Illustrate Tropical Fishes In Procreate

1. Introduction & What You'll Learn: This class is all about illustrating tropical fishes in procreate. By the end of this class, you will have two tropical fish illustrations. Plenty of tips and tricks on illustrating various body parts of a fish, and a lot of example that will inspire you to start your own tropical fish collection. Hi, my name is Vanita, an illustrator and a designer based in Singapore. My illustration style can be described as semialistic, mostly inspired by botanicals and nature. This class includes five sketches that you can download and follow along, a brush set, a color swatch, and more than 50 royalty free reference images. We will start this class by setting up our cannabis and knowing the brushes. I will be showing you the process I follow for sketching. We will be referring to multiple royalty free reference images to create our own unique sketch. There's a lesson showing with a lot of tips and tricks on how to illustrate different body part of a fish like fins, eyes, and even the scale. We'll be illustrating two types of fishes in this class. The first one is Moorish idol, which includes basic steps to understand how you can illustrate any fish in procreate. The second one is discuss fish. This includes slightly different steps with two layers of gradient effect. We'll also see how we can recolor this fish. I'll be showing you two different methods of recoloring them in. Procreate also includes a quick lesson showing how to create your own scale pattern brush. There are plenty of examples too that will help you decide your own scale pattern brush. We will also learn how to add this to our illustration. There's a bonus lesson showing time lapse of more than six tropical fishes. These illustrations can be sold as clip art or art prints on online platforms. Or you can turn them into seamless pattern for your surface pattern design. There are plenty of ways you can turn them into products. Let's dive into the world of tropical fishes. 2. Canvas & Brush Setup: Let's set up our canvas brushes. When you download the sketches and open your procreate app, you'll be able to find your sketches at the top here. Let's stack them into one folder. For that you need to tap on the Select option here. Select all the canvas that you need to stack and tap on this option called stack. This will add them into a folder and tap cancel. I'll tap on the stack to open. Now let's move on to the brushes. I'll create a new canvas for that. I'll tap on this tiny plus sign. Again on this plus sign. Now most of my illustration are either 3,000 by 3,000 pixel, or 4,000 by 4,000 but the DPI has to be 300. The size of the canvas depends on the purpose or the type of the project you're working on. This is just for the brush demo. I'll keep this as 3,000 by 3,000 pixel with 300 DPI and tap Create. When you download your brushes from the resource section of this class, tap on the brush library. You will be able to find your brushes at the top here with the name tropical fishes. You'll be able to see four brushes in the folder. These are basically the default brushes from the procreate library itself. But I edited them depending on my requirement. The first brush is a six pencil for sketching. I use this for sketching. By editing them, I made it slightly smoother by increasing the stabilization and the pressure for this brush, it's a pressure base brush. You can also use this for small details. Let's move on to our second brush. I'll select my second brush. This is basically to create all the base shapes after sketching. When you create a base for your illustration, you can use this brush. This two is a pressure base brush. This can also be easily used for leaf like shapes, which is also perfect for a seaweed or a coral shape. Now let's move on to our third brush. We will be using this for adding shading and highlights to our fishes. I'll select a darker shade of yellow. This, again is a pressure based. The more pressure you put, the darker it gets. With less pressure, it gets lighter and it gives you a very watercolor effect. You can even use it as it is on your illustration or smudge the edges later. Now let's move on to our fourth brush that is a fish scale brush. This is not a default brush, this is what I created from scratch. Let's try it on this leaf. We can add this on a new layer. I'll add a new layer and make the mode as multiply with very little pressure. This is how it looks. You can even increase or decrease the size of the brush. With smaller size, it looks something like this. And with bigger it looks like this. Let's write with a different color. We are done with our brushes here. The color palette that you can download from the resource section is you can set this as default, and that will show in your color panel here. Let's move on to the next section. 3. Sketching Tips: I will quickly go through my process of sketching. There can be multiple ways you can do sketching for your illustration. I will show you one very common way of sketching in procreate. We'll start by creating a new canvas. I'll tap on this tiny plus sign for your rough sketching. You don't really need a very big canvas. You can find a lot of options here. But I will be going with the screen size, It's a comfortable size to work on. Now from the brush library, I'll select my 60 pencil brush from the color panel. You can select any color of your choice. I'll be keeping mine as this dark gray. Now our next step is to get all our reference image on the canvas. For that, we'll go to this Wrench Ic menu. Tap on this. Under Add, you'll find this option called Insert a photo. You need to swipe left on this option. This will keep your photo private. Tap on the reference image and that will insert the image on your canvas. I always work with more than two reference images. I'll deselect this. We go back to the wrench icon menu and keep inserting the images that you need for reference. All of these images are royalty free and I have a lot of these images in the resource section two. You can download them for your sketching to. Once you're done importing all your images, I'll arrange them on the canvas. I will have one big image in the center and all the others at the top. I'll go to my layers and reduce the opacity of the one in the center. Because I will be sketching on this image, and our sketching lines should be visible. Now we need a new layer on top of this layer. Tap on this plus sign and add a new layer. I will start with the circle for the body. Hold your pencil tip on the screen. On this option called edit, you'll find these tiny blue nodes. You can adjust your circle with these nodes. Next, we need a vertical and a horizontal line to understand the center of this fish. I'll add a new layer on top of this layer. Now