Learn How to Draw! Fun & Easy Exercises for Nailing Proportion, Shading, and More

1. Introduction: Drawing is a learned skill. When you see people who are insanely talented, they didn't start that way. Everyone was the beginner once. My name is Brooke Glaser and I'm a full-time illustrator, but drawing is not something that came naturally to me. I used to struggle with it. The trick is learning what to look for, learning how to see things a little bit differently. What we're going to do in this class is learn some exercises to hopefully help you to see things in a way that you might not usually. I'm going to teach you the techniques that I use to draw proportions accurately and quickly, like the clock method, grid method, shaped method, and plotting method. We're going to dive deep into learning about shading. I'm going to cover the different kinds of shadows, how they look different, where to put them, and a bunch of tricks to make illustrating them fun and easy. I'll walk you through my entire process from reference image to sketches, color, and shading. I'll also be sharing some of my tips for dealing with layer limits and Procreate. This whole course will be done in Procreate, but can easily apply to traditional media's. If you prefer things like pencils or paint or Kranz, no problem. You can follow along easily too. By the end of this class, you'll be able to draw anything that you can see and create shading like a pro. 2. Where to Find the Class Resources: Hi, art friends. Welcome to class. Before you jump into learning, I created some free reference photos and drawing prompts for students of this class. To download them, go to brookeglaser.com/draw and enter your email to unlock the freebies. The link is in the projects and resources tab. This will add you to my e-mail list, which means you'll get my occasional tips, freebies, and resources for artists. You can unsubscribe at any time. Once you've done that, it'll take you to the page where you can download the class freebies. I hope these will help you with your drawing journey. Happy creating, art friends. [MUSIC] 3. Learning To See: Drawing is a learned skill. Anyone who wants to, can learn to draw. When you see people who are insanely talented, they didn't start that way.They also had to learn how to draw. Some people, pick up these skills faster than other people. But we all start as five-year-olds who make terrible, weird scribbles.There are two parts to learning how to draw.The first part is hand, eye coordination, and that's just learning how to actually make the marks that you intend to make. That's something that just takes practice, like weightlifting, or exercising, or learning how to ride a bike. It's just something that you practice and get better at.The second part is learning to see and actually seeing the shapes and forms that objects are actually made of and then translating that onto the page.Oftentimes when asked how they draw so well, artists will just tell you, they just draw what they see, which I'm sure it can be very frustrating and it's not very helpful because we all see the same things, why can you draw better than I can? But the trick is learning what to look for, learning how to see things a little bit differently. That's what we're going to do in this class is learn some exercises to hopefully help you to see things in a way that you might not usually. You might have heard about the two sides of the brain before that there's one side that's really creative and another side that's really analytical. It's true there are different parts of the brain. One part deals with creative things and seeing actual shapes and forms and the other side is highly verbal.The verbal side often overrides the creative side that sees shapes and things because it's trying to be a good brain. It's trying to work as fast as it can and just tell you immediately what it is you're seeing. For example, we might take a look at these scissors and the verbal side of your brain says, "Oh, I know what scissors looks like there's two circles at the top and it's a sharp pointy bit at the bottom." But that's actually not true.This is not a circle, this is actually like an egg shape, so it's wider at the top and thinner at the bottom. Well, this is like a weird flattened oval, it's almost like a letter D, but rounded and squashed. It's not just a circle. In particular, the first exercise we're going to do, the upside down drawing is meant to quiet down the verbal side of your brain and discourage it from trying to take over. We're going to do something that I can't make sense of and that's going to let the creative and the side of your brain that sees shapes more clearly take center stage.There are a couple of other things that you can do to encourage the creative side of your brain and discourage the verbal side of your brain. One of those things is to avoid words. If you're listening to music, you might want to listen to music without words in it.You definitely want to turn your phone on silent with no vibrations. Even better if you can put it in another room. If at all possible, find a quiet space to work in where nobody's going to be talking or disturbing you. That may not be possible. If you just have ear buds, you can pop those in and just try and block out the sound as you're able to. Another thing that is important to note is that the creative side of your brain, the part that sees shapes. It doesn't keep track of time either. If you are on a time limit and you've got to be somewhere, you might want to set a timer. That also gives you the freedom to just relax and forget about time and just get into the flow of actually doing the drawing exercises. So let's get started. 4. Ex 1: Upside Down/Access Drawing Side of Brain: I've created a canvas that is four inches by six inches because that's the size of the image that we're going to use. It's not a big deal if it's not the same size canvas as the reference image. The point of this exercise is not to create a perfect replica of this image, it's to wake up the part of your brain that helps you to see the things that you're drawing. I have pulled the photo up in my Photos app and I'm going to drag and drop this over here on this side so that I can reference it. If I tap on the Photos app, it will put a black background and remove these thumbnails. That's going to help me so I can see where the edge of this drawing is, since it's just black and white. You can download this image in the My Project tab. Or if you want do your own version of this exercise, you can really use any image just flipped upside down. I'm using the HB pencil, but you can use any brush that you want. It really, really does not matter which brush you're using for this, you don't want something that's huge, you can't draw those lines very well, so just whatever is small ish. One thing that's also going to help you with this exercise is to turn off the quick Shape Tool. So I'm going to go to the Wrench icon, I'm going to go to Preferences, Gesture Controls, and I'm actually going to turn this off because you will probably be drawing slowly and intentionally during this exercise without lifting your pen. You might accidentally engage the Quick shape, which will change the shape of your line for you, and so it's just easier to have this turned off for this particular exercise. Don't forget to turn it back on when you finish up. There are a couple of guidelines. I don't want to say rules, but guidelines for this exercise, do not turn either of these drawings right-side up until you are finished. It will defeat the purpose of this exercise. Work on lines that connect to each other. Instead of going all the way around the edge, it's just going to work a lot better that way. When your brain tries to name this as like, "Oh, that's an eye, that's a pocket, that's a watch." Try to stop and think that's not, that is a line that curves this way or a line that bends this way. If you are feeling stuck, go ahead and switch to a new section of the drawing. I'm going to go ahead and walk through this so you can see how this exercise is done. I'm going to start in this corner over here, and I'm going to start by drawing this triangle that I see here. Then fill in the little lines to fill it up. I'm not going to be perfect, I'm just trying to do my best. It's okay if I get the proportions off, adjusting the best that I can right now. I've finished this drawing and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to turn it around. Voila, this is the results of my drawing. I can tell you that while I was drawing, I felt like there was a lot of things that I did really, really wrong with this drawing. But when I turn it around and see the end result, I think it's really impressive. Again, if I pull up my original over here and I show you the right-side-up version, I would say that it's pretty decent. All of that comes from just paying attention to where each of these lines is in relation to each other. It's all about the end result, it's not about every single little tiny piece. Just to keep that in mind when you are doing your own drawings. Now that we have finished this drawing, don't forget to turn your quick shape back on. 5. Ex 2: Shape Method/Draw Anything: One of the things that I get really bogged down with is getting sucked into too much detail, focusing too much on every tiny little part of reference material. One of the tricks that I use to work faster and get my drawing done faster is to break things down into simple shapes. Most things can be broken down into a circle, a triangle and a cube or a rectangle of some kind. Let's take a look at this frog for example, his eyes are simple circles which are connected by triangles, his head is like a trapezoid shape, his neck is a triangle and the part of his mouth is a long rectangle. His toes are made up of circles and the fingers are like long rectangles. Even his arm and hand are rectangles or a triangle. His back leg is kind of like an upside down U-shape, but it's all made of simple shapes. Now, I don't trace my objects. I like to use my own artistic interpretation. By just drawing what I see, I exercise my drawing muscles more and it comes out a little bit more unique and stylized, plus if I don't like something about the photograph I'm using, I can change it. Lots of things don't break down into such obvious shapes as that frog. I'm going to walk you step-by-step through a more complicated example and at the end, I'll show you how I edit those simple shapes and turn them into an actual sketch that doesn't look like it's just a bunch of shapes shoved together. What I'm going to do is I'm going to come here to the side and I'm going to do this in blue so we can see the difference and I'm just going to draw what I see over here and so I'm going to start again with the beak and I'm going to do like a triangular shape. If I wanted to, again, I could maybe make that triangle that goes down like that and I can just smooth that out as I want to and then the triangle that comes under here is rounded triangle as well and then I'm going to draw a circle for his head and I'm noticing that the top of his head meets the top of his beak, I want this circle to be at the top right there. I'm not worried about making this perfect, it's just a sketch. I'm going to add all kinds of color and all kinds of better refinement later and then again, I see his neck is kind of like that trapezoid. It's not a perfect square, it's not straight up and down, this side of that square is curved. That's really basically what it is, curved and maybe even a little bit of a curve on that side and then a U-shape for his body or I can say an egg, I could finish that off and then I'm going to say, a crappy rectangle for the