Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Maya [inaudible]. I'm an illustrator and a designer from Montreal, Canada. What we're going be doing today, is drawing some fun and colorful inspirational portraits on the iPad. My style is quite colorful and bold. I like to use a lot of different textures and patterns in my work. I also like to incorporate a little bit of a message in a lot of my artwork. I work mainly in editorial illustration, but I also do things like pattern design and also portrait editorials, I've been lucky enough to work with clients like Showtime, Teen Vogue, Time's Up, [inaudible] and a lot of different magazines both nationally and internationally and it's something that I'm really grateful for. I started using the iPad to draw about two years ago. It has really been a complete game changer for me, for my workflow and also from an efficiency. At this point, about 90 percent of my work is actually done on the iPad. I find it's really useful for drawing portraits because it allows me to get really up close and personal with my subject. At the same time, I can maintain that hand-drawn feel, which are really enjoy having in my images. I find the Procreate app to be very intuitive and easy to use. Whether you are beginner just starting to play around in Procreate or a little bit more of an established artist who wants to try some new techniques, I think there's class can be good for you because we're going to play around, we're going to experiment, we're going to use a lot of color. I really enjoy creating women centric artwork and drawing meaningful portraits is one way that I like to express that. That's exactly what we're going to be doing today.
2. The Project: The main project for this class will consist of illustrating, figured out inspires you. I'm going be sure to show you every single step of my creative process along the way. Here's what we're going to be taking a look at during this course. How to find your inspiration, how to create your own custom color palettes, how to sketch your subject and making a couple of color calms for your final design, and of course, how to paint your subject and basically add a little bit of personality to your sketch. I think one of the most important things when drawing this portrait is not to get too caught up with the resemblance aspect of it, the most important thing is really to try to capture that person's essence and their presence more than their exact features, in my opinion, because we're really just trying to have fun in experiment with colors and textures, and basically try to bring that personality of the subject into the painting rather than just copying their official features. I think this is how we're going to be able to have a lot more fun with it, it's going to be a little bit more spontaneous, we're not going to take ourselves too seriously, and we're going to end up with, I think, a more genuine final product, and it'll be a true representation of what that person means to us in our own point of view. For today's project, we're going to be picking somebody that inspires us and we're going to create our own interpretation of their portrait. Now this could be anyone, maybe somebody in history that really inspires you, maybe a fellow artists, or somebody in your family. It really doesn't matter, it's fully up to you, as long as it's somebody that you really want to depict in your own way and bring some life to the idea of them that you have. For today's demo, I'm going to be drawing [inaudible] not only my fan ever work, also really inspired by her story in general as a feminist artists, somebody who was trying to shed a little bit of light on indigenous communities and also disable artist and just the LGBTQ in general, and it's also a nice little way to my Latino heritage, so this is what we're going to be doing today. In my case, I remember seeing a lot of really gorgeous photos of freedom with those big flower crowns does she were, and also her obviously iconic [inaudible] , I think those are going to be some really great starting points in our composition, so I'm excited to get started.
3. Gathering Inspiration: So the first step of the creating process is going to be gathering some references and also inspirations. Were going to go about this pretty simply. We're just going to do a little bit of research on the web, but also we're going to look around ourselves maybe in some books or some other references that we have around us and try and gather all different elements that are going to help us create our composition, and that's going to be a mix of colors, different patterns that we're going to see in some things, maybe. I'm just going to start by doing a little bit of research on Frida herself. What was her life like? What was her work like? Then we're going to skip to just some visual research. Nice and easy. First thing, we're literally just going to go on Google, we're going to look up Frida Kahlo We're going to start having a look at some images of her. Making sure to save everything you're interested in along the way, whether it's for facial references or different colors and things like that. These are going to be useful, especially when we are going to be sketching, obviously. These are some really gorgeous photographs. So anyone that I'm interested in, I'm just gonna make sure to add to my photos. This is something that you can do on the computer too, obviously. So everything I dispose actually, I think it might be the main one that I'm going to use. I think it's quite a simple angle, it's just a frontal view of her face. But she has such important features with the unibrow and also the flower crowns. I think we're going to be able to do something that really pops. So that's probably going to be my main reference photo. I do really like these ones too, because I can see the different flowers that she would wear. This is going to be my base as far as reference photos. Now, I also want to be looking at sources of inspiration, generally, from Mexican culture. So I'm going to go ahead and research Mexican folk art. You can also check out different sides from public libraries or maybe there's some specific sources where you can find a lot of different images. They can be really useful because you can often find high-quality images for those as well. Now, what I'm looking for here is more like color combinations and generally, what does that culture like in terms of folk art. Because I think that can be a really good starting point for the general color palette that we're going to establish a little bit later. I'm really liking these little autisinal hearts. So I'm going to go ahead and save those two. I think the colors are interesting, the compositions, and you can really feel how vivid, and colorful, and lively that culture is. I'm just going to keep looking a little bit. You can also have a look at some platforms like Pinterest and things like that. But just make sure you don't reference too much things that are existing art works. Well, for example, this is really cool. I'm going to go ahead and save this photo. I really like the pink and the juxtapositions of all these elements. Oh, this is cool too. I think interiors could be a really fun starting point as well. So I'm going to save that too. You just go along and gather as many references that you like. Just make sure you don't get too caught up in looking at other people's artwork of that same person that you're illustrating because otherwise, I think your brain might subconsciously try and copy somethings that it has seen. So it's nice to keep your references not necessarily are only art related things. It could be all different images as long as they speak to you in some way. We already gathered some images online. But I also like to look at some just real life inspiration also that I just have around me in my library. For example, I picked up a couple of books, as you saw. Out here, I'm just trying to look for different things that inspire me, whether it's color combinations or different textures that I can see. This is really cool. I like how you can tell that it's really hand painted. I'm also really liking the colors in these. I think they have a nice foci look to them. I'm going to go ahead and just take a photo with my iPad. Nothing fancy, just to make sure I have a little bit of a reference that I can just paste it into my mood board. I'm going to just have my iPad, take a photo. It doesn't even need to be