How to draw a Pirate Bear in Procreate

1. What you will Learn here: Do you just love to draw? But you never know how to start, where to start from and how to fill. The whole process seemed kind of hard. That's why I've designed a very simple character. And I'm going to follow step-by-step in Procreate. And I'm going to teach you how to draw very simple pirate bear character. How you can clean up. How do you can add color, and how you can, and probably should find some shading and lighting to make your drawing. So follow me to the course. 2. Sketch your Illustration: Open, Procreate, and choose a formula to desire on a separate layer. Start sketching your drawing. First, sketch, roughly where everything is going to be with very simple shapes. Draw a rough rectangular of where the boat is going to be. And then draw a rough sphere of where the Bayer is going to be. At this stage. You can't do anything wrong. You're just trying to find the shape. So I'll just place even another rectangular. Just find the placement of the bear and the proportions. And at the same time, sketch where the boat is going to be a refine and redo at this stage. Don't be afraid to be messy. This drawing is not going to be your final drawing. You trying to find the structure of your drawing. The rough lines placed the waves. With Ralph lines, draw the mask or the placement of where the mask is going to be. Now, create another layer. Go back to layer one and decrease the intensity by clicking on the letter N. There, you're going to find the opacity, drag it down. So you make this initial sketch less vesicle. Now on the second layer, start drafting and MRI finding more of your drawing. Now when you have the help lines of this first drawing, it's easy to find the proportions afford a character and the boat. Start by drawing one sphere for the head of the character, as well as a one sphere for the body. Drawing an ellipse or a curve across the face and the body will help you to find the perspective. And the middle line of where the head and the body split into equal symmetrical parts. Draw another sphere for the draft out the legs with another sphere or an egg shape form. I use all kinds of methods. You can even sketch a scattered lines. Here. It is important that you work fast and you don't think too much. Now, let's give our bear a pirate hat. Maybe made out of newspaper. Like in the old days. It's a cartoony character, so it should be playful with the triangular start to shape the boat. Use very simple shapes. Draw on top of the first sketch we already had approximately, roughly. And now we can add some waves. Here. We can go for from back, refining different elements of the drawing. The most important here is finding the proportions and looking for the character who this character is. Now, let's adjust even the wheel. We can still keep up kind of roughly and try to find the lines approximately Around the first initial sketch. But this is our second sketch. So we're going to have another take on this drawing later on. So don't worry too much, try to get as close as possible to what you want to have. But you don't have to keep clean lines. And now you can jump from one element to the other. The good thing with this program is withdrawn digitally, is that you can zoom in, you can come closer render on more details, even in this rough stage of drawing. So follow me along and try to trace approximately where the boat is going to be, where the lines are going to be. Now, I'm drawing the thickness of the upper part of the boat where it's more defined, there is a wooden elements sticking out from the boat. Here. I'm even signifying where the front of the boat is and how that will look like. I'm choosing to keep the boat very, very simple and very cartoony. Draw the line freely. Don't be scared that you're going to make a mistake. At least here you can always redo the lines. So here I'm signifying that the boat is actually a wooden boat with a simple lines on the boat. And now I continue with the character. Again. On top of the lines that I already drew. I'm trying to find the shape. And now let's draw the eyes on both sides of the middle line of the head. The one that we drew, we sketched out. And let's put in the pupils, because now you can see how the character comes to life. And one eye is going to have an eye patch. And this is going to be a happy little pirates bear. So we'll draw the mouth as a happy mouth and continue with another element with defining the lines. Now, counter the ears. This is the good thing. When you draw, when you sketch out, you don't have to finish one element before you jump to something else and discover how this looks like them before you've finished the whole element. So just go forward from back with your drawing and discover how do you want your drawing to be. And now I can continue with the arm and the placement of the arm on the wheel, on the steering wheel, and zoom out to see you. How's my drawing during how the composition is and do a like the character. We're on a good path here. So let's give this little bear some clothing and use the middle line of the body to define where the clothing is going to be placed. Like placing some buttons in the middle, exactly on top of the line, and adding some sleeves. So some pirates leaves and pirate clouds. Costume is important when you design your character, gives you character personality and defines who the character is. So pirates need to have buyer's clubs. And here we are going to have some trousers and that's it for now. 3. Outline your Drawing: Okay, welcome back. So now we have our little guy drawn two darts and we're going to draw him a third time. And every time we draw him, he becomes more defined and more clear. And now we're going to make another layer and make the previous, the second layer lighter