Transcripts
1. Introduction: Welcome. Today's class is all about travel destinations you can explore from the comfort of your home studio. In class, we take a trip around the world painting landscapes and scenic locations with gouache in Procreate. Gouache is the perfect medium for drawing vibrant illustrations, wave captivating, focal points, and everything in between tropical foliage, beach by an ocean, lively markets, and people. I am Yifat, artist illustrator living in North Texas with my family, an industrial designer by profession, and a self-taught illustrator. I license my artwork on print on-demand stores like Society6 and I teach here on Skillshare. In this class, I'll be teaching you the principles of creating gouache paintings in Procreate, all the way from sketch to finished art prints. I'll be drawing along with you in easy-to-follow bite-size lessons. We'll focus on painting elements that you may wonder how to approach and what techniques to use, such as how do we draw tropical foliage, how do we paint water in backgrounds, add textures, work with masks. This class is for illustrators one to learn techniques for drawing complete colorful landscapes. Whether you're a hobbyist or advanced illustrator looking to build your portfolio, you'll finish this class with illustrations that you can share on social media and in your print shop. Join me in class and let's get started.
2. Getting Inspired: Wanderlust is a strong innate desire to travel and explore the world. Tolkien said, not all those who wonder are lost. As artists, we have the privilege to explore places in our imaginations through our creative outlet. So in this lesson, I want to give you some art promts that will inspire you to get your project started. Let's think about oceans and beautiful beach. Maybe a tropical place. How about rolling landscapes that are filling your Canvas? Mountains or activities that we can do outdoors like skiing and waters sports. How about your happy place? It can be a coffee shop, cocktails, friends, or a place that helps you relax. What about an island vacation, an exotic place? A vibrant pool party? I'm thinking something really colorful. How about fruits that you can find in remote places? Imagine a busy market. Maybe in a place like the Mediterranean. Think about street views. How about shopping in an amazing and glamorous city that you'd love to visit? Maybe you're inspired by monuments, these iconic places that you'd really love to visit someday. And maybe you are more into nature hikes with long trails or you want to consider biking in nature. Think about adventure!
3. Project Overview: For your class project, create a landscape illustration of vacation place from anywhere around the globe. Your project can be inspired by a place that you've visited or would love to visit. To get started, research travel destinations online on Google search or Pinterest, and you can find links to Pinterest boards that I've placed for you in the class resources, along with gouache brush that you can download in a list of fun art prompts to get your project underway. I'll be teaching in class various techniques in Procreate but any other drawing mediums and drawing apps are welcome. Remember to share your projects on the class project gallery for all of us to see. Share your sketches and rough ideas and tell us a little bit about your choice of location and the story behind your piece. Tag me on Instagram with your projects and illustrations. I love it when students reach out to me and follow me here on Skillshare. I hope you'll have fun in this class and let's start drawing.
4. Let’s Sketch a Few Ideas: In this lesson, we're going to look at our photo collection and create a few sketches that we can later base our painting on. I created a mood board because for the sake of class, it has all the images that I've picked in the previous lesson. Now it's a good idea to create your sketch on a separate layer than the page because then they will be transparent and they'll be easier to transfer to a new canvas later on. I have my page layer and I have my sketch layer. For sketching purposes, I'm using the 6B pencil. I like it because it's very soft and fun to draw with. Let's start by drawing a rectangle. We can edit the shape. I'm going to choose Rectangle and I can duplicate. These sketches are going to be thumbnails, meaning they're going to be simplified small sketches that we can later enlarge and start working with. Let's merge down these layers, duplicate. Now we have our thumbnails frames ready. I want to start with these street images. They're more complicated, but they have very interesting details to them. Let's see. We're going to draw these in this perspective, where we can see the stairs. At the very far end, we have the sea and these fading mountains. I really like how the mountains are as blue as the sea, maybe we'll have a little ship over here. What I would like to add to this sketch is these perspective lines and some basic architectural elements. Now at the foreground of this sketch, we'll have the stairs and the planters with the colorful flowers and plants. Midground is going to be the rooftops and maybe some architectural elements. This is just a very rough sketch. Here there's another little plant here. At the very back of the picture, you're going to have the sea, like so. All these lines actually point at the very center of the picture, which is the sea. Over there we'll have our focal point which is going to be a little boat. This could be a great painting if you like to focus on all the little details of an image. We'll have some shadows and we'll have flowers and different planters that we can paint. We can even draw the stones that are embedded in the pavement. If we want to focus more on the landscape, we can create another composition. I'll have plants and flowers and more plants with flowers at the other side of the picture. Then I'll frame in something like that. I might borrow these buildings. I like how the houses are built on the hillside on different levels. When we create a sense of depth, maybe add a boat, maybe this boat will be one with sails. We'll need another reference photo for that. I really like the rock formations. We might want to use them as well. Now, let's start sketching a couple more sketches. I'm really interested in the view from above and they're also a great opportunity to draw some tropical foliage. The focal point for this sketch is going to be around here, roughly around the center. I'm going to frame it with tropical leaves. Now, we don't really need to get into the exact shape but give ourself an idea of how we want to proceed when we get to the actual painting. The leaves are not just at the very edge of the page, they create a diagonal and frame all over the top, on half of the top of the page, and I really like that. We'll mark that as well. We may want to recreate those shadows as well. For that, I can tilt my pencil. Remind myself that there are some interesting tropical shapes that I can create with the shadows. In the center of the page, I have this nice couple. They're holding hands, though they're not very complicated to paint. I really like those chairs as well. Maybe instead of this shadow, I'll put in the chairs. For now for the thumbnails, just marking where everything should be. Then we can go in and refine the sketch as we go. The market scene is very simple. If you're drawn to very colorful objects and you want to show more of the details and less of a landscape scene, this is a great opportunity. We can do the doorway. I actually really want to do this as well. Let's make sure we're on the sketch layer. Maybe the perspective in this sketch is going to be some of these tagines that are very close. The doorway is going to be farther out in the background. We're actually going to play with the perspective and draw some of these very close. The background is going to be very small, like smaller elements. We have four sketches and we can pick one or we can draw all of them. In the next lesson, we're going to discuss colors and start refining our sketches to create our painting.
