Illustrate Butterflies And 3 Ways To Animate In Procreate + Guideline Sketches

1. Introduction & What You'll Learn: Let's dive into the world of creating semi realistic, beautiful butterflies and bring them to life through animation. Hi. My name is Vinita, an illustrator and a designer based in Singapore. In this class, I'm going to guide you through the process of illustrating semialstic butterflies and three ways to animate them in procreate. I've prepared a set of guidelines that works as a versatile foundation to illustrate a wide range of butterfly species. We will start by sketching our butterflies with the help of these guidelines. And as you become more aware on how to work with these guidelines, you can even craft your own based on your own unique illustration style. Followed by sketching will be our illustration steps. That includes highlights shadow and adding pattern to these butterflies. I will also introduce several techniques for achieving shading and highlights that brings depth and dimension to your illustrations. We will be illustrating three types of butterflies in this class, and I will be showing you how to animate them in three different ways. There are plenty of butterfly and animation examples that I did using the same techniques shown in this class. I look forward to seeing you in the class and start illustrating these tiny, colorful butterflies. 2. Reference Images: It is often beneficial to draw inspiration from a combination of reference images. You can start by creating a collage of the butterfly you want to illustrate. Like for example, here you can see I have three images of the same butterfly. Like I want to pick up something from each butterfly. For example, in the first image, I like the shape of the wings. I want to follow this shape for my illustration. In the second image, I might want to pick up the shape of the head. The second thing I like is the way the wings are lighter and it is clearly visible for me to follow. Now in this third image, I want to follow the way the blue and the white is washed out with this kind of collage of images. The combination you will assemble will result in something entirely new and uniquely yours. When selecting your reference images, feel free to use your personal photographs, or the ones from the Internet, whichever you prefer. Just keep in mind that if you use someone else's photos, they may be copyrighted. To ensure you're in the clear, it's best to choose images from the royalty free sources like Pixabay or Unsplash. I have attached more than 50 royalty free reference images in the resource section of this class, which also includes both the images that I'm using in this class. For unsplash.com I have installed the app on my ipad. This is how the app looks. I will tap and open this app. You can tap on this search icon at the bottom here and type in your subject. I'll type Butterfly and Tap Enter. This website has a high quality royalty free images. You can use them for any of your projects or for reference to. You can download them by tapping on the image on the right corner here. You can tap on this tiny arrow that will download the image. Now just for your illustration reference, you might not need a high quality, you can simply screenshot your image. I even have a Pinterest board for the butterflies here. You have to be very careful, because most of the Pinterest images are not royalty free, But you can use them as a reference or as an inspiration. 3. Body Parts Of Butterfly: I will quickly go through the basics of the body parts of a butterfly. This is very helpful because we need to understand which body part connects, where it will not be a very detailed or a scientific one. We'll start with the first body part, that's the head. This will be the head of the butterfly. Below that, attached to the head is the thorax. Now, the third one below thorax is the abdomen. There are two pairs of wings. The upper one is the fore wing, the lower one is the hind wing. There are six legs. All six legs and the pair of wings are attached to the thorrex. These were the major parts. Let's move on to sketching our first butterfly. 5. Blue Morpho - Sketching: Let's start with our very first butterfly, That's blue, Morpho. When you download my guideline sketches and open in the procreate app, you'll find them in the left corner here. Next, I'll place both of these files into a stack. Select both of them, and tap on this option called stack here and cancel. Now they are into a, A folder. Open this folder. Now, before we start with our first butterfly, I want to duplicate our guideline file that we have a copy of this file for our other butterflies, I'll tap and open one of the front view guideline. This is how my guideline file looks like. Next, when you go to the layers, you'll see there's just one layer with the guideline on it. Now our first step will be to reduce the opacity of this guideline sketch. For that, you'll go to layers. Tap on this tiny here, You can slide and adjust the opacity of your layer. Our next step is to sketch our butterfly. For that, we need a new layer. Go to layers, add a new layer, Pull this layer below our guideline layer. I'll rename this layer as Sketch. Now our next step is to switch on our drawing guide. For that, you need to go to the wrench icon menu here. Make sure your canvas is selected here. The drawing guide should be switched on. It should be switched on. Then below that Edit Drawing guide, here at the bottom, you'll find a lot of options. You should be on the Symmetry option. There are more options to edit your drawing guide. Here you can edit the thickness of your drawing guide and opacity to under options. Your vertical option should be selected and tap done. Now when you go to layers, you'll find this assisted return on your layer. That means the drawing guide is switched on for that particular layer. Now let's start with the sketching of our butterfly. Our first step is to select our brush. Tap on the brush library. Select our six pencil brush. Next I'll select my color. I'll select a dark gray color from the color panel. Now we need our reference picture on the canvas. To for that, I'll go to the Wrench Can menu. Again. Under Canvas, you'll find this option called Reference. Switch it on and that will open a tiny box like this. I'll move this on the left corner. Now when you're on your first option, it is showing what is on the canvas, you should be on. The second option, you can tap on this center, Import image, and you can import your reference image. Tap on your image and that will open your image. Here can move and even zoom in. You can adjust your image inside this tiny box. Now let's start with our sketching. Make sure you're on your sketch layer. We'll start with the upper wing first. This butterfly has a slight curvy edges on the wings. You can follow the guideline and add these curves. You can even move the canvas around. Take your time until you're satisfied with the shapes and the curves. Let's move on to the lower wings. Even for the lower wing, we need these slight curves on the edges. First I'll add this basic shape, and then we can add our curves using this as a guideline. We are done with