Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Leanne and welcome to my first Skillshare class. I'm the Digital fantasy artist based in Denmark. And today I'm here to share how to paint a realistic grayscale portrait in procreate. In this class, we'll be going over the process from start to finish. In humanism, basic anatomy, use a reference Anish with Intro to Procreate itself. So grab your iPad, file, procreate, and let's get started.
2. How to use Procreate: So we've made a new file in procreate is has the dimensions of an A3 piece of paper. And it is a CMYK color profile. Going from right to left. Up here in the corner, we have a color I prefer to have in the square. You can also go in the disk and you have color profiles, both setup for you and you can make your own if you want to. If you just want to fill in a shape, you can just drag the color like that and just tap two fingers to undo. Next to it you have the Layer tab. If you are unfamiliar with using layers in digital art, they essentially function as clear film on top of each other. So whatever you paint in one layer is only in that layer. You can delete a layer by swiping it, lift it clear. L1 can only be cleared, but if you have multiple layers, you can delete those. If you press the layer, you have different options of renaming, selecting, coping, filling, clearing. And you're going also alpha lock, which means you can only draw within the pixels you have locked, which we'll use layer. Or layers are going to be set to blend of normal, which means that they can overlap each other, but they do not interact with the layers beneath them. Next, we will have our eraser or smudge tool and our brush. I tend to have all three of these set to 0. And in the brushes, procreate comes with a lot of great brushes for sketching, inking, drawing, painting, a lot of different textures you can look at and see what tickles your fancy. I tend to stick with one brush that I've made myself. And if you want to make a brush, you symbol, press the plus here. And you can set up however you like. For the one I'm using, I willing to Shape Edit, Import and I used from Procreate own library. And the shape is here. Mess. Since I will be using my own brush, I'm going to show you the settings that I've done for it. And if you want to edit an existing brush to just add up. So I'm just going to quickly go through. So you can pause and replicate if you want to. You go. So you can make that brush if you want to. I certainly enjoyed it. It just has sort of blend the edges so that it blends nice for a painterly look, which I enjoy. It also has pressure sensitivity so that it goes like lighter if you don't press so hard. Is that the smudge tool to say? And it is supplied is amply can smudge things out kinda like if you would use graphite pencil and some paper and you can smudge it out with your hand. And I prefer to have the eraser set to the same brush just because I think it fits in a little bit if you do have to erase something. So we can take this. And we're going to left here first. Over here, you have the size of your brush or whatever tool you're using. If you want to select and select a color. You can also go here. We selected, or you can simply press down and hold your finger and also selects and lower part here, you have the opacity and you have undo and redo down here. But as mentioned before, you want to undo something, you can simply tap with two fingers. So up in this corner we have a few different things. We have the arrow which is Select, and it selects only in the layer that you are, we have only the shape these pixels engage in all layers of this is what is selected. Down here you can choose if you'd Freeform Uniform Distort orbit. If you were to alert, he gets smaller, you can flip it, rotate. Who sort of things next to it. You have a little marker tool so you can hear, forgot what it is you want to select or you could also copy and paste. Also very useful feature. So next to that, we have our adjustments. There's a lot of different things here. You can play and with the sketching process or even finished pieces liquefied can be useful too in either enlarge something or move it around, or you can blurt something, or you can change up the colors. And finally, you have little wrench. And here you just have your basic actions. If you want to insert a file or photo here, you can copy whenever they got going and you can paste it into new layer. You can also covered the entire canvas, which is also a very useful feature. And in the Canvas section here, you can resize and do different things if you want to. But what is important for us in this one is reference. We have here the option of enabling reference. By default. It goes to show you what you are, in fact working on now you own Canvas, but you can import an image and have it sitting right here, which a lot of people use. That is one way of doing reference. I'm going to show you my preferred reference in a moment. But now you know this is here and it isn't that radius for an excellent, we just have our share, which is where you either save onto your iPad or you can send it to iCloud. The video tab is whether or not you have enabled the time-lapse recording on your iPad. I have, which I think is very useful. Next you have your preferences. This is how I got this, it over here. And this is just so you can just feel. So as I mentioned before, I don't tend to use the reference feature in Procreate simply because it takes up a bit of my canvas at some times, which I don't appreciate. So I use viscera if instead, it's essentially mood boards. So I can have more than one reference going on the same little mood board. And I can just adjust it to sit by the side. And this way, I can zoom out and see my tie Canvas, which is why I do it this way. But that's a matter of personal preference. So try it out and see what worked for you.
