Transcripts
1. Welcome!: I really love creating magical illustrations and I always fill my pieces with floral, and with lunar elements. I think that drawing can be such a wonderful form of meditation Hi, my name is Weronika and I'm an artist based in Berlin, Germany. Welcome to my seventh Skillshare class. I'd like to guide you and show you that you can create a detailed, and professional-looking digital illustration that is full of depth and texture. I'll be showing you my entire illustration creation process from gathering inspiration, working on your sketch, choosing attractive colors, all the way to the final execution of your piece, together with all the shading and adding texture. Our strong focus of this class is learning to use the various symmetry guides that come together with the digital drawing software such as Procreate. Next to utilizing those symmetry guides, we will be working on improving the flow of your composition, as well as creating color thumbnails to make better decisions about the colors of your illustration. Let's start working on your next masterpiece. See you in the next class.
2. Your Project: Let's have a look at your class project. For this class project, we will be working on a magical moth illustration surrounded by floral elements using symmetry guides. Who is this class for? This class is not suitable for complete beginners, you should have some minimum knowledge about digital drawing software such as Procreate. I will be showing how I create my illustration in Procreate, however, if you're feeling fit in any other drawing software, then feel free to skip Procreate and use the tool of your choice because you will be able to apply the general principles that I'm teaching in this course. I will be showing you some of my best tips and tricks for drawing in Procreate and among other things, we will be learning the following. Stay with me, for example, if you would like to learn more about the symmetry guides. Procreate has four symmetry tools and we will get to know all of them. Next, I would like to give you my hacks, how I create an illustration that has a lot of depth and looks as if it was created with traditional media such as colored pencils or paints. Another thing that we will be discussing is how to improve your composition when you are creating an illustration so that everything is flowing and how to design a good illustration with balanced color palette and for that purpose, I will be showing you again my technique of utilizing color thumbnails. Finally, I will be demonstrating how I use different blend modes in Procreate, especially multiply for creating shadows, screen for creating my highlights, and adding a little bit more interest with using overlay blend mode. I believe that anyone can draw and if you just follow the steps and have some patients, then you can really create a beautiful illustration full of depth. At the end of this course, I would like to encourage you to show yourself so you have a chance to connect with me on my social media, especially on Instagram and also to post your final illustration or some behind the scenes in the project gallery. Makes sure to use the hashtag magicalmoths so that you also get a chance to be featured on my social media. Don't forget the hashtag and join me in the next lesson where we will discuss the tools that you need for the project and how to gather some inspiration for your design.
3. Tools & Inspiration: In this lesson, we will be talking about your tools and the inspiration. To complete this class, you will need a tool for digital drawing. I will be using, as usual, my iPad Pro 12'9''. I own two iPads, one smaller, 9'7'', but 95 percent of the time I'm using the bigger one. I will be drawing and showing my demonstration in the Procreate app using my Apple pencil. However, if you would like to use any other digital drawing software, feel free to do so. I think you can very easily imitate or copy all the principles of illustration creation that I'm teaching in this class to any other drawing software. As you study your reference photos later and you practice some warm-up sketches, you may want to use some traditional sketch books if you'd like to use them, along with some pencils or colored pencils. To make things a little bit easier for you, I prepared a few free resources to speed things up. You will find two free PDFs. One is with moth shapes for some inspiration, if you feel stuck, you can use them and a sheet with composition ideas. Apart from that, to speed everything up, you can download my brush set and four color palettes. The brushes that I'm using are all native to procreate there for free and you can already find them in the app. But instead of looking for them in each and every folder, I gathered them in one easy to download folder so that you can have everything immediately and start drawing right away. I do mention that in each of my Procreate classes here on Skillshare, that the number of layers in procreate depends on the iPad. The bigger the iPads that you have and the newer, the iPad that you have, it we'll support more layers. Once you create your canvas, you might see some different numbers depending on the model and the year of your iPad so be warned. You will find all those resources in your browser. In the class description, you have to go to Projects and Resources. Once you click on that section, you will see all the resources on the right side ready to be used. Now, let's talk about the inspiration for our illustration because preparation is key. If you have been drawing moths every single day for the last year, then feel free to skip this part of the presentation, but there's a pretty good chance that the topic is new for you and that's why I always recommend some warm-up sketches, either in your traditional sketchbook or digitally. This exercise is up to you. It really depends on how confident you feel regarding your drawing skills. You can have a look at the elements from this list and see what you would like to practice in your sketchbook. To practice your drawing, you will need a good reference photos. The safest way to go about it is to have your own photos. Next, you can create a Pinterest board, and I also created one and I made it available for you. If you want to save some time, just have a look at my board and use it for inspiration and in order to practice your sketches. The last way that you can try out is to check out some royalty-free photos' websites. The two websites that I have a look at most of the time, are unsplash.com and pexels.com. It is important never to copy other artists. Now, I think we're ready. Let's start and let's draw.