I can start sketching with the help of this reference image. Now you don't have to exactly follow the reference image while you're sketching. You can make your own changes if there's a particular style that you want to follow. For example, for the fan, you want it to be slightly more geometric than the reference image. For example, if you see in this reference image, the way it is attaching to the body, I want my fin to attach the same way, like the reference image even for the tail. I want to follow the same fish even for the eyes. If you want to follow a particular shape or size for all your fishes, that will help your collection to look cohesive. Now for the lower fin, I want to follow this fish for the shape. If you see there's a tiny little slit or you can say a little cut there, I want to add that detail in my sketch. Now for this part, you can see the fin in the reference image is stuck to the body. But I would like to add my fin to be something like this. So I'll add this tiny fin here. Now let's add a little fin here. Let's see how it looks on different reference images. I would like to add this little curve. They look transparent and they are of the similar color as the body. Let's catch something similar on our image. Now let's move on to this little slit here. Check on all your reference image to see which one you want to follow. I'll add a little gill slit just above our fin. For the eyes, I'll draw a circle and hold with one finger on the screen to make it a perfect circle. You can even move in and out to make it smaller or bigger. Another tiny circle in the center. Hold. Again, we're done with our sketching here. I'll hide my reference image. Now this is how your rough sketch looks like. After this, you can even add another new layer on top of this sketch layer to refine and sketch again. One final sketch. I will quickly show you how that looks. I'll reduce the opacity of this sketch layer, add another new layer on top of this layer. I'll start sketching on this layer. Like for example here, I want the tail to be less curve here. Now this will be your final sketch where you can edit your lines. You can remove or add anything you want. This can also be done with a different color, like red or green, so you can differentiate between your and the final sketch. We are done with our sketch. Here, I'll go to layers, hide my rough sketch and also all the reference images. This is a sketch we created using multiple reference images. It is also a combination of elements that we would like to add in a particular fish even now if you want, you can refine this further by adding another new layer until you're happy with your final sketch. Let's move on to our next section. 4. Tips, Tricks & Examples: Let's see some example of these fish illustrations. On the left side is my complete illustration. On the right side is my canvas where I'll be showing you how to illustrate these body parts. This is a regal tank fish for this fish. I will show you how you can illustrate this type of ice, this little slit here, which is also known as gills or gill slit. Our first step will be to add a new layer for the ice. For that, I'll go two layers and a new layer. Now we can go to the color panel to select the black color for the ice. From the brush library, we can select my base brush. I'll add this little black circle following my sketch. Now our next step is to add this little shine on the top, for which we need a new layer on top of this black circle layer. From the color panel, I can select this light gray or light blue in color. And from the brush library, I'll select my shading brush. My brush size is very small, around two or 3% We can add two crescent shape lines on the opposite edges of this circle. Next we can select our smudge tool, make sure same brush is selected. My brush size is smaller and even the opacity is less than 50% We'll start smudging inwards. Make sure you're only smudging the inwards, the inside layer of these crescent shapes. I've increased the speed of this video, but you can take your own time and make sure the lines and the shading is as smooth as possible. Repeat the same on the opposite crescent two. This might also take some practice to understand how the smudging or how the brush works, also how much pressure you need. We are done with our shine layer here. Let's move on to this outer circle, the circle around the eyes, for which I'll add a new layer. And this should be below our black circle layer. And make sure your same shading brush is selected. I want the brush to be smaller. Select a light blue color. You can either select from an image or from the color panel. And I'll draw this circle around the eyes. It shouldn't be too thick. Now with the smudge tool, again, smudge the outer area of this circle. Now our last step is to pick up a darker shade of the same blue. And following the same steps we did for the lighter circle, we'll draw a circle around with this dark color and then smudge it the same way we did for the light one. There is another tip that I would like to add is if you feel one of your shading or high lights look too dull or too light. For example, the white high light layer here. When I duplicate this layer, it multiplies and it looks more brighter and heavier. You can even adjust the opacity to see if you like it lighter or darker. We are done with our first eye here. This is another example of a similar that I did for the clown fish. Now let's move on to the second part of this fish, that is this little curve slit Here. I have this sketch mark on my demo fish that I can follow. I'll select all my eye layers and group them. Collapse this group and I'll add a new layer for the slit. Now under my brush library, I have my shading and highlights brush selected. Now from the color panel, I'll select a darker shade of blue that can help us create this depth. Slit. Following my sketch, I'm going to add this curve, crescent shaped line. Next we'll select the smudge tool, make sure same brush is selected. My brush size is very small and even though opacity is less than 50% I'm going to smudge only the right part of this line. If you see, I'm not smudging the left edge of this line. Now if you notice it is already looking like a slit. To give it more depth, we'll be adding some more high lights For that, I'll select a very light shade of blue. My brush size is very small and I'll add these lines on both the edges of this slit. Now selecting the smudge tool with the same brush, I'll start smudging these lines outwards, trying to blend it with the lighter part of the body. I'll hide my sketch layer and we are done with our second part of this fish. Another example of the slid detail that I did for the yellow time. Let's move on to our second fish. This is the lion fish. For this fish too, I