5. Brushes Overview: Before we dive deep into our painting, let's take an overview of the brushes that we'll be using today. Although [inaudible] does have a [inaudible] brush, I won't recommend using it in the painting that we're going to paint. Because it's more of a watercolor brush. It's transparent, and we're actually looking for that opaque painting effect. One of my favorite brushes lately is the Blackburn. You can find it under the drawing menu. The Blackburn has these rough edges. It really looks like we're smearing paint on the canvas. It doesn't have any transparent mode. If I lift my stylus, I'm just going to loose the paintbrush. It's like the brush is getting drier and drier as I paint with it. If I press, the strokes become larger as if I'm applying more paint on the Canvas. These are the brush dynamics, and probably use it to color areas that need coverage. Another brush that I would like to recommend today is the Oberon. Let's pick a slightly different shade. This brush is really heavily textured, gives you the feel of drawing on Gordon Matt for your painting, which we often do when we draw and coarse. It's really opaque when we're pressing on the brush, but it's more transparent as we loosen our pressure. The pressure sensitivity does not apply so much to the stroke, but more to the color. I just want to show you this brush because I love it, the Old Beach. This is a wonderful watercolor brush. We might use it for our foliage. I'm pretty sure it won't be using it today. That just so pretty that I want to introduce it to you. The Old Beach. The Hartz brush is wonderful for applying texture. It's very big. Like drawing with a sponge. Low pressure, give it a transparent layer of color. The more I press, the more [inaudible] paint becomes. I use it a lot to add texture with a clipping mask. If we draw leaves and foliage and I want to add some extra texture to them, I would most probably choose the Hartz brush. The last brush that I want to introduce today is the Larapuna. This brush is great for layering color on the canvas very roughly and mixing it in. Now, this brush is like a mixer. Now if we paint with it very gently, it will mix the colors together as if we were working with a wet paint. It's really like [inaudible] now if we try to layer another color on it, you'll somewhat mixed together. Let's try differentiate shade. Not really pressing, like on very light pressure. Remember this brush because we're going to start painting with it. Larapuna from the artistic menu. Next, we're starting to paint.
6. Picking Colors: To start drawing I want to import all these sketches into a new Canvas. I'm going to duplicate my sketch group, flatten it. I want to show you two ways to import it. One, I can copy the layer and then paste it in a new Canvas, or I can just drag it and place it on my new Canvas. Another option, swipe down with three fingers because I copied the layers before I can simply paste it down to this Canvas. Either way works, sometimes though the finger ninja just doesn't work, so don't get frustrated. Just copy and paste is fine. Next thing we want to do is enlarge the sketch layer. I would pick Fit to Screen, and since I have this extra bit here, then we'll just move it a little bit so that it will get cut off, and do this again, there. Now I have all my sketches on the Canvas and I want to pick one to start working with. We'll start with the sketch of the couple on the beach with green foliage all around. I'll duplicate this sketch layers just so that they'll have a copy of it, and lock this one and hide it so that I won't mess with that layer. For this layer, I will simply make it larger, makes sure that we are in uniform rather than free form because we don't want to distort our image. I'm just going to make it bigger until it fills my page, there. Perfect. The next thing that I want to do is make the sketch layer more transparent because I find it super distracting. Now you have the option of grabbing a new layer and starting to get into the very fine details of the image before you start coloring it. That's called refining the sketch. Today I want to go on a different route. I want us to be more free, more flowy, and really work with our big brushes and color, and get into the details as we work. I just want to put it out there that you can refine your sketch at this stage, but we're choosing not to. What we want to do is start to bring color into the page. The best way to do it is first to work with a reference. I'm going to hit this Build Tool over here and pick up reference. Now we're actually ready to color. I meant to pick the Laura Puna brush and paint in the very first layer of color, which is the sand. After the sand, we'll have another layer for the foliage and other layers for the couple and all the little details. The very first layer will be the sand. It's just a lot of big brush strokes to work with. I want to work with yellow. It's just one of my favorite colors. But yellow is not necessarily the color of sand. We may want to choose other colors like more of a brownish-yellow. We may want to work with a more sandy or maybe a lighter color, which is more mutants. Your sand can be any color that you like. I actually like this one. It's a mix of yellow with white, so it's not supersaturated. Let's talk about saturation for a moment. This is a very saturated yellow. The more I grab the color from the top right part of the wheel, the more saturated the color will be. The more I drag my peaker to the left or to the white, I have a car that is more mixed in with the white. It's like taking a cube of yellow color and mixing it with a tube of white color, and this is what we're going to get, so it's less saturated. Another option for you is to pick colors directly from your reference photo, and I wouldn't recommend it, but I want to show you this option. Let's say that we grab the sand. The sand in the picture only looks like it's a very, very desaturated yellow, or brown or orchard. It's actually quite colorless and gray, and it comes from the reds, not even from the yellows. If you're grabbing a color directly from photo, you might get paint that is not necessarily right for you. Let's even try one of the greens just to show you. This green looks more of a yellowish on the Canvas, but in the photo, it looks very green because colors are relative, and this desaturated sand, this green looks very bright. It's actually a type of yellow. I actually want to work with this yellow and my other yellow, which is this one. Let's clear our Canvas and begin.