or decrease the opacity. And we're going to start drawing the outlines. Now, there is no more of these sketches stuff. Now you have to be more precise. So I'll choose this outline, this line. I'm going to try out different brushes and see which brush gives me a more clean and defined look. I'm going for the library of inking and choosing different brushes to see which fits my tastes best, and which brush makes the character and the outlines better? Yes, This one seems pretty good. It is, it has a nice variety of thickness and finance to the lines. So I'm going to go and draw as clean as possible. So if you draw the line and hold the pen a little bit, the line in procreate will straighten itself. That's how you can make a really round eyes. You see, I can draw the line and hold a little bit and the lines straightened itself. So I'm going to just follow the shapes that I did before for this character and outline it. And if you drag the color up there in the corner and drag it into a close section. It will feel this section with that color. So I'm continuing outlining teeth. And now I can add more details. So I'm going to add some cheeks just with this little line here and feel the mouth with black. And this is not because the mouth is black, it's because it's dark in there. So I'm going to refine the ears and I'm going to get as close as possible and define the hat. And you'll see how easy it is to one, you have drawn these two drawings on top of each other. It is very easy to do that in digital drawing because you can always undo. This is something that you don't have on paper. And you have the possibility to both girls sketchy and then refined. So I'm going to draw the head here and continue with the other ear. Now, let's do some costume. And I'm going to extend the color outside of what I've been drawn before. Because it looks nice. The, the pirates have this high color thing, like a costume. It's very nice and people recognize it as something that pirates have. So I'm going to add this element to increase d. The feeling that this little bear is not only on the boat, is also a pirate. Now, let's continue with the other details. The buttons and the other sleeve you just draw on top of what you've drawn before the previous sketch, but you also make some new things up. You use it as a base to draw something else to make it even better. Because when you have the main sketch, it gives you the possibility to find the size on top of it. Where would that costume and the top of the costume. And where would the sleeve? And if you don't like it, I mean, just undo it or erase it and do it again. It's not more two dots. One thing that's a beginner's do is that they are too scared to make mistakes. And all the professionals are professional because they are out there to make the mistakes. That's the only way actually you are learning through the mistakes. So don't be afraid if you draw wrongly. The good thing in Procreate is that you can zoom in. You can come as close as possible and draw a line. Hold the pencil and the line will straighten itself. It's amazing this technology, what we can do with it today to help us be better artist. So use the tools for your advantage. And don't be afraid. To start over two, to do another layer. If you need to do yet another layer and you're not sure if you bear is good enough. Just do that. The only thing you shouldn't do is tell yourself that you're not good at drawing because that's B as dots it, it's because this is not true. Everyone can draw and everyone can you use whatever tools they have at hand? And everyone has an iPhone or an iPad. Pen and paper. I mean, if you don't have an iPad, it's fine. Just grab a pen and paper. The process is exactly the same. Go with a blue lines, are lighter lines and you're just a refined afterwards. Now I'm even putting some trousers to the Bayer. And I made, I met him bear fruit so it doesn't have any shoes. That's how I feel it would be a good composition because there's not so much space to make nice long pair of shoes. And also, I want him to look more like a bear. So I'm going to draw some pulse as some nails to that little bear to make him look more like a bear. Now, let's continue with the most refined out. And I'm going to do these two lines here to signify that this is soft material. It is made out of cloth and their wrinkles on this cloth. That's why I'm adding these two lines. It's an easy way to signify different kind of material than you have on the mask, which is a wooden material. Now, I'm continuing to continuing with the pole of the must. And, you know, sometimes I don't want to have the straight line, but sometimes would like to do that. So just hold the pen while still under while not releasing the pen and you'll get a straight line. But sometimes I just wanted to have a more lively lines. I want to still feel I'm drawing the hand work underneath my drawing. So not all the lines I would make straight. And this is something to remind you that you don't have to have everything perfect. Sometimes you're drawing becomes better when you have a wavy lines. So when your viewer can sense your hand, your hand drawing. And here I'm making this part of the boat where there is a bench and the bench have a perspective. So that's why I'm adding small little line here to signify the perspective. It is still not very clear which line is where. All this is a little messy. But follow me in this lecture and do what I do. And you will see why we put this lines and how we build perspective in very simple ways. And later, you can apply that to your own drawings. And you can know why you do that. Sometimes in the beginning before you even know all the rules of perspective and all this thing. Just repeating what someone else is doing and understanding it. For justice case can give you the freedom