Procreate Painting Techniques: Creating Painterly Flowers in Procreate

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm flow A might know me from my easy to follow drawing tutorials on YouTube, my in depth tutorials at patriotic or my classes here at skill share. Of course, when you sign up for this class, you'll find a bunch of resource is in the resource section, like to special brushes with a realistic campus sexual that will be using for our class project. You'll also find my working file, some sketches that I've made and links to reference photos so you can start creating your own painterly looking flower in procreate. During this class, I will show you how you confined perfect reference for your painterly flower, how you can exercise your sketching skills. We'll talk about what brushes we should use to get this pain. Julie, Look, and I'll take you through the entire painting process off painting this painterly rose. And if you have any questions after following this class, please feel free to drop a common in the discussion section. I'm looking forward to guiding you through the process of creating painterly flowers. Let's get started 2. Finding References: to get started sketching and painting flowers. It's really important to get proper reference and study material. Depending on the season. You could just go outside and make pictures of the flowers that you see there in your garden or in a park. Or perhaps you could buy some lovely flowers. If you don't feel like going outside, there's a whole world of flour photos right here on the Internet. There are various stock photo websites where you can find lovely photos of flowers. I have left some links to some great looking reference photos in a resource section, but you could also just go to a website like unspool ash dot com. Search for flower images and you'll find a whole bunch lovely flower images. 3. Exercise: If you want to improve your drawing skills, you'll have to exercise and build those drawing muscles. It's just like building your real muscles. You'll have to go to the gym and do some. Exercise is great exercise. When you want to improve your drawing skills, it's making sketches, lots of them. So before we start making painterly flowers, let's make some sketches and do some exercise to sketch in procreate. We will be using the HB pencil, which you confined under sketching. But of course, you can use whatever sketching brush you like to creates catches in procreate. My canvas is 2500 pixels, but 2500 pixels. But for sketches, it doesn't really matter. It's all about the exercise. Of course, we are going to use a reference image, and a wonderful way to grab a reference image in Procreate is by just dragging up from the bottom of the screen and then dragged your favorite app to grab a photo. Drag it to the left side of your screen order right side if you're left handed. I like to use Google Drive, but you can use any app that you like, and then you can just have your reference image at the side of your screen. So let's get started creating some sketches. How do you go about sketching a pretty complicated flower like this one? Well, first of all, I try to not get distracted by all those pedals. I tried to look at the big shape first, so I'll sketch that outside of the flower first, and I'll think off angles here. So just focusing on the outside. I'm trying to. Well, if I'm lying some straight sticks around that flower, finding that really basic shape once catching, just don't try to get into any details at the starches. Look at the big shapes, and eventually we'll get to the smaller shapes. So first, let's start with big lines. And then I start to look at those pedals on the outside trying to get those, um, well, center off the flour is about there, and we can see that stem going down there and remember improving your sketching technique. That's just about doing it. A lot. Make a lot of sketches, and they don't need to be perfect. Just the more you practice, the better hope. Yeah, better, you will become so don't worry if you're not getting it right right away. So now I got that outside pretty much, and I'll start thinking about the pedals on the inside. Like I said, we have that center there and I can see that line going there just again, trying toe. Look at some simple shapes and it's OK. If your sketch is messy, for instance, I can see a little triangle there into flowers. Let's put that there, and I also try to measure that length. Will that height from that center of the flower to the top, where that is and where those other paddles are, You can see a pedal going up there, and especially when creating painterly flowers. You really don't have to get into a whole lot of detail for your sketch because we want to create that painterly look going all over the place, trying to capture that essence of those pedals, trying to find simple shapes. And once you have that outside shape, it's easier to measure everything inside it. Compare lengths, compare angles. How much space is there between pedals? Where do you see parts overlapping each other? Of course, you don't have to follow your reference exactly, but you do want it to look like a flower. But it doesn't matter if one paddle looks a bit different. It's not exactly the same as a reference, and you could keep it like this. Your sketch. You could keep it really rough. We can darken up that center a little bit. You can keep it really rough or well. The great thing about working digital statue could make a new layer on top. You could just lower the opacity of your first catch by clicking that and turning it down, Let's say 25% and then make a new layer on top of clicking the plus, and they even start making a more details. Catch on top off your first rough sketch. Your first rough sketch is a perfect base to start at detail in, because it will be easier to measure things out. So just use that sketch as a base and start tweaking little things. What you could do what your sketches also add a little bit of value, a little bit of shadow to your sketch and the great thing with the HB pencil in procreate that if you use the side of your apple pencil, you will get a broader stroke, so that's great for adding that value. Just look at the darkest spots in the reference image. I had some shadow there. There we have sketch number one. It's a great idea to sketch multiple flowers just as an exercise toe warm up before you start painting flowers. Are you all warmed up? Now Let's get started making painterly flowers. 