7. Painting Textured Background: Now that we understand how colors work, let's start painting in the beach. If you pinch and zoom out of your canvas, making it small, and work with a large brush, you'll be able to have an overview of your work pretty fast. This is how I usually start working because at this stage we want to lay the foundation for our painting. I'm working with large brushstrokes, just trying to start filling up the canvas with paint. As you paint, switch between different shades of the same color. Pressing down on the color swatch will replace it to the last swatch used so I can easily and quickly switch between my two yellows when I work. We're looking to create enough interest between different shades of the same colors. That will have the effect of textured sand and also that would allow us to later on sample colors directly from the canvas as we paint. I might decide to add brighter yellow and change things a little bit as I work. Allow yourself to explore and change. Remember that this is a very forgiving brush. It's a mixing brush and you can tie in different shades and they will work well together. Don't overthink this phase, just keep on working and adding color and play with your texture. A few things that I've worked on in this first layer of the painting, I decided to add a more vibrant shade of yellow to the sand just because everything seemed muted. Bear in mind that we can always edit the colors in each layer later on. If I decide to change the colors, I can always go ahead and do that just by editing the hue or the saturation of this layer. But for now, I'm very happy with the colors that I've painted in. This is a really super fun way of creating a foundation for the painting. Add on color and mix it up a bit and use this specific brush to soften the brushstrokes if we want to. Great job if you've been drawing with me so far. Up next, we'll start exploring ways of painting in foliage.
8. Tropical Foliage Practice: In this lesson, we're going to take a break from our painting and practice ways of drawing foliage. Now go ahead and practice painting these big leaves with me, because next, we're going to take all these skills to our Canvas. Make sure I'm on my painting flair for drawing. I'm not going to use [inaudible] because it's just a crazy big brush. I want to do this one. Start with the Oberon. The easy way to draw this one is to box it in and add the details. I'm trying to keep the base of each section of the leaf narrow and branch it down from there. Now we want to add these little fingers then come out but I need another brush. Let's see how this works for us. What I did here, I was looking for a brush that is still textured. This is the Freycinet and it has the tip to it. I was looking for that tip. It works well with the Oberon brush because it's also similarly texture. Super quick and easy way to draw this expressive palm. I'm just painting it all around, adding all these nice details. I make sure that I have these fine tips at the end. You can go ahead and try it out with different brushes. What you want to make sure that you have is a similar texture to these brushes. We're going to see that they work well together because I don't see different textures when these brushes meet up. They've to be similar. We certainly want to have the one at the very end with these fine tips. I want to add some different color variations. I can go ahead and grab, let's say we can grab the Oberon again and get it into some slightly darker maybe towards the bluish part of the color wheel. To bring in texture, I'll make the brush larger. Here I can give it some more depth. If I use the same brush, my texture is going to seamlessly merge with the layer underneath. But if I want to give it a more distinct texture, I might go ahead and use the Hartz brush. Let's try a different color. Actually, this one actually makes it too flat. I'm going to go to the deep blue. There. Now the texture is slightly different. I can go ahead and use a lighter green and add some dramatic touches at the very end. I like it. This is a really heavily textured leaf. You don't have to go out and draw such a heavily textured leaf. But if you want to, that's totally up to you. It's an option. If we want to correct the amount of texture that we added, all we need to do is sample the base color and paint it in. As simple as that. That's the advantage of working with Alpha lock. Everything is done on one layer and we don't have to go ahead and switch between the clipping mask to the original layer and we want to make changes. Now I'm going to release the Alpha lock because I want to add more details that are going to be drawn above this layer and beyond the boundaries of this layer. Now we want to add these nice veins. I'm going to sample the darker color and go ahead and pick a smaller brush. I'm going to use this one. I'm going to go to the very base of the leaf and do all these concentric lines. They can be a little bit wobbly. They don't need to be perfect. I do want to make sure that these lines come really out from the base of my leaf. All we need to do at the very end is stretch out the stem or the branch that holds the leaf together. We painted in our first leaf. Next, I would like to show you how to paint in a banana leaf. Banana leaves have these very long oval shape, slightly rectangular but still pretty rounded. It has these veins on the leaf that goes parallel. We're going to repeat these lines and sometimes the leaves break, so we might want to show that in our illustration as well. Let's draw this one with the fluid pan brush. My fluid pan brush is available for download from the class resources. Go ahead and use it if you like. I created it specially for this class because I just love how it feels like to go wash brush. The first thing that we want to do with a banana leaf is to make the oval shape. Then I might want to add some shadow to the side of the leaf just to start in with texture. We're going to use my Oberon brush, and pick a slightly darker color. Now the banana leaf has these lines geometrically veined. So I can show them when I paint. The stem of the banana leaf has two shades because it's rounded, so we'll have the darker one and the lighter one, and from there we'll draw these veins on the leaf. Let's go ahead and draw the branch first. Nice. Now, pick up a darker color. What I want to see when I paint is so different colors that are mixing in. If you imagine gosh, paintings, we're going to mix up the colors on our palate, real palate. I'm trying to mimic this when I draw. I also think it's really more interesting when we use lots of different colors in the same color family and they really work well together. The last thing that I want to do is add some texture to the edges of the leaves. Hey, let's do another version of a banana leaf and this time, so this is a side view of the banana leaf. It's a good idea to create different versions of the same leaf to add more visual interest. The shape is curving. Then we want to close it with a waving line and color it in. After we paint the leaf in, we want to add another layer of color, and this time in a darker shade of green to add depth and create the illusion that the leaf is actually folding, we'll finish it up with the leaf lines and tear up the leaf a little bit using our eraser. Lastly, what I would like to show you is the Monstera. Monsteras are big and very expressive leaves. Monstera leaf creates very interesting shapes. It has this little tip. From that tip on, we can draw in those torn edges of the leaf, and at the very last stage, we can also erase the holes in the leaf if we want to, after we've painted it. Let's draw a very basic shape of the leaf and then color it in. Finally, we'll add the lines on the leaf again with two different colors to create a sense of dimension and shading. We'll finish up the leave with erasing the holes. With that, we have practiced three basic shapes of the leaf, and up next we'll start painting in tropical foliage directly into our beach. I'll see you up in the next lesson where we start applying all this knowledge and practice into our painting.