3. Why use Reference?: So here I have imported the professional we'll be using today. This photo is firm side pixabay.com, which offers pictures for both private and commercial use. Depending on what extent you lie on your reference, it is important to know where you've gotten it and also that you have permission to use it however you wish. Now we're going to talk a bit about the importance of using a reference. I think some people have gotten the impression that it's sort of cheating, which it isn't, it's studying. But also I, myself in the past have been annoyed at my own reliance on reference because I just wanted to be able to paint without them. But when it comes to it, there's just so much information in human anatomy, which means it is really hard to do that simply from memory. This shell wants information to store. Some people might be able to do that, the practice. But if you want to do photo realism or even hyper realism, you really need a good reference in order to understand the shapes and anatomy of the face. Working in values, AK grayscale is very useful as it takes away all the hues and the idea of color. His, when you look at a picture like this, I myself really struggled sometimes with my perception of what is the darker value versus a different hue, simply because the colors are different. Which is why it's useful to work in grayscale. And as we have a digital reference, it is easy for us to go into adjustments. Hue, saturation, layer, and assembly, takeaway saturation. We are now left with only the values. Now that we avoid of color, it's easier to see where the shadows fall, especially if you were looking for the harsher shadows to understand our light source, which is very important when you're shading to give the proper shape and understanding of where everything is growing. But the face itself is made up of many different shapes, which we're going to dive into for the different features with some studies have done.
4. Basic Anatomy: Eyes: Astronaut, make this too confusing for any beginners. I'm going to stick to some pointers of the features to be mindful of when painting. If you already know your basic facial anatomy, you can go ahead and skip right to the sketching from this point. If not, here we go, The eyes are often where we look first. So that's where we'll start. As you know, the eyeball is indeed about that sits within the isochoric of the skull. Therefore, when we shade the eyes, they need to be shaded in a spherical manner. What are the protrudes the most will catch the most light, which tends to be the middle of the islets, the middle of the actual eye, and the waterline. The outer edges of the eyeball is receding into the skull. In them catch less light and making them darker. The same goes for the crease that in this case is a defined fold. But there's more to take into consideration. And then just the overall roundness of the eye as we also have cast shadows going on. If you look at the waterline, you can see the actual thickness of the lower lid that protrude from the eye. The appellate has the same thickness even though the edge is covered by the lashes, so we rarely see it. This thickness beans that the appellate and lashes both cast shadows onto the upper part of the eye. Looking at the iris, although often partially covered by the lids, we know it's a circle. But when you look at the side profile view, it shows that the iris is actually on the surface of the eyeball level. The shape of the iris will change depending on the angle and only appear as a perfect circle, straight on. Lastly, we need to talk about texture and reflection. When painting, we need to take the texture of things into consideration. And the eye and surrounding skin is a good example. The surface of the actual eye is smooth, but most importantly, it's moist. This means that shading has to be smooth, but also that the eye can have a very defined highlight and or reflection. Sometimes the eyelashes can be reflected in the eyes. Which is the sort of details that can really amp up your realism game when you're painting, in comparison, the skin is a less refers to the surface. Sr skin is full of little cracks and pores with bones and muscles beneath that makes it uneven. So the skin still have reflects light, but it's broken up due to the textured surface.
5. Basic Anatomy: Nose: Onto the nose. This is a feature that I, among many others, have found very difficult to do in a graceful manner. There's a lot of different shapes going on, depending on the angle. One will enter draws kids. We often draw the nose as a circle and some cartoons still stick to that, which kind of makes sense. The tip of the nose is versa. On the side of this, two overlapping circular shapes which leads down to the nostrils in front view. Then Austria's together with the bottom of the tip of the nose, forms a continuous line. The more than those terms, the better we see how much it actually sticks out from the face. It looks very triangular. However, if you focus on the tip of the circle is actually still there, which helps determine the shading from the size. The nose bridge is very defined but straight on. It's just indicated with shading rather than defined lines. Since the nose protrude so much, the tip is highlighted and the bottom in shadow along with the cache shadow below the nose depending on the light source. So shade the nose as one big sphere with a smaller one on each side blending into the nose bridge.
