Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi everyone. Welcome
to my colorful world where people are full of
playfulness, color, and emotion. I really love colorful art, so I taught myself how
to push the colors of the things I see to create
colorful paintings in Procrit, if you would like to
learn my approach and add more richness into your artwork, this is the place for you. This is not a recipe where you follow step by
step what I'm doing. And then when you're on
your own and you're trying to paint something
different, it doesn't work. We will change the way
you look at color. So no matter what you paint, this will be knowledge that you can Yeah. Bring always with you. Hello, I'm Angela, also
known as Riza Chan, and I'm a Spanish artist
based in the Netherlands. My work has been exhibited around the world in
galleries and museums, in countries such as China, the United States,
and the Netherlands. It has also been published
in books and magazines. And my favorite ones
are this is Colossal. They wrote an amazing article about my work and
also a book that accompanied one
of my exhibitions in China called The
Path Dimension. In the following lessons, you will learn the basics on how to draw your portrait
in procreate, as well as how to block color to create a
color structure. And then how to
blend your colors and make the details
on your portrait. For this, we will be painting a portrait as
you might have imagined, as well as take some fruits to do some really easy
fast exercises. Artists at any level are
welcome and appreciated. So feel free to join this class. The thing you will
need, however, is some basic knowledge on procreate as well
as access to the app. I remember when I started painting and I struggled
so much with color. If I painted like skin, I didn't know how to
paint the shadows, I didn't know how to make
it look rich and not flat. I believe that anyone can follow this technique and with
a bit of practice, you will be able to create a portrait that you
will feel proud of. I hope, I hope it will be
vibrant and fun and beautiful. Join me on this course.
Yeah, let's start.
2. Orientation: Hi everyone. Welcome
to the course. All you need to complete
this class is an ipad, an ipad pencil
procreate installed, and a photo reference. The class project will
be for you to complete a portrait using the techniques that I will teach you
from beginning to end. I chose this project because often when we paint skin tomes, we constrain ourselves to just
a couple of basic colors. I want to teach you how you
can paint one thing that has one or two basic colors and push that to create something that's really colorful
and really rich. For me, it's the perfect
mix between realism and playfulness in
the project area. I would love for you to upload one of the portraits
where you can only see the color structure
without the details and then fully finished as much
detail as you want version. Some tips to succeed
in this class are, don't judge your piece until
the end. Really don't. I know you want to,
but let's try not to. Choosing a portrait that has a good light and
shadow structure will really help you
creating more volume, but we will talk more
about that later on. Another thing
that's important is that when you share
your final portrait, it's useful for me to
see the photo reference. Because then I can give you feedback that has
a lot more detail and I can be more picky with things that you
can push on next.
3. Choosing a Reference Image: Before we start with
the painting exercises, I want to give you some tips to find the best portrait
for your project. First, we will take a look at the best references
to paint from. For me, the most
important thing when finding the best
references to paint from is to find references that have both
light and shadow areas. Here you can see how I'm
drawing on the light areas. And both the shadows and the lights are creating interesting shapes
on the portraits. This means that these portraits will be very fun to paint. It will be easy to make them look volumetric and realistic. This will set you up for
success on your project. Here we have more examples. In this case, you can see how the temperature of the
light is different. We have a warm light on the left and the color light on
the right portrait. That's completely fine. You can play and experiment with different temperatures of
lights or even colors. But again, what you need is to have these both sides available, the light and the shadows. Now let's take a look at not ideal references to
paint straightaway. You can see that the images
are quite different. The light is a lot more flat. That means that we have
only tiny areas of shadow, and this will complicate the process of making
your portrait a lot. Then we have other difficult
situations to avoid. In this case, we
have, for example, an image where there are
a lot of shadows from things that are around it
and they are quite sharp. This is going to make it very difficult for you to
follow this class. Then we have a
similar situation, although the shadows
are a bit more diffuse. There is a tree around, I imagine, and it's creating some shadows
on the portrait. Finally, hair that is
on the face or lots of details of light will also
make your job very difficult. You can definitely paint
these type of situations too. But maybe wait until you try our method one or two times before trying
something so difficult. Another question that you might have is where to
find your portraits. The first option is
taking your own photos. Sometimes I have people
coming to my studio. We create lots of shots. I have one light on
one side. Try again. If you see her face, you will see how she has some light and
some shadow areas, which is great to create the portraits
that we're looking for. For me what I do is I like people that feels
comfortable dancing. They don't need to be dancers, but that they move a little bit. I keep taking photos that
have just a bit of movement. Try to make the model feel as comfortable as possible
in their face. They are also relaxed. I give some prompts like, can you turn this site
or look up or wherever. But I also let them
just do random things. When something is nice, I ask if they can
do more of that. In this case, we found lots of beautiful photos that I
used later on on my work. There is Spexos, there you will find a lot of
copyright free photos. I made a folder for
you to check out, you will find it in
their resources. Finally, we have the
museum app by Sketchy. This is an app where a lot of people put their selfies and you can browse and see who you
want to paint. I love it. This is the photo
that I will use. I found it on this app. Yeah, sometimes you have to scroll quite a bit to
find what you want, but there are lots of beautiful,
interesting photographs. That's it. Join me
on the next class where we will start our
first painting exercise.