9. Layered Palm Leaves: For this lesson, we'll start painting in tropical foliage at the edges of our painting and so we leave room for our focal point, which would be somewhere around here. The sketch gives us some context to know where we're going next. I'll uncheck my Sketch layer and you can just tuck it away for now. Now I've created a new layer for my foliage, and I've already placed on color. These are just colors that I like to work with. But I think that for drawing a foliage, we need to have a choice of several colors that will alternate between to create that gauche effect. The trick is to start with your darkest color and work from there. The base layer for the leaf will be your darkest green. On that, I'm going to add lighter green and then lighter green and at the very end I'll have my highlights. Once I have the shape of the leaf ready, I'll go ahead and pick lighter shade of green and add some more brushstrokes. Gradually, I'll create the shape that I'm going for. My first brushstrokes are pretty rough, I'm just placing color on the canvas. But the more I work on the leaf, that's where I want to get more into the details of the shape. Create these fine tips for each section of the leaf and overall create a nice shape. I'm gaining control over the painting the more I work, and that allows me not to overthink the way that I paint. I play with the colors and the shape. I will try to create some variations with the palm leaves by choosing different colors to start our new leaf from. If I started painting my first free leaves with the most darker color, the next layer of leaves will be with a slightly lighter shade and that helps create that playful layered look of palm leaves that are kind of resting one on top of the others. The ones at the bottom will be darker and the ones at the top will be lighter because they're closer to the light source. If I changed my base color to a lighter green, I might need to go ahead and pick new colors from the color wheels because the colors that I have set on my canvas are suited more for the darker leaves that I've started painting. Don't be afraid to experiment with colors. Keep in mind the color scheme that you've set up for your painting and work with that. One other thing that I would like to mention is the shapes. I'm trying to paint, different types shapes, so some leaves are going to be more from the side view, others are more from the top and they're all bending in different ways. Overall, when we look at the complete canvas, we'll see different shapes of leaves, leaves with different sizes and dimensions, so that overall our Canvas will be playful and more dynamic. Some of my tropical leaves are going to be quite full in shape and others are just going to be the tips of the palm. Sneaking from the corner of a very side of the canvas, and that's I think create a lot of interest and movement. With that, I hope you're getting inspired to go ahead and paint your own palm leaves on your canvas. Meet me in the next lesson where we'll be playing with shadows of palm trees on our sandy beach.
10. Blending in Shadows: In this lesson, we'll add shadow to our painting, and I suggest creating a new layer to paint our shadows on, because we're going to use blending mode for that layer. Setup the blending mode to multiply so that will be able to get the sand texture underneath the shadows. We will pick a light brown color which is muted grayish brown. Over saturated color will draw too much attention, and shadows are usually dark and colorless. Since we're making painterly choice, the creative choice, our shadows can have some, use, some colors that are more interesting than merely black or gray. As I paint, I draw inspiration from my reference photo to get a sense of the angle of the shadows and the shapes that it creates on the sand. When I paint in the shadows of the palm leaves, I'm not actually drawing a palm tree, but rather create different shapes of palm leaves with different angles, and try to tie them in together in this big mass that is the trunk of the tree. I do want to create an interesting shape with my shadow that will reflect the fact that the shadow is created by palm trees rather than just a big blob of shade that is shapeless. Basically, my shadow layer is a painting of its own, and what I'm aiming at is adding interest to the whole picture with the shapes that I'm creating with painting the shadow. The thing that I like about this specific painting is that I can really play with this layer and create very free shapes that resemble palm tree, but are a little bit removed from the actual shape of a palm tree. Because the shadows work the shape, and so that allows me room to play with my painting. Another thing is that now after we've made so much effort to draw palm leaves that represent the shape accurately, we can give ourselves some freedom when creating the shadows, so we can be more playful when we paint in the shadows and loosen up a bit and explore the shapes as we draw. To have interest, I'll draw some palm leaves that are picking in from the perimeter of my page, and so I'll have diverse shapes in my shadows, and not the same shape repeating itself in variations, and I think that really adds more interest to the painting in my composition. Now here's a tip. When I draw, I usually like to take a few moments every once in a while to pinch in or pinch out. Not sure, to make my Canvas smaller, and that allows me to have a broader view of my work. Here I can assess how the shadows work with the palm leaves above them, and see if everything looks interesting enough to move on with my painting. The last thing that I felt like adding to the shadows are variations in color. This is not replica of real life, we don't really see that in shadows. But I just felt that the shadows were too opaque, too boxed in, and I really wanted to add the feel of the layer underneath, open up the brown shapes of the shadows with paint stroke in the same color that I used for the sun. Adding some light touches with yellow paint brush all over my shadow, I think it adds to the movement and lighten up this layer. I'm really liking how this looks so far. Go ahead and create your own shadow layer and play with your painting, and meet me in the next lesson where we start painting in some more details.
