Portrait Painting in Procreate: How to Start on a Solid Foundation

1. Introduction: Hi there. I'm Gabrielle Bike, and I'm an artist and teacher who loves painting portraits. In this mini class, I'm going to show you how you can begin any portrait painting in Procreate on a solid foundation. I'll be sharing some of my favorite tips and techniques for painting portraits with confidence. I'll walk you through some things that I find to be essential at the start of a portrait from finding a great photo reference to setting up a high quality canvas, blocking in the painting with big shapes of value, and checking to make sure everything's in the right place. I'll be sharing tips for working with color, edges, brushwork, and textures, too, those things that really bring a portrait to life. This class won't cover the full portrait painting process. Instead, I'm going to show you how to start strong. So you can build any portrait painting and procreate on a solid foundation. Then we'll move into some of my favorite techniques that will help you add style and expressiveness to your digital paintings. Whether you're brand new to portraits or you just want to feel a little more confident in your digital process, this class is here to help you start strong and build your own painter and only style. By the end of class, you'll feel more confident approaching the blank canvas, and you'll have tools and techniques you can return to again and again. Ready to paint and have some fun? Let's get started. 2. Start with an Incredible Reference: So to begin, I want to share with you four ways you can start every portrait painting on a solid foundation. And they are start with an incredible reference, set up a high quality canvas, paint only the big shapes of value at the start, and check your proportions before adding any detail. So let's jump in first by talking about how to find great photo references. Now, it's important to note that not every beautiful photo will translate into a beautiful painting. Over the years, I found that one of the most important factors is having a reference with clear and readable lighting that defines the forms of the face. If a photo has strong, clear shapes of value or light and shadow, you likely have a winner on your hands. On the other hand, poor lighting can make the painting process frustrating and challenging, even with a stunning model or composition. Let's look at this example here. On the left, here's a reference photo where the painting process felt effortless to me. But why? The model and composition are beautiful. But more importantly, the shapes of value here are clear and easy to see. But here on the right, although we have a beautiful model and a beautiful photo, when I went to paint from this photo, I struggled to see clear shapes of value. When I would squint down my eyes at the reference, I couldn't really see the shapes I needed to paint because they weren't really well defined by the lighting. So the process turned into a struggle for me, and because of that struggle, I eventually gave up on the piece altogether. But this photo on the left, because there are clear light and shadow shapes, I was able to make a more successful painting. So here's a look at my painting, and it was just a joy to create. It was easy to do because all these shadow shapes and all these shapes of light and shade are really easy to see. I believe the best photo references have incredible lighting that enhances the composition and creates a strong, clear contrast between light and dark, making the shapes and forms easy to see and therefore paint. But then on top of this, it needs to be a subject that inspires you. So where do you find great photo references like this? Well, unfortunately, these photos aren't just going to fall on your lap. It's definitely a hunt to find them. So when you do stumble upon a great photo reference, definitely save it in a dedicated folder. I like to use shutterstock.com for my reference photos, usually, but there are also some free sites like unsplash.com and pixabay.com. But in summary, take the time to find or take great photo references with excellent lighting. This will make the painting process smoother and more enjoyable and will end in a more successful painting in the end, I believe. So take your time, seek out those clear shapes of light and shadow, and start your portraits on a solid foundation. 3. Set Up a High-Quality Canvas: All right next up, let's talk about Canvas setup. For painting portraits in Procreate, you'll want to work on a nice, high quality canvas. You'll also want to set up your reference photo and painting perfectly side by side. This will make getting proportions correct down the line so much easier. So here's how I set up mine. So right here in the corner, we're going to tap this plus icon here. And then right here where it says New Canvas, tap the little icon right here. So what I do is I make the width 5,000 and I keep the height at 3,500 pixels. And I like to have the DPI at 300. Now, something else I want to show you here is in the color profile. For me, I set the color profile to be this SRGB color profile because I find that if it's display P three, sometimes if you put the images you make in display P three, they look beautiful on your iPad. But then when you go to upload them to the Internet, sometimes the colors can get dulled down, and that's just because the monitor that you might be looking at doesn't have the same range of colors that your iPad does. So I always like to work within the range of colors offered within this SRGB range because it's pretty standard for the Internet. So back to here, 5,000, 3,500, 300 