4. Brushes: to create a painterly look and procreate. You will need special brushes, and I have created a whole bunch of them. They all have a realistic Cavazos texture, and I am sharing two of these for free in the resource of section so you can start creating your own painterly flowers. I'm sharing the round smeary brush. Let me demonstrate the look. As you can see, it's Mary what the name says, and it has a nice canvas texture. So this is great for big shapes in your painting. When we are starting to create our painterly flowers, I'm also sharing the opaque, thin brush as the name says it. It's a thin brush for thin lines, and it's pretty opaque, so it's great for details. As you can see, this one also has that nice canvas texture. So this is all we need to start creating are painterly flowers. Do be sure to download these brushes through a browser, though you can't download. The resource is when you're using its kill share app. Unfortunately, and if you are a wildly enthusiastic about these kind of those brushes, then I will also leave a link in case you want to get the entire pack 5. Class Project: it's time for the class project for this class project. Off course, we will be making a painterly flower. You could eat or go and grab your own reference and make a painterly flower from that. Or you can also grab one of my sketches through The resource is page. You might have to download them through a browser, though I'm not sure if it works through the skill share app. Once you're finished with the project, do be sure to share it. I really love seeing your results, and I think it's just great for everyone to see Childress results and learn from it. Let's not delay well, let's get started. 6. Making a Sketch: first thing we'll do for our flower is make a sketch. Of course, I have my reference image ready on the left side, and I have prepared a canvas. It is 3500 by 3500 pixels, and I have laid down a light based color using around smeary brush. That way, we already have a subtle canvas texture on our campus. Now let's make a new layer on top off that layer, which I have filled with a texture. Click the plus, and here we will start making our sketch. It doesn't really matter what's catching brush you use. You can just use the HB pencil from procreate. I'm going to use my sketching brush from my canvas painterly canvas brush set. Just pick a great color. You can actually pick any color you like, as long as it's darker than the canvas. But I like to go for agree, because that gives me the feeling of a real graphite pencil. So again for sketching, I will start off with that big shape. I'll just look at that rose for now, and I try to make kind of an angular shape on a look at those leaves, one going there just roughly, laying it down. We have little flower over there, and like I said during our sketching exercise, you really don't have to follow your reference exactly. But you do want it to look like a flower, of course, and we want that painterly look so it doesn't really have to look all neat and tidy. So now I'm working on those outer petals, still making pretty much angular shapes. You have that center over here. We can just a little circle there. For now, I'll add the little leaves on these tiny branches. I would just want this sketch to be a base for our painting. No need to get into really small details. Also, be sure to leave my working file in the resource is area as well, in case you want to download it and take a closer look at my painting and have my sketches just looking at the bigger shape of this little branch there and I'll assume in a little bit. And look at the pedals off that rose trying to feel like we have a little circle. Well, a big circle, actually, with all these rounded petals the outside pedals does look a little bit like triangles and the utter pedals on the inside. They are more rounded. The aren't curled like the ones on the outside. Let's go to that center. He don't have to sketch out every pedal in the painting phase. We don't need toe paint every individual pedal. We won't be able to focus on that center of the flower and add more details there and make the outside more painterly. I just want to get a rough idea off these pedals and a great way to look at. You're painting or into reference, and you're trying to decide what parts are important to sketch. To draw is to squint your eyes and look through your eyelashes that you can see quite a lot of detail near the center. But those pedals on the outside they almost merged together so we can reflect that in our painting. We don't have to paint small details there, so it's not really needed to make detailed sketch lines there because we will be merging color stare, making soft transitions there in our painting phase. We just want a hints where everything is placed, so we have some anchor points when? But when we're in the painting phase, let's look at this little branch There. You have that flower there, some little leaves. I just want to get an idea of the placement and will get more detailed there in our painting fees. All we need is a rough sketch. I think this could be enough. 