branch. The more imprecise that this rectangle is, the more natural it's going to look. If I draw a very straight rectangle, like if I do perfectly straight lines, this looks very man-made. This looks more like it would be a fence rather than like a natural tree log and that's totally fine. That's a stylistic choice but I want it to be a really crappy rectangle and then I'll add another little rectangle right here for this part of the branch that just sticks out. Even though I can't see it, I'm going to draw the entire tail from where it connects to this back. The reason that I draw through the log is because if I come over here and I might accidentally start over here, well, this could work, like his tail could be going that way, but it changes the whole orientation of his body. Just to make things easier, I'm going to come in here and I'm going to draw through, draw my rectangle there, draw my rectangle there and I'll do his feet too and I see it. You could draw them like straight rectangles like that, you could draw them as like curvy rectangles, or you could draw them as curvy triangles. I'm going to make this a curvy triangle and maybe like a triangle right up there, peeking around back out there, then triangle, rectangular, triangle. Hook in there, right there and then I'm also going to draw this shape right here. Now before I actually do that, I'm going to say like, wow, I can really see that the proportions of this U-shape feel really off to me and so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to redraw. I'm not even going to erase it, I'm just going to say, okay, this, I want to come out further that way and we want it to come in a little bit closer and then if I want to, I can erase this so that I can see that's actually the shape that I want. That feels a little bit better to me and I might have to redraw his feet or whatever, but just an evaluation like same, that's a little bit better. Again, I'm going to come in here. Now, when I look at this shape right here, I actually see a full circle. I can say that's a full circle, cut into fourths and I'll turn this black so you can see that a little bit better. I can say that I see this being a full circle cut into fourths and this section right here, that's this curve right there. If that makes sense, I'll go back to blue. I'm going to say, look like curve right there kind of like it ends at the bottom of his jaw line and then this curves around into like wide U. Don't want that lower? I want that lower, so I'm going to start down here and bump that right there. Now this is a really confusing, messy sketch and it's not necessarily accurate, but that's the thing. When I make these stylistic choices where I'm like, this is like a U-shape that goes like this or his body is a little bit wider or whatever, this creates my own artistic interpretation of this. You might be paying attention to different parts of this bird than I am and when you go in there and you visualize like I'm going to make sure that I get this little thing right here. You're going to see things differently than I am. You're going to add those details and that's what's going to help make it unique to you. But this is still a mess, let's go back to cleaning up the mess. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to refine my sketch and so I'm going to drop down the opacity here. Obviously, if you're using pen and paper, you can't lower the Opacity. If you're using this exercise with pen and paper, a technique I find helpful is to take my original sketch and tape it to a window and lay a fresh sheet of paper on top of it, then you'll be able to see easily through to your original sketch underneath. Let's go back to cleaning up the mess. Create a layer, drop down the Opacity and I'm going to draw in black so I can see it really well. You can draw on whatever color you like and I'm going to draw my sketch again, but this time I'm going to take out what I don't want to be there, like the draw through right there, maybe this like circle that comes all the way through here, I'm not going to draw that and if there's any shapes that I want to refine or make a little bit better, like this is kind of not the shape that I want and now I can just redraw it. I can go over that and be like, I want that little bit more smooth. Now's the time to refine that. Now if I turn off that sketch layer underneath, and I turn off this guy, it's not too bad. Here's the secret, you don't have to do everything exactly like the reference image. You can also totally exaggerate things and that can add something really fun. I really love that beak, so I'm going to make his head much bigger and I'm going to extend the size of his beak so that I can focus on what I think is the most interesting part of the two cam. 6. Ex 3: Grid/Clock Method: Proportion: The grid method is great for getting your proportions very accurate or if you want to create a realistic drawing. I like to think of this like train wheels on a bike only it's for your brain. Training you to see proportions better. I'm going to walk you through this exercise with a really small grid, but as you gain confidence, you can move to a larger, more spaced out grid. I no longer use a grid at all, but imagine one in my mind. That's like the training wheels. I'm also going to walk through some tricks like the clock method, plotting out arcs and shapes to help you all with your speed and accuracy. What I'm going to do first is I'm going to make room for the drawing so that I can draw side-by-side next to this camel. I'm using two fingers to zoom out and move the canvas around the screen. I'm going to drag out my crop and I am just making sure that this center line, so there's two squares here and there's two squares here, so this should be about the same size canvas. Quick note here. These do not have to be the same size, your drawing canvas can be way bigger or way smaller than your reference photo. The grid method can be used to draw something smaller or larger than it actually is. What is essential is that you have the same number of squares in the grid on your reference photo and the grid on your drawing canvas. I'm going to demonstrate how to create a grid digitally and procreate. But if you're using paper, you can create your own re-usable grid. Draw a grid with the dark marker on a piece of paper. If you don't have a ruler, you can use a straight edge like a book. If it's dark enough, you'll be able to trace the grid onto your reference photo. If it's not dark enough, we can use the window method that we used in the last lesson to trace the grid onto your reference photo. You can then use the same grid on your drawing sheet. If it's dark enough, you'll be able to see through the paper, so you don't actually need to draw the grid on your drawing paper, you can just use the grid underneath of it. If it's not dark enough, again, you can use the window method. Now I'm going to turn on the drawing grid in Procreate. I hit the wrench icon, Canvas, and right under that Crop and Resize, which we were just in, there's the Drawing Guide. I'll turn that on and I'm going to hit, "Edit Drawing Guide." Now, I'm going to zoom in because you probably can't see it. Very thin on here is a grid guide and I can control that here. I'm going to pump the thickness and the opacity app so that you guys can see it a little bit better on camera. I'm actually also going to turn this all the way black, so it's just maybe hopefully shows up a little bit better, and I'm also going to increase the grid size. What I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be drawing this camel grid for grid in each section over here. When I'm setting up the size of my grids, I'm just thinking like, "Okay, is this going to be easy for me to see the shape of this head and replicate it over here?" You can play with this for those of you that are wanting to follow exactly along, I've got this at about like almost 700 pixels and there's the bottom lined up down here and the middle line right there. If you want to move the grid around, you can hit this and drag this blue dot in the center and it drugs that grid around. If you for some reason wanted to tilt the grid, you could. I definitely do not want to tilt the grid. Also when I'm in here say I'm like, "Oh no, I don't actually want to tilt the grid," I can tap my fingers twice to do undo. I want this to be in the center. With this method, what I'm going to do is I am going to create a new layer for sketching on and I'm going to make it pink so that you can see it really well here. Just like the shape method, I'm going to find the basic shapes that this camel is made of, like these circles, and I'm going to transfer those into the matching square in that canvas grid. When I say like, "You know what, the muzzle of his mouth is like a circle." But that circle, how far up in this square is it versus how far over? I'm going to come over here and I'm going to say, "The circle is about that size, that far over and that far up," and the same thing here. There's like a bigger circle right there and that is probably this far up and that far over. Then I can connect these then I can come back to detail this a little bit better later. Then I want to connect this neck. The neck starts about at the peak here, it dips down, that's about the lower center and that would correlate with this square here. That far over and that far down right about there, then it comes up. It's going to go like this, and this is like a negative space. That's easy for me to see right there, so you know. Right there, there's a negative space of that. Then the top of his neck is right about there. It's about that high up, maybe like halfway up and halfway, a little on the lower side of halfway. Not all like halfway up the square, maybe like about that size. Again, not like all, not dead center, maybe a little bit higher, somewhere right around there. Now I've plotted out all of these points here, I can come in and there's my neck curve and that matches pretty well. I'm going to do the same down here. It's going to start right there and end right here, which is lower than halfway over, so ish. If I connect these, cool. Now that's not all the way to his neck, so we'll go right about there. Let's see. His body is like a long egg, not including the hump. I'm going to make like an egg shape starting right about there ish, and this guy, I'm just thinking inside this oval or inside of that square, right to there. Then the lower part of the oval, somewhere around there, the upper part of the oval is somewhere right around there. Let's see. That's one two, two squares over ish like that. Then it's going to get narrower over here, really long. I know his butt, if I said the circle was like that, the egg shape. His butt ends about there. Cool. It doesn't have to be perfect. Again, if we wanted to make a perfect replica, we would just take a photo, we wouldn't draw it. I don't need this to be exactly perfect, but getting the proportions right is really helpful, and this grid method is really great for getting very accurate proportions. Now I'm going to exaggerate that hump even more. I'm not even going to follow that. When I find why is the sketches, I'll be like, "No, that's no good or that's great." Now I'm going to look at the legs here. This guy is like a square. He's going to attach, like a cup almost, so there's that rounded section there. His legs starts up over here. It goes down over, if this was a clock, 12, 3, 6, 9, this would be headed towards seven o'clock. Let's do the same over here. That's 12 o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock. Yeah, I got that pretty good. Boom. Then this goes straight down, but what I really love is this curves. If it starts up