4. Seeing Colour: So let's start with
the first art class. Before starting
with your portrait, I want to talk to you
about seeing color. This is something that
can seem very simple, but that actually takes quite
a long time to develop. And sometimes I will
be telling you, yeah, see there is a bit
of green in this color. And you will be like,
I don't see that. But be patient
because you can train it and we will start
thinking that way. In this class, you will learn to see the small
subtleties of color. And see how you can adjust them to your advantage
and exaggerate them, or pull them back a little
bit and create something new. First, let's talk
about our keywords, the things that compose a color. There are four elements
of colors that you need to understand to be able to gain more freedom
when painting. The first one is
called hue and it's the color wheel where you
have all the versions of different colors
we all know about it is the one that we
use a lot as kits. When we have our colors sets. The way that you change it
is on this menu over here, you have a lot of options. And the one that I prefer
is the one called value. If you go here on the edge, you will see that it changes. It's up to you to decide which of the many,
worst, best for you. When you change the hue on
something it looks like this. It went from green to pink, for example, the
background, right? Then we have value, it's color wheel, where we have variations on the lightness
and darkness of color. For example, we have
this orange over here. If we make it, it
can look like this. If we make it darker, it can look like this. What we're doing
right now is changing the value of one color. See, to change it, you actually have two sliders. One is the saturation that can change the value a little bit. And the other one is
the blackness in truth, this one is the one that's
changing the value. But you need some pin in, let's say the saturation is the one that
gives you the color. It's a combination of the two sliders to change
the value of something. For example, if we have
the yellow over here, we can make it darker as it is. We can make it lighter. But if I wanted to go
lighter than this, right now I have my saturation almost all the way to the top. I can lower it a bit and
it goes more to white. It's a combination. When you change the value
of your painting, it can look something like this. From light to quite dark. Here you have an example of how color and value are
related to each other. What you have to think is that all the colors that you are seeing are equal to darkness. This orange over here. If you change it to
black and white, it's this darkness, quite gray. This yellow over here. If you change it into black
and white will be a gray. But it will be much lighter than the orange when you're painting. It's nice for you to understand which darkness the colors
that you're using are, because that will be helpful
when building up volume, and we will talk about
that a bit later. Then you have saturation. It's the highest
vibrancy of the color, the stronger the color can be. For example, in paint, when a color is very saturated, we will say that it has the highest pigmented
possibility. When we work on the
saturation spectrum, we will use this
slider over here where you can gray colors out. The lower it goes, the more gray it will look. For example, we have
here this blue. If we go down here,
we gray it out. We can also make it just a little less gray
or more saturated. For example, if we
take the yellow, we can bring the slider down. We will have less
and less pigment. You can also move the value a little bit if you
want it more to gray, because this is a
very bright color. Again, it's a bit
of a combination, but mostly you will use
the saturation slightly. When you change the saturation of something, it
will look like this. From quite vibrant, for example, look at this red to quite gray. Here you have a surprise Xm, where you can try
and train your eye and see what changed
on each of the colors. For example, here we have
the first color here, it changed to brown. In this case, this
changed in hue. Here we have this pink, it changed to a brighter pink, it changed on value. In this case, we have this t, let's say the change
to a brighter color. But what happened here, it isn't a change on value, is a change of saturation. Try to complete the rest. You can stop the video now and I will be
sharing the answers. Next here you have the answers. I hope you did well. Here you
can see what I was saying. There are some that
are really obvious, like a change of color. But saturation can be confusing. Sometimes you don't
know if the value changed or the
saturation change. For example, on the ones
that are really close, like this and this, it's okay if you made a mistake
on these two. This one is a bit easier. Change in value,
it's quite extreme from quite dark to very light. This one is less extreme. I do understand if you made
a mistake here, for example. But yeah, you will
train your eye and become better at
seeing these changes. You might remember, I said that were four elements that
you need to understand. That is true. Every color
consists on four elements. The fourth is temperature. But this one is more advanced. We won't be talking about
it during this course. Temperature is something that when you know about
color already, you can use to gain more
like magic in your colors. To gain more depth in
your color choices. To make the changes of colors
more extreme and beautiful. But you do need to first understand how the others work to be able to
work on this one. For now, we will focus
on the other three. Let's work on a tiding
exercise on seeing color. For example, if we want to paint this cuff and we don't
know a lot about color, a lot of times what can
happen is that we choose one or two colors and we base our whole
painting on those. What we will be doing
during this course is to broaden those decisions and make your paintings look richer. An exercise for
this, for example, is expanding your choices. This is something
that I see a lot. For example, you now
this calf and you say, okay, I want to paint it. What I will do is choose a
color or two for each area. The head will be the white gray. And I will color of it with