11. Ocean Waves Practice : Let's bring in more details into our work. As far as the foliage goes, we can always use different tropical leaves for this painting. I might choose to add some more palm leaves, but I can do it later. I'm actually thinking of adding a seashore at this corner of the painting. Let's go ahead and add a new layer. I'm just going to lock my other layers because I'm constantly bumping my pencil against them and picking them accidentally. I'm going to go and pick a nice blue for it. When I'm painting here, what I'm trying to do is leave some of these brushstrokes visible. I want to get the brush strokes to show on my canvas. So I'm trying to make sure that when I draw, I can see them. I like the feel of analog paint in a digital canvas, so I do try to mimic that. I know that when I talk about mixing color, I really sound like I'm talking on a color palette. That's just because this is where I'm coming from and I'm referencing my experience with watercolors and go wash when I'm working in my digital canvas. It's not that I really miss that experience, this is absolutely my choice to work with a digital thing. It's just so more versatile and frankly, I love that technology. I'm a huge fan of the iPad painting. Now, let's add the waves and you can see in the ocean we have different colors. The sea color are lighter where the ocean touches the beach. We'll try to show that in our painting. Another thing that I want to show is the foam. I'm probably not going to go with white but with the lighter blue. I don't know if my microphone picks this up but there are so many cicadas sound in the background coming from the yarn. This is summertime here in Texas and cicadas are making so much noise. If you've never heard a cicada before, now go ahead and google. Try to find their sound. It's very, very loud. I don't want to create too much noise, too much texture on the sea. I want it to look very calm and inviting, and what I'm going to work now is on the shoreline. Let's get a closer look. As you can see, it's a painting. There's no right or wrong, basically. We're painting, we're enjoying ourselves, we add details, and we build on the layers that we've worked on. I think drawing the sea is super relaxing. There. It looks really nice. Let's take a closer look. See what our brush strokes look like. To create the effect of foam, I'm pressing very lightly and working with the tip of the brush. I can always go and scale down my brush if I need to. Not sure if I want to, it's working fine for me. I actually like the way these brush strokes meet so I'll try to repeat that. These are the happy accidents that happens when we work so always go back and assess your work and see what seems to be working, what feels right and identify it and continue working with that. I really like how this ocean is coming along and I don't want to overwork it. I think it looks great with the rest of the picture. Let's move on to adding some more details to our painting.
12. Exploring Ideas: What do we want our painting to be all about? Think about the focal point of your painting. What can we add to this scene? We can draw cocktails and fun drinks, and how about some beach chairs and coolers and stuff that you bring with you to the seashore, some fun and colorful beach umbrellas? Maybe we just want to focus on fruits like pineapple and watermelons. We can also choose to draw people. People are pretty complex. It takes a while to figure out how to draw human character. We might want to focus on painting mini people and start off the project on a small scale. Think about all these fun ideas and come up with more of your own. Let's try to explore a few techniques to draw the focal point of our painting. Maybe we want to look at these beach chairs. They're very simple to draw, basically, because they're very white, they have white straight lines. All we have to do to paint them is create the basic structure and add hints of shading in order to paint the basic form of the chair. There, it's really super easy and a quick way to add a focal point to the painting. That's just a very quick demonstration, but I have another idea for what we can do with this painting, so join me in the next lesson and we'll start drawing.
13. Shading Beach Umbrellas: In this lesson, I'd like to show you a fun way to draw beach umbrellas from above. Think about lots of circles and towels with little people sunbathing on top. This could be a very stylized picture, or it could be very colorful one, depending on your choice. Let's start with a new layer and start drawing circles, spread them around our sunny beach. Next, we're going to add some towels or lounge chairs. Looking from above, they look very similar. They're basically long rectangles. We can create different designs for our beach umbrellas. I'm choosing to repeat the same design, but change the colors. If you're going to do a quick search for beach umbrellas, you'll find some great ideas up there and get inspired to create your own designs. While I can work with symmetry, I'm choosing not to. I want this to be a little bit wonky to make sure that I can read the impression that it was handmade, if you know what I mean. I like to alternate between colors in this painting and just create interest by change colors that work well together. I think this looks pretty good. Now, let's add some shadows. We'll head back to the shadow layer. It's a good idea to sample the same shadow color that we've used for the palms. Now, we're going to add dimension to the painting by drawing the shadows for the umbrellas and the beach chairs. For the umbrellas, we want to create a circular shadow that is slightly side from the umbrella, and that gives us a sense of the direction of the sunlight that falls on the umbrellas from above. For the toggles or the chairs, we'll see a very small hint of a shadow. Adding the shadows helps the painting come alive and makes everything pope and feels more three-dimensional. This is something that I really love about this scene. It looks really playful and fun because it's made with simple shapes and the shadows actually makes it come alive. Up next, I want to move back to the Oberon brush because it's slightly textured and not colored to the towels. Since the Oberon brush is textured, it gives me the texture of the towels without really working too hard. All I need to do is draw some stripes and it's ready. I'm going to use the same colors that's I've chosen for the beach umbrellas when I'm creating the design on the towels. The reason is that using those same colors helps the painting keep the same language, the same color palette, and it looks more compact, more tight. Once I've chosen my color palette for the painting, I'm going to keep sampling colors and use them in different ways. Like sometimes I would draw stripes that are on the side of the towel, and sometimes I'll create shorter stripes just to create more interest to my picture. Up next, we write it to our people through the painting.
