Transcripts
1. Introduction to the class: Laura, and welcome to this
class here on Skillshare. So this is going to
be the fundamentals of digital painting
in Affinity Designer. And in this course, the delivered expected
project is this apple. So what I've included is the apple that we are
going to be painting. I've also included the
palettes that you're going to need in order to
pull off this project. And we will be doing
only the brushes that come native to
Affinity Designer. So what you're gonna learn in this class
is you're going to learn in mind method
for digital painting. Now it is very, very simple. The first thing
that we're gonna do is we're going to lay
out the workspace. From there. We're going
to create our palette. I'm going to show you
how to put together at painterly palette from the reference images
that I give you. Then from there, we're going
to set up the boundaries. I'm going to show
you how to perform a pixel selection to make sure that we only paint
where we want to paint, which takes away
one more variable. From there, I'm gonna show
you how I share my basis. Now, when I lay my basis, I'm gonna show you my
color strategy as well as how I use the smudge tool in order to get that
nice painterly look. Once we're done with that, I'm gonna show you
how I add details, shadows, and highlights
to make the image pop. Once we wrap that up, the last section
of this course is going to be dealing
with taking the image. And I'm gonna show you some
pro moves in order to kick the image up post-processing
prior to export it. So this is a very good
beginner tutorial. It is about an hour to an
hour and 15 minutes long. And what I'm gonna be showing
you is fundamentals of digital painting that you can
use for your own projects. But the deliverable
for this project as Skillshare's a
deliverable based course. Is this apple? I have a lot of fun doing this. I hope you have a
lot of undoing this. Let's go ahead and delve into Affinity Designer right
here on Skillshare.
2. Laying out your workspace: All right gang and welcome
to digital painting here. So we're gonna go ahead
and we're gonna paint this apple in Affinity Designer. Now most people
are familiar with designer for its
vector capabilities. But what I wanted to do,
I wanted to open up a, an introduction, the digital painting
using Affinity Designer. In all fairness, I will
be using my tablet. You do not need a tablet
to complete this section. You do not need a tablet
to complete this course. This is a tool that
I use that helps me. But believe me, I am
just as dangerous with this mouse as I am
with this stylus. So let's go ahead
and get started. Now, you're going to see
the same sorts of workflow. I have a very defined workflow
that I use each time. First we're gonna set
up our workspace. So let's go to File New. We're going to be
working in digital, so I'm going to
take the DPI to 72. I'm going to make the
document units pixels. Remember 72 pixels
is for digital. And I'm gonna make a 1500
by 1500 pixel Apple. So these are my settings. Let's go ahead and create. Now. You see mine comes with
a checkered background. The first thing that I
always do when I paint, I grab a rectangle and I
drag a rectangle out so that my background is kind of an
off-white. Do what you will. I liked the off white because I like my highlights to show up. And sometimes white on white with highlights and
a white background. Looks a little bit weird. So over here in
the layers panel, now if you don't have the
layer studio panel over here, chances are it's nested
over inside here. So I find the layers and
I always pull this out. And to change the layer name, just click on it. And now we're gonna
go background. Now for beginners, this might be a little
bit intimidating. Do three or four projects, follow the steps and I promise you it will get a lot better. The layers panel is the only
one you need right now. The rectangle that
we pulled from this studio area is
everything that you need. And all I did is change
it to background. Now what we're going
to do is we're going to bring in an image. So let's go ahead and use
our Place Image tool. Now, if you don't have
this tool over here, you can always go
to File and Place. I'm going to choose this apple. And we're going to click, and we're going to drag it out. Now I want you to
drag it roughly to the size that you want to
paint it, make it large. Just like that. We've got our image setup.
3. Creating your pallet: Now we need to set up our palette because
just like a painter, we have to come
up with palettes. We're going to grab to do this. We're gonna grab
the swatches panel. Now if you do not have the layers or the swatches
panel and you're struggling. Check over here on the studio. And if you still can't find it, go to View Studio and you see how I have a
little check marks here. That means those panels are out there
somewhere over here. You just got to find them. Sometimes you may not have checked where you
want to be right now. You want the layers
and the swatches. Now, in order to create a
palette like a painter, the first thing we're gonna do, we're gonna come over to
this hamburger menu and we're going to add what is
called a document palette. Now a document palette
travels with this file. If you had this file
off to a friend, the colors in the palette
will travel with it. This is a great way
to get consistency. Now, before we go further, let's go to File Save As, and let's call this apple one. Alright, perfect. And save, make sure
that's an affinity file. All right, Now you see
right here it says unnamed. Let's go ahead and come up to the four little
lines right here. And let's go ahead
and rename it. We'll call this apple
terribly original. I know. Alright. Now, the secret to
this palette is going to be this little eyedropper looking
thing right here. The first thing we
want to do is we want to get our base colors. Now, let's click and drag
where the red circle is. And you see when I pull
this out, what it's doing, it's going into the image and it's pulling different reds. I'm gonna find a
red that I like. I'm going to click
on it. Now you see this red shows up here. Now, once you have
this hands up, hands off, click
out of everything. Click on the red, and then hit this little button where it says add
fill to palette. The reason you have
to click out of everything is that if you don't, it'll fill the color, it'll fill the rectangle,
it'll fill everything. Alright, now along that line, let's go ahead now and let's pull our darks and our lights. We're gonna come down here. And I'm gonna pull a dark red. See, I clicked on it. Bam. Now let's pull a light, read. Something really light
right about here, I'd say right in here. Perfect. These are going to be
our three colors of red. Now we're gonna do the
same thing for the stem. I'm going to pull in
some of this green look. Ad. I'm gonna pull in some of
the white right about here. Add, I'm gonna pull
in some of the brown. All right, about here. Add. Perfect. We're getting our apple palette
all put together. Now, the last thing that we're going to want to
do is we're gonna go on to some lights and we're
going to want some darks. So let's go ahead and
grab the lightest lights. I think we are
somewhere over here. Add don't forget to put it in the circle there
by clicking on the circle. Then what we're going to
do is we're going to grab the darkest darks now to
do that, Here's the trick. I'm going to come over
to my color palette. You see where my light is? I'm going to push it
up to about here. Once that's there. I might even push it
a little further. Then I'm going to add it
to the palette and bam. Alright, this apple
palette will be available to you as a
download in this lesson. So go up to where the downloads
are for this section. And you'll see it,
this apple palate is going to be available. So not only do you
have my image, but you have the
palette as well. All right, so we've
got the layer, we've got the palette,
we're looking good.
