Procreate Tutorial - Learn how to draw cute animals

1. Introduction Cute Animals in Procreate: Hello guys, I'm Marie an illustrator, surface pattern designer, and kids book author from Munich, Germany. I am well known for my wonderful word of cute animals, be it on fabrics, kids clothing, or interior items such as wallpaper, pillows, and more. My client portfolio has some impressive names on it like Adobe, Canva, Auto Desk, and Microsoft. Did you always wanted to learn how to draw animals and procreate, but found it frustrating with this fun class. I will finally teach you how to make it happen. Come with me in the fun class and I will teach you exactly how to get from this. Do this. I will also teach you how to use geometric shapes to create your own animal as well. Are you ready to unleash your creativity and bring a drawable creatures to life on your digital canvas? In this comprehensive class, I will cover a wide range of topics to equip you with essential skills to create charming animal illustrations. We will begin with a fun Chris to find out what crazy animal you are. Are you a sweet kangaroo, a funny poodle, a chikiiref or a wise? Get ready to dive into the process, gather inspiration from online sources like Pinterest or my own book, and learn some procreate tips and tricks along the way. You are then ready to discover the secrets of colors and learn how to utilize color in procreate. To bring your animals to life, a distinct color palette can help you grow illustration artist immenly. That's why I'm offering three free capelets, free of charge to my students. Once again, deep calpet, one mid century capelet, and one bo calapet. There's really something for everybody's style. Furthermore, we will explore the vast word of procreate brushes and how they can elevate your illustrations. I guide you through using various brushes to adapt texture and personality to your acute animal creations. We will find out where to find cool brushes and how to import them to procreate. With those tools, you can create truly unique drawings. As a warming up exercise, we will trace over different reference photos from real life ones to mid century Putin and brass figurine swans. Then it is time to draw your own animals. One of the key aspects we will delve into is mastering the art of drawing cute animals by exaggerating basic shapes like circus. You'll learn how to take simple circles, squares, and trans and transform them into irresistible, adorable creatures. Unleash your creativity, and develop unique styles through these techniques. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced artist, this journey will help you develop your skills and create delightful animal illustrations to make your learning experience even more convenient. I've included a free procreate che sheet. This handy resource will guide you through all the essential gestures you need for a quick and efficient workflow. Appropriate. Print it out and stick it somewhere you can see it While drawing on your ipad Pro. It's a must have tool for any aspiring propriate artist for your project. I encourage you to create your very own cute animal illustration practice what you've learned in my class, and see your first animal coming to life. Just make sure you have fun watching and drawing. Are you ready to embark on this creative journey with me? Let's start right away. 3. Inspiration Session: Before we start, let's gather some inspiration. Look for pictures of cute animals online and immerse yourself in their charm. For this exercise, I love to type things like cute animal, sweet animal, et cetera, into the search bar of sites like Unsplash.com and Pexels.com Those sites offer license free images, you can easily use as a photo reference for drawing if you want to look for a specific animal, for example a cat, just type cat into the search bar to get execute results. You can even put baby in front of it. Another way is to have a look at my book, Cute Animals, which is available on Amazon. It is filled with 70 adorable creatures you can use as a reference to. Let's just flip through it for a second. Another idea is to get inspiration from animal figurines. My favorite ones are from the mid century era and I've collected a lot of them here on my pincher spot. Most of them are wooden figurines, but I've also get some ceramic and brass ones if you are looking for detail. Brass is the ones you want to look at, but if you are into simplified shapes like me, the wooden ones are great. The ceramic ones are mostly abstracted. In a way to, this is also a great way to sort around. These whimsical and minimalist designs can serve as a unique reference for your creations. Are you more into real life photographs? Take out my photos of Sweet Animal Sport on Pinterest. 4. Color Theory and Color Palettes: Colors are a fun way to elevate your drawings in procreate. Let's take a quick journey into the world of colors by learning more about colors. Colors are a fundamental aspect of design and instantly evoke emoss ask yourself, what kind of colors do you gravitate towards? Are you more of a minimalist gandy type that loves colors? Do you like earth tone colors which are often described as Bohemian? Or are you a real color fan who loves every color on the planet, especially blue? And its core color theory examines three primary components, U, value and saturation refers to the purest form of a color. It encompasses the distinct color of the spectrum, such as red, yellow, and blue. Along with the countless variations the artist's color wheel. A circular representation of color is often used to visualize and organize the use. Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. By adjusting the value, you can create a range of tones from deep shadows to bright highlights. This element is crucial for establishing in an artwork. Play around with the values of some colors. Google some hex codes and put them into here to see how the color looks on your ipad. Saturation, also known as intensity or chroma, represents the purity or vividness of a color. Highly saturated colors are vibrant and odd, like my blue shirt, while desaturated colors appear more muted or grayish. By manipulating saturation, artists can influence the moot and visual impact of the work. Color theory also explores the relationships between colors and the harmonies. These harmonies are widely create aesthetically pleasing compositions. Let's have a look at a few common color relationships. Complementary colors are positioned opposite each other on the color wheel. Examples include red and green, blue and orange, or yellow and purple. When placed together, complementary colors create a high contrast and can be used to make elements stand out. Try this out on your ipad by drawing two complimentary colors next to each other. Analogous colors share similar undertones and creating harmons soothing effect. You can use analogous colors schemes to, of unity and coherence in your artwork. Try this out on your ipad by drawing two analogous colors next to each other. Monochromatic color schemes involve using different shades, tints, and tones of a single color. This approach creates a homimonious and unified visual experience. Monochromatic compositions can be soothing, elegant, or impactful depending on the choosing color and its variations. Try this out as well on your ipad by drawing two monochromatic colors next to each other. One of the most exciting aspects of Bcd ability to import color palettes, allowing artists to expand the creative quote possibilities. Importing color palettes into procreate not only saves time, but also ensures consistency and cohesion in your digital artwork. Here's a guide on how to import color palettes into procreate on the ipad Pro. Before importing a color paulette, you can either select an existing palette, like one of those we have made for you for free, or create your own. There are numerous online resources available that offer pre make color petes for various themes, moods, and artistic styles. My favorite website for this is just head over to Ww.com and type in procreate color palette. I would always sort for top ratings, as I feel this gives me the best options, There's a preview of each color palette. So this can really help you choose the ones you really love. Another great and free resource is Pinterest. Go to Pinterest.com and make an account if you already have one, that's cool too. Now you can check out my color palettes put under Pinterest.com Income for Creators Color palettes. With one of my pre made color palettes, you can now import them into Procreate, choose the one you love most, and save it on your cloud space like Google Drive, Clod, Chair Point, et cetera. If you saved your palette as a dot swatches file, open, procreate and create a new canvas. Tap the plus button to access the actions menu. Select Palettes, and then tap the plus button to create a new palette. Name your palette and tap next, tap on the newly created palette. Choose add it, and select Import. Locate the dot swatches file you saved and tap Import palette will now be available for use appropriate. Once your color palette is successfully imported into appropriate, it will appear in your list of palettes. Tap on the palette to access the colors in it. You can now experiment with your imported colors, use them to create digital artwork, and apply them to your brushes and layers. To apply a color from your imported palette to brush or layer, simply select the desired color from the palette and start painting or drawing. This allows you to maintain consistency in your artwork and easily switch between colors from your imported palette without the need for manual color picking. 5. Procreate Brushes and how to import them: After we covered colors, let's talk about procreate brushes in detail. Procreate comes with a diverse collection of default brushes that are great for a variety of styles. These brushes are readily available when you install the app. Pct also has its own brush library where you can explore and download additional brushes. To access it, tap on the brushes icon, then tap on the plus sign at the top right corner and select import. If you are looking for more specific brushes, like the brushes from more era, let's say mid century brushes for example. You can also buy some will sow you three of my favorite brushsurces on the Internet. Now first of all, I recommend the lovely Lisa Vado. You can find your brushes on her. Do Brush.com I suggest you look around. She also has great ideas on how to practice during regularly