Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Whether you're wanting to attract more clients,
grow an audience, or have your signature style recognized when someone
sees your work, knowing how to justify
your style allows you to create endless piece of
work with consistency, but also gives you a
room for your style to grow, evolve, and develop. Hi, I'm Smitesh Mistry, a self-taught illustrator and graphic designer
who creates fun, abstract, and surreal
illustrations. I've been creating
digital illustrations just over three years now. In that time, I've definitely
honed in within my style. This wasn't something
that came to me straight away as I was in a
similar place to you, not knowing my style or
even how to establish this. However, having gone through this process of not
knowing my style, but over the years playing
around with different things, I've put this into actionable steps which you can use which will help you find and
establish your style. I'll be guiding you through the process of how
you can create your illustration
with an insight into how you can
find your style. I'm teaching this class, I will be going
through the process of establishing my style. I want to share my
experience and how you can establish and
hone in on your style. Having your work recognized as an illustrator without
the use of branding, logos, or even a name, is one of the biggest benefits
of knowing your style. This class is perfect
for someone who's just entering the
illustration space and wants to know or
really establish a solid style before
they continue, or even for someone who
has been illustrating for a while and really wants to get to grip with their
current style, know how they can
establish it and keep consistency whilst producing
different illustrations. In this class, we'll be
starting off initially with some reasons why having
your style is so crucial. Then moving onto a
little creative exercise to get the juices flowing. Then I'm going to take you
through how and where you can find inspiration,
constantly being inspired. Then we'll be using all this, once we broke it down, into our final
illustration where I'll be walking through
my create process; how I start from an idea and
how I go to a conclusion of the final illustration for which then you can upload in
the project panel below. I'm excited to teach this
class as the powers this will give you as an
illustrator is insane. Having people recognize your
work or even people reaching out to you [inaudible] being created in your signature style, and the fact that I get to be
the one teaching you this, gives me immense happiness as I know the place that
you're in right now, and it can be confusing, not knowing how to
justify your style or how to produce
consistent pieces of work. Also, once you've
established your style, once you're
comfortable with this, you can start inspiring
others and others can use your work as
their inspiration. If you're ready to master your style and get
well on the way of getting your work
recognized, let's get to it. Let's grab the medium
of your choice and I'll see you in
the next lesson. [MUSIC]
2. Class Orientation: Hey and welcome to this class. In this class, we're
going to be creating a fairly simple
illustration using the style that you find
during this class. The illustration that
we'll be creating is around the theme
of adventure. The reason why I've chosen this is because it
allows your mind to flow as adventure could mean anything to everyone and anyone. I chose this project
because it contains the main elements which we'll be going through in this class, including fill, stroke,
texture, lighting. This is a good place to start for a beginner as it's not too hard as it allows your
expressive side to come through. The reason why I've set
these constraints or these main elements
is because it doesn't distract you from the
subject to the illustration. It just lets you
focus on the style. By the end of this
class, you'll have a better understanding of how to find your style or to
justify your existing style, which allow you to produce
more work consistently. The main tools I'll be
using for this class will be my laptop
for the internet, pencil and paper for the
sketching part of the class, and then any other hardware or software that you'd like to use. I'll be using the iPad and Procreate as some
additional illustrator. Whether you want to go the
traditional reoccurring art and use paints or
maybe oil pastels or the digital way
like me and use Photoshop or Procreate
is totally up to you, but to get the most, I'd recommend you using
what you like, what you feel comfortable
with and what you want to continue using in the future. Also if you're not sure yet, then you can use
any medium that you want and then come back to the
class when you've decided. Now we're all excited and you know what you're
going to be creating. In the next lesson, we're
going to be running through some of the benefits
of knowing your style. See you there.
3. Benefits of knowing your style: In this class, we'll be running through some of the benefits of
knowing your style, what it allows you, and all the opportunities as eye opens. Me, personally,
I've been drawing, designing, and painting
for the last 10 years. However, over this
period of 10 years, I haven't really been
creating my own work. It may have been imitating
other artist's style, which looking back at it, I've been inspired by many
other different artists as I've been along this process. My style came for a range
of different sources. From RS, who've inspired me, from other things,
such as music, but also another
reason was because I couldn't draw faces correctly. I just decided that my
character don't need faces. Pro-tip. Here's a
really good way of making your style
personal to you, is by using your flaws. Anything that you feel
that you have a weakness in or struggle to draw, embrace it and make it
a part of your style, as you take these
lessons in this class. Being exposed to so
many different artists, different techniques is really allowed me to find my style and carried forward onto the
post I post on my Instagram. Let me run through some of the
key reasons of why finding your style is so important
and how it can help you. Firstly, we have recognition. This is the opportunity
to get clients, build a brand, or
even have a voice. Secondly, consistency. This is another key
element to make sure your style is yours. Being able to create
multiple pieces of work in your style regardless of the subject or the idea
of the illustration. Thirdly, we have evolution. This may be within illustration. It may expand into
different areas of design, includes a graphic design
or say 3D modeling, but being able to communicate
your style consistently, but also allowing
it to evolve for different mediums or even
just different trends. It's such a huge benefit. Fourthly, we have
the constraints that come with
having your style. Because sometimes you
may have a mental block, whether that is what
color palette to use, what illustration
style to do this in, but if you've got your own, you can really focus
on the idea and the concept of the
illustration itself. Finally, we have community or the fact that you
can inspire others. Once you've established
your style, and say if you post your work on social media or any
other platforms, eventually, you're going to gain a following because people will gravitate
towards your style. After honed it on your own, you can start to inspire
others and maybe be the inspiration
for their style too. Just a quick roundup
of this class. Some of the key
benefits of finding your style include recognition, consistency within your work, the fact that you can
evolve your style, but also the fact
that you can grow an audience and eventually
inspire others too. In the next lesson,
we're going to begin the create process and get the creative juices flowing
by drawing from imagination. So let's grab your
pencils and your paper, and let's get to it.