DPI, color profile at SRGB that top one, and then we press Create. So now this is perfect. We're going to set this up so that our reference and our painting are perfectly side by side, and I'm going to show you how I do that. Go up here and you see this wrench icon, tap that and where it says add, you're going to press Insert a photo. Tap that, and I'm going to grab this photo right here. It's importing. And then I'm going to tap my layers for now just to deselect it and zoom out a little bit. Then I'm going to grab the transform arrow. And what you want to do here is make sure when you tap snapping here at the bottom, make sure magnetics and snapping are both turned the one. So we're going to tap those. They're going to light up blue means they're on. And then what I'm going to do is just drag at the corner here and pull this up so that it fills about half the canvas here. So that's probably a little bit, I want to be able to fit both of these side by side. So let me make it a little smaller. I'm going to put it just right in the middle. That's probably going to be good. Let me tap my layers again. What we're going to do here is take your finger and swipe left with one finger and press duplicate. Then take the transform arrow again and drag it on over. I want you to see that yellow line there. That means it's perfectly in line with that first one, and that's what we want. I'm going to put it right there and let it go. We can see they're perfectly side by side, but they're a little off center from the canvas, and I want to fix that. Let's go to layers and swipe right on that bottom one there so that they're both highlighted in blue. Grab the transform arrow again and we're just going to stretch it out a little bit and make it so it's perfectly right in the middle here and we're going to know it's right in the middle. Let me see. I locks up perfect there with the cross hairs in the middle. That's good. I'm going to tap my layers, and what I'm going to do is grab this top layer. If you're right handed like me, this is going to be your reference photo. This is going to eventually become your painting. If you're left handed, just switch it. What we're going to do now is grab the layer that's going to become your painting and take two fingers and swipe right with them. What this is going to do is it's going to alpha lock that layer. And you can tell it's alpha locked because of these. You see this checker background here? That means it's alpha locked. You can also double check and make sure just by tapping it, and you can see that little check mark right there. So it's alpha locked. And what that means is that when I go to paint on this layer now, the paint I put down is only going to stick to what's already there. So it's only going to stick to this rectangle here, basically. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is go ahead and go to my brushes, and I'm going to grab a big fluffy brush. I like to use this soft brush here. This is a modified procreate default that I really like. So just this one and make it nice and big as big as it'll go. And what you want to do at this point is select a background color, like a nice mid tone color. I'm going to grab this one here, and you're going to just paint over the entire thing. Now we have a reference and a would be painting perfectly side by side. This is going to make spotting negative space and making proportional measurements and comparisons so much easier, okay? So I definitely recommend taking the time to set up your reference and your painting perfectly side by side like this. 4. Paint the Big Shapes of Value: The third key to building a solid foundation for your portraits is starting with a focus on shapes of value. If you're unfamiliar with the word values, what I'm talking about here is when you start your painting, think about breaking down your piece by painting the abstract shapes of light that you see and the abstract shapes of dark that you see. Sometimes looking at a reference like this, the idea of starting with, like, a line drawing can be so intimidating. So my suggestion is to skip the line drawing altogether. Instead, let's focus on capturing abstract shapes of light and dark. And let me give you a tip to make this super easy to do. So again, let's go back to our layers. Go back down to the reference photo, swipe to the left with it, and press duplicate. Now on this duplicate image, what we're going to do is blur it. What blurring will do is it will eliminate the details of this photo so that no longer is it going to look like an intimidating photo that we need to draw, it's going to be blobs of value. Let me show you what I mean. So make sure you have that layer selected. Go here to adjustments, this little magic wand looking button here and tap Gaussian blur. Okay. And we can see it's on because of this, but nothing's happened. What we have to do is take our finger and just drag it to the right, okay? Now, this is way too much blur. That's gonna be unhelpful. We want something about right. Mm. About right there where we can see. Okay, well, now there's just a little blob here. It's just a little brown blob. This is another little brown blob, and then there's this shape here and this little thing here. And there's this lighter part right here. It's like a triangle. That's how you want to start seeing this. So now it's no longer eyes, nose, mouth, it's shapes, and they are abstract shapes, which are so much easier to paint. Okay, so let's keep it about there. I'm going to tap my layers again. So now if you want to, you can even label these. You could label this. Painting. And this is blurred reference. Blurred reef and