center or anything, it's just so I have a reminder of what initially inspired me. I also picked out this little 45 because I really think the gradient on it and I think I'm going to try and incorporate these colors as well. So once again, just hovering. Quick photo. I might even try and do one that's really just the colors. Now, this book doesn't have anything to do with Mexican culture, obviously, but I often find that a lot of really great inspirations in there just as far as color goes and just different ways that products are displayed and there's a lot of really fun, old posters in there. So I find myself getting really inspired by this. I had put a couple of bookmarks initially. I really like the pink in here and I think the stripes work with it really well too, so quickly going to snap that. I'm going to be able to crop them later. But this way I'm going to have all my inspirations on my iPad and I can just drop them in a canvas later just so I can quickly create a little bit of a mood board. Oh, yeah, and I love these title pages. I'm really a fan of the half-tones. So I'm going to try and maybe incorporate that as well. This book I've had forever and it's just a bunch of different patterns. They're so incredibly different. This is by Mike Perry, and every single one of them is completely different because it's just a collection of different artists. It's just fun to have a quick look at all kinds of different options and color combinations. I'm really liking the way these flowers are illustrated because they're like figurative and not necessarily trying to be too realistic. I think this is an approach that I might go for her flower crown. This is going to be a good tool to have. I think these colors are also really interesting. I like how it stays in a warm pallet, and this might also be something that I'm going to do. So once again, just quickly going to grab a reference pick. That should be good as a base. Now, what I'm going to do is bring all of these images into my iPad, into a canvas and create a little bit of a mood board, which I'm going to base my color palette on. It's exactly what we're going to be looking at in the next step. Stay tuned.
4. Creating a Color Palette: The next step in our process to create a portrait is going to be basically creating our own custom color palette. The way we're going to do that is we're going to make a little bit of a wood board using the photos that we just saved in all the references and then we're going to pick some specific colors from that and tweak them until we have something that we're happy with. The first thing I'm going to do over here is just open Procreate, create a new canvas. I'm going to create a custom size and it's just going to be irregular letter size so I'm putting this to inches and I'm doing eight and a half by 11, 300 dpi is good. That way we can have a really high-quality file in case you want to print it or frame it or something like that or gift it to somebody. I'm going to go ahead and hit "Create" and so this is my canvas. Now what I'm going to be doing is really simply just going to the action menu, inserting a photo, and just picking the photos that I picked and save onto the iPad directly just so I can base my color palette off of these and really this is pretty straight forward. You can only import one photo at a time so make sure you choose your favorite ones. For example, this one that I took from the book and you can just scale them down as you go create a little bit of a, I like to do this as a little bit of almost like a wallpaper thing but I'm just going to zoom in and play around picking some colors from afterwards. This I determined was going to be my main reference photo. I'm adding it into my mood board, but eventually I'm just going to probably have it on the side or maybe on an external screen so I can look at it as I do my sketch. You just do this as long as you want and you think you have enough references and when you're ready, you can go ahead and start picking your colors. Now I put all of my pictures into a little bit of a mosaic style composition. What I'm going to do from here is just merge them all together because I don't really need to have them separately and I'm going to be zooming in so that way we can save on our layers. By the way, I'm just tapping the layer and then going merge down until all my photos are in one specifically. I'm going to reduce this a little bit in size so I can go ahead and swatch some colors underneath. Now, we're getting into the fun part of choosing the colors that we are going to be working with. I like to do this at the beginning of the project that way I don't have to always overthink the colors. I can just pick something from my palette. I know everything in there fits together. Then you can tweak as you go, of course, but I think it's a really solid place to start because it takes all the stress of choosing the colors out, which can be difficult and time consuming when you're trying to do a portrait specifically. I have a little mood board over here, I'm just going to reduce it slightly and I'm going to make a new layer on top and this is where I'm going to be swatching. I'm going to grab my Apple Pencil at this point, and I'm just going to zoom in and go and see if there's any colors that I like. I'm going to be using the color picker tool to do this. It's this guy over here, the little square between the two sliders for the brush side and the opacity side. For example, I'm really liking this hot pink over here so I'm going to click that square, tap the color and you can move it around to see which shade of it you prefer more but I like this darker one and I'm just going to come underneath my composition. I have a chalky brush selected, but this really doesn't matter. Just going to make a little bit of a swatch and eventually I'm going to narrow down my swatches and create a palette from them. I really like this pink, but I also think a slightly paler version would be good too. So I'm picking my pink and then going into my color editor to make it a little bit more light. I'm going to just put that underneath to have some variation. I think I'm seeing a lot of warm colors and really bright colors in here and it's probably what I'm going to focus on. I'm a huge fan of this really hot yellow as well. I think this could be a great starting point so I'm going to use this orange too. I want this to be more saturated so I'm going to go into my picker and bring it in a little bit more. Yeah, I think this is more of what I'm looking for. Picking a little bit of inspiration from a bunch of different areas and swatching them as I go. Then I'm going to narrow down my swatch collection to my actual painting palette. It's always good to have some really dark shades and some really light ones as well, so you can create some contrasts in your final composition. This photo is really great. There's so much happening in here, but I think it illustrates a really good idea of what Mexican culture is like and I'm here for these colors. We've got a good amount of colors out of those images and I'm happy with this environment that we've created. There's a lot of warm tones and I think I'm going to stay in that realm for the final portrait. We're going to go into the color wheel over here. Usually I like to work with the classic one down here, but this time I'm just going to go to palette and I'm going to create a new one. We'll call it Frida. The way we're going to be adding the colors in it is just selecting the color that we want, clicking on the color circle again, and just tapping inside the palette. I'm going to do that with all my colors. I'm trying to keep a little bit of an order just in terms of shades so it's nice to look at and easy to understand the differences between the different tonalities. I'm going to keep the slightly darker ones at the top and then the lighter version of almost every color at the bottom there. Now I've finished adding most of my colors, or at least the ones that I care the most about in my little custom palette over here and as you can see, it's set to default. When I'm just in the classic color picking interface, I'm going to see it always at the bottom here, which is going to make it easy to just pick and choose and easily change colors. Also I can pick a color and then slightly tweak it depending on what I want to do. Now we're going to be moving on to the sketching part. See you in a bit for that next chapter.
