Sloth Acrylic Painted Illustration

1. Introduction : Hi, guys, welcome to my class here on skill share. In this class, we are going to be illustrating a superhero character and we go through the class, planning out the sketches, deciding what we're going to paint, and then we get straight into it with some acrylic paint and start working out what we want this character to look like, what the environment is going to look like. Keeping it very simple, but making sure that we take some of the details that really give the characteristics of this illustrated superhero. We're going to go through looking at light and dark. And just the way that the character is positioned and we'll have a lot of fun. We come along to the class. If you've always wanted to paint with acrylic paints, this is a very light touch on that. Just to show you how you can take your time. You can approach it a little bit like you do with watercolor or with Gua But you can build the layers so that you have more texture if you want. Let's get on with the class, have some fun and create a really interesting character that we've illustrated from using acrylic paint. I'll see you in the class, come along and let's have some fun. 2. Resources & Sketch : We get started. I wanted to show you some examples of the painting we're going to be creating in this class. Here you can see a mouse and here a girl, superhero with her cape in the air, and it's very bright and sunny here. This next piece is a girl with long hair, and this one's not got a cape. Is more of a B. This boy that's got his red cape with the blue background. I love the hair, the energetic way that the hair is in this piece. You can make the background simplified or you can have some detail. Then we've got here also this character with some more dynamic. Energy like brush strokes behind her as well. These are all acrylic paint illustrations. This was one of the ones I just did a couple of days ago of this mouse and a bit more subtle background. It was a lot of fun creating this character. Obviously, you can have the story that you want to use and you get straight into it and you do the research. What I'm going to do, first of all, is we're going to research the character we're going to have for this class. We're going to do this by looking at some free stock image software. The one I'm specifically going to use today for this class is called Splash, and it is available on my iPad. Also, you can get Pixabay or Pexels as well. Here I am just looking for what the character is going to be for today, and I decided it's going to be a sloth. So we've got different images here of the sloth and we're going to get into selecting some of the poses and sketching. Getting straight into this, I have zoomed in here and I'm looking at this character as facing to this right, it's holding onto this tree. I just wanted to start getting the feel of what the sloth looks like. You can do this for your sloth as well. You can do some sketches, you can time yourself. You can take 5 minutes on each sketch if you want. I am being very quick here because this is a class and I just want to give an example. I have gone straight in there and I am getting the shapes that I can see on this head of the sloth. It's really good to work with straight lines when you are sketching anything because it helps not to be too cartoony. But also you get more of the detail that you want as in how it looks. But obviously, this class is to do with illustrating. We're using acrylic paint, and you can definitely take longer than I'm intending to take for this class to get the details in um, and you basically just need to get the basic shapes in and you can take your time with more detailed brushes to get all those details in. I'm just looking here at the feet and I'm trying to sketch that in as well. The illustrations I'm sketching are quite light. Sometimes I do use a darker pencil for this. But basically, the whole point I'm giving here is that you sketch your character from a variety of resources. Here I am doing a different angle again of a sloth. Just trying to do a few of them for this class just to see what it looks like, get a feel for the way the face is is shaped the detail on the face. It's got this mask eyes there, which is quite interesting because for a superhero, sometimes they do have a mask, so it fits in very well. Getting the details of the eyes in here that I want. It's just something to help me remember what this animal looks like. When I go in to illustrate, paint my character, it's a lot easier to be dynamic and to get an impression of what this character is going to be. Obviously, when you're doing your illustration, you're going to be thinking, is this a very strict character? Is this a fun loving character? Is this a clumsy character? There's going to be things you're going to do in the way that it looks to get the impression of this character across with the story line that is being illustrated, especially if it's something for a children's book or a book in general, or you're planning to animate or whatever area you're planning to use this later. This is about getting a character and getting it down with this medium, which is acrylic paint. Usually you get people use watercolor, gua, the digital way as well. But I love to use acrylics, and I've been having