4. Canvas & Brushes: In this lesson, we will talk about setting up your canvas, and I will also give you my brushes recommendations to complete your project. The Canvas that I'll be using for our illustration is a 3,000 by 3,000 pixels, so it's a square format. It's very Instagram-friendly. To be honest, I create pretty much 90 percent of my illustrations in exactly this format, and exactly that size. But you can also go smaller. For example, we can choose 2,000 by 2,000, or even bigger, like 4,000 by 4,000 pixels. You just have to remember that the bigger the canvas, the fewer the layers in Procreate. You can also choose a rectangular orientation if that works better for you, you don't have to do it in a square format if you didn't want to. Let's go ahead and create our canvas and start our project. We create a new canvas in Procreate by hitting the plus sign at the top-right corner. I do have my 3,000 by 3,000 canvas all ready pre-saved. It's called the big square. Like I said, I use it 90 percent of the time. For me, it was easy, but in case you didn't have this dimension saved, let us delete the canvas that I just created, and let's create this dimension together. In order to create a new dimension that you would like to save for future reference, you need to click a little bit below, but still in the top right corner, and then you move to a window that says custom canvas. This is a super easy thing. You rename your canvas over here. We can type in, for example, 3,000 by 3,000. Here in the lower part of the screen, you can choose either millimeters or centimeters, inches, or like in our case, pixels. I'm going to make sure I have pixels selected, then I type in the width and the height, 3,000 by 3,000. The DPI for our custom canvas is 300, and it's also very handy because as you create your custom canvas, it does give you the information about the number of maximum layers. You just have to remember that in case your canvas is smaller, you will have more layers, and in case your canvas is bigger, it will have fewer layers. We're good with the canvas, but before we start drawing, let's very quickly discuss the brushes. You can use any brushes you want. Here, I'm just going to give my own personal recommendations. There are many beautiful brushes out there that you can buy, but Procreate has so many native brushes that are completely for free. Over here, I gathered in one folder a handy set of brushes that are pretty much available for free. They are within Procreate, they are native Procreate brushes, and the set is just a recommendation. I created a handy wrap-up slide for you. You can also hit the pause button over here and have a closer look at what is on this slide. This is the brush set that you can also download from our resources section. In this folder, you will have the following brushes, which I very roughly categorized into those four groups. From my experience, I use mainly those brushes for the following. For the sketching, I use the 6B pencil. I think it's one of the best native Procreate pencils ever. Basically, you can do this entire illustration only using this brush. But there's also very handy charcoal pencils from the charcoal section of Procreate. It's also very good for drawing a little bit more precise lines, but it's still very thin. It's very good for the details, just like the 6B pencil. It maybe has a little bit more texture. On the right side to the sketching category, you see the eraser section, there's only the hard airbrush, I use it quite a lot if I need to erase bigger sections. For the coloring, I tend to use the charcoal stick. It has very beautiful texture, and it really imitates nicely this traditional media look. You can also shade with the charcoal shader. I really like the willow charcoal. A lot of charcoal over here for, texture, and blocking the color. If you want a little bit of less texture and more precision to blocking your colors, then I do recommend the dry ink from the inking section. Last but not least, for texture and also for creating the background for our illustration, I really enjoy the Nikko rule, the two wet media brushes with acrylic and gauge, and a mysterious brush that appeared after the latest Procreate 5 update with a name that is very hard to pronounce. I think it's [inaudible]. It's very beautiful for backgrounds. I have no idea how to pronounce it, but it's absolutely stunning. Feel free to either download this brush set and to use it along, or to use completely your own brushes, especially if you have some experience with Procreate, and you already have your favorites. We have our canvas ready, we know the brushes, we can start sketching, so follow me to the next lesson.
5. Symmetry Guide: In this lesson, we learn how to use the symmetry guide. Before we start our sketching process, let's create our background first. We go to the Layers panel and we hit the "Plus" sign to create a new layer. I select the color of my background from the color palette that I like the most and I can just do that by dragging the color from the palette symbol in the right upper corner and just dragging it onto the canvas. There is another way to fill in the color of the background. Let me show you that. We briefly go back. Then you go to your Background layer at the very bottom, you hit it with your Apple pencil, and then you select "Fill Layer". Let's also rename our layer into background to keep everything as tidy as possible. For the sketch, I like to select the 6B pencil. I usually keep it in the color white. At this stage, it's time to get to know the symmetry guide. We go to the Wrench tool in the upper left corner, and we make sure that we are in the Canvas section, the second section in the row. We select the Drawing Guide on by hitting the "Toggle" and then we can go to Edit Drawing Guide. Once you are here, you will see that the default is the 2D grid. You see it at the bottom. We have to go to Symmetry, so we click on the "First option". If you want to see more, you go to Options which is below over here and when you hit it you see we have the vertical orientation and this is the one we would like to keep for our illustration. But you can choose from the other options, also horizontal, top versus bottom, you can choose the quadrant where it's divided into four sides, there's like a cross grid. Radial, which is very beautiful for [inaudible], you have this beautiful like a spider web but we keep the vertical orientation. At the top, you see different colors that you can choose for this guiding line that you see in the middle: pink, green, blue, whatever. Find the color that is more contrasting with the color of your background. Down below you can change the thickness of this guide and the opacity; how transparent this line is. Make sure that is really visible and that's why it was important to choose the background color first and then you hit "Done". We have our guide. I'm going to repeat this over and over again during this tutorial that it's important that the drawing assist for this guide is on so we see here on the Sketch layer, it has this small subtitle with assisted and basically when you create a new layer, you have to make sure to hit it and to select in the menu on the left side the drawing assist, it has to be ticked. What I really like to do to prevent any mistakes is to duplicate this one assisted layer a few times. I swipe to the left and I hit "Duplicate" to make a few copies that I can recycle later on. Here's again a little cheat sheet on where to find the procreate symmetry guides, the wrench tool on top, on the left and then making sure the drawing guide is toggled on, it's selected and then going to Edit Drawing Guide. Once you're there, making sure that you choose the vertical type of symmetry for our illustration. This is it. Well, before we move on, make sure that number 1 you selected the background of your canvas. Number 2, you were able to locate the symmetry guide, you switched it on, you chose the vertical symmetry and make sure that you have the main sketch layer ready. Make sure that it's on drawing assist. You can also create a few empty layers that will also have the assist on. Now we're ready to really start sketching.