4. Drawing from imagination: In this class, we're going to be drawing
three different sketches from imagination based on themes
which I'll run through. The reason for this is just to get the creative
juices flowing, but also to see where your current style is at the moment. Put together a list of themes of which we are going to
draw for imagination. I'm going to be drawing these alongside with you
so you can see my thinking process
and how I create these sketches based
on these themes. The reason why we're doing this task is because your sketch generally is the backbone
of your illustration. Seeing where you are,
getting your imagination flowing is a great way to
get things kicked off. I feel drawing from
imagination is the best way to see
what you already have, what you've been inspired by, or what you've consumed
over the years to see where your current
style is at the moment. I'll just start improving
and drawing more. Your sketch is going to become the backbone of
your illustration. It's good to get
familiar with it as this is going to help you
further down the line. On the screen and now the three themes that we're
going to be drawing, whether you use your iPad, a digital tablet, or you're going to use
pencil and paper. Let's start with the first one. I'm going to run you
through my process and what I'm thinking as
I'm creating my sketch. Within the project panel below, I've included a PDF or JPEGs. You can either drag the
JPEGs straight into Procreate or you can use a PDF and you can print that out and then draw with pencil. For this activity,
I'm going to be using the iPad and the Apple pencil. The three topics I've
mentioned before, are nature, exercise, and music. We're going to start initially
one-by-one starting off with nature then
exercise, then music. I'm going to be talking through my thought process
on what I'm drawing, why I'm choosing this. Let's just get straight into it. If you drag this into Procreate, I'm going to be
creating a new layer and then draw my
sketches on there, just so I don't mess around
with the grid layer. For this, I'm going to be using the pencil that comes
with the Procreate app. There's no special brushes
or pencils needed. I'll assume to the
sketching section and then the HB pencil. First thing that comes
to mind when I think of nature is maybe landscape, trees, grass, anything
green, think of nature. I'm just going to
start off by for me, our first one's going
to be a landscape. This is the first that came to mind so I'm just
going to run with it. Here I'm just
thinking of filling in the bottom of the page. Again, keeping it super rough. I'm just adding
some loose shapes. This is the way that I like
to communicate in nature. These sketches are
meant to be rough. They are not meant to
be finished pieces, they are meant to be
nice, rough, and ready. On these sketches to
be nice and rough, no finished project,
nothing polished, it's just to get
used to drawing, seeing where you are. Now let's move on to exercise. With this one, the
first thing that comes to mind for me is just someone running. I'm just
going to go ahead with it. I'm going to start
with the legs first, just plotting out some skeleton, how I want the character
of mine to run. This is for me, I'll just
call it the skeleton. This is the skeleton of the illustration or the
drawing that I'm doing just to figure out
where I want the limbs to be. This comes in very useful
when I'm creating characters. As you can see, it
already looks like a character or a person running. I'm going to do now is go
in and fill the shapes in. Just a little bit
of shading just to bring the character to life. This is what I like to do,
but you draw how you would, you envision exercise
how you would. It's important that you
keep it personal to you. Here's my second drawing, so I'm going to go in
and add some shading. This is what I like to do. Again, keep this
personal to you. You do draw these
illustrations or you draw these sketches
just how you would. Here's the second one. Let's
jump into a third one. Here are my three sketches
I create for exercise. Then finally we have music. Going for a similar
approach like we did in the previous ones, say exercise. We could go with music, we could go so I'm
playing an instrument or someone interacting with music, or we could just draw
the instrument itself. Feel free wherever your
imagination throws at you. This one said, draw music, what's the first thing you draw? It could be the iPod from
a couple years back, it could be a pair
of headphones. It could be a
keyboard, a guitar. It could be someone
listening to music. Feel free to draw the first that comes to mind
keeping it personal to you. I think firstly, for me, first that comes to music
is listening to music, so I'm going to
draw a character. Again, as you can see, all
my sketches are very rough. There's no reason to go
into detail as right now, this is just
understanding concepts, how we think, where
our mind goes to. Right now say the concepts of proportions, nothing's
really there. This stage is all about imagination concepts
and seeing how we draw, because our sketches are the backbone of our
final illustration. It's important to draw as
freely and loosely as possible. Here's my first one
I created for music. It's quite a crazy
concept to be honest. Honestly, I do not know
the music symbols. This is all for imagination. I'm not sure if it's
natural music symbol. All things I've seen
from in the past. As we go through imagination is how you think things look like becomes
part of your style. I'm quite happy with
that. I'm going to move on to the next one. This is what I've
created for the sketching part of this class. This is purely just to see
where imagination goes, how it flows, and then what we're going to
do now is I'm going to break this down and see if we can
find some similarities. So now that we've
completed the task, we're going to
take a few seconds to see if there are
any elements are similar or consistent or if there's any similarities
within your sketches. Our list of questions
which you can ask yourself in order
to see if there are similarities or any resemblances between all your sketches. Are they simple or detailed? Are they in proportion
or out of proportion? Are they playful or real? Expressive and controlled? What pattern do
you see emerging? Line width, shading, expression? The main thing we're doing
here is looking for patterns. Whether you can see
in your line width, in the shading style, if there's an expressive