4. Setting up your masks : Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to do what is called
setting up my boundaries. Now, we're gonna be working exclusively in the pixel layer. There are ways to
do this in vector, but part of digital painting is working a lot more in pixel. I want this lesson,
this lecture, this section, to be
about working in pixel. So you see here that this
apple JPEG is an image. This means it's not
really selectable. We have to convert this image over to what is
called a pixel layer. Let's right-click on the image. And let's go ahead
and Rasterize. Now you see where it said image. Now it says pixel. Now that this is a
pixel, it is selectable. So I'm gonna show you the
tool that I use when I have images with strong borders. And when I say strong borders, you see how this border
is really clean. I'm going to come up to what is called my selection brush. Let's click on the
selection brush. And up here in the
context toolbar, you want to make sure you
are on add to the selection. Which means you're going to
add to whatever you select. Egn, snap to the edges is on. Now watch this. I'm going to turn down the
width of my brush a little. That's the little
slider up here. Now with snap two edges on. Look at how when I
go around the apple, it is snapping to the
edge of the apple. Now, we're not trying
to cut this out. What we're trying to do is
we're creating boundaries. Where when we start painting, we want them to be confined
to the shape of the apple. We don't want to have to
create a perfect apple shape. We want to use a selection. Alright, so you see
the marching ants. The marching ants
around the outside of the apple and the
outside of the stem. Now if you ever went crazy, Let's say we went
crazy out here. You can always come over to
subtract and trim this up. This selection brush tool
I use all the time for selections that are clean and
have very defined borders. Now, once this is selected, Here's the last step. Let's go to refine what
affinity is going to do. It's going to seek
out the edges. You see how everything
around it is read except for the Apple. You want to then go
to Output and you want to make a mask
of the selection. Now, why do you want
to make a mask? A mask is going to tell affinity where you can put paint
and where you can't. So let's go to mask and apply. Now, up here, you see
there's the new thing, this little twirly down. Click here, you will
see a mask layer. This mask layer says
that whatever is white, you see the little white
area of the apple. It will show whatever is black. It will not show. Let me do an example for you. And then you'll see exactly
what I'm talking about. Don't do this. This is definitely a
watch and learn thing. Let's come over here. I'll add a pixel layer and I'll show you why I'm doing
that here later. I just want to show
you this part. Right-click on the mask, duplicate, and we're going to attach
it to the pixel layer. You see now the pixel
layer as a twirly down. If I pick a really
annoying color, like green, All right, let's pick a bright green. I decided to paint green
on this pixel there. Watch what happens? Now? Why is it paint in black? Because over here the color
I didn't select the green. You see how I'm
painting on the piece, but no paint is going
onto the white. It's because this
mask has told it. The only thing you
are allowed to show is the part
that is in white. So as long as you have a mask
layer attached to a pixel, you will never go
outside the boundaries. Alright, so how do you
use this practically, let me go ahead and
delete this pixel out. This mask layer right
here is your lifeline. In order to paint effectively, we're now going to
set up our document. Come down here and we're
going to add a pixel layer. Now, the first one
we're going to do, once it says pixel,
we're gonna click on it. I'm gonna call this base colors. These are our pure base colors. Then we're gonna add
a new pixel layer. And we're going to
call this shadows. And then we're going to
add a third pixel layer, and we're going to
call this highlights. Now there's gonna be a
couple more layers added. That'll be a later thing. What I want you to do now, this mask layer,
Right-click, duplicate it. And I want you to put one
at each layer right now. So we duplicated it
right here, right? Click drag, and you see
where it turns blue. You see how the little
rectangles blue. That means that it's now
on the base color layer. Right-click. Duplicate, bring it
onto the shadows layer. Right-click the mask layer, duplicate, bring it into
the highlight layer. Got a new base color
layer for some reason. What you should have folks,
at the end of the day. You should clearly
have your apple. You should then clearly
have a base color. You should have shadows and
you should have a highlight. All right, What
we're gonna do next is I'm going to come in and
I'm gonna go to File Place. I'm gonna bring this
apple back one more time. I'm just gonna put it over here. It's now out of the way. Now I'm gonna show
you how to do this. We're going to grab this apple. We're going to bring it
down below everything. And then we're going to lock it. Locking means you
can't touch it. If I tried to select it. It doesn't allow me to. This folks is my reference. I'm gonna call this
one reference. What we're eventually going
to do once we start painting. We're gonna do away
with this apple. So let's go ahead
and let's do that.