want to show you the eyes. The eye for this fish looks slightly transparent and bulging. We'll try to achieve that on my demo fish. Our first step is to make sure we're on a new layer. I already have a new layer here. Next, I'll select a white color from our color panel. Now from the brush library, I'll select my base brush. Now we can draw a little circle near the area. If you have a sketch, you can follow the sketch lines. Once you're done with your first circle, we'll go back to layers. And we need to reduce the opacity for this layer. It can be around 50% We can even adjust this later. Let's move on to our second step. I'll add another new layer, Select a black color from the color panel. I'll add another little circle in the center. Let's move on to our third layer. I'll add another new layer. Select a white color again, Go back to the brush library and select the shading and the high light brush. Now with a smaller brush size, I'll draw an outline around the white circle. Once you're done with the circle, we'll select our smug tool. Make sure the same brush is selected. Again, my brush size is smaller and if you can see, even the opacity of my brush is less than 50% and smudge only the inner area of this circle. Try not to touch the outer edge of this circle. Now with the same color and on the same layer, we can add this little shine detail in the center. Now the last step and the last detail we can add to this ice. I'll go to layers and add a new layer. This should be below our transparent white layer. Select one of the darkest brown color and I'll draw a circle around our white transparent layer. I'll follow the shape of the white layer. And we'll select our smudge tool with the same brush and smudge it outwards. This gives depth and shadow effect to the eyes and helps the eye look slightly bulging and popping out. We are done with the eyes for our lion fish. Here, let's move on to the third fish. This is a peppermint angel fish. For this fish, I will be showing you how you can illustrate the little fin. We'll start by adding a new layer on top of our fish layer. I have my sketch here. I will be following my sketch to illustrate this fin. Select my base brush from the brush library. Next we can select the color. I'll select this bright yellow. We can draw a base shape for the fin. Drop the same color into the shape. Now our next step is to reduce the opacity for this fin. But that will go to layers. I'll reduce the opacity to around 40% You can even adjust this once the whole fin is done. Next, add another new layer on top of this base layer. Select shading brush from the brush library. With a very small size brush, I'll start adding these ins, lines starting from one end to another. Make sure it is slightly curved and follows the shape of the fin. You cannot add clipping mask to this layer because that will reduce the opacity of your in layer two. You also need to add an outline for the whole fin too, once you're done with your outline. Next we'll select our smart tool. Make sure the same brush is selected and we can start smudging these lines to words in word. 5. Moorish Idol Illustration: Let's start with our first, that is Moorish idol. That's our first canvas here on this canvas, this is how the sketch looks like. You'll find this sketch in the resource section. You can download and follow along. When you go to layers, you'll just find this one layer with the sketch on it. Now our first step is to get our reference image on the canvas. For that, we can go to this wrench icon menu. Tap on this Under canvas, you'll find this option reference total on this setting. This will open this tiny box where you can import your reference image. Tap on this image option on import image. This will take you to the photo gallery. You can import your reference image here. Once your image is here, you can hold in one corner and you can adjust the size for this. You can even zoom in, zoom out, I'll keep it in this left corner and adjust the size. Now let's move on to our layers and reduce the opacity of our sketch. Tap on this tiny and you can reduce the opacity to around 50% Next, we need a new layer to add a base to the fish. Add a new layer and pull this layer below our sketch layer. I'll rename this as my base layer. Tap on the layer and tap, rename all our illustration layers will be below our sketch layer. The sketch is always visible to us. Now for the base, we need to use white. You can see here in the reference image, The fish base needs to be white in color. I'll slightly change the color of my background. Our base color, which is white, will be visible to us. I'll keep mine as this light blue color. You can choose any color of your choice. Just make sure it is slightly darker than the white color. Next, we can go to the brush library. Select my base brush, that's the second brush. Go to the color panel and I'll select a white color. Either you can directly select a white color or you can double tap in this area, that will automatically give you the correct white. My brush size is around 4% We'll start by drawing an outline. Just go to layer and make sure you're on your base layer. Before we start, there's another setting that I would like to show is go to your color panel and go to the tropical fish color palette that you'll find in the resource section. Tap on the three dots and set this as default. This will keep your palette default and it will always show in this section. Now let's continue with the base of this fish. I'm going to follow the sketch lines and draw an outline for this fish. When you're drawing these lines, you have to make sure there are no open ends because we need to fill this with the same white color. If you miss an open end somewhere and you drop your color in this shape, it will spill all over the canvas. Once you're done with your outline, we'll pull this white color into our outline. If it is spilling all over the canvas, there are two things to check. One is the threshold and the second one is if there is any open ends. Our next step is to add this black pattern to the fish. For that will go two layers. Add a new layer, this should be above our base layer. Rename this layer as pattern layer. This layer is to add this black pattern on the fish. You can see it's near the mouth and even near the tail. You can even follow my sketch as a guideline. We can start with the mouth first. Let's zoom in the reference image. We'll select the black color from the color palette. This black, if you see it's not very dark, it's slightly dark, charcoal black. To the brush library. And I'll select my third brush that is the shading and highlight brush. Make sure you're on your right layer because this mistake can happen a lot. I'll keep my brush size around 3% and start adding this pattern to our fish. Okay, we