Drawing Parent-Child Moments for Children's Book Illustration

1. Intro: Hello, and welcome back to my latest class. I'm thrilled to share another class focused on children's books Illustration. We will dive into a world of character design again while creating a heartwarming parent and child moment. This class is perfect for boosting your skills, whether for personal or professional work. Hi, I'm Iva, and I'm a full time illustrator. My experience in creating engaging characters has led me to a range of projects, including the award winning Lego Friends concept, which was turned into series on Netflix, numerous books, magazines, and spoke illustrations for various clients. In this class, I will guide you through designing a storytelling moment, featuring parent and child characters, highlighting differences in style and proportion. We'll examine numerous references, while I share tips on what to notice before sketching. As always, we will use simple shapes to establish proportions and poses, and this approach eases the pressure of achieving perfection right away. I will also share with you what I'm noticing on the references and what to think about while sketching. Now, for the fun part, while adding colors to our character scene, we will set them in a meadow. This will add an extra layer of enjoyment to our practice, and I will be there every step of the way making this class accessible for both beginners and experienced artists alike. So I hope when you follow and watch this class, you will feel super happy about your project illustration, and you will share it with others. And if you didn't know yet, in addition to over 40 classes, I also create tutorials and fun art challenges. So please sign up for my newsletter to stay updated, so you will know about upcoming content, and you can also get my free brush set and explore other cool content. Before we dive in, we can also connect on Instagram and there you will find my latest artworks and glimpses into my life as an artist. So let's get started with expanding your horizons and drawing awesome characters. So without further ado, let's start and see you in the class. 2. Silhouettes: As you can see, I collected some references. I want to share with you some tips what to look out for when collecting your own references and we'll take it step by step before we start sketching. First of all, let me open this reference because what I want to show you here or share a tip is that I would like you to try to choose references where you can see the full silhouette. Because seeing full silhouette, which is not the case in this one, is better, and it helps you with good sketching practice, and it's important to start with the clear, well defined images where the entire body of the character is visible. Because this helps you to understand the overall shape, also the perspective and proportions of the figures that you are drawing. Because by seeing the full silhouette, you can better capture the essence of the pose like this one lying on the sofa and the interaction between the characters. It's also useful to study how the light and shadows play across the entire form because you can see the light is here on the left side, and then there is shadow here on the right side. You can always even establish the light source. While talking about light and shadow, this helps you to add depth and realism to your illustrations later on. We will practice this in later lessons when we will add color and light and shadow. Just to mention it here as well before we start sketching, choosing references with full silhouettes within the picture frame helps you with the sketching and composing your images. Now, let's talk about another aspect. 3. Proportional Differences: Another aspect of drawing parent and child and in this case, mother and the child is proportional difference or proportional differences. Let me open a different one. For example, I really like this photo. Also the composition and the colors and poses of the characters are. You can also see as in the other ph references, some proportional differences. Because accurately showing the physical differences between the child and the adult is essential for visual clarity and immediate recognition of their ages. Because as you can see already in photographs, the child should be illustrated with proportional larger head and shorter limbs compared to the adult. Because adult should display more elongated limbs, as you can see arms. If you compare the arms on the child and the parent, here they are much shorter and parent limbs are much longer. Parents should always display more elongated proportion features. These differences should be pronounced and clear when you illustrate your characters. Because that will help your viewer understand the characters, roles, and ages. I talked more about proportions in the previous class, so you can check it out with more examples. 4. Activity: Now, another point, let me open a different reference. I can open, for example, this one. Because I want to mention the activity that we are going to illustrate here. Because we are showing the characters engaged in one storytelling activity. We have the book reading here, as you can see, and you can add your own story by adding a specific title on the book. Maybe you have a book that you still like to read as a child, or you actually like to read to your children Or if you are illustrating something for editorial or book, there is a specific title that is requested for this illustration. Another thing when we are talking about the activity, which we are illustrating in the illustration, is that we are also emphasizing the relationship between the characters. Because the child is supported by the parent, which means that also the parent is supporting the weight of the character, their pose, and they're also holding the book for the child. This not only captures the physical proportions, but also conveys the sense of protection and nurturing inherent in the parent child dynamic. You can show all of this in one single impactful illustration or image. Positioning the characters within their environment in ways that reinforce these proportions can be effective in your illustrations. As I mentioned, it's not only about the size difference when you are drawing your characters, but also how you pose your characters is helping you show the dependency of the child and the parent. Also this thoughtful placement within the composition can make the illustration more dynamic and engaging. Depending how you place the characters and how they are interacting with each other. When we talked about angles and poses where you can see the full pose, this pose is a little bit easier than the previous one that we looked at because here you can see a little bit more for shortening. Which is changing the proportions in the perspective, compared to some of the other ones, where here there is a nice relationship between the parent and child, but you don't have as much foreshortening because you see only front of the characters. This is an option if you feel like the foreshortening and the perspective is too challenging to illustrate. 