that cool resource is Creative Market. Just head over tow Creativemarket.com and underbrushes and more. Select, procreate, undersftware. Popular brushes never disappointed me so far. And if you are feeling adventurous, you can filter for staff pigs, which are also great. I also want to recommend Ts for buying brushes. Go to Wts.com and type in procreate brushes. I always filter for top ratings as I don't like to waste my money. Additionally, Procreate allows you to create your own brushes, giving you the freedom to customize and experiment with unique brush styles to create your own brushes and procreate Follow these steps. Tap on the brushes icon in the toolbar to access the brush library score to the bottom of the brush library. And tap on the plus sign to create a new brush set. Tap on the new brush set to open it. Then tap on the plus sign again to create a new brush. Adjust the brush settings according to your preference, such as shape, size, oprecity, and texture. Once you're satisfied with the brush settings, tab on Don to save your custom brush. By creating your own brushes, you can further personalize your cute animal illustrations and explore unique styles to reflect your artistic vision. Next, it is time to draw your first cute animal impropriate. We'll delve into the step by step process of drawing a poodle from a wooden figurine picture. Let's get started. 6. Draw your first cute animal with me: Drawing adorable creators can be a fun hobby, and Procreate provides a fantastic platform for this. In this tutorial, we will explore the process of drawing a cute poodle and procreate using an ipad Pro and the Apple pencil. With the aid of a photo reference. Let's dive and create a cute poodle together. Open, procreate on your ipad Pro and create a new canvas by tapping plus icon in the top right corner. Ensure your canvas size is suitable for your intended final artwork. For a beginning, it is always to use a big canvas. I always like to start with the screen size. Tap on the wrench icon in the top right corner of procreate, select Ad and choose the photo reference of the poodle formula devices gallery. I also love for photo reference to just screenshot my desired photomultaneously. Press and then release the top button and the home button. Then click on Done and Save to focus. Next, click on the arrow and pinch your fingers to make the enumeral in your photop. Beware, don't go over the edge of a canvas, otherwise, animal will fall off and we don't want that right. Adjust the opacity of the photo reference layer by tapping on, on the layer to make it fainter. Allowing you to sketch on top of it, create a new layer on top of the photo reference layer. Choose a pencil brush, observe the photo reference closely, and sketch the basic shapes of the poodle. Using light strokes, focus on capturing the proportions and overall form of the pole. A good tip is to squeeze your eyes a bit. Seeing the overall basic shapes of the poodle, can you see how this poodle is made of four circles for the head and one for the tail. H over two for the body, four for the paws, and two long ones for the ears. And there as well, put in a triangle and two rectangles for the leg and you have a final pol. Did you know that appcate snaps into perfect shapes? When you draw for this just draw shape. For example, the circle for the head and hold. Do you see how it snaps into the perfect circle shape? Well, we don't want a circle shape for the head of the pulling this time. But it is a cool feature. With this, you can achieve accurate lines and shapes, maintain symmetry, and save time. Let's exercise this a bit more. Go to Pexels.com and type in a few animals. Observe them, and find out what basic shapes they are made of. Time for a digital layers session, I promise it will be fun on top of it. It involves burgers. When you create a new canvas in propriate, it starts with one default layer to add more layers types plus chen in the layers panel usually located on the top right. Each layer appears as a separate section in the layers panel stack one above the other. The layer order determines the visibility order of your elements hide layers by clicking on the check box next to the layer. Layers at the top of the stack appear in front of layers below them. You can rearrange layers by tapping and dragging them up or down the layers panel. Imagine layers like a burger. When you are looking at the burger from above, you can see the first P and underneath the cheese lettuce and peg To draw on specific layer, select the del layer and the layers panel by tapping on. Once a layer is selected, any stroke you make will only appear on that layer once the refined shapes are in place. I like to refine even more for this. I'm thinking of the color I want to the poodle to be. In our case, I'm using a cool mid century bound for the body of the poodle for my mid century color palette. Under sketching, I like to select the nuin pencil and create a new extra layer for every shape of the poodle. Now I want to teach you a time saving method of filling in the poodle shape with color. By using the Pain packet tool and procreate, you can easily fill closed shapes, the solid colors. First of all, make sure you are on the layer with the shape you want to fill. Tap on the color