forgot to add clipping mask to our layer. We need clipping mask to our layer because when we draw our pattern, it should not go outside our base layer. You go back to your layer, tap on this layer, and tap clipping mask. Now when you start drawing, you will see your brush stroke will not come on your background. It will be inside the lines only showing on your base layer. Now I need a smaller brush size for this shape. Now following the reference image and my sketches, I'll add this pattern to the whole fish. I will increase the speed of this process so that the video is not too long. Now, once you're done adding this pattern, let's move on to the next step. We need this yellow color below our pattern layer. For that, we'll go to layers, add a new layer, pull this layer below our pattern layer. Now in the reference image, you can see this yellow area. We'll go to the color panel and I'll select this bright yellow from our color palette. Let's add with the mouth first. For this, we need a smaller brush. I'll fill this tiny area with this color. Now let's move on to the body. For this, we'll need a bigger brush size, around 10% You can start with a little pressure first. The more pressure you add, the color gets darker as you start working. Maybe in the second layer you can add more pressure. Let's add another layer of this color. But with slightly more pressure, you can see it gets darker. I'm going to add this in the shadow areas. I need another layer of a darker shade. So I'll go to the color panel and select this bright orange from my color palette. I will add this in the darker and shadow areas. The pressure on my apple pencil is very little. I start with a very little pressure. Maybe later if you want it to be darker, you can add with more pressure. I need another layer of this orange. Again, for it to be darker, I'm going to add it with more pressure. Pressure size can be slightly smaller for this. Now, let's move on to the mouth. We need some towards the bottom here. Now our next step is to smudge and blend these colors. For that, I'll tap on this smug tool. Make sure under smudging the same brush is selected. The opacity of the smudge tool can help you increase or decrease the intensity of smudging. My brush size is around 6% but as you start smudging, you can adjust this later. Now, this depends on your illustration style. You might not want to smudge a lot and leave the texture of these brushes as it is, or you can just smudge the edges where you feel it's too strong or too. I like smudging a lot. I like to leave very little texture on my illustration. Once you're done smudging, let's move on to our next step. We will be adding some highlights to our pattern layer. I'll select my brush tool. Go to layers. Add a new layer. This layer should be above our pattern layer on this layer and tap clipping mask. Go to the color panel and I'll be selecting this dark gray color from my color palette. And I will be adding this in the areas where I want to add highlights. I'm adding this very rough strokes because later we will be smudging them, adding another layer with more pressure. And also only towards the center area of this highlight. Once you're done adding these highlights, let's move on to the smudging, select the smudge tool, make sure the same brush is selected. You can keep the size around three to 4% and the opacity is around 25% You might have to keep adjusting this depending on your preference while smudging. You have to make sure you're following the shape of your object. For example, here you cannot go horizontal or wavy. You have to go vertical, following the shape of this fish. Now let's move on to the ice. For that, I'll go two layers. Add a new layer on this layer and rename this as ice. Go to brushes, and I'll select my base brush. Go to the color panel, and I'll select this black color from my color palette. I'll make it slightly more darker. I'll keep my brush size around 7% and draw a circle following the sketch. Now for the next layer, I'll add another new layer. Go to layers, Tap on a new layer from the color panel. I'll select this bright orange color and I need a slightly darker tone. Add another little circle in the center. If you want to slightly edit, you can just go select under Wrap. You can adjust the shape with this little nodes. Once you're done, select Next, we can go to layers, Hide my sketch layer. Next we need another new layer. Again, I'll select my black color and I'll add another tiny circle in the center. Once you're happy with that circle, I'll go back to my orange layer. Select this orange layer, tap on this layer and tap Alph lock from the color panel. I'll select a lighter shade of this orange color. From the brush library, I can select my shading and highlight brush with a smaller brush size of around 2% I'll add this crescent shape on two sides of this eye. Next we can select a darker color of the same orange color. Select the color and go down nally. I'll add another crescent stroke with my smudge tool. I'll smug the areas where I feel it's too strong or too rough. There's also a lesson showing more eye examples. You can even watch them to understand how you can illustrate different types of eyes, let's add some shine to this eye. For that, we will need a new layer. And this layer should be on top of all the other eye layers. And we can select a white color from the color panel with my shading brush. And the brush size has to be smaller with very little pressure. I'm going to add this little brush stroke. Now let's move on to the last step. For this eye, we need a new layer below the last circle with a little light gray color. I'm going to add this little outline around this black circle. This step is very important when your eye and the body color is of similar color. Once you're done with the circle, we'll select the smudge tool and smudge it towards the outer area. Let's move on to the fins. I'll go to layers and unhide my sketch layer. We can group all the layer. I'll select all the layers and tap group. Now we can add a new layer for the fin. I'll add this new layer below our group layer. Now from the color panel, I'll select a white color. Select my base brush from the brush library. Now following the sketch, I'll draw this shape and fill it with the same color. Now to make this fin look transparent, we need to reduce the opacity of this layer. For that, I'll go to layers, tap on this, and you can reduce a 70% We can even change this. Next, we can add a new layer. Go to the brush library and select my shading brush. Now with a very small size brush and with the same white color, we can start adding these veins like lines starting from one end to another. Also a few strokes on the outer edge and at this C shape, where the fin starts. Once you're done with this step, we'll start