brush strokes, pencil marks, any faces, any detail work, we just trying to see if there
are any similarities here. Now that we've completed the
initial sketching tasks, what we're going to do, is going to go through
the sketches that you've produced and the
ones I've produced. I'm going to go through
and analyze them ever so slightly
to see if we can finally patterns emerging within the sketches that
you've created. Let me show you two
different contrasts to each question just so you get a better understanding of what we're working with. We can have a simple
drawing of a book, or it could be heavily
detailed so it could maybe at the pages, maybe shut off the surface
of the book is saying them. You can see two contrasts
between simple and detailed, so for that given it quite rough but say an ice cream cone. Ice cream with an
ice cream cone, it's fairly in proportion for the ice cream to the cone ratio. But then say out of proportion
could be very tiny cone and there could be a huge amount of ice cream on top with maybe a little tiny [inaudible] Here's
an example of, I would say, in proportion
to out of proportion. Instead of plans, I drew, for example, very playful. Natural light shapes,
nothing too serious, very loose or it could be
something a lot more real. Expressive is normally
communicated through your brushstrokes
or your shading, so you're sharing is
like that, for example, or you're sharing is mixed
up of a mixture of dashes, or the shapes you draw could be loose or
they could be very stiff depending on how you
draw on your drawings. Say controlled could be
very perfect circles, or it could be the
way you shade, it could be a very smooth
gradient going from dark to light, for example. Here's a little cheat
sheet that we can use as a simple versus detailed, in proportion versus
out of proportion. You've got playful
versus real and we got expressive
versus controlled. These are few things
to consider as we are going through
our drawings. We're going to go back to the
three themes that we drew, and I'm gonna go through mine to see if you can spot
different things. For each one, I'm going
to associate a color, so yellow can be
simple or detailed, orange is going to be in
proportion out portion, green is going to
be playful or real, and then purple is going to
be expressive or controlled. We're going to create
a new layer above and then I'm just going
to go through and highlight some
things I can see. Starting off with
simple or detailed. Definitely these
simple, very simple. I realize is clouds, so these clouds
here, clouds there. This is one pattern and
I can see myself doing, and here again, I
see proportion wise. We can see here, for example, this thing is way
our proportion. As mentioned ones, we're drawing here the leaves, the stem. The stem is almost as
thick as the leaf, which generally isn't the case. Then here I'll say this
as fairly in proportion, so majority is out
of proportion, as you can see,
the orange through the sketches that
we've just analyzed. Moving onto real or playful, as you can see as a
whole apart from say, this one and this one, a lot of them are very playful. As you can see by the
very loose use of lines, especially in these hills. I know hills look like this. Is very fun way of approaching, say, greenery or foliage. Again, I'll tell all of
the sketches that we do, this was the most realistic, as it could be a dumbbell. There's nothing,
that stands out, that's really
amazing about this. This hair, the texture
in hair is very playful. Now finally, I'm
going to be on the purple and this is
to see where the expressive or
controlled so styling of hair can see the
shading, very expressive. These little marks
here in there. Again, hallmarks here. This is what I want
you to do with yours, go through and be very conscious of the things
that you're choosing, whether it's real or expressive
or simple or detailed. Really go through it and
see what the majority is. As you can see with mine,
I'd say it's very simple, compared to simple and
detailed as a multiple of the simple side in proportion
versus out of portion. I would say mine is very out of proportion, the long legs, a tiny body, big
leaves, big stems. Again, they said, sizes dotted, very out of proportion. Overall, the flow and the
simplicity of the shapes, it's very playful, there's
nothing too real about it, and then finally, with regards to expressive or controlled, I would say mine is
very expressive and very lose lines, free shapes. Largely to go through and
do the same with yours, really analyzing the
sketches that you've done and when we
do get to the end, I would like to see this
part of your drawing. So do save this, export it, take a picture whatnot, and then when we
do get to the end and you can upload it
to the project panel. Before moving on to
the next lesson, I recommend spending some time analyzing the sketches that
you've created to see if there are any similarities in the elements that
you've used or has any consistency within
the shading I wanted to. In the next lesson, I'm going
to be covering inspiration, how and where you can find it, and then we're going to
get moving on to creating a mood board.
5. Finding inspiration: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to be showing
you some of the best ways that you can find
an inspiration, but also be inspired. This is an important part of the illustration style
as subconsciously, your style comes from things
that you are inspired by, things around you,
music you listen to, films you watch, or
even games you play. In this class, I'll be
running through some of the places where you
can gain inspiration, then we'll be turning that into a mood board for which you'll be using in the final project
to create your illustration, but also it's something
that you can refer back to anytime later
on in the future. To begin, let's run
through some of the places where you
can get inspiration or things that you can
search online to help you find inspiration if you're
unsure where to start. Firstly, let's jump online. Let me show you a
few websites that I like to use for
different purposes. Firstly, I'm going to start
off by showing you some of the resources that you can find online to get inspiration from. Firstly, we have Pinterest. This is a great place
as all the images on here are saved from
all over the Internet, which is great, so it puts
everything in one place. Here as you can see, I've just searched illustration. I'm just scrolling through,
and as you can see, there are many different
types of illustrations, is great for inspiration.