down here, Rf. Okay. So then back up here on the painting layer, we're going to keep it alpha locked. Let's move into trying to paint some shapes of value. Okay, so now we are going to mentally free ourselves up. This is no longer a portrait painting. These are just little blobs, little abstract shapes that we're going to try our best to copy over. What I'm going to mostly be considering here are shapes of value, like I said, but also negative space. That's what's really going to help me place this on the canvas. And if that's an unfamiliar idea to you, let me just add a little layer on top here real quick and explain what I mean. Instead of looking at the positive spaces, which is her, the girl, we're going to be looking at negative spaces and negative shapes. So for instance, I'm going to instead of trying to draw this shape of hair, I'm going to try and draw. Let me grab a blue collar so you can see. There we go. I'm going to be trying to draw this shape. Okay? This weird little shape right here. So I'm not going to try and draw her hair, which is the positive shape. Instead, I'm going to try and draw to place it better, this negative shape and the shapes surrounding it. Of course, eventually, I'm going to get in here and paint the hair, but I'm always going to consider the shapes around that, too. So here, I'm not going to try and draw her arm per se. I'm going to instead look at this shape right here, this little triangle. So these negative shapes around her are going to make it a lot easier to place her on the page, if that makes sense. This is really sloppy, but hopefully you understand what I'm going for here. Okay. That's the way we're going to consider this and approach it. Let me grab one of my very favorite brushes for starting. I love this six B pencil here. This is a modified Procreate default brush and I'm just going to use that brush to place her on the page. But let me go back here, make sure you're doing it on your painting layer because basically that's going to lock in all your colors into these dimensions here. Thinking with the same mentality as before, we're going to think in simple shapes of value, blobs of color. Okay? Just go to start with her face here. And it's a mess. We're not thinking about lines. We're not thinking about making a drawing. You're thinking more with a painter's mentality. Okay? And I'm just looking at shapes of value, shapes of light and dark, okay? And already this is like a mess. It's like, where is she going with this? It comes together in the end. Okay? I see this little dark kind of triangle in here, so I'm trying to hint at that. And here's that hair I was talking about. But as I'm painting it, I'm looking at this shape. Okay. Looking at this shape back here as I'm painting it so I can make sure I place her correctly on the page. Here, as I'm drawing the top of this head here, I'm thinking, well, what's the distance between here and here, here and here. It needs to be a little higher on mine, so I got to push it up so that it can match. Coming around here, we get this side of the hair here. This kind of loops down. I'm thinking now about this negative shape. What does that shape look like? Kind of pushes in a little bit more than I have. Already, I have her head floating a little too far this way. It's got to come. Scooch this way, some. So I'm looking again. Okay, what does that negative shape look like? What does this look like here? And this is just the first things you want to think about as you're placing these shapes of value up on. Page. And like I said, I'm not thinking about drawing a girl here. I'm thinking about these really abstract fun shapes. If you even wanted to, you could turn your entire composition upside down. Okay? Let me flip it so that it's right for me. And you could copy the shapes of value like this. And I know I'm using the color picker. I know that's kind of a controversial thing. Some people don't like using it. I don't mind it. I'm having fun. This is, like, therapy for me. I love just getting into the zone and copying over these shapes. And if you want to study color, absolutely study color. I like to study color in oil paint. And, like, real life mediums, and I kind of just like to use one of the digital art shortcuts we have here. And I'm okay with that. But of course, do what's best for you. You can absolutely go and pick each of these colors if you want to make it a study of color as well. So I'm seeing just this kind of big shape here of green. So I'm just putting that in. Okay. It's a little triangle of color down here. Here, there's a little bit, but I think this is a hand peeking in, but I'd probably take that out, edit that out in my painting just because it's kind of an unnecessary detail that kind of takes us off the page. Takes takes the viewer's eye out of the composition or out of the away from the composition. You always want to keep your viewer's eye flowing towards whatever your focal point is. So something like this little hand could probably get omitted. Let me flip it back now. But you understand the point I'm trying to make. You can even flip this thing whatever way you want, copy those shapes. You're not painting a person at this point. I think a lot of times we get hung up on the details of something like this. A portrait is so special and usually we're drawing someone. Sometimes you're drawing a loved one, and it's such a special person to you. You know them so well, and it's like, how could you possibly capture them? You have to take out all that intimidation by just saying, It's just shapes of color. It's just shapes of value. And having that nice reference from the start is what