5. Consistent Features: Now, let me open a different one. In this one, you can see that the parent and the child even have the same clothing, which I think is very cute, especially in the illustrations. In this illustration, we will focus on a traditional look where the parent and child share similar physical features. There are, of course, many different types of families, but in this case, for this illustration, we'll try to focus on finding similar facial features and things which parent and child can have in common in the physical appearance because it's easier to show the familiar relationship in the illustration clearly. This approach allows for the immediate visual connection between the characters when you are illustrating them, which is essential in this single frame illustration. You help the viewer to recognize the relationship. The future classes, we can explore more family dynamics and more diverse parent child's representative. But in this one, we are emphasizing the shared physical features, as I said, like facial features, maybe the eye color, or distinctive smiles, or we can think about other biological connection. Maybe we can add freckles, or curve to their eyebrows or subtlest signal their relationship without the words beyond the physical or facial features. Maybe the body language can also mirror the family ties. For example, you can have the same sitting pose if you're illustrating something like that. Or maybe they can be both laughing because both faces should light up in similar ways and you can emphasize sharing joy. These two characters are both focused on finding the right page. They are sharing the moment as well. You can think about similar face expression when you are creating this type of illustration as well. Because integrating these consistent features with the overall composition of the illustration will help you in grounding the characters in their shared world. For example, in this one, you can see they are in the living room. But here we don't see many other storytelling elements, which you can also add later. Because if you create also more family connection believable, that will help you with more the narrative and overall visual theme. Let me see. In these pictures, we don't have many toys or other storytelling elements. Here we see only generic sofa, but you can see a little bit of the toys there. You can think about what else do you want to add as a storytelling element there. But what you can also do is to connect the characters further. For example, you can give them similar outfit, which you don't see in this illustration, I mean the photo, but we saw it in this photo reference. You can connect the characters with a similar headband, so they are both blue, or they are dressed in the same outfit. You can maybe mirror maybe the same bracelet, or you can give them similar shoes or similar haircut, which I think will create the nice connection between your characters in the illustration. 6. Facial Expressions: Now, if I open this photo reference again, we can see the connection in the face expression. Facial expressions help you to convey the relationship of the characters. In this one, we can see the characters are looking at each other, but you can also create different storytelling moment where the characters are both looking into a book. You can notice that it has totally different feel to the pose and how the characters are positioned. Because you can also focus on different expression where one of the characters is looking directly to the camera, where you create different relationship because the character is looking directly at the viewer. This is something you can decide about how you are going to position your characters. Do you display the relationship between them? Do you want to have the focus on the story in the book or more connection with the audience? As I mentioned with the previous references, try to in the illustration, focus on the facial expressions of both parent and child? And show their emotional relationship and overall tone. These expressions should be clear and strong capturing the moment that feels real and emotionally touching. Here we see the characters focusing on the book, and you can see the m is reading to a child. Paying attention to details like these within the expressions can make the illustration more powerful. Subtle cues like the way the light falls on their faces as well or the shadows, and highlighting the certain emotions can enhance the mood and depth of the scene. These artistic choices are crucial in the illustration context. Where every detail to support the overall impact of the image. Make sure that these expressions match the theme of the illustration or the article or the book. Are the characters happy or what is the mood that you are trying to convey? Are they calm and relaxed, or are they more joyful? Maybe you can create different moment where the characters are a little bit more active and laughing more or they are in the outdoor space. So as I already mentioned, try to also consider surrounding colors and elements of the scene to match the mood. 7. Angle and Composition: Now let's talk about also the angle and composition. In this scene, we can see some white space behind the characters, and they're placed in spacious living room, but it still feel quite enclosed. As I already mentioned, the full body pose lets you to capture the entire form of the character, how the characters interact, which is the crucial thing for the storytelling, as we mentioned. So balancing the composition with a negative space is another effective technique. As I said, by using the space, we can highlight the closeness between the characters or create sense of isolation even or openness, depending on the scene needs and the story that you are trying to create. For example, in this one, if you want to create more sense of closeness, you can add more elements to the scene. For example, this one, has less negative space and it feels a little bit more cozy. For instance, we have here large open