6. Sketching & Composition: Let's get to some serious sketching. For this entire sketch, I will be using the 6B pencil. As you can see, the Drawing Assist is working. Whatever I draw on one side appears on the other side. We start by drawing the shape of our moth. Then here in case you need a little bit of help, you can get into the resources section and you can make use of the PDF with the moth shapes that I made available. For that, we go to the Wrench Tool and we select "Insert Photo", and then once the PDF is saved somewhere in your files or photos, you can select it so that it gets transferred onto our canvas into an extra layer. I'm going to first create a copy of this layer with the PDF in case I cut it unnecessarily or I make a mess. I look around for the shape of the moth that I like the best. Next, I use the Move Tool to position the PDF more or less in the center so that I can use it as my guide for tracing the moth shape. Once I'm happy with the position of this layer, I reduce its opacity and I also put it below the main sketch layer, and then I go back to the sketch layer and I will be drawing in this main layer. I zoom in to see a little bit better. For me personally, it doesn't really matter that this moth is not exactly on the guideline. Of course, you can position it in a better, more perfect way. I just follow it very roughly to replicate the shape of the body of the moth and the general shape of the wings. But of course, you can draw your moth freehand without any guides or just out of your imagination. Next, I make the PDF layer invisible so that I see the lines a little bit better, and I make some extra adjustments. Regarding any further inspiration, you remember we have our Pinterest board with the moths, so you can exit the Procreate app and you can go to Pinterest to have it open, and then you can find your board so that you can look at the reference photos and therefore complete your sketch. What you can do next is when you go back to Procreate, having opened Pinterest as one of the last apps, you can choose this little, toggle at the bottom of your screen and swipe it a little bit up, and then you can drag the icon of Pinterest with your finger. Without letting it go, you can put it to the right side of your screen so that you have this screen sharing between Procreate and the Pinterest. The next step is so easy, just scroll up and down, you have a look at your board of reference photos, and you look for inspiration on how to change the shapes, any patterns that you would like to add to the wings, and you just work on your sketch further. Once you are more or less happy with your moth shape and a bit of some details, it's time to work on your composition because it's really important. For that purpose, I created an extra layer and I renamed it into composition so that I know what it is about. This is the time when you can make use of the second PDF that I made available that shows different composition examples. I do exactly the same, I go to the Wrench Tool, I follow the same steps. I select "Insert Photo", I reduce the opacity of this layer, and I have a look at the composition, and I choose one basically, and then I pinch it, I make it a little bit bigger, and I make my best to position those guiding lines for the composition along the shape of the moth that I just sketched. Again, it's up to you if you do it on your own or if you make use of the PDF, of course, you can draw everything freehand, you don't have to use the guide. You can also have a look at this PDF for inspiration somewhere on another screen. You don't have to upload it, insert it as a photo. But I do highly recommend that you do not skip this step. Namely, I would always draw at least some arrows that will help me to decide on my composition. For this illustration, I know that I will have some botanicals on both sides. It's useful to draw at least the shapes a little bit. It could be just one bloppy circle, just a shape, no details yet. I know that there will be a central element above the moth, and I know for sure that I will position my own signature at the bottom or below the moth. As you see here, those circles are merely placeholders. Within those placeholders, I will be slowly step-by-step filling it in with some details. When it comes to the botanicals, especially for this piece, I'm starting with drawing the stocks, and then I make again circles, so very simplified shapes. I do not go into much detail yet. I again create circles, I use different colors over here, I chose some yellow, and I try to imagine, "What's going to be in there?" Not in detail yet, but what shape will it be. What size it will be. Then I usually change, for good my brush into a white color and I make the brush that is a little bit thicker, and I try to work with this very basic sketch and refine it, so I'm adding in some extra leaves. Instead of those circles that you saw I draw, and I thought, "It's going to be a flower." I slowly start to add in some more specific shapes. I think I'm happy with my sketch. It's really important. I like the moth obviously because it's the star of the illustration, I like the shape of the wings, I like the big botanicals with those big blooms on top and the star. Yeah, I think I can work with that, so I'm going to let it be for now. Right now, I would like to sum it up for you a little bit and give you a few tips for this sketching stage. For starters, use a big enough canvas, and it really doesn't matter if it's a square or rectangle. Because if you have a look at this sketch on the left side here, it could work really well for a rectangle too, so don't feel obliged to create your illustration just in the square format, and by big enough canvas, I mean, don't go for too few pixels, at least 2,000, 3,000 pixels for the shortest sides of your illustration. That's my recommendation. Don't go too small. Next, choose really your composition very well. You can also draw those leading arrows and use for that purpose, different colors. You see it also on the left side. I marked with reddish color, the middle, the moth, the star, and the signature in this line, right in the middle, and on both sides left and right, you see the botanicals, and it really helps me to draw those arrows. Maybe you will like it, maybe you want to skip that, but give it a try. Draw the arrows, see how your botanicals flow. I think it's especially important for the botanicals. You will check if it flows well, or if it's too short, if it's too long. I think it's really helpful. Then the next tip is to really think about those botanicals because they add a ton of interest. If there was just a moth with some stars, it's also okay. But it will make a lot of impact when you have a lot of flowers and leaves. Don't hesitate if you want to add in some cacti, even the succulents, fruit, seeds, berries, whatever you can think of. Having said that, it takes plenty of time and it should take plenty of time to refine your sketch. It doesn't mean that the sketch is final, you can add in more details as you do the coloring which you're going to see. But do not underestimate the importance of that step. The sketch is ready, so now it's time to talk about our color palette.