here and it ends right about there, getting that curve of that leg. I loved the way that this swooped. I'm going to do the same thing here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off this layer and I'm going to turn off the grid layer. That looks pretty good. Couple little ear on him and probably put a little eye on him. He's looking really a nice, realistically well-proportioned sketch. What I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to come on top of here, and this is where I can start to exaggerate or stylize. I'm going to choose a different color so you can see it really well and I'm going to turn the opacity down on that layer there. I'm just going to come in here and I'm just going to create a cleaner sketch. I'm not worried about making it terribly perfect. But that's up to you. Not bad. There's no wrong or right way to do this. Certainly I could exaggerate his head so that his head is bigger and that might make a fun stylized approach. That could make a fun camel. It would be more interesting to see more of his face. Now, his hump could get bigger, his legs could get shorter or fatter. This is all where it gets really fun and up to you. This is all about your design. This is accurate, but this is fun. This is all totally up to you. 7. Drawing from Imagination, Tracing, and Reference : So far we've covered drawing exactly what you see. But what if you want to draw something that doesn't exist, like a dragon, or a mermaid, or a girl with three eyes. You've probably had the experience of trying to draw from your imagination and getting extremely frustrated. The thing about our imagination is that we don't actually see things in our mind as clearly as we do when we see a real life photo, it's very elusive. We'll probably see some things in very clear detail or little bits and pieces here, but not the whole picture. We can't measure how big or small something is in comparison to each other, because it might just be a feeling. Or you might only be visualizing the most important parts, the things that stick out the most in your head. Not necessarily all of the details that make it up that aren't actually that interesting. But if you take a closer look at some imaginary creatures, you might notice that they're actually made up of things that, well could be multiple references. Like a mermaid is just a woman and a fish. You can find two photos, a mermaid and a fish and combine those things. The same with dragons. Maybe a dragon would have bat wings, and the claws of a lion, and the face of a lizard. This is actually one of the reasons why I encourage you not to trace. Tracing is fast and easy, but it doesn't let you build up the mental muscle of seeing how objects and shapes actually make things up. Drawing from observation is much harder than tracing, but it's going to help you develop the mental muscle to draw from your imagination later. When you understand how real things are made up, what shapes they are made up of, it makes it easier for you to modify them when you're actually drawing. Another reason you don't want to trace is that if you want to sell your work, you can't just replicate an image that you find on Google Images and sell it in your Etsy shop. If you want to work with commercial clients, you definitely have to be careful that you're not stealing somebody else's work. Just because you don't know who the photographer was, doesn't mean that the image was free to be used. How would you feel if you found a big box store was using a copy of your art and selling it. Not cool, right? But in order to draw well, we need to use reference photos. So what are we supposed to do? Using reference images is fine, as long as your work is distinctly different from the photos. Here's a little test that I like to use for myself. If I were to meet the photographer whose image I used as a reference, would I be excited and proud to show them the artwork, or would I feel embarrassed like I had ripped them off? I like to use multiple images. I like to look at a lot of different pictures and get the idea of what the shape of an animal or an object actually is. That way, I'm not just taking from one person, I'm using a whole bunch of images to come up with my own thing. Copying from one person is usually considered plagiarism, but copying from dozens of people is usually considered research. In fact, the more reference images that you use, you're going to see things through your own perspective and you're going to see your own unique take. We're all different and we all see things differently. There's nothing wrong with seeing how other people draw things or using reference images. The thing is you don't want to just draw from one source, you want to draw from a lot of sources. That way, when it comes to your own filter of drawing, it's going to be uniquely you. Even though you're learning from the master is about how to portray light, or you're learning from some of your favorite artists how they use different ways of drawing faces or ears. The more that you're combining from all these awesome places, the more unique what you create is going to be. Don't limit yourself to just one way of looking at thing, one reference image, one artist that you admire. Seek out inspiration from as many places as you can. Another great idea is to take your own reference pictures. You can pose yourself and you can use the self timer on your camera or your iPad and luckily, there are other great alternatives. I like to use a website called Unsplash, where photographers have donated their photos to be used for free, even in your commercial projects. As you use multiple references, you're going to get better and better at drawing. It's going to be easier for you to draw from your imagination and you're going to develop your own unique style. 8. Giveaway + Second Part of Drawing: At the beginning of class, I mentioned that there are two parts to learning how to draw. One is learning how to see things and the other part is actually doing the practice, training your hand to actually make the moves that you intend for it to make and that just takes practice. Well, I want to give you a little extra motivation to get that practicing. If you share your art before July 5th, 2019, on Skillshare in the projects and on Instagram while tagging me in #DrawWithBrooke. You'll be entered to win some prizes. There's going to be a few prizes. There will be a few winners too. Winners are going to be chosen randomly. You do not have to worry about being the best illustrator or the most popular. All you have to do is play, draw, and share your art with us. There will be a one-year premium Skillshare membership, two bundles of Lisa Bardot's fantastic brushes. I use her brushes in my work all the time. These bundles include a ton of brushes which will make adding texture to your work a whole lot more easy and fun. To give you some inspiration, I've created a prompt list which you can find in the Resources tab and this is just to help get you started. If you want to, you can do one every single day, but you don't have to do all of them. In fact, you don't have to do any of them. You can do your own thing, whatever inspires you. I just want to provide you with a little extra motivation to get out there and practice your drawing. I'll also be featuring some pieces on my own Instagram account. If you want to get on that again, make sure that you're using the #DrawWithBrooke. 9. Base Color and Dealing with Layer Limits in Procreate: Now, because I make my artwork so that I can print it really large, I usually work with a file size that is 16 by 20, and often at 400 dpi. That means that I usually have six layers to work with. I have to be very strategic. To make editing easy later on, if I decide that I want to change the color of his body or his chest or his beak, I want to make sure that none of the colors touch each other. I want to show you that. This layer right here, if I turn off the background color, how's the brown of the branch, the white of his chest, and the blue in his beak. None of these touch each other. It's very easy for me to come in here, and just drag and drop, and change that color or change that color. It's very easy to do that. The same thing here. Now, I've got the black, the yellow, the orange, and the red. I just want to show you that there is space in between here. If I want to do a color drop onto the orange, it won't change the red. Not only is it easy to do a color drop and drag onto here, and change the individual colors, it's also really easy for me to add some texture. If I want to add some detailing on here or if I want to add some dark black, it's easy for me to do that. I haven't gone into the white or gone into the brown because this layer, none of that stuff is touching, so it makes it really easy for me to add shading and different textures without going outside of the lines. Let's go over the methods for filling in your base layers: color drop, and a selection tool. I'm going to make the body of this bird black or a gray. I don't like to start with pure black because shadows are always darker than my base layer. I want to get myself room to play with the shadows. I never use flat black for my flat layers or pure black for my flat layers unless it's something like a detail like an eye. What I'm going to do is I'm going to have a layer underneath of my sketch layer, and I'm going to turn the opacity of my sketch layer down so that I can see it. But that it isn't confusing when I see the edges of my outline. I like to use a brush that doesn't have any texture, something that's very clean and smooth. The studio pen brush under inking is also perfect for this method. Now, I'm going to create an outline of the bird's chest. No gaps in this outline because I'm going to color drop migrate in. This brush does a pretty good job. Sometimes you'll end up with like a funky line, and I'll show you that. Let's try using a more textured brush. If I come in here, and I try, and color drop now, sometimes what happens is you get these weird outlines. What can help with that is the color drop threshold. Right now, when I take this circle, and I drag and drop it, if you watch this threshold, what I've done is I've drag this, and I've dropped it. I have not lifted up my pen. Now, if I slide to the right or the left, it's going to say, "How much of this do you want me to fill in?" As I slide to the left, you can see that this little gap is getting wider, and as I slide it to the right, well, I want to slide it all the way to the right, it fills in the entire layer. If I can find the spot right before it fills in the entire layer, like this 60 for this particular brush, there's still a little bit of like, because this color threshold is dropped in a solid amount of color. It hasn't dropped in textured color, but it's no longer leaving a gap in the line between the line that you drew, and the line that you drop the color into. You can come in here, and make that a little bit more faint. This is why I like to use a solid smooth brush when in lane in my base colors. Here's another reason I like to keep my base color solid instead of texture. If I were to say, "You know what, I want this background to be yellow or green or purple." It dramatically affects that coloration. I want to put solid colors down first. You could also avoid this problem by being decisive about the background color from the beginning. Now, another technique for dropping in color is to use the Selection tool. I'll start a new layer here, and I will draw some selections for this tail feather down here. I can use this guy. If I tap at one place, and tap on another, it's going to make a perfectly straight line between those two points. If I drag that I can, it'll just draw wherever I want it to. If I make a mistake, I can use two fingers to double tap, and it will go a step backwards. Now, I have a selection, and I can color drop into that selection. 