5. Sketching the Subject: At this stage, we've created our color palette and we did a little mood board and also our research. Now we're ready to get sketching. For this part, the first thing I'm going to do is just hide the layers that we've created so far because we really won't be needing them because our palette is here. If we wanted to take a look back at our inspiration, we can just turn it on eventually. One thing you can also do is send that little mood board to an external computer or your phone if you want, so you can keep looking at it regularly without having it necessarily on your Canvas. I'm just going to turn these off over here and the first thing we're going to do is just import our main reference photo. This is what we're going to base our sketch off of. I'm going to the action insert photo and the picture that I thought would going to be a really great reference was this one over here, as you can see is a pretty small photo. But this is fine because all I want to do at this stage is just get a general idea of the proportions. I can spend a little bit less time worrying about my actual drawing and more about how I can customize it in my own way. Lower the opacity of this image to about 35 and I'm creating a layer on top. I'm going to grab just the regular chalk brush. It's the one I like to use the most, with a dark pencil and all I'm doing here is just getting the general shape of a face. I'm really going to do basic drawing composition. I'm getting where does the chalk start and end. It's really not that precise at this point as you can tell. It's really mostly a matter of proportions. I'm getting the hair. Now, I'm not doing this to particularly, like precisely trace the features or anything. I just want to make sure the elements are going to be generally in the right place. so I can focus on the way I want to render them instead of focusing on whether or not they are accurate. This should be enough as far as my drawing guide. I'm going to start off with that in order to complete my sketch. I'm going to turn this back on. I'm going to make it smaller and bring it in the corner of my composition just so I can keep referencing it. A good thing to do is also open it up, as I said a little bit earlier, on either an iPad or a laptop, if you have that, of course. I'm going to lower down the opacity of this initial rough sketch layer. I'm going to do another one on top maybe with a brownish pencil so I can see the difference. At this point I'm just going in and trying to be loose with it and experimenting to get to know her face a little bit. I'm going to keep doing that and I'll see you in a little bit when I have a bit more of refine sketch. At this point, I'm still just loosely sketching making sure I referenced the image enough so that we get the likeness of the character. But also, I'm not trying to be like a slave to the reference photo. I think it's okay to have your own take on stuff and deviate from that a little bit. One thing that I like to do though, is accentuate where the shadows are going to be because I think this is going to make a big difference in our composition, even if we stylize them a little bit. There's some big shadows on the sides of the cheek. It's quite a dramatic photo and I think it's something that I really like from it as well. I already tackled the brows because I thought it was such an important part of that. Doing them first is a nice way to frame the image right as we start. Now you can do as many of these initial sketches as you would like. There's no right or wrong. The most important thing I should say is just ending up with a product that you're excited about and that you're going to want to paint over afterwards because if you don't like your sketch, you are not going to like the final product because we're really going to base ourselves off of that. It's going to road map for the rest of your composition. I find it's an easy way to paint because you have your colors set up already. If you like your sketch then it's easy to just play around with colors because you don't have to think about those two things. Now, her coat and this jacket and the shirt that she's wearing in this photo is quite dark, but I don't want to go. I don't think I want to do that and that's the beauty about just using something as a reference. You can use certain parts and then you can totally choose to leave out other parts because we're really not aiming for realism here. I'm going to take the structure of a shirt, but I think I'm going to go really different with the colors. For the flowers here, as you can see, I'm also not really trying to do a precise job with them. I think as I said a little bit earlier in my reference, I like inspiration photos, I like the look of the really flat flowers. There are a lot more graphic and I think it's what I'm going to try and go with. Feel free to also to erase stuff and go back and rework some things. You should really take as much time as you need to create your sketch. Now that you have a really initial sketch that you're happy with, one thing I'd like to do is just reduce the opacity on this one as well. Maybe I'll turn off my initial shape layer and then add another layer on top and get something like a red pencil. Same brush and then I'm just going to go over and clean up that sketch and make another version of it that it's going to be a little bit easier to follow. You can do that process as many times as you need until you end up with a sketch that you are confident enough to move on to your final with and to start painting on top of. This is what it would be like in my usual technique. I spent a little bit of time perfecting my sketch. I'm going to go ahead and paste the one that I made earlier today but it's basically the same concept. I'm going to turn off this one. As you can see, it's also really rough, but I have a good idea of where I'm going with the painting. Now from here, I'm going to do this process one more time of lowering the opacity and going on top of it this time maybe with a blue and cleaning up once more to make sure I have a good final outline that I'm happy with, that I'm going to be using as a real base of my final painting. Here we go and I'll check back in with you when I have that layer ready to move on to the next step. I finished my clearer sketch and I'm going to turn off everything underneath so I can see what I'm left with. This blue sketch is going to be my main outline I'm going to be following for the final painting. I'm pretty happy with it. I think it's going to change along the way, but that's okay. At this point, what I'm going to do is just group all my other sketch layers. I'll show you what I did there. I click on the layer and go combine down. That creates a group and I just put all my sketch layers in there and I hide it so that they don't get in the way of the rest of the composition. I'm also going to go ahead and include my color scheme and any other things I don't need right now. Just to make sure I have enough space in my Canvas to get painting. Now the last thing I'll do is hide my reference. I'm just going to re-frame my sketch into Canvas to make sure that on the next step we're really ready to go ahead and start our final paintings. The next step is going to be exactly that. We're going to start painting the base of our portrait and we're going to go from there to do all the features and the different elements. See you in a bit.