smudging. Select your smudchtol and we can start smudging inwards. We're done with our fin here, but let's add some more details like shadow and depth. I'll add another new layer and I'll select a black color because this place doesn't look very clear. I want to add this little shape and smudge it. Another shadow I want to add is towards this part of the fin. For that, I'll add a new layer below the fin layer. I'll select this dark orange color from the color palette. Now with my shading brush, I'll add a little shadow here. Now selecting the smudge tool and smudging it outwards. We are done with our fin here. Let's move on to the last detail for this fish. We can add some details to the other fins like you can see in this reference image on the top here for which we need a new layer. This new layer has to be below the fin that we just did and add to this layer. Select a gray color, a lighter shade of gray. I'll start adding these baby lines. On the top, bottom, and back fins and now smudging it with the same brush. Select your smudge tool and make sure while you're smudging, you're only smudging inwards and not smudging the whole line. You can even give more time to these details. I don't want this class to be too long, and I want this first fish to be simple, so that it gives you a basic idea on how you can illustrate a fish. Let's move on to the tail, now to the bottom fin. Now there's another detail that I would like to add to the tail, for which I'll add another new layer. Tap on this layer and tap clipping mask. For this, I'll select a black color with a small size brush. I'll add these wavy strokes again. This time I'll be adding them in between these white strokes. Next again, I'll be smudging these lines following the same steps we did for the gray ones. Now this is one of the last step for this fish. This is mostly when you have a fish with a white base color. Like for example here. If you see at the edge, if I am changing my background color to white, you will not be able to see the edges of this fish. We will be adding an outline with a light gray color. For that, we need a new layer just below our pattern layer. I'll be adding a thick outline with this gray color, mostly where the white edges are visible. And now smudging these lines to get a smoother effect. These steps can also depend on your illustration style. You might want the thicker lines to be as it is and not smudge them. Let's change the background to white color and see how it looks on this background and I'll make it white. You can even make these details with a gray color, darker or heavier. Let's cancel the reference image. Tap on this and you'll get this cancel and we're done with our first that. 6. Discus Fish Part 1: Let's illustrate our second fish that is discussed, Fish. I have attached the sketch for this fish in the resource section. I'll tap on my sketch, the second canvas here. This is how the sketch looks like. If you have my file, when you go to layers, you'll be able to see there's just one layer with the sketch on it. Before we start the illustration of this fish, I want to show you a few reference images. This is the version we will be illustrating in the class today, but there are plenty of more color combination these fishes come into. You can choose your own color combination. Before we start illustrating, you can follow along my steps, but in your color combination. Later at the end of this class, I will also show you how you can recolor these fishes. I'm going to start my illustration with this version. Coming back to procreate, my first step is to insert our reference image. I'll tap on this wrench icon menu here under canvas. There's an option called reference togal on this option. And you can see this tiny box on your canvas here. You should be under Image, Tap on Import image, Select your reference image and you'll be able to see your reference image on the canvas. You can even adjust this reference image by holding in one corner. Now let's move on to our next step. That is to reduce the opacity of our sketch layer. You can reduce it around 50% Next to add our base, we need a new layer. Tap on this tiny plus sign and pull your new layer below the sketch layer. Tap on this layer and rename this as base layer. Next, we can go to the brush library. You'll find my brushes from the resource section. Select the second brush for our base, make sure you're on your correct layer. That's the base layer. Now if you see in this reference image, if you zoom in, you'll be able to see this gradient effect with a combination of light and dark blue. Try to achieve that. For that, I'll go to the color panel and I'll select this light shade of blue from my color palette and we can start adding an outline to our. Now, while you're adding these outlines, you have to make sure there are no open ends. There shouldn't be any gaps between these lines, because we will be filling it with the same color. If there is any gap left, the color will spill all over the canvas. Now we can fill this with the same color. I'll pull this and drop it into our outline. Now our next step is to add another shade of blue. You can see in the reference image, it is around the upper and the lower area of these fins. We need to add this on top of our base layer, for which we need a new layer. Go to layers, add a new layer, tap on this layer, and add crip mask. For this, we need another brush. I'll go to the brush library, select my shading brush, Go to the color panel, and I'll select this royal blue from my color palette. My size is around 10% and we can add this at the top. And the bottom area near the fence. I'm adding this with a very little pressure, another layer with slightly more pressure. Let's move on to the bottom. Now the second layer with slightly more pressure. Now, selecting the smudge tool. Make sure the same brush is selected. My pressure size is around 10% even my opacity is less than 50% And I'll start smudging the edges with a very little pressure. You can take your own time. Make sure you're following the shape of your fish. You will need some practice to understand how these brush works. Now let's move on to the bottom. So we're done with the first layer of our gradient effect here. We'll move on to the second layer. For that we'll go to layers. Add a new layer, tap on this layer and tap clipping mask. Make sure underbrush library your shading brush is selected. Now for the second layer, we will be adding this yellow and red shade of gradient effect. We'll go to the color panel and I'll select this bright yellow color, the darker shade with a slightly bigger brush size. I'll first cover the whole fish with the yellow color. We'll add the red color later. I'm adding this with slightly less pressure first. We can add more layers of color later. Now