Obviously, that is endless. There is never an end to the types of things that
you can find on here. One thing I really
like about this, is it allows you to
go in and save it. You just hold on it
with your finger, you can save it, you can send it, and
you can flashlight it. Here, we press Save. Then here as you can
see, I've created a mood board called Skillshare. So I'm just going to go in, Skillshare, and there we go. If you tap on that, it shows you all the things that have
been saved in that board. Secondly, we have Behance. This is another great website, but the only thing with this is that it's only
uploaded by designers, so it's not safe from random
things off the Internet. These are all designers who have uploaded their
projects onto Behance. Then again, you can
search different terms. Say if we click on there, it will search illustration, and it comes up
with many different illustration projects
from packaging, to product, to
digital illustration, to again, packaging. There's many different
sources on here. I feel like this one's
a lot more creative, a lot more unique
compared to Pinterest, but again, it's good to
get inspiration from. If you do click on it, you
can see the illustration, you can see the process if the artist or the
designer does upload it. Thirdly, we have YouTube. This is an odd source,
but again, it's great. Here for example, I have just searched illustration
trend 2022. It's great just to go through videos together of illustration
styles are trending. You can search
anything you like. It comes up with any trends. It's just great to
see video format of maybe illustration trends
or up-and-coming things. It's great for inspiration
because you come across things that you
don't even intend to. Then finally, we
have Google Images, the one that we all used
right at the beginning. All I've done here is searched illustration and
clicked on images. I'm just going to
scroll through. It's endless, honestly. The amount of information, the amount of inspiration, the amount of ideas that you
can get from this is crazy. Obviously, depending on what you're illustrating at the time, what you're creating, you can tell your
search accordingly, but I've just searched the very open term of
illustration just to show you the amount of inspiration and possibility
that is out there. Now for the offline ways in
which you can get inspired. Firstly, we have music. This is great because musicians and artists tend to describe feelings or emotions while
they're singing their songs, and you can take inspiration, whether it's the story
of your illustration or if you just need an idea. Secondly, we have
environment or surroundings. This is great whether you're
in nature or in the city. There's always many
things around you. There's color combinations,
there's textures, and there is new
things that you see which may spark in your idea. Thirdly, we have films. Me personally, I really like
this one as I'm quite into sci-fi and watching superhero
movies or animated films. In these, you have some
lifelong key concepts, whether it's the way
the special effects been done, the graphics, or even just understanding
certain lighting or even like body
positions or poses, which I will have taken
inspiration from in the past. Fourthly, you've got fashion. I use this one personally for when I'm thinking of
color combinations. As walking around,
out and about, you see people's outfits and say the trousers and
the t-shirts that they're wearing and the color. If the color combination
that they're wearing works, I like to incorporate
that whether it's into my characters or even just
the illustration in general. Finally, we got observing. This is a great one, as you're always out and about and
your new surroundings, you can take inspiration from
everything and anything. Really, just looking
out for things. Looking up, looking down
street, as you normally would, and then just seeing how you can incorporate that
into your work. For the mood board, I'll
be using Pinterest. It's a great platform
to find inspiration, but also allows
you to save it and categorize all the things you
save into different topics. Now that you know a few
places where you can find inspiration or places where
you can be inspired from, now we're going to go through
and create our mood board. For this, we're going
to be using Pinterest. I'm going be using
this on an iPad, with Pinterest as a phone app, so you can use your phone. If you have access to a laptop, you can do on there
for the web browser. Feel free to choose
whichever method you do, but for this, I'm going to be using Pinterest on the iPad. What I'd like you to do
is we're going to go through and search a few times, which I'm going to
place on screen. I want you to choose
between 20 and 30 images and save them to a mood board. You can call the mood
board wherever you like. I've called mine Skillshare. But feel free to save
whatever you like, whatever you look
off for everything, whatever styles or inspiration
that you feel match you, go ahead and save
that to your board. All we want to do
for this lesson, just go ahead and save 20-30 images that you
like the look of. I'm going to go
in and initially, I'm going to start off with
the term illustration. I'm going to be using my
pencil just to scroll. What I'm doing here,
I'm just going through and seeing what I
like, the look of. I call it the colors of this. I'm just going to hold it, drag my pencil across to save, and then I'm going to
click on Skillshare. I'm going to go
ahead and do this. Feel free to stop
whenever you want. You can add more than 30 images. I'd say 20-30 as a minimum. I'm just scrolling through.
Seeing what I like. I quite like the way the figures that I illustrate in this, like the proportions and stuff. Again, hold, save, Skillshare. I want you to go ahead and
continue doing the same. Take as long as you like on
this step, pause the video. Go ahead and create
your mood board. Don't forget, we're
going to search these terms initially, and then feel free to search any terms that you'd like after. Whether you want to
search character design, you're going to
search animal design, you're going to search textures, anything that you feel much is things that
resonate with you, go ahead and do so. [MUSIC] If you do like the
look of something, you can click on the image
and that'll take you into maybe more images which
show you similar concepts. I've gone through and
I've made my mood board. I've just filled it out with
a bunch of images which I feel resonate a lot with me. A lot of them range
from say, characters, to environments, to
even 3D characters. Again, the inspiration
could be anything. To some flowers. It can be a range from anything, but hope you've done the same. Got your mood board together. In the next lesson,
I'll be breaking denser elements which we'll be using in order to
break this down. Pro tip. One thing I like to do is keep my phone on
me at all times. The main reason for this as
we're walking out and about, or if we scrolling online, there's so many
things that we see visually that we
may be inspired by. Whether that's someone's outfit, a song we listened to, or even if your
thought comes to mind and you want to drop
something down for later. However, in order to do this, the first thing you need to
do is learn to be observant. See things around you, know it's color combinations,
know it's textures, know it's things that