a lot of fun creating characters with acrylics and just being very quick and spontaneous with it. I am just going through here looking at different faces, impressions or expressions, and Once I feel like I have illustrated enough of these to get an idea of what this character could be like. It can go up to as high as 20 illustrations that you just repeatedly go through until you get used to what it looks like before you get into the painting side. Even if we do this one painting, it's not the final one, you can create more of them in more different positions. I just wanted to quickly just show you how you can get an illustrated character straight down onto paper in your sketchbook very quickly. No to spend too much time thinking about it because that can paralyze us. But this is a very quick exercise. I think I put my timer on in about 30 minutes. I might have gone slightly over with another 15. But that is the length of time I spent on this to show you how quickly we can get something done. It's good to time yourself as well. You don't spend too long laboring on it and questioning yourself. You're thinking, I have this time segment, I need to get this done. What other things that stick out to me? What other things I want to focus on? How do I capture the impression of this character of this animal? Um in a way that is recognizable as well. That would be good. But if there are distinct marks or distinct expressions that the character has or posture or colors, then these are all the things that will help your illustration get the message across as to what someone is looking at. I am continue to sketch here all the different poses that I'm finding of the sloth. This one here, the eyes are completely closed, but they're still so cute as well. Yeah. Go ahead and get those sketch down. If you like, you can pose this now and sketch out your own sloth. Then when we get onto the next segment, which is to paint the sloth, then you'll be ready for that. You can spend up to 10 minutes if you want just sketching the sloth out, and then we will see what comes next with the final drawing that we create from this. But as I said, I'm showing you how I'm just going along and sketching this character out. Now we have come to the part where we're going to sketch this out. I, as I've said, for this is to sketch out an illustrated character and the characters that I've been illustrating with this acrylic paint is superheroes. Superheroes is what I have been painting, and I wanted to keep a theme with that. I really feel that there's more I could have done with this sloth, but I wanted to get my first impressions out and I can always look at it and work in a different poles for this sloth. Here, I actually have the slot holding onto a tree. But you can have the slot. Doing a different pose, which I've got another pose in my head that I would love to probably do. I might sketch that actually and make that available for you guys in the class as well. Look out for that attachment. But yeah, it's just looking at the sloths, looking at your sketches and feeling free to put whatever marks down that you are enjoying, and then not to question it because once we start using paint, some of these sketches can be covered up. That will not make much of a difference. But you can always go back in again with your pencil and readjust areas quite aggressively, so you could use a darker pencil over the paint or you could use a lighter pencil if it's quite dark areas. White China markers are quite good to use for going over darker areas. Also probably white pris moer pencils as well. All these color pencils, there's so many things you could do, you could overlay this with color and pencils as well. That would be another way to go. But here I am sketching in my character and Also still thinking about the colors I want to use. I had a lot of ideas of where I could go with this. You don't have to use the actual colors of the animal if you don't want to. That is, as long as the word insinuate or you can actually show what the animal is with whatever other aspects you can. It's a giraffe, then the shape of its head, it's long neck, it's very prominent look of an animal. It wouldn't necessarily matter what colors you put on that, rhino elephant. There's very specific animals that No matter what colors you put on it, they're very easy to tell what they are from a far away glance. They're very easy to tell what they are. But for characters or animals that are a bit more subtle, then it's best to really figure out how you can subtly bring that animal out. It might be that it's the background instead that becomes unusual and not necessarily the animal itself. I've sketched this quite light, but as I said, you sketch out your character, and we start looking at the paint, the paint we're going to use next. On this side here, I start getting my paint ready. We're going to look at that next. 3. First Layers: We're going to start with the paint and this is my palette that I use. I have a variety of paint on that and I will be adding whatever else I need onto the painting palette. It's a really good painting palette actually because you can close it. It has a cover that allows the paint to stay wet for a lot longer and you can sprit with some water to make sure it stays wet. What we're going to do is