7. Base Colors: The next step in our painting process is to add the base colors for our painting. I'd like to do that on a layer beneath the sketch layer, so we'll click the plus first to make a new layer and dragged underneath the sketch layer, and we'll grab the round smeary brush, which you can find in a resource section when laying down base color for my paintings. I always like to start out a little bit dark, so let's grab a base color for our flower. First, let me just grab a pretty dark pink color and let's start laying down the color. I have my brush said to 60% right now, but just be sure to play around with that size, and every time you touch your screen again, there will be new pain. So if you hold your pen on the screen, it will be like a smudge. Er, colors will be smart, hte all around, and if you release your pen, put it on your screen again. There will be new paint. Let's go a bit smaller so we can work on those outer edges. Let's say 25% and let's go around the edges, just giving everything that seem dark base color. And it doesn't really matter if your color it's very accurate right now or not. I always just like to start off with a color. And then as I go, I tweak that color just during the painting process. You need to start somewhere, and of course, it's better to start with a pink thank go in and drop. Drop a well, let's say a blue for your for your flower. That would be kind of weird. So let's just start with a pink and weaken tweet that during the painting process will make a pink dap there for that small flower and right here a swell, and I would switch to the greens again. I like to start out with a pretty dark color, go towards the yellowish greens and pick something like this. I'll make my brush a bit smaller, let's say 13%. Let's make some dabs forties leaves and we want that painterly look. So don't worry about details. It can be a bit rough. Just some dabs for these leaves. I'll focus on the leaves first and then later work on the thin little stems and we're using . That's kitsch as a guide. Right now, you could see that nice canvas texture showing up in her brushstrokes. Let's go a bit smaller again. Maybe 5% for these smaller leaves. Just making a base that we can use to continue painting in the next stage. All these little leaves here. Now let's switch to that thin, opaque brush opaque sin, and we can use that brush for the stems. Let's set it to 10% analysts at thes. This brush is great for the thin lines. It's like working with a very thin small pencil. Small brush, small tip, how we have dropped in our base colors. Oh, wait, let me also add a little based color for that core of the flower. So let me switch to the round smeary brush again and let's add a bit of orange there. Brownish color. Perhaps a bit like this. I will make the brush bit bigger again. 20% and let's drop in a base color there. I think we can go even darker, more reddish like that because, like I said, I like starting off with dark colors and then building up towards the lighter colors. Now we have a nice base to continue painting 8. Big Shapes to Small Shapes: In our next step, we will continue working on smaller and smaller shapes. So we will be working from the big shapes to the small shapes, and we will also build up the contrast. Let me just duplicate this layer for you so that if you download my file, you can check out my previous step. So let me just call it based colors and I will start refining. Let me I'll call this sketch. Let me lower the opacity of the sketch so we can see our paint a bit better. I've lowered it to 49%. Doesn't really matter what the exact number is. I will continue using around smeary brush. Let me pick up it's pink color and let's go lighter a bit like that. Lower the brush size to 10%. Let's work on the light areas on the flower, so I'll just look where I can see light areas. We'll make rounded petals on the outside. Oh, on the extreme outside will have these pointy looking curled petals and then the next circle towards the inside. Those art around pedals like here I could just make thes brown. It shapes, leaving a little bit of the dark pink between them we're using that's kitsch as a guide, so we're slowly building up contrast here, lightening up some areas you still don't have to worry about. Details. Don't soon. In too much of your painting, we wanted to look good from a distance. We want that painterly look and that counts for digital painting in general, don't assume in too much. It's so easy to zoom into your work and to get lost in those details. When you paint like in real life with traditional media, you can sue me neither. Well, of course, you can take a real close look at your painting, and even with traditional media, he needs it. Take a step back every once in a while, But with digital painting, it's even easier to get lost in those details into zoom and cat like crazy. And then you'll just lose the overall view of your painting, and you might soon out eventually and then find out that you're painting doesn't look that good, so focus on the big shapes. First, you're kind of making a fuzzy, a out of focus flower first, and if it looks like an out of focus lower. That's good. That's a good start. They can start adding details to try to stay away from zooming in too much. Congrats. A little bit of orangey brownish color for those pedals. There a little bit of that shadow. There's already starting to take shape. We go back to that light pink to cover those edges, even a bit more. And let's add a lighter green, two toes leaves. Let me pick up that