7. Color & Thumbnails: In this lesson, we will talk about the colors for your illustration and we will be doing some thumbnails together. Our sketches ready and waiting. I have done it on purpose in the neutral white color. For your project, you can either use your own color palette or in case you're having a hard time choosing your colors, I made available four different color palettes to choose from. Just like the PDFs, you can find those color palettes for Procreate under projects and resources. Here's how it works roughly. There are four color palettes to choose from. I gave them some fantasy names that have to do with moths. The way I tend to organize my color palettes is as follows. That on one side, I usually sort out the colors for the background and the main object. On the other side, on the right side, I sort out the colors for some details. Usually the first color in those color palettes is my personal recommendation for the background and all the colors on the left side, I recommend for the background and for the moth, for the main central object. Then the colors that are on the right side I usually use them for the details and the botanicals. It's only a recommendation, but I have tested those color palettes before and from my experience, they give a very nice color combinations. Your color palettes really sets the tone of your illustration. Here I gave you one example of a dark versus a light design. The illustrations on the left are a little bit more witchy, moody, whereas the designs that you see on the right are a little bit more feminine and delicate. That's why depending on what mood you would like to convey in your illustration, it is really worth taking your time to think about your color palette. However, the decision is sometimes very hard. There's so many beautiful colors to choose from. In order to make that a little bit easier for you, I again, in my previous class, would like to suggest that we do some thumbnails together. I wanted to show you one example from my personal work. On the left side you see the color thumbnail and on the right side you see the final illustration. Once my sketch was done, I used some blobs or some purchase of color to create my color palette. The colors that I choose for the thumbnail, I would call them starting colors. Then I usually take those colors to block in the shapes for my illustration. However, it's not set in stone and you will see how it evolves. Sometimes those are the colors that I start with. But then I like to make them a little bit darker, or a little bit lighter, or completely change the tone, or the hue of the color. It's just a starting point. I will be very honest with you, I make color thumbnails every single time I create an illustration, so 100 percent of the times and here I listed some advantages of making such color thumbnails. Very obviously, they help you choose the final colors. They help you choose good starting colors combinations. Next they also enable you to see the contrast. They also help you to build new color palettes. If you're particularly happy with one color combination, you can save it very conveniently in Procreate and create a new color palette that you can choose for any other illustration in the future. I usually test two color mixes per illustration. Sometimes I'm so happy, like with this one, I actually remember I only made this one color thumbnail because I was instantly happy and I knew okay, I don't need to test any further and one thumbnail for this illustration was enough. But in most of the cases, I still make at least two thumbnails. You can make more, you can make two, three, four and then I usually decide on one color palette. Or if there's more color combinations that I like, I create color palettes out of them in Procreate and I save them for future illustrations. In case you're interested, I'm talking about color thumbnails in my other Procreate class, Isometric Illustration and Procreate, Design Your Dream room. It's less than 15 thumbnails. Let's get to it. I will choose the biggest and the simplest brush from the set and it's going to be hard airbrush. Then I'm going to make sure that the brush is big enough. I will reduce the opacity of my sketch layer. Very conveniently, we have the color of our background already sent. As next, I am blocking in the colors for the moth, our central element. I put all the colors on a separate layer right under the sketch layer and I do not really care about keeping my color within the lines. I do it very freely. I'm only positioning the colors where they more or less should be. After choosing the colors for the moth, it's time to just the colors for all the decorations around. I block in the colors roughly, and sometimes I put extra colors on top of the colors that I drew there before. Sometimes in the middle of the process, I realize I'm missing some other color, like other from my color palette. Then I do not hesitate to choose a color from a completely different color palette, I mix and match. For this piece, I decided to create two color thumbnails so that I can make up my mind between the two of them. When I'm done with my first thumbnail, I hide it, I make it invisible, and then I work on a separate layer on my second thumbnail. Also for your convenience make sure that this layer is also on the drawing assist on. You will recognize it by seeing that it has this little subtitle assisted. I usually work with the colors from the same color palette, but I flip them. I decided to keep the same background color because I really want to work with that color. But you will see that for the second thumbnail, I chose a completely different color for the moth for instance. Before it was something like bluish gray, or bluish green. Right now, I'm testing something more warm reddish coral. Because in the end, you do want to test. You want to create backgrounds that are a little bit different and not entirely the same. They will still be quite similar because they belong to the same color pellet, but you will see they will be a little bit different. You can create those color thumbnail tests on your own. For example, maybe you're hesitating, you don't know whether you want to choose a dark versus a light design and then feel free to create completely different thumbnails from completely different color palettes. After I am done with both my thumbnails, I go to the respective layers. Using the Move tool, I make those thumbnails smaller and I position them on the same canvas, next to each other or opposite each other so that they can compare them better. Because they share the background color, it's going to be very easy for me to compare. I hide my sketch layer to see things better. Then basically you grab a cup of coffee and you have a think. There are so many beautiful colors out there that the choice is sometimes very hard. For this illustration I actually asked my Instagram followers if they have a preference and they chose the bottom one. I created for you a slide with color combo examples that you can take for a spin and you can test them by creating such color thumbnails. We discussed that you can test dark versus light design. Maybe you would like to check out some monochrome sketches. One color with different shades. Perhaps you are wondering if you can pull off a minimalist color palette with maximum two to three colors, maybe you would like to test pastel colors, very wishy-washy colors versus bold colors and finally, an easy one as well, warm versus cold tones. I also prepared a short summary of the steps for you. Your task is, first of all to choose your initial color palette or your color palettes. Then you reduce the opacity of the sketch, and you test your colors on the layer below as you saw. I do recommend that you use a bigger brush for creating bigger patches of color. It's going to be easier to see. Then you zoom in and you zoom out to check the contrast and to check if your overall, how the colors work together. I do recommend you create at least two colors thumbnails and choose one as hard as it is. I hope that you can also take a screenshot of your thumbnails directly in Procreate and post it in the project gallery. So far I hope you did like those preparation steps. I do like to spend some time on both the sketching and choosing my color palette. I don't think it's a time wasted. I also think that you should spend some time on deciding on those. Because as the next steps proceed, you will see that your illustration is really just appears out of your fingers. Now follow me to the next lesson where we will be blocking in the main colors of our illustration.