makes this so much simpler because I'm able to see these shapes better. You know what I mean? If you don't have a nice lighting statement, a nice clear readable statement where you can see these different shapes of light in here, it's really, really challenging. So here kind of see this triangle shape happening here. That's not a nose. That's a triangle. Okay. Here there's these darker shapes in here. And then there's this dark shape happening here. And then I'm looking like, Okay, well, let me see here. This looks. Let me add a layer on top. You can do these kind of negative space measurements as you go. So let me grab blue so you can see what I'm doing. Okay. So this is like the general If you tap your finger, it'll go straight. This is kind of the general shape I'm trying to get over here. I know already that I'm really off, but this is the time to make those adjustments. So let me go here. Let me duplicate this weird little shape I've made. And drag it over. Okay. Look at what this is showing us. Now I can see I painted this in a way where her face overhangs that line so much. You see all this extra I've put over here, it doesn't belong there if I want to make something that truly looks like this. Over here, we can see nothing's overhanging here. So already I know that this entire face needs to shift. Probably her entire portrait needs to shift over. So these are the type of things you want to look at. Now, though, when you're 10 minutes into a painting versus 5 hours into a painting and everything becomes delicate and precious and you don't want to move it. So early on in this, that's when you want to make these proportional checks and things. So let me get a little bit more up here with the values, and then we're going to go into some of those proportional checks. So let me delete this for now. And as soon as you notice something like this, make the adjustment. Even if it looks awkward at first, you can fix it. It's easier to pick something like this that looks kind of awkward. Like, obviously, that looks weird now, but it's going to be easier than letting it go on and on and on and then having to change it later. It's really tough to change stuff once details get involved. And if you're a traditional painter, you especially know this to be true or a traditional artist working with pencils or ink or whatever, you know this to be true because we don't have the luxuries that we have with digital tools with those traditional tools. Like, we're able to use selection tools and move things around and liquefy things. You don't really have that traditional art, right? So I still think, though, even still, it's easier to move it now. Alright, so you just want to get your strongest values in, whatever's going to show that lighting statement. The best. Those are the values you want to get in. Shapes of light shapes of dark. I can see already that chin her face is just getting too long. I've made her face too long. It's got to go up quite significantly. So you make that change now. You don't wait to do it once the details involved. You got to move it up now. I'll show you a really easy way to check all this. In a minute when I get a few more values up here. If I squint my eyes down, I can kind of see and knowing kind of way the planes of the body are here, this part is a darker green than this front plane of her body. So you kind of get in that value shift now. Okay. If you've studied portraits at all, you know the importance of the planes and how each plane change is going to be a color change. Basically, if you consider the head or the body like something more blocky and sculptural, every time you get that shift in plane, it's gonna be a different color and a different value, and that's what's gonna give you the illusion of light. Hopefully that wasn't too confusing, but if it is, you'll know what I mean as you continue your journey. Let me just get a little marker for her lips now. And then I want to show you how you can do some quick measurements at this point. 5. Check Your Proportions: Before I even get in those middle tone colors, you really do want to make a proportional check. So the final thing I want to share with you, so you're able to start any portrait on a solid foundation is to check proportions before going into any details. Even adding those mid tones, you got to do a proportional check. And because we set up our canvas like this with the reference and painting perfectly side by side, this is going to be super easy to do. So at this point, we have something up on the canvas. Let's check it. Go ahead to your layers and add a new layer on top. Grab a color where you can kind of see it well. I like to use, like, a light blue or red. That'll be good. And then you're going to want to grab a kind of straight sort of brush. So I'm going to grab my willow charcoal streamline brush. I love this brush. It's one of my very, very favorites, if not my favorite. And you're going to make the brush about you know, not too big, not too small, basically about that size. Okay? Then from here, we're already on that new layer. What we're going to do is draw perfectly horizontal lines across this canvas. And you're going to want to try and hit the major landmark. So where her eyes land, where the bottom of her nose lands, perhaps where the part of her lips lands at where the top of her shoulders land, where the top of her head lands, that sort of thing, okay? And what we're going to do is compare. Did we make the mark? Did we hit the mark? Are we lined up where things are supposed to go? So from here, it's essential for this that they be perfectly horizontal lines. So I'm going to drag a straight