10. Shadows: Where to Add Them: We're going to talk about shadows. There are two shadows. The first shadow that we're going to talk about, is a cast shadow. A cast shadow is when light hits an object and that object casts a shadow. If you were to do finger puppets with a light in the wall, that would be a cast shadow. This light right here, is being cast by this candle. The same with this shadow on the desk right here from these flowers. Now, let's talk about the second shadow, which it's the shadow that makes up the shape of the object. Let's take a look at these flowers. You'll notice that it's not all the same shade of cutlets, and not the same shade of yellow. But these flowers, they are the same shade of yellow. But if you look closely, right here, is a much darker color than here and up here. This is the form shadow, the transitional shadow, the shadow that this thing is made up of. Since this direction is where the light is coming from, this is the bright side, and this is where the light is not hitting it because it's a round object, and so it's darker on this side. Now, a thing to know about cast shadows, is that the quality of light is going to affect them. Right now, I'm sitting in front of a big bright window and it's a cloudy day. Diffuse soft light. You get these shadows like this, which are very soft and fuzzy around the edges. Especially this. This is so fuzzy. It's not a hard outline, especially as I get further away from the table. But if I have a harsh light like a bright flashlight, or if this was a bright sunny day, I'm going to turn this on, and look how harsh the lines of this shadow are now. If I were to take this and shine it on the flowers, that is a much sharper cast shadow. Another thing to note, when I get closer to an object with my bright light, the shadow gets shorter, and when I get further away, the shadow gets longer. If I come on top of an object, it can almost make this cast shadow disappear. Shadows act a little bit differently on round objects than they do on square or sharp edge objects. Round objects tend to have a gradual transition, whereas square objects tend to have a harsh flat, where that shadow meets right there, that's the end of the plane of this box. Even though the light is diffuse and soft, and all of these shadows are really soft, it's very distinct right here. Let's talk about some more complex shapes, like for example, this Buddha face. Really, just like we were talking about in the drawing portion, most things can be broken down into simple shapes, and most shadows can be broken down into either round or sharp edges. Let's take a look at the nose to eye socket connection right here. Now this is a round shape, but it is more of a harsh shadow, especially from the bridge of the nose to the inside right here, that is a hard line. That's because this is one plane, just like we saw the planes of the boxes, compared to this side. But as we go down into this shape in here, it becomes more of a gradual soft transition. If we take a look at the little actually squares that make up the hair in here, you'll notice that they are also very plain. Right here, this is a very bright area, and this is a very dark area. It's a very sharp distinct line that separates each side of that little bit of hair. Now, this is different from the eyes. The eyes are a very soft shadow. Now this is the brightest point right here. This is probably the highest point of this round eye socket. It gradually gets darker until it's up in here. It gradually, gradually gets darker down here because this is rising up. It's going up and then around. This side, is not getting hit by light. Let's take a look at that. If I pick it up here now the light is right here and it's gradually, gradually, that's because this is a round shape of this eyeball. Same thing with the lips. They're curved, but it's a different plane. It goes down and inwards. This side is bright and this side is dark, and it's a hard line. Now this shape, is a little bit more rounded. It's a gradual transition from the highest, the point that sticks out the most, that's the highest part of the lip, that's the brightest point. As it gets further down, it gets a little bit more in shadow, a different darker color. Again, everything can be basically broken down into, part of it may be round and part of it may be square. But anything that is a sharp plane, becomes a hard line and anything that is a gradual change, like up in here, becomes soft. Let's talk about shadows in illustration. The first shadow that I want to point out here, is this dark blue shadow right here. This is a cast shadow. It's cast by the drop of honey against the teacup. What I want to point out here, is that this is not all one solid color of blue. Usually shadows are darker than the object that they're actually on. But because this is a darker section of blue, that means that this part of the shadow is darker, and this is actually a lighter section of blue. That means that the shadow portion, is lighter up here than it is on the lower part. I'm going to show you a couple of tips and tricks for making these shadows without having to actually manually go in and adjust the color. That is a cast shadow. Let's talk about form shadows. Shadows that are actually just part of the form of the shape that the object is. For example, this teacup. This teacup has a darker blue over here and then it gradually comes into a lighter blue. Now, that is different than the edge of the tea cup. Right here, again, where there's this dark blue, that's one side of the teacup, and this is the lip of the teacup. This is actually in the shadow and this is being hit by the light. This is not a soft transition here, this is very hard. This is a solid line. But if I take a look at the honeycomb, they're in between a round object and a square object. I'll turn the honey actually off of this. This is not quite a hard solid line, this is a little bit of a textured line so it gives it a slightly softer edge. That was my way of communicating that these are not necessarily hard, hard, but they're just a gentle transition between one side of the plane and another. Let's take a look at another example here. These ice cream cones, they are not one solid of yellow. The shadow starts on one side and it slowly and gradually transitions from a dark color, to a lighter color, to the lightest shade of the ice cream cone. Also, it is a textured transition. Let me show you what it would look like if I just had these hard lines. Instead of having a soft transition, see how this is just very textured, it's not solid lines, it moves gradually from one to the other as opposed to, this is dark, this is light. If I showed this with everything on there, it looks funny. This is not a very smooth transition. If I used this same harsh shading on everything in this illustration, it would probably communicate it well. But because this is so different from the way that I've done shadows in the ice cream cone itself, and in the hands, and the nails, those are much more textured shadows. This looks out of place. Now one trick that I could use with this harsh line, is I could use my smudge tool and I could smudge the shadows so that they blend. That looks a lot better than this one right here. Let's look at one more example here. I want to show you the basket right here with this donkey. I know that this basket just by looking at it, is rounded ridges. I've communicated that because I've created some shading on each section of the ridge. I've also drawn these lines right here to indicate that it's the sticks that make up this woven shape. Now this line right here, acts as both a outline, but it also creates the darkest part of that shadow. I've created a dark part of that shadow, and then I've created a midtone, or where the transition between the deepest part of the shadow is, to the midtone, to the brightest part of the shadow. But what I've also done, is these curved lines, they help indicate the shape of this basket. If I had drawn straight lines in here like this, it doesn't quite feel the same. It looks like a basket, but now instead of a basket that's rounded like these ones, that's like very bulbous, this is a lot more flat. The shape of the lines that you use, is also going to help you indicate how 3D something is. We talked about direction of light before. When you are beginning to do illustration, it's the most simple to just decide that, "Hey, my light is going to come from one direction." You decide which direction that is and just make it up. In the real-world, there's not usually just one source of light. Maybe you have a window and maybe you have a lamp. There might be a lot of different light directions. But it's very complicated to try and imagine all of those things. In this case, the light is probably coming from up in this corner over here. But I didn't stick to that strictly. I made some stuff up. For example, if the light was coming from this direction, this shadow on the beam should be down here, and it should be highlighted up here, it shouldn't be looking like that. But I got lazy. I took this bee and I copied it and I pasted it over here. That's okay. That's my artistic interpretation. This illustration doesn't look like it's completely wrong just because this shadowing on this bee isn't perfect. If you mix these things up too much, it will get confusing and you might not be able to pinpoint why something doesn't look right. But it might be because the shadows and the highlights aren't in the right place. Most of the shadows and highlights in this picture, are mostly coming from this direction. In this illustration here, this is an odd place for the light to be coming, because in a way it's like the light is coming from here and the light is coming from here. Well, I just found it was easier to communicate it by having this shadow in here because it created a little bit more contrast on the fingers. You are the artist and you get to decide how realistic that you want to be with your shadows, and how not realistic that you want to be with your shadows. In theory, the light should probably be coming from this direction in this illustration, because there's a shadow behind his leg here and in the basket. But if I look at his leg right here, that's not how it's working. If the light was coming from this direction, the highlight would be here and the shadow would be over here. But part of the purpose of shadows, is to indicate that one thing is in front of another thing. Since these legs were the same color, I wanted to create some shadow on this back leg, so that you could see that it was behind this leg. I made it up. Again, this is artistic interpretation. Use shadows where you think they will be helpful. 