5. Laying out your base colors: Now the first thing
that we're gonna do is we're going to lay
down our base colors. To do this, we're going to
use a very simple brush. Let's go into the pixel persona if you're not already there. And let's grab the brushes tab. Then of course, I've
got my swatches tab. These are the three pallets
that I routinely bring out, layers, brushes and swatches. We are now officially
ready to begin painting. All right, the brush that I will use comes from the
category of basic brushes. Now, I have a ton of brushes. In this class. We will use brushes that
come with affinity. You can buy brushes, you can find brushes on forums. That's a tale for another time. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna use what is
called a basic brush. And the way that you
read this folks, the hard brushes have
very hard edges. And this little number here is how many pixels big they are. So that's a 128 wide
pixel hard brush. So let's go ahead and do this. I'm going to come up here
with my 120 pixel hard brush. I'm going to my swatches, I'm selecting my color. Now, watch this. With my brush selected. I'm now coming across
and I am painting. Now you see that I'm
going over everything. But because of the mask, nothing gets on it. Now, this is not necessarily
desirable because you just lost a lot of the stuff underneath. What I tend to do. Now watch this. I'm going to take
my Apple reference. I'm going to click
it over to the top. Now I'm going to
drop the opacity down to a very, very low level. What I'm really looking for, you see how I can
see bits and pieces. Now this apple, I'm now going to come over
to my base colors. What I'm going to do now is
I'm going to come over to my swatches and I'm
gonna grab my yellows, this color for the stem. I'm going to drop the
size of my brush. Now the size of your
brush is up here. I'm gonna make this
about 20 pixels. Now if I was to pull this line, it would be very
difficult for me to pull. I'm going to use my stabilizer. This is a trick. The stabilizer when you only
have a mouse is a lifesaver. Remember, on this layer
we still have the mask. What I'm going to do
with my stabilizer on, I'm going to go ahead
and I'm gonna paint in the base color for my stem. Looks pretty good. That looks pretty good. All right, Perfect. Very happy with that. Now, this is an important one. You see this apple right here. We can toggle it on, toggle it off, toggle it on, toggle it off so we can
come back to constantly, be checking our work. Alright, so I think that I
am pretty darn good on this. What I'm going to do next now is I'm going to come
over to my base colors. I'm on the base color layer, never, ever, ever on the mask. It's a matter of fact, let's lock that mask. What we're gonna do now
is I'm going to come in and I'm going to grab my lights. Now let's come over here. And we started with this one. I'm gonna double-click on this. And I'm gonna move this in to maybe something that
is a little greener. Maybe something
right about there. Yes. Alright. I'm gonna close that out. Now what I'm going to do is
I'm going to expand this out. And I'm just gonna do
a little bit of this. Alright, now that doesn't
look great, does it? Shouldn't because we're
just doing a hard brush. This is just a placeholder. I'm gonna show you how this
works here in a little bit. I think that we are pretty
good while I'm here. I'm gonna go ahead
and I'm going to add that to my palette. Again, you guys will have
this pallet when we're done. Alright, so if we
come back to layers, we toggle this off. We've got our baseline
here for this. We kind of know
where this is now. I think we're in
pretty good shape. Why don't we go ahead
and call it on this one. And in the next one, we're gonna start working
in some of the shadows, some of the highlights, and we're gonna start
sculpting some of the shapes around this piece. All right, we'll see
you in the next one.
6. Finishing your base layer: All right, folks,
let's go ahead and get back on into this
digital painting. We're now on the shadows layer. And I want to make
sure that you lock this mask layer as well. Now, there are more
advanced ways to do this. You could group and apply the mask over to the
group. All that jazz. I want you to get
in the habit of locking the mask
layer on each layer. We don't know where in this tutorial you're going
to arrive as a beginner, as an advanced user. So I want to make sure I give
you the best information I can to make you a
successful as I can. All right, so let's go ahead and we're gonna be working
on the shadows layer. Now in order to do the shadows, we're going to be coming up. Let's go ahead and
switch our brushes. Now before I was showing
you the basic hard brush, I use for 90% of my work. That is photo and other. I use the soft brushes. Down here. You see we still have the 128. That is a 128 pixel. But see how the edges
are very faded on this. This is a very soft,
round style brush. For my work. This is an important section. I keep the opacity at 100%. The opacity is how
opaque this layer is. But I always put the flow
down around 20, 15%. I'll start at 25 and
we'll see how it goes. But for me, right now, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm
going to drop this flow to 25. And we'll start from there. And with the Wacom, I'm not going to
use the stabilizer. But if I pull large lines
even with the pen, I will. I'll go ahead and
start with you guys so that you can
see how it works. And then we're good