to do something similar in another case like now, you know how to draw about, for example. So if you need to draw a boat for another, drawing another illustration, you will know why you do these small lines and how to find the perspective of different elements like this one, for example, that I just drew. This is just the bottom part of the surface that the bear is standing on. End it goes down so it has thickness, and this thickness has a perspective. So just repeat these steps and I've made some elements on the wooden planks, the boat. So it signifies material. It signifies that the boat is made out of wood. This is good thing to work also with materials when you do a graphic work and just put some structure from, from the, the thing you're drawing like this waves for example, there are wavy waves, right? That was funny meaning. But here on this boat, like I'm putting again these small lines to signify that the boat is made out of wood. It's a plank. And I'm continuing with the waves. I'm just jumping from one element to the other. So I don't get stuck. If I don't get bored, I want to see my whole image come to life. Now. This image is done. It's clean and I hide the layers in blue. And here we have clean drawing of our bear. And I'm going to delete the part of the head that is intersecting with a costume with his clothing because that's not natural. And now we have clean, clean lines. We started with sketching, drawing one for another, scared to drawing. Now, we went through the cleanup process and let's add some more details on the waves. Just add more wavy lines to signify this is water, this is how water moves its way. It's basically just decorative way to describe it because that's not really a water. It's just the cartoony way to describe water. So you can add such elements as much as you want. Don't do it too much because you don't want to do more lines than you did for the Bayer. So now we have our cleanup. Let's continue in the next section. 4. Color your Drawing: Hello there and welcome back. Now that we've done the outlining, it's time to do the coloring. First. I'm going to try to close as many gaps on the payer as possible because we are going to fill in the colors by dragging and dropping color. And for dad, we need to have closed spaces to do that. So whatever you can go through the, the character from your drawing and just drag the lines and close the gap so you have only closed areas. So now just create another layer, duplicate that layer, where the outlines choose the orange color. This is some kind of a wooden texture, light orange and drag and drop it to the boat. And also drag and drop it to one part of the boat that is on that side of the boat. Now, change the color to a little bit brighter and we're going to color the upper part of the boat because the light is coming from above. So this part is going to be lighter. You see how I can drag and drop or over here and I have an open area somewhere that's going to happen if you haven't close the gaps of the outline. So if that doesn't happen, you can just draw around the edges and you see that you can easily just drag and drop whatever you can. If you zoom in on your drawing, It's going to be easier for the ground, for the program to recognize what area it needs to fill. Now let's continue with darker orange. Just pick a color approximately like this one. And let's just drag and drop inside the boat. These are the areas inside the body which are going to be darker because the light is not coming in there. Now, let's choose a brighter orange color, but a lighter color than the darkest part of the boat. And we can add the history of the colors in the palette in Procreate. So you know which colors you're working with and just drag and drop it in this little small lines. And you can see how they appear as they are a little bit on top of this dark color. Here I have an area that I haven't closed again. So I'm just gonna deal with that. I need to close the gap. And we see clearly that I have an open gap over there. Does I need to fill in? And sometimes even if I do it over and over again, I mean, I can close it so I'm just going to draw it for hand. That's not a big deal. So don't let that stop you that you have to do it this way. So now we need to color the top of the planks that the bear is standing and the sun rays are falling on top of them. So they need to be brighter color and that will give us a volume. It will look like boat is not flat, that it has a volume. One that one part is below and one part is on top. So that looks almost done. The boat is done. Now, let's continue with the other parts. We have the must that we need to work with. Now that we are at the boat. And this color, you see I have a gap over there. You see how important it is to be to have everything closed if you don't want to draw. I mean, if you have a process that you just drag and drop, drag-and-drop. And it's nice to not go back and pick a pencil and do that. It's not impossible, is just annoyance when you get into the process. So let's pick a color and color the sales that are now closed. Maybe some red color. We are going to have the Bolt be more like a reddish color because we're going to color the sky and it's going to be bluish color and that's how the boat will stick out more. It will draw your attention, which we want. So now this looks good. Now let's color the costume of the bear. And I'm going to choose a blue color, dark blue as pirate, I'm not gonna do it. I'm going to make it black because, because it's going to be too much black in the picture, I still want this image to have brighter colors. Usually the pirates have maybe a black suits or black costumes, but I'm just going to do it brighter. So now I want to pick up a color and color. The bear is going to be a brown bear, and it looks pretty nice