11. Shading Tips for Physical Media: In this next lesson, I'm going to be demonstrating how and where to place shadows in Procreate. Some digital techniques allow us to create shading faster and if you're using analog tools like pencils or markers, you'll need to add your shadows manually. I want to give you just a couple of tips for creating darker colors if you're using colored pencils or markers. The first one is, if you are using a marker, you can come in here and draw your shape. Let this dry for a second. Then when you come back in and draw on top of that again, it's going to come in with a darker color. Now, another way to do this is to fill in with your lighter shade and then grab a darker colored marker and add your shading in that way. If you're using colored pencil, this is even easier because you can just come in with your first layer of color, and then you can just push harder to create that darker shadow color. Let's say that you are using a red color. I can also create shading using colors that are next to this color on the color wheel. A color that's next to red is orange. I can come in here and add a little bit of orange on here and this will help create a darker shade of red. If it's too orange, I can come on top with just a little bit more red, but now you can see this looks a lot more rounded, a lot more darker red on the corners. Another really fun one, and I'm not going to get too much into color theory here, but if you use the opposite color on the wheel, so if the red is on one side of the color wheel and green is opposite it. If I use a very small amount of green, it's going to create the illusion of a darker red and if I use a lot of green, It's going to look like it's green on top of a red circle. You want to be really gentle with the amount of the opposite color that you use because too much of it will make it look like the opposite color of the color wheel. If you want to learn more about color theory, I've got an entire class on that. 12. Shading Techniques in Procreate: Now that I have my base layer of color, I can see all of them right there. I'm going to start doing some shading. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add some shading to this log over here and I'm want to start a new layer and I'm actually going to be using a brush from Lisa Bardot. I really love her brushes and this one, I'm going to use the same color of the log, but I'm just going to go a little bit darker. Now, let's check this out. So I'm going to go crazy and going to say, Breb what are you doing? That looks terrible, but here is the fun fancy trick. What I'm going to do is I'm going to use what's called a clipping mask. So I'm going to tap on this layer here and I'm going to tap "Clipping Mask," and it's going to contain all of those shadows that I just made to this log right here. So this is with the clipping mask off, it's everywhere and this is what the clipping mask on. So that clipping mask, what it does is anything in the layer that it's clipping to it that wherever there is something on that layer, it's going to show it. So if I turn this on, you'll see that the white chest of the two can I got a little bit sloppy and it got up into that space, but it's not showing anywhere else. So all I need to do is come in here and just erase that from up there and that log is looking pretty good. Now, I don't want my log to just be one solid texture. I want it to have a little bit of shape. So I'm going to say that the ray is coming from the top ray. So the bottom of this log is going to be textured and the top is going to be a lighter color. So what I'm going to do is I've got this wood plank shader selected, and I'm just going to tap and hold on my eraser brush, and then what it's going to do is it's going to pull up the same brush that I was using for my pencil, for my eraser and then I can come in here and I can, I'm in the brush still,I'm going to use the eraser and just start lightly erasing the upper half of that log. So that now it looks a little bit more three-dimensional. So the bottom of the log is in shadow and the top of the log is in the light. Now, I'm using a very large canvas and I'm going to run out of layers very fast. In fact, if I try and add two more layers, I can't. So what happens when you have limited layers? I'll show you another fun trick. So what we're going to do is use some of the blending modes. I want to shade the underside of this beak. So I'm going to come in here and I'm going to select using my selection tool. So now that I made my selection, I'm going to shade all of this, and ideally I would like to have a darker green and a darker blue and a darker red, but it's such a pain to keep switching colors and try to keep this track of my shadow consistent. So I'm going to choose a light gray, a mid-tone gray and I'm going to use, I really like this oil pastel or maybe this soft pastel, and I'm going to come in here and I'm going to add some shading. I'm going to make sure that it's really thicker, up near the edge of the beak,because that's where the shadow would be the darkest, and look at that, that doesn't look great, does it? But let's use some blending layer. So I'm going to hit the n right next to on this layer and that's going to open up the blending modes and if I play around with some of these, I start to get a different color and I really love using "Multiply" and "Linear Burn" and "Color Burn," but I also love using some of these contrasting ones. "Overlay" does great things for me, not this time, but so do some of these other ones and this is all really about personal preference. This time I'm going to use "Linear Burn" and I'm going to take the "Opacity" a lot further down and now I've got some shading in this beak. So that is one way to do a lot of shading really fast with one layer and the cool thing is, if I change, since I'm using a neutral color like a mid-tone gray, if I change colors of this beak, let's say that I want to, just for fun, change this to a gray color. That shading still works. So it's easy to edit because you don't have to change the color of the shadow. Whereas with this log color down here, if I were to change this color of the log to, let's say like a yellowy brown. I'd really need to come in there and change the color of that shading. So I'm going come in here and I want to create a little bit of roundness on this upper beak, and that's a little bit too dark for my taste. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to come in here and I'm going to lower the opacity. This slider controls is your brush opacity, and this lighter controls the brush size. So I'm going to keep the brush size the same and I'm just going to lower the opacity, and that's going to give me a much more faint shadow and of course, I can always use my eraser tool to soften up the edges, smudge that out or uses smudge tool to smudge it out. I want to create some definition on the feet here, and I also would like some help staying within the lines. It's really easy to accidentally come up into the body or onto the log. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to select just this layer. So I'm going to use two fingers and I'm going to hold them on this layer here, and you can see that I've selected these feet, but I'm going to draw on this layer. So when I select it, it's only going to allow me to draw within that selection. So I cant get outside of that selection. I'm not getting into the body, so that gives me a really, really clean line, and I'm going to do the same over here. I also want to create some shading under the belly over here. Maybe even some shadow underneath of the feet because the feet would be creating a shadow on the log. Here's the problem, if I select the log, it's not going to prevent me from drawing over those feet because this shadow layer is above everything. So what can I do? What I can do is I can exclude those feet. So I'm going to select the feet and I'm going to invert that selection. So I minimize selection tool and I'm going to invert it, and now I'm going to come in here and I'm going to create shading under the feet, but it's not going to allow me to draw on the feet. So let's take this selection off. Now I've still got those nice clean lines for my feet right there, but I've also got a little bit of shading under his feet. The bummer about using a mid-tone gray is that, well, it makes everything look gray. Like not particularly wild about this gray on this beautiful light pale-yellow chest of the bird. So I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to be using more color. Well, this looks really cool. It definitely does not work on the chest of the bird,on the blue portion of the bird. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to turn this on to "Multiply "and if I don't like the way that this yellow looks against his blue body, what I can do is I can turn Alpha lock onto this layer right here, the yellow layer, and I can choose a bluish color and I can fill in with a blue color, and if that's too dark, well, then I can choose a lighter blue color. To turn Alpha lock on you can swipe with two fingers to the side. So again, that's two fingers swiping to the side to turn it on. You can see it's on with these little checkerboard and swipe to the right to turn it off. If you ever can't remember these shortcuts, you can always use. You can just tap on the layer and there is a select copy and Alpha lock. Alpha lock prevents me from drawing outside of the lines. So in here, if I tried to draw outside of the shading I've already created, I can't, it's not going to allow me. I'm also going to add some lines in here to his tail. The lines in his tail here look awesome, but I want to come back and add some more shadowing to it. So I'm going to go back to my shadow layer and rather than my details layer right here, and I am going to make sure that I can only touch these tail feathers. So I'm going to select by using two fingers on the tail layer right there, and I'm going to make sure that I'm on a mid-tone gray. I'm going to use my soft pelt pastel brush and I'm going to come in here and I'm going to create some shading where the log is casting a shadow onto the tail. If I wanted to go darker, I could use a darker mid-tone gray. Now the other thing I want to do is make it clear that this tail is behind this tail. So I'm going to re-select the tail layer, but remember to still draw on my shadow layer, and I'm going to create some shadowing right here. So I can distinctly tell that this tail is behind that one. Now it's not all shadowing, there's also highlighting and this is my base color, which means that I can go lighter with a highlight. So let's say that wanted to make this beak very shiny and so what I would do is I would choose a white color and a really smooth brush, like maybe my studio brush, and I'd create a white highlight like that. So this makes the beak look really shiny and glassy and wet. That's why white highlights are usually in eyes and sometimes you'll see like a little bit of like a glassy look like that. That's because eyes are wet and shiny. In this case, I don't think I really want my beak to be that shiny. So what I'm going to do is create an overall highlight in here. Again, I'm going to create a selection, and I'm going to create just a little gentle highlight. So the nice thing about creating a selection is that it creates a hard line on the edge of the selection, and then I can really gently and gradually change, create like a gradation of color on the inside. So well, that looks like snow on his beak. But thanks to the magic of blending layers, I can come into lighten and I can play with these different settings. I personally like overlay quite a lot, I use that a lot and soft light is probably my favorite because soft light, in this case looks super, super gentle. So this is with that off, and that's with it on and so it really does add a tiny little bit of highlight. It really adds a nice little visual interest. 