Digital Painting for Beginners in Procreate

1. Introduction: Are you intimidated when you see a realistic painting and think, wow, I couldn't do this. Well, in this class, I will prove you wrong. Welcome to the digital painting for beginners class. In this class, you will learn how to paint objects realistically. You will be guided through the whole process that precedes the painting itself; analyzing shapes, defining light and shadow, choosing the right colors. The class is perfect for very beginners in painting and drawing too. The focus of this class is to give you a basic thinking process about objects, how and what to observe, and how to apply your observations to practice. Hi, my name is Alexandra, aka The Artmother. I hope that you know me. If you don't, I'm an artist, illustrator, a professional art teacher, and my superpower is teaching complicated art topics to beginners. Beginners tend to make the mistake of thinking that art is just sit down to the screen or Canvas and these beautiful aspects just magically fly out of them. But they don't. This causes procrastination, fear of failure, and lots of unfinished artworks. Even though try and failure are part of the process, it is important to understand that there is a thinking and planning process before the painting itself. If you want to paint objects realistically, you need to analyze shapes, values, and colors. I will show you how. In this class, I will be using an iPad and Procreate. But as these concepts apply to any medium, you can use any software, Photoshop or Krita, or even follow me traditionally. You don't need to know how to draw either. The skills you get from this class, will give you the most basic knowledge every artist should have and will give you a stable base you can build on on your artistic journey. They will set you up for success for sure. Are you ready to start? See you inside the class. 2. About the Class: Welcome to the realistic painting for beginners in Procreate class. I'm so excited to have you here. Let's just talk about what this class will be about. I'm sure that you are totally scared when you see extremely realistically painted objects, and you think that, "Oh my God, I can't do this", but I have to prove you wrong. You can totally do this because it is not about an extreme talent, it is about your focus, your dedication, your patience, and thought process, if that makes sense. There is a method that I love to use in my drawing classes too, it is called the coloring book method because everything is about shapes and color and detail. The level of detail, I would say it rather like that. Let's just take a look on some realistic digital paintings. This theory and method applies to all mediums. You can do this in any medium, watercolors, acrylics, oils. But now we are on digital. We are going to work in Procreate or in any other software that you are using. It is great because you have the undo button and you can work in layers and it's so much easier than with mustering a medium. In those cases, again, it is not about the technique itself, but rather about mustering that medium. Now we are mustering this digital medium and we're going to go through that process. Alright, so just take a look at this, for example. Realistic silver objects. As you can see, there is a general sketch and then they are just levels of details and values, and colors. Just take a look at this cup. This is a simple sketch. Then everything is really about base colors and then working with the shadows and light, and adding details. What I want to state in there, actually four steps that you need to utilize, you need to take. Let's just go back to this worksheet and I'm just going to show you. So there are four steps. At first, choose the reference. It can be a real object or it can be a reference photo. It is because if you don't have enough experience, you cannot think about the shapes of the shadows and the light. It is great to have a reference that you can copy. It is all about that. Everyone is doing that. Don't think that art is just sit down to the Canvas and just paint realistic objects without a reference or without years of practice, okay? Then you have to define shapes. There is the main shape of an object. In this case of this doughnut, you have the base shapes. There are two circles, totally simple, and then you have the shapes of the shadows and shapes of the highlight. That's it. What you need to realize is that everything is about shapes and the level of defining shapes will define the level of detail in your artworks. Then you need to choose colors, obviously. When we are working in colors you need to think about them, we are going to work with it. Then you need to just fill in the colors to this shapes. So that's the coloring book method. It is totally simple. In this class, we are going to work with a simple object so that you know what I'm talking about. I'll just move on to the first step and let's choose a reference. 