our wings here. Let's move on to the body. I'll zoom in my reference image. Let's start with the mouth first, then the eyes. If you see the thoryx for this butterfly is small and it's very roundish and oval in shape. And it is not very hairy. Now for the abdomen, you can add these tiny curves. Now we are done with our outer shape of this butterfly. Let's move on to the veins. We'll start with the first one. You can even follow the guidelines sketch exactly as it is now. The upper part, I'll divide this into two more parts. Now, for most of the butterflies, the upper wing is divided into around six to seven parts. I'm following the guideline and I'm dividing this into six parts. I'll reduce the opacity of my guidelines sketch more so I can see my butterfly sketch more clearly. I'm trying to add this oval shape following the reference image. Here we are done with the upper part of our wing. Let's move on to the lower ones. I'll follow the reference image for this part because it looks different from my guidelines sketch. We are done with the wins for the wings. We forgot to add the tiny antenas on the head. We are almost done with our sketch. Let's hide our guideline layer. You can make any amount of changes when you are on your sketching stage, because later adding changes to your final illustration can spoil the quality of your illustration. For example, here I feel the body of this butterfly needs to be smaller for that, I will first make sure I'm on the sketch layer. Tap on the selection tool, make sure your free hand is selected. Now I'll carefully select only the body area. If this was on another layer, it would be easier. But because this is on the same layer as the wing, you have to be careful. Once you're done selecting, make sure your uniform is selected and I'll make it smaller. Now you have to make sure under snapping, your snapping and magnetic is on. That can help you with the center of the canvas. You will need this body of the butterfly to be exactly in the center. When you move this with your finger, you can see these golden lines that indicates that it is exactly in the center. Once you're done fixing your body, you can de select we are done with the sketching of our first butterfly. Let's move on to the illustration. 6. Blue Morpho - Illustration: Let's start with the illustration for our blue morpho. Our first step will be to add a new layer for our base layer. Go to layers, add a new layer, pull this layer below our sketch layer. I'll rename this as base layer. Now before you start, you have to make sure your drawing assist is on tap on the layer. Tap on drawing assist. Next we'll select our brush. We'll go to the brush library. Select our studio pen brush. Now we need a mid tone blue color for our butterfly. You can just pick up from your reference image once you like the color. I'll go to the color panel. Now from the color panel, I want it to be a little lighter one. I have this color palette in the resource section two. Now I'll start with an outline first outline for the whole wing. Now you have to be very careful because this is going to be the final illustration. The sketch will not be the part of your final one. Now you have to make sure there are no open ends because we will be filling this with the same color. Next, we'll pull this color and drop it into your wings. If there is any open end, the color is going to fill the whole canvas. Now our next step is to add patent for that. We'll add a new layer on this layer and tap clipping mask again on the layer and tap drawing assist. Next we need to pick up our color. I have two dark browns in my color palette. You can pick any one of them or you can even choose your own dark color. Now to pick up our brush, we'll go to the brush library. I'll select the broader six pencil brush. Now following the reference image, I'll add pattern to our butterfly. Because the pattern for this butterfly was very simple, I did not sketch while sketching our butterfly. But for most of the butterflies, you can sketch your pattern two while you're sketching your butterfly, I'll add this thick chunk of outline. Now I'm going to extend the pattern towards the veins. I'm going to make it a little slightly pointy where it is meeting the veins. Also, try to keep the edges of the pattern not very neat and clean to smudge it or try to make it slight blurry. Add this slight dark area in the center. For this part, I'm holding my pencil with a very slight pressure. Also it is slightly tilted so my lines are not too dark or too sharp. Now let's move on to adding some highlights and shadow. We'll go to layers. Add a new layer. Tap on this layer tap, Cripping mask. Tap again and tap Drawing Assist. Now we'll select our blend mode for that tap on this tiny scroll down until you select overlay. Once you're done, it will show on your layer on your right here, it will show. That means overlay is selected. Now you have to select a dark gray color. Just select a dark gray color. And then you can check on your butterfly. If you're not very happy with your shade, you can change the color to be a little darker or lighter. Once you're happy with the color, let's start adding shadow to our butterfly. Always double check. Your drawing assist is on for that particular layer. My pencil tip is slightly tilted. I'm adding a brush stroke and then I continue with less pressure. It should be going from darker to lighter. The purpose of overlay blend mode is it helps to enhance the shading and high lights on multiple colors at the same time. It makes the dark color darker and brightens the light ones. For example, here you're shading the brown and the blue at the same time. You can follow the guidelines or the sketch lines to add these brush strokes. I'll continue adding this for both the wings till the bottom. Now we are done with adding shadow with our darker color. Let's move on to the lighter one. This new layer should be below our shadow layer, the one that people are working on right now. Next we'll switch on our drawing guide on this layer, on this layer and as next for the blend mode on the tiny and select overlay. It is more comfortable to work with your butterfly upside down for the high lights. Now for the lighter color, we will need a lighter shade of gray. You can just select any shade of light gray. And check on your illustration if that is light enough. Once you're happy with the color, let's start adding some highlights to our butterfly. With the highlights too, I'll be using the same techniques we did for the shadow. I'll start with my pencil a little tilted. We'll start with more pressure first and then later extend it with slightly lesser pressure. You can see when you add the brush strokes, it lightens both the color at the same time. Now I'll continue adding this for both the wings until the end. We are done with both light and the dark color, with the blend modes. Here let's hide the sketch layer and see how it looks. You can see it gives you a very three D ish look to the veins of this butterfly. Now let's move on to the white color pattern you can see in the reference image. This, we will add a new layer on top of all our layers. Tap on the layer and tap clipping