to go. Let's go ahead and get started. Now. We're going to come to the wear and we're
gonna grab the shadows. Now, what we're looking at here, if we zoom into this apple, you see the dark
area right here. And you'll see the
dark area right here. What I'm going to do, I'm
gonna take this shadow. I'm going to make sure I'm on the pixel layer for shadows. I've made sure my
brush is that a 128, and I'm going to
grab the dark reds. Now, we're gonna go ahead and
we're going to grab this. Notice I have my stabilizer on. Now, we're just gonna go ahead and we're gonna
pull this down. We're gonna do it again, and we're gonna pull it down. Do it again. I'm going to pull it down. Now. I might drop my brush size
down a little further. And you see how I
keep adding it up. Eventually it's going
to stop working. That's because I've reached
full opacity for this color. Now, if this is the side
that I'm looking at here, and that looks pretty darn good. If I've taken too much. You can always come over with the eraser with the
same soft brush. And I'm gonna grab
the stabilizer. And I'm going to
drop my flow down to about twenty-five percent. So what if I painted, what is the eraser going to do? The eraser is going to erase. Again, if you've
gone a little far, you can certainly come
in here and correct. All right, now let's do
this area over here. Back to the brush. Same brush, the 128 soft brush, same color, the dark red. But now I'm going to
turn my stabilizer off. I'm just going to tap
what I'm doing here. I'm just tapping in where
I think it needs to go. That looks pretty good. Now, along the side here. Go ahead and grab. Why did that do that? Because it's above
the base layer. Alright, I got you. All right. I'm gonna do it anyway. You see, I'm kind of going through along this
back edge here and I'm adding in some darks
and I overdid the masked. It's because the
shadow layer is on top of the base
layer. That's fine. We'll just come over
with the eraser. Turn my flow up to a 100. I'm gonna take the
stabilizer off for this one. I'm going to bring back my stem. Cool. Let's keep that stuff where that stuff needs
to be right now. I think we've got
that now notice on the side here we've
got a little bit more. Now I'm going to come
in and with my brush, I'm going to turn my
flow up a little higher. All I'm really doing folks, is I'm reading the picture. That's really all
we're doing here. Now. Looks like I've got see how I added just
that little hump there. Got a line there. Alright, perfect. It looks good. What I might do here. Let's add a little
bit more to here. All right, looks good. All right, we're starting
to get this area in here. That looks good. Now let's go ahead and
change the blend mode. Once we have the shadows over here where it says
normal, click down. And we can then change the way that the
two layers interact. For right now, I'm
gonna go ahead and I'm gonna look at this
being a Linear Burn. And I'm gonna go ahead and
I'm going to tweak that down just ever so slightly
right to about there. I think that that
is pretty good. About 54% Linear Burn. Now let's go to highlight. Click down on Highlight. Let's grab the Mask and of
course locked the mask. And let's go ahead now and do the same thing though
with the highlights. Which brush are we going to use? Which colors are
we going to use? We're going to use
the light color. Now. I'm gonna go ahead and put my
stabilizer on for this one. I'm gonna come up, I'm
going to turn my flow down. I think that that's a
little bit extreme. I want a little more control. Now if you get stuck control Z. Now why didn't that work? I didn't double-click. You see how it didn't
show up there. Alright, Now we're
in good shape. Now I'm gonna go ahead
and I'm gonna click the stabilizer off for this. And I very clearly
see on this side, I see two lines for this one, stabilizers going back on. And then I see right about here, Let's turn the stabilizer off. Right about there. Perfect. Then what we're
seeing is over here. Now this is going to make
more sense once I do it. All right, we're gonna
leave that where it sits. I'm gonna grab that 1234. Now, what do we do with this? Watch this. I'm gonna come down here. Actually, I'm gonna do one
more little thing here, stabilizer. I'm going to come
down just like that. I don't want to come down, just bring that right there. Perfect. Now, the same thing we
did with the shadow, we're gonna do with
the highlights. Instead of darkening it though, we're gonna come down and
we're going to lighten it. I'm looking for lightness. I'm looking for things that
will help me with this. I'm gonna go ahead and
I'm going to do a, let's do a lightened
actually screen. And let's go ahead
and shrink this down just ever so
slightly right in there. I liked the way that is looking. I'm happy with everything
that I'm seeing here. I think we're getting
ready to kind of blend some colors and
paint them together. Alright, let's go ahead now
and take the next step.
7. Blending your base colors: We're gonna come down
here, we're going to check our placement. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Now, there's a lot of different
ways you can do this. Here's what I'm
gonna do with you. We're gonna come down here. And with all of
these layers now, I'm going to come
in and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going
to select them all. And I'm going to flatten them. Now, this is an important one. Why would I possibly
flatten them? Because what I'm
trying to do is I want to be able now to smudge them. What we're gonna do.