8. Base Colors: This is the lesson in which we start coloring our illustration with the base colors. What we will be doing here is blocking in the colors of our illustration, and the color thumbnail will be just a starting point. It's as if through blocking in those base colors, we are revisiting our color thumbnail and before it gets any more serious with the coloring of our illustration, we can still make some changes. In this slide, I prepared for you a bit of a cheat sheet of what brushes I personally like to use for outlining and then for filling in the color. But of course, feel free to use your own brushes. I prepared this slide because those brushes are native to Procreate. That means they come for free, and you already have them, you don't have to buy any new fancy brushes. Cool. I have two thumbnails to choose from, I decided to choose the bottom one. The one that I'm not using for now, I will make it invisible and I will drag it at the very bottom of everything else so that I can save it for future reference. Then I hit the layer with my main thumbnail and rename it to colors or color palette, whatever works for you. From the very start, I like to duplicate a few of those extra assisted layers, then I use the Move tool to make my thumbnail again bigger so I can resize it to the original size. It's usually that the sketch layer is first and the thumbnail layer is second. For this traditional media feeling, I also like to adjust my background. I go back to the Layers panel and I create an extra new layer on top of my background layer, which doesn't have to be on Assist. I usually use the texture for the background either on Multiply or on screen, so I will create two layers, one with multiply and one with screen, and then I will compare them and see which one I like the best. You can use any of the textured brushes to add some interest to your background. I recommended the Nikko Rull or the wet media brushes like the wet acrylic or gouache, but I will go for the mysteriously sounding brush Tarraleah, because it really does create a magical background texture. I readjusted the size of my brush and I hover with the brush on the Canvas till I'm happy with all the textures and the bubbles and the specs. I also reduce the opacity of the layer, I make it more transparent because sometimes the texture effect is a little bit too intense. Next, I swipe to the left and I make a copy of this multiply layer and I will test it in screen. I go back to the original 100 percent opacity and I change multiply to screen. I double-check which one I like more multiply versus screen, and I go for the lighter version with screen. I start my coloring with the hero of the illustration, which will be the moth. I first select the color from the color thumbnail. I just hold my finger on the screen and I drop it so I select the color, and then I choose a willow charcoal to fill in the color for the wings. In case the bigger brushes were a little bit too bulky and I want more precision, I switch my brush to something smaller, like another charcoal brush or the 6B pencil, and I fix my lines so that they're a little bit more tidy. I always try to keep some elements on separate layers. For the case of the moth, for example, I will have the upper wings on a separate layer, then I will have the lower wings on the separate layer, and the body of the moth also on a separate layer. This will help me to tweak the colors and to make any adjustments. You will notice that for the time that I am coloring, I don't need my color thumbnail, that's why it's invisible. But every time I'm ready to block in the color for another element, I go back to the color thumbnail layer, I make it visible again, and then I select the color by selecting it with my finger on the screen and make it invisible again. I do it over and over again. But it's very handy to have this color thumbnail layer available whenever you need it. As I was coloring the body of the moth and the tentacles, I've noticed that the yellow that I selected is a little bit too dark. On the same layer, and it still counts as blocking the colors, I use the second color. Basically a brighter shade of the same yellow, and I use the 6B pencil to experiment a little bit and create as if hairs on this body of the moth. You can already add in some texture and shape. I was initially drawing with the 6B pencil with my active brush, and what I've done is I selected the eraser icon and I held it till it clicked, and my eraser brush change to the current brush that I was using, which was the 6B pencil. Now, it's all about repeating those steps. I go back to the color thumbnail, I select the next color for the next element, I make sure I separate those elements on different layers that are already on Drawing Assist. Don't forget to switch on the Drawing Assist, either by remembering about it or you make a few copies of the same empty assisted layer. Now I'm going to speed up this video a little bit for you, and we will meet in a second once I am done with blocking in all the colors for this illustration. Nice, I think I'm happy here. Those are the flat or the base colors for our illustration. I tried to keep also the layers as tidy as possible. You will see on the right side that I tried also to rename those layers as I went, so that I keep track. If you see the berries at the bottom, they were not even there in the sketch, I decided to spontaneously add in some elements. Now, it's your turn, your task is to block in the base colors. I don't want to leave you entirely alone, so I compiled the following four tips for this process. The first tip is don't stick to the sketch lines. Of course, if you think that your sketch lines are the most perfect sketch lines in the world, you can stick to them, but it's usually not the case. Don't feel obliged that you have to follow your original sketch. That's why number 2 is draw some extra elements. I added in some extra berries at the bottom of my illustration, because I felt there are too many leaves and the illustration could profit from some specs of colors down there. That's why I added them in, even though they were not in my original sketch. The third tip is, don't be afraid to change your colors. I've noticed on the body of the moth that it was really not that visible and too much merging with the background, that's why I decided to grab a lighter color and draw on top of the original color. In this way, I was able to tweak and change my illustration so that I am in the end happy with the end result. Finally, don't worry about the details yet. First, you have to work on a good foundation for your illustration and from that point on, everything will start rolling in the good direction. There's one thing missing, we need to color in the star that is above the moth in my illustration, but I will be using a different symmetry guide here. Please join me in the next lesson, where I talk about different Procreate symmetry guides and how to draw a perfect star for your illustration.