color. Move it to a bit lighter green. I'll make the brush smaller 5%. Let's add some liar touches. So at the start at the beginning of the painting, I use very big brushes but big brush size. And then I continue. I start to make my brush smaller to work on smaller details. And if you start out with big shapes and you find a little flaw, your painting it's not that. Well, it's not that bad that you need to fix it because you haven't put in a lot of detail yet. Let's see, you started out with a lot of detail, A lot of work. Put your heart and soul into those details, and then you find out that you made a mistake and that you need to fix something that's just, well, Nobody likes that, and it's much. It's less worse if you haven't put that amount of time into details yet. If everything is still a bit blurry, you won't feel that bad when fixing mistakes. And it's easier to find mistakes if you stay zoomed out. And if you lay down your work every once in a while, maybe take a break, maybe even take a break for a day, then get back to you. Work the next day. It's easier to spot mistakes that way, and I'm not a great ways to, uh, flip your canvas Once in a while, it will give you a fresh look seated. I have for gotten a little ranch there. I will move to the left to the other leaves go back to 10%. You can just play around with your brush size. You might prefer a smaller brush, or maybe you're working on a different canvas size. Then you'll have to use other sizes as well. The bigger your canvas is smaller, your brush will appear. Make the brush a bit smaller. I'll go to 4% lighting up these a bit more. Let's move back to the flower itself. I want to work on that. Inside the core of the flower, I want a bright orange. Well, let's just make some gaps to give a hint off those. Well, I actually don't know what they're called, but the thing is, inside the core of the flower, where the bees like to be at right, just some small gaps. That's enough for now to give a hint of it. Now let's go lighter for our pedals. I'll pick up that color by holding my finger on the screen, and I'll grab a lighter pink so we can start adding lighter values. Just follow these shapes off the pedals, these rounded shapes leaving a little dark line between them. This nicely builds up that canvas texture. In our painting, I was trying to look at their reference and find those light areas in the in the flower. I try to focus on those right now, making these outward strokes that adds a nice texture to those pedals. You can kind of see it in the reference as well, making these rounded shapes with a small dark line in between them. That's where a little bit of shadow is because thes paddles are overlapping each other, you can find a nice, warm, dark ping shadow. And like I said earlier, you don't have to follow the reference. Exactly. I just want to create a painterly flower. Let's go to 20%. I just want to light it up that whole outside area a bit, making these n words strokes, because when you squint your eyes and look at the reference, you can barely see any dark lines. It looks very light. And as if all those pedals merged together on it outside, let's go even lighter. We'll make it a bit smaller again, 11% and by continuously going for a lighter color, you can really slowly build it up. Slowly build up those strokes. Let me turn on a sketch even more. I'll go to 14%. Just be sure to zoom out every once in a while. Take a look from a distance, check out your work, see if you still going in the right direction. It is already starting to look like a flower 9. Details: How do we have worked? From big shapes to small shapes and Adam more contrast to our painting? It's time to add more details, and we can do that with the opaque, thin brush. Let's start with the flower itself again. Let's zoom in on both the painting and the reference image. And let's work some details around those pedals like we see a pretty sharp edge near that shadow area, and I feel like it's a saturated reddish pink. So let's pick that. I have to brush set to 9% and let's add some sharper edges. I'll just look at some pedals that have a dark, ready shadow around them. Add some detail there you're painting. You want a variety of sharp edges and mawr soft transitions, and that's what we're doing here. What that were adding some more sharp edges. Go to this dark red color so you don't want a painting that just has a lot of fuzzy lines. Hey, don't want a painting that has old, sharp, crisp lines, either. You want a bounce between that and look at your reference image to see where you confined thes hard edges, those chris patches and way see soft transitions. Try to put those in your painting. We can go even a bit smaller. Let's say 5%. It was really thin lines around these pills. It's just something that I see often with beginner artists that they eater have a lot of soft edges, kind of like a airbrushed look. Or they have a lot of sharp edges, just the same amount of sharpness all over. So try to play around with that. Try to find those edges in your reference and put them in your painting. So now it's like we're having this really thin pencil with just a few hairs, and we're using that for some small details and are painting in our painterly flower and not copying the reference exactly. Just trying to find that essence off the flower. So don't stress yourself out trying to capture every little thing. Just relax. I'm just moving all over the place, going from left to right top to bottom, constantly looking all over that flower to see where I can add. So Mayer details some little sharp edges, and you can also pick a lighter color. Let's go to near white and add some tea to on this pedal, for instance, make these inches been more crisp. Get a little bit bigger. I'll go to 10% for some lighter edges on these pedals. And you might have noticed that I haven't used this much tool at all in this painting process. That smeary round, smeary brush that already blends while painting. And we're just making layer on top of layer, slowly building up those colors so it's not always necessary to blend or smudged. With that smarts tool, you can do a whole lot, but just painting. Let's also add a little bit more detail to the core. I want a nice, bright yellow like the brush. 