the second layer with more pressure, I'm trying to even out the color. Now let's move on to our red color. I'll be selecting this bright red color. We are on the same layer. I'll add this gradient effect on the top and the bottom area like we can see in the reference image. Again, I'm adding this with a very little pressure first. We can darken this with more pressure later, or even by adding more layers of color on top of this, adding another layer on the edges, You can see it gets darker with more pressure and multiple layers. Now I'll be adding another layer of darker shade of this red from the color panel. I'll select this darker shade of red. Now we can add these to the edges. Let's start from the bottom, like in the image you can see at the bottom here. Now let's move on to the top here. Two on the edges. I'll add these brush strokes following the shape of these fins. Now we're done adding our colors. Let's smudge them and turn them into a softer gradient effect. Select your smudge tool and make sure the same brush is selected and we can start smudging on the edges on the fins. Make sure you're following the shape of the fin. I keep changing and adjusting my brush size depending on the area I'm trying to smudge. Now back to the bottom again. Now once you're happy with your smudging, we'll move onto our next step. Now for the next step, we'll be selecting our eraser tool. Now under eraser, I'm selecting the same shading brush and we will be erasing these wiggly lines following my sketch. Through these lines, you'll be able to see the layer below the blue gradient effect that we created before this. And you'll be able to achieve the two layers of gradient effect. This step of erasing took me a very long time. I squeezed this lesson into 35 to 40 minutes. But if I go to my settings, it took me more than 2 hours. To illustrate this, you can pause this video and take your time for this step. For this, you can select any other, even the base brush. Depending on the brush you choose, the effect will be slightly different. If you select a softer edge brush, the whole illustration will give you more clean effect. Once you're done, you'll be able to see these beautiful shades of blue coming through these yellow and red. Let's continue with the second part of this fish in the next lesson. 7. Discus Fish - Part 2: Let's move on to our next step of adding an eye to this fish. We'll need a new layer. Tap on this layer and rename this As we'll go to the brush library, and I'll select my base brush. Zoom into the area, make sure you can clearly see the eye in the reference image. You can either pick up a color from your reference image, we need a bright red color. Or even if you go to my color palette, you'll find one of these red. We need a very midtone, kind of red for our base. I'll add this little circle following my sketch lines. The little light gray circle in the center is from my sketch. I erase that in the final sketch in the resource section. Now we need to add another little black circle on top of this red circle. We will be doing that on a new layer. Tap on this new layer. We'll go to the color panel and select a dark gray or black color. I'll add this little circle in the center. Again, because of my sketch, it looks very light, but it is actually black color. You feel it is not in the center or the shape is not correct. You can fix that by going to this selection tool. Now we will be adding some highlights and shadow to the red circle. I'll go back to that layer, tap on this layer and tap Alphiloc. Go to the brush library and I'll select my shading brush. We need a lighter shade of this red color. I'll select this color. Go to your color panel and I'll go up diagonally. Now we can add high light following the shape of this ice, adding some on the edges too. Next, I can add some darker shade for the shadow. Again, select the color and go diagonally down for a darker shade of the same color. Now we can smudge these colors. I'll select my smudge tool, make sure the same brush is selected. Now under layers, I'll hide my sketch layer. Now we can start smudging in the areas where you feel it's too rough. This also depends on your style. You can even leave it as it is or smug very little. Next we can add some shine and reflection on the eye. For that, we'll go to layers. And we need a new layer on top of the black circle we made. Add a new layer. Select a white color from your color panel. Same shading brush. We'll add this little shine like detail. You can even follow the reference image for this. Now let's move on to the last step for this eyes, for which we need a new layer below all our eye layers that is below our red circle layer. And I'll select the same black color from the center. If you zoom in your reference image, you can see this black area around the eye. We can add that black detail on this layer. We're almost done with the eye. You can even skip this step, but because I can see it in the reference image, the white ring around the black circle in the center, and we are done with our eyes here. Next, we can start with this front fin. When you zoom in this reference image, you can see the fin is very transparent with a very light shade of yellow. We can start by adding a new layer for this. Before we add a new layer, I'll keep all the layer in one group. Select all the layers and tap group. Now we can add a new layer. Below this group layer. I'll tap on this layer and rename this as Fin. Now from my brush library, I'll select my base brush. From the color panel, I'll select this bright orange. Now we can start by adding a base shape for this fin. Following the sketch, I'll draw this shape and fill it with the same color. Next, we need to reduce the opacity for this fin. Go to layers. Tap on this tiny, we can keep this around 75% Next, we need a new layer on top of this layer to add some highlights and shadows. Next, we'll go to the color panel, and I'll select this bright yellow color from the brush library. I'll select my shading brush. That's the third one. Now with the very small size brush, I'll add these lines from one end to another. Even for this, you can follow the sketch lines. I'll hide my sketch layer so that it is clearly visible next to smudge these lines. I'll select the smudge tool, make sure the same brush is selected. We can start smudging these lines. We have to make sure the smudging is only on one side of this line, the lower edge. This helps you get this nice gradient shading effect that looks like veins to the fins. Another detail that I would like to add to this fin is with the same brush, with a small size brush, this very thin line between each in now we can add this detail where the fin is attaching the body. Like you can see in the reference image, it's like a little curve. For this, we need