the ear will have the red. Then the hair over here
will be the orange. All your choices will be
based on what you're seeing. But then you will end up
with something that looks like the photo and
maybe a bit poor, like this as just painted
over the photo very quickly, you can see the effect. As you can see,
it's not so rich, it feels a little bit boring. It can still be nice, but if you like me like
using color a lot, this won't be the
best way to go. What we could do
is for each area, we can try to find similar
versions of that same color. For example, we have
this brown hair. For the hair, what we could do is to move the slider a
little bit to more saturated. To find more colors that we could use when
painting that area, we can make the color more
saturated, for example. We can also change the color
a little bit to yellow. You can see if I
move this a lot, it will go to yellow. We move it a bit
on that direction. We can even move it
a bit more to red if we want Even then. We can also change the
value a little bit. I wouldn't do very harsh changes on this because the
painting will look better if the value matches this area closely if I
was to paint this area, for example, with this brown. All the volume of the calve
would go away, right? It's good to move your slider
in hue, in saturation. And you can move just a
little bit on the value, but don't go too extreme. Then we have this
white over here. And whites are
really interesting. You can change them to bit blue, to a bit green, bit yellow. Actually, if you see
things in real life, you will see a lot of
colors on white here. You can almost
intuitively see some of them like I see a
green on this area, a blue on this shadow. But yeah, you will have to train your eye to
be able to see those. While you can see those, you can also make decisions
based on your taste. You can say, I want a little
bit of yellow on this side. I want something that
looks more to purplish. Keep the values very light. It all looks like white. For example, the two are a
bit too dark for that area. This was for the shadow. Then you have more choices. If you keep doing that for
all the areas of the calf, you will end up with
a color palette that is much richer,
like this one. What I really like in
this image, for example, is that the grass, well the dry grass looks
quite yellow and brown. But you can also add a lot of greens and oranges to that area, and it will still look
like it belongs together. Here you have all the choices. Then if you paint the cave
using this new color palette, you will end up with
something like this. We went from this boring version of the painting to
this really happy, bright, full of
colorful painting. Right now it's your turn. You can look at
these two images and try to find a really
rich color palette. You should be able to
fill this area for the rooster and this
area for the cow. This is not a painting that we will do
during this course, but if you feel inspired, feel free to also make a painting using as many
colors as possible. All right, now that
this class is done, make sure to upload
your versions and I'm really curious to see the colors that you
were able to see. Yeah, see you in the next class.
5. Drawing: All right everyone. We're in
this super exciting moment where we're going
to actually start our portrait after
all the chatting. Yeah, let's start
with our drawing. This is the photo that we
will be using as reference. I took it from the
museum sketchy app. This is the drawing that
we want to get done. If you don't like drawing and want to skip
ahead and painting, you can download this
drawing and use it for your work to learn how to draw. The first thing that is useful to know is that in our brain, we have two sides, the right hemisphere
and the left one. The right one works
with creativity, intuition, face recognition, angles, shapes, and the
left one works with math language, logic, grades. For example, everything
that we did in school was normally really left based. A lot of times we work from
the left side of the brain. For example, as kids we created an array of
symbols that we learn. For example, for eyes
look something like this. Then everyone had a cool way
to draw a mouth or a nose. They are symbols that are
actually really hard to break from when we are trying to create something
that looks realistic. A lot of times we're focusing very hard looking
at our subject, but we get something that
looks like if a child made it. The reason is
because we're using these symbols we learned
when we were kids. We need to learn to
break from them, to be able to create things that are more realistic looking. Let's set up our workspace
and start drawing. The first thing you need to
do is open your ipad and then there new canvas and
create the size that you like. I like everything
above 2000 pixels. And then you have to
choose your color profile. And I like the P three because it has many, many
colors available. Then you can go to Insert
File or insert a photo. Depending where you
have your photo. I like putting mine
all the way in the left and also create a
canvas that looks quite long. I have space to copy it, then it's very useful to
break with the symbols. It's useful to use
a drawing guide. Here we have our options, opacity, thickness,
and grid size. What I try is to
match both of them. I have the same amount
of squares for each. For example, in
this case we'll go for four or five little squares. Then this will make it very, very easy for you to draw. If you are a beginner, sometimes it's hard to get it right, but just move the grid
size a little bit. Then you can move it from
the center and change it from place until you get to align both sides and have more or less the
same space per each. If you're really struggling, you can also change the
size of your canvas. Like here, I make it
a tiny bit bigger. It's always a bit like
eyeballing it and see where to place the
grid there is. Yeah, it's always
a bit different. Here we have four
little squares and the same amount of squares on the other side a little bit. This will make it
very easy for you to create shapes that are more realistic because all
of a sudden you have very abstract shapes