get started on this character. I'm just going to zoom out so we can see what colors I'm going to be using and mixing on the palette. Also, I was looking at these colors, which I would love to do something with this another time like these colors here. To give you ideas that you don't have to use the color that you see the character in, you can use your style, you can use the palette that you want, the tonal palette that you want. I'm going to also be using some es, white esto. I usually use this bleached titanium, I think that is. But it's a warm white. I will use in some areas, but I'll also use the titanium white in the gesso as well. I'll use the gesso white, which is very bright. Just putting some of that in my palette, I'm just going to zoom out so we can see this a bit better. Here we go. So I have zoomed out, and I've just finished putting that white onto my palette, and you will be seeing this messy palette through this painting. I wanted to be able to show you what it's like. When I am painting, and I've got a selection of brushes here. I am using a flat square brush. Also, I do end up using a round brush as well. These are smaller brushes that could be used for detailed work. I get straight into it, mixing a tan color. Mixing the tan color straight away there into the face and trying to get some of the areas that I think are lighter into the face. You will see the character build up as I go along. Right now, it looks very interesting because you can't see the pencil too well, but I'm trying to put the lighter areas in. I think I'll o c again and it would be nice to have left the palette for you to see, but let's see if I can get it in a bit closer. So I am adding the colors here. And when you're looking at your painting, as I said, you can pick whatever colors you feel. You want to use from the color palette that you maybe usually use. You can stick with the original colors of the animal as well that you're trying to make into a superhero. But as I said, for the illustration, you can do anything you want. You don't have to stick with a specific color or tone. Here I'm now adding the mask area of the slots eyes, and it will just get clara and clara as we go along. Right now, it is still looking very abstract. But Yeah, more time can be taken on this. You can see m using the edge of the brush and getting in some details already. Looks like he's got a crew cut, but not really. Mixing in colors that I want to add into this darker colors. As I said, I was going to use some paints gray to get the darker values in But as I'm doing this, I'm thinking about the fact I can paint over with acrylic. It's not like watercolor where you have to be so careful with the different layers as you're putting them on. I am quite free to do a lot of things. I am quite free to add a lot of different paint colors because I can paint over it. While I'm painting or while you're painting, you can be thinking about the depth of your painting of your character. There's going to be shadow areas, there's going to be areas that are lighter, and so you work from the back forward. Here, I'm trying to highlight where his little face is and or its little faces, and going with the fact that there's supposed to be some greenery in the background. We will see how this goes. I'm working around the cape next. I'm going around the tree area. Outlining some things so that I can get a better picture of how this is looking. As I said, it's going to be something that will be trial and error. This is the first iteration of this sloth. If it was if there's areas I liked and areas I don't like, I'm learning that from this. If I went on to do some more and to create a character for a book a story line of some sort, I would have known how I've adjusted it. I'm currently thinking here that I want to use a turquoise for the cape. This changes later, but I will let you see that when we get there. But at this point in time, I'm thinking, I want to use this for the cape. At this point in time, we are using this teal color teal color by golden for the cape. So I'm just going in and adding those details so that I'm telling my mind a story that this is how it looks. Just have fun with what you're doing. My paint strokes are very unique. They're not specific because they are I can paint over them as I keep repeating. So whatever it is that you're painting for yourself, you know what you want your character to look like. Here I am adding the grayish tone that is around its muscle. I am adding some of that grayish turquoise color to the legs. I have an arm up here as well, but I'm now adding some of that same shadowy color to up at the top and starting to outline the arms so that I can get a better impression of where everything is. Some of the background here again, with the green going in, outlining the tree and the feet, right now, it's just very, very light. I'm just going to go ahead and fill that in. Next, I am going in with a tree, and so I'm going to fill in the tree areas too. I would have loved having a bit more of a pattern on this tree, which you can do, or you can fill it in completely as a block and work on it. But as I said, for the class, I did put the speed up on. You can take your time, you can put more details than I end up doing. Now, looking at adding some areas of orange in here, looking