mask. Tap on the layer again and tap drawing assist. You can see the white pattern on the butterfly. Here we'll go to the color panel. Pick up a white color with the same thick six pencil brush. I'll add this white pattern following the reference image. Always check on the other side too, to see if your drawing assist is on. Now these patterns can be slightly different even within the same species of the butterfly. You can refer to more than one reference image to understand how you can add to your butterfly illustration. Now let's move on to the bottom wing. Let's add some more highlights and detailing with the same brush and color. This will give your butterfly a more shiny and bright effect. Another detail that we can add on the pattern layer is go back to your pattern layer, the one with the dark brown color. Here I'll select one of the brown color, more like a mid tone brown color with your six pencil brush. But reduce the size of the brush. I'll add this brush stroke in the center of these curves with a very little pressure. Adding these small details will help your butterfly with the realistic look. Now this is going to be the last detail to our wings. For this. Again, I will add a new layer, two layers. Add a new layer. And this layer should be below our pattern layer, just above our base layer on the layer drawing assist. Now this detail is to add this darker area in the center. For this, I'll be selecting a nice bright blue color. This should be darker than all the other blues you've used for the wings. I'll start adding these brush strokes. My pencil is slightly tilted, we are done with our wings. Here we'll group all our layers for the wings. I'll go to layers. Select all the layers we worked on except for the guideline and sketch layer. Now we'll add a new layer for our body. Move this layer below our new crew layer. I'll hide my whole group for the wing so we can create our body. Clearly select my studio pen brush from the brush library. I'll select a color from the reference image. You can even select the same dark color we use for the pattern. We'll draw an outline. We forgot to switch on our drawing assist on this layer, tap on the layer, and tap drawing assist. And we'll draw an outline, fill this with the same color. Next we can add Anton's to the head. Now our next step is to add highlights and shadow to the body. For that, we will need a new layer. Add a new layer. This will be above our body layer on the layer, clipping mask on the layer. Again, drawing assist. Next we need our thicker six pencil brush from the brush library. Let's start with the Y and the head first. I'll pick up a darker color from the reference image. Just simply hold your finger tip on the image and that will pick up a color. I'll start by filling the area now for the body, try with a very little pressure on your pencil. You can even reduce the opacity of your. One tip for adding shading and highlights to any shape is while you're adding your highlights and shadow, you need to follow the shape of that object. Now here you can see I'm not going through the sides, I'm trying to keep the darker color in the center. This will give depth and a little three D ish effect to your illustration. Now we're done with the shading part with the darker color, let's move on to the highlights with the lighter color. Now to pick up our lighter color, first I'll select my mid tone. Go to the color panel and I'll slide diagonally for the lighter color. You can even follow the reference image to understand how and where to add these highlights, I'll be adding mostly to the sides and the edges. You can keep your apple pencil slightly tilted and with pressure, not sure. My brush size is smaller and my pencil is also not tilted because I need the lines to be sharper. Now to add a little shine in the eyes, I'm going to select a white color. We need our size to be slightly bigger here. Now there are more details on the head of this butterfly. If you zoom in, every butterfly has its own detail and patterns on their body and the wings. You will need a few reference image to understand these patterns. We are done here. Let's unhide our wings layer. I'll go to layers. Unhide our group. And you can hide your sketch layer. Let's cancel our reference image. That's how our blue morpho looks like. Even with just one color and very little pattern on your butterfly, you can give so much detail with the help of shading, highlights, and the wins. Let's move on to our second butterfly, which has much more pattern and colors then our blue morpho. 7. Tiger Swallowtail - Sketching: Let's start with a second butterfly, That's tiger swallowtail. Our first step is to duplicate our guideline canvas. I'll rename this canvas as Tiger Swallowtail. Tap on this and open the canvas. This canvas has my guideline sketch. Our first step is to reduce the opacity. Tap on this tiny, you can reduce the opacity. We can start sketching our swallow tail using the guideline for our sketch. We'll add a new layer, pull this layer below our guideline layer. I'll rename this as my sketch layer. Our next step is to switch on our drawing guide. For that, I'll tap on this Wrench Kin menu under Canvas. Switch on your drawing guide. Tap on Edit Drawing Guide. You'll see these options at the bottom. Your symmetry options should be selected under Options, your vertical should be selected. Tap done. Now you have your symmetry guideline switched on on your sketch layer. The word assisted means it is on for that particular layer. Next, we can select our six pencil brush from the brush library. Select a dark gray color from the color panel. Now we need our reference image for the butterfly on our canvas. For that, we'll go back to the Wrench menu. Under Canvas, there's this option called Reference. When you switch on your reference, that will open this tiny box. I'll place this on the left corner here. You should be on your image option. Now you can see this option called import image. Tap on this and you can import your reference image. Now you can move or zoom in your image inside this box. You can even increase or decrease the size of this. I will adjust this in a way where we can see the body and one part of the wings. Now let's start sketching our butterfly. Make sure you're on your sketch layer. We'll start with the wings first. Now this butterfly has a slightly pointy wing at the top. Before you start sketching, you can even go through more reference images to understand the shape of the wings. Now for the bottom, I'll first draw an outer curve, and then we can add those tiny wavy lines with the help of the curve. Now from the bottom, on the third line, I'll draw this tiny shape. Now let's start with the curves along the shape of the wing. Now on this side, we need around three to four big curves. Now we can erase the extra lines that we don't need under the eraser tool. I'll select the same six pencil brush and carefully erase the extra lines. I'll make this upper part of the wing more thinner and select the eraser tool with the same brush. I'll erase this extra at the top. Now let's move on to adding some vines to our butterfly. I'll draw our first in. You can see it's very thin here. Now