you want to fill enclosed shapes. Hold and drag your pencil onto the enclosed shape and release the shape. Procreate will automatically fill the selected area with the color you have chosen. In the beginning, I often made the mistake to not connect the lines of shapes, like here with the body. Then the whole canvas wind the color I picked. It is crucial to have connected lines for filling shapes this way. Let's find out where the shape is not connected properly when the shape is close. Provides a quick way to add depth and visual interest to your artwork. Another way to color in is more time consuming but sometimes relaxing as well. It is the old school way of coloring in. Do you remember being a kick coloring in all of your color books? I loved it. Let's take a trip down. Memory laying here. Create a new layer. And select, for example, the flat brush in the painting section. Slide down the size to color in the edges of the shape and make the size bigger for blocking in the rest. To create rough edges, I love to use the brushy liner from the gorgeous mid century illustrated Bad bushes, which is my favorite kit by the way. Don't forget to use separate layers for each color to make adjustments easier later on. Once the basic shapes are in place, we find your sketch by adding more details to the poodle such as its eyes, nose and mouth. Let's start with the nose. Now. It is a perfect time to explain alphalog to you. It allows you to protect the content on a specific layer from unintentional changes. Let's say for example, you want to draw the nose of the body on the pole, but do not want to draw over the edge of your shape. That alphalog is the perfect feature for you. Create a new nose layer on this layer double. Now select alpha to keep this layer safe. Select a darker bar for the nose of the poodle and slide up the oppresity to see better as you can see. Now if you draw over the edge of the shape, it only keeps the colors in the shape. This is great if you want to, this is great if you change to use a different color instead. Or just want to draw where you've already drawn, create a new layer to draw the eyes of the poodle. Draw the shape of the ice, and fill in the shape, tap the layer, and draw detals of the ice. Either way, it is always a good idea to exaggerate things like the eyes, ears, and head to make animals cutter. This depends on the type of animal, though it is a fun exercise to look at photos of bigger animals and baby animals to see what exactly makes the baby animal look cute. You can draw the second eye by duplicating the first eye layer. Just site the first layer to the left and select duplicate from this. Now you can move it around by selecting the arrow on the left, right hand con. To practice Alphloc a bit more, let's move onto the tail layer now, Alpo Alpha, lock it by tapping it and selecting alpha log, draw onto the tail with another color. Just to practice alpha log, we nearly finished our cute animal. To imitate the fur, just doodle along a bit, make sure you have fun drawing guys. There are also some great fur voices out there in the world. If you love details, some basic lines are cool for drawing the beard, mouse and part details. Consider adding a sweet little spot where poly sits on to enhance the composition of your drawing. For this, I love the Spco from Sabado which is also from the mid century kit. Create another layer, drag it under all the other layers I already have. And use a green color with a few brush stocks or the pool as green dress to sit. Congratulations, you've illustrated your first cute animal by following the steps and using a photo reference. As your guide, you can bring your doable poodle to live. Remember to explore different brushes, textures, and exaggerated shapes to infuse your drawing with personality. Now let's move on to drawing basic shapes or more photos to understand the technique of drawing with basic shapes better. 7. Draw other cute animals: Drawing animals can be a delightful and rewarding experience. Especially when you use basic shapes as a foundation. By observing photos of the animals you want to draw. And breaking them down into simple geometric forms like triangles, circles, rectangles and more, you can easily capture their essence and create charming illustrations. First of all, find high quality photos of the animal you wish to draw. Look for images that provide clear views in various angles to help you understand the animal's structure and proportions. Again, look at websites like Paxil.com or at my Pinter Sports photos of sweet animals or admit Century animals for inspiration. Make screenshots of the pictures you like most and open them and procreate. Take a few moments to study the reference photo carefully. Pay attention to the overall shape of the animal, the placement of its features, and any unique characteristics that define its appearance. Begin your drawing by identifying the most prominent shapes in the animal's body. For you might use a large circle for the head trans for the ears. Or be rectangles for the body or limbs and circles or ovals for the eyes. Using a pencil, lightly sketch the basic shapes in the appropriate positions on your drawing surface. Keep your lines loose and faint as these initial shapes will serve as guidelines that