus of the attention. I will just try to make it approximately, you can actually go and approximately divide it into these three even parts. As you can see, I will have the mother at these two crossing points and the girl at this crossing point. It doesn't really need to be 100 percent perfect. You'll now know your characters. You can just revisit these sketches. I can now see that this hat is not exactly perfect. I want to go for this line work a bit, so I will improve my sketch with this in mind. You can also go and revisit the facial expressions we have discovered. The small kid will be disgusted and you can now apply that to your sketch. Now I have a clean line work that I'm going to illustrate. Now, I have applied everything. I tried to apply these curved lines and straight lines. I tried to improve some shapes and add the props and details and added the facial expressions. Maybe this boy is not the most perfect, I will work on it a bit more. But what I can say is that now I have a clean line work. I have a color palette, and now I'm ready to go to the illustration part. What I'm going to do here is to create a new pallet and just pick up the colors so that I have them in the pallet here. By the end of this lesson, you should have a clean line art. But before we start painting, the three bonus videos are going to follow this one. I will give you my personal illustration tips about the ways I'm choosing my brushes, my favorite painting techniques, and the types of shadows I usually apply to my work. I hope you're excited. 14. BONUS VIDEO: Brushes: For this class, I haven't made a completely new brush set, because I believe there are so many amazing brushes that are already included in procreate. All you need are four different types of brushes, and I want you to be confident when choosing them. In this video, I'm going to share with you my strategies for choosing brushes for my illustrations. So basically, you need four kinds of brushes. One is the liner, then a shader, texture and details. So what I mean by this, you will need a liner to create your shapes. I could call this "shaper" if that would be a word. But you can download these free illustration brushes of mine from my website and they will be also in the resources. Basically, I'm going to use this for creating shapes. The second brush I love to use for shapes and what I'm going to use in this class, in the painting brush set and a Round Brush. What I've done with this brush that comes with procreate, then I added taper. So I would just say the exact amounts. I added spacing 7 percent, streamline 11. Then added taper. I have this size 82 percent pressure max. I added a blunt tip so that it is not that edgy at the end. I added tip animation pressure marks. I have added a maximum size for the pressure so you can create this brush for yourself. I am going to use this brush for creating my shapes here. But if you are looking for more texturized shapes, you would be good with the liner. Now with a shader, if you go to my free illustration brushes, I have a shader here. It is a textured brush that I use for shading these shapes. And what comes with procreate, it is the Airbrushing and the Soft Brush. It is so nice and creates amazing gradations. This is for the shader. For the texture, I love to use this shader brush as well. But what I'm going to use here is at a drawing and it is called the "Oberon" brush. I use it to create texture. What I love to use creating texture is with the 6B pencil actually, but in an angle. So you can create pretty nice texture with it, as you can see. For the details, I love to use at the drawing the "Little pine". We'll make it bigger. I add these textures or these lines over the top of my textures to add little details. I love to use the liner for little details and add the sketching. Actually, you can use any to "Procreate" and [inaudible] pencil. Our greatest fall for these things, for adding details. [NOISE] Okay, so now we have our brushes. And in the next bonus video, I'm going to show you how I use these brushes to create different effects and different materials in my illustrations. So I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 15. BONUS VIDEO: Painting Techniques: If you have the line work, you can just take a look at it and think about what kind of surfaces you will have on it. You will have a human body, so you will need to have a skin. You will have fur, you will have hair, and textile as she has clothes on, and the foliage. What I do here is that I create these circles, go through the brushes I have in my brush library, or I create one. I try it out and think about the ways, how can I create the effects, with the skin, with the hair, with the fur, with the textile, and the foliage. Here I have a light. I usually choose a brush which I use to add texture to the image and create light. If you can see, I have used these techniques in the illustration. Here is the hair of the girl. I have filled in the shape, shaded it, and then added these long lines to create the hair effect. For the textile, I've done the same and here is the fox where I actually used a really loose sketching technique to add these elements. I tried to keep it loose because this wolf is a bit stiff, which I actually don't really mind because this adds to its unrealistic character. But the girl looks pretty believable. As I have already shown you in the wolf illustration, it is good to look at your line work and differentiate between different materials. We will have hair, fur here, and we will have wood and also foliage. I have my circles here and what I'm going to do is to create a new layer and just write what I'm going to paint. We will have hair, fur, and we will have wood, foliage. What else? Let's find something. We will have, let's say the bush. For the hair, I'm going to go to the layer of the circles. You can just select this circle so that you don't go into the next circle, but it doesn't really matter. You can just put it to a new layer, so cut and paste. What I love to do is, I'm going to use my free illustration brushes that you can download from my website, and I think you already