How to Draw Plants for Beginners (Procreate)

1. Intro: Hello guys, I'm Laura and I'm here to teach you how to draw plants as beginners. What qualifies me to teach you this, it simple. I'm also a beginner at drawing plans, but I applied all my previous knowledge and I will break it down for you into five easy steps. If you follow this class, you will be able not only to drop lens from photo references, but stylize them and give them a magical virus will. This class is divided in the following lessons, which are also the steps of the process. Sketching, line art, these colors, shading and lighting. And of course, the project where you spend time to nurture your skills. I would like to get to know you better. So feel free to follow me on Instagram and let's get to know each other better. We are all artists and we're all trying to grow both in our artistic skills and on social media. So send me a direct message telling me that you are coming from Skillshare and I will follow you back. Previous students of mine can tell you that I always love giving personalized advice, explanatory videos and sketches over on direct messages. So really you got nothing to lose. So without further ado, let's grab our tablets and get started. 2. Sketch: Hey guys, and welcome to the sketching phase of this class. In this lesson, I will take you through the whole sketching process of free different houseplants. And I will tell you what I'm thinking about when drawing inanimate objects that I wish to Stylize and that I wish to look colorful and full of life in the end, if you have seen my previous classes, you should know by now that I'm more of a character artist rather than a prop artist, however, I feel like every artist needs to go outside their comfort zone and tackle something new, something different. Personally have never drawn plans before, but I felt confident enough to be able to use the art skills that I learned during the ears and the flight amount of clearance instead of characters. If you think about it, plans should actually be easier to draw ten people because you don't have strict anatomy. You don't have proportions that you need to be careful about. You don't have expressions that needs to be drawn and so on. But what you do have is a challenge when drawing plants is knowing when to draw plants details and when to choose to draw just noise. For instance, in the first reference picture that I picked, I don't especially like the middle area with so many leaves. So I will definitely leave some out and change the position of some others. This is because I want the silhouette of my plants to be readable even without someone's single the details that will come later. So similar to what I do when I draw characters, I tried to measure the proportions between the plant and the face. And then for the plant part, I tried to see what are the biggest shapes that create the silhouette of the plant. Then I sketch those leaves that capture the most attention. We are not adding in any details to the leaves yet, we are just drawing the general shape. This is the skeleton of our drawing. I feel like too many beginner artists feel like they need detailed to the max the first small parts that we put on paper even before having the skeleton of the drawing greedy. But if you do that, you will simply have some really detailed piece floating on the canvas without something to bound them together onto one subject. So first you should sketch the overall subject by using big shapes. Then you start refining the sketch and only later when you add all sorts of small details. In phases, also the phase where you capture rhythm. Maybe your object is really bouncy or really stiff, very organic are very static. The sketch should be the part in the process that is so free and draw that you can actually feel what you are drawing. After I have two large shapes in place, I will start working on the line of the leaves and maybe add some small holes in the leaves everywhere in there. I tried to respect into some degree the reference photo and address some of the most eye-catching leaves, while others are totally replaced and made up. I create depth by making some of the leaves more to the front and others to the back. Somewhere above other. The distance will be later shown through shadows. Okay, so now I set this sketch layer side and create a new layer for a new plant. This one is rather easy, but I still wanted to do it. I spent some time working on the base and its holder, and then I start to drawing the leaves. Compared to the previous plant. This one is quite straightforward. The leaves don't have much detail and neither does the base. Now I want to play around a bit with the composition. I'm trying to obtain a big, medium, small kind of composition. And I move them around the canvas until it looks good. When I'm satisfy, they start working on the final point. I want this one to be the largest and the leaves will be the most eye-catching due to all the texture on them. Just like before I start by taking the proportions and trying to figure out the composition of the final element. I want the leaves of this one too spread out quite a bit and cover parts of the other two plants, but without overshadowing them completely. More like making them feel part of a composition. I'm still drawing large shapes to get the feel of the plant before jumping into details. Don't be afraid to make use of your digital tools when working on your composition. Multiple schedule around skill elements, rotate them. You can even use Liquify to adjust some of the wonky shapes you are in control. Right? So we are nearing the end of this sketch phase. I will let you watch the rest of the video and I will meet you on the next part, the line art phase. See you soon, guys. 3. Lineart: Hello guys and welcome back to the class. In this lesson, we will pick up where we last left off and start refining our sketch. It's getting a little dark around here, but hopefully this won't take too long. When it gets too dark to keep filming, I will switch to screen recording. If this isn't the first time you watch my classes, you probably already know about my customer liner brush. But if you're new here, this is the brush that I always use for my liner. It's creamy, It's smooth. It has an awesome pressure sensitivity and it helps you with line weight. You can get it for free for being my students. And you can simply now a little bit from the resources section. When I do the line art overdrawing, I first said the sketch layer to a lower opacity and create a new layer above it. Then I essentially start tracing. Line variation is important when doing the liner because it can create more areas of interests. It can create the impression of depth and the impression of light. Procreate is also the best apps that I know for facilitating the liner process. It helps to create perfect shapes and lines by holding down the pen on the screen after you finish scribbling the wonky shape. And then the shape menu will appear. I use it the most in perfect circles or streak lines. I will let her watch the rest of the process now and I will meet you again on the base colors lesson. I will show you how to create a watercolor wash, how to use a paper texture, and how to select your colors for your piece. 