line across, and then I'm going to take my finger and tap it down. What that's going to do is it's going to make a perfectly horizontal line, okay? And I didn't really do that with any landmark in mind, but there we go to just show you. Okay, let me do one. I'm going to try and hit the top of her head here. Tap, right? So I got that one pretty good. Let's try and hit the bottom of her chin. Got a little higher. To. Okay, look at this. This is really telling, right? Because I can see here, the bottom of her chin very clearly ends here. There's no overhang here of her chin. Yet mine really overhangs, and I kind of sensed this earlier in the painting process, but it's got to shift up even higher if I want to match up with this reference. And this isn't to say, you have to paint something exactly like a reference. You are the artist. You are free to veer as far away from this photo reference or as close to it as you want. That's up to you. For me and my style, I like to hang out when I'm doing this sort of painting, I like to hang out like the actual proportions that are shown. And then I like to have fun with brush strokes and colors and all those sorts of things later and be more expressive there. But when it comes to proportions, I do like to kind of lock it in because this is a real person and I want to make my painting look like a real person. So I like to lock into the actual proportions that are there. So, of course, you can always go in and change things if you want, alter them to fit your artistic style and needs. But if you want to do it correctly, this horizontal line trick is great for checking. Alright, now let's go in and check maybe this eyeline here. Tap it. That's pretty good. Let me do one try and hit the bottom of the nose. It's kind of a really good anchor right there at the bottom of the nose. Mm. Okay, so this is very telling, too. I can see that. Like, it is blurred, so it's a little hard to tell here, but let me bring the blur down a little bit. So go onto your layers, and if you ever want to change the level of blurriness, you can just tap this in and bring it down, okay? That's how I go through my whole painting process as I slowly sneak this down and give myself a little bit more detail as I move forward on my own painting. Okay, so let's put it about right there. And I can tell her nose, it doesn't end on this line. It ends right up here, okay? But in my painting, if I had continued on with this and rendered it and added all the details in the world, it would have ended up too low. This needs to push up. So then at this point, I see, Okay, I need to make a couple changes here. What did I learn? I learned that the nose needs to be pushed up, and so does this chin. With digital art, you can either hand paint that. If you want to, though, you could even take the selection tool back on your painting layer. Go ahead and duplicate it. Take that selection tool, grab free hand, select it. Grab the transform arrow, push it up. And it looks awkward, but that's more proportionally accurate than what I had before. Okay? So you can do that in digital art. We do have this luxury of just using the selection tool and pushing things around and I definitely utilize it. However, I typically this early on in a piece because I'm a painter, I like painting, so I would rather go back and just hand paint and make those corrections. So you'd go back here and say, Okay, let me grab my brush I like. You'd go back here and say, Okay, that's got to move up. We can try and fight it, but it's got to move up, so there it goes. Okay. And then it looks like the lips have to go up too. There's more space here with the lighting of the bottom of the chin there. So that's got to push up. These lips have to push up. So that eventually this nose can also be pushed up. Okay. So this is more proportionally accurate than what I had previously. Then, of course, you can take these horizontal lines, turn them on and off, use them as they're beneficial to you. I don't recommend gridding out an entire piece. For me, I just think that takes a little bit of the joy out of it. But you're your own artist and your own person. If you want to use the grid method where you literally do out a full grid, you do you. You have fun. As long as you're enjoying the process, I think that's what matters most. So this is how I start my pieces on a solid foundation, my paintings. I make sure I have a reference that has incredible lighting or just great lighting. I make sure I set up my reference and my painting perfectly side by side on a high quality canvas. I think in terms of abstract shapes of light and dark, shapes of value, and then I always make sure I check proportions before adding any amount of detail. This is my approach to starting on a solid foundation. And I kind of stay in this state where things are malleable until I know everything's in the right spot, and I have a really solid light and shadow statement down on the campus. Don't go into detail mode until you know those proportions are correct and everything's in the right spot. And as a quick note, I know some folks like to work on a bunch of layers on a painting. I'll typically do is work on one layer kind of in a more traditional fashion. So say I liked how this looked, what I would do is just swipe left and duplicate it, and then work on that duplicate. What that does for me is I kind of am storing up backups of the piece if I need them, but at the same time, I'm working on one layer. So I don't separate things by the eyes, the nose, the mouth, whatever. That's a different approach, which leads to great results. I just don't personally work that way when I'm doing