We're gonna group, then we're going to
rasterize the entire group. Bam, this thing
is now destroyed. It is destructive. Now we're gonna do
the same thing we did in the mask, Right-click, duplicate, and apply this
over to this new pixel. Alright, let's lock this. Perfect. Alright, so what we really did is we applied
the different layers. We got our lights and darks
the way that we want them. Now what we have to
do is we have to add in some sort of visual interest. So to do that, I'm coming
over to the smudge brush, which is right here. And with the smudge brush now, now let's go ahead
and go File Save As, Let's call this App2. You use the smudge brush
the same way as others. It can use brushes. So what I'm going to do, I'm gonna go ahead and
I'm going to go to the sprays and spatters. Actually, no, let's
do let's do acrylics. Acrylics. Acrylics work this way. You see how they've got
these little tapered edges. The reason I wanted to do
acrylics is because I want to be able to smudge these
and kind of make it dirty. I'm gonna choose this 72
pixel dirty acrylic brush. Now, the strength is important. The strength is how much smudge, this gives the flow. I'm setting it 20%. So let's go ahead and
start smudging this away. Now you see that
it's not doing much here because we're
painting on the mask. We need to come
over to this layer. Now. You see we're starting
to get the desired behavior. Now, this gives you that nice painterly
texture that you're looking for as a base. This is really nice. I really like this effect. Now in Affinity Photo, they have a tool for this where it's called the
pain mixed or tool. We use that to occasionally. This gives us a really
nice blend though. Now if you ever wanted to, you could turn up the
flow a little bit. You could turn up the strength
a little bit as well. Down the strength on this. Let's turn down
the flow on this. Folks. This is why I wasn't too worried about the large
sections of color. Because we're going to go ahead and we're just
going to frame those out on the highlights
out of there, bringing them into the
rest of the apple. This is a very painterly
approach to it. Do whatever it is you
feel like you want to do. Notice how I'm starting to
drag a lot of this outward. If it's a little slow for you, turn up your strength
a little bit. Also experiment with
different brushes. What we're doing,
we're sculpting this portion of the apple. So think of it like sculpting. Now what I might do here, I'm getting a little bit, Let's say scratchy in this. So what I might do is I might come in
with my basic brush. I might come down
to my 128 pixels. And you'll see how I
might go into some areas now and make it a
little smoother. I'm good looking good. All right. I think overall, I'm happy with that. I think it's time
to do a little bit of I don't want to put
this the detail work. So let's go ahead. And what I'm gonna do now, I'm gonna go ahead and lock this layer so that we've
got this all locked down. Then we're gonna take
a look at, well, that corresponds
over to the apple. Just check-in. So far. So good, got a little bit
of detail work to do. Very happy with that. We're gonna be finishing this off with the sprays
and spatters, putting in some good highlights. Overall, very happy with
what we have in the base. Folks. This is not the only
way to approach painting. This makes sense to me
because I like putting in my three different
tones in the Apple. I like blocking it
out against my piece. And then I do like
painting it over with the smudge brush in order
to get it where I want it. I really liked this approach. I think it really adds a nice
painterly look to my work. This is what I wanted
to show you in this, there's a 100 ways to do it. In the next section, what we're gonna do now, we're going to call
this the base. Let's go ahead and
call this base. In the next section,
what we're gonna do is we're going to add a
couple more pixel layers. And let's call this detail one. We'll call this one shadows. And we'll call this
one highlights. So we'll move one more. We have base details,
shadows, and highlights. What we're gonna do
now we're going to start moving them
in and we're gonna start talking about how we actually create
these little spots. How do we get some of
the highlights in? And that's where we'll
be in the next area. All right, folks, let's
go ahead and call it on this one and we'll see
you in the next section.
8. Detailing: All right, Again, let's go
ahead and get back after it. So what we're gonna do
now is we're going to do some adjusted light because
we have the base colors now. And one of the reasons why I really liked
to do it this way. When you click on this apple, look at how closely what we did resembles what this picture is in terms of where
this highlight is. If I click it off
and click it on, we're in pretty good shape. I really liked the
painterly look of this. I really probably overuse
this smudge brush quite a bit when doing
this sort of work. What I'd like to do
now is I'd like to go through and we're gonna do the same thing now
with the shadows, the highlights, and the details. We're gonna do the same
thing that we did here. We're going to grab
this mask layer. We're going to right-click. We're going to duplicate. We're going to attach
to the detail layer. We're going to right-click, we're going to duplicate. I'm going to move it
to the shadows layer. We're going to right-click. We're going to duplicate, and we're going to move it
to the highlight layer. Alright, perfect. So now let's go ahead and
start with the details. Now to do this, I'm going to come over here and I'm gonna
go to the zoom tool. We've got these
little dots, right? So we need to create
this pattern, but we need to make it random. So to do this, what we're gonna do is
we're gonna come over and we're going to use the
sprays and spatter brushes. So let's make sure we're
on the detail there. This is important. Let's lock the mask
layer, be consistent. And now let's go to the details. Go to the brushes and find your sprays and
spatters brushes. Now, I like these. I probably overuse them
in a lot of things, but they really work
well for texturing. We're gonna be using the
sprays and spatters. We're also going to be using
the texturing brushes. I'm gonna go ahead. I'm going to grab this 200 pixel ink splatter
tinting brush right here. And we're gonna start here now this is gonna be
trial and error. Let's go ahead and make
sure we're on the layer. Let's go to swatches. And now I'm going to intentionally
grab a bright white. So what I'm going to do
is I'm gonna come down here. I'm gonna click. And I'm going to
push this thing to an almost white color. Notice I'm not going
extremely white. I'm going to keep it
just this side of pure white thread about
here. We're going to close. Now with this selected. I'm going to add this over to the palette, just like that. All right, Now when I say
this is trial and error, use your brush context menu
here to move the width up. I'm gonna go ahead
and I'm gonna move this thing up pretty large. What you're going to want
to do is you're going to want to move this as large
as it'll go pretty much. You're gonna be right
about there, let's say. Now we're going to
add in some dots. Now, if it gets too repetitive, drop your size down. Now, right through here, right through there,
right through here, that looks pretty good. Now there's some larger
dots in here, I'm aware. Let's go ahead and