9. Radial Symmetry: In this lesson, we will discuss four different Procreate symmetry guides with the focus on the Radial Symmetry. As of 2021, there are four symmetry guides in Procreate. You already know the one that we have been using so far hopefully which is the vertical one. You'll find all the symmetry guides when you go to Edit Drawing Guide and then to options in the lower right corner. Even though we are mainly using the vertical guide for the purpose of this class, you are very much welcome to try out all of them and to take them for a spin for your own illustration. Let me show you what you can choose from. In the vertical guide, the guideline goes vertically down in the middle of our Canvas. You can create mirrored results on the left and on the right but you know already from this class. The next one in the line is the horizontal guide. The guideline here goes horizontally across the midline and then you can create merge result on top and the bottom. You will see here the movement of this guide with the arrows that I marked in a brighter red color. Feel free to experiment and also incorporate maybe the horizontal guide to create your illustration. Now, if you think that the previous guides were a little bit boring, then you will not be disappointed with this one. The third one is the quadrant guide which combines both the horizontal with the vertical guide. It divides the canvas into four parts called quadrants. It can produce very, very interesting results in your moth illustration. So who knows, maybe I will see some quadrant symmetry in our project gallery. Last but not least, we have the radio symmetry. This one is beautiful. It splits our canvas into eight segments. It combines horizontal, vertical, and diagonal. It's very, very nice to create mandalas for example. But I personally love to produce different shapes of stars with this symmetry guide. There's one more tiny detail that I wanted to tell you about, namely each of those guides can be turned into a rotational symmetry. Also under options after you choose your guide you can switch on rotational symmetry, the toggle has to be on, it has to be blue. Then for every symmetry like in this case in the picture, the vertical symmetry, it will be also rotated on top of that. So it mirrors and then it flips and it rotates. I think it can also produce very interesting results. Now that you know all the guides, you can experiment with all of them and then decide where to use them in your illustration for different types of symmetry guides, and on top of that, you know that you can also not only mirror them but also rotate. Going back to our illustration I switched on the sketch and my color thumbnail bag. You see this big block above my moth is the star that I wanted to draw. We hit together that wrench tool, we go to the Canvas section, we edit our drawing guide and then you know the drill. We go to the options, we used to have the vertical guide, we change it to radial. I also wanted to show you that your drawing guide is also not frozen. You can grab the center of this radial symmetry, the little dots that you find in the middle of the canvas and you can move it around freely. What I like to do is I take this guide more towards where I would like to draw my star. I'm starting to draw some shapes with the charcoal pencil and slowly I add in more and more details to build the arms of my star. Initially, I use the light yellow color from the color thumbnail but then I decide to swap it to the white color so that there's a bit of more contrast between the star and the background. I wanted to show you that even if I switch off the drawing guide and the layer is still on assist, Procreate will remember this last set up and you will still be assisted in drawing your symmetrical element. Sometimes I do like to switch off the guide but keep the assist so that I'm not distracted by the lines and I can see things better. You can define the shape of your star either by drawing or erasing bits of the story to also create interesting effects. Our star is ready. It looks great. Let's go to the next lesson where we do some final adjustments to our base colors before we move on to proceed with the shadows and the highlights.
10. Color Adjustments: Let's make some final adjustments before we move to the shadows and the highlights. If you look at my layers, you will see that I kept separate elements on separate layers, and in this way, it will be very easy to make some tweaks in the color. To show you how I usually adjust my layers, I will select the Stalk N Leaves layer. Next, I go to the adjustments layer and I select Hue, Saturation, Brightness. I choose the option to select the entire layer. Then in the panel below, you'll see that you can make some tweaks in the brightness of that layer or its saturation, or even its hue. Now I just go layer by layer and I have a look if I would like to change anything. Usually, I do tweak the brightness, I make things a little bit darker or a little bit brighter. But changing the saturation, the hue can also give you some unexpected really good results. I warmly invite you to have a look at the layers that you would like to change and to play around before you really 100 percent make up your mind about the colors. For instance, I always like to decrease the brightness of the lower wings of the moth. See this way when I zoom in, the moth already gets some extra dimension. The final step is to add some pattern to the wings of the moth. All right, we're done. Let's add some shadows to our illustration, in the next lesson.
11. Shadows: Adding the shadows gives so much more dimension to your illustration. Here are, again, the brushes that I use the most for adding the shadows or some darker texture, but they are only my personal recommendations. Feel free to use your own brushes, of course. It's just that those are for free. You can find them very easily in Procreate, so why not use them or at least try them out? I will start this lesson by directly presenting you my process, and then we will proceed to the demonstration. There is a wide range of blend modes in Procreate, but 99 percent of the time I use Multiply to create my shadows. I create a new assisted, in our case, a layer above the layer that I would like to add shadows to, and then I make it a clipping mask. Next, I change the mode of that extra clipping mask layer to Multiply. After I am done adding my shadows and my darker textures, I can still tweak the opacity and make it less permanent or more prominent. Let me show you how it works. I'm selecting my willow charcoal brush, and then I select one of the copies of the assisted layers and I drag it on top of the layer I want to change. First, we will work on all the leaves. Then I touch this layer so that the menu opens, and I select the Clipping Mask. Next, I go to the Blend Mode and I scroll up to find Multiply and select it. I select exactly the same green color, and using Multiply will just make it darker. Let me share with the willow charcoal first. It has a very beautiful texture as if it was really a charcoal or some sort of a pencil or a chalk even. You can also try out the wet media brushes. This is the wet acrylic. The tarraleah brush also creates very interesting effects. So it's not only good for the background, but also for the rest of the elements. In the end, it's your personal choice which texture you prefer. The last step is to go to the opacity of that layer and to tweak it a little bit. Sometimes the effect is too darker, so you may want to turn it down a little bit. Let's put some texture and shadows on those big blooms. The handy thing is this is also a separate layer of our shadows, so we can do exactly the same process of altering our color. We can go to the Adjustments layer, and then we can select Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and also play around a little bit with the effects. You see here I decided to change the color of those shadows again, so your color palette is really something that evolves and changes all the time. I will repeat this process for the rest of the layers. This is what the illustration looks like with all the shadows. In the next lesson, I will show you one more extra trick with the overlay blend mode. Follow me.
12. Overlay: I believe that the overlay blending mode deserves a separate dedicated lesson. Let's go straight to the point. Overlay blending mode combines multiply and screen blend modes. When the base layer is light it makes it lighter and where the base layer is dark it makes it darker. You can see the example of how overlay blend mode works in the picture. I apply the overlay blend modes as a separate layer and it's always on top of other layers. In this picture, I used only two colors, the light cream color, and the darker purple color. All the other colors that are listed to the right of those pictures came as a result of using the overlay mode. Let's add some extra berries to our illustration which will be in overlay mode. You can do that by creating a new layer on top of all the other layers and then you click on it and you select from the menu drawing assist. Then you go to the blend mode menu and you scroll all the way down till you find overlay. I will be drawing my berries with the dry ink. To get the effect that I want I'm choosing a color that is quite light. Then I go ahead and I start drawing my berries, and I make sure that the color that I'm laying overlaps with this existing red color because this exactly is the effect that I want. I think it looks very interesting. You can see here for example when I draw with the very same color but over the green of the leaves, it gives me yet another color. It really depends on what other color is underneath and the results are sometimes quite unpredictable, but this is what I like about this blend mode. Because I chose that lighter color, my berries look as if they were flooded with some extra light. I like this effect so much that I had to do little bells and I add some extra details on the bells as well. I also add a few more extra as if rounded specs next to the leaves because it adds even more brightness and luminance that I want to achieve. To be fair, I usually use the overlay mode with light colors. I rarely use them with darker colors, I like this light effect. That's how now we are ready to add some extra highlights.