now. Next to the blue color, It's nice. Contrast for that there. So this is basically how the process go. I'm going to go from one part of the Bayer, fill it in with a color that you can pick up color by pressing the little square on the left side and dragging it over the color you want to get. Just you see that every time I pick a color, procreate creates a palette for me that I can go back and choose the color that I previously picked. I'm going to have the rows. Now for Bayer. And you see here I have something not filled. And it is unknowing because I want I want to get into process and interests like drag-and-drop, drag-and-drop. But in a perfect world, that be how it works. But I'm also humans, so I'm having closed all the gaps. But that doesn't matter. You just continue filling in manually or with the pencil. So I'm just going to give the bear maybe pink. Oh no, that didn't work either. Let's do it again. Let's do it with a pencil as much as I wanted to just drag and drop, does have to do it manually. Think toenails to match the bear's nose. So we are done with that. And I'm just going to continue where the buttons of the bear, there may be gold buttons like the real pirates gonna be. Think about your character and the character's costume. That what idea you want to convey with this costume. So what are the ornaments? What are the attributes to this costume that will tell you audience a lot about your character. And you will make your illustration come to life. It will make viewers perceive this, this pirate as more vivid, more realistic. So I'm just going to continue to to fill in the steering wheel as well. And I'm jumping from one part of the drawing to another because I don't want to get bored and I want to see the drawing come to life faster. And the more areas I feel in that are farther away from each other, the more completes the drawing is getting, and the more it gives me suggestions what colors, what other colors I need to put it. Because if you put in very similar colors next to each other, that's not going to be a good contrast and they will just disappear. So you want to find colors that are complementing and not merging into each other. You want to have your contrast in the picture. The picture to be clear. And the only way you do that is by keeping an overview of your picture. And I'm just looking at it from time to time, went with different eyes, zoom ins and out. Now I have one part of the heart being lighter, gray because that's gonna be like a newspaper. And the lighter parts suggests that the shine, the sun is shining on that part of the hat and the other part is in the shade, in shadow. So it's going to be dark gray. So now I'm going to do the sky. And I'm going to pick a rather sketchy brush because I want the drawing to be rather sketchy. I don't want to have all the drawing to be this smooth and clean. That's why we have these brushes that procreate has created for us and that we can do ourselves. We want to simulate real life brushes as if you're doing this with an oil painting. And this is something that simulates maybe charcoal or watercolor that makes the drawing come to life. Even though we have this digital technology today, we want our drawings to imitate life. Before it was like about that we want is our drawings to imitate digital, digital art. But now the digital art is actually made two, to imitate life. Now, this, again, draw a big brush now because I've created a layer that is below the layer of the boat, but not below the layer of the sky. So I need to be careful around the outlines where the sea meets the sky. And I can delete some layers but, but I can draw with large strokes. But the boat is because I've put the layer below that layer. So I'm going to color the white. And I want to make the shirt of the bear also white. And I want to make bears teeth also white. Now, we've added the main colors. Let's continue with adding shades and light to the bear to give it more volume. We couldn't do that in the next lecture. 5. Polish and refine: So this is the last stage of our drawing, adding shading, light and details. Now, copy the color layer and click on it one more time and choose clipping mask. Now, you will paint on the clipping mask. And this will give you the possibility to paint inside. The area of watercolor is about the berries, so you don't go outside this area. It's a very handy little tool that you have there with masks. So now we're going to choose a brighter color of the brown for the bear. And you just going to add some outline just a little bit to add a more definition, to add more volume to the bear as if as if the sign is shining on top of the bear. And there's just a slight lighter area around it. It gives it immediately more light and now choose a slightly darker color than the brown bear has. And on the other side of the body of the bird, just outline the same, in the same way with a light brushes that will give the bear shading as if it's a shadow over there. So that will make the bell have more volume, the more realistic. Now let's do the same with the steering wheel. Dust, pick up the color of the steering wheel and choose a darker color for darker side of the steering wheel. And just added a little bit on one side of the steering wheel. Follow the outlines and because we have the clipping mask, you don't have to be afraid to go outside the line. It's going to keep you inside the line. So just drafted out like that. Carefully, zoom in, zoom out to see how it gets. You can rotate the canvas here and now choose a brighter color than the yellow of the steering wheel. And do the same thing that we did for the bear. On the other side of what a shading us. Just add some brighter color on top of the elements of the steering wheel. And you see how they get around this. They look as if they're