6. Painting the Base: At this one we have a final sketch ready we have a color scheme, so we're ready to starting the meeting. One thing that I want to touch on really briefly is, if you're not too familiar with using a lot of different colors and working with a color palette that's established, one really good thing to do is create some little color comps, so you can really quickly see what colors go together and what's going to look good as a final painting. You don't have to think about it too much as you're actually rendering. One way to do that is to duplicate your sketch. The first thing I'm going to do actually here is draw my sketch back to black, because it's going to be a lot easier to see once we're going to start adding colors to them. Doing over here is just clicking on that sketch layer. I'm going to go select, I'm going to create another layer on top. Put my cursor to black or maybe even the dark brown that I have in my palette. I'm just going to tap on that ideal layer and go fill layer. That way, I have a black sketch and it's a lot easier to work with at this point. I'm just going to duplicate this guy and making a lot smaller. This is going to allow me to color it a lot quicker to see if the colors go well together. What I'm doing here is going right underneath that small sketch. I'm adding an empty layer and now I can just go ahead and try out some colors. What if I did a beige background on this? Can be a dark green shirt. See, I'm not liking that already, and I can tell that this is a little bit to blend for me, but that's a good way to try out some color variations. Once you get something you're happy with, you can just merge all of that down and keep it as a reference for when you're going to do your final painting. I'm going to be using a quite bread and maybe unconventional color for the features and for the skin tone. Because I think that's what I like to do with these portrait, I think it adds a lot of personality. This is the color columns that you can really quickly do to see if things go together. But if you're into the idea of experimenting, you can just go ahead and start directly from your sketch, and you can change your mind as you go. I'm going to show you how to quickly change the colors of something you're painting. But yeah, this is my really quick touch on color columns. Now I'm not really a big fan of the one I just did there, so I'm just going to go ahead and delete it, but I'm going to bring back my dark sketch. I'm mostly going to delete the blue one because this one is enough of a reference for me. This is what I'm going to get started with for the actual painting. The first thing I'm going to be doing is duplicating that sketch so that I can have one on top of mine painting and one at the bottom. The one on top, I'm going to click on the little n over here and bring the opacity down to maybe a 32 percent. Maybe slightly less even, and this is going to be my drawing guide, and I'm going to have both of my sketches visible. What I'm going to do is, I'm actually creating a layer in-between those two sketches, and this is where I'm going to apply the color so that when I paint, you can see that the sketch is still visible. This is exactly the guidance that I'm going to be using for the whole rest of the painting. The very first thing I'm doing here is just very simply going to come in with my base color for the skin tone, and I'm going to work everything else off of that. Now for this portrait, I'm thinking something golden would be really nice for the skin. Maybe a darker, this is more orange. I'm going to stick to this color for my palette, and I'm just going to go all around. That's going to be my skin tone base. I'm going to lower the bottom sketch also, just so I can have an idea of where my edges are going to be. You can zoom in as much as you want on this, and also a cool little trick if you haven't tried it already. As you can also just do like a general perimeter with your pen, and then if you drag the color from that circle, and if you play around moving your pencil, you can move the color dropped threshold, and that way you can color in the spaces pretty quick. But I also would like to do it by hand because you can keep some spaces like over here where you can see the texture of the brush. This one, by the way, still using calligraphy, regular chalk brush, and this is how I like to add a little bit of that hand-drawn touch. I'm just going to keep going with this base color and I'll check back in when I'm ready to add some shadows and some depth. Now actually I'm not going to limit the skin tone to only the face part. I'm actually just going to drag it along for the whole outfit in that shirt that we're going to be drawing eventually. Just because later on you'll see that I'm going to be using the select action in order to fill the rest of the space. This is going to give me like a good area, and basically we're just figuring out where the clothing is going to go. It's really the shading and the neck, and in the phase that, or it's going to give us the illusion, suppose the illusion of this skin tone starting and beginning in certain areas. I would say this is a pretty good base, and from there the next step is going to be adding a little bit of depth and some shadows. Now just to make sure that your edges are relatively clean, you can turn off both of your sketches, and have a look at