you find Later with the underlying shapes you find, you can start adding more specific details to your drawing. Study the reference photo to observe the animal's fur, further scales or other distinctive features, and incorporate them into your illustration. Remember to work from general to specific, gradually building up the level of detail. As you continue finding your drawing, you may need to erase certain lines, shapes that no longer align with the reference photo. Don't be afraid to make adjustments as necessary to ensure acute result. Once you're satisfied with the oval structure and details, darken the lines that you want to keep and erase any remaining construction lines. This process will help you drawing stand out and appear more polished. Don't limit yourself to a single approach of style. Feel free to experiment with different combinations, shapes and expoy creativity. As you gain more experience, you develop your own unique artistic style and techniques. Try different brushes like rayon watercolor and ones. Just fun, remember, drawing animals with basic shapes is a skillful text practice. Be patient with yourself and enjoy the journey of discovering new ways to capture the beauty of the animal kingdom through your art. 8. Procreate Gestures and Your Project: Last but not least, I want to show you how to enhance your workflow with gestures. When it comes to maximizing your productivity and efficiency appropriate on the IP Pro, mastering shortcuts and gestures is key. These intuitive actions allow you to navigate through the app, access tools and features, and perform actions. In this guide, we'll delve into the world of shortcuts and focus specifically on the powerful gestures available appropriate. Let's explore how gestures can enhance your workflow and make your artistic process even smoother. Two finger tap, a simple yet powerful gesture. The two finger tap serves as an unction. If you make a mistake or want to prevent to the previous state of your artwork, simply tap with two fingers on the screen to undo your last action. This gesture can save you valuable time and help you maintain a seamless creator flow. Pinch in and pinch out. Gesture are used for zooming in and out of your artwork. By placing two fingers on the screen and either pinching them together or spreading them apart, you can adjust the zoom levels and focus on intricate details or get an overview of your entire canvas. This gesture is invaluable for precision work and exploring different perspectives within your artwork. Two finger swipe from the side if you need to access the brush library quickly. Then two finger swipe from the left side on the screen will bring it up instantly. This gesture saves you the trouble of navigating through menus and allows you to switch brushes seamlessly, keeping your creative momentum flowing. When you want to access the layer panel swiftly, a two finger swipe from the bottom of the screen will reveal it. This gesture provides easy access to layer management, including adding new layers, adjusting opacity and blending modes, ensuring efficient control over your artworks composition. By mastering these powerful gestures, you can elevate your workflow appropriate on the Ip Pro. These shortcuts allow you to focus more on the creative process and spend less time searching for tools or performing repetitive actions. As you become familiar with these gestures, you will unlock new levels of efficiency and fluid fluidity in your digital artwork. Drawing with your fingers accidentally while working appropriate on the Ip pro can be frustrating. But there are a few simple steps you can take to prevent this from happening. I will tell you how Procreate offers a useful feature called touch accommodation that helps prevent accidental finger drawing. To enable it open Procreate, and go to the Settings menu under the Gesture Control section, Tog on Touch Accommodation. This feature detects when your palm or fingers are resting on the screen and automatically ignores any unintended touch inputs. One of the best ways to avoid accidental finger drawing is by using an apple pencil. It provides precise control over your artwork and eliminates the risk of unintentional touch inputs. If you find that accidental finger drawing is still occurring, consider using a drawing glove. Drawing gloves are specifically designed to cover part of your head, reducing fiction and preventing unwanted touches on the screen. They provide a smooth surface for your head to glide over the ipad pros display while keeping your fingers from interfering with your artwork. By following these steps, you can avoid accidental finger drawing and maintain better control over your digital art And procreate on the ipad Pro a seamless drawing experience and focus on creating. There you have it guys. You've learned everything to draw cute animals. I hope you've enjoyed the world and look forward for more classes of mine for your project. I encourage you to create your very own cute animal illustration practice what you've learned in my class and see your first animal coming to life. Just make sure you have fun watching and drawing. I'm always grateful if you find the time to review my class and let me know your opinion. Thanks for watching my class. See you soon, bye.