space, and when you even see the sky, you can evoke feelings of freedom and endless possibilities when you open the space more. Conversely, a close tight space as we looked at in where is it? Here, it's more closed up, and we are using also warm colors and soft lighting. This can create a feeling of warmth and protection. So if I go back to this nature scene, I was thinking of creating the characters, sitting outdoors in a park or or a forest to combine the sense of freedom and openness. While characters are sitting together, emphasizing their closeness, because changing the space within the composition, as I mentioned, significantly impacts the emotional tone and the clarity of the illustration, making it not only visually striking, but also emotionally powerful. So if you look back at this one, this feels very close and cozy because everything is closed off and there is not much negative space. Try to consider what do you want to convey with your illustration. Try to think about the space within the composition and how it will impact the storytelling of your illustration. So varying the angles and the perspective in your composition can also add depth and interest. But we will start with more simple pauses, not too much foreshortening or too much perspective, and we will try to draw the viewer eye into the scene and making the interaction between the characters engaging. Now let's start sketching. 8. Drawing Idea #1: I opened a new document. For sketching purposes, it doesn't have to be very big document. I opened already the bigger size document, so I can continue sketching and coloring within the same document later. And this document is my water paper, I mean, watercolor paper template where I have all the textures on the top as well. So I can speed up the process, but you don't need it for this project, but it just makes the final illustration more textured. So I like to use it quite often. And the size of the document is, let me find it. Dimensions. The document is 5,000 pixels by 3,750 pixels and 300 DPI. I can have the high resolution later on for the illustration. I imported some photo references, so we will look at them. I will show you how I look at the poses when I want to simplify the shapes for sketches, and I will be sketching on the separate layer. You can of course import the references or have references in the reference window and you can import the image here. But I want to show you while sketching on top of the references, so I imported them into the Canvas. Let's open one of the first references. I need to reduce the opacity. So I can sketch on top of it as well and explain what I mean. We see also the layers, I think I will make the illustration. I mean, photo a little bit smaller, so we can sketch here and then we will see also the layers. It's here. For this part, I will be using my chunky sketching brush. It has a nice texture and you can see what I'm sketching. But you can choose your own favorite brushes for the whole class. The brushes are definitely not necessary for the project. But again, I like to create my own brushes. So I can add this traditional look and feel into the illustrations. But again, you can choose whatever brush you like for this project. I have also free set of brushes if you want to explore some of them. Anyway, this brush you will be able to see better, so I need to go to the proper layer. So Maybe yellow would be better, so you would see more clearly in the color palette. I will use some colors from the previous class color palette. But of course, I will upload some of the colors that we will use for the final illustration, so you can explore more. First of all, what I'm looking at this photo is the composition. I'm trying to find the shape. Here I'm seeing these triangle shapes, and also, I'm trying to see how the faces are positioned. We have one of the faces looking this way and the other one is looking down. When sketching the faces. Let me go back to the green. I'm trying to notice the middle part of the face, where the eyes are and the mouth, and then how the other face is angled. You can see this one is angled this way and this one is here. Then of course, we have the size of the head. I always try to Think about the head size. As you can see, this one is angled and this one is looking straight. Then we have the proportions of the shoulders and the child has much smaller shoulders. These are some of the things that I think about when I want to sketch characters like these. I will move this reference to the side. And we will start sketching a little bit more loosely. For that one, I like to use more soft brush, still with some texture, and I like to use more brown color, not black or dark color because I think the brown is a little bit softer. I will start sketching here on the side. As I showed you, I'm looking at where the head is Always starting with just the oval, then I will sketch the shoulders. And then we have the child here on the side. We can use these sketches as just the warm up. Trying to place the ears. The child. They can be very rough. For the hands, I am just using the mitten shapes and we want to add the book. We have these turning pages. Again, just the mitten shape. Now because we're not sketching on the photo, I can make it darker so we can see it better. If you feel like you want to sketch on top of the photo, that's also fine too. Now I can add like suggestion of the hair. Because of this angle, we see a little bit more of the hair, then if you would see the character from the front. As I mentioned, it's sometimes tricky to choose the right reference, if you are not sure about the foreshortening, But I think like this, it's enough for now, and then we have the good and the child has this nice fringe. Y. Other point is when drawing the child and the parent is usually the size of the eyes. You can make the eyes a little bit bigger later, and also the size of the ears. The parent can have a little bit smaller ears, and then you can add bigger ears for the. You can emphasize the size of the head by making it bigger. We can see that the parent has wide shoulders even in this like a rough sketch. Then we have a little bit more hair. Maybe it can be cute. If the two characters have similar hairstyle, as I mentioned, and these catches should be just like a rough idea, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but you can add that maybe to the other character as well, that can be. You will add similar hairstyle. Not sure if this is very readable. Right now, it might look like cakes. Maybe this is not the best in this one, but it's good to try. Maybe what we can do, maybe we can add a fringe to this character. They share some kind of like a feature. All right. I think this is good enough for this sketch, and now we can move to another sketch. 