a new layer on top of both the fin layer, we need this darker shade of orange. I'll draw this thick curve shape now with my smudge tool, I'll just smudge one side of this curve. Make sure it is the side facing the fin next. To add more depth to this opening, I'll select the same brush with this bright yellow color. And I'll draw this curve following the edge. Now with my smudge tool, I'll smudge this on the opposite side. Now if you see, it looks like an opening for the fin. Now our next step is to add details to the other fins. I'll unhide my sketch layer. We will be adding a new layer, and this new layer should be below the front fin layer. Add a new layer, tap on the layer and tap clipping mask. We'll start with the upper fin first, make sure your shading brush is selected. Now with a very small size brush, I'll add this thin lines following the shape of these fins and I'll add this to the upper, lower, and also the tail. I'm going to increase the speed of this process so the lesson is not too long, but you can pause and take your own time. Now with the smudge tool and the same brush selected, I'll start smudging each line. Now our next step is to add shadow to the fins where the fin is attaching the body. For that, I'll add a new layer. This layer should be above your yellow and red gradient layer. And we can change the mode for this layer to multiply, because this will help us add shadow to all the colors at the same time. I'll unhide my sketch layer. This will help us follow the sketch lines. Now from the color panel, I'll select this bright red color. Make sure your shading brush is selected. I'll keep my brush slightly bigger. This detail will help us add depth to this fish illustration. Now I'm following the sketch line and with very little pressure we need to do for both the sides, upper and the lower fin. Next, I'll select my smug tool with the same brush and smutch the outer area. If you feel the shadow is too light, you can just go to layers and duplicate this layer that will multiply the layers and it will get darker. You can even control this by adjusting the opacity of this layer. Now on the same layer, we can add some more shadow to the body and the tail of this fish. Next, with the smudge tool, again, smug only one side of these lines. Now let's add some detail on the mouth of this fish. I'll select my shading brush from the color panel, this very light, bright yellow color. Add a new layer, and this layer should be below the fin layer. And I'll add this two horizontal drop like shape. Next with the smudge tool, I'll soften the edges. Now with the darker shade of orange, I'll add this shadow and depth defect. Now, slide smudging. If you see at the tail of this fish, there is this blue gradient effect for that will erase some part of this first layer, that is the yellow and the red gradient layer. Select the eraser tool. Under eraser, I'll select airbrushing soft brush. You can even select the same shading brush. My brush size is around 6% I'll slightly erase this first gradient layer. You'll be able to see the blue layer below it. Next, we can add a darker shade of blue on the edges. I'll go to the lower gratian blue layer. Select this royal blue color from the color panel, and I'll add these details on the edges. We are almost done with this fish and we don't need this reference image. So I'll tap on this and cancel. Let's add some scale effect to this fish. We'll go to layers. We need to add a new layer below our front fin layer. Add a new layer, and it should be below the fin layer. We'll change the mode for this layer to multiply. Next, we can go to the brush library and select the scale brush. Here we can reduce the opacity for this brush. You can move this minus around 75% Next, from the color panel, we'll select this bright orange color. I'll make it slightly lighter. You will need to experiment with the size and the opacity of this brush. Now I'm adding this to our fish with very little pressure, I will not cover it to the whole fish just in few areas. If you zoom in, you can see the scale clearly. I'll add some at the bottom too, so we are done with our second fish here. Let's move on to the next lesson. In the next lesson, I will show you how to recolor this fish. 8. Recolouring Discus Fish: Before we start recoloring of this discuss fish. Make sure you duplicate your original file, swipe left on the canvas and tap, duplicate, tap, and open one of the canvas. Now our first step is to merge all the layers. Go to layers, I'll delete my sketch layer. First, merge all the layers for the body. We'll merge the group layer separately, pinch and merge them. We'll keep the layer as it is for now. Swipe left and duplicate the body layer that we have an extra copy of. The original layer now hide the lower body layer. Now we can recolor and experiment on the duplicate one. Our first step is to go to adjustments. Under adjustments, we'll go to gradient map. This will open a rectangular bar at the bottom. You'll find a lot of default color combinations here. You can slide these tiny square and you can see the color changing for the fish. You can even create your own color combination. To create your own color combination, tap on one of these color combo that will open and gives you option to edit. Now you can see two tiny squares here. You can tap on one of them and change the color. While you're changing the color, you can see the preview on the fish. Now here you can experiment with the colors until you're satisfied with your result. You can even slide and move these squares. You can even have an original reference image to follow. For example, I'm trying to achieve the one shown on the screen here. Now once you're happy with the results, tap again on the adjustment icon to exit. Let's see another way to recolor this fish duplicate the original layer again. Next, we can hide the one at the bottom. Make sure your duplicate layer is selected. Now we can go back to adjustments. Again, under adjustments, tap on hue, saturation and brightness. This will open this rectangular bar at the bottom with few options to recolor your fish. Now under huh, you can slide this tiny circle and see the color changing preview on your fish. When this tiny circle is in the center, that is at 50% that was the original color of your fish. So you will have to slide left and right to find the color you're happy with. When you recolor with this option, you might not be able to control the colors. We are done recoloring our fish here. Let's move on to the next lesson. 