13. Line Quality: Keep People's Attention for Longer: When things are all the same, they get predictable, and boring, and so what we want to do with our drawings is create a lot of visual interest. Quality of line can really help you with that. If I look at this door, this dark blue line that goes around it, is very smooth, as opposed to these leafy-things in here, they're very textured. This smoothness versus this texture, even this texture inside in here, with these lines, these lines are also very textured. That contrast creates visual interest. It gives us something to look at around here. We don't just look at this and have nothing else to see. There's lots of things to see in here. Another thing that can affect the quality of the line is variation. These slats in the door, they are not all the same thickness, they are not all the same width. Some of them are very thin, and some of them are thicker, and that gives us something to bounce around. For example, my eye can be drawn into this area over here, and then maybe it's drawn into this area, or this area, and if all of these slats were the same thickness all the way through, I wouldn't notice them as much. But because there's variation, it gives me more to look at, at this drawing. Another thing that can affect the quality of your line is, some lines are darker and some lines are lighter. For example in this snake plant here, not all of these lines are the same, the dark green striations. Some of them are thinner, some of them are thicker. Some of them are a little bit lighter, or a little bit more smudged, and some of them are darker. The lightness and the darkness can also give you some variation in the quality of your line. Quality of line doesn't refer just to lines in contrast with each other, it can also refer to lines as itself. One reason that this line right here, this white center line, it's not a single thickness all the way through. It's a little bumpy and a little ridgy-looking. If I were to make that a solid line, it just wouldn't be as interesting. Again, the quality of your line isn't just these little dashes compared to each other, it's also the quality of this single line as well. The lines in this cactus here, they are not actually a single line, but they create some visual interests because they're not all the same lightness and darkness. Because some of these are lighter. Even though this isn't technically a single line, it's actually a series of dots, we visually see that as a line. What makes this one a little bit more interesting is that, it's got some see-through or some lighter parts. It's not all the same darkness. The dark and the light, that variation can also affect your line quality. 14. Stay Motivated: Don't forget, nothing will crush the joy out of drawing as much as comparing yourself to other people. Save your original drawings. Nothing will give you as much satisfaction as seen how much you have grown yourself. Even if you don't like what you do now, if you hold onto it, you're going to see progress, you're going to see a difference. Having those original drawings are going to be able to motivate you and encourage you better than anything else really. 15. Final Notes and Project: Before we get into your class project, I want to say, thank you so much for watching this class and I truly hope that it was helpful for you. If you found this class helpful, I want to ask you a favor. Please share this class with a friend who you think it would also help. If that person doesn't have skillshare, you can share a link with them so that they can get two months free. There in the Projects tab, if you share your work on Instagram, I would love to see what you guys are creating. Use the hashtag, DrawWithBrooke, and I'll be sharing some of those on my own account. You can find me at paperplaygrounds. If you want to keep up with what I'm doing, whether it's a new skillshare class an in person workshop or any other events, you can join my newsletter and the link is in the description below. For your class project share an image that you use with any of the exercises in the class. It can be one of the ones that we use as an example or it could be something completely different. I'm so excited to see what you guys create. Don't forget if you need any of the resources there in the Projects tab, and if you have any questions, please feel free leave them in the community tab. Go out there and create stuff guys, I can't wait to see what you do. 16. Bonus Student Feedback Pt 1: Hello art friends. In this video, I'm going to be giving some feedback on student art. These artists were part of a workshop and they submitted their art to get some feedback. Before we dive into the video, I just want to let you know that art is totally subjective and what people consider to be good art or making things better is totally subjective. What I like, you might not like, and that's totally okay. My intention with this feedback is to help people level up, but honestly, taste is different. You might love the way these art pieces are just the way they are, and that's totally okay. There is no right or wrong way to draw and there is no right or wrong style. It's all about finding what you like. So take what you like from this feedback session and ignore the rest. Let's dive in. Monica has shared a beautiful watercolor drawing of a toucan. A couple of things that you can do when you are taking photos of your watercolor images is to edit them so that they come out a little bit brighter. For example, what I want to show you is how I go from this, which is the original photo, to this, which is a little bit brighter. I'm going to be using the Photos app on my iPad. If you have an iPhone, you can do the same here. If you have an Android device, you can find an app like Snapseed, but I'm also guessing that there is some other photo editing app that's built into the phone. Even though your interface may not look the same, you can definitely find the same, similar kinds of tools. In the Photos app, I'm going to tap "Edit", and on the right-hand side, there are all kinds of different editing tools that you can pay attention to. The first one that I'm going to look for is called exposure. Now when I'm editing a photo, the things that I want to pay attention to is the white of the paper. This white is very, very dark, and so I want to bring it up to as close of an actual white as I can. The other thing that you want to pay attention to is any black that is in the art because you want that also to stay as dark as black as possible. With the exposure, if I crank this up all the way, what you'll notice is that this is really bright, but in the greens of the background, it's blowing out. It's removing some of the detail in there. I don't want to go to 100 percent, but I actually think I might go to something like 50 or something in this app. Again, if you're using a different apps to do this, it'll be your art, your photo, the conditions will all be different, so you need to pay attention to what works in your particular case. We'll keep going down here, and the next one I want to pay attention to is contrast. If we look at the black areas of this photo, what you'll see is that it's difficult to see if any of these areas are darker or not. Here, I'll make it an exaggerated example. If I pump the contrast up, I really can't tell any difference between the blacks. Everything just looks like one flat black. If I crank this all the way up, especially in the tail here, you can really see that there are some areas where there are darker black and some areas where there are lighter black. Now, of course, the contrast pumped up this much just looks awful because everything is just flattened out. So you want to play around and find a spot where it's not distorting the rest of the art, but you can actually see some of the contrast in the tail. Now the next thing that I want to look for is warmth and tint. Now this might be called white balance in another app, but sometimes what happens when we take photos is that the white of the paper turns, it may be a little bit on the blue side or a little bit on the red side, sometimes a little bit on the green side. This warmth and tint or white balance, it can make a big difference. We've adjusted the exposure in this particular photo, and this particular photo is actually pretty clean, so this is not going to make a huge difference, but it might in yours. If I crank the warmth all the way up, you can see like, wow, that skews it to really kind of an orangey, and if I have to skew it all the way down, this is a very light bluish. In this case, if I look at the white, it's hard to tell without having an actual white example next to it, but I think just bumping it down just a little bit to the bluer side, it's going to bring out some of the blues and greens in this painting, and I'll do the same thing with the tent. Again, the tint, if I bring it all the way up, it's bringing like a reddish tint, and all the way down, it's bringing a greenish tint. But I want this to just be like very, very slightly [inaudible]. This is neutral and this is just a little bit more green. In fact, I might take it a little down. So just brings out the greens inside of there. Then I'll tap done and I will have a finished piece. Again, if I wanted to compare the original, I can tap "Edit" and I could hit "Revert". Revert to original and you can see what a difference just those simple edits made. Betsy Thomas submitted this awesome-shaped drawing of the toucan. What I wanted to point out about this, I really like how she has exaggerated different features of this toucan. She has taken and said like, "Oh, I really like the chest of this toucan," and really made it a much larger part of the bird than it actually is in the photo. If you want to draw it realistically, you don't want to do that. But if you want to draw stylistically, which is my preference, this is exactly what you want to be doing. You want to say like, hey, this is the shape that I like. This is the part of the bird that I think is most interesting and emphasize those things. I like that she's really oversized, the part of the chest, but also the beak. This beak is a little bit more straight, but she has chosen to follow this line right here and really make it a curved portion. This is something that you might find Betsy that you are going to want to do in all of your drawings. Try and find where you can continue a line from one section of the drawing into the next section. For example, this shape of the head into the beak. That's something that you might find becomes a stylistic choice for you. Annette K. brought up a great question about how to rotate these images. I've got one image in Procreate and if I take two fingers and I twist and rotate it, then voila, now I've got this drawing right upside down. But this image is not in Procreate, it is actually in the Photos app. That's where I've pulled it up in. If I tap "Edit", let's see here there's a button down here that have a cropping and rotating move. Once I tap that, it will bring up these options up here to rotate the image. If you have other questions specific to Procreate, I highly recommend checking out my Intro to Procreate class, which will help you with figuring out some of these things to do inside of Procreate. Now, another thing that I wanted to point out was in that case, she's got this really fun and quirky interpretation of the toucan over here. But one thing I'm noticing is that this line right here is it's not very smooth. I also saw the same thing in Taylor Ashbrook's drawings as well. This is so cool. She showed her entire progress here. You can see this is her very first draft like actually just copying these shapes over, and as she goes, she has drawn and retraced over these shapes, and here is just the final retraced version. What I want to point out here is that this really shaky line quality can be a total stylistic choice. You can absolutely do that and it looks really cool. This looks really nice on the branches, but oftentimes when you are a beginner at drawing, your hand is not very steady. There are a couple of things that you can do to improve the steadiness of your hand. One of them is drawing quickly. Even now, if I draw really, really, slowly, you can see even