9. Drawing Idea #2: All right. Let's take another reference photo. For example, we can take this one. So I will move it to the side and same as before, I can hide this sketch for now. I will create a new layer, reduce the opacity of this one. And I will sketch on top. I can show you again what I want to focus on here or what I'm noticing first. I'm trying to notice the action pose of the character or how the character is tilted towards the camera and positioned. Then the weight of the character is here at the bottom. And the whole composition, it's again more triangle shape. So this is something that I am focusing on here. Then I am also again trying to see how the phase is angled. The phase is angled downward. Then you can always mark where are the facial features. The face of the kit character, it's more forward. Facing, so it's not angled down, and then we have these elements which are coming out of the silhouette because overall the silhuette is more closed. But here we have more visible bump, and of course, we have also the heads. We are trying to simplify the silhouette as well. This is what I'm trying to see when sketching. Now, I will make this smaller again. I have space to draw, I will switch to the soft brush and brown sketching color. Here, I will start with the head. I usually start with the head because that helps me to position the character, and you can always change the size of the head later on. Then I will sketch the torso. Then as I said, we have the arm sticking out, and then we have the bottom part. This is like the weight of the character. Then I can sketch the knees. Of course, I have the whole class about sketching characters. You can check that out in more detail. Here, we have the book. The child is next to the main character or the parent character. Then we can add the hair and the child has shorter hair. Also, as I mentioned in the previous class about drawing kids characters. You can notice different proportions on the face compared to the parent. As I mentioned, we have the bigger ears on the child, but also you can see it here usually bigger forehead for the child. I think this is a very cute pose. When you are happy with like a rough sketch, you can clean up the sketch on a separate layer later on as well. I can reduce the opacity of this sketch, and then I can sketch on a separate layer. Just to clean up this one. Just to add a bit of the c to the sketch. And she had curly hair. So I'm trying to add that. She's looking down. Then I can add the nose. And then she will be smiling. Now we have the arm, and we don't see much of the body th the book, which is fine because we want to show the sting of the book. Here for the kid, we will add a big ears. And I'm trying to draw similar facial features for both characters. We will have this curly hair, which I think would be super cute. And then the child has these overalls, which I think is quite nice, and then we have these small shoulders. That's one of the things which can help you a lot when drawing the kit characters as well. It's drawing the smaller shoulders compared to more adult character, even though this adult character is more stylized. We still have more narrow shoulders compared to the realism. So now let's add some pins. So not such a big brush. And As I was mentioning, you can add the title of your favorite book, or you can even draw a topic that it's interesting for you. Maybe we have birds or some other topic that you would like the characters to read. Maybe we have some birds here flying or something like that. You can invent your own story. You can imagine something is written there. And then we will just do some suggestion of the food. We don't have to draw it in detail. Here you don't have to draw the rest of the child because maybe it's not necessary to convey the pose. As you can see, we already have the book and I think that's filling up the space pretty nicely. You don't have to struggle with feet if you are not comfortable drawing them. As you can see here, it's not necessary and it's already looks quite cute. Now I can just emphasize the silhouette a little bit more. What I forgot to mention is also neck of the child compared to a parent. Neck of the child is more narrow. That's one of the things you can do here is to neck for the child. All right, I think that's nice. We can add a little bit of shadow here. All right. I think this sketch is pretty cute already. Now let's look at another idea. 10. Drawing Idea #3: Let's catch another image. Maybe we can take this one. Because here I also wanted to show you how you can translate this image into nice composition. Because even though you don't see the character faces, I think it can be if you have it as one of the elements maybe in the book. Because the composition is quite nice because it has this nice curve, and then you have the top part. Then we have the book, and then the characters are sitting closely. There is this nice flow in the illustration, which I think creates very nice shape. Let's delete this one, and let's take a soft sketching brush. When sketching something like this, I would exactly start with those shapes that I want to emphasize, and then I can adjust the proportions later. I like those flowing movements. As you can see, it's very rough. Here, I will imagine the torso. And sometimes you can sketch in very messy way. So only you can know or can imagine where is what? Because these rough sketches are mainly for you. Of course, here when I'm trying to explain stuff to you, I'm trying to make the sketches more readable, so you know what I mean, but sometimes my sketches are so messy that you can't even tell what is what. You can definitely just find your way how to sketch and you can do it in as many steps as you want. It doesn't have to be perfect or presentable right away. Here, I will focus on the more readable shapes. I'm trying to now make a little bit cleaner lines because I already mapped out what I want to sketch? Also this character, I like the flowess, also in the hair, even though I really like also more curly hair and all kinds of different hairstyles. That's something you can also imagine like, what is the character hairstyle? Are you drawing specific story or are you drawing your family members? That's something to think about as well. Here, the child, maybe we can just simplify the face. We are not drawing it. Here, of