4. Base Colors: Hello guys and welcome back. In this class I will show you how to quickly block in the colors and how to obtain a really nice wash and a watercolor background for your piece. In the screen recordings that I usually make in my classes, you'll always see me using the Lasso tool and filling in the shapes fast. I believe that filming the whole tablets at this time might give you a better insight on how to actually use the tool. It's a lot of pinching, zooming in and zooming out and having the color fill activated so you can see the colors fast. It also helps if you try different colors while still having the, an active. Now because I want to sketch to be presented. I want to give it a nice watercolor wash underneath. So I browse Maxwell it nice watercolor max pack and mess around with different brushes to see what kind of effect looks better. Then I take the paper texture and put it as a background and set the watercolor layer to multiply so that you can see the paper texture underneath. I'll put the paper texture in the resurfacing in the resources section as well. In case you want to play around with it. Because I wanted the plants to have the same watercolor paper texture. That means that I will have in my layers on either multiply or overlay so that each layer will build upon the other. Will let you watch how I choose all the base colors and then we will go into more detail in the next two lessons, shading and lighting. Make sure to be there. 5. Shading: All right guys, now we start the shading process. Some of you may have skipped directly to this part, but I strongly believe that without a good base, a good foundation, no matter how good your shading is, the final result won't be satisfying. That means the short recap is an ordered in case you skipped previous parts. I need to let them know that my base colors are all on either multiply or overlay layers. Each part of von drawing on a different layer, the face, the leaves, and one. I chose to make the likeness so that the paper texture will be visible. Because I want the soft traditional way. It will create separate multiply layers for each part of each plant and start shading. I want all the plans to build it from the same direction from the upper left side of the drawing. I need to keep that in mind whenever I create shading, since it's directly affects what are the darkest part of the drawing will be when shading, keeping in mind, what is the volume that you are trying to depict is this fear? Is it the cylinder may be a cube. Then keep in mind that the material, is it something reflexive like glass or golf? Or maybe it's something math like a wooden table. In my case, I'm trying to create the ceramic cylindrical debt has the analytics. So the base will be darker on the edges and quite lit on the middle. Some very light far to be on the upper edges where the light is coming from. However, the wooden parts will be more cohesive since what is not the shining material. So neither will the shadows be extremely dark or delight, very white, unless the light source is extremely close and we'll create deep shadows, but that's not the case. The leaves are sort of reflective and their darkest parts will be around to the middle. But for now, I wanted to create a dark area on the base towards the roots, and they will later come to darken the details. I also created some shading on the right side, the one that is farther away from the light will also combine green shading with blue shading to create more depth and more color variation. For deeper shadows. Instead of using the brush, I will use the lasso tool and also create some details on the leaves for this plant, most of the shadows or towards the middle of each leaf and where there are leaps casting shadows on other leaves Onto the next plant. This plant waste has a really nice texture in the photo reference. So I will try to obtain something similar and create some marks on the base as well. I use textured brushes to get the effect I want and I try not to create too much contrast. The leaves of this plant are only the wavy, so there will be some shadows on the edges of the leaves as well as on the window. Later on, we will also add all the little things that make this plan so pretty. But now we are sitting the general shadows of the plan. Before diving in deeper in this shading, I want to alter the colors of the leaves and make them a little more yellowish. Okay, this has been there. For starters. I want to read the details of the leaves with the brush, but instead of covering all the leaves with small lines, I would choose only a few areas to do that. Because the human eye will automatically assume that the same picture is on the whole leaf. But in art, creating lines on the whole leaf will be too much detail and they will take away the special effect from it. Now to create deeper shadows, I will also use the Lasso tool around the middle of the leaf and to create some stronger details as well. Now that I'm satisfied with the leaves, it's time to create some details for the basis. Well, I have my reference on the left, so I will do my best on some mark-making. I will also test out some new brushes that I got from RAAS drugs. It's the advanced flashback in case you are interested. This is your friendly reminder to also go out sometimes so that you don't get lost in details that can really be noticed. Now we are moving on to the next plant. This one has a low one kind of face. So it's really texture. I