6. Basic Anatomy: Lips: Ellipse often have a darker value than the skin and the lower lip appears lighter as it is the fullest of 2. We all know the general shape of two triangles for the top lip and I'm all half oval for the lower. But there's a lot more to the shape than that. First off, both the lips have sort of a cylindrical shape blending into the skin, meaning that they both curves, both upwards to the skin surrounding the lips and into the opening of the mouth itself. Therefore, the bottom of each lip is darker as it recedes. The highlighter affected by how the fullness of the lips are distributed, which is in round shapes like this. The cube, its bowl above the lips, and the two nines going up to the nostrils also catch a lot of light. How three-dimensional the lips actually aren't obvious until you look from the side. But one sign in front view is the shadow below the lower lip.
7. Basic Face Proportions: Now let's have a quick look at the face overall and other features fit together. Here's a musical guidelines to keep in mind when you sketch out a face, starting with the eyes, the width of one eye tends to be the same as the distance between the eyes. The length of the nose would be 1.5 ice width. If you draw an elongated line from the side of the nostrils to the outer edge of the eye. You have a guide for the end of the eyebrow. Line going straight down from the inner corner of the eye should align with the side of the nostril and the edge of the mouth should align with the middle of the eye. In this reference, The person has their head slightly tilted. But you can see how the lines of the hairline, eyes, nose, lips, and chin at the same angle. This is good to keep in mind. Years would sit somewhere between the bottom of the nose and the top of the eyebrows. But the specific placement differs from person to person. The same goes for all features to an extent. But these are some good pointers to keep in mind. One generally drawn people. My final note on anatomy and using reference is this. If you want to throw you a reference so closely as to draw the exact same person. You can, but you don't have to. And by that I mean, you can use the overall anatomy of your reference to draw a realistic person without it actually being someone specific. I prefer to do this in my art as I want realistic proportions but imaginary people. But if you want to do photo realism and follow reference to t, you certainly can. You choose the destination of your art journey?
8. Let's start Sketching: There are different approaches to sketching. In this case, I cited by getting loose but basic shapes in place and then gradually working my way to the more complex shapes. Even at this stage, I keep in mind the anatomy we covered previously change here that the proportions are right at the beginning of the sketch. Especially if you approach it loosely, like I do. It can sometimes start out looking pretty bad to the point where you even struggled to see the potential of it. Well, that's totally okay. I guess our first steps are about simple shapes and placement. And it doesn't have to look pretty to be correct on those points. It's sort of like the uptake phase that's often mentioned later on in the process. We doing the groundwork, but it doesn't really start looking good until close to the end. But you just have to keep refining and tweaking until you get it to weigh wanted to go. I zoom in and out of both the sketch and the reference depending on what area on focusing on. This is one of the advantages of working digitally and having your reference on the same screen. Sketching, ease, oval, easy and procreate in the sense that you can easily undo or adjust the sizes of things in comparison to each other. The basic drawing skills are the same as required for sketching on paper. When I start cleaning up the rough sketch, I remained in the same layer and a reason rough lines as I go along. But you can also start refining in a new layer if you want to. My process of how a stock moves and then define and slowly erase, almost carving out the sketch in the same layer comes straight from I used to draw traditionally on paper. I love in my approach and habits come from them. But I have incorporated advantages of the digital media in how resize and move things around in a way you can't traditionally. To save some time, I select the first i and copy pasted it in, which puts it in its own separate layer. Then, after adjusting the angle and placement, I merge this layer into the sketch layer, making them one. It's important to note that even though humans want to be completely symmetrical were not. So I started the reference to see how this second guy is supposed to look, rather than just assuming that the two are the same. To fact check the proportions and angles of the face, I make a new temporary layer in which I draw straight lines to measure the distances. I do it in a separate layer so I can easily move it around without affecting Sketch beneath. After adjusting the distance of the eyes, I delete this layer and go back to this sketch layer. I used to own a sketch on paper. But as I got going in Procreate, I really love the freedom and how easily I can resize something when I've having to complete their redraw it. As mentioned previously, you don't have to follow your reference 100% for it to be realistic. It can be a depiction of an imaginary person based on their anatomy of your reference. All parts of a portrait has its own challenges and hair is no exception. As everything else. It really doesn't come alive until you shaded. So we're only going for the basic shapes and I'll sketch. It's not necessary to follow each hair strand from reference. And I'll try to keep the lines loose and fluid as a field, it ends up looking more natural that way. If you want to trace your sketch cleanly in a first layer, you can go ahead and do that now. But I prefer to just clean the original sketch and leave it at that.