course, the hand of the child is much smaller than the parent. You will see it here in comparison, which I think that's quite nice when you are drawing, you can see it next to each other. But overall, I'm not sure if I would use this type of pose because I like the poses where you see the phase expression. We have the hair. Maybe we can add the bow for this character too. Maybe she looks too childish with the bow. Maybe some other hair accessory. Maybe a smaller bow, or it can be a flower. Maybe that's a little bit better. But if you want to make the character look younger, then you can add the bow to the hair, as you can see, it's making it younger looking. Here, I'm just trying to align the phase proportions. Maybe we can add the year. Maybe not. I think that's good. We have this bow on this character. All right. Now we have also the shorts. The kids legs are quite thin compared to the pent. That's also a comparison of size. We don't see the other side of the sofa, which I think would be helpful. I think for now, this is okay sketch. I will do another take of simplification of this sketch. So it's a little bit more readable. I will hide the reference and then we can compare the sketches that we have so far. So this one, and then I think we can do one more and I will clean up these two sketches before we move to the next one. 11. Cleaning up the Sketches: A a I a. A a 12. Drawing Idea #4: All right. So now we have three sketches. I cleaned up the other two as well. So now let's look at one more just to fill the page. I can hide these ones for now, we have place to sketch. I was thinking that we can take maybe either this one or this one is pretty cute. Maybe this one is nice, but we don't see the feet of the character here, so we can use the second one for the reference. I will move this one to the side as before. Reduce the opacity a little bit. I can sketch on it as before. Let me take this one and some green color. What I like on this reference is that the silhouette here on this side is almost straight, even though you can see some curves of the head, the hair, and of course, the rest of the body. Here we can see like a frontal view of the legs. There is not too much for shortening. Then here, we can simplify the outside silhouette almost to these shapes. We have this like rounded triangle and here is another round the triangle. You can imagine the overlap of these two characters. Now when I move it to the side again, go to my favorite sketching brush. I will start sketching these shapes like before. I will focus on this composition, as I mentioned, we have these triangles where we can fit the characters within these triangles. We have the torso of the parent here, spine, the legs are somewhere here. The shoes, we can use the other picture for a reference later. Then we have the arm and the book, of, and you can customize your character based on the other references. If you want the character maybe to look more like you and you like certain pose. For example, if I customize this character, to me, I would make the hair straight because my hair is more straight. Here I can adjust the legs because she has two legs on top of each other here. Still keeping quite rough. As I mentioned, I think I will make the hair little bit more straight. Now I can redefine the sketch on a separate layer. I like the outfit because there is such a nice contrast between the stripy shirt and the yellow shirt, but maybe I will use different outfit for a child. Maybe I will make this into a girl, which can look like me and maybe this one can look more like my mom. You can find different reference when adjusting these sketches. I think I need to maybe move the legs, a little bit lower. Because I moved them too much up when I was adjusting it. And I can make the head a little bit smaller because I started with the head, which was maybe too. Let me delete this part. I think that works. You can, of course, also tilt the head if you feel comfortable in different way as well. The head is maybe this way or looking at the child. Let's test it out. I will start with redefining the child a little bit more with more generic shapes. And I will add the fringe like we sketched in the other reference. I think I can add maybe a bow because I think that was pretty cute. How it was in the other reference as well. If you need references for bows, and you want to add them, you can find different references for that. I think this head might be still a little bit too huge, so I'll just make it a little bit smaller. I will add a narrow neck as we talked about, small shoulders. The book, let's see, the book is little bit higher up, so I think we can make it a little bit bigger. We will have the space for the ad a character to hold it. Here we have the hand of the parent. Still using the mitten shape for the hand. Then we have the legs crossed, but I think we can add the book on top of their legs. Here, we have the shoe. Don't forget that the legs of the child be a little bit thinner than the parent. When we are trying to recreate stereotypical proportions for the kid and the parent character because both of them are quite simplified. Of course, there are different body proportions and sizes. For this one, we are just going for this a stereo bigger versus smaller proportions for the parent and the child. Now we will have the child looking down, reading the book. Maybe we can make her smile a little bit more. I will make more like a open mouth for the character. Make sure that the ears are of the same height and the same size. Now let's catch the parent. Trying to keep the face proportions in the middle of the face, following that line. As we talked about expressions, that it helps with the illustration if we mirror the expressions. If the child is smiling, we can make the parent smile as well. I think we can have like this cute fringe for both of the characters and both of them can have this nice hair band with like a bow. Maybe we can simplify the bow a bit more. I think this is So let me look at the reference. As you can see, I'm creating this wavy hair for both of the characters. They are not like curly, but they are more wavy. And this is one of my favorite hair styles to draw. We can also draw this shirt. I think it's pretty cute, as I mentioned, we can just simplify it. I need to move the legs a little bit closer because the torso is here, so it wouldn't fit the best. I will just draw the legs to the even on the reference, they are a bit further out, but you want to have aligned. As we stylize the characters, you can see that this older character still