Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] We think
using traditional art that there's only
one way to color. But if you use Procreate, then you rethink the
way you're doing it. Hey everyone, my name is Simon. I'm a digital content
creator and illustrator. You may recognize my work from my Instagram account
at Simon's designs, where I love to draw about really mundane things
and sweet moments of everyday life
with my partner. Today's live class is all about creating a beautiful
lineless illustration. That means that we're going
to cover building shapes, finding a harmonious
color palette, and always remembering where your light
source comes from. I think this is such
a great exercise, especially for beginners, to understand that
there's a lot of different possibilities
using digital art to change the way we think. I want students to know actually that there's a lot of beauty in trying to keep an
illustration simple. Often whenever people wants to start drawing with Procreate, they dwell too much into white to get all the cool
texture palette. This type of illustration, it's very simple shape
that we're using. Sometimes that's all we need in order to create a
nice illustration. I think that a
high-quality illustration is an illustration that
looks simple to do, but it actually isn't. This class was recorded live and I got to interact with the
audience as I was drawing. Let's get right into it.
2. Getting Started: Hey, everyone. My name is Ali. I'm a producer on
the content team. My pronouns are he/they, and I'm super
excited to introduce our instructor for today, Simon. Of course, my name
is Simon or Simon. I'm French, I'm also Canadian, and I'm currently living
in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm a digital content
creator and illustrator, and I really like to draw about things that brightens
people's life and then make me happy. We simply share a personal
project that is dear to me, that's called my
100th happiness. There I shared a little bit
of sweet moment I share with my partner throughout
the year 2022. Awesome, and you've
been creating classes on Skillshare
content, right? Yes. I've been creating a class. I think I started working on Skillshare a little bit more
or close to a year now. Yeah, exactly a year ago and I create a class to
inspire people to draw again and also using Procreate. These are the type of topic
I'd like to talk about. How to get out of a
creative rods, inspired, have an upcoming class about keeping a visual journaling
using Procreate, so stay tuned for that one. It sounds so fun. It's been on my iPad and jump
into this Procreate world. It just looks so fun. Especially, coming
out of the pandemic, everyone has been inspired to be creative again,
which is beautiful. In that vein, what are
we going to do today? Today, I just wanted
to share with you a fun little exercise. You've probably seen
that I've been sharing two different types of
images for you to color. It's a clean line
image and at the top, you will find the color
palette that we're using. Today is more of a
coloring exercise and we're going to color. But the little twist is
that we're going to color and then remove all the lines. It's really coloring with
harmonious color palette and also sharp and clean edges. Awesome. Lines are there at the
beginning to just guide you so that you can
just remove them later and it's a little effortless,
that's beautiful. How does an exercise
like this help you in your creativity
and in your flow? Well, I think this type
of exercise for me forces me to create a very
clean line drawing. I think that's the secret
of line list illustration, is that in order to have this really cool
drawing at the end, you need to be very
confident with your line to be able to
remove them at the end. Also, it inspires me to
pick a color palette that I think is quite
harmonious together, and also to know and identify where the light
sources come from. Because those type of thing, sharp edges, meaning
clean shapes, and colors, and knowing
where the light hit, these are the things
that are really going to give a huge impact. Some type of whom to
your illustration. Awesome. What can I expect to come
out of this class with? Is there any skill set or
technique in particular? Yes. I'm going to cover
different things. But from a technical
point of view, because we will be
using Procreate, they'll learn how to
set up the colors, create a flat illustration, clean out some of the edges, and also practicing
your mind to knowing where the light
source comes from. Usually, it's a longer
process because we started with a sketch and then we
started with a clean line, and today just went to
do my favorite part and share it with you
guys, which is coloring. That's why here we're
just skipping a few steps and we're going to
color it together. Awesome. What materials will students need to follow along
with you there? You guys will need an iPad. You'll also need the
software Procreate. Why are we like about Procreate? Is that right now is a onetime
fee where it's like $999, I think and in case
of price change and a stylus, Apple Pencil.