you may want to create or things that you want to incorporate into your own work. Before moving onto
the next lesson, I'd really recommend
spending some time, building out your mood board, really filling it with
everything that you like. In the next lesson,
I'm going to be giving you some components
in which we can break down the mood board
into the elements so we can then use it
within our illustration. [MUSIC]
6. Component Breakdown: In this lesson, I'm going to give you an explanation of the
components that we're going to use in order to
break down your inspiration, which you found with the
mood board that you created, to give you a better
understanding of the different components and how each component can be used and how you
can implement it. To your inspiration
what you found, I'm going to be using a simple illustration
to communicate this. Let's jump into the different
elements that can be used in order to break
down our illustration. bear in mind, these
are just the basics. There's so many more
that can be used, but it's just a
good way to stop. Once you've got a
better understanding of your mood board
and the different components of which
you selected, you'll get a better
understanding of how you can implement it, and
then after that, then you can start adding more, and diving deeper
into what you found. The five-minute
elements we're going to be discussing are the following; fill, stroke, proportion, color, and lighting. These may seem a bit
vague at the moment, but let me go in and
explain each one, how they look and how you can visually spot them
in your mood board. The five elements that
we're going to be discussing in this are fill, stroke, proportion,
color, and lighting. Now let me go into each
one separately to give you a bit more understanding what I mean by these five topics. Firstly, we have fill. I've split it up into
solid or textured, so here is an example
of a solid fill. As you can see, there's no gaps, everything is nice and clean. We're comparing it
to the textured, you can see there's
a lot of difference. It's the same illustration. It's the same shape, the same
colors, but as you can see, there's a lot more texture
when it comes to the fill. Secondly, we have stroke. This is another
word for outline. This is the base illustration
that we're using. As you can see, there's no
outline on this illustration. Then moving across,
I've separated it into two separate types. As you can see,
both of these have strokes on them or outlines. This one is a much
cleaner outline, just a solid with
a fixed thickness, and here's an example of again, a stroke, but this time
it's got texture on it. This is what I mean by stroke. Thirdly, we have proportion. This is in proportion, the hat, the face, and the body are all in proportion as they
would be in real life. Here's an example of
outer proportion, where the hair is
massive, the face, and the neck are small,
and then the body is big. That's what I mean
by proportion, whether it's to
scale or auto-scale. Fourthly, we have color. As you realize, this is
very abstract color, no one's hair is purple,
no one skin's yellow. Here's an example of
abstract colors in use, and here's an example of real colors with
light skin tones, brown hair, and then a blue top. Then finally we have lighting. I split this up
into flat shading or flat colors or
flight illustrations. Or even no Illustrator, no shading at all like this. We've got flat shading or then
we have realistic shading. As you can see, the colors are a lot more blended together, you can see that is a 3D shape. Here's a rough understanding of what I mean by these topics, and what I've also
done is I've got some sample illustrations
together from other artists of the Internet which help convey this further. Let me just go
through it. Again, solid as you can
see, clean outlines, solid fill, as opposed
to a lot more texture, a lot of rough edges,
stuff like that. Now we have no
stroke illustration, there's no outlines,
nothing like that. To compare that to a stroke, as you can see here, the illustration
is all outlined, even the section the inside, everything has an outline. That's what I mean by stroke. Thirdly, we have proportion. This seems fairly
proportion, the leg length, the upper body, the
arms, everything, and then compare this
to a drastic tiny head, huge arms, big upper body, huge legs, massive feet, very out of proportion. Fourthly, we have
the abstract colors. Here we got purple,
yellow skin tones compared to realistic
skin tones as you like, the different skin
tone variations. Then finally, we
have the shading. This is very flat
as you can see, flat if any, blending
together, no gradients. Compare that to say
something like this, which is very realistic, a lot of lighting is
taken into consideration. I just wanted to
show you this as different ways it
can be broken down. This is crucial for the next stage where we
are going to be using this analogy to break down your mood board
even for example, say an illustration like
this has got a mixture of the components
we're talking about. It's got the real colors. But then it's got
the flat shading, it's got no outline, it's out of proportion. This one, for example, the fill is solid, the stroke, there's no stroke. Proportion is completely
out of proportion. The colors, fairly real, and the lighting is
completely flat. You can do this for every
illustration you have. This one, for
example, so the fill, solid, stroke,
there's no stroke. Proportion, I'll say
this out of proportion, but not too far
from in proportion. The colors, I'll say
they're fairly real, and then lighting
again, flopped. You can do the same for this, but this is what we're going to move on into our mood board. Do you spend some time,
re-watch that section again just to get a
better understanding, and you can mix and match. You could have a textured fill, you could have in proportion, you could have real colors, and you could have real shading. But say the shading
here, for example. This shading is very
real, is very blended, but you can use this
shading or texture, so it's clearly up to you,
it's completely open. But I want you to get an understanding of this
as we'll be applying this to our mood board and I'll be showing you how
I'm applying it to mine. Pro-tip, when looking for
inspiration is good to keep these five different
components in mind as when you're looking
for the inspiration, you maybe want to look for
a certain color palette or a certain texture. Knowing what these
look like will allow you to implement them
within your style. As a quick recap,
in this lesson, we covered five components which we are going
to be using in order to break down your
inspiration includes fill, stroke, proportion,
color, and lighting. In the next lesson, we're
going to be taking what we've just learned with
the five components, and we're going to
be applying it to the inspiration that you
found in your mood board.
7. Moodboard Breakdown: In this lesson, we are going to be
applying what we've learned in previous lesson with the components and
then using them to break down the mood board
which you've created, which will give you a
better understanding of what you've chosen and how you can start applying it and then establishing
your style. Now that you have a
better understanding of the five elements which are
used in the previous lesson, let's apply the same thinking to your mood board.