9. Lay Down Base Values: Before moving on, I'm copying my sketch layer and pasting it in new one. This is just to have it for reference. If a shrewd have a needed later. I'm not in the habit of naming my layers, but since we won't have too many for this project, I habitable get too confusing. Then I make a new fresh layer beneath the actual sketch to be the background. After deciding on the value, I drag and drop to fill the whole layer. The next layer is going to be the skin. So fill that in. The reason I fill in the background first is that the colors and values appear different depending on what they're compared to. The hair also gets its separate layer, which in this case has a darker value than the skin. Following the direction of the hair when filling in the shapes gives a more natural look. If you want to keep your sketch in a separate layer, you can, but I prefer to merge it with the skin and slowly blend it in as a goal for me, this feels most natural. Once the sketch and skin has been merged, I set the layer to alpha lock, which means that when we end this layer and kind of draw outside of the pixels that are already there. This just takes away the hassle of having to stay within the lines, so to speak. Now, looking at our reference, we can determine the darkest values of the face that we want to maintain throughout the process, being the pupils, Asch line nostrils, and line of the mouth. One of the advantages of working digitally is that we can now draw these in separate layer to establish the darker values right away without fear of going too dark. The same goes for the lightest values being the highlight of the eyes, which you normally would add in the end. He me separate layers as great as it enables you to easily make changes without affecting the rest of your painting. So keep as many or as few as you want throughout the process. Now, we're turning to the skin layer. We're going to add a bit of light shading to the face most of the features. This is a very quick pass as we'll be diving into the features separately in a moment.
10. Rendering: Eyes: Stainless skin layer. We're going to focus on one eye and get the value of the highlights down first. Approaching it with sort of a traditional mindset, I focus on the smooth surface of the highlights first, as it will be overlapped by both the iris and the eyelid. As a little bit keeping on of this rendering in one layer. And the order in which I do things to matter when painting defined edges between different parts of the features. You can also separate the whites of the eyes, the eyes and eyelids in each their own layer is that it looks better with your workflow. For the sake of this class, I'll be rendering each feature close to completion one-by-one. Although I would usually work gradually around the face of my portraits. This does mean that some of the values would need to be adjusted in the end. But you get the idea. Shedding the ISS via, it is laid out at the bottom lid where it catches the most light and dark. At the top of the upper lid is casting its shadow. To blend, I add values gradually going darker or lighter next to each other. And the federal edges of the brush does alert the book for you. If Anita smoother blend, I use the smudge tool set to the same brush and go over the edges between each value. The iOS is also affected by the cast shadow of the eyelid, making it lighter at the bottom. Since the pupil and highlight on different layers, I can adjust them as I go tweaking the size and placement slightly. The pattern of the iris appears as lines spreading equally from the middle. Moving on to the islets and the surrounding skin matures have clean edges between the skin and the eyeball. I find that realism is about knowing when to blend and when to leave edges be. The crease is a somewhat defined line as the skin folds over here while the eye is open, you might find that the line might fade out on one side, either towards the lashes or the chiral, but not on the other at different points down valine. Such attention to detail helps make it more realistic. The donkeys shadow in this case, is under the start of the eye, brown next to the nose, due to the light source. This is the point that least amount of light can hit machete shadow stock enough as it helps define the shapes and make them three-dimensional. And don't be afraid of messing up and making areas too dark is they can easily be adjusted or corrected later. An advantage of working in grayscale and one of the aspects that makes it easier, in my opinion, is that once you've laid down a value, you can easily switch out the edges to blend. Well, making a full color portrait, you have to be mindful of the different hues present around the face. And blending can therefore be a bit more labor-intensive. When working on one area at a time, I find it very helpful to zoom out occasionally to see how the progress is registering from afar. Sometimes we get caught up on details that might not make much of a difference in the big picture. So that's the other side of the coin. The size and placement of the iris, sorry, does not feel right. So isolated the area and adjusted it along with the pupil and the refraction. The latter were in their own layers. But since the iris less in the skin layer, it requires some extra steps. It's not a big deal though. Just de-select alpha lock for the layer, move and resize as needed and fill in the now into