a more realistic portrait. Just wanted to make a note of that. 6. Class Project: Let's talk about your class project. Your project is to start your own portrait painting. Sometimes starting can feel intimidating. But I hope the process you just saw will help you see that it's approachable. It doesn't need to be this scary thing. You don't need to finish a full detailed painting. Just follow the steps we just covered to get your portrait off to a strong start. That means picking a good reference photo, or you can use the one that I used, setting up your canvas and procreate with a nice, high quality canvas, blocking in the big shapes of light and shadow, and doing a quick proportional check. You can stop right there and share a screenshot of what you make. I've included two resources to make it easier for you, the reference I'm using in class, and also the brushes I used in the demo. And you can grab those right here in the projects and resources tab on a computer. Whether you follow along with me or try this on another portrait, I can't wait to see what you make, so be sure to share with us in the project section. 7. A Look at the Full Process: Real quick, I'm going to play back a little bit of this time lapse replay here, you can see how the piece progresses. Let me play this and I can explain what's happening. But I do set it up with the big shapes of value. You'll see here, big shapes of value, looking at negative space. But it's very abstract in the beginning. We're not thinking in terms of line and doing like you would with a pencil sketch. There's really no sketching here. It's really thinking with a painterly mentality, thinking with big shapes. Here I'm checking my proportions. Of course, you can also look at vertical lines. Here I'm getting up close to the anatomy. You can see I'm sort of breaking down the forms there. So once you get something up on the canvas, that's when you can go into these details. But even still, you can see how it's very blurry. I'm not getting super detailed. I'm not drawing eyelashes yet. Looking at perspective, making sure proportions are right. Okay. And then finally, at the very end, I get into some detail. So hopefully that just gives you a little bit of an idea of how this process looks. But I do want to show you a few more techniques that can help you create really expressive, beautiful portraits. So let's go ahead and jump in. 8. Quick Tips: Edges : Switching gears a little now. I want to show you some easy go to painting techniques that you could try in your future pieces. These are just some fun things I like to play around with as I'm working through my pieces, especially in the middle and towards the end of my process. I think these techniques add a lot of expressiveness and uniqueness to paintings, and they are experimenting with edgewk, playing with color, experimenting with brushwork, and adding textures. So let's first talk about edgework. So when I'm talking about edges, I'm talking about soft edges that are sort of misty and smooth and hard edges which are crisper, and it's just the edge between two areas. So let's take a look at this as an example. So if I make a comparison, I'm going to show you a hard edge versus a soft edge or a softer edge. So right here on this shoulder here, do you see how the edge here is a little bit tighter between this light red and this darker red? Then as you move over towards here, it's softer and mistier here. This is a softer edge. This is a harder edge. And I think what brings a lot of beauty to a piece and a lot of expressiveness is exploring that difference. So here again, there's a really hard tight edge, whereas over here, it's really misty and smooth, right? And you can see this throughout the whole piece, and it kind of helps your eye to bounce around the piece. I tend to use mistier edges around the edges of, like, shoulders and things like around this collar, it got a little misty, but it's going to depend on the reference, too. So let me look at a reference where I have the image here. So back here on this one. You know, you get to choose as the artist what to make hard and what to make soft, but you can also use the reference as a guide. So here, I noticed that on her forehead, it kind of was a nice point here. You know, there's a lot of bone structure here, so I wanted to make this a tighter edge right here on her forehead. So that's what I did. I made it a nice hard edge where there's a clear edge between her face and the background, okay? But then over here, a place that's less important like her shoulder, I thought, Well, why would I put a hard edge right at the edge of the piece? That's going to take my viewer's eye right off the edge, and they're gonna go look at something else. So instead of mimicking the hard edge that's right here, it's very hard. You can clearly see the distinction between her shoulder, her shirt color, and the background. Instead, I thought to myself, Well, why don't I make it softer right there, mistier so that my viewer's eye is in catching this point that's going to fly right off the page and onto something else. Okay? So I made it soft so that the focus would remain here on the face. So I want to show you how to get soft edges in your pieces, and two ways, I like to get hard edges in my pieces. So in my work to get soft edges, I love to use Procreate's soft pastel brush. I've modified it a little bit, but I love to use it with this mudg tool, this one that looks like a finger right here. I grab that and I use this brush right here. Okay. And the size just depends on what exactly you're smoothing out and softening, but kind of like a middle range is typically