3. Choose a Reference: In this video, we are going to choose a reference for our realistic painting. You can choose a real object and take a photo of it or you can just observe it. What I suggest is to go to a stock photo site, I love Unsplash and think about a simple object. I suggest some fruits or simple sweets like macarons or doughnuts. Something that has the base shapes really simple. Let's say, I will just write cherry here. This is a great reference photo. It is simple, the shape is simple, everything is sharp and it is in a great contrast, so you can really see the shapes themselves. Or let's say, apple. I wouldn't choose this one because it is not adding contrast, but for example, rather this one or this one. It is totally up to you what object you choose. I will re-write doughnut here. I would love to choose a doughnut that doesn't have these things on the top because that is a bit time-consuming to draw it all at the top. I'm just going to go through this images and find one that will be my reference photo. I couldn't find one that I like, so I will try my little doughnut here. I will just take my camera and I'll just take a look at it. I just created a screen sized canvas and I'm going to insert a photo, and here it is. Now, I'm going to use this photo as my reference. In this video, your task is to find a reference and put it into your canvas and see you in the next video where we are going to do some observational practices. 4. Observation Practice: Now you'll have your reference photo in the file. Now I want you to turn this layer off and create a new layer. Now in this class, I'm just going to use my two free illustration brushes. These are my favorites and I can basically do what I want or anything with them. They are the best brushes for me, obviously. You can use any brush that you wish. Choose the liner and choose whatever color you like. We are going to do some observational practices because that is what we will need. You can now experience the difference between drawing from yourself and from copying something. What I want from you now is to draw a square. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you will have Edit Shape here and just click "Square", and just draw some simple shapes into it as you feel. You can draw a straight line, you can paint a dot. You can create a spiral and some zigzag lines. Now, create another square all down, Edit Shape, Square, and try to copy these lines. You have drawn something from yourself. Now we need to observe this one. You'll need to look for reference points. Approximately, where does this line start? Approximately from here to here. I will copy this line. I have this dot here. I'm going to copy that. This starts here. I will approximately look at it and okay, it doesn't work. What you need to do in-between, follow this original line with your eye and try to copy it. It's not that easy. It is not that easy to copy something than draw from yourself. Even though thinking of ideas and drawing beautiful artworks from yourself might sound even harder. But as you can see, I have practiced in observation, and this is not that perfect, but this is just practice. Let's just create another one and create a new square. I will draw two of them right away. Again, just think of some shapes. This is a way how you can practice your observational skills. Let's do this, I have a dot here. This starts approximately here. So train your eye. What I suggest to you to do few more before you start drawing or sketching out the object that you are going to draw, just to get into the mood of observation, to warm up your hand and your eye at Sarah. After you are done with at least three of the squares and copying them, see you in the next video where we are going to sketch out our object. 5. Creating the Sketch: In this video, we are going to define shapes. I'm just going to turn off my practice squares and turn on the doughnut. I will select this layer and just put it to this side. Actually, you can trace it, but as the point of this class is to teach you skills and observation and how to draw or paint realistically, I really suggest that you don't cheat, okay? Now I'm going to choose from the Sketching the 6B pencil, that is my favorite, and choose black. Now I'm going to speed this up because I want to make this as realistic as possible and it requires focus. I'm going to speed up and I'm just going to draw these main shapes and then I will talk about the shapes of the shadows. As you can see, it is not perfect. What I was doing was using lots of short lines to find the form. But again, this is just practice. Your drawing will be as good as much time you are spending on it. I don't really want to overdo this. I also want to point out that our point is not to be 100 percent perfect. Allow yourself to enjoy the process and don't overdo or over stress things. Creating art should be fun and, in my opinion, this is going to be just great for my drawing. I will do a recap. Use lots of short lines while sketching out because you are not exactly looking at where you are drawing, you are observing a shape. You have your eye there and just draw a line, then look back, and then look back, and you are switching this. Use lots of short lines like this when you are drawing. Then you can erase. If you can see, I have lots of details here, and it is totally okay, this is just a sketch. The next thing, and now you need to switch your eye to the shadow shape observation mode, if that is a thing. From the base shape, try to see the shapes of the shadows. This is why I wanted you to choose a simple object. This is a little distracting that I have a lot of these on the top. It would have been great to have just a glazed doughnut, but it is okay. If that helps you, you can just try to draw this shape of the shadow to the reference photo and then try to implement it into your main sketch. I can see that around this hole there is a shape like this. This is a bigger shadow as the light is coming from here. Also, I have a big shadow starting from here, as you can see. I will just approximately put it here like this. I hope you can see that, I will make it darker. Don't work too dark. I'm just going to make it darker so that you can really see where I put these shapes, like this. Then look at the drop shadow, as you can