3. Tracing Your Sketch: We are going to divide it
into five different step. The first one will be to color the base in the flesh color, the second one to
use flat colors so we'll achieve some type
of a flat illustration. After we'll add
some darker colors, fourth, I clean up the edge, and then I'll use
a little technique that using gradient
map on adjustment. But I know it's just jargon. When I'm saying run all, let's
just dive right into it. I have this illustration. This is my boyfriend and
he's eating a dumpling. That's the illustration that
people wanted me to color, or want to color with me today. Here on the color palette, I've saved the color
palette as well, so I'll have easy access to it. I usually use this
really pink color to draw his skin tone. If I use two fingers
now I'm going to reduce the opacity to
maybe five percent. Usually, I like
for good practice, to lock the line layer just so
I don't start drawing on it and mess up everything. Then I usually like to
use a technical pen. This is a technical pen
under the inking category. It has been modified, so it has a streamline
of 100 percent here, and Streamline means that it's a tool to help you
smooth and your stroke. You'll see that even if
I'm shaking a little bit, I'm shaking a little bit because
I'm a little bit nervous because everyone is watching
me drawing right now, then it will help me
to adjust the line. The first step is really
to put the color down. This is not really the fun part, but the reason why I'm
doing this is because afterwards we are going
to use a clipping mask to start layering the
colors on top of it. I'm just personally curious
what kind of dumpling is imaginary dumpling is your
boyfriend eating in this. I hope it's my mom's dumplings because they are the
best in the world. Just so everyone knows, she's currently in Canada, so I haven't seen her or eaten her cooking
in more than two years because of the pandemic. Oh, no. What's your favorite
dumpling that she makes, or does she always just make one like that's mom's dumpling? The favorite one that
she makes I think is the one with pork, a bit of shrimp sometime,
water chestnut, and a lot of secret ingredients
and I'm not even sure. But the best part about my mum dumpling is
really the dough. She makes her own dough and I think that's what
makes it so special. Oh, absolutely, that's magical. Does she boil or buy them? So we have this
big argument, Eli. Well, we're quite
divided at home where my father
prefers them fried and my mom prefers them
in a soup or broth and actually I prefer them
also in a super broth because I think it's
more satisfying. I can talk about dumplings
and dim sum all day. I'm glad, I can appreciate
different types of foods. I think I wouldn't
be able to be with someone who was a picky eater. Also, just a quick little tip, make sure that you close
your edges properly when you trace in order
to create the foundation because we're going to
fill it up with color. I don't know if you
remember, maybe I'm old, but whenever we had
our first computer, we had this paint program and in order to paint you
need to do this whole outline and then drop the color. If there was one little opening, then the color would start
bleeding everywhere. So that's why I'm trying
to make sure that I close all the lines because
it's the same principle. Guys, our hard work is done. Now, I'm going to see
if I didn't mess up and I'm going to start dropping
to color into Patrick. It seems that's doing okay. Something that you
want to be careful, you probably saw when
I drop the color, there's something called
color drop threshold. If the color drop
threshold is too low, sometimes you'll see that
it's not filled in properly and there's some jaggedy lines. So just to double-check here, I like to remove the lines, and that seems to be okay.
4. Adding Color: The first phase was to
create this type of outline. Now I'm going to start adding different type of
colors on top of it. I've decided that
this shirt will be some type of a green-gray, and I'm not sure if you're
familiar with clipping mask, but clipping mask basically
allows me, for example, so if I were to make
the layer on top, which means the green layer, dependent on the
layer at the bottom, so the pink one, you won't see me drawing
outside of the lines. I'm just going to do it quite roughly right now so
you know what I mean. I'm always really bad at
explaining what a mask does. I think right now I just
like know it by heart, so I apologize. I'm purposely doing it a
little bit roughly now, so you understand
the magic accusing a clipping mask here.
Same principle. Now we have the outline. I'm going to drop
the color again, make sure that the
color threshold is. Usually, if it's above 80, I think it's good and
there's no issue. Oops. You can see
this is his shirt. If I click on layer
10 or do a shirt and then I go to clipping mask, you'll see how it starts fitting his body and it's not
bleeding everywhere. I just love always toggling the lines back and forth
to see how I'm doing, if I'm not messing up. So far, so good. Now I'm going to pick
this yellow for his hair because he's a dirty,
mousey blonde. I don't know how you call it. Simon, Jessica
would like to know how they can change
the opacity of the fill-in when they're dragging it simultaneously with
the Apple Pencil. To change the opacity
of the fill-in, let's look at the
shirt, for example, if I double tap on it, then you'll be able
to get the opacity. Then you can just drag
it right or left. Now I'm super excited because I always loved to see
what people were doing. During the eyebrows, I
just want to make sure anything else which
should be yellow. I'm not sure if I'll do the chopsticks yellow
or that darker mustard. Let's skip it. You know what? Let's do the chopsticks
yellow as well. I just removed the clipping mask for a second because I want to make sure that I close
my lines properly. Putting back the clipping
mask with this part. Now I'm going to draw the cap. We actually have
two illustrations. One that you can always work
on it a little bit later and this one that we're
working altogether right now. Does the other one have a
dumpling? Very important. No. [LAUGHTER] But it's still
with the theme of eating. It's me eating a sandwich. Foods from different cultures. Exactly. For different foods, we just love to eat. Now I forgot to add a white. I actually don't
really like to add a white that's really pure. What I'd like to do
is I'll just go here. If you go here at
the top left corner, you usually get a
very white wipe. Just going to select
type of grayish white. I forgot to add this one
in the color palette, so we'll improvise. Just doing roughly, because I'm going to put
it under the yellow layer.