around. They don't look flat anymore. Isn't that nice? It's just a, such a simple, simple two and you get more and get more life to your drawings. So let's continue with just adding more details. And we'll want to have some elements. The costume of the bear. So I'm going to choose, again a goldfish color. And I'm just going to do this wavy lines as if the costume has some Broderick, like a real pirate costume. I don't want to do too much, but just a little bit. We'll give my bear, my drawing some life to it as if the bear has this really nice fun costume. Because this is a cartoony drawing. Just small elements are enough. If you're drawing a photo-realistic drawing, maybe you want to do much more detailed costume. But for this one, just doing that, it's quite sufficient and it does its job. It gives us more character and moral life. So I'm going to have this dots, also, golden, golden, I don't know, dots, whatever they are, elements on the trousers of the barest costume. I'm, now, I'm going to continue with, I'm even giving more shading to the bear's suits, to the costume. I'm just going to pick up a wider brush. And I'm just going to lightly start, start finding the darker areas on one side of the costume. And you see the darker areas has to be on the same side as the darker areas of the face and of the steering wheel. They can't just suddenly go and be drawn on the other side because you see the light is coming from, from left, right corner from left above. So it needs to always come from the same direction. So always think about that when you are, when you add shading to your, to your drawing. So now I'm going to create another layer and I'm going to get out from the clipping mask layer. And I'm going to choose a slightly darker grayish color. And I'm going to draw some shadow underneath the feet of the bear where he is standing on the boat. That will create a more volume. And also, no, I'm going to add some white on the waves. So they have this foam, foam feeling to it. It's going to look more naturalistic, is going to give more life even to the sea. It's going to look more like a sea, like a cartoonish version of the sea. We are trying to find interpretation of the elements that we are drawing. So simplifying and trying to find the symbols that are similar, that are conveying the version that we are drawing like this, see like these waves, this curvy lines symbolizing the C. And I'm going to do some dots here, white dots, foam coming from the waves and giving you one more speed to the boat. So anything that will give more life to my drawing, I'm going to try to combine put in there. And now this symbolic language is actually very well-known. When we see waves. There are many illustration like that. Draw waves in a certain way and that's why we're not surprised when we see that. Now we can consider our drawing basically done. This is enough to have a nice finished touch on our drawing. Of course we can continue. But this is also a simple cartoony drunk. So I hope you've enjoyed this little course. And go on and just start your next drawing, thinking of your own cartoony character and something that you like to draw. Buy from me. 6. Create a Birthday card with your illustration: Now the last thing I want to show you is how to turn your illustration into a nice birthday card from your relatives. So the first thing you need to do is duplicate your file in Procreate. Choose, Select from the upper menu and select that file, and click on duplicate. This will create a copy of your file. So if you want to make some changes, then you have a file that's already there and you can reduce that. Now, drag all the layers with two fingers, drag them and they will merge. So this is now just one layer. And you want to have doubt because you can move the layer around on the sheet of paper or on your screen. So move it around to leave space for the letters. And I'm going to put it maybe down here approximately. If you want this to be a digital card or if you want to print it out on the A4, you can decide how you want it to be, but you can choose endlessly. So choose the eraser and I'm going to choose some sketchy style from the artistic menu. And I'm going to start slightly erasing the edges of this drawing to have this grungy artistic style. So bring down the opacity and just dots here and there with this pencil and eraser to give it this artistic look. And then I want to bring up the text. The text is at the toolbox, toolbox and there's actions. And there you can find how to add text. So if you have an Apple pencil, it will appear this little icon here. But you can go to menu and can bring down this menu by clicking on the Pen. And it will give you a tool, a keyboard. You can type. Happy Birthday now you can see what I'm typing because the text went too high up, so I'm bringing it down while I'm typing. So happy birthday. And here we have the texts that we need to have. And then I'm going to choose the arrow tool, the selection tool, and try to place the text what I want it to be. And you can have a layer created for this text. So it's not rest of size. So if you click the layer and choose Edit, you can choose different styles for your texts. So I'm just going to scroll down. As soon as I just pick up a style, I can see a preview for my text appearing. These texts looks very happy, happy letters and a cartoony text really. So if I select the text, I can even change the color and I'm choosing some red color to make it look brighter. And here it is. Basically, I have my digital my digital greeting cards to a loved one for kids or your mom or dad or your friends. And that's it basically. And besides, in the same way, you can just make a picture book. It doesn't matter if it's a birthday card or texts as your texts of your picture book, that's the same way. So buy from me.