14. Mini Characters: I think it's going to be really fun to add people to this scene. Like people who sun bathe and people are walking on the beach, lying on towels with sun hats. We can add many drinks. We can add really coolers, even little fruits to the scene. It's really fun because everything should be kept small. People walking on the beach from above, we're going to see mostly their broad shoulders, and head, and a little hint for their lengths. Once again, I'll be sampling colors that I already have on my canvas. For this man, let's give him some fun blue shorts and keep their hair very simple. It's just going to be a blob of color on his head, and we can add a little bit of lighter highlights at the top of his head later on. I'm drawing a couple. The man has broad shoulders, the woman has smaller scale body, and I'm trying to create different tones for the skin just to make the picture more interesting. Let give her just this fun little details of the X on the back for her bathing suits, I think makes it much more interesting than just drawing a straight line. Little details are what has the fun element to this painting. To bring these people to life, will be to add shadow. I really going to see this long shadow that spread across the beach, it gives us the sense of how fierce the sun is on this seashore. Drawing this long shadow is really adds to them, they mentioned and create a sense of how sunny this beach is. Next, let's move on to the lounging people. Let's see a few strategies for drawing these many figures. When we draw people sunbathing, think about the different ways the body can lie down flat on the back. We can have legs spread out. We can have legs bent, we can have arms resting behind the head. Think about all the ways in which the body can move to create variations in your sun vaders. Another fun way to add interest to the picture is to design different bathing suits. These are going to be very slight changes because these are mini figures. I can create the changes with the color and the shape of the bathing suit. I think that's what really helps bring these people to live, is showing the light source. On a sunny beach, we're going to see a very harsh difference between the light area and the shaded area. Parts of the body that are going to be higher up like the knees, the thighs, one side of the body versus the shaded side of the body, this is where we're going to see the highlights. We want to make sure we pick a significantly lighter shade when we draw these highlights. On the other side of the body, we're going to have the shaded side. Again, since we want to show a striking difference between the shaded area and the lighted area, we're going to pick significantly darker shade for those shaded area. For this very little details that we add to these mini people, these are the details that are going on make these people pop and make them more fun and relatable because they're going to create the illusion of three-dimensional and shading in those many figures. Another way that we create interest in this painting is different hairstyles. For our figures try to pick different hairstyles. Well, the women usually have longer hair, so we have more opportunities there. Even for the men, we can pick different colors and different shapes for their hairstyles. Go ahead and create your paintings. Looking forward to seeing what you draw. I'm wondering if it's going to be flip-flops, seashells, may be a hammock. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this painting. Up next, we're going to move on to our second part of the class and draw a new travel destination.
15. The Second Painting: We traveled to a sunny tropical beach and there are so many other places to explore. For our next project, I want us to pick up the pace and create a more complex piece. In this painting, we'll establish a sense of perspective. We'll draw the Mediterranean Sea and buildings and architectural elements. We'll draw plants and fun little surprises and finish up with beautiful flowers. With that, let's move on to the canvas and start drawing.
16. Water and Sea: Let's start, we're working on our second project. Now, this one is going to be really fun. We have buildings on a hill and they have all these interesting details to them. We have an ocean view and plants in the foreground. I already set up a new layer for the painting and locked the sketch layer. Let's head over to our brushes and once again pick the Larapuna brush. This brush will allow us to layout paint without really feeling too attached to what we create in this very first layer and that's what I like about it. Let's start with strokes of color that work with the ocean currents. We want to create a sense of perspective with this new painting, the ocean is going to fade out towards the horizon. I want to emphasize it by creating long paint strokes, coming all the way from the front of the painting, all the way to the back of the painting. Right now, what we want to focus on is to pick a few colors. That will be the foundation of what we'll be creating next. We want to make sure that the colors towards the back of the painting are lighter. Where the ocean meets the sky, the colors are going to be more muted and light and the ones at the very front of the painting are going to be darker and deeper shades of blue. As a rule, I want you to remember that your picture should be fading towards the horizon and deeper and sharper at the very front of the painting, that would be like the lower bottom part of the painting is going to be more detailed than the back of the picture. At the very last stage, I'll lay down color for the sky, and that will be my lightest blue. Now we're going to mix up the colors. My first layer of color came out too rough and I want to soften it. I'm going to pick up the ocean and go ahead and choose Gaussian blur and blur the whole painting. Then I can go over it and layer down colors. This time I'm already using the colors that I've placed, but I can blend them more in with the big Larapuna brush. Here is a fun way to add more definition and style to your painting. We're once again going to select areas of the painting with a freehand select tool. That would create a mask in that shape and we can paint in the waves into that mask selection of the painting. I'm going to repeat this process and create more defined waves. The fun thing about using the Larapuna brush is that it's going to mix up the colors. I would really recommend that you use that brush if you can for this stage. This is a really fun technique that I love using so go ahead and try it out and I hope you like it too. To finish things up in a bit more definition and a sense of direction, we're going to draw in some much more defined lines. For this one, I'm using my gouache brush, but any line brush would work here. We're going to create this fine lines trying to draw in the waves that kind of break down towards the seashore. I really like this part of the painting process because it allows me to be a bit more playful and less controlled. I'm going to change between the colors. I'll pick some lighter shades of blue and some darker shades of blue to add more definition to my painting. It's a good idea to bring back the sketch every once in a while to check that I'm on track with my plan for this painting. I think working with the sketch keeps us on the right track, kind of inspires me and gives me a good sense of direction with this painting. Up next we're going to start painting in the hills towards the horizon.
17. Hills and Sky: Let's start painting in the hills there, close to the horizon. They are not going to be very well-defined. If you think of hills, you probably think of brown for the ground and green for plants. But in a painting, we sometimes pick abstract colors just because we like them. But I want to point out my reference photo in the very left corner of the screen. Look at the hills at a very far away and close to the sky. When the hills are very far away and close to the sky, they are going to turn out grayish blue. You'll see this effect with traditional paintings as well. Well, let's look at the hills that are even closer to us in the reference photo, and you can notice that they have this grayish purple, U to them. I would say that my choice of purple is not very far removed to what the eye catches when we look in a landscape, that is far away from us. The colors are going to change than the ones that we are used to see. As we paint, we are going to little by little, add more definition, a layer in more colors. We want to make sure that we pick darker shades to add definition, to our hills of these far away mountains. For me that would be like a darker shade of purple. I would also add yellow and lights muted orange to give it a sense of shape because I don't want my hills to be just lumps of colors. I do want to create a sense of a stony, rugged hills that are at the background, that are may be hills that don't have much vegetation, but are made out of mostly rocks and earth. I'm trying to depict that with my paint strokes and my choice of color. I think I'm picking a light yellow over a purple really creates a pop of light and just, I think it's a very fun color combination. That's the reason why I picked that color palette for those hills. Let's add some clouds to this picture, because I think they add a dramatic effect to the painting. I'm going to draw the clouds on a layer that is behind or under the layer of the hill, but over the layer of the ocean and the sky. These are very light paint strokes with which I create these light blue clouds. Later on, we can go ahead and very lightly blend them into the sky. For me, I don't want to overwork these clouds. I don't want to create a very defined shapes. I just want to add little sense of drama to the painting and create a little bit more sense of depth. That's pretty much it. I want you to be playful and enjoy your painting.