what you're painting actually looks like. As you can see, it's rough, it's not the most precise line work, but personally it's something that I really enjoy it. You can always go in with a brush and tidy up some areas if you want. Which you can do now, but it's also perfectly okay to do that at the end, once you have the general feel of your portrait a little bit more established. It can be pretty difficult to see where you're going when you're looking at this because it seems so far from where you're trying to go. That's why having a sketch on top is a good reminder that you actually have some path, and it's good guidance. I'm going to follow up with some shadows in a second. We got our base done, that's good. Next thing we're going to do is starting to add some shadows, and what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to do another layer on top. Most of the steps that I'm going to be taking in the rendering, there's just going to be added layers every time. In order to do that cleanly, what I'll do is the select method that I did a bit earlier, which is that I'm going to click on my base layer, and that's going to be a good reference later for every elements because I'm always going to select that in order to fill some spaces. I tap on that layer, I go select, and then I tap on my new layer that I created. I'm going to put this one and multiply, so you'll see the addition of those two colors. It's going to be this yellow overlaid on top of this very same yellow, but it creates this shade when you put it in as a multiplier layer. As you can see, it only selects my base layer, which is going to be perfect for me to be able to create some shadows without going over. I'm just going ahead and first thing I'm going to do is just the whole lower section or at least the neck part. Just going to go ahead and fill that in so that we can differentiate the jaw from the neck, and that's going to give us a good amount of depth already. Now, the portrait that I'm going to be doing is really not realistic or realist, I guess in terms of drawing the style. I'm not really basing my lights and shadows very precisely, I just want to make something that has a nice visual impact. Also, add some shadows here and there, but they're not going to be the most calculated thing ever, because that's just not really how I like to do these, I like to keep them a little bit more spontaneous. I did the neck over here, it's totally fine if you leave this area empty, because I'm going to be covering it eventually with some a different color for the garments that she's wearing. I got the neck, and now this is pretty intense at the moment, but I'm going to be reducing the opacity of that layer in a second, so don't be afraid to really pack some color on there. Now still with my brush, the same layer, also, I'm still selected, I'm going to go in and add some shading to the ears. I'm going to make these also probably fully orange. I can add a little bit more emphasis into the actual face because the ears aren't that important in the composition. I want the eyes, the nose, and the unibrow, and probably the flowers on top to be really the focal point. That's something that's interesting to keep in mind also when you're doing this drawing, is what do you want people to look at when they see your composition? I'm going to go ahead and add good amount of orange at the top there too. We're going to be using a blending tool in a second so don't be afraid if your stuff is looking a little bit harsh. You're going to come with different tools to make that blend a lot more. That's a pretty good start, now I'm going to go back to my layer panel, and I'm just going to turn the opacity of that layer down. I still want it to be pretty strong, but just not like too vibrant orange. I'm going to bring it down to about 60 percent, and now I'm going to go in with a smudge tool, I'm just using this soft pastel and the sketching brushes, these are really the basic procreate brushes that come with the program. I'm using this soft pastel, maybe this side at the full blend capacity, and I'm going to soften the shading that is in the face mostly. I'm okay with leaving the shading in the neck and in the ears pretty intense because whenever the focal points. As you can see, this is blending pretty nicely, and we also get to see some of that past sell texture a little bit. This is a pretty good start, I think we can go a little bit more intense on the cheeks. Because if I turn on my reference photo, you can see that this is really dark and it gives a very cool effect on the photo, so I'm going to go ahead and make sure I emphasize that in my painting too. Feel free to keep your reference layer on also and look at it as much as you need. It can be interesting to try not to look at it and see how you remember the photo to be and how you interpret it yourself. But it's always, if you fill in self conscious or not too confident with your memory, you can definitely leave it on and refer to it as much as you need. I think this is pretty good as far as initial shading goes. I'm probably going to go in a little bit and add some in the eyes and under the nose. I'll do that on a separate layer. I'm going to go ahead and add a layer, oh, I already handled. I'm going to add a layer and basically keep shading until I think it's looking good. After that, we're going to be moving on to adding some features.