bring this in. Just like that. Let's put some dots over here. Just like that. Now, if you have areas in which there are larger dots
that you don't like, feel free to come
over with the eraser. And now this is an
important part. Change your eraser also
dispatch and spatters. Then use the same brush in order to erase
out some of these. If I see that they're
a little bit heavy, I'll come in here and I'll erase out my concentrations
a little bit. See how I'm erasing some of
these concentrated areas. No problem. You can use brushes
with erasers. You can use brushes
with the paintbrush. You can use brushes
with the smudge brush. Now, if you wanted
to change this up, we can change from
this ink spatter into this ink spatter into something that's a
little bit finer spray. So we come over to the brushes. We grab this spray and we come up now look
at the difference. Now I'm just gonna put
a couple down here. That'll work where I think
I'm gonna put quite a few. You see up here in
the highlights. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna put a couple of these in. Now the stabilizer was on. I'm going to put a
couple down here. I'm gonna come down here. We're going to put a couple
of these writing here. Now I'm going to drop
this down a little bit. We're going to put a few
of those down in here. Alright, that looks pretty darn good. I'm happy with that. What else do I want to do? I think I'm gonna come down here while we're on
this detail there. I think I'm gonna come
down to the swatches. And I think I'm
also going to put in a couple of dark spots. I'm gonna come down
with the darks. I'm gonna come down
with my brushes. And this time I
think I'm going to use this ink spatter right here. Yes. Alright, now for this one I am going to
grab the stabilizer. Hey. All right, perfect. Then what I'm going to do, I'm going to grab this little
white airbrush right here. There's like a 128
pixel air brush. I'm gonna come over to swatches, and now I'm going to start
swatching in some dark browns. I'm gonna come down to here, right about here where the stem is going to start putting in
some of these dark browns. Now you see that I've
got the stabilizer on. Let me turn my stabilizer off. Perfect. Yes, This
is looking good. Happy with that. Now let's go ahead and grab
the tip of this thing here. That's looking really good. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to increase this
just a little bit here. Put in a little bit
of a fade here. All right, that's
looking pretty good. Happy with that now we need
a little tint of green. What I'm gonna do, I'm going
to come up to my apple. I'm going to grab this. I'm going to find just that
perfect tint of light green. Now if I cannot
locate light green, see, it's not quite coming up. It's kind of that
pinkish yellow color. We can start there. We'll double-click
on this circle. What I want to do now is I
want to bring in the green, so I come over to choose
color and I grabbed the hue. And the important thing is
I'm not moving this dot. The reason I'm not
moving this dot is because I wanted to be
the same lightness. I want it to be the
same saturation. So I'm good here. Let's go ahead and add
this to the palette. Alright, perfect. Let's grab our magnifying tool. Let's zoom back out. Come back down in here. Then we're going to
zoom back in here. Alright, so with this
puke green color, what I'm gonna do, I'm
gonna come down to brushes. I'm gonna go ahead and let's
grab this finer spray. Grab my brush here.
Bring this up. All right, So that did not
work as I wanted the two here. What we're probably
going to do, Let's grab another brush. Let's go this time to my oils. All right. Perfect. I'm going to grab this fine fiber
brush, fine fiber oils. And I'm gonna try this one. I'm gonna come down here. Yes. Sit right there just
like just like butter. Good deal. You see how I'm using
different brushes depending on what I wanted
to actually look like. Now, this detail layer is cool. But notice the stops, the spots are a little bit much. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna come down
to them to try to screen and try to add. Let's do this. Let's go to normal. I'm gonna drop this
down ever so slightly, just like that. There we go. Yep. Alright, I just
dropped the opacity down. I played with the blend modes, didn't quite care for that. And so I'm going to
drop that down just a little bit more. All right. Now, the detail layer I think
is looking pretty good. Lets go ahead and twirl that up. The base layer was
looking pretty good. I'm going to lock that layer. So now I've got
my detail locked. Now what I'm going to do is
I'm going to add some darks.
9. Finishing the darks: So I'm gonna go to the shadows. And this is where I'm probably
going to grab a brush. And I'm most likely going
to grab the basic brush. So let's go ahead
and go to basics. Let's grab something soft. I'm going to grab my
a 128 soft brush. Alright. Now, when it comes to this, I want to add a little bit of dark inside this
area of the apples. So I'm gonna start kind
of tweaking this out a little bit to make it
a little bit cleaner. Let's go ahead and grab this. Let's go to swatches. This time I'm going to
grab the almost black. Now we're going to play
the blend mode game. We are intentionally going
to go to Multiply layer. We're going to keep
this at a 100%. Now this is going to look
way too much, but it's fine. 100% multiply on
the shadows layer. Make sure your mask is on
that shadows layer, folks. All right, let's do this. So I'm going to grab
the stabilizer. Now that looks like
a hot dumpster fire. Let's go ahead and turn down the opacity just a
little bit bare. Now, what is the result here? You'll see how we're now
getting that nice little area. It's heavy here, but it's
not too heavy anywhere else. So let's go ahead and do
this now with this side. Alright, that looks really good. Now, if this is a
bit much for you, watch this, I'm gonna
come down to highlights. I'm going to switch
my highlights right now over to screen. Now watch this. I'm going to come
down to my swatches. I'm going to grab that
little off white. Now I'm going to just rim
this area right here. It's a little bit heavy still. Perfect? Yes. Alright. Now when I use the term rim, that's actually what that is. That is called rim light. So I'm going to now, when I'm on this
highlight layer, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to apply the
rim light over, but I personally always
use my shadows first. It's just what I do. I come back over. And now this is how you toggle back and forth
between your colors. Whatever color is on top here, that's the color that
it's gonna show. So you see that I've just
clicked on my swatch. Now I can toggle back and forth between these colors freely. I'm on the shadow layer still, and I'm trying to
figure out where I want to put my darks. I've got my stabilizer on. You see how I just went
around the rim of this thing? Same thing here. I'm dropping down my brush size. Now I'm turning off
my stabilizer and I'm just putting a little
dark on the side here. Turn back my stabilizer. This is why I said you
don't need a Wacom. In order to do
this type of work. I use my stabilizer most
of the time. All right. Very happy with that. Now if you wanted to, you could come over and you could have created
multiple layers. Let's say if you wanted
a little bit different, look to say the darkness of the apple and the darkness
of the outer edge. I like it the way that it
is. I'm happy with that.