on the outside of the wing, I'll divide this into seven parts. You can even follow the guidelines sketch. Now I'll start these lines from the center of the wing to these points. Add this tiny oval section in the center. Now let's move on to the hind wings. Here again, I'll follow the guidelines, sketch and add these veins. Now every species has its own different types of veins too. You might have to understand that and follow the reference image. We need these oval section in the bottom wing to Let's start sketching the body for this butterfly. We can sketch the body on a new layer in future. It's easy to edit or make any changes if needed. Make sure you switch on your drawing, assist on this new layer. Let's start with the head first. This butterfly has a very narrow and triangular shape of a head. It has this oval shaped hairy thorrex, a smaller abdomen with these sections on them. Now we are done with the outer shape and the veins of this butterfly. Let's move on to add patterns to them. I'll hide my guideline layer and we need a new layer. This new layer should be above our sketch layer. Tap on this layer and tap drawing asit. I'll adjust my reference image so we can see the pattern. Next, we can go to layers. Merge our sketch and win layer so we can reduce the opacity. Now on our new layer, we'll start adding our pattern. We'll start with these tiger stripe lines first. There are four of them and you can see in the image they're crossing. They're coming at the bottom two. We have this part of the sketch on a new layer that in future, if you're not happy with the pattern, you can just clear this particular layer. This third stripe is merging into the ins, merging into this oval shape. Now let's start with this thick outline on the edge of the wing, adding these tiny, wobbly oval shapes. Now let's move on to the bottom wing. Here you can see these tiny crescent shape on the edge of the wing. Now we can add these wavy lines at the top. I'll go to layers, increase the opacity of my first sketch Layer, merge both of our sketch layers. We just have the sketch on one layer and rename this as Sketch. Here we are done with the sketching of our swallowtail butterfly. Let's move on to the illustration part. 8. Tiger Swallowtail - Illustration: Let's start with the illustration of our tiger swallowtail butterfly. We'll start by adding a new layer for our base color. Pull this layer below our sketch layer and I'll rename this as my base layer. Next, we'll make sure your drawing assist is on for this layer. Tap on this layer and tap drawing assist. Next, we can select our brush from the brush library. Select a studio pen brush. I'll select a bright yellow color from my color palette. I have this color palette in the resource section two. Now we can add an outline to our butterfly wings. Make sure there are no open ends, because we will be filling this with the same color. If there are any space or open ends between these lines, the color is going to fill the whole canvas here. I want this extended shape to be a little more bigger. I'll drag and drop color to our shape. Now our next step is to add pattern to our butterfly. For that, we'll add a new layer. Tap on this layer. Tap, clipping mask. Tap on this layer again. Tap, drawing, assist. Now we'll select a dark brown color from our color palette. Select our six pencil brush, the broader one. Make sure you can see the pattern on the reference image clearly because we will need our reference image to add these patterns. We have already sketched our pattern for this butterfly, so you simply have to follow your pencil marks. Now, the thick outline on the side of the wing cover this whole area except for these wobbly circles. Now let's move on to the hind wings for this part in the sketch I made section, but now looking at the reference image, I feel we don't need more than four sections. I'm going to fill this area too. Next, with the help of our eraser tool, I'll select my, select the same six pencil. I'll erase these crescent shapes. Now with the same brush, I'm just going to add some rough edges because the lines are too clean. I'll also reduce the opacity of this brush with very little pressure on the pencil. I'm going to add these much lines on the edges. Another detail that we can add is to extend these lines into the veins. These lines should continue into the ins. You can follow this from the reference image to now. For the area where I need to shade, my pencil is slightly tilted. For smaller and sharper areas, my pencil is vertical. Now let's add this blue color at the bottom of the wing. For that, we'll add a new layer. Pull this layer between our pattern and base layer. Tap on this layer and tap drawing assist. Now from my color palette, you can select this bright blue color. I'll add this at the bottom of the wing between the panels. Now on the same layer we can add this tiny orange spot. I'll just select the bright orange color from the color palette and add at the bottom corner here. There's another second spot to. Now let's move on to adding some shading and highlights. For this, you will need a new layer on top of our pattern layer. Tap on this new layer, Tap, clipping mask. Tap on the layer again, and tap drawing assist. Now we also need our blend mode here. Tap on this tiny scroll down until overlay is selected. Next, you will need to select a dark gray color from our color panel. Check on your illustration if it is dark enough. If you're not happy, you have to go back and make it darker. I think this is dark enough and looks good. This is how your colors will look after you add your shading with this color. And I'll start adding my shadings to the wings. I'm following the same technique we did for the first butterfly. My pencil is slightly tilted. I start with a darker shading and then with less pressure my shading two becomes lighter. The purpose for overlay blend mode is it helps you add shading and highlights on multiple colors at the same time. Now let's move on to our hind wings. We are done with our shadow le. Let's move on to the high lights one. For that again, we'll need a new layer and this should be below our shadow layer. Your overlay should be selected for this layer. Also, your drawing assist should be on. Now, this time we'll be selecting a lighter color. I'll select a light grey color and check on your illustration. If that is light enough, it is more comfortable for me to add highlights when the butterfly is upside down. Because this way the direction of your brush strokes are the way you want from dark to light. I'll be using the same technique where my apple pencil is slightly tilted, so the brush strokes are darker at the start. And then you can continue with less pressure and extend the shading. I'll continue adding this highlights for both the wings. You can see here with the overlay blend mode. The high lights are applied for all the three colors at the same time. Let's hide our sketch layer and see how this butterfly looks. Now another tip to add more depth to your illustration is to duplicate your blend mode layer. This multiplies your shading and gives your illustration a more heavier look. You can even play with the opacity