good for my use. And what I like to do is I just go like that. Not too hard, not too soft, just kind of softly, push one color into the next. And I don't know what it is about this combination of soft pastel smudge brush and smudge tool, but it's just a magical little way to soften colors. And you just do it kind of softly like that. And it's also great for unifying an entire piece. So say everything got a little too detailed, oftentimes what I'll do is I'll take my soft pastel smudge brush and just go over the whole thing. And it just makes everything a little mistie and just brings it back to a more uniform state. See that difference? So what I like to do is just make it a little misty in places. And that's what's going to make your harder edges even more special. Back when I first learned how to draw and was experimenting with painting things more realistic, I found that I wanted to make everything a hard edge. I wanted everything to be tight and realistic. And then I learned about edges and I found the beauty of the soft edge. I think what a soft edge does is it makes when you put them in, it makes it so that your harder edges can really sing. They can really be something special versus everything being all hard edged. So that's how I like to make a nice soft edge. But let's look now at how we can make a harder edge. So there's two main ways I like to do this. You can use a selection tool. So let's pretend like we want to crisp this back up. So I got really misty. Maybe we decide, I don't want to make it misty. I want to make it a harder edge. This is what you could do. You take the selection tool and use the freehand selection, and you just kind of go like this, select right up on the area where you want it to be a little bit harder in edge quality. Then I like to use the six B brush that's perfect for this. I'm going to pick up the background color. I'm going to select the background color, and then I'm just going to butt it up right up against that headscarf there. Then when I deselect it, see how nice and crisp and sharp that is now. So this is a really hard edge there. Let's see back that soft edge. See? But you can go either way with it. And I think exploring these edges is where your work is really going to start looking kind of magical and dreamy. So have fun with your edges. Let me go back to where it was a hard edge. I think that looked kind of cool. Alright. Now let me show you one more method or way of making a hard crisp edge, and that is with the six B brush. So this six B brush right here, what you can do is this brush is very versatile. Let me show you how to layer on top here. It can do thin marks, but if you put it on its side, so right now I'm holding it kind of upright. If you tilt it downward, and I like to put my hand on top like this and hold it that way, you can make this nice thick sort of stroke like that. I find that on those thick strokes where it's like that. Do you see how this is a hard edge right there? And here it's kind of misty and softer. So if I want to make a hard edge, I would just put it on its side and put the pencil using this edge against the hard edge. Let me see if I can find somewhere to show you. So say I wanted to crisp up like this area of her neck here. I wanted to make this part like a harder edge between this dark and this light color. What you could do is you have to kind of move it around so that it's the right angle for the pencil. But what you could do is pick up a nice dark color. Let me make it even darker and using that hard edge, just kind of push it right against there. And you'll have to get some practice with this pencil. I've been using it for I don't know. Yes and years and years now. So I'm pretty familiar with it. But I think once you get familiar with this brush, you're really going to like it and how versatile it is. And this is an old legacy brush that they took away, and I made a couple of modifications to it, so it's a little different than it was before. But that's how I like to do it. That's just another way. You can add some sharper edges to your piece. And then if it gets a little too hard in here, you can always go back, soften it up with that soft pastel, right here. 9. Quick Tips: Color: Now let's chat about color. There are so many ways you can experiment with the element of color, but this is one of my very favorite techniques, and that is to add different colors on top of each other and colors that you wouldn't necessarily expect. So here on this one, I added this little if you zoom in. See this little pop of pink in there. Or, you know, right along the edge here even. Maybe you can see it. You see this little, like, blue. Like, you wouldn't expect to see that color there, but it makes it exciting, and it just makes your colors more exciting to look at. So right here, we have a little bit of green. So that sort of thing. Let me see if I can find another example here. Let's look at this one. So here on this one, I was like, Oh, what would it look like if we added this nice slice of blue in here? It's different. It's a little bit unexpected. And the same thing with this, this little purple. And what I'm often thinking about when I'm doing this is I'm thinking in my head, Well, she's got a yellow headscarf here. What if I added the complimentary color or the color across the color wheel from it? Would that make it look more exciting and more visually appealing to see that contrast of color there? And even in the background here, I added it a little bit. So here, it's kind of just this boring brown color. But I thought, Well, let's spice it up, make it a little more scintillating and add it in a little bit of