10. Project & Resources: For your class project, you can illustrate any tropical fish of your choice. There are plenty of examples, tips and tricks, and even resources for you to start this project. Let's see how can you download these resources On your class page, you will find this option called Project Resources. When you scroll down, you'll find this option called Download Resources. You can find all your sketches, brushes, and swatches here. When you're on your ipad, you simply have to tap on this and download. You'll get this option at the bottom to download on download. Next, you can tap on Open in, You'll find an option to open in procreate. Now when you open your procreate app, you'll find your swatches at extreme bottom. Now for the brushes, when you open your brush library, you'll find it at the top with the name as tropical fishes. This includes four types of brushes in the canvas and the brush set up section I'm going to show you how are we going to use this brushes. Next are these five sketches. When you download these sketches from the resource section, you'll find them in your procreate gallery. I even have a Pinterest board that you can follow for more reference images and inspiration. I have a link to this in the project and resource section two. These are mostly tropical fishes. I can't wait to see your beautiful tropical fishes in the project section of this class. 11. Scale Pattern Brush: Let's see how you can create your own fish scale brush. Before we start, let's see some real examples of these fish scales. There are more examples in the resource section two In the reference images. I want you to see these images and the examples that I created. You can follow along in the class with your choice of scale. This is the scale brush that I have attached in the resource section of this class. We will be using this as our base brush to create all the other scale brushes. To create this brush, I started with this shape, tie this shape together, and turn it into a seamless pattern. This is another example For this, I started with a shape like this, tie them together into a seamless pattern. We will be pasting these seamless patterns under the grain section in the brush settings. You can even find another version of the same brush by tapping with two finger and inverting this image and tap done. This is how the inverted version looks like. This is the third example for the scale brush. For this, I started with a shape looking like this and turned it into a seamless pattern. Again, for this, let's see how it looks when you invert this image. Under grain, tap, edit, Tap with two finger on this image. That will invert the image done. Now let's try this on the canvas. Every grain can give you two types of effect just by inverting the image. Now let's create our own brush. We'll start by adding a new canvas that tap on this plus sign. Again on this 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 switch on our drawing guide for tap on this wrench icon menu under canvas Togal on the drawing guide option. Tap on Edit Drawing Guide. Here you should be under symmetry. Tap on options. Vertical should be selected here. This will also depend on the type of scale you are illustrating and tab done. Now from the brush library, I'll select my base brush from the color panel. I'll select this black color, make sure it is completely black. Now we can draw the shape we need for the scale for this demo. I'm just selecting a basic oval shape, but you can pick up any shape of your choice, even from the example I showed at the start of this class. Select this shape and make sure under snapping your magnetic and snapping is on. We can get the exact center of the canvas. While we are moving this shape around, I'll make it smaller and place it in the center. The vertical and the horizontal golden lines means they're exactly in the center. Now I'll keep duplicating this shape layer and tying them together. It doesn't have to be very accurate and exact. I'll group all of these five layers and duplicate the group. And I'll repeat the same process of placing them and tying them until my whole canvas is filled with this shape. There are plenty of ways you can create a seamless pattern in procreate, you can do this with any other method. You know one I'm showing in this lesson is with the help of a layer that is filled with color that works like a place holder and helps splitting the pattern in a seamless manner. Once my canvas is filled, I will pinch and merge all the layers. But I'll save this one layer with this scale shape. In future, when we need to fill some extra space, we can duplicate this layer. Now add a new layer and fill this layer with any bright color. I'll select this bright yellow color. Drop this color on this layer, reduce the opacity of this layer to 50% Select this layer and the merged layer and group them. Now duplicate this group. Now we can split this horizontally. Hide one of the group layer, select one group and slide it left until it snaps. And you can see these golden lines. Now unhide the second group, slide right until this two snaps, and there's no gap in between these lines. Now delete both the color fill layer, merge the remaining pattern layer. Now again, I'll start filling the gaps here with the same shape. Our next step is to split this pattern vertically. I'll merge all the layers again except for the one extra shape layer. Now we'll repeat the same steps of splitting the one that we did before. We'll add a new layer and fill this layer with a bright color, reduce the opacity of the layer group. The layers duplicate the group. This time we slide vertically, slide one of the group until it snaps. Slide another group down until there is no gap. And it snaps to delete the color fill layers and merge the pattern layers into one. Now again, I'll start filling these gaps until there is no space left. Now again, for this just one shape, I'll split it horizontally using the same techniques so that there's no gap in between there. Merge all the layers together into one layer. The seamless pattern for our brush is ready. Now our first step is to copy this canvas. For that, I'll tap on this French icon menu. Tap on ad copy canvas. Now under the brush library, duplicate my fish scale brush. Tap on one of the brush here. We just need to change one setting that is under grain, tap on grain, tap on Edit, import and paste. This will paste our canvas here and tap done here, under scale. You can change the size of your pattern in the brush. You can increase or decrease the size depending on your requirement. Once you're happy, tap done. Let's try this on our canvas. Now, another way is you go back to the brush. Tap on this brush, tap, edit. Tap with two fingers and inward this image and tap done. You can create another effect with the same brush just by inverting the image in the grain. This is how it looks with inverted image. Let's increase the size of the brush, and this is how it looks. Let's try this brush on one of my fish illustration. We are done with our scale pattern brush here.