7. Adding Details: We have a good base for our shading. I'm probably going to be adding some more eventually down the line, but that's probably going to come once I have a little bit more of the features drawn out. This is what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to start maybe with the eyes or the lips or something that's going to ground my composition and make it easier to see where I'm going. Before doing that, I'm just going to go ahead and group my shading layers together. I'm going to go on the top one. Actually I'm going to leave the skin out of it. As you can see I have a group now where I have all my shading, just to keep my layers a little bit more organized. At this point I'm just going to do a new layer. I'm going to start with the eyes I think. I'm going to zoom in over here. I didn't pick a white in my color palette. I think it's going to be nicer if I stay within those warmer tone. I'm going to choose this beige ish color as the base for my eye. I'm just going and drawing it as I feel. If the sketch is a little bit too annoying and you can't really see underneath. You can totally turn it off or reduce the opacity. When I'm working with smaller features like this, I like to also just go over the lines and not be too precise and then just come in with an eraser. I'm using the same brush to draw, enter a race, which is the chalk brush. But if you want something more precise, you can move on to the mono-liner something a little bit more sharp, depending on the look you're going for. For eyes since they're pretty important part of the composition. It's where you want your eyes to go as well. Maybe something sharp would be nice. This is just the general shape for the white of the eyes. I'm a little bit lazy. I'm just going to go ahead and duplicate this layer and then flip it horizontally. Now since I duplicated it, these are on two separate layers. I'm just going to go ahead and merge them down. Now I can start playing with a little bit more of an outline for the rest of the sketch. I think something like a darker outline, either maybe a red like this or maybe this maroon color, or reddish brown would be nice as an outline. I'm liking the way this is showing up together. This is what I'm going to use for the features. Once again, doing another layer on top, this time I'm going to go ahead and combine these all ready. My eyes are going to be in one set folder. Now in this plain layer, I'm just going to grab that same chalk brush. In a pretty small size. I'm just going to start drawing an outline. I think I'm going to decide as I go, the amount of detail that I'm going to be putting in. So far I'm just doing an outline. I like to put a little bit more weight at the beginning and the end of the corners. It's always good to turn on your reference and check how similar you are doing without necessarily trying to copy it, but just to see if you still have the expression and the mood right. You can see that I still have a certain level of sketchiness even in this final render. I think it's going to work with the composition is something that I enjoy seeing in my work. I have no problem having this grittiness to it. I'm going to keep playing around with the eyes until I'm happy with the result. Here we go. As you can see, you can tell a little bit that the shade for the outline is slightly paler. I can go in and rework that a bit if I want to add some depth, don't be afraid to also use the transform tools. If there's something that you're drawing that you're not 100 percent sure about. I like to use them if something should be maybe a little bit smaller than I drew it, don't be afraid to just play around with it and change your proportions without necessarily having to redraw stuff. I'm liking the way this is turning out. It's not exactly the same as her actual eyes in the photo, but I think they have a fun and flat look to them, which I enjoy. I'm just going to keep going in this trajectory for new. The eyes are done. The next step we're going to do is just keep going with a little bit of an outline. I'm going to do the bolder things like maybe the eyebrows and the lips probably. I'm just going to start a new layer on top of what I've been working on, [inaudible] still that features folder. In that new layer, I'm just going to go ahead and grab that same really dark brown that's almost a black. I think this is what I'm going to use for the eyebrows. Good thing to have you reference and take a look at it just to make sure you get the feeling of it right. But once again, no need to be too precise with it because I want this to be my own take. I like the way I drew them in the sketch. I'm going to be basing my rendering on that for now. I'll see when I'm done and I zoom out how it looks in the rest of the composition. I like to use this chalky brush to do hair also because I just find it has a nice balance of course and grainy texture. But also you can do some pretty blocky shapes with it. It can give a good illusion of hair. You know what they say about eyebrows, sisters not twins. This is where I'm going for. In the middle there I just added like a couple of main hairs. You can always turn off your sketch once again to see where you're at. Now, don't be scared to turn off your sketch because it's totally normal that you remove your sketch and you're like, I have so much more to go. But you can also leave your sketch in your final drawing and just lower the opacity and build everything on top of it. You'll have a little bit of a hand-drawn texture underneath and then some more precise features on top. You don't necessarily have to turn it off. Don't be afraid to turn it off and then back on, because as long as the final product looks good, weather that layer is on or off, it really doesn't matter at this point. I'm liking the eyebrows. I'm going to move on to the lips. To do that I'm just going to once again do another layer. This time I'm going to use my selected fill layer, one little technique once again. On my new layer I'm going to pick the color of the lips, and then I'm going to do this darker red that I have in my palette. But I'm actually going to bring it up in intensity, because I want them to pop, because they really pop in this photo, and I could just color pick it from the photo. But I think it's nice to get the custom colored based on the palette that I have established. I'm really liking this really vivid red and it's what I'm going to use for the lips. I'm just going to zoom in and go ahead and do my outline. Once again, flat shapes. Then I'm eventually going to add a little bit of depth with some shading. Now, there are some pretty intense shadows in the reference photo. I think eventually I'm going to be able to come in with some brown and add some of those in as well. For now I'm going to add some depth to the mouth by selecting what's on this layer, creating another layer on top. Once again, I'll just go and multiply. Within that selection I can easily draw within the lines or the shape that I've established already and I'm just going to do the top lip. Maybe a little bit at the bottom here to add some of that depth and maybe bring it down a little bit. I'm happy with that. As I just said, I'm going to go in with that same brown. You can either color pick from your actual composition once you start to have a lot more colors in here or from your palate, it really doesn't matter. It's possible that the colors are going to change a little bit. But we're not really dealing with vector or anything that has to be precise here. As long as it looks good to your eye, it's all that matters. I'm adding some details of the corners of her mouth. Not necessarily an outline, but just emphasizing certain parts of the feature. Next thing that I'm probably going to be working on is the hair. This is going to be very much the same process. I'm just going to be filling in one big flash shape as I did with the base color, and then I'm going to be adding some details or maybe a little bit more texture with a slightly paler color. You'll be able to see that probably sped up, because it might take a little bit longer since it's a pretty big area.