see, here is a nice drop shadow. I'm going to add that also to my drawing. As you can see, as the light is coming from several directions, I have also a variety in the drop shadow. Here is a dark shape, here is a lighter shadow, and here is a very light shadow. You can implement that also to your sketch if that makes sense. Here is this and this. Now, I'm not going to add all of these, I will add it at the end as a detail. I'm now focusing really on light and shadow. We'll just talk about the light. Switch your eye to the light shape observing mode. Now try to see where the light hits the object the most. As you can see, this is really light here, this part. I'm just going to set it. I have a small shadow here, but almost right at its top, I have a really light part. Then at this part it is really light, so I will try to make it as light as possible at this part. Yeah, basically, that's it. I will just name these shadows. This shape is a highlight, these are shadows, this is a drop shadow. I'll just write it here and then delete it. This is a highlight, this is a shadow, this is a drop shadow, and everything that is the rest of the doughnut is the mid-tone. This drawing or sketch can be as detailed as possible. The level of detail in your painting will depend on how exactly you define these highlights, shapes, shadow shapes, drop shadow shapes, mid-tone shapes. If you go back to these paintings, I would maybe show this one. As you can see, here is a highlight, here is a highlight, these are mid-tones, then there are shadows. Actually, they are reflections. Anyhow. Also here. There are so many little different shapes reacting to light and shadow and that will result in a realistic drawing and painting. As you can see, this is really not about an extreme talent, it is about observation and your patience to do this. To be honest, I'm not really patient. I don't really like painting too realistically. It is a great practice. The more objects you paint realistically, the more you will know about them when you are illustrating, for example, in your artwork. Even if this is not your style, you don't really want to paint very realistically, it is totally okay, but it will improve your skills. Just take a look on this egg. Can you see? It is a simply shaded circle with really weird, very light shapes, highlights and it already creates the effect of light, and different materials have different these shapes on them. So that is the trick. Focus of this class is to help you to understand this trick. It is all about shapes, all about shadows, and color. I will turn this off. Let's just move on to the next lesson where we are going to choose the colors for our artwork. 6. Choosing Colors: In this video, we are going to choose colors for our drawing. Basically, what colors do you have to choose? The easiest way is to pick up the colors. But I have tons of colors in my reference photo, so which ones to choose? I would love you to go to Palettes, create a new palette, and set it as a default. So when you go to the Classic, you have it here so you can fill it up. Now when choosing colors, you can cheat. For example, with the Procreate's new tool, if you go back to Palettes and add, create a new palette from photos, and you choose the photo, it automatically imports the most colors, basically. So you can do this. You will already have a palette that you can work with, but I'm not sure that you will know which colors to use. It might be confusing. Another way is to constantly pick a color then paint with it. Now, I'm just trying it out. Just paint with it. This is what I love to use some. But now, I would really love you to understand how to choose colors. Go back to this untitled color palette and basically choose colors for these different values that we have already defined. You will need a color for the shadow. You can just pick a color and not from the shadow itself. Maybe you can do that so let's just do that also. This is going to be the color for my shadow. Then choose a color from the place that you have in the shadow here. Then go to the mid-tone. Choose a color for the mid-tone. Then choose a color for the highlight. It's going to be the lightest for the highlight. You have the drop shadow too. Wow, you have five colors. Now another thing that I want to show you is the value check. I will create a new layer above everything and fill it with black or gray, it doesn't matter. Let it be gray and fill the whole layer. Now, go to the blending mode of this layer and make it color. Now you can see it in grayscale. Now you can see what kind of intensity you will need to put. Actually, you can see the shapes of these shadows and highlights, a bit better in grayscale. That is a way to help you with these shapes. Now I can see that my observations weren't the most perfect, but I don't care. Fine, cool. Basically, this layer, you can just name it "value check" layer. If you have been with me in my classes, you know that I always use this value check layer to check my values. It is really handy and I totally recommend you to keep a value check layer in all of your artworks, all of your illustrations, so that you can check your artworks in grayscale because your artworks have to work in grayscale as well. I'm going to turn it off and now we have colors begin. All right, so now we have colors and we are going to use this. Obviously, while painting, you can just pick up colors if you feel that you miss a hue, or you can use this imported palette from the image. They are very useful actually, but I would now stick to these base colors because they will give you really the base of the artwork. Now, let's move on to the next video where we are going to again practice a little bit before we start painting. We're going to try out our brushes and practice gradation. 