here if you feel it's too dark or too light. The same can be done to your highlight layer two. Now we are done with our wings here. Let's unhide our sketch layer. Add all of these wings layer into one group. Select all the wings layer and tap group. I'll collapse this group. Make sure your guideline and the sketch layer are not in this group. Next we'll add a new layer for the butterflies body. Pull this layer below our wing group layer, tap on this layer, and tap drawing assist. Next from the brush library, we can pick up our studio pen brush to illustrate the base for our butterflies body. We can select a dark brown color from our color palette and I'll add an outline to our butterfly body and fill it with the same color. You have to make sure there are no open ends, because if there is, when you drop your color here, it is going to fill the whole canvas. Dragon, drop the color in the body. Next, we need a new layer to add all our shadow, high lights, and all the detailing to this body. Add a new layer. Tap on the layer. Tap, clipping mask. Tap on the layer again. Tap, drawing, assist. Now we can select our brush. Go to the brush library. Select our thicker six pencil brush. Let's start with the head first. Zoom in our reference image. Select the bright yellow color from our color palette. If you see in the reference image, they are these yellow panels on the sides of the head. I'll add them with a smaller brush size. Now, continuing the same detail, with the same color on the sides of the body, we can add black color for the eyes, for the tens too. Now I'll select this dark brown color from the body. And we need few tones lighter from this color. I'll keep my opacity to around 60% and we can add shading and highlights, especially towards the center. Try to follow the shape while you're adding these details. Oh, now we'll move on to adding some hair to the thorrex. Now my opacity is 100% and the brush size is smaller. The color can be lighter from what we were using for shading. I'll add these short hair like brush strokes for this hair area. We'll be adding a combination of lighter and darker shades of these brush strokes. From the color panel, we can pick up a darker color. Now let's move on to add a little detail on the ice, but this, we need a white color. Go to the color panel. Select a white color with a bigger brush size. I'll add this slight detail. I'll reduce the opacity. We can add this shine like detail to the ice. We're done with the body of this butterfly here. I'll unhide my wings layer. Now we need a slight shadow between both the wings because the separation between both the wings are not very visible here. Now to add that, we'll go to layers. We'll need a new layer just above our base layer on this layer and tap drawing as now we need a darker color of yellow. I'll select one of the darkest color from our illustration. And select a color a few more tones darker than that. Now with my pencil slightly tilted, I'll add this shadow just between both the wings. You can add some more shadow detail with the same brush and on the same layer. So here we are done with our tiger swallowtail butterfly. I'll cancel my reference image. Let's move on to our third butterfly. 9. Longwinged - Sketching: Let's start with our third butterfly. It's a type of a long wing butterfly. Now my first step is to duplicate my side view guideline canvas. Tap on one of the canvas. Now when you go to layers, you'll see there's just one layer with the guideline on it. We'll reduce the opacity of this layer. Now we can add a new layer on top of this guideline layer to sketch our butterfly. I'll rename this layer as Sketch. Now let's get our reference image on the canvas. For that, I'll tap on this wrench Ken menu under canvas. You'll find this option called Reference. When you togal on it will open this tiny box. I'll move this on the left corner. Tap on image. Import image. You can import your reference image from the gallery. You can move and adjust your image here so that you can see it clearly. Now for sketching, we'll select brush. I'll go to the brush library. Select your six pencil brush. Select a dark gray color from the color panel. Let's start with the wings first for this, but to fly, you can see the upper wing looks bigger While sketching, you can keep that in your mind. Now, the second part of the wing, the lower part looks smaller and roundish and it is also overlapping the body. I think that looks good. Now let's move on to the body. The body is slightly hay. Then for the eyes, I'll draw a circle. Hold it. That will give you a nice oval shape. Now for the guideline that I have in the resource section is slightly improved than what you see in the class here. You can even follow the guideline exactly for the head, the body is slightly thicker than my guideline. Sketch the antenas on the head. If you zoom in, the eyes inside has these dark, tiny spots. We follow that. Now let's move on to the abdomen. The abdomen has the small section and it's pointy. At the end, near the mouth you can see the small spiral thing. I'm not very sure what you call them. Now let's move on to the legs. We need to add six legs. You can either follow the reference image or my guidelines sketch. There's also another wing showing at the back in my guidelines sketch. For that, I'll just follow my guidelines sketch. You also need that wing while we are animating this butterfly, let's move on to the wins for the upper wing. I'll follow my guidelines sketch. Now win for the bottom wing, adding the small oval shape on the upper wing. On the body you can see these black and white stripes. We're almost done with the outer sketching of this butterfly. I'll hide my guideline layer. Now let's move on to the pattern. Our first step is to go to layers and reduce the opacity of our sketch layer and add the new layer for our pattern. I'll try to follow the reference image as close as possible so we are done with the sketching of our third butterfly. We'll go to layers and increase the opacity of our sketch layer, pinch, and merge your pattern and sketch layer. Now let's move on to the illustration. 