8. Painting Features: It's starting to look like something. We got most of them are based on, we have the hair, some good features, also a little bit outline. What I'm going to do next is starting to work on the jacket or the shirt or the garment that's going to cover the lower part of the image. Once again, I'm just going to start a couple of layers and just combine them to make a group. As I did earlier, I'm going to select my base layer of the plain yellow. I'm going to go select. Then in that new group that I created, this is where I'm going to be doing my painting. I think I'd like to incorporate maybe less orange tones or maybe something a bit more pink could be interesting. This is too light, and this is too red. But I think something with that in density would be nice. I'm just going to slide it, and play with it until I have a color that I'm interested in. This is nice. I think I'm liking this. Oh, yeah. I like the way this is going to be look. It's okay to take some time and experiment and try some things, go back. There's really no rush, as long as it's a color combo that looks good to you, you can keep trying as many times as you want. Now, I'm drawing with the side of my pencil a little bit and you'll see that allows me to create that texture over here which I personally really like. I'm going to keep going for all of that area. Actually, if I look at my reference photo that I've hidden, oh well, I can't really see. But I'm going to pretend that her shirt is either shirt that she put on top or something else or maybe a dress in different panels. Instead of putting this whole area pink, I'm actually going to cut out part of the front like you'll see in just a second. I'm just going to cut out down here, because I think it'll be interesting if we incorporate another color. Just like that like if it's some shirt or something. Yeah, I'm liking where this is going. As you can see, you can see the skin tone underneath because of that texture. Now what I'm going to be doing here is, I'm going to be going into that layer underneath. Then I have a plane layer, I mean an empty layer underneath that pink one. I'm going to grab something deeper, maybe that initial red that I liked. I'm going to go ahead and select that yellow space again. Just fill it in, so that you'll see the undertone of the painting almost, which is something you can see in traditional paintings sometimes. That way we have a little bit more depth of the color and I think the texture is a nice little addition. I'm liking this base layer for this shawl. Next thing I'm going to be working on is what we're going to have under here. I think we can go with something deep once again. I'm going to create a new layer underneath both of those, and this one will be maybe the dress she has underneath or something like that. I think I'm going to grab this burnt orange. Once again with a little bit the side of my pencil just applying it all over. I'm okay with having rough edges like this. It's something that I personally like, and it's why I use the chalk brush so much. However, I'm thinking this is lacking a little bit of contrast. I'm going to select this area that I just painted, I'm going to do another layer on top. Place this one on multiply. I'm going to try a little pattern or maybe a little bit of yeah, some pattern with my pen just to try and add a little bit more depth. I'm liking the textures on this. I'm just going to turn down the opacity of that layer on multiply. It's not too overpowering. This is starting to look cool. I'm just going to keep working on that and check back in when I have little bit more of a final look for the jacket or the shirt. I'm still working on the clothing here and I'm going to add another layer. Now, this is looking very warm. I think it would be cool to incorporate maybe a blue or a green into this, and also possibly a little bit of pattern. First thing I'm going to do is select my main pink area so that I can draw in those lines, and then inside of my new layer, I'm going to go ahead and choose, was just be nice. This is a little bit strong but I'm liking the green. This can be a good option. I don't think this would work. I'm going to stick with that all of the green, and we're going to do maybe a little bit of a trim. See there's absolutely nothing wrong with starting with your color scheme but then tweaking as you paint, because obviously you can't always get it right as you plan it. I started with the green that I had in here and then I just tweak it inside of the color box. I'm going to do a couple of lines here, maybe reminiscent of some pattern, and then I'm going to go ahead with slightly darker green. Well, very darker green, and do a couple of touches maybe for details. Obviously, I'm making this up because this is not at all in my reference, but I'm basing these details on the reference photos that I did some research for and same for the colors. I was really inspired by those colorful rooms that had all the religious iconography and the crazy folk art with the wooden pieces and the very colorful rooms. This is what I'm getting inspired by to create these little details. Now, this is cool but I think it would be really fun to add a pattern onto this clotting. The way I'm going to go about it is really flat. I'm not trying to do anything to 3D with this because I think the power of this image is really going to come through the flatness and through all the different elements that I'm going to incorporate into the flatness. Once again, I'm going to select this pink base layer. I'm going to create another layer on top, and this time I'm going to go into my brushes and I'm going to pick a different brush, one that already has a texture incorporated in it. You can obviously do this by hand if you were or just for example, pick the monoline brush and just manually create your polka dots, and that's perfectly cool too. By the way, I'm going to go about it, is use one of these brushes that I have loaded onto my iPad. These ones are from True Grit, I believe I'm going to put all the brushes that I use that are not traditionally in procreate as you buy it in the description of this class, so you can check them out if you want, it's really not necessary. I only got those recently, but they can be fine and they can be save sometime if you're somebody that likes to use a lot of pattern like I do. I think for this one I'm going to go ahead with these lethal brush dots. As you can see, I'm brushing on this pattern really quickly. I'm also going to be putting some free brush resources in the description. These ones from True Grit are not free because they're really good quality and they're professional level brushes and I use them daily. But there's also some really good free resources and you can also create your own brushes from your own patterns that you create yourself on the iPad, and I'm also going to be putting a tutorial for that, that I followed on YouTube that's really good at explaining how to go about that. But for this one, I'm just going to pick this exact same color of the pink. We're going to put it on multiply once again. Yeah, I'm going to go in with that. This is going to work well with the rest of the portraits. So far, I'm liking where it's going. I'm probably going to keep working a little bit on these details, and I'll check back in to do the flower piece on the crown and on the head. Now, one of the last bigger pieces that we're going to be tackling are the flowers on the head piece. For this part, my sketch was really loose and I didn't really have a precise idea of what I was going to do. I think the way I'm going to go about it is getting inspiration from the image that assign the pattern book where the flowers were really flat and really graphic, and that's just what I'm going to start with. I'm just going to go ahead and create a new layer, or maybe two new layers and group them. The first one of those layers I'm just going to start playing around with a bigger brush to create the general shapes of the flowers that I want to do. I'm liking this red, this could be a cool. Really, I'm not going into any realism here. I'm just dragging in my color to fill it. Since my sketch is not really the most precise, it doesn't matter if I follow it or not because these aren't real flowers, and I don't want to have a good reference for these. I'm going to freeze all that. I'll show you how I do one of them, and after that I'm just going to keep working until I have a good little head piece. The way I'm going to go about this one over here is I'm just going to create a general flower shape. You can retries as many times as you want as long as you're happy with. The final one, I'm going to go with this guy. I colored it all in that one flat red, but I think it'd be cool to add some texture too. What I'll do is I'll select this, I'm going to delete this original layer and then just create a new one. I'm going to grab my chalk brush again so I can just fill it in really roughly. That has a little bit more personality to me. I'm going to add another layer on top of this, and I think this could use some pattern too. Instead of spending too much time on the details of the flower, I'm just going to go ahead and add a lot of patterns to these, and it'll be a nice graphic way to integrate the head piece. I just picked this polka dotty brush. Afterwards if you want some more details, you can just go ahead and add another layer. Maybe go with a paler color, chop brush once again and just add some stuff as you see fits. This is a good start and basically I'm going to be doing the same process with any other leaf edge or flowers and I'm going to be adding out layer. Hopefully at the end of this, it's going to look like a nice graphic head piece.