Here's my mood board. What I'm going to do is
from the five elements we discussed in a
previous lesson, we'll write them down and how my mood board fits each element. What I've done here is
I've got Procreate here and I've listed the five
elements I'll be talking about. Fill, stroke, proportion,
color, and lighting. I've gotten here
listed and what we're going to be doing
is we are going to be filling this out based on the mood
board that we have. You can fill it out
through drawing, can fill it out through words, or you can even fill
it out by dragging pictures that you like and then putting them
in that category. There's multiple ways
that you can do it whichever way that helps you communicate or for you to understand the concept
that we're talking about. You feel free to do so. I'm going to swap
this off to the side. I'm going to show you my mood board what
I've put together. I'm going to talk you
through why I've chosen these and then we're
going to go over to my list and I'm going
to go fill that in. I'm going to start off here. I can swipe through so
I can start at the top. In this one, I really
like the colors and the contrast
between the two, but I also like the
way the character is, the proportion, as you can see, is where a proportion, the length of the arms, the legs, the way
our proportions. That's one main thing
that stuck out to me. Here, the colors popping. Secondly, the way that
the shading has been done so it's still flat, but within each flat section, there is a gradient
of some sort. Again, this is mixing
two styles together, the flat illustration plus
the realism of the shading. Here this is a completely
file illustration with realistic colors. But again, the main thing
that stuck out to me here was the out proportion. As you see here, the size of the hands compared to the head, the hand is way bigger
compared to the head, which is definitely
out of proportion. This one here, I really like
the texture within this. It is something I
do like and it's not technically
used for shading, is used to fill here. But the textured
feel really stood out to me so I was
gravitating towards that. This one is the
simplicity of it. I really like the
free-flowing shapes. I'm going back to the sketches
that we did initially, this one did resonate
with the way that I draw with the free-flowing,
playful shapes. Here again, main
thing was proportion. As you can see, there is
some pattern going on here with me and the proportion. I do you want me to do the same? Do look at the five
categories that we have. See which one it takes. I have to go through
all in this one. The fill on this one
is fairly solid. The proportions where our
proportion, the stroke, there's no stroke
on the outside, but there is some
detailed stroke on the inside which I like. Colors-wise, it's
fairly real with a skin tones and then the clothes that the
characters are wearing. Then finally the lighting
it is completely flat. There is no shading on this one. Again, on this one, the
main thing I liked was the textured outline mixed
with the abstract colors. It was really nice. This one here I didn't like
the way the shading was. It's real with a bit of
highlights and the shadows. But then also it's still
quite textured as well. Mixing the real
with the textured did really work on
this illustration, which is why I like this one. This one is
completely different, is a 3D model. But again, the main thing
was the proportions, the size of the arms
compared to the legs. It was something that
stood out to me. This one outside the color is
the yellows and the greens. It did really work
well for me again, the greens, the
tones on this one, and the simplicity
of the shapes with a tree just big mounts. Nothing too detailed about
adding a little bit of detail with the little
lines here and there. This one for me,
the orange and the green really worked
well together. I realized that
color combinations, I do feel like I
will be using that. Again, similar hair,
this for me, the colors, the orange, the greens, the whites really stood out. Portions again on this one and the abstract colors are
the bright yellow skin, the pink, sore skin here. It is something I'm
gravitating towards. I do want you to apply
this same thinking, really break down
as to each one, why you chose it, and why is
added to your mood board. These were just really simple. I like the clean shapes. The simplicity of this one. Same for this and this one it was the
texture highlights, the texture, and the shading, the fingers on the hair. They do feel it's something
I do want to implement. What I'm going to do, I'm going to swipe
them from the side. I'm going to start
filling in this. Film-wise or do feel
like textured for me. Textured is something that did come across in all of them. Stroke-wise, there
wasn't many strokes, I'm going to go no stroke. Proportions. That was
easy to proportion. Our proportion and
then we've got color. A lot of the ones
that were abstract. I'm going to stick with
abstract and lighting. There was mixture. I did quite like the flat
illustrations. I say that's a
flat illustration. But I think for me the one that really stood out was this one. It is fairly realistic. But I'd say it's
somewhere in the middle between flat and realistic. I'm going to go
real but textured. I really want you
to spend some time, go through the mood
board which you put together and break it down. Now, you're going
to make your list. You can do it by
putting this over here. You can write it like I have. What I'm going to do,
I'm going to go a step further and I'm going to add little bits of the side. I'm going to add some
texture on the side just to show that I did really
like the textured look. Stroke, it's not
something to be done. Proportion, again, that's more
within the sketch colors. What I've done now I've
got my mood board here, and there is a few colors
within that I liked. This is something
that I've done prior, so what I'm going to do
is I'm going to show you which ones and
then add them too. I've already created
a color palette here. The color I'll be using
will be the yellows. As you can see, the yellow. Also remember I said that I like the yellow and
green combination, so there is a green there too. But I did really
like these green and orange so I'm going to add
an orange in there too. Now for the dark looks, I'll need something
for the shadows. Going through this,
one color that i did like was a purple. We'll be adding a purple too. These are the colors and again, I want you to do the same. I'm going to go through
your mood board, see which colors are coming
up, which ones are common, which cause you like
the color palette of, and then create a swatch, create a color
palette for yourself. I'll create one here
in Procreate then with the gas to the
real and textured. This is one that I was
really inspired by. If I break this down, I'm going to draw a ball. Just to demonstrate this. As you can see, I'm doing a realistic solar
shade with the gradient, but whilst using
a textured brush. This is something
that can be done. As you can see, is real-ish. But with the textured look
taking inspiration from this. As you can see it is using
the texture strokes here and the texture strokes here
but still making it look like a gradient
going from light to dark. That's what I've done here with our little study
just by doing so. But don't feel like that's
the only way it can be. Whichever illustration
you've saved to your mood board you can
try and recreate that. Just break it down into how it's been done. I'm
going to do this one. This is not some
time going to be using but let me show you. As you can see, here's
our base color. It has got a base
color of the yellow. But then they've added
this light yellow texture on top to give that effect. Now, I want you to
all go through, really spend some time making your list with your
color palette. The way certain things, if you do want to
try out, really do, spend some time
testing the lighting, recreate elements from here
bearing these in mind. Whereas the fill was
it flat like this, is a texture like this so
you can see a lot of texture going on here. Break it down. There's a stroke,
there is no stroke proportion-wise, color-wise. These are all things
that are put together to build up your illustration. Really spend some
time, go through this, in the next lesson
wherever you put together, we're going to be applying
this on the sketches which you did in your imagination
task together. These five elements
that we've been discussing above, these
are just the basics. There's so many more
that you can categorize your illustration or the inspiration which
you found into. Just a few could be, maybe, it says q or scary. It could be the concept of the story behind
the illustration, which you categorize
as your style. There's so many more, but I think these five are
a good place to start. Pro-tip, if you do
feel that there's more categories and the
five that we discussed, do add them to your
list and fill out a description too
from the mood board. It is good to put
some constraint on your style moving forward
as it will allow you to be consistent and produce work that will be
recognized as yours. However, over time
your style is going to evolve so don't put too
much pressure on it. From the inspiration, the mood board which
you've created, I want to go through
and fill out the five elements
which we mentioned, the fill, stroke, proportion,
color, and lighting. Go through fill amount
with a description of how your mood board fits
these five categories. Or if you did add any
extra, fill those in too. It's important that
you spend some time and completely start properly, as this will be the backbone
of your illustration when we come to create and
get in the final project. In the next lesson, I'm
going to run through the ways in which you
can continue this, establishing your
style from the things that you found before we
apply it to the project. Whenever there I'm excited
to see what you've created. I'll see you in the next lesson.