13. Highlights: Adding the highlights is my favorite part of the illustration creation process. We are nearly done, but not quite yet. My brushes recommendations are exactly the same brushes as for the shadows. All of those textured brushes will do super well when adding some highlights or creating some lighter texture. But of course, feel free to use your own brushes. I would say that there are two ways in which you can add the highlights to your illustration. The first way, which is also quite fine, is using a simple white color. You will see in the picture that the result is very bright, but it might look quite flat. The other way is to create an extra layer and set it to screen blending mode. I really like this way of adding my highlights because of that's more dimension. Screen mode reacts with the color layer that is underneath and it can create very interesting new color combinations, and I like some predictability. In this way, it reminds me a little bit of the overlay mode from the previous lesson. Let's zoom in a little bit. On the left, you have the white highlights. On the right, you have some highlights created with the screen mode. It's really up to you which effect you like most. I use the screen mode all the time. I wanted to show you some past illustrations of mine to show you the screen blending mode in action. In this slide, I have two examples of some botanicals. On the left, I added some highlights, both to the blooms as well as to the leaves. Each time I selected the base color to create the highlights. For the case of the blooms, I selected this light pink, and it gives me an even lighter edition of that pink. On the leaves, I selected the light in green, and it gave me even lighter green. I acquired the same result on the right. This time, I selected the original steel blue of the leaves. It gave me a lighter version of that, very same blue. That's why this piece also looks very consistent when used the screen mode. But it's not entirely white. If it was just wide. For me personally, it would be too much contrast. I prefer the screen mode. It's also my favorite when it comes to illustrating people, especially when I'm coloring the skin. On the left, you see an example of a slightly darker skin color, and on the right, a little bit lighter skin color. Because I selected the base color first and screen mode gave me a lighter version of the very same color, all of those pieces look extremely consistent. Of course, another way could be to stay in the normal mode and then go to the color palette or the color wheel, and try to figure out, what is the lighter version of my skin color? Like in this case, I could go to the adjustments and set the brightness a little bit up. But for me, it's just too much work. I prefer the screen mode because it does everything for me automatically. I wanted to tell you about the normal way to use a screen for highlights and the lazy way. Later on, I will be doing the lazy way, meaning I will be using only one layer. But the normal thing to do or the standard thing to do would be to add those highlights or lighter texture by creating a new layer for every single layer that you would like to change. You could do it one by one. Above each of those layers, you would have to create a new assisted layer. Then just like with multiply for the shadows, you would make it a clipping mask. Then you would change the blending mode to screen, and then you would play with the opacity once you're done with your highlights. My illustration creation process is quite long, and sometimes it does take me more than 10 hours to create one illustration, but you can make things a little bit easier. Instead of doing all those separate layers, you can create just one, and this is what we will be doing. We will be doing in this course the lazy screen. Now, I will show you how I usually do it, how I proceed. If you want, you can follow along simultaneously and work on your own illustration at the same time. I already have one extra layer that is already on Drawing Assist. I'm going to take it and drag it and put it on top of all the other layers. I'm also renaming it to Screen Highlights. At first, I'm using the dry ink to create some extra elements on the flowers. Of course, let's not forget to change the blending mode to screen. The easiest way would be to select the color of the background, but you can select any color. For example, some color from the flowers. The dry ink brush is very good for drawing completely new elements into the picture. However, if you want to add any extra texture, I would go for more textured brushes, for example, for the charcoal stick or any brushes from the wet media section like with acrylic or gouache. One way to add some extra interest into your illustration is to introduce some new shapes onto the existing shapes. For example, I add some simple lines to accentuate the shape of those bells. I don't stay with the same color for too long, for example, to add some extra highlights onto those leaves, I select the base green color of those leaves. I hope that you can see by now that using screen mode is much more superior than to simply using just one single white color for the highlights. The fact that the screen mode produces is very subtle. It does create very lovely brightening or luminosity of the color that is underneath. I believe that this is where the fun really begins. We are nearly done with our illustration and adding those final details really make your illustration pop. Do not hesitate, and add as many as you can think of. As for the wings of the moth, you can add any extra elements in here, either in screen mode or just using a white color. For example, I'm adding those little moons on the lower wings. By now, I have switched to the 6B pencil. I am giving some extra, again keyword texture to the wings of the moth because my goal was to create an illustration that looks as if it was handed drawn. I am also adding some final details to the blooms. I'm creating some gentle lines and drawing some dots for the seeds. I would like the leaves to pop a little bit more. So on the original green based highlights, I take the peachy background color, which will give me an even brighter color, and I make some extra adjustments so that's the highlights on the leaves look even brighter. That shows that you don't have to stick with the original base color of the element you can mix and match. I do encourage you to experiment with a variety of colors, even from a different color palettes. One advantage of this one single screen layer, which is not a clipping mask, is that you can also go outside of the lines and add some extra elements onto the background. I am creating a few specks of light on the outside as well. I think I'm done. Let's have a look at the before and after. This is without the highlights and with the highlights. You can tell it makes a huge difference. Let's tackle the Gaussian blur in the next lesson, and then we are really done with the illustration.