5%. Let's make the little Wiggles. Let's also grab a dark orange. I want I, I would like to. To is turn off the sketch layer now. Another trick I like to use is overlay blend mode to tweak the colors in a painting. You can do that by adding a new layer on top of your layer with the painting, set it to clipping mask so that whatever we paint on it will only show up on our flower and set this layer to overlay So click the end and then go to overlay. And now let's grab the soft brush on their airbrushing and how we can tweak the colors of the flower a little bit. Let's grab a light pink, for instance. I make the brush a bit bigger. Let's say 12% capacity is at 40%. Now let's glaze over the flower. This is a bit bright. Let's go to an orangey color. You can see that this really gives a boost to the colors there. Let's see the difference. See, we can add some yellows as well to that center. That and you can play around with the opacity of this layer, with the slider turning it down just slightly. Let's see to 65%. And then you can just merged these two layers. How? Let's continue detailing. We'll go back to the painterly brush set and go for the O pic thin brush. Let's move to the leaves. Let's just pick a local color and with our opaque thin brush, gonna work on these edges a little bit, giving it some of those spiky edges. Just a little bit more detail. You don't have to do too much because we're going for that painterly look. It's also picked that dark green had some details to the leaves. I once also grab a lighter, more yellowish color, some little like details. Just don't overwork it. We want that focus to be on the flower itself, here on this side to concede it's a little bit messy. So what you could dio is go a selector eraser, and if you click it and hold it, it will select a brush that you were using for painting. So now our eraser is that opaque, thin brush. That way, you can make sure it's just still got that that canvas texture, even when erasing you don't want a weird, sharp edge, so you can just use that eraser to clean up some edges. Make it a bit smaller 6% and you can do that for the entire flour. Of course, you can also clean up the's parts a little bit because, like I sat, focus on those soft transitions and crisp edges, and around the flower you will see a crisp edge. You don't want blurry edges there. Just clean everything up. Also adding some of those well, those spiky edges on the leaves going over with the eraser. I think that gives a nice effect. They're now Let's go back to the brush. I work on the leaves a little bit more, going for a darker green, just adding some small details. It's really starting to come together, starting to look like the painterly painting that we want. So you really should stay away from the smudge tool because that we'll ruin the canvas texture. Always, you're using the special smudge her from my painterly brush set that just leaves the Comus texture. But don't go smudging with any other brushes. If you don't want to soft in it and ruined that texture, Let's lighten up this little knob here for but sure what it's called. I like the way that looks. What we just need is a little bit of a drop shadow. You can see that in a reference image, and we can add a little drop shadow for our painting as well. We can do that on a separate layer. Below are painting, so click the plus for a new layer and tragedy underneath. Call it shadow and let's use the round smeary for that. I want to use a grayish Koehler. Let's go for something like this. Let me make the brush a little bit bigger. Let's go for 15%. Let's add some shadow. Look at the reference. Look where you see that trad. Oh, we just need something subtle. There's not a very dark shadow underneath of flour with lights coming from above, so you're not seeing that much. But adding a subtle shadow does give a little bit more depth to our painting. If you hold your pencil on the screen while smearing, you can gently blend everything a little bit. Battles pretty dark there needs that area, so let's go a bit darker and what you could do for full control. You could go to the layer and lower the opacity a little bit to make that shadow even more subtle. You could go to, let's say, 70%. And there we have our painterly flower with canvas texture 10. Your Turn!: and now it's your turn to create your own painterly flower in the resource section. I have shared some links to some nice reference images, or you can just go to a reference website, a stock photo website and grab a reference of your own. Or, of course, go outside and make some pictures of lovely flowers in a resource section. You'll also find a couple of my sketches. In case you feel less confident about this catching face. You just want to practice creating that painterly look. They can grab some of my sketches. Be sure to share your project in the project section because I'm really looking forward to seeing your work. And remember, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I am here to help half on creating painterly flowers, and if you have enjoyed this class, they might want to collect the follow button. That way, you won't miss any of my upcoming classes. Thanks for watching