9. Adding a Background: We're really coming along here. I think the main part that we have to deal with at this point would be the background. Because obviously up to this point, we've left it white. But I think it'd be really interesting to do something completely different and really usable color. Now if I take a look at the reference, she's in front of a green wallpaper with some flower details, which I think is actually really nice. I love the contrast between the green of the wall and then its really really bright colors on your lips and cheeks. I'm thinking similar green would be really interesting and I think it's going to work because even though we're going to go with a similar color as the reference, the portrait itself is pretty different from the [inaudible] of the photo. I think it will be too redundant. I'm going to go ahead and click on the background layer and select one of the greens that I have in my pellet. I think I'm going to go with the darkest one because she really pops on that background. This is what I'm looking for in terms of an effect. What I'll do now is just create a layer on top of my background layer and I like the flat color, but I think it could be cool actually if we integrate a little bit more pattern into it, once again, or texture. I'm going to select that same green with the color picker. I'll put this layer on multiply that I've just created. I'm going to go in like a really large brush to see if I can maybe just create some texture. I'm not really precise with this as you can see because I'm going to be turning the opacity down quite a bit. I actually prefer this, I'm going to scrap this and start with this stroke that I have done over here. This also reminds me of the texture of very old walls and for some reason that makes me feel Mexican culture because of the grittiness of it. I think it's going to work nicely and don't worry about it being equal everywhere because we're going to be turning the opacity of this [inaudible] down quite a bit so that we just get a hint of texture and what I'll do on top of that, I think you could also use a pattern. As I mentioned before, you can go ahead and create your own pattern. If you want to go with a brush, you can do some loop. Actually, I'm going to put this later on multiply as well as it get darker. Little element would be nice. As I said, you can use your brush and create your own pattern that you can do manually and that could be really fun and original. Some of the cool brushes and the actual Procreate. Basic brushes could work nicely for this too. I'm going to go back to my lithotone brush set and I'm going to probably use this guy over here that I use in the flower. It's these longish polka dots. They're called litho brushed tabs and I'm going to go ahead and apply these everywhere. Now, something I'd like to add is maybe a little bit more of a background. That's not just a flat color and she had some florals in the wallpaper of the original reference in it. I'm not going to go with flowers because I've done some on the head piece already, but I think it would be cool to have maybe some bethphage in the background. I'm going to go lighter this time. I'm going to go back to my chalk brush. Actually, I might do just a monoline brush to quickly fill all of them. What I'll do now, is I think this might be a little bit too point. I'm going to give it another go with the green that's a little bit more rich. It also emulate. I'm liking this chartreuse color. I'm going to go ahead and create, I think I'm going to do more rounded shapes. I think this is it and here you have it, your portrait of an inspiring person. In this case [inaudible]. Of course, if there is something you're not happy with, you can always go back in, check what layers are bothering you, and then just rework them. As I said a little bit earlier, you can also leave your sketch on or turn it off depending on the final look that you want. If you'd like to leave your sketch on, you can totally do that and then come in with an eraser and remove certain parts of it to make it more clean in certain areas but if you want to have it off, that's perfectly equal as well. We have gone through every single steps of my creative process and Obviously, there is no limits to the amount of patterns you can add in the amount of color you want to integrate. I think it's all really about balance. I like my compositions to be pretty extra to have a lot going on, that's why I went really full color and quite a bit of patterns as well. But obviously, that's totally up to you. I hope you found this enjoyable and I hope you learned something, hopefully. I'm really excited to see what people are going to come up with. Please do share your projects if you do take this class underneath the video because I would love to see everybody's progress.
10. Conclusion: That's it for this course. I hope you had some fun, I hope you learned something if you made it this far, and especially if you tried the project to definitely post an image of what you came up with for your own version of the portrait of somebody that you find inspiring and really curious to check those out. If you have any more questions, you can always reach out to me and I'll leave my social media handles, and a description as well as basically a list of all of the resources that I've named, like my equipment, the brushes that I was using, etc. Thank you so much for watching this far. I hope you had fun.