8. Establishing your style: In this lesson, I'm going to be going through some of the ways
in which you can continue establishing your
style beyond this class. Now that you've got a
better understanding of the elements which could
potentially make up your style, let me run through some
of the ways that you can continue this,
establishing it, ways in which you can
practice it, daily routines, and other elements
in which you can use in order to help you
establish your style, which will help you along
the way in order for your audience to
recognize your style. Practice. This is key when
you're wanting to build something new and especially when you're establishing
your style. You need to constantly be
practicing by drawing, creating things, and really getting to grips
with your style. Practicing anything
over time will make the task at hand
a lot more easier. In this case, we talk
about our style. You will get more
familiar into grips with your style when
creating new pieces. A great way to practice
when I started off was just to illustrate or draw objects
or things around you, whether it's in your
house, your car, in the classroom,
anywhere that you see. Anything around you, you can
just practice and draw it, really observe it,
and try drawing it. If they've already drawn
many objects around you, a great way to continue doing this is to use a
random word generator. This is something I did. I posted a bunch of
videos on my Instagram, where it just generates
a random word and then you get to create
an illustration around this. It really gets you thinking that some of the words
require abstract. However, it's really
beneficial to create this daily
practice of drawing, whether that's in the morning, in the evening, or whether you come straight back
from school or work. Creating a space or a time
within your day in order to practice this will
definitely become beneficial as the
more you do it, the easier and the more
established your style will get. A good way to do this and
for this habit to becoming grained is to constantly
have materials, or notebooks, or
your iPad around. There's literally
something you can pick up, grab, and start
drawing or sketching. What I like to do
is keep my notebook and my pencil at hand. Always on my desk or next to my bedside table so
I can pick it up, grab it, start drawing. It's such a handy tool
and over the years, it's coming handy or
if I want to draw down a quick idea or a quick concept. Secondly, we've got
tastes with the styles, and it's okay to taste
with the styles, but let me explain
what I mean by this. All my journey
over the 10 years, I have been creating art
digitally and physically, or the traditional way. Over that time, I've tasted
so many different styles. But by doing this,
it's allowed me to establish the things
that I really like, and not used so much the
things that I don't like. It's all part of the process though of finding your style. You have to taste, you
have to experience, you have to open yourself to all these different types
of work out there in order for you to understand
the things that you enjoy or the way that
you like communicating. As inherently,
Ukraine illustrations is a way of you speaking or you expressing
yourself creatively. A few ways in which
you can taste different styles is
intentionally or passively. Intentionally, I mean
by you may search on Pinterest or any other
platforms that we discussed, and look for something slightly different to try recreate it and then slowly
incorporate a few of those elements
into your work. Or it could be
passively. Say the music you listen to or the
surroundings that you're in. You may be inspired or
the things that you see may want to drift
into your work. You may not realize, but sometimes that's the
best way in which your style establishes by environment or
your surroundings. Another great way
to practice is to pick one illustration
or one object, or one subject and try draw
that in different styles just to see if you understand how to apply different elements, different strokes, different
fills, or textures. Thirdly, we got consistency. This is the best way in order
to establish your style. You have to be consistent
in a few elements, where that say the
color palette, the way in which you
illustrate your work, whether you have
certain mouse strokes or the color of your stroke. There has to be some
constraint within all this exploration which will define you and your style, which people would recognize. Being consistent with
these over time, producing different work, different types
of illustrations, your style will
become established. You'll have your own style and people will start
recognizing your work. Now that I've covered
ways in which you can establish as beyond this class, let's go on to the final project
where we are going to be applying all the
inspiration, the mood board, and all the elements
which are broken down into your first illustrator
using your startup.