downloaded it. I'm going to Alpha lock this circle and just fill it with a light magenta as this is going to be the hair color of the mother. Then I will choose a shader brush and just shade it. I will choose an even darker color to get even more depth. I will go lighter again, and it looks great. Now, I will add some texture and I love to do this hair with the drawing, and you go to the little pine. I am going to choose some light color, lighter, and do this long lines over it, and this is going to be my hair texture. I love the brushes that come with Procreate. They're so great. So in this class, I would focus on using those. You can go even darker. You can choose a darker version and just add some little shadows here, or even darker. You can just strengthen this filling. This is the texture I'm going to use for the hair. Now, let's go to the fur. I'm going to do the same, so I will select this circle, put it to cut and paste, so I'll put it to a new layer. I will Alpha lock this layer and this light color. I will just fill the whole with this light color. As I told you that the unicorns will be purple, so I will just choose purple to shade it. I will choose a shader brush. I will choose maybe a lighter color, even lighter. I will try to make a nice, I will make this smaller, blending of these colors. I've chosen a darker violet to make it here. It is important to shade so that you get the idea how this texture will work in different lighting situations. Not this color, but this light, we'll add it back, somehow like this. What I love to use is, in the drawing, I choose the oberon brush and do the same. The reason I lay down this basic shaded part is because textured brushes usually have pixels missing, so if you don't add something to the layer below them, it will not really look good. Now I've chosen this oberon brush and you can see it really has a nice texture. I will make it smaller. Trying to do the same. Now, you can really play with this to see how these brushes work. It is a really nice exercise to try out how the brushes work. What I also love to do is to get the smudge tool and go over it a bit with a smaller one, and make a gradation like this. With the smudge tool, it adds a bit more of this rough texture to it. You can add fur on it. I will choose the little pine as well or again, choose this light color, and here and there, I will add some lines like this. The fur is smaller. This is going to be my fur. I don't like this here, so I will try to make it this harsh. Let's go to the wood. I will again select this circle and cut and paste. Yes, and I will choose this brown and I will just fill in. I will choose, again, the free sketching brush, the shader, and go with this lighter color and widen it a bit. No, let's try something else. Let's go to the sketching and with the 6B pencil, make it smaller. You can add this smooth texture over it, and voila, we have wood. Let's go to the foliage. Cut and paste. I will go to the color palette because I'm not sure what color I have chosen. Yes, it will be this light green. I will go here, and with this light green, I will just fill it. I will look at the painting, artistic, Hartz. Let's try it. I don't like it. Leatherwood. This looks great. Okay. So I will Alpha lock this layer and with this brush, I can add some interesting texture over it. What do you need to do with the foliage is actually, it is stylizing. What I'm doing is stylizing so many things that are at the ground. There is grass. There are different plants, etc. I could do something like this for the foliage. I might do something different. But the point is to try out, add this little circles, how you can create a texture that imitates these things. Now, the bush, I will make the bush, oops, it is here, like this. I will, again, shade it. Maybe I am going to shade it with the airbrush and soft brush, and I will choose this light green. Oops, Alpha lock obviously. Wow. Looks great. I will make it dark here, but I don't want to lose this color. I will add it back a bit. Looks good to me. Maybe I will use the free illustration brush, the liner, and I will add some stylized things like this to the bush. Okay. So these are the textures I'm going to use in my illustration. What I love to use is adding lights. As I already told you, I want to use light, so I will choose yellow, and I am going to use oberon brush. I will make it big. I will use a new layer. This is too harsh. I'll go a little bit orange lights like this. This is going to be my light and texture brush that I'm going to also use. In this video, I have given you my personal tips for illustrating different types of materials. Feel free to apply them to your work. In the next video, I'm going to tell you about the ways I shade my illustrations. 16. BONUS VIDEO: Shading: There are several ways you can shade your illustrations. In this video, I'm going to show you three types of shadows I apply to my illustrations. The first one, I'm just going to write it here, is the shading with color and texture. What this means is that I choose a color, and you have already seen that before. I take a shader brush or you can choose, for example, from the Airbrushing to Soft Brush, and then we use that. This darker color, after locking the shape, I'm going to shade and I add shadow. By rearing actually the pressure in my pencil, I can add bright by choosing the light color and just control the smooth gradation. I usually progress in my illustration by laying down these base shadings. Now, the second type is Inclusion. Now, let's say that this circle will be divided into two colors. One will be, let's say the skin tone. It already has, I Alpha Lock the shape at first. What I'm going to do is I'm going to select this shape and create a new layer above it, so that I can shape this shape. Let's say this is the hair, I'm going to shade it with this darker version. I'm doing the same thing I've done here. I'm going to add the hair with a little point, let's say like this. This is the hair. What I'm going to do is to go to the shape of the skin that is below the hair, and I'm going to shade it. Similarly, I will choose