within the squares. Also, it will be much easier to place things
in the right place. Like for example, the nose here. You know that it's in square number three from
below and from the left. The top of the hair
will also be very easy to know where to place. It's like counting and
seeing where things fall. This will help a lot
with proportion. And again, to break out with the symbols here we can create the silhouette
of the hair very easy. Let's start with our drawing. Now that you know
how this works, I'd like to start
with the silhouette, in this case the
top of the hair, and then start looking
where things are falling. In this case, for example, I have the nose
quite in the middle. Sometimes I have to change
from plate or something. I'm not trying to make a
pretty drawing by all means. I'm just trying to
know where things go. This is helpful for later
when I'm trying to draw. Yeah. Also draw your shadows and think of everything
as abstract shapes. For example, don't think
of the nose as a nose. Think it agonal shape
with a little bump somewhere and just abstract
angles and good luck. Some tips to end this class. Practice your blind
drawing skills. They will always help you. You can use the grit to
keep your proportions right and focus on astrac shapes when
drawing your portray. All right, so let's
start thinking about painting and learning
a bit more on that.
6. Understanding Planes: Welcome to Understanding
planes one on one. In this lesson, I
will explain to you how planes work
and what they are. We will also paint a
fruit for practice. I'm really excited to teach
you about this because they will help you so much
creating better paintings. Yeah, let's start
with draw planes to help us see things in three D on the flat
surface, that is our paper. It helps us to
understand the structure of things and we will be able to paint in a way that can
express that volume example. Here we have a pair. What
I'm doing now is creating a drawing that shows the
structure of this pair. This is created with flat little surfaces that
you will see now. It's all very angular. What I'm trying to think is
how the curves are working, How the surface
is changing here, you can see, if it
was transparent, I would be drawing
this full circle. But I'm only seeing this
curve from one side here. You can see how I
connect them and I create something that
looks really volumetric. As you can see, the
planes of the pair are much more complex than
the ones of the leaf, for example, where we only have two surfaces pointing to
two different directions. Then of course, we have
the planes of a face, which is what we
are building into. In this case, I took a selfie of myself with nice lighting that really will help you understand how the volume
of the face works. We have the glasses that
are pointing forward, then we have the nose
and we have the shape of the light in the right side that helps us
building the plane. It's like cone shape. On the left, we have the shadow. Then we have the lips and the
upper lip is pointing down. It's also on shadow. The light is hitting all the right side of
the face and shoulder. As you can see, as
the volume turns, you have less and less light on the left side of the face and
the body have less light. This is a simplified version of what we will do
with our portrait. I hope that it helps you understanding what
to think about when seeing shapes that you want to represent
on the flat surface. Now I will show you
a short exercise on how to work on the planes. It will be a preview of all the steps that we will take during this course
with the portrait, but then on a very
simple, easy object. All right, if we take a
Mandarin as an example, this is one of the most easy
situations that we can find. Because the Mandarin is
only one color orange, then the shape is
quite circular. It's quite easy to
build those planes up. We can for now, just trace
them and put them on the site. Then when we start painting, you will see that
what's happening is that the values are
slowly changing. You can choose an orange
that you might think that it's pretty close to
the orange of your Mandarin. And then slowly change the values to the
left to be lighter. When you go to the
right of the shape, you can make them darker. If you see them in
black and white, you can check that your
values are correct. For example, now we need them to be a bit lighter
on the left side. It really helps to
change things in black and white to be
able to correct them. Then you can slowly move the
value to lighter or darker. Maybe there is an
area that has a bit more yellow on that orange, more on top of the Mandarin and a little bit
of the left side. But I think it's quite an
easy subject to paint because you're not dealing with all
the colors that the pair had had like greens
and reds and all that. You have orange, maybe
some orange goes a bit more to yellow and
some it's more reddish. But yeah, it's a great way to practice if you never thought
of this concept before. Then I will blend
it a little bit. In this case, just do
what you think is right. We will talk about
blending later. I'm just trying to find the value in between
those planes that I drew. And then about the detail again, we will talk about that
later in the course. You just can do what you want to do a as much as you want. I'm just making it all
quite simple and fun. Yeah, this way of approaching subjects will be
such a game changer for you. Let's continue with this. Some things to remember. We can use light and shadow to understand the
volume of a shape. Values are super important. They are the most important
thing for building volume. To understand values is essential for you to
make better paintings. Also, objects with a small
quantity of colors will be much easier to blend
and also to add detail to. There are different ways
of blending colors. You can use the one that works best with you. Now
it's your turn. Find fruit or vegetable
that has one main color, like a banana or
a kiwi or khaki. Anything you want. Practice
these steps because they will help you on the more
intense color based theory, as always share them
in the project area. So we can all get
inspired and say, oh, I also want to
paint this production. Anyways, see the next one.