don't think I will be able to reproduce it exactly. But we're stylizing cure, so let's give it a shot. I simply throwing spaghetti at the wall here and trying to see what sticks. I'm trying different texture brushes. Now multiply layer is coming off as a bright orange due to the fact that the basis really liked and set to overlay. So I will try to change that and see where that gets me. Now that I have a better base, I will test out some more pictures until I feel satisfied. You will see how many brushes I have that I hardly ever use on my appropriate. Now we'll do the leaf shape. How create some dark shades on the middle of the leaves and very lethal texture on the edges. The lines that I will create in the lighting video, we'll make this plot look or special. But for now we are keeping the shading to a minimal for this one. Before we go to the lighting phase of this class, we will spend a couple of minutes to change the color of the liner. We will set our line art layer to alpha lock, that we will only apply our changes to the pixels of this layer. That means we can grab a big brush and color over our lines. I tend to create a slightly darker color than the one immediately next to the line so that it will still be visible but it'll disappear. Right? That's it for this lesson, I will see you all in the lighting phase where this drawing will come together. See you soon. 6. Lighting: Okay guys, I always like to leave the lighting for the last part because I just know after all this time that if everything worked out well in the previous steps, the lighting will simply enhance the beauty of the piece and it will tie everything together. But first I will have to do some adjustments, respectively, moving gauge, plants, line art, and nature of their respective groups of layers. I know that I want to use a warm color for delight is because on the shading part, I used cold colors like green and blue. With a round brush, I will follow the shape of each leaf and create some diffuse light. Afterwards with a smaller brush for finer details is I will create the lighter Street on the middle of the leaves. Because I wanted to The first find the lighting. I will try to create some yellowish portions here and they're using a larger round brush. I also want to create some details like making some nice lines to create some roughness to the design of the leaves. In this face, I will also use normal layers propelled me cover some states or adding more details. For these bonds, I want to add some lighter vines that will give it some really nice detail. Nothing fairly happy with this vase. So bear with me for awhile is I tried to create some interesting reflexive colors, like yellow from the light and green from the leaves. Because I want this class to be a bit magical, I will create some small white particles, urine, they're kind of like dust particles. So let's do some before and after. Before. We're going to move on to the next blend. I will start similarly on the second plant with the large round brush to create the main light, also using a warm color. Using a smaller brush, I will try to then differentiate some leaves from one another by equating the lighter contrast here, they're just like before. I will emphasize the middle of the leaf with a nice slide straight before adding details to the leaf. In. Now to add some lights, the base I will liken the middle of the face and then with a smaller brush, I'll create some details and fixture. Just like before with a normal layer, I will add some details, some reflective light, darkening some areas, and adding more texture in various places. After checking the progress so far, I feel like this plant needs some alarms. So I want to add a subtle thing. After filling again fast with a large brush, I will erase part of the red light and only leave some salt Hansel form. Now let's move on to the final plan. First, I wanted to create some light texture on the ways because it's been bugging me, not be able to obtain some of the rachel mixture. After I feel better about it, I start putting in some round breath light on the leaves. On a different layer, I will start creating the details with a smaller brush starting from the middle and working towards the edges. Creating this lines will add fixture to our plant, but it's important not to exaggerate when adding them. Not every leaf will be equally important in our final piece. Now let us move on to the base again and put some light on some certain areas. Again, we will try to keep in mind the texture of the base or rather the basket and not exaggerate with the light. I'm adding against the small dust particles to every leaf manually. I feel like this leaves me the lethal more attention. So I'm trying some texture brushes on some of the leaves. This is about it with this plant. Now let's check them all again and see if there's anything else that we can do. Finally, we will create some adjustment layers before calling the BCE writing. Sometimes it's necessary, sometimes it isn't only by trying, we will see how we can enhance more work. That was it for this class. I will see you on the final lesson where I will give you your court. Be there guys. 7. What's next?: Congratulations on finishing this lesson guys. You did really great and I'm sure that now you will grab your tablets and start exercising growing plants. Because let's be real. If I managed to draw some plants when all I'm drawing our characters, I'm sure that you can do with two. What I want you to do is search for one house plant on Pinterest and start sketching it, coloring it, add the shading, the details and the light. Then whatever you do, don't forget to submit your drawing in the project section so that you feel demonstrate that the flipping the work. Not to me of course, but to demonstrate it to yourself. If you are following tutorials, you should spend one hour to actually try to apply the new knowledge and make sure it sticks. That means that guys, if you'd rather draw characters, I've got you covered. I'm currently at the beginning of my longest program yet, the Character Design Crash Course. There are two classes out already that are breaking down everything you need to know about character design. Next will be a class about character expressions. So don't forget, follow me to be the first one to know when the next class will be out. Stay safe and keep creating. Bye.