pixels before enabling Alpha Lock again. Alongside the darker shadows, It's also important to get light values to where the face is highlighted. A good range in your values really helps shape the features correctly, which is something that can be a bit harder when working in color as a different hues makes it harder to make out. So when doing color work, I find it helpful to sometimes copy the entire canvas and paste it in its own layer to then turn it into grayscale by removing saturation. This way you can clearly see how you use compared to each other in value to get a better idea of how the ice will look when completed. And make a new layer on top of the eyes highlight layer, drawing the lashes. In other mediums. This would be one of the last steps, but do two layers. We can do this when a month to procreate comes with some different hair brushes you can experiment with. But in my experience, any bras control individual hairs once you decrease the size enough. I was once told that details such as eyelashes had to be drawn with confidence to ensure smooth lines. This actually discouraged me for quite some time as I have a somewhat sketchy approach and I read it, draw any line with confidence. But I'm here to tell you that, no, you do not need to draw each lash with confidence in one go. You can build each hair gradually, doing more strokes of the base of each year to thicken them and then go over them as many times as you need. Is some looks messy. Then clean up the edges with the eraser, hold up the rules of other people hinder you in your journey. In short, do whatever works for you. As one of the final touches, I added the refraction of the lashes into the smooth surface of the eye. Once you have the lashes down, we can go back to the skin layer and correct anything that new set. The second die is done in the same manner. So as speed through it quickly, keep jacking a reference and don't assume that the two I should be shaded these hexane. I could tell that the first I wasn't shaded dark enough in the actual whites of the eyes. But I chose to do the rest of the face before adjusting everything accordingly. In the end.
11. Rendering: Nose: For the nose, I started with a cast shadow diagonally below that helps determine the direction of the light source. This also says as a reference points for the other values around that area. The silicon a shading onto the tip of the nose and then with the shadow besides the node spreads, both help to convey that the nose protrudes from the face. An important thing to keep in mind about shuttles is that only in the complete absence of light with the shadow be completely black with no variation in value. Like bounces of everything around us, all some even the ground getting variation to the shadows. You can see this for instance, at the size of the nose, around the nostrils, even on the shadow side. In this case, the whole bottom of the nose is darker than the tip and bridge. But zoom into your reference to see the slight differences in the value of the shadow. Understand the more complex shape of it. Adding the highlight on the tip and which really brings out the shape, bent the top of the nose into the brow bone and skin around the inner corners of the eyes.
12. Rendering: Lips: The upper lip tends to be less formal than a bottom one, and therefore catches less light over all and gradually gets darker as it curves into the opening of the mouth. In the reference, lips appear a bit glossy, causing a slim reflection on the upper lip right at the mouth line. Had the lips been Matt, This would not have been there. The cast shadow of the upper lip on the bottom one is dark on one side due to the light source. The texture of our lives in general is sort of wrinkling as the lips need enough skin to stretch over a wide smile. So each of these wrinkles has a darker value and the tops in-between them, a lighter one. The shadow underneath the lower lip makes it look more three-dimensional, is going to run them all. It is slightly in shadow where the skin around the upper lip is lighter. To bring up both the texture and shine of the lips, use a light NYU to make squiggly lines going along with the overall texture. The cupid's bow just apocalypse tends to be pretty light. I finished up the lips by further defining the Dijkstra has ellipse with darker shadows.
13. Rendering: Forehead: For the forehead, I started with the light value to establish the highlights. Like to tend to hit right above the eyebrows as the muscles protrude a little bit. Since our school is circular from above, the site of the temples rounds back and needs to be shaded to convey that. Although the forehead isn't as smooth as you might assume.
14. Rendering: Cheeks: The top of the cheekbone is lightest, leaving the area below down to the jaw in slight shadow. Let's also a bit of shading going from honor, the apple of the cheek to the side of the nose, showing the round shape of that area right below the cheekbones. I would concur if you went to make up a slightly darker value depending on how pronounced the cheekbones are. The cheek dips in here since there's no bone underneath, which is also why you can touch the inside of your cheek. We have done it. Cheekbone and lower jaw. The full both stick out further than the stapes. This shading is overall darker on one side as put the light source. And there's a little more shading next to the nodes going into the cheek.