7. Practice Gradation: In this video, we are going to practice gradation. I will love you now to turn everything off again and create a new layer. Now, go to the Illustration Brush to the Liner and let's choose the lightest color that you have chosen for the highlights. What I'm going to do is to make a brush as big as possible and draw a shape like this. You are going to practice shading. One thing is that going from one color to another don't necessarily have edges. What I mean by this, Alpha Lock this shape and I will show you what I mean. Let's choose this darker color. If you just add this color like this from a part of a donut, let's say it is just a part from here, this can be that one color goes to another like this. When it is in a really harsh light, or it is in contrast, it is really contrastive, I don't know, photo or really harsh light, so very contrastive lighting situation. But mostly, there was blending. You can do blending with this brush, if you are drawing it would add in an angle and then just push it. But you can easily do this in real brushes, but now we are in digital. This is why I have the Shader Brush and you can see, what will l do? I'm increasing pressure. Can you see how smoothly does color goes to this darker one? I will choose an even darker color and do it again. Really lightly, push, increase pressure and also change the angle. Go over it also several times and maybe I will try it with white and this edge. Now I went from white to this dark color with this simple Shader Brush. Basically, I want to explain how these two brushes work. I basically painted shapes with the Liner and with the Shader I create this gradations and shadings. As you can see, what it does, because this Shader Brush has a texture, its base shape is this one. It really nicely adds texture to the shapes and also changes colors. As you can see, I have used white, pink, another pink, the darker red. There are four colors, but if you can see, it created such a variety within this one shape. Here it is dark red, lighter, lighter, lighter, and when you go closer, you can see the textures how they work. Now, what I want from you is to draw a base shape with the Liner. Then choose the Shader and go through this main colors that you have chosen for your illustration or painting, and try to create a nice gradation going from one color to another. Actually, you don't necessarily need to go for in similar hues. I'll just show you something. Let's say, I have this light pink. I will Alpha Lock it and choose maybe a blue or gray with the Shader Brush and you can go from one color also to another in a different hue. But you need to keep in mind that when it goes into gradation, this is a bit transparent, so you will see it through the pink. So maybe it would look really weird with this green. Let me just draw it [inaudible]. It will look a bit weird but it can be done. Going from one color to another. This is also a great activity to experiment with colors, to learn what works together and what doesn't. I don't really like this part but okay. This is a great exercise to get to know the colors better and to learn more or to gain more control over the brushes and to know them. This is the way I'm using just two brushes. I suggest if you're using different brushes or you want to apply completely new brush that you haven't used yet, just try out how you can work with it in gradation. It is important that you know in what function you can use that brush. So I don't want to talk too much about this. Let's just move on after you practice this. I'll just move on and let's start painting in the next video. 8. Painting the Donut: All right, so let's do this. I'm going to click on my reference photo and make it a bit smaller. Put it up here and go to my sketch and place it to the middle. I will erase this lines, and actually I will go on to the reference photo and you erase it. I made a little order and my layers, I will create a new layer below this sketch and lower the opacity of this sketch and go to this layer. Select the liner and select the mid-tone. I'm going to paint the main shape with the mid-tone because it will be so much easier to widen and then darken it. It is going to be the base color of the doughnut. I'm going to speed up the process where I'm just not talking, just drawing or painting. It is not annoying too. I also turn off the sketch to see if my main shape is all right. I don't mind if there is a little texture at the edges, but you might want to have it really sharp. That really depends on you. Now, I will over look this layer and go with the color of the shadow, and I will choose my shader and I will fill this shape with the shadow now. Again, I will try to make a gradation from this dark to lighter. I pushed a brush as much as possible here, and as I'm going to the main color or the edge of this shadow shape, I try to make this gradation. If I've overdone it, I'll just pick up the color of the mid-tone and just paint a bit back. It will result in a nicer gradation and also texture. I will go back to this color of the shadow and do it from outside. Again at the outer side, try to push it as much as possible, and then try to create a gradation. You can also check this part. You might want to add not just this sharp shadows, but if you can see, for example here, it is not that regular daring our little undefined shadows like here or like here, it goes a bit out. You can just observe and try to add as much detail into