10. Longwinged - Illlustration: Let's start with the illustration of our third butterfly. We'll reduce the opacity of our sketch layer, add a new layer, pull this layer below our sketch layer. This will be our base layer for the illustration. I'll rename this as base layer. Next, we can select our brush, tap on the brush library. Select our studio pen brush, the bright orange color from our color palette and I'll draw an outline for our first wing. Make sure there are no gaps and open ends because we will be filling this with the same color dragon, drop the same color into this wing shape. Now our next step is to add pattern to this wing. For that, we'll go to layers. Add a new layer, tap on the layer and tap clipping mask. I'll select a dark brown color from R color palette. Select six pencil brush from the brush library. The one with the bigger size. Now following the reference image and the sketch I'll add patent to this wing. You have to make sure the colors you're choosing for the base colors are not too dark or too light. Only then you can get a better results on your highlights and shading. There will be more pressure on your apple pencil where you want to achieve clean and darker strokes and little pressure for your faded and smudged effect. Having these pressure sensitive brushes are very helpful. While you're adding these patterns, you can try to follow the reference image as close as possible, because most of these butterflies under the same species will have very similar patterns on them. This area, if you see the pattern, has a very faded effect, I'm trying to achieve that. You can see on the edges, there are these dark faded outlines. Now with the smaller brush size, I want to add this detail where the pattern is merging into the veins. You can add some smudged edges and the pattern can continue into the veins. Now let's move on to adding this white patch into the pattern. Go to layers, add a new layer. Pull this layer below our pattern and base layer. Now we can add this yellowish off fit pattern to our butterfly. You can directly pick up this color from your reference image or you can even pick up from a color panel. I like this yellowish color because this is more like a midtone. While you're adding highlights and shadow, this will help on this pattern. I can even see some splash of this color on the hind wing. Now let's move on to adding some shadow and highlights to our butterfly. Go to layers. Add a new layer. This layer should be above our pattern layers. Tap on the layer and tap clipping mask next. To select our blend mode, tap on the tiny end and you can scroll down until overlay is selected. Now we can select our color from the color panel. Tap on the color panel and I'll select this dark gray color. You can check on your illustration if this is dark enough, we'll be using this to add shadow to our butterfly. Now let's start adding some detail to our butterfly. For these brush strokes, my apple pencil is slightly tilted. I start with darker strokes and then extend it with very little pressure. It should go from dark to lighter. I'm adding this detail in small sections of these veins. Now I'll continue with this shading for the whole wing. Here you can see working with overlay blend mode is helping you add your details and shadow on three color at the same time. You can see the orange, the fite, and even the brown, All three colors getting this effect at the same time. Now let's move on to the hind wing. Now for the highlights, we need another new layer. I'll go to layers. Add a new layer, pull this layer below our shadow layer. We need Overlay Blend mode for this layer too. Scroll down until overlay is selected. Now you can select a light gray color from the color panel. Tap on the color panel and select a light gray color. You can check on your illustration if it is light enough. If it is not, you can go back and make your color lighter. Now we can start adding some highlights to our butterfly. For this first panel, my brush size is very small because it's too thin. The area is too thin. Now, for the broader areas, we might need a bigger brush size. And also for me, it gets very comfortable when the butterfly is upside down for these highlights, because then the brush size can go in the opposite way from dark to light. My pencil is slightly tilted and with very little pressure, I'm adding these highlights. Again, for the highlights too. I'm going to work on each section of this in going from darker to lighter. I'll continue with this for the whole wing. We are done with our highlights here. There's another tip that I love is you can go to layers and duplicate your shadow. Layer the one with the overlay. This multiplies your shadow or highlights. It is very helpful when you feel your illustration is flat or doesn't have depth. You can even play with the opacity. This can also be done with your highlights layer, the one with the light gray color. Now I'll go back to layers and there's another detail that can be added on your pattern layer. Select your pattern layer, the one with the dark brown color. I'll hide my sketch layer. Pick up a shade of brown color from your pattern, more like a mid tone and with a smaller brush size. Now we're done with our wings here. Go to layers and hide my sketch layer. And we'll select all the layers for the wings and group them and collapse this group. Now we can add a new layer for the body. Pull this layer below our wing group layer. Hide the wing layer so we can see the body clearly while we're working. Select our studio pen brush from the brush library. We'll start by adding a base color to the body. I'll select a lighter version of the brown. You can find this color on the screen. Now following the sketch, let's add a base to the body. Make sure there are no open ends, so you can easily fill it with the same color While adding legs, make sure there are six of them. You can follow more than one reference image to understand how you want to position these legs now this tiny spiral shape near the mouth. I'll increase the opacity of the sketch. We cannot see the sketch clearly. It is still not visible. I'll make it darker by going to the adjustments and curves. I'll pull the string down that will make your sketch darker and deselect. We need a new layer just above our body layer to add details to our body. Tap on this layer and tap clipping mask. Next we need to select our brush. Go to the brush library and select six pencil, the thicker one. Go to the color panel and select the same off fite color. Now following the reference image, I'll add this off fite on the body, you can see the head looks off white and even some part of the body is off white. Now for the darker color, I'll go to the color panel and select a very dark gray, almost like a black color. I'll fill in the eyes first. Now select few shades more darker to add these tiny circles inside the eyes. Now let's move on to the body. I'll select the same dark gray color from the eyes and we can fill in both the stripe with the same color and we can continue the same color towards the abdomen to now. For each section here on the abdomen, we'll add some shadow and highlights. Here we are done with our shadow. Let's add some detail with a lighter color. Select the body color, the midtone color. Go diagonally and choose a color, few tones lighter. With very little pressure on your pencil, you can add this shading detail. This will help us give a very three D ish look to the body too. Now let's unhide our wing layer, go to layers and hide the group. Now we can select a dark color from the eyes to add on the legs and some more other parts of the body. I'll select a lighter version of this off white color and we can add these tiny hair on the body. Overlap this color into the dark color too. And I'll continue adding this high light on the head too. Now let's add our second wing to the butterfly. For that, I'll go to layers and hide my sketch layer. Duplicate our first wing. Group. Select and open one of the group. Pinch and merge all the layers in this group. Now select this wing and we'll use our sketch as a guideline. I'll hold this node and rotate. I'll switch off my snapping and magnetics. Now we can easily move this shape, rotate, and adjust this wing inside my guideline sketch. Now this wing should be on the other side of the body. Go to layers, pull this layer below our body layer. We are almost done with our illustration. I'll go to layers, hide my sketch layer. Next, we don't need our reference image, I'll cancel my reference image. Now we need our second wing to be slightly lighter. Make sure your second wing is selected. Go to Adjustments, Curves. Now you can hold this tiny string and pull it up. Now you can see the second wing getting lighter. And select. Now there's another detail that we can add for which I will add a new layer on top of all our wings layer. On this layer and tap clipping mask, select a dark brown color. You can find this color on the screen and we need to add this shadow in between both the wings so you can see and it will be clear that there are two separate wings. That was our last step. I'll go to layers, hide my sketch layer and this is how our butterfly looks like. Let's see how we can animate these butterflies. 