purple, adding these little blue marks, just experimenting and playing. And digital art makes this so easy to do, there's no reason to not experiment because if you don't like it, you can always delete it. You can always do it on a new layer. If you don't love it, delete it. 10. Quick Tips: Brushwork: To let me show you some brush work techniques. You don't have to tightly render everything. In fact, I think the beauty of portraits can come from the spontaneity of your brush strokes. So instead of making everything perfectly realistic, try being more artistic and abstract in places. And like you can see here, I find great places to explore this are in the backgrounds. And like I said, digital art makes this experimentation so easy. You can always try something out if you don't like it, delete it. So here, you know, I didn't want to render out the shoulders. I didn't want to do all so I went for a more prima painterly vibe where I just kind of hinted at, well, what would a shirt line look like? And I did a little painterly brush stroke there. And then, you know, here in her head scarf, you know, it's very simple. It's just simple strokes. It's not fully rendered. It's not just, like, fully rendered satin cloth. It's just brushstrokes. You know what I mean? And that's what I think is fun about painting, doing things that are artistic. Like, these are just a bunch of strokes here. And I think I pulled this piece into a little bit further. Let's see this final piece. So we can see, you know, I had fun. I just kind of slopped on some digital paint. You know what I mean? Up here too. The brushes I really like to use for more expressive brush work are some more painterly brushes or ones that are a little bit jagged. So in the set I've given you, glossy paint is great for this painterly. This one here is great. It just comes from not thinking about it too much. What you can do in a scenario like this is literally duplicate your painting. You're feeling your painting, you're liking it, but you want to have a little fun, duplicate your painting and just start playing. Just start having a little bit of fun. It doesn't have to be this thing that's super serious. Where everything is rendered out. And there's nothing wrong. If you want to render something, you do it. If you want to make something super realistic, you do it. Like you just got to follow whatever your artistic gut is telling you in the moment for what's going to make the best piece. So, like, that's kind of fun. It makes it more artistic to look at and kind of just adds a little bit more energy into it. You can kind of feel that energy of making those brush strokes. In my portrait making process, the goal is to capture the essence or spirit of the subject, but also while adding my own artistic flair and brushwork can help a lot with that. 11. Quick Tips: Textures: Textures, there's just something about adding a paper or canvas texture on top of digital work that just brings it to the next level. It just gives it this real feel that I just love. So here's how you can add a texture to your piece. What you'll want to do is, and I typically do this towards the end of my portrait making process, what I'll do is go to the wrench icon, add, insert a photo, and you'll want to have some already stored in your camera roll. Okay. And then let's try this one. So it imports on Zoom here, grab that transform arrow and just make sure it's big enough to cover the whole thing. And then what I love to do with this is just play with the blend modes. So tap that in next to the texture you put in, and just scroll through these blend modes. You can really get some, like, fun looking things here. Let me zoom in so you can see the grain a little bit better. And you just scroll through and see what do I like to look of? Typically, for me, I'll do multiply blend mode. Sometimes color burn, sometimes linear burn just kind of depends. I'll also often play with the opacity of it to get, you know, just the right. It's like, how much salt do you want? You know what I mean? It's just to taste. So you decide what you like to look of there. But typically, I'll go for multiply. I find that that gives a nice little bit of texture without being overwhelming. 12. Next Steps: So much for joining me in class today. I hope you're feeling more confident starting your portraits and procreate. And remember, you don't need to have everything figured out in the beginning of piece. Just taking those first few steps like finding a great reference, setting up a high quality canvas, locking in the big shapes value and checking your proportions can give you a solid foundation to make the whole painting process feel a lot simpler as you move forward. Now, I have some things I'd love to share with you. If you'd like to keep exploring portrait painting with me, I have a free portrait art starter kit for you that you can grab. There, I'll share a free mini training, appropriate rush pack, and more helpful guides to support you as you grow your portrait painting skills. You can find a link to my portrait art starter kit in the Projects and Resources tab, your own Skillshare. And if you're ready to continue learning to paint portraits, start to finish. I'd love to invite you to join me in my full class here on Skillshare. Paint with me digital portrait painting and procreate. In that class, we'll move past the foundation stage and walk through the entire process of painting a portrait and procreate step by step. If you love painting portraits, you'll love this class, and I really hope to see you there. Thank you again for being here with me. I hope you enjoyed and until next time, happy painting.