5. Using Shadows & Lines: Now we can have our base color. I'm going to use a little
bit of darker colors in order to play a
little bit more with the shadows at some lines, and also at the
details of the face. If I go back to my
color palette here, first of all, I need
to draw his eyes. When I was younger, I
loved to add a lot of details to the eyes of my characters, and I don't know why in the recent
years, I became really lazy and I just like to make little small beady eyes, but that's just the
way I draw now. Now that we're going to start
adding a little bit more of darker colors, we need to understand where the
lights come from. You'll see I usually do it
in a very standard way, but I love to add
my light source on the top-left corner and that's just something that
I've always been doing. So I'm going to add this little light bulb for your reference. Actually, this is
the wrong layer. To help us know where the light and
the shadows should be. So you'll see in a
lot of illustration, the light source, you often
see that a lot of characters have a shadow
underneath their chin, so that's why I'm going
to add right now here. Maybe I forgot to say why
I'm using this darker pink, but I use it also to
create a few lines. I know I said it was lineless. We need a little bit of details, but lineless in the sense
that we don't have, let's say one black thick line that goes across
all the character. Let's see. I'm going to add a little bit more
detail on the shirt. So you can see it's starting
to feel a little bit less flat the moment we start adding a little bit
more darker colors. Because remember, this
is how he looked like previously, when we only
put the flat colors. I'll add more detail on the cap. One of my favorite shortcut
actually is to undo. I'm not sure if she can see me undoing because you
only see the screen, but if you tap gently twice with those two fingers,
you'll undo your last stroke. We have a question, are you using just
darker colors or black and then lessening opacity to make it similar
to the background? In preparation to the course, I actually selected the color
palette and I made sure to add a darker version
of these colors. But they are not black and
I'm not lowering the opacity. A little tip is if you
want for example to find the darker color of
let's say this yellow, you can go to
"Classic", and then go to the last row
and start toggling it a little bit towards the left where it will become
a little bit darker. Even at this level, it could be a good darker
version of this yellow one. So this is what we have so far. It's a very simple illustration. I'm just going to look around, make sure that the
edges are clean. For example, I don't really love this part because we can
see it's not super clean. Now is the time to edit
a little bit our lines. Someone would like to know, how do you come up with or
make your color palettes? That's a really good question. There's an app that I use
that's called Coolor, C-O-O-L-O-R-S, I think. Coolors.com, it's a pun. I usually go on this app and trying to find harmonious
color palette, and it can help you find color
palettes that are complimentary or
they're monochromatic. Now I'm just cleaning
a little bit the line. I like the edges
to be a little bit sharper, and I like to use
the eraser tool for that. Also, for the eraser tool, I'm using a technical pen, so similar to the
brush that we used. We have another question. Are you adding the
darker colors on the same layer as the
base for that color? No. I actually try to
have everything in different layers so in case
I mess up like I often do, like anyone else, then
it's easier to just start from scratch or just
erase that specific layer. Also, a tip that I usually give my student that is really
difficult to follow, but to make sure to lock or to name also your layers
names that make sense. This is just a quick exercise, but sometimes it is too much to just name everything
that you create. Now we have this, it still looks a
little bit flat. It's not bad actually.
I'm going to add more shadows a little bit
more to the chopstick. I'm going to select this layer.