looks pretty young, and you can play with the proportions. If you want, you can make the head smaller and limbs in different proportions. We can still make this head a little bit smaller, for example, you need to switch to uniform ops. As you see if you make the head smaller, it looks already different. So it's up to you how you want to style these characters. So let me look at the other reference. So we can see the legs of the character as well. So I'm sketching here. So What helps you when sketching feet is to try to notice where are the soles of the shoes. And the shoelaces. I think that all works pretty nicely. I just need to move this new sketch a little bit lower. Perfect. On this one, I think I still need to move these legs blo. I mean, the feet because they were a bit out there proportionally. I think I can move also this part a little bit. Yeah, I think this works a little bit better. Perfect. So we have more sketches of different poses. Choose your favorite one, and then we will move on to color. 13. Color Palette: All right. And now it's time to choose your favorite sketch. I think I will go with this one because as I mentioned, I like the reference of the character sitting in the forest or in the meadow. So I will hide the other sketches, and I will kin group these two and I will duplicate it. I will make this sketch bigger, so I can use it as a base. Then I will merge these, so I will flatten this group. I will set it to multiply, so I can sketch under it, and I will also reduce the opacity of the sketch. And I will quickly test out the colors as well. To do that, I will duplicate this 11 more time. I need to make this one much smaller because I want to test the colors fairly quickly on a separate layer. If I test it on a bigger scale, I would focus more on details which are not necessary just yet. To do that, I will choose the watercolor brushes, and of course, you can use other brushes that you like. I like the textures on these brushes. So I will be using these. But again, of course, you can use different brushes that you prefer. For testing the colors, I will take more opaque brush. First, inspiration, if you are not sure where to start, you can take the colors from the reference images that we looked at before. While sketching on a separate layer. For example, here, we have some nice yellow colors, just to make sure that I'm on a separate layer. As you see, this is just very rough test. Then we have some blue color. Maybe I can add jeans in the same total pink color. But as you see, I took it just from the photo and it looks pretty dark, compared to this yellow, I can make it a little bit more pinkish and bright, and then maybe a bow in the hair. Maybe the hair is nice and brown. But as I was mentioning, I wanted to have the characters look a little bit more like me. I will make the skin tone a little bit lighter. I need to have it even lighter because it doesn't stand out next to the hair enough. Always think about the contrast of the hair compared to the character. The book is quite light. Maybe we can make the book in gray tones here. Then the shirt is gray, and maybe the shirt of the kid is also yellow, and we can redistribute the same colors as we have here. Maybe something like this can work pretty nicely. I can mark these colors on the side, so you can see the better. But as you see, it's still and I like this rough edge of this brush. It's perfect for this a rough sketching. Nice. Then I can hide the photo reference. I like the blue tones, so I can mark maybe different coal palate, maybe a lighter blue tones. You can create more blue, almost turquoise color palette, which can be pretty nice. Because when you create these shades of blue and green can help you evoke more like calmness and stability. That's ideal, maybe for even a moody illustration. When you use more of these orange and yellow color tones. We can have yellow, maybe even brighter yellow, And even something like orange. That can be nice with something lighter. And then we would have those nice brownish color tones for the hair. This is one of the ideas because if you use more warm tones like orange and yellow that might highlight the joy and liveliness. I was thinking that I can import another photo reference As we were looking at this photo reference, this one has nice green color tones in there. I can use maybe warmer green. If I go to this color palette, more like warmer greens together with the yellow as we see in this photo reference, I think this can be very nice combination and Maybe from these warmer tones, I can even move towards more pink tones. Something like this. I think this can be a nice color palette just to have another reddish color next to yellow, even though this pink is cooler, yellow, not warm yellow. I will test out these colors on the sketch as well. I will hide this reference. We have space to draw. Just here. I can just move this one. I can make it smaller. Duplicate this sketch and test out these colors here. Maybe they are just sitting on the grass and we don't need to make everything in detail. As we saw in the reference, there were the yellow flowers. And then we can create maybe this yellow shirt, maybe the book is yellow. Then we need the brown hair, like we tested before. Then we need some color here for the pent. Maybe we can keep the blue idea. We have more colors in the color palette. We are not going only for monochromatic colors. But overall, I am using yellow color a so that would be my main color focus. I think this color palette can work pretty nicely. Then we can add a little bit of these yellow flowers. Then we can have a red bow for both of them. Maybe then the book is red. It's actually not too bad, but maybe the book works in yellow. Like this, you can quickly test out your color ideas, and now we can move on to color the whole illustration. 