18. Color Rough: I'd like to show you a new technique and it's called painting with color roughs. Color roughs is a way to lay down rough patches of colors and gradually refine the painting. I'm working on a new layer which I've called houses and I'm painting rough rectangular shapes with different colors. I'm looking at the reference photo for inspiration and picking colors that are similar to the one that I've used in the hills. I'm working with soft browns, muted oranges, and muted pinks which is similar to what you see in the picture. I'm also seeing some soft blue and light yellow buildings in the reference photo and I really like using these colors so let's add a few of those in my rough buildings. The nice thing about working with color roughs is that you can always change things around. Working with these rough color patches helps get the painting started without feeling that you are obligated to a certain form. You can always play with your color palette at this stage. Obviously we're going to do more of that later on but for now, I can change things around. For instance, the front of the painting I've used this light blue and it just doesn't fit my idea of having a lot of light on those buildings and it's kind of dark, so I can always go ahead and change it to another color. Basically this is a similar process to what we did with the sea and the hills only this time around, we're trying to achieve some kind of order because we're going to get into more details for all these little buildings. We're not just going to lay down big expressive brush strokes. We are trying to be orderly and organized in the way that we put down the colors. Now it's a good idea to go back and refer to the sketch to see where I've planned my focal point. My focal point is the front building with a dome. I want to make sure that I create the background and the setting for painting this building. All right. The last thing that we're going to do in this stage of our painting is pick up our eraser and sharpen the edges of the painting to create a more defined shape.
19. Focus on Focal Point: Looking at the reference photo, I have so many details and so many things going on in that photo that I want my painting to show that personally, I'm having trouble focusing on one building at a time. It helps me to create a few major buildings that will grab more of the attention and around those focal points, I'll draw other buildings that are less detailed, but still very nice. Obviously the thing that standouts most in the photo is the blue dome. There are several of them. I've already laid in the foundation for this first building. This is the building that I chose to paint with more details and started off in the previous lesson, leads at the front of my painting and I wanted to stand out, be interesting, and grab most of the attention. To start off, we're going to paint the basic shape of the blue dome. Then getting to more details with more colors, highlights and shaded areas. If you're working with different reference photo and you're working with your own sketch, decide which detail you want to highlight and which is going to be less front-and-center in your painting. I'll work with that to decide what parts of your illustration draw more audience and build on that as you paint. It's a good idea to work with some extra layers at this point, since we can always merge them down later in the art process. I keep adding layers for drawing new features and then I merge them down. It helps to keep everything more organized. Of course, we want to pay attention to our light sources we paint. Some facets of the building that you're working on will have sharp light on them and other walls will be more hidden and a bit more shaded. We can be super creative with our color choices here. This is part of the fun of painting [inaudible]. We want to see those lively colors. My shading can be pink and light blue. This is basically what we're looking for, so be creative with your color choices. Now that the foundation of the building is ready, I can focus on the fine details. I'll be checking the reference photo every now and then to get inspired about what I want to paint next. What I don't want to do is copy what I see in that photo. I do want this illustration to be my original work. You can always go back, adjust the painting, and add more details to what you already did. I started off with rectangular windows and then came up with a rounded window, which I like better. One idea leads to another and the key thing to remember is to flow with your process. Allow these ideas to come up as you paint and work with them. When I want to add shadows that are more real and less abstract in their colors, I'll sample the base color and then pick a darker shade of that color to draw in the shadows. In this way, the windows come out a bit more realistic. To finish up the windows, highlighting them with a lighter grid is a really fun idea. Now these fine lines are delicate addition to the painting. I really like how they look in the overall picture. When we work on architectural elements, we can give ourselves freedom to pick and choose which elements we want to show. We can follow the reference photo closely or imagine new features to the buildings. Essentially, when you're working with a photo, you can borrow what you want to show in your painting and don't feel pressured to paint every single detail as it is in the photo.
20. Art Process : In this lesson, I'd like to show you the art process of adding more and more buildings to the painting. We are going to work slowly and steadily in our details to create the complete painting. I'll be doing more showing and less telling so that you'll be able to focus on the drawing process. But I'll give you tips and pointers throughout this lesson. Let's begin.
21. Plants and Surprises: In this lesson, we'll draw the fun little details that help the painting come alive. Let's refer back to our photo to draw some inspiration. For instance, the planters on the white fans and large clay pot of bougainvilleas would be a great addition to the buildings that I've drawn. I like these rectangular clay containers as well. Let's take a quick look at the sketch to see where I planned on my plants to be. We'll draw the plants on a separate layer that we'll name plants. Let's start with the largest planters, they are still small but will be more detailed since they're placed at the front of the painting. I can give them some texture and shading. I try to keep the style light and fun and quick. Here, I would like to create two distinctly different kinds of plants. It will be a lot more interesting this way, though, I do keep the color palette pretty tight and consistent. For the first plant, let's go for the dramatic long look with tall green leaves. I think this one is called the snake plant. Try to use a few shades of green for shading and interests when you paint. My other plant can be softer, spinning down and up from its container. We can add some dots for bright colors for flowers. Though I do keep them simple and not overly bright since I don't want these flowers to draw much attention. As we add more and more plants to the scene, we aim to control where the attention of the viewer goes when looking at our illustration. We do that by keeping a balance between all the elements we add. We use colors that are already in the painting, so we pick up colors from the palette that already exists in the picture. We choose lighter use for details that are deeper and farther away in the picture, and that helps them blend in. Now that I have a good foundation to work with, it's fun to give the painting more character. What if we create a relaxed place for someone to inhabit? These details tell a story. I keep it simple and fresh in whites and a few lines, and a bit of shading helps give the furniture some dimension. We can draw some fun little details like a drink, and it feels like someone was just here enjoying the view on the balcony. Adding animals. Well, a cat helps the movement to the painting. I draw just this one cat in an open space that could use some love. Based the center of the composition, so I want to get into more details in this part of my illustration. Up next we'll draw the front of the picture.