14. Gaussian Blur: In this lesson, we will finish the final details using the Gaussian Blur. It's up to you if you do this step or not. Gaussian Blur is a very handy tool that you can find within the Procreate app. It basically helps you to blur or to create an out-of-focus appearance in your illustration. It is super great for a blurry background, so it's very handy when you are creating some scenes. But it's even better for our purposes here, because we will be creating a few glowing elements in our illustration. I mainly use it to create an atmosphere of some magic. I use it for creating the glow for my stars or the moon. I can also imagine you can use it when you're painting some ghosts or any other fantastical creatures that need a little bit of glow. Have a look at the Gaussian Blur in action. On the left side you see the illustration without the blur, and on the right side you see the illustration with a little bit of blur that creates a very, very subtle glow. I hope you can see that on the moon and on the stars and on the outline of the moth. You can find Gaussian Blur under Adjustments, it's the fifth option from top. But I will be showing you everything in my demonstration now. What we want is to add a bit of glow to this star here in the center using Gaussian Blur. Going back to our Layer. You see we have our star layer. We need to duplicate it, swipe to the left, and we have a copy of that layer. Making sure that we stay on that copy layer, next, we go to the Upper panel, choose Adjustments, and then we look for Gaussian Blur and select it. We select the entire layer and we come to the Gaussian Blur panel. Next you touch and hold on your screen with your Apple pencil. You see above that there is a blue bar that shows us the percentage of the Gaussian Blur. From my personal experience, anything between seven and 10 percent is enough to create a very beautiful blur or glow on your stars. Here is the effect with and without. I pretty much always use the white color to create my glow. That's it. That's how easy it is. The last thing to finish off the illustration is to sign it. It's really important. I have a special stamp brush for my signatures. There's a separate class here on Skillshare on how to create such stamp brushes. This is the last step. We're done with our illustration. I am so happy with how this illustration turned out. I hope you're very happy with your illustration too. In the next lesson I will summarize all the steps that we have taken together to create your beautiful artwork.
15. Summary: Now that your illustration is complete, let's revise the steps that we have taken. After studying our reference photos, we created our sketch using the symmetry guides. We looked at a few color palettes. We chose one, and then we created a color thumbnail for our illustration. Next, using the color thumbnail as reference, we laid our base colors. From the base colors, we moved on to adding some shadows, mainly using multiply blend mode. After the shadows, we continued to add in a little bit more detail into our illustration using the overlay blend mode. In this way, we were adding even more dimension and depth into the piece. Next came the highlights. It had brightened up our composition a lot and for that purpose, we were using the screen mode. Last but not least, we use the Gaussian blur on the stars to add a little bit of magic into the illustration and some glow. With each of those steps, our illustration gains more and more depth. The key to this piece was really layering. The more layers you add, the more details you add, the more attractive your illustration will look at the end. When normally you could say that less is more, I think in this situation we have the opposite. Layering is really your best friend and more means simply more. Do not hesitate at that stage to add even more details into your illustration because it will have a bigger impact. Throughout this class, I gave you lots of tips and tricks on how to improve your illustration creation process using the digital media. But if I were to underline some of those tips, then I would leave you with the following ones. Number 1 for me is to really spend nearly half of the time on studying the references. The sketch is really important and it sets the tone of the entire illustration. If your sketch is good, the rest of the process, like laying the colors, is simply flowing. Another important thing to keep in mind is that your color palette is only the starting point. It's important to decide on your color palette and to create a thumbnail, but try to stay flexible because you will see that your colors really evolve with the piece. Do not hesitate to make any adjustments on the way. Moreover, get outside of the lines of your sketch and improvise. Do not be afraid to add any extra elements that were not initially in your sketch because this will add even more interest in your illustration and all the details are your best friend in here. Finally, layer, layer, and one more time layer. Add some shadows. Add some highlights. Add more detail. Have a look at your illustration again. Add again more shadows and more highlights and over and over again till you're happy. I really hope that you had fun creating this illustration. Remember that you don't need any fancy brushes. You can really use all the brushes that come for free with your tool and you will get great results. With patience, you will get there. I believe that anyone can create such a detailed illustration full of dimension. Go wild with all the details. Do not hesitate. Do not try to limit yourself in here. Finally, do not be afraid to post and get your work out there. Remember that you can use the #magicalmoths. Again, don't be afraid to share your beautiful art. Congratulations. We are done with our illustration. I would love to see what you came up with. Please make sure to post your beautiful illustration into the project gallery. See you there.
16. Thank You!: Thank you so much for taking my class. I hope that you learned a lot, but also had fun and really enjoyed the process. Don't forget to show your beautiful artwork in the project gallery here on Skillshare and if you're active on Instagram make sure to post there and use the hashtag magical moths for a chance to get featured. Stay tuned for my upcoming Procreate classes, and see you soon. Bye.
17. JUNE in BLOOM Giveaway: Hi guys. I would like to announce a really wonderful
art challenge that is currently taking
place on Instagram. Five of you have a chance to win one year of
Skillshare subscription. That means one extra year of learning completely for free. I am collaborating with
four other Skillshare, top teachers, really
wonderful teachers. I loved their classes. I've taken their classes myself, Charlie, Jia, Maya, and Sarah. All of them have
really amazing classes on digital illustration
on Skillshare. So I highly recommend
that you check them out. I will include all the
links in the description. Together, we host a
challenge given blooms. If you're watching
this video into the future and you have
missed this year's edition, then you don't need to
worry because we will be hosting this challenge
every year in June. If you follow us on
Skillshare and Instagram, we will make sure to notify
you. How does it work? We provide it with five amazing art prompts
which serve as a starting point inspiration for you to create
botanical inspires art. The more entries you
post on Instagram, the higher the chances to win one year of Skillshare
subscription. We announced the five lucky
winners at the beginning of July for this
year's tradition. And we have June 2022. Already after three
days of the challenge, we have over 1
thousand illustrations under the hashtag
June and blooms 2022. This is really beyond meet this challenge is really popular and it seems
that you really like, and that's why we decided
to host it every year. And again, above the
challenge itself, you can find more
information on Instagram. Each of the co-host has created an announcement post
with both today it's the hashtag and all
the information and the prerequisites to
participate in the challenge. You can find it on
our social media. I hope that you join us
this year and next year, and we create some
amazing illustrations together inspired
by Botanical Art. See you on Instagram.
Weronika Salach, Art with MAGIC