my lines are not very smooth. But when I draw it quickly, you can see that the line is a lot smoother. So when you are moving very, very, slowly something like this. One technique that I use on this glass screen, it's very easy for me to brace my hand. You'll notice I'm not moving my whole hand, I'm actually moving from my wrist, so that helps me keep a smoother line as well. Another thing is again, if you move quickly. You'll see a lot of times in artist sketches what they'll do is called ghosting. They will draw the line many, many times so that they can get their hand used to that movement, and then they can come on top of that and trace that in a faster, more comfortable way because they've drawn it several times. It's like practicing the movement. Then once you've practiced it several times, you can do it faster. This can absolutely be a stylistic choice. I think Annette here has got really smooth lines in the beaks and the outer edges. You would want to make sure that it's intentional to have this less smooth section here. Again, it's totally a stylistic choice. You can do one or the other. But if you find that you are unintentionally creating these shaky lines, which again, this actually looks really cool and you can tell Taylor has actually done that. She's practiced smoothing out these lines here, and you can tell that she is much more confident in her final lines. This is obviously very unintentional. Again, totally, it can be a stylistic choice, but if you feel like you are unintentionally having wavy or shaky lines and you would like them to be smoother, try drawing faster, try the ghosting method, and try moving not just your fingers, but moving from either the wrist or from the elbow. If your drawing surface is bigger, it's easier to draw from the elbow to create a smooth curve or a straight line instead of moving your hands or your fingers to make those lines. Speaking of ghosting, you can see this in action with Venu. I'm so sorry if I'm butchering your name. But you can see that they've used this nice ghosting effect right here to figure out like, "Hey, where do I actually want this shape of the bird body to go right here?" You can also see that they've done it right up here in the face. This again helps them create exactly the line that they want to create right here, and exactly the line that they want to create right here. It's not just like they came in and said, "Okay, I'm going to do this once, and that's the final choice that I've made. I've got to stick with that." No, they've come in and they've circled around, and in that way, you can choose. If I lower the opacity here, like if I had drawn with a pencil really lightly, then I could say like, "Okay, actually I think this line is the best one right there." That ghosting technique can be really, really helpful and it can help you practice those moves. What I've noticed here, I love this interpretation. Draw through right here. This is totally a unique perspective of this. This is just like seeing the shape and saying, "You know what, actually I like this to be a little bit smoother and rounder and like having a little bit more dynamic flow in the tail." One thing I've also noticed, this is a great interpretation because the body is tilted going this way, whereas the body is very upright in this drawing, the oval of the body right here is tilted. Now, when you're drawing, this is all an artistic interpretation. You can say, "You know what, actually I like this and this gives me the sense of movement with this bird." You can keep that. The one thing that I might, if you want to keep the tilt of the body this way, you could actually come in here and also tilt the head of it so that the bird's head is tilted this way. Now, of course, you would have to redraw the chest of the bird, but it's a nice way for you to be able to figure out, "Hey, maybe I want this bird to be looking at a totally different direction. Maybe I want the bird looking down." Then you can imagine what the connection between the line would be there. Beautiful work Venu. I wanted to point out for Amy Z. She's also done this awesome drawing here. Amy Z also has a slightly tilted body, the result of the body being leaned back like this, but the bird's head being tilted this way. The oval of the shape isn't straight up and down like it's straight up and down right here, it's tilted back. This creates a totally new vibe to the bird. The bird feels a lot, much more alive, like it could jump up and fly away at any time. Yes, I see a lot of people saying like, "Oh, my rabbit upside down-drawing. It's not exactly the same as the real version, but that's actually a good thing. It's a creative process. We're not taking photos, we are creating our own interpretations of this art. Maybe you didn't mean for the bird to be leaning back, and you actually want it being straight up and down, but this is actually a happy accident because what you can do from here is embrace the fact that, "Hey, this actually looks a little bit different. The feeling of this drawing is a little bit different than this photo." That's what's going to bring when you embrace the mistakes that you make. This is going to bring in your style. This is going to bring in your unique take, your unique artistic choices. Because this looks good, if something you do that is a mistake, it doesn't translate well, then maybe you don't want to have it in there and maybe you do want to fix it. But in this case, I think that this shape really creates a lot more life-likeness to the bird. So, I wouldn't fix this. I would keep this the way it is and move on to the coloring stages. Again, everything doesn't have to be perfectly the way that it's supposed to be. It doesn't have to be a perfect replication of the photo. Otherwise, we would just take a photo, unless of course your goal is realistic, and in that case, try and stick as close to your reference as possible. Diana Hewitson sent this lovely photo that she used with the grid method. She took these pictures of these crocuses in the sun and use the grid method to do a really fantastic job of translating these shapes over into her watercolor painting, and she did such a great job, you can't even see the grid on here. Really, really well done. We haven't gone over shading, but I think that some shading stuff would really help with these crocus drawing. What I've done is, I have just drawn over this and I wanted to point out where and why I drew over this. This photo is actually very challenging to draw in the sun, because there are so many cast shadows. What I tend to do in these cases is, I'm trying to create the look of the petals being one on top of each other so that you can see the form of the flower a little bit better. But that's really complicated because there's all of these different random shadows, so I have to make it up. So, what I've done here, I've come in here, and if I turn this off, you'll see right here in this flower, it's really difficult to say like, hey, which petal is on top and which petal is on bottom. So, I have drawn shadows on the undersides of the petals that should be underside. Right here, you can see that this petal is in the front. I've made some shadows right along here. Right along the edge of where this petal that's on top is. I've also really reinforced that. When these flowers curl over on the edge, they're going to be bright on the top where the sun is sitting then and they're going to be darker underneath of that. We've really exaggerated that. Diana did a really good job with that. You can see she's got some nice white highlights in here. I just over-exaggerated it so that you could see it a little bit better. One other place that I saw could probably use a little bit more definition was in this flower. This petal right here, the curve of it is a lot shorter. This in relation to the size of the petal, this could be squashed down. What I did was I just erased this edge and brought that curve in, a little bit closer. I also did the same thing right here. In this petal, the curve of the flower comes all the way up. You can't actually see the underside of it. You can see like right here you've got the curve of the petal and then the underside of it. But since we don't see that I brought it up, this is totally subjective. You can totally not do this. Flowers are awesome for this because they're so abstract, an organic that whatever you do to them, they look good. It doesn't have to be like an exact replica of the photo, but since we are trying to exercise our drawing muscles, I just thought I would point that out. It's totally not necessary. Again, I've just come in here and created shadows along the edges so that I can emphasize the idea of like, hey, this petal right here, it would be in shadow because it's underneath of these two petals right here. Beautiful work Diana. 17. Bonus Student Feedback Pt 2: Cat did a fabulous job of recreating these pine cones. What I want to really point out here, first of all, is that it's so useful to draw from life. The difference of drawing from a photo versus drawing from life is that you really have to decide like, hey, where is the lines that I want to keep? What is the shape actually? When you use a photo, it's already flattened out for you. Drawing from life really, really exercises those muscles in your brain that helped you to see shapes and make your decisions for yourself where you think things should go. Now, Cat says, "I took Brooks' advice and was a little liberal with the idea of shading rather than trying to reproduce exactly where the shadows and highlights were. I like the sketchy feel I got, but I definitely was too light on the cache shadows, watercolors, dry, lighter, and these almost disappeared. I'm not sure about my shading attempt. I tried to give an impression of shading without being too detailed and I'm not sure it worked." What I would say is that this looks phenomenal. Cat's done a fabulous job of creating shading in areas right here. You've got the dark part where this is casting a shadow onto this part of the pine cone, so that does a really, really great job, and leaving these white edges right here really helps create that illusion of like, hey, this is on top and this is underneath. The only thing that I would say if you wanted to add is you could add a whole form shadow on top of this to create the idea of the entire pine cone being round, so I've created that right here. Now, I've used just the shadows on this side of the pine cone. Cat, you probably were drawing these pine cones somewhere else and you just place these pine cones here for the purposes of the picture, but that's why I chose this side to create those shadows because if you squint, you can see that this side of the pine cone is a little bit darker. If I would really be in exact the darker side is like that, but I just sort it up and put it around those areas. Now, you could also fake it and just do the other side. This was my first attempt at adding some shading to this and I just drew it over here. That is not at all how this pine cone is shaped, but this is just how I did it from my imagination. All this does is create the illusion of the pine cone itself being round, but honestly, even just this by itself looks great too. Annette K. has made a really fun illustration of a caterpillar. Annette asked some great questions about outlines and changing the colors. Typically when I come in and do my color, I redraw over my sketch and I don't keep my sketch lines. But once in a while, I've put a lot of work into my sketch lines and I want to keep them. I've taken Annette's image and I have separated the sketch lines onto their own layer and the color is on its own layer, so I'm going to be just drawing