22. Bougainvillea Branch: In this lesson, let's add the layer of plants to the front of the painting. I want this plan to be large in detailed adding complexity and interests while it still feels like it's blending in with the rest of the scene. To do that, I'm painting simple shapes for the leaves but the overall plant will be lively with various shades of green and textures. I like using the Alpha Lock mask at this point to draw a pop of light and colors on the tip of some leaves. This is a very quick way to have control over your painting. I use the mask so that I can add these spots of colors without going beyond the boundaries of the shapes that I've already created. Other ways to create variations in the plant is drawing fine lines, not all over the plant, but in selected spots so that we draw attention to some areas but not everywhere. If every rare is painted in the same way, that's not interesting enough. Now let's create some adjustments. Elements in the front of the composition will be the darkest in deeper colors, so I want to adjust their brightness and saturation. We can try out and see which settings work best for our picture. Great. Now I'm ready to draw the bougainvillea flowers. Having a reference helps us understand the shapes and the way the flowers are spread over the branch. It's really handy to keep the reference in a separate window. I draw simplified shapes for my flowers as I am aiming at achieving a light and font style. My main interest here is the pop of bright pink flowers over the blue sea. It's a warm shade of pink. To give it some dimension, we can draw in stamens in lighter pink. There, very simple and fun. Now, these flowers can get even more character with additional color. Just be sure to keep the palette within what's already in your illustration. I can sample this purple but maybe create a different shade of that color. The new petals help add a sense of dimension and depth to the flowers. We can intensify the brightness of these flowers with some cheerful yellow pollen dots. I want to balance these bougainvillea branches with more on the other side of my painting. I'm playing with the perspective by choosing lighter shades for my new flowers. If I'd used the same colors for the new flowers as in my right side of the picture, then my image would have looked very flat. Choosing slightly different tones of colors helps play with the perspective and liger those flowers in various positions on this picture. The ones that are closest to us are going to be darker and farther away the flowers will be lighter. Now I can add more branches by painting them in or I can just work with what I already have by giving it a little modification. I can duplicate the branches and flip them and then brighten their colors. That is how these flowers create the illusion of depth in the painting with the way they obscure parts of the buildings behind them. Now let's select the two small plants from their separate layer and adjust their position in coordination with the big branches. Now everything works well together. Up next, this illustration is coming to its finishing details.
23. Drawing Sailboats: Here we are at the last lesson of the class. It has been a fun long art process, so let's finish it strong. The sailboats are a late addition to my sketch. I believe that was inspired by one of the reference photos and decided they'd be great here. I love the sense of movement the boats bring to this painting. It looks like a race and we compare their speed, and that helps with adding action to the illustration. The color choices for these boats are pretty intuitive. I picked colors that I like, but the position of each one plays a role in this decision. The first boat takes a central placement in the composition, and so I give it the brightest color. It's located in a place where the light is strongest in the picture. For that reason, it got a light shade of yellow. Also, yellow is like one of my favorite colors. So yeah, it's pretty intuitive. The average boats blend in more with the scene. Of course, the sailboats are drawn on their own layer and we'll talk more about it later when it's more relevant in this art process. Now by this point in the workflow, you're already very comfortable and familiar with your work. So the painting would likely flow and take shape seamlessly. I just want to remind you to trust yourself and trust your hand to do the right thing when you paint and don't overthink your art process. The drawing of the water moving against the side of the boat, for instance, is a good example to that. I start doing that and feel that it helps with connecting the boats to the water, and the sea ripples, and those ripples adds depth and shading and create a sense of direction and movement with these sailboats. I love the flexibility of drawing digitally, because I made the choice of drawing these shadows later in the painting, in another kind of smearing allover my flowers so I can change the layers orders and place these shadows under my pink flowers. I want to repeat this process with the other sailboats as well. I think it really helps connect them with the rest of the painting. Painting in Gouache and Procreate to me means that I can leave things a bit rough and unperfected. In a way it's similar to using actual brushes. So we let things be, we use the eraser as little as we possibly can. We work with what we have on the Canvas. My boat shapes are not perfect and that is intentional and just fine. I want you to give yourself the freedom to create without trying to nitpick at every little detail. I may wish to refine the boats a bit so there I can work with what I already have in my painting. Maybe I add some light lines or darker lines, so when I want to stylize my shape a little bit. I hope that all makes sense. Last thing that I'll add is logos to the sailboats. Like drawing in texts and letters, the defined shapes of logos help style the boats. With that my friends, the painting is done. I loved my trip to this Greek island and I can't wait to see what you create.
24. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on completing the class. You've followed the creative process from thumbnail sketches to colorful gouache paintings. I'm looking forward to seeing what you create. You can use the knowledge that you've gained in class to create a series of illustration and explore more travel destinations of your own. I'd love to see your personal projects as well as the one that you created in class. Share with me through social media, tag me on Instagram, I'd love to see what you create. Share your project in the class project gallery so that we can all take a look. Share sketches and rough ideas, share photos, and tell us more about the reasons for choosing that specific location for your project. Stay in touch here on Skillshare. Follow me along to learn when my next class is ready for you. Thanks for joining me today. I'll see you in my next class. Bye for now.
Yifat Fishman, Artist & Illustrator