15. Rendering: Chin: The chin protrudes enough from the lips and jaw nine to be highlighted. In this case, the name is completely in shadow on one side, making even the shadow side of the face stand out, no doubt a conscious decision by the photographer. When we sketch out a face, we draw a sharp line for the jaw as it stands out from the neck. If all you might assume that the John needs to be shaded in a sharp magnitude, as it sometimes is in cartoons, but in real life it isn't that sharp. And the book of the jaw is rounded going inwards towards the neck. In practice, this means that once we have the darker value of the neck down the very bottom of the jaw needs some soft shading to convey this rounded shape.
16. Rendering: Shoulder: As the face is the focal point of the portrait, I went in with a large brush to get some shading down on the shoulder and arm. Once the values are bounds easily eaten out with this much tool. The neck has visible lines when the skin folds as the person who is turning their head to the site to look at us, refer to the reference to see where the lines are defined and where the values needs to be darker, such as right below the chin or the back of the neck. A slight dip with the shoulder meets the back, causing a dark area. For both the shoulder and arm. There just needs to be bit darker to recede and show the cylindrical shapes.
17. Rendering: Hair: Now we're going to leave the skin layer and jump into the hair, which alone too often appear now. Much the same as for each section of the skin. I start getting down the darker values to give it some shape. And always found had difficult and confusing to paint. But it helps to look at it in overall shapes rather than individual strands. Choosing a lighter tone than the base tone on the hair, start carving out some of the shapes on different sections. At this point, I took the lab out of Alpha Lock to add some smaller strands by the Hamline can make it look more natural. You can also use the smudge tool at a small size to drag back the headline and give it a softer look. Now it's also a good time to go around the edges of the hair and smudge out all arrange and the H's that are too sharp and it's small strokes to break up the shapes. Picking the same value as the highlight of the forehand, we can start adding in the lightest value of the hair. Make many small strokes to show that this individual has reflecting the light. Then pick an even darker value than the one we started with and really carve out each section of the hair. For this, I zoom into the reference one area at a time and focus on how each section of hair flows and folds. This can be a little tedious, but really helps bring out the dimension of the hair. Try to further out use drugs to keep the natural flow of the hair. Finally, going back to the skin layer and quickly added some shading to the ears, as we see very little of them. And one is almost completely in shadow.
18. Rendering: Eyebrows: I kept the eyebrows in the skin layer, but you can give them their own layer if you prefer. The modeling of our friends appear to have a high eyebrows filled in with makeup, leaving no visible skin between the individual hairs. For a more natural look makes them individual strands going upwards at the start of the brows and drag some of the value of the skin into the shape of the browse in the direction of the hair growth. For the base value of the brows, pick one from the hair as the 210 to correlate. Also pick a lighter value for some individual hairs, but don't go overboard as that's hard to pull off without looking messy. We can actually see every single hair with the naked eye. Therefore, you do not need to draw them all unless you want to move into hybrid surrealism. And that causes changes, changes to the judge to change, change, change, change, change, change.
19. Add Final Details and Adjustments: This is the time to make a final adjustments to the portrait to ensure that everything is cohesive. In this case, I went around the skin and ensure that the hindsight, the same value on around and that is shading was consistent with the light source. This is also when I went back and shaded the first side a little further to match the rest. Now she's highlights and can also be added now if some places needs and even lighter value. The final touches to the hair is to add some single strands, not too many, but just some to break up the shape and overlap the edges of the face and ears. To finish up, I added some variation to the background. And then our portrait is done.
20. Conclusion and Class Project: So here's a finished portrait and now it's your turn. The class project today is to do your own value portrait, either from the reference that I have provided or from another of your choice. If you need to portraits, a good way to start out easy is to focus on one feature and practice that before moving on to a full face. Alternatively, you can also use the sketch that provided to practice your shading and blending. So have fun creating and do show me how you get on. I would love to see it. If you'd like to see more of my personal RPCs, you can find me on Instagram at saline, dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot. Thank you so much for taking my class and bye for now.
Celine D., Digital Fantasy Artist