a darker version of it. I choose the shader brush and shade it where these two meet. Where two things touch, It creates a shadow. Take a look at my fingers. Where these two meet, there is a dark line and the shadow gradually comes out of it, right? So you need to go really dark at the place where these two meet. This can be done with the color. I have shaded the hair and shaded this skin as well where they meet. The bigger you make this shadow, the bigger the distance between these two touching things are. Look at the shadows on my hand. I am putting away my hand, and you can see the shadow is bigger, I put closer at this, look at this line here. It is harsh and dark, and move it away, It is bigger. This is when two things touch. There is a third thing I usually do, and that is the drop shadow. Let's do it similarly. I will select this and create a new layer above it. Let's say this is going to be the leg of the unicorn on a new layer and a layer below is going to be the foliage. This is the foliage, I'm just going to create it quickly, and this is the leg of the unicorn. What I'm going to do now, is I'm going to shade it a bit. Okay. So this is the leg of the unicorn sitting on the foliage. Now it will have a drop shadow. It is basically when things don't just touch, but the whole dimension of the character has this shadow below it. What I used to do is that I create a new layer, I choose in painting the round brush, choose black color, lower the opacity, and make it bigger. I just draw it here like this. Now, I go to the Adjustments, Gaussian Blur, Layer, and I Gaussian blurry it a bit. This is great because if you take a closer look by creating this Gaussian Blur, there will be a line here that is lighter, and it is great because light always bounces back, and this creates the effect that these foliage is blue and it bounces back to this shape. Let's do a little recap what I've done here. The first type of shading is getting color and texture, and by using it, create a clean gradient between the colors and the shadows, and I use this to create a base for my shapes. The second one is the Inclusion. When two things touch, they have a shadow that is rough and I use color to shade where these meet. Actually, I'm using a color and texture again, but with intention here. Then we have the Drop Shadow where I place a transparent layer of black, and use Gaussian Blur, and it creates the effect of the bouncing light and a drop shadow as well. Now we are all set up to complete illustration. You have a clean line arts, know how to choose your brushes, know how to illustrate different materials, and how to put shadows to your work. See you in the next video where I'm going to finish up my own artwork. 17. Final Illustration: We are almost done. This is the time where you finish your illustration. In this video, you can watch me illustrate my own concept. It will be spread up, but I will be commenting on the process. This is not going to be a step-by-step, choose this brush, choose this color, choose this layer tutorial. But I will rather show you strategies and steps take from the beginning to the end of completing my illustration. Give yourself time to complete your illustration. Do not rush, but also do not hesitate and make it a month long procrastination. Jump into the work, have regular breaks, and enjoy the process. Then see you in the final video. Don't forget to upload your project to the project gallery. Now let's see how I complete my artwork. Now that you are all sat, you have the line art, you have the techniques, you have the shading. What is left is creating the illustration. Create a new canvas. I'm going to create a screen sized canvas, but feel free to use any ratio you like. I'm going to take my line art and import it here. Feel free to use any style, your our own illustration style. To finish this illustration, you can use my techniques that I have used. I am not going to comment on the whole process, just in bits. This will be sped up. The basic technique I'm using is that I fill in shapes due to basic shading, and I progress from character to character. Then I am building up the background and the ground itself, and the last step is setting the light. I will also give you some tips. Make sure that the sketching layer is at the top, lower it's capacity, and make it to multiply. This multiply blending mode will allow the sketch to be seen through if you accidentally place a layer over the sketching layer. I go create another layer that I'm going to fill, either with gray, white, or black. I will use this gray. I will add it and put it to color, and this will be my value check layer that I'll have at the top. When I turn it on and off, I will see the values in my artwork. The first layer I'm going to create is going to be below these two layers, and I start illustrating. I'm going to use the brushes that I have already shown you. You can download my free illustration brushes. I'm going to use the liner and a shader from the draw being the little pine and the Oberon brush, and I'm going to explore brushes if I need to. I'm going to set the background color to a bit a darker gray so that I can really see the colors I'm working with. [inaudible] I call this finished. Oh my God, how cute this illustration turned out. I totally love the surprises. So what do you think? 18. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you finished the class. I'm so proud of you guys for sticking with me during this whole process. I hope that I've been able to teach you some tips and tricks that you can apply to your own practice and that will help you to tell stories with bigger confidence. I am so excited to see your final artworks so please make sure to upload it and share it with us. Don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare to stay up to date or follow me on social media for the same reason, and most importantly, leave a review for the class. It is really important to me to know what you think about it. It is really a great reward to read your words. Thank you so much for taking the class and hopefully I'll see you in my other classes. Happy creating.