at the shadow areas and really enjoying this color as a mix of a red and a warm yellow. There's so many different varieties of orange you can get if you mix some of the different reds, and there are warm reds, there are cool reds. How you mix that is a technique in itself. If it's receding, if it's going far away, then it will be a cooler color. If it is coming closer, it will be warmer. That goes for any color that we use while we're painting. Yeah, I've also tried to mix the oranges, so some has a bit more red, some has less. Try to put some more shadows in here going back and forth. Going back and forth in cars going past. Go back and forth and adding these colors is what adds to the time. It is work illustrating painting, a lot of thinking as you're going as you're filling in the different areas. I have a beige color I've mixed in here with some of that orange and some more probably bleached titanium. Adding some white in there to make it lighter. 4. Final Layers: Not really seeing too much difference there, but maybe a closer up. You can see how the face is built up right now and I am adding this color into different areas of the painting. The illustration illustrated character is the name of this class, using acrylic paint, and I really love slots. I still feel they're a bit of a mystery to me, but I love their tenacity and the interesting stuff of them being able to fold from a really great height and be able to survive that. It's not something you'd obviously want to test over and over again, but I just think it's cool that they have so many things going for them, even though we can think in the world that well, they're too slow, so that is an issue. But they are actually, very strong animals and, just so interesting. I am going in with details to the eyes now because I love to work on the eyes of my characters. I love to put in some more details. Over time, the more time I spend on this, I would end up making the eyes very unique in the way that I do the eyes of my characters. I love to put whatever paint I'm using elsewhere. I love to put it in the actual eyes of The characters, which is what I'm doing here, putting some of that teal into the eye area. It's a back and forth process with everything fine tuning, going back and forth and seeing that something is working or not. Some areas still need to dry, so you need to leave those areas alone if you go in and they are not working. Add in some more colors, some of this ciena brown brown Sienna, bring it in some more warmth into the body of the sloth. Starting to bring in those details of the fur. I would consider this to be a quick illustration and I would dry very quickly as well being acrylic, and it wouldn't move around like it would if it was watercolor or goulash. If you've got the layers wrong, you can always paint over them again and change the way it looks. For me, acrylics have everything that you would get from the watercolor. Except probably that you need to work quite fast. I love to work quite fast. If not, things do dry on you, but at the same time, learn is really the way to go with acrylics. Here it's really liquid. I put a lot of liquid onto my brush, mix in this color, and so I can just go back and forth and get that expressive mark with my round brush here. But you can put so many colors, you can wait for areas to dry and then come back and add those colors and that's what I've been doing here. I'm just going to go around adding all those gestural mark making on this. You can see how I've built the face and worked on the eyes, I've added those colors into the eyes there. I really love the way that looks. I am now adding some other mixed browns and oranges together. I really excited because you can do so much with these and you can take your time and really build what your character is going to look like. You can add whites. You can also coloring pencils over this. You can use all ink markers as well. Sometimes I love to collage before I even start my characters as well, just to have a different texture of things going on, scratching into the pain so many different things that you can do with your painting to make it exciting. So the process can be exciting in itself and also add a liveliness to your character that you wouldn't otherwise get. If it's a textures in the hair, I could use molden paste as well and scratched into that. There's just so many layers of what you can do while illustrating something. And you could basically sketch out whole pages of your book that you want to do and illustrate the pages. I might do a class like that where we illustrate with acrylic paint, the different pages in a short story, that would be really nice to do as well. Here I started adding some extra colors. I didn't plan originally to do this to add the pink because I feel like it makes it a bit more feminine, but also the delicateness of the fingertips and Its claws are very important to it going through the trees and trying to keep itself steady and stable. I just added that. I thought it was a nice thing to add a different color that I could see just to give a little bit of a pop, and I was trying to keep away from making it very red. Now I decided to add some leaves, some more leaves in the background, or some more foliage in the background, of a different green and to liven