10. Finishing the highlights: Alright, now let's go ahead
and let's add in some lights. I'm coming over
to the highlight. I'm keeping with the 128 brush. But you can see
that right now I'm dealing with about 28 pixels. You see that over here
in the context toolbar. Now what I want to do is I
want to come over to layers. And now this is where I am
gonna create another layer. I'm going to call this
one final highlight. This is the one folks where
I am going to take this. So I'm gonna come
over to swatches and I'm gonna go full
on bright white. This is gonna be the brightest of the bright and the bright. When it comes to my design. I'm going to make sure that's
in the circle and I add it. Now this I use very sparingly. This is the final I need
to add in a mask layer. Let's go to the mask layer. Right-click. Duplicate. Move it over to final. Lock the mask layer. Now, what you'll find is worth the stage in the game
of this painting where, you know, there are probably
easier ways to do this. Like why couldn't you just
do a layer, duplicate it, apply the mask, and then
just save it as a blank. You absolutely could. But as a beginner here, I don't know who's
in this tutorial. I wanted to make
sure that I give you every tool that you need. Now for my highlights, I do this a little bit
differently. Let's go to final. And I'm gonna come over to
brushes and I'm going to use a firm brush. I'm gonna use a round brush. I'm going gonna show
you another technique. The brush is a 16th
pixel firm brush. The color is a bright white. And on this final, I'm gonna move this
over to screen. Now this is gonna be
really bright and it's going to look like trash. Take the stabilizer off. If you're using a Wacom, you can get by without
the stabilizer. And what I'm doing, I'm painting an area that looks similar to the
highlight in the picture. You see where the highlight
and the picture is. Okay. Put a little bit
there like that. Perfect. Looks like it's got
a little highlight there and a little
highlight there. Let's go ahead. Now I'm gonna make
a modification. My brush, I'm coming over here. I'm going to come to dynamics. I'm going to adjust the size. Now what this is going to do if you have a pressure
sensitive tablet, this allows you to
control via pressure, but I'm still going to
use the stabilizer. Perfect. Now I'm gonna move that up a
little bit just like that. Now, notice my stabilizer. I can do this with a mouse. I don't have to have my Wacom. All right, now this looks like a little bit of a
hot dumpster fire here. So what I'm gonna do
here, one more thing. Let's add a little bit
of a highlight here into our stem because
the stem is round. We're gonna go ahead
and we're gonna grab, drop that down a little bit. All right, Perfect. Now, this doesn't look
good. Watch this. I'm gonna come
down to the layer. And now I'm going to add what
is called a layer effect. Now the layer effect, we're gonna go with
Gaussian Blur. Gaussian Blur. Gaussian Blur doesn't really matter how you want to say it. I don't care. And we're going to now
shift this around. You see how we've softened
up these areas now. That is huge. I've got about a 42
pixel blur on this. And I'm able to soften up all of those areas that previously
were a little bit heavy. Then what I'm able to do
is I'm able to come down here and I'm able to
adjust my opacity. This gives me these
sorts of highlights. That is a different technique. I like to use this technique especially because sometimes the How do I put it? The airbrushed gets a
little bit redundant. So I will do the hard things
and the nice thing is, if you wanted to continue
to redraw on this, you come over to the effect. You turn the effect off. There are all your highlights. If I wanted to come back in, let's just add a
little bit more. I come over here. I'm gonna move my size up here. Let me take my stabilizer off. Maybe I want to make
this little boulder. Maybe I want to make this
just a little bolder. Just like that.
Perfect. Welcome over. Throw up your blurred
look at that. Problem solve problems,
stay dissolved. That is another
technique that you can use using a layer effect. Now we're rounding home on this. I know this is getting a
little long in the tooth here. The last thing that
I want to do is I do want to put in
the detail there. I want to do a little
bit more with the stem. I think the stem has been
underserved largely. In this painting. We're gonna go to
the detail there. I'm going to unlock it. Now. I'm going to
zoom into the stem. We still have the mask, so no worries there. What I'm going to do, I'm just going to add a little
bit of greens to it. To do that with my details, I still like to use the
sprays the spatters. I just do I think
that the sprays and spatters break things up nicely. I liked the textures on them. And I have about three or
four dozen different types of spray brushes. So let's grab that
color of green here. And then let's
grab some of this. Now, I'm going to
drop this down here to the infinitesimally small. You see how my width of
my brushes, 53 pixels. This is a prime example of now what I'd like to
do with my oils. I'm going to find my oil paints and I'm gonna look for that broken bristles,
oil detailer folks. And majority of this is
figuring out what each brushes does is just trial and error. All I'm gonna do now, I'm going to stick a little
bit of detail into the stem. Let's turn the stabilizer on. Bring it down like this. Now let's grab a little bit
of this stabilizer here. And I'm just going to rim
the side of this so that it makes sense and it looks
like it's supposed to. Perfect. It turned to
stabilize her off. Happy with that. Let's add a little bit
of this greenish color. Head that pwc is greenish color. Let's add that. Let's soften that a little bit. Basic brush. Now I don't want to put too much on here and make sure you're
on the right layer. All I'm doing is I'm just unifying this
out just a little bit. And let's go to the
highlight layer. Go to brushes. Let's do oils again, I want to bring
back that detailer. Let's grab the whites. Remember this highlight layer? Might be a little bit bold. Perfect. That's great. Now let's go ahead and
turn this highlight down just to Scotia. Alright. I think we're, we're good. Let's try the
shadows real quick. Go-to brushes, keep the oils. Let's do that off black
for just a bit here. Alright. Alright, Very happy
with that so far. Love in the way that
That's looking.