14. Painting Part #1: Now let's color the full illustration. I will cut this part because we don't need it anymore. We can hide also this one. I will keep this one for the reference because it's easier to sketch. I can delete the photo references because I don't need them anymore. I will sketch on a separate layer. First, the base colors. You can choose a brush, which has nice opacity, and I will be using this more opaque smooth brush, and I can just sample the colors from the test that I did on the side, and it's quicker, and I will create the color palette as well, which you can test out, but you can test out your own colors because I think it's always fun to create new color palettes. Now I will just follow the sketch that we created and I will just fill in the shapes with this more opaque, but still watery brush. I like the natural watercolor feel overlap. I don't have to be super precise because I can always blurry together, but it's fun to use. But as I said, you can use a different brush if you prefer different look, and you can always clean up the edges. A Now, I have also brown hair for the secondary character or for the, not necessarily secondary character, but the second one that I co here. Then we have this yellow color for the shirt. As you can see, I'm just following the sketch, not creating any new unique shapes, and we will still add some shadows and highlights later on. Now we want to have maybe gray shirt because I think that works with the other colors. Also for this main character, and you can really test out different colors. Maybe the shirt here in the middle is yellow, and then the outside bigger blouse or shirt is white. You can really test out different colors and play around here and just to customize it and make it your own. M Here I'm imagining that the light is coming here from the top. I can add few of these lighter tones on the top of the surfaces. We have the hair, the shirt, and we can add more of the highlights. But you can where the highlights would be. Perfect. Now, Let's the skin tone and see how it works in this bigger scale. Maybe I will make the skin tone a little bit lighter, so it stands out better against the hair. Perfect. Now the other pens for the kit character. It's, and then we can make the book yellow. I think that's nice. Then the shoes can be this light gray. We need some skin tone here, so there are legs or cs going into the shoes. Then we can add the grass like we did before. I will switch the brush. I will take the brush number 30. I will add some shadows and definition around the face of the characters. I will sample the color from the Canvas and I will make the color a little bit, and then I can follow the sketch. I need to make the sketch a lit b so I see it better. Make sure that you are on the correct layer. Now I can just add some shadows around the face. Perfect. We are just adding a bit of the definition to the hair. I love some of these brushes with a rough edge. I like to combine different brushes when sketching. Some are little bit more loose and some have little bit like a rough edge, which I think adds character to digital illustrations because you can combine different textures and different look and feel when illustrating the characters. And when you find your favorite brushes, which I always try to experiment with different textures, I find it definitely more fun. You don't have to use too many brushes in one illustration, but if you have at least one favorite brush, I think it definitely makes it more fun to play around with textures and maybe different brush strokes in illustrations. All right. Now when we add a little bit more of these shadows and definition around the face. I think the characters already pop a little bit more, which is lovely. I need to add some of these base colors. I will swap to the more opaque brush. Actually, I wanted to use this one. We need the orange color for the bow. Maybe we can make it a bit brighter. Perfect. And then I can add the bow also to this character. And maybe this nice detail on the book. I think that's pretty cute. Maybe we can add the flowers on the book. Maybe they are reading about the nature. I think that's idea. Now I can add at flowers, And I plan to do a tutorial about drawing meadows and flowers. So I will go more in detail about drawing like flower shapes and how to create depth in natural setting when drawing a meadow because when you are drawing a meadow, of course, there is a lot of things that you need to balance and to create that depth in the illustration because the flowers and everything is so lush with the backdrop of a meadow. So I will create meadow more in abstract shapes here, so we don't spend too much time on that one. But let's just add some greenery here and I'm drawing it on the separate layer. I don't have to be so careful around the characters. I'll just draw some green here. I think by adding this green color, it adds this nice extra color into our illustration. Because the watercolor brushes are less opaque, I can also a bit of that greenery around the flowers, they stand out. Perfect. Now I can alpha log this and maybe we can add a little bit of the shadow around the characters. We have some shadow from the characters. Ad. Perfect. That's good enough for now. I will reduce the opacity of the sketch. First, we need to find the right one. Then we can the character facial features on a sear layer. 15. Painting Part #2: Oh. Now, I will create a new layer for the facial features. For that, I will take smaller brush. For example, I can take brush number 16, which is quite small, so I can create nice details, and then I can just draw on top of the base colors. So I will take darker color, and I will just follow the sketch. When drawing the facial features, just make sure that they are in the same height, and also that the eyebrows have the same thickness. Then that the nose, is in the middle of the face, and it's aligned with the mouth. Now I can just redefine the shapes for the head and the ears, just in the corners. When you press with fingers, you can enter the full screen. For the smiling mouth, I'll just add white to suggest the teeth. Now we need to add the facial features for the m in the same way. Just make sure that they are aligned. Now we have the nose. Depending, of course, on the styling, how you draw eyes, and facial features, that's how you can create the facial features basically. As you can see, they are quite simplified here. Then you can add details to the rest of the body and the phase. We need to add outline for the pace and the same goes for these outlines, following the sketch. Y. You can add as much detail to the hair as you want. And if you know, I also have a class about drawing hair. So I kind of ex the techniques and how I hair in that as well. I added more outlines and definition to the overall illustration that we have so far. I used the photo reference that we used for the sketch, and I paid attention to certain lines. For example, this line is going from her face down. I tried to create this curve line. Then there is more shadow here in this part. I added that. Then we have some creases here on the shirt, and then I can add those with shadows, which we will do in a moment. For example, this line should be angled like this because Naturally, I might draw it like this as you saw in the