9. Final Project: This is where the
real fun begins. We've covered a
lot in this class. Well, this is the time
where we get to apply all the things that we've
learned and explored. For the project, the theme
I've chosen is adventure. The reason for this, as I feel like it gives you
enough space to think, also apply all the components, the elements which you found
within your inspiration, which inherently will
allow you to get in touch with your style and
your creative process. In this lesson, I'm going
to be running through my creative process on how
I create illustrations. As we're all starting with
the same theme or adventure, I'm going to show you how
I start by sketching, then I go through
into color blocking, and then adding details
like texture and lighting. I'll be sharing my story of how it's changed over the years, and you may take
certain parts out of this too and apply
into your style. However, before we get started, don't worry if you're struggling
with the sketching part. I've included some
skeletons down below in the project panel,
which you can use. You can import those
into Procreate, or you can print them out, and then you can use
those as your base for your sketch. Let's get to it. Here we are. We're
in the final part. Like we did in the
imagination task, we're going to be drawing some rough concepts from
the theme of adventure. Just the first thing
that comes to mind. Bear in mind all the things that you've saved to your mood board, the way that things are, if it's in our proportion, put that into your sketch, that will help you as
we go to illustrate. I'm going to do
what I did prior. Put a little grid down
the title adventure, and then just let
more mind flow. Here we have the
grid. I'm going to go in and start filling this in. When I think of adventure, we think of long walks. We could have
climbing mountains, rock-climbing, jungles, camping, mixing those together, so say walking in the jungle, mountain biking,
hot air balloons. Feel free to, wherever you envision or you think of
when you think of adventure, it could be the adventure
of learning a new subject. It could be the adventure
of something else. So you keep it personal to you as long as it means
something to you. I'm going to go in now
and just start sketching. [MUSIC] These are illustrations or the sketches that I've
produced with this. Again, going along the
idea of adventure, so here we've got the
hot air balloon, Here, we've got someone
pouncing around, like going on an adventure, maybe through a jungle
or some foliage. As going back to
the initial stage, I did sketch a lot of
foliage and stuff. I feel this is part
of my drawing style, so I thought I'd include
this into this sketch. Then here's another
example of, again, keeping the characters
out of proportion as this is something I
was in my mood board. But then along with
the playful three lines, here and here. Here's the ones that I created. Now what we're going
to do, is we're going to take this sketch, take the one that you're
going to go with, and we're going to go
further refine this. Just so we have a better
understanding before we start adding color
into the illustration. What we're going to do
here, is I'm going to drag , click on "Gallery", click on "New screen size", and then just let
go of the pencil, and then it should
put the layer here. Now what we're going to do, is we're going to
click and drag. I'm going to make
this much bigger so it fills the screen up. Now what we're going to
do is reduce the opacity. Now we're going to go in and refine the sketch a little bit. The reason for this, is just so the type of
things that we wanted to do, where the shading is
going to come from. It all gets solved
now before we even start adding color
to the illustration. As you can see, I've
reduced the opacity. I'm just going to
go in and sketch over the sketch that's there, but just a little
bit more detail. [MUSIC] Now that I've got base catch, what I'm going to do now, is go in and add some rough shading before I add the color, just to know where I want
the light to come from. For this, I'm going
to add a new layer, and then I'm just
going to go ahead and start shading on top of this. [MUSIC] Now that we've got this, what I like to do next after adding shading doing
the refined sketch, is I like to color black. This is where I just like to see which colors
work well together. The next step I like to do, once this sketch is done and the shading has been applied, I like to go in and reduce
the opacity of this sketch now and start building out
the shapes with the colors. [MUSIC] For this, I'll be using the
monoline brush that can be found within
calligraphy, just here. I've created my own
modified version. Feel free to use the one
that comes within Procreate. Bear in mind I will be creating each different color
on a separate layer. So when I do come to
our shading within Procreate, it's a
lot more easier. I'm just going to change
in the background. What I'm going to do now, is for every single color can be drawn on a separate layer
using the monoline brush, just trace over the sketch
that you've already created. [MUSIC] Now that we've filled out the
illustration watercolors, what I'm going to do now, is this is where I'm going
to add my shading. As discussed previously, I
quite like the texture looks. I'm going to go in and add
textured shading to my piece. I'm going to uncheck
the sketch layer, so it's just the colors
that we put down. With two fingers,
I'm going to swipe right on all the pieces. This is how it
creates a alpha lock. That way I can draw
within the shape without going out
to add my shading. This is the quickest
way to do it. This is one way where you
can use clipping masks, but that requires
a lot more layers. For this, I'm going to be using a alpha lock for all of them and then adding
shading to each one. [MUSIC] We've all created our project. I'm super excited to see
what you've created. I'll see you in the next lesson, where I'll give you
a quick roundup of what we've covered, and how you can
upload your projects so I can see it and
give you feedback too. [MUSIC]
10. Conclusion: Congratulations on completing this class and
getting to the end of finding your illustration style. I know we've covered a lot of
concepts within this class, some of which you're
about to implement now, and some of which
may take a few weeks after you spend some
time establishing this. But do feel free to hop back to any of the lessons which
you feel you may want to recap or retake or redo just in order to
help you establish this. As a quick recap of
this full class, we started off by
going through some of the reasons why having your
style is so important, such as recognition,
consistency, and evolution of your style, also the chance of growing an audience and
inspiring others. Then we moved on to a
quick drawing exercise which allowed the creative
juices to get flowing. As we talked about using
our weakness or flaws and embracing them and
adding them to our style and making a unique
and personal to you, bringing that within your style, which will make it yours. We created a moodboard from all the inspiration
that you found. We broke it down
into components such as fill, stroke, lighting, and color, then we moved
on to a class project where you applied all the
findings into your work. If there's one key takeaway I'd hope you take
from this class is the understanding of how you can break down work
with the elements, whether that's the fill,
color, the stroke, texture, or even maybe their characteristics
whether it's cute or scary. Having the ability
to do this is so important as it allow you
to continue your style, but then in the future, say if you are inspired or
you do want to implement say an elements from different
artists' work into your own, you'll have the
ability to do so. This is so important as
it allows you to stay consistent while still adding different elements
here and hair. After completing the project, don't forget to upload
it down below to the project panel where I
can see what you've created. It'd be good if you can
upload your project, so the final illustration, along with your moodboard, or maybe a link to your
moodboard along with the list that we filled in where we talked about the fill, the stroke, and the color. It'll be good to see how
you started and seeing those elements come
through implemented within your illustration. If there is any feedback I
can give, I'll let you know. Also if you do have
any other questions, do add it with the project panel below so I can
answer them for you, which will help you
in your future. Also, if you do like
to stay in touch with my illustration journey, do head over to
Instagram and give me a follow design_with_smit where you can see my illustrations, my process, and see how
I'm getting on too. Also, don't forget
to tag me if you do post your work on
Instagram as well as the project panel so I can comment and share [inaudible]. I hope this is the start of an amazing illustration journey for you and I can't wait to come across your work
in the future over social media and seeing you inspire others
around the world too. I hope you stay creative, be inspired and keep inspiring the people around you
with your unique style. That's all for this class, I'll see you soon. Bye.
Smitesh Mistry, Illustrator & Designer