it. This is how we can just add layers and The whole image can start to grow and glow as well. When you put a mark down of leave in it as well. Because sometimes we can labor a mark. We can put something down and go, Oh, I don't like it. Like I do here coming up next. I wanted a longer leaf, so I went back in. It's a very specific reason. But That leaving the marks when you've done them because you could always build another mark over that. As I'm looking at this, I'm thinking, I might want to add another bit going up here and here because I didn't like the way it cut off, practicing with the brushes to see how to do the leaf, I wanted to add another mark. That was a bit more unique compared to the other marks I've made before. Here again, I'm coming in, I want to add another color. I just feel I want more color in here. I love my colors. I'm thinking that this side, the light is coming from this side, so I'll put this yellow here, but then I still want more. I want the yellow to be a lot brighter. When I'm looking at this now I'm thinking I needed some lime yellow, which is a cooler yellow because this is quite a warm yellow that I'm using currently. I start trying to add white into it to make it a lot brighter, but I think if I had the lime yellow, that might work a lot quicker and getting this the yellow I had in my head. So, I'm just going back and forth, adding this yellow on the side. Thinking a bit like the light is coming from that angle, and if the lights coming from this angle, then the other side is going to be darker, so I will change that in a minute as well. I'm trying not to cover too much of the background, which I leave some areas peeking through, but this this whole idea of as you're going what you're thinking about. If I did this again, I would do it slightly differently, but I was still trying to get a brighter yellow going on in this side. As I've done that, as I said, I'm now thinking, the other side needs to be balanced. I'm going back in and I'm getting a darker green and working my way into this other side. There's so many ways to look at this. Apart from this green that I'm adding now to what was there before, I can add another green and another and I can build a whole bunch of layers of patterns on this that can become quite intricate and detailed. But then you can start missing. You can start not seeing the main character of the story. I go back in here. After doing that, after trying out the green I wanted to try out. I go in and then I start seeing that the tree probably needs a bit more. Of a value in this because there was not as much value, the darken the light to be able to see what is going on. I made the tree a lot darker. Not as much detail as it could have had, but also I would like more pattern in that tree. Also, I'm seeing here that I working on this painting more, I would have put the face of the sloth needed to get corrected here because the tree when I was doing the tree, I've overlapped onto that. I would change that slightly. Here, yet again, because of the way the color is for me, about making the color stick out, I am going to go ahead and make this cape a lot brighter than it is. I'm trying to contemplate if I wanted to leave the blues showing through the red and I was going back and forth and all sorts of stuff. But I think I end up deciding that very tiny amount of that blue will still be left and I wanted that cape to be red as red as possible. Basically, this is how we can go along and we can end up seeing some colors peeking through things and wonder about the whole painting. I was tempted to put some of the red cape showing in that curve there. That's what that was. I was just testing to see and I was like, no, that's going to look odd. But yeah, this is the painting. I didn't use the other colors as I mentioned before, but this is my little sloth hero. And it would be great to see what you guys have created for yourselves and to see your character as well, pulling this sketching it out and then painting it process would be really cool. Also, y, I will try and sketch out another position of the slot for you to have to also paint. That will be cool. But I do encourage you to sketch your own character and to see what pauses you can get with that as well and have a lot of fun. I'm going to tidy up now, but thank you so much for joining me for this class. I also have other classes here on skill share available, so please do take a look at those. Really enjoying the way that this turned out, this face is so cute all from this using acrylic paint as well. Do try acrylic paint if you've not tried it before, it is a lot of fun and your painting dries very quickly as well. If you want more details in your painting, then you would have more layers you would add on to get all those extra details. You would use finer brushes as well, and maybe start off with bigger brushes and then work your way to more detail brushes. But as you can see, I just used only two brushes for this class. That is one way to look at it that you don't need very much to create a cute character like this. This is a close up for you to see what his little face looks like. I will see you guys in the next class and Please do take a look at the other classes here as well. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you guys soon.