11. Animation - 1: Let's animate our first butterfly. I'll duplicate my blue morpho canvas. Tap and open one of our canvas. Now our first step here will be to go to layers. And we don't need our guideline and sketch layer. Swipe left and delete. Merge the body layer with its clipping mask layer. Open the group we made for the wings, pinch and merge all of them. Now you should have two layers here, one with the wings and the other one with the body. Now make sure you're on your wing layer. Tap on the selection tool with your free hand selection. Select one part of the wing tip down with three fingers on the canvas, you'll get this bar with few options. Tap on cut, paste. This will cut and paste the selected part of the wing on a new layer. Now all of these three layers should be in a new group. I'll select them all and try to pull it out of this old group. I'll delete this extra new group and hide my body layer. I'll tap group now you should have just one group will. All the three layers inside that group. Now our next step is to switch on our animation assist. For that, I'll go to this wrench icon menu under Canvas on Animation Assist. This will open a bar at the bottom. This shows the number of frames you keep adding to your animation. One group equals to one frame for your animation. Next we'll go two layers and duplicate our group. You can see at the bottom, it just added another frame. Now our next step is to open this new group that we just created. Select one of the wing, tap on this arrow, and select under this selection, make sure your free form is selected. You can see these tiny nodes on each corner. Hold this node and pull your wing inside. Repeat the same for the left wing. Two, select this wing, hold the node, and pull it inside at the same distance as we did to the first one. Now we will be repeating these same steps a few times. Make sure you duplicate the group that we just made changes on. You can see these gray markings from the previous frames. This works as a guideline to work on your next frame. Now repeat the same steps for four to five times. Now for this frame, I will move the wing, almost double the distance we did for the other ones. This will be our last frame. Now tap on this option called settings. Here under settings, I will select ping pong. The next setting is frame per second. This helps you increase or decrease the speed of your animation. I kept mine as 16. Now tap this play option. Now this is how our animation looks like. You can go back to your settings and adjust your speed and see how it looks. We're done with our first animation. Here are a few more examples with the other butterflies. Let's move on to our second animation. 12. Animation - 2 (Side View): Let's see another way you can animate these butterflies. For this, we need a butterfly with closed wings. For that, I'll duplicate our long wing Butterfly Swipe left and tap. Duplicate, tap, and open this canvas. We don't need our reference image, I'll cancel this. Now, our first step is to merge our layers. For that, I'll go to layers. We don't need our sketch layer. Delete sketch layer. And delete the guideline layer two. Now first I'll merge the body with its clipping mask layer. Next, we can open the group for the wing pinch and merge all the layers. Now you should be having only three layers here. Select all the three layer, pull these layers out of this group. We'll add them into a fresh new group. Delete this extra empty group layer, select all the three layers and tap group. Now our next step is to switch on our drawing assist. For that, we'll tap on this Wrench Kin menu. Make sure you're under canvas Togal on this animation assist. This will open a tiny bar at the bottom here that shows all the frames for your animation. Now here you can just see one frame because one group equals to one frame. When you go to layers, we have all our layers under one group. Now to create our next frame, we need to duplicate our group. Swipe Bled and tap Duplicate. Now you can see here at the bottom, it just created our next frame. Now open this new group and select our first wing. Tap on this arrow icon. This will show you this selected box around your wing. Make sure under this selection your distort option is selected. Now when you see closely, there are two options here. One is a tiny yellow square and the other one is green circle. Now we need to move this tiny square. This is when you want to rotate the selection for this wing. I want the selection to be diagonal like this, because I want the wing to flap like this. With this selection, my wing will flap down, which will not look correct. We need this bottom of the selection to be diagonal. I'll hold this tiny square and move it left so it can be diagonal. Make sure it is aligning with your wing, the part that is attaching the body next, hold this tiny node just under your green circle and move it slightly inward. Now we'll go back to the layers and select our second wing. Tap on the arrow selection tool For this, we don't need any changes to the selection. We'll just select this tiny node and pull it slightly lower, almost the same as we did for the first wing. Now we'll duplicate this group. Make sure you're duplicating the group that we made the changes on. I'll be repeating the same steps four to five times. Go to layers. Select your wing. Rotate your selection. Move the wing a little lower. Now we'll go back to the layers and select your second wing again. Select this and move slightly down. Repeat again. Now the last couple of them can have more distance, you can have bigger gaps between them. Next, we can tap on this option called Settings. Here on settings, you'll see at the top here, there are three options. We'll go with the second one that's ping pong. Now here we can adjust the speed of our animation. Let's go with 15. Next, we can tap on this play option. That's how your animation looks like. You can always go back to setting and adjust your speed again, This is how our animation looks like. These are few more examples of the same animation, but with different butterflies. Now let's move on to our third way to animate these butterflies. 