11. Working with curves and exporting: Now the last thing that
I will probably do here, this is going to be
our finishing step. Okay? I'm gonna go ahead and
I'm going to position this in my background. It's up to whatever
you want to do. I'm gonna go back to my pixel or my vector
persona though. The first thing that
I'm gonna do is I'm going to add a layer. Let's drop it in front
of the background. Let's go ahead and
give it nice gradient. Then let's squish this just
like so. It looks good. Now with the background, Let's grab this and
give this a gradient. What we're gonna do here is we're gonna give
it a gradient. We're going to go from, let's go from black
to gray. Perfect. All right. Let's change this guy
up just slightly. Now. I'm gonna show you guys how
to create a little shadow. Realized that the light is
coming from this direction. One of the things
we're gonna do, we're gonna add a pixel layer. We're going to drop this down. We're going to come back
to our pixel persona. Gonna grab a soft, round brush. Brushes. Sorry, basic. There we go. Come down to here. And let's grab the
subtle off black. Now, this layer is
above the rectangle. What I'm going to do now
is I'm going to paint, throw a little bit of
shadow on this way. They're perfect. And I'm going to make this
shadow a little bit long on that side. All right. That's looking pretty darn good. So I'm gonna show you
guys one last thing here. We're gonna group. I'm going to hold Shift. I'm going to select
all three of these. I'm going to right-click
on my mouse. And I'm going to group them. I'm gonna call this
background. Perfect. And now I'm going to go ahead. I'm gonna show you guys
how to do an adjustment. This is an optional thing. It's something I do to
finish my paintings. I'm gonna show you an
advanced technique. You're going to come into
an adjustment layer. And I want you to
create a curves layer. Now where does this
curves layer exist? It's going to pop in somewhere, move it up to the
top of everything. So we're good here. Now, what I'd like to do, I'd like to drop this down. Now. I want you to take
this little dot and I want you to drop
it into the middle. What this is doing,
It's darkening the darks across the board. You see how it's
affecting everything. Watch this. This is a pro move. I want you to come over
to the flood fill. I want you to come
over and I want you to pick the color black. Then with the flood
fill selected here you see the
paint bucket click. This should make it disappear. What has happened? The curves adjustment
has been masked out. All right, Now we're
going to right-click. We're gonna duplicate. Now I want you to take
the bottom one and I want you to call this darken. Want you to take this top one, and I want you to
call it lightened. Now, this is a technique
called dodging and burning. I want you to double-click on the black square where
it says lighten. And I want you to move this up. Now you won't see
anything happen. This little dot in the
middle needs to go up. Close that out. Now these black squares
are what are called masks. When it comes to masks, black conceals, white reveals. So if I wanted to reveal some of the areas where
I want to darken, I need to paint in white. So what I'm going to do, I'm gonna come over
to my basic brush. I'm gonna come over to
my 128 pixel soft brush. Now what I'm gonna do with
bright white selected, remember you have a down
here in your palate. I'm gonna paint on the
darkened area now. Watch what happens. Let me make sure I got the right brush and the right color. Yeah. Alright. Now, it would seem
that everywhere I go, it should lighten because
I'm painting in white. But in reality what I'm doing, I'm revealing the
darkened image. So this is a great way
to finish your art. And what I'm doing
here, I darkened, double-click the image
and all I'm doing, you see the little white areas that are beginning to show up. I'm revealing where
I'm exposing this. This is an advanced move. The reason why I
call it an advanced move is because we're
using some masking. And we're also using
some techniques there where maybe you don't fully understand
is the beginner. The reason why this is cool, watch this changes
over to multiply. Now, I can reduce the opacity so that only areas of my apple
are being affected. And if I ever want to adjust it, I can double-click on the layer. I can make them darker, I can make it lighter. You see how that's
subtly changing. So I can adjust with total
anonymity and total freedom. It's totally non-destructive. So this is the nice
finishing step and we're gonna do
the same thing now enlightened in the highlights, I keep the same brush and
I'm painting in white. And what this is
going to do is reveal the areas that I want to highlight and make just a little bit more visible. I think that I am quite happy with that now I'm
going to change this over. I'm gonna change
this over to screen. And I'm going to drop
down the opacity. Just a little. Last thing that I want to
do here on the Lighten. I want to come down to here. I don't want to put it
in three little dots. Go very happy with that. I think that we're
pretty good there. All right, so let's go
ahead and export it. Go to File Export. Let's make it a JPEG export. This bad boy, Bring
it in as Apple final. Now, you are free to go ahead and share it
about your groups. Alright folks, I like
what we did here. If you want to
don't be afraid to send this over to the
Affinity Designer, the complete guide to
Affinity Designer. I'd love to see what you made
as a result of this class, and we'll see you
in the next one.
Jeremy Hazel, Education Through Creation