6. Adding Depth to Your Illustration: We've created a color base, which is the pinkish color. Then we add the flat color, and this is the
color of the shirt, the cap, the hair now the basic. I added darker colors. By adding the dark
color on both, I'm able to create
also nice lines. We have a better idea where
the ships start and end. I clean up the edges
a little bit as well. Now I'm going to add a
little bit more depth to this illustration. I'm going to duplicate
this illustration. I'm going to flatten it. It's a little locked selection. If you press on a group of
layers, you can flatter it. The reason why I duplicate it that's something
that's irreversible. You can undo, but you cannot save your layers if
you're too far down, if you create too many
actions after that. I'm going to flatten this. Now I went to Adjustment, go to Gradient Map. Go to layers. Here, if you want to play a little bit with creative map, you're able to
change the colors. Now, what I like to
do is for example, I like Venice. I pick Venice. I go to multiply and I
go maybe all the way down to 40 percent,
it's 41 percent. I create a mask. You can see that this
version is little bit darker than this and it's a
little bit warmer. The reason why I created
that is that I'm going to add a little
bit of light now. I create this layer mask. The layer mask means
that everything that's white reveals and
then black hides. Now I imagined that the light
from the top-left corner is shining on the
top of the cap. Just a thin line. Here as well. We have another
question coming in. Sure. What would be the cleanest brush for line art that
comes with Procreate? The cleanest line
is anything that goes in this section, inking. I love to use technical pen. That's one of the default
pen that I use a lot. The only difference
is, like I said, I use one that is
using streamline because if I use the technical
pen without streamline. Just to show you,
it's a little bit. You can see that I can wiggle or jaggedy line. If I change the streamline
all the way here, we can create a
very smooth line. That's my little tip. Any inking brush, but my
favorite is the technical pen. That's why I was saying earlier that this exercise is really good for you to understand where your
light source comes from. Sometimes I like to create
just a little crappy sun like this on the top left
corner to remind me of like, well, if this is
where it would hit the character more or less. A little bit on the cheek. Just a quick little
simple exercise. You can already see that it's adding some type of
layer cheater drawing. It's not as flat as
this was earlier. Drawing hands or fingers is probably my least
favorite thing, but I force myself to do it. You can see here also, I didn't clean up
the lines properly, but we're a little
bit short on time. Just imagine that this is
something that I should have done during the cleaning
line part of it. It also looks so
cool and amazing. [LAUGHTER] Thank you. I
told you about undoing. Every time I mess up, I'll
do this a lot to remove it but if you want to redo, you do the same movement
but with three fingers. I think it's super
important for people who get into Digital
Illustration, Procreate, or even Photoshop Illustrator
to know this type of quick shortcuts
because it saves you a lot of time at some type of glossiness,
cheated dumplings. People know that, maybe
it's boiled like I said earlier but it's still gooey. Yeah. More or less, this is the last bit of the illustration where
we add a gradient map. This is a technique
that I like to use in order to add a
little bit more depth. Some other artists or
some other way to do it, of course, would
be to, let's say, pick a bright white
color and start adding, let's say highlights
like white highlight to give a little bit more
dimension to the illustration, but I like the other technique. It makes it a little
bit more fun. You can see the difference
because we started from basically a line drawing and
then we created that base. From that day, we started
adding color on top of it to have a very flat type
of illustration. It just looked like a effect
to art without any depth. From here we started adding
a little bit more of darker colors, lines, details. We remember our light source. Of course, I duplicate it. This illustration, I flatten it. I went to gradient map. I just meant gradient map
selected one went to multiply, lower the opacity of that one. So lower the opacity here. Then created a mask
where I just revealed to places where actually the sun will be shining on
the character's face. Maybe to finish up, add a little bit of a
quick color background. I'm just going to get
rid of this little sun. This is the type of
line list illustration that I like to make. It's quiet simple. I think we've completed
in 30 minutes. A lot of rambling from my end. No. All good my
dumpling obsession was a distraction, I'm sure. No. [LAUGHTER] This is so cool.
7. Final Thoughts: Do you have any final thoughts you want to share with students? Yes. Just go buy an iPad. I don't work for Apple, I swear, but go buy an iPad,
get Procreate, have fun experiment. I think it's such a good
platform to start drawing because the pen is very
pressure sensitive. You have a myriad of
different types of brushes that will allow
you to experiment. This is just one style, but you can take so many
different type of tutorial and explore your own personal
style for Procreate. That'll be my little
advice I would say. Then regarding to this drawing, my other advice would be [LAUGHTER] just have fun and experiment with
different color palettes.
Simon Ip, Digital Illustrator