13. Animation - 3: Let's see a third way to animate these butterflies. For that will create a new canvas. Tap on this plus sign. Again, on this tiny plus sign, I'll keep my canvas as 3,000 by 3,000 pixel with 300 DPI tap create. Now our first step is to import a vintage flower image. For that, I'll tap on this wrench icon menu. Tap on Ad insert a photo. From here you can select any picture of your choice. I have these images in the resource section two. Once your image is on the canvas, I'll adjust this image to the size of the canvas. Once you're done, de select. Now our next step is to get your butterfly on this canvas. For that, we'll go back to the gallery. Duplicate our tiger swallowtail canvas. Swipe left and duplicate. Tap and open one of the canvas. Go to layers. We don't need our guideline and sketch layer. Swipe left and delete. Now pinch and merge all our wing layers. Next, pinch and merge body layer with its clipping mask layer. I'll hide the body layer and we need both the wings on two different layers. For that, we'll go to the selection tool. I'll select this selection tool, make sure your free hand is selected. And I'll select one side of the wing, swipe down with three fingers that will open this tiny box with all the options. Tap on Cut, Paste. This will paste your selected wing on a new layer. I'll select all the three layers and pull them out of this old group. Delete this empty group at the bottom. We'll add them in a fresh new group. Tap group. Now we need two of these groups. Swipe left and tap. Duplicate open one of the group. Select one of the wing. Select with this arrow tool here. Your free form should be selected. And make sure under snapping your magneting and snapping should be on hold this tiny node and slide it inwards until it snaps. We repeat the same for the second wing. Two select the wing layer, hold the tiny node, push it inside until it snaps. Now deselect, now we'll go two layers, pinch and merge all the three layers. For the first group, we'll repeat the same for the second group. Two pinch and merge all the three layers. Now you should have two layers with these butterflies on your canvas. One with the close wing and the other one with the open. Now our next step is to drop these butterflies onto our flower canvas. Tap gallery. Open the flower canvas and drop it in the center. Next we'll go to layers and we can resize our butterfly. Tap on this arrow icon. And I'll select both the layers. Make sure your uniform is selected. I'll make both the butterflies smaller. Make sure you're resizing them together. If you're not resizing them together, they will not match. And they will be of two different sizes. Now you can position them depending on where you want your animation to start. For example, I want my butterfly to go diagonally across the canvas. Once you're done de select, let's move on to our first step for animation. Tap on this wrench icon menu under canvas total on your animation assist. Now here at the bottom, you can see there are three frames, because you have three layers. Tap on the frame with the flower tap on that frame. And you'll see this option called background total on the background option and that will make your flower layer as your background layer. Now go two layers and I'll select the butterfly with the open wing. I'll move this butterfly slightly ahead of the butterfly with the close wing. So if you look closely, you'll see the first butterfly, the reflection of the first butterfly. Next, I'll select my close wing layer. Duplicate that layer, and pull it above our open wing layer. Select this duplicate butterfly and place it a little ahead of the one with the open wing. What I'm trying to create is a trail or like a path with the help of these butterflies. And we'll be creating this by alternating both the butterflies. So I'll keep moving them in the front so you will have your layers looking like open, winging, opening, closing. This will continue depending on where you want your butterfly to move. I'll continue this until it reaches to the other end of the canvas. Now here, when you see at this side, when you select your first butterfly, you will need one of the butterfly that is coming from down. I'll duplicate the open wing butterfly and move it below our first layer. Duplicate the close one, pull it again down and move it down. This will help us with a nice continuing animation here. I'll tap on this option called settings at the top here, we'll go with the first one that's loop. I'll keep my frame per second as nine. Tap on this play option. You can always go back to the settings and we can adjust the speed of your animation. We are done with our third animation here. Here are a few more examples with the similar animation process, but with different butterflies. For this animation, the butterfly is at the same place. This can be done with multiple butterfly in the same group. You have to make changes on four different butterflies in one frame. 14. Project & More Examples: For your class project, you can illustrate any butterfly of your choice using the technique shown in this class today. Here are a few examples of the butterflies that I illustrated using the same guideline and the technique shown in this class. This is a common rose butterfly. It has a white dusting throughout its fore wing and red and white spots into the tail. In the hind wing, its abdomen, thorrex, and head always have red patches too. This is a tiger long wing butterfly. The wings are black with bright orange and white patches. The body is dark and black too. This is the peacock butterfly. It is large and colorful. The wings are red with rusty brown splotches and gray black edges. They also have these eye spots on the back of their wings, similar to the eye spots on the peacocks. This butterfly is a type of a heliconius. It has black, elongated wings with yellowish, orange and white patterns. The body is very dark, blackish brown with white spots. This butterfly is one of the species of flittlary. Its upper wings are primarily orange with black spots and lines. The underside of the fore wing mirrors this pattern. However, the hind wing is a series of silver strikes and bands, which lends the butterfly its name. This is spring azure. It is a very small specie of butterfly. This has a very hairy thorx and the tens look like these black and white stripes When the wings are open, they have a very bright shade of blue. When the wings are closed, they look grayish with dark markings. This butterfly is known as paper kite. The wings are generally light yellowish or white, with dark brown or black wins and spots. Every butterfly has its own unique characteristics and features. It's always best to start by researching on these reference images and then start your illustration. To help you start with your project, I have more than 50 reference images in the resource section, and there's also a list of butterfly names in the project section. There is also a link to the Pinterest Board that I created while researching on my list of butterflies, and I'll also keep updating that in future. Please post your butterflies in the project section of this class. I can't wait to see your beautiful, vibrant butterflies.