sketch. But in here, the perspective is little bit different. Then I also check the placement, for example, of the knees. That one is here and one is tucked little bit lower and further out of the torso. Here, for example, I didn't sketch the shoe so much in detail. Maybe we can just add the laces, and this should be enough as a suggestion for the shoe, and it's pretty cute. And Perfect. I think that works. We can add also the other shoe here. Other than that, I think everything works. I need to adjust some of the color details. As you see now when I change the sleeve, now I'm missing some of the color here. Perfect. Now, I don't think I need the extra sketch, which was here in the corner. Also we can test out how our illustration looks without the outlines. I think it's looking pretty nice. You can make a copy of the whole canvas. I already created a backup if you are running out of the layers. Now I can also add some of the textures So I added this paper texture background as well as some of the textures for the colors. But it's of course optional. Now I will add more shadows to the layer where we started drawing the hair, and then we can merge it with the other colors when you are hay and you can use this reference p as a visual reference where the areas appear darker. 16. Painting Part #3: All right. To add shadows, I will use combination of two different brushes, this brush number 17, and brush number 30, because I can do more details with this one, and then we can blend it. First, let's make bigger areas with shadows. I can see here on the reference that there is a shadow here when the shirt is open. And we can double check. So the outlines are somewhere here, and I can delete this part of the outline. So I have the shadow there. I think we can actually merge it now. So we have easier time just to work on one layer. Here, I will add the shadow under the hair. Then I will also make the neck little bit darker here. Then going back to the shirt. There are some shadows where the T shirt folds. Also here. I'm always looking back at the reference, where I see the darkest areas and the lightest areas. There are a highlights or lighter parts of that shirt because the light is coming from the top right. So we are working similar like with traditional watercolors if you are using the same brushes, and if not, you will have a little bit different textures. But this coloss is not about the brushes, but about how you can create this nice illustration with mom and the child together, or if you are drawing maybe a father as well. If you found a different reference that would be e to see in the project. Please don't forget to upload your project, or if you are sharing on social media, you can take me, so I can share your art as well. Here, I'm just sampling the colors from the canvas. Now I want to add a shadow here, which is on the shirt. Now, we need to add a little bit more of this blue. Let's darken it in some parts. Like the legs where they are on top of each other, there is less light. We can add some shadows here. Maybe I can create lighter blue. We can mark it next to the colors. This is for the shadows, and this is for the pants. Perfect I ca I want to sample it again from there. Oh. Then we need some shadows under the book. Maybe you can add some greenery on the book cover. People can imagine that maybe they are reading about the nature around them or maybe about gardening or basically, you can choose any topic you want to add on the book cover. That's quite cute. Now let's look at the reference, where else we can add some shadows. But I think we are already getting there. What we can also do now is to add some shadows here. Then we can also add highlights. To do that, I'm sampling color from the hair. I will switch to a brush with more opacity. Then I can add highlights with just a lighter brown color. You can watch my class about drawing hair. If you want to know a little bit more how I draw hair. We don't have to go too much in detail into the topic in this one. We have some of the highlights here. Then we can add some highlights also to the bow. Maybe even lighter. The bow doesn't have to look like a bow, can be more like a suggestion. We can also add nice color to the cheeks of the character. We can do that with a softer brush and pinkish color. Then you can softly paint on the cheeks. You can always adjust the intensity by changing the opacity of the layer. Let's see. We can reduce the opacity little bit. For the girl character, I can higher it up a little bit. I can also add maybe freckles. They seem to have more in common. So that can be. You can use also grain brushes actually for the freckles, or you can draw them one by one. Let me create a new layer for this one and then we can test out the size. Yeah, I think that's pretty cute. I can just add more and then delete some of them. Perfect, and I can add some of these freckles on the um as well. And then reduce the oy, and then I can merge it together, the colors, perfect. When you want to have the colors even stronger and you are using the same brushes, you can duplicate the layer and then reduce the opacity perfect. They are more vibrant, and then you can use the blending or smudge brushes to blend the colors better. For blending, I like to use this brush number nine. And then I can blend some of the harsher edges. But I like this unfinished look of the brushes because then it looks a little bit more painterly. It depends what type of look you like. If you like blended and more clean look. But I still like to see some of the textures. Even these blending brushes that I'm using, they still have some texture to them, so it doesn't blend it completely to smooth colors. We can look at our canvas here more from the distance. You can analyze if you want to add more colors or more textures and more definition. But overall, I think it turned out pretty nice. You can add more details also to the flowers if you want and play around with of the finished look of the illustration. You can also add loose strands of hair just to a bit more movement to the illustration as last details because I think loose strands of hair is always like a nice addition at the end when you have everything done. All right. That's it. I hope that you like your illustration and you can of course add more details and textures and shadows if you prefer when finalizing illustration or you can leave it as it is with more rough edges because I like that type of look as well. I hope that you love your illustration. Thank you so for watching. I'm really looking forward to seeing your versions. Oh.