this possible, but you don't need to overdo this. This is again, just practice. I will go back to the main color and smoothen this a bit, we'll turn off this sketch so that you see I already have some really amazing shadows here, and I can just turn on the value check and see the shapes of the shadows. They are almost identical. I can see that this is here, a bit darker and also here. I will try to add a bit of the shadow still here. As you can see when I hold down this color button, it will change the color to the color I used last time. I will add a bit of a shadow still here, a nice shadow here. I can turn the sketch back on. Now I can choose a color for the light, this will be far. I will make it a bit bigger, and I have the shape of the light here. Maybe it is not that light as I want it to be, maybe I want it to be lighter, see how it works. Again, apply degradation. Here we have a great light. Let me make it a bit bigger. I will go back to the middle color and just smooth it a little bit, so it is not that harsh. Turn off the sketch. This looks incredible. What do you say, and we only work with shapes and free colors, incredible. Now let's do another incredible thing. Put the layer below this doughnut, and let's go for the darkest color, for the shadow here, and it can be the shader. I will just add it here. One more thing I will do is go back to the doughnut, make it smaller, and also create a bit of degradation to this middle edge so that it goes from this dark to the shadow color, if that makes sense. It is not that harsh. If you take a look at this, you can't really see that harsh going from this back shadow into the color, but it is a bit smoother, so yeah. Go below again. Now turn on the sketch, make it bigger and work on the drop shadow. Here is this darker drop-shadow. Here is this lighter drop shadow. Now, if you might want to change the background, you don't want to paint with white. I will add a bit darker shadow here to the edge a bit. If you don't want to paint with white, I suggest you don't get back from this shadow by painting white, but we're choosing the eraser and choosing this shader brush to be your eraser. Now you can, again, create a smooth gradation and get back from this shadow to make it smoother with it. Just a bit lighter. Let us do. Wonderful. We'll turn off the sketch and take a look at that. Perfect. Now what I missing are these colorful candy from the top. I might spend a little time on adding them to the artwork, so I will speed this up and see how it goes. I will use this color palette now to help me. For the base shapes, I will use the liner brush. I think that's it from me. I have no patience to add more of this candy, but I want to make it a bit more realistic. I have it on a different layer. I will duplicate it and the one that is below, I will hit "Select" and choose black and fill layer with black. I will place it just a little bit below because here is the light coming from. It is now too harsh, so what I'm going to do is to get Gaussian blur layer and Gaussian blur this black. I will make it a bit smaller like this and lower its opacity. Just a little bit of a shadow for this candy here. What I can also do is to Alpha lock the layer of it. Hit "Select" and create a new layer above it. Choose white, and choose the painting brush and your round brush from it. It has a low opacity, so I will a bit lighten those that are at this highlighted parts just a bit, and choose black and darken those that are in the shadowy parts just a bit. It will create a simple variety and the color of this candy. They lost a little bit from the saturation, so what I can do is to lower the opacity of this light. I can also go through the blending modes. Not perfect. Actually, if I would spend more time on it, it will look a lot better. But my point was to show you that it is easy, isn't it? Or wasn't it easy? We were just filling in colors with five colors. These five colors, two brushes, and some shapes, and we have a realistic donut. You will get this procreate file so that you can see my layers, what I've been doing, and I'm really, really looking forward to see what you create with this class. Again, choose a simple object so that you don't need to, for example, do a book or I don't know, a robot where there are so many different shapes. Make sure that the base shape is simple. An apple, a peach, a banana, a donuts, a macaron, anything. Try to choose an object that doesn't have too many details like this candy. Make it simple. What you need to do is to observe the shapes of the shadows and understand how it is built on. One more thing I will try is to change the background color. It works on this one as well. Wow, it looks better. I will turn off this, and I have a wonderful donut. Yummy. I will taste this one. I will create a new layer, and I will sign it. Amazing. It was a pleasure to have you in this class. I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned a lot. See you in the final video where we're going to do a little recap of what we have learned. 9. Final Thoughts: Congrats on your hard work. Now you know how to paint objects realistically. How amazing is that? I'm so proud of you and I can't wait to see what you've created during this class. Make sure to upload your project to the Project Gallery. I would also love if you could tell me in a few words how did you like the class and a review. I hope to see you in my other classes, too. Follow me on social media on Instagram and Facebook as theartmother to be up-to-date about the latest classes and challenges. It was a pleasure to have you in this class. See you and happy creating.