on the sketch lines, and underneath of that is all of the color that she's put in. Again, the sketch lines are by themselves. What I'll do is I will create an Alpha lock on the sketch line. I used that by taking two fingers and swiping to the right. Now this, I can tell that the Alpha lock is put on this because it's got like a little checkerboard. What I'll do is I'll come in here and I drop the color that this purple is down here and I can fill in these areas where the lines touch the body. You can see I'm being sloppy near the bottom here where the legs meet. I actually accidentally drew like on that section. Well, all I'm going to do is I'm going to also sample by holding my fingers down on the color that I want to use until that little eyedropper pops up. Now I've got that color of the foot and I can come in here and I can decide exactly at what point do I want these to come in. I don't want the purple over here. I want it all the way to there so I can save all that linework that Annette has put a lot of work into making a really nice, smooth, clean linework here. I can still have completely clean lines right there. I saved that nice, clean, smooth linework that and that did, but I've also removed it so that I don't see the outlines anymore. Now, of course, the outlines are totally a stylistic choice. If you like the black outlines, you can absolutely keep them. Another thing that you could do is you could even make these outlines the same color but darker. Now I've got the outlines of the foot right there. This can be really fun when you get stuff like stripes in the middle here. I could come and do a bright green stripe in between all of the stripes right here. This can be a really fun effect. Maybe I want to make some of these orange in here. Now I've got orange stripes instead of black stripes. This can be a really useful technique for filling in the linework if you want to save it instead of redrawing over it. Celine wrote, "I found it a bit difficult with the varying lines. I would like to have a main point of focus, but as I made the baselines the thickest, I'm not sure that the decorations in the balloon stand out enough. Any advice you have on how to improve the image would be greatly appreciated." The first thing that I would say is when you have a sketch, there is no way to tell what the dominant area of focus is going to be because color plays such a huge role in where your eye is drawn to in an image. Now, I've got an entire class on color theory and I would highly recommend that you check that out. But I want to go over a couple of quick tips here. The first thing I want to point out is, I just filled in a quick version of Celine's beautiful balloon here. This is not her coloring. She may not have chose these colors. She might have a totally different color taste than I do. But what I want to point out is that if you have these dark thick lines, a dark color, especially if the rest of the image is really light, it stand out a lot. But if you make it a lighter color or if you make it blend into the background, so for example, I made it just like a darker version of the sky here, then it really blends in. It doesn't show up nearly as much, even though those lines are really thick. Now, another thing that you could do is that you can create some darker and more contrasted points of interest. I've made these little embellishments up here. I've made them really dark, and so they really stand out when they're on a light balloon. If the balloon was darker, if the whole balloon was this darker color, it might not stand out as much. But even still, this balloon is such a large portion of the image, the color being such a noticeable color is also going to draw your eye more to the balloon and the decorations up here. Again, I would check out that color theory class to learn a little bit more about how you can use color to draw your eye. I think you've got some nice visual interest in here. Again, the color will really make a big impact whether you've got thick lines down here or not. Hope that helps. Diana has done a really excellent job of adding some nice linework and visual interest to this beautiful flower. What I really like about what Diana has done is that she's added both thick lines and thin lines, so you've got some nice thick lines right here. Then you've got some nice thin lines right along here. That is really, really nice. Another thing that I liked that Diana has done is she has done this very intentionally. If you look at the original image, you'll see that there's some folds in the flowers right here and right here, and right here. Those folds really help indicate that the petal is curving around. Diana has done that, added that extra details in these petals intentionally here. They really look like the petals are folding up into themselves. Diana has done a great job of not only adding visual interests, but visual interests that makes sense, that ties in with the way that this image originally was. She's also done some beautiful work in the leaves over on the left-hand side over here. Originally, if we go to the original, you can see she's done a really great job of creating some really interesting shapes to begin with, especially to add this splash of color. Here even though it doesn't hit the entire leaf, this is really nice because that also creates visual interests when you have this line here, but then there's a darker section and there's a lighter section. That just almost implies light or shade hitting that petal. But she's also come back and add some really nice lines inside of here. What I like is she hasn't just gone straight and then straight and straight, she's done a really great job of curving these lines so that they really feel again like the leaf itself is curving. These curved lines really help add shape without even having to shade. Even if there wasn't this darker side of the petal right here, you would really feel like the petal is folding over just because of these lines themselves, great work Diana. Venu has made an amazing illustration that I am so excited to share with you. This illustration has had so much thought, but behind it. If you check out her project, you can really see the consideration that's put into the flow, like this right here is this flow of this image, and then even this right over here by the lines right here really mimic this side. She has put a ton of amazing thought, the flowers and the details, all the shapes and shading, all of this is really, really incredible. Honestly the only thing that I would point out, and in fact this illustration is totally fine the way it is. There's a couple of things that you might be able to do, so because there is so much amazing thought put into all of these flowers, it can compete with the focal point of the illustration. There are couple of things that you could do potentially to increase that. You could darken the center image here away from the leaves. I've just made this part of the illustration a little bit darker. What I've done is I've adjusted the curves and this is something that you could do to the entire image. In fact, this is how it would look if I didn't see an entire image. What this does is it really pushes the darkest colors so that they're a little bit more deep, and the light colors are also still retaining their lightness. This is something that you can just do on the computer, you don't have to redraw anything at all. Just to show you really fast how I did this, I separated the two can and slot away from the leaves. I went into this magic wand icon and I hit the curves, I hit the layer, and then I just add a little dot right here and drag it around until I find a good spot so that I'm increasing the darks of colored pencil that you've added while still retaining the latest of the lights. That is a really easy thing, so you don't have to worry about redrawing this entire thing. Another thing that you could do is you could actually add more space between the leaves and the characters. If I were to zoom out, I can really tell where the focus of this illustration is. Now, if you have a physical piece of artwork, you're not going to be able to zoom out, but if you walk 10 feet away and look at your illustration, it does the same effect of zooming out. I can really see, hey, this is the focus of my illustration whereas the original is a lot tighter, so it's a lot harder to see where that ends. Now, one thing that I want to point out that Venu did really really well with this is she avoided what is called tangents. None of these leaves are crossing over in front of or touching even the bird, or the branch, or the slot. It comes really really really close right here. In that case, you might want to erase this just to give a little bit more breathing room right there so that you can really see the edge of the slot, but she did not come in here and accidentally touch this because when you do that, it makes it more difficult to see the separation between the pieces of the image. This is a really really phenomenal piece, well done Venu. Taylor has done a fabulous job with this barn illustration. I love the thickness and variation of the lines. There's some that are going up and down and some that are going side to side. It's a really really excellent job. I also by the way love the latter. One thing that I've noticed, Taylor said that she didn't feel like this piece was quite finished. The one reason that I can think of it is that the barn and the grass over here are very similar colors, so there's not a lot of contrast between this edge here. Now there's a lot of contrast between the barn and the sky, and there's a lot of contrast on this side because there's this nice dark saturated green in here which really separates this side of the barn from the field. Now, Taylor has been doing this really wacky, awesome, fun animal mashups, and she also said, "Hey, this piece doesn't feel finished." What she did was she added this dark green saturated leaves around it to create a vignette. This also helps draw your eye inwards to the animal. I would suggest maybe doing something similar with this piece here. All that would need to be is maybe saturating some of these green areas. You could saturate the sky just a touch if you wanted to. In this example, I also lightened up the barn a little bit. Now it's really really easy to see the difference between the barn and the field. I think that might help this piece feel a little bit more finished. You don't even have to get quite as saturated with the grass if you prefer a more muted look, but even the original I think is fantastic, well done, you should be very proud of this piece, Taylor. 18. Improve Your Color: So you've just finished this drawing class and want to take your art to the next level. Have you ever felt like you know what colors you like, but they just don't look good together? Then this class is for you. What separates amateurs from professionals? Pros understand the importance of color theory. Even the most simple drawings can look incredible with the right colors. This class is a fun practical exploration of color theory. You'll learn how to use color to direct people's eyes and make your colors pop. You'll learn how to shade with color. I'll show you several ways to fix your colors when they just don't feel like they're working. You'll learn how to choose evocative colors to emphasize the mood you're trying to create. I'll share what you need to know about color in the real world, when you're printing and scanning your art, the five most common color stumbling blocks, and the funny tricks colors can play on our eyes. There's something so satisfying when the right colors come together. I hope you'll join me in this fun class on color.