7. Drawing Planes: Now that you
understand the planes, let's start adding them
into our portraits. The first thing you
might be wondering is how to organize
your layers and I just add a new layer and paint on top of the
drawing with it before. First of all, let me
introduce you to as he's a head model that
was built to help artists understand how the
planes of a face work. You can either purchase it or download this photo
from the resources. Now the idea is to translate the planes from a head
into our portrait. But as all faces are different, it won't end up
looking like him. Just a reference
for confusing areas like the breach of the nose, the chin eye sockets. All those areas that
are just a difficult to visualize when you're
painting on a flat surface. What I'm doing here is to look at the arrow
and to look at our photo reference and trying to translate those
planes into the drawing. The shadow shapes for example, in this particular photo
are very clear and that helps a lot seeing where
the planes can be drawn. Example, all the area from the cheek bones
to the chin has these very sharp
shadows that we can see both in a Saro and in our model. Yeah, we're using
light and shadow to determine where
these planes will go. You can see on the eye
sockets for example. You also have some shadows that describe the volume a bit. Areas that are a
bit more complex, like the chin I'm drawing now, are perfect to look
at a Saro very intensely and seeing
where they go. You don't need to get this right everywhere and I don't
think I'm getting it right, but this helps a lot to later work on the color and draw things that will
make sense in the end. Yeah, this is the most
intense way you can go on thinking
about the portrait. But you don't need to
do this every time. Now we're going all in
for you to understand, what you'll need to think about every time you
paint a portrait. But in my case, for example, I don't draw this every time. This is just a way to
show you what's going on in my head, in
my imagination. When I'm painting, I visualize these
planes as I'm painting, even though I don't spend
all this time drawing them. Yeah, I hope this will help you. For me, it not only helped
on drawing the face, but also on understanding
how to approach the hair. When you look at hair, you have all these little
tiny hairs and you're like, well, think about it,
how do I paint it? But as you can see here, I'm using light and shadow to
see how the volume changes, just like we did
in the Mandarin. Each strand of hair, is it strand when it
is just a group of hair that is just creating
a little girl or something. Um, we'll have different
volume that you can interpret. For example, in the shadow that is next to the left
of the face and the chin, you will see that
I simplified it to an abstract shape that
looks like a triangle. Yeah, you just think
of abstract shapes that shadows and lights are
helping you to determine. Yeah, you will see
how these help so much when you try to
paint your portrait. Oh yeah. Don't forget the
area between the ice. It's easy to forget it, but thanks to a Saro,
we can see where it is. Some things to remember. Use a Saro as a guide
to put planes in place. Shadows give us clues on
where some of the planes are. There is no need to be perfect and put everything
in the right place. We can also change things
later on when we paint. All right, so let's continue
with the next exercise.
8. Painting Planes part I: Now it's the time to add color to the planes we
created in our drawing. In this step, your drawing will look terrible.
This is how it is. It won't look very good. But if you stick with it, it will make sense. In the end, all this hard work has been building
up to this stage. For this stage, once you
understand what I'm doing, the technique that
we are using today, feel free to paint along. And you don't need to have such a deep focus in this stage. The drawing I feel like
is where I normally need. Everything silent, no
music, anything, and focus. But once I arrive in the stage, I either put a podcast or
music and have fun with it. All right, let's start. The first step is to lower the opacity on
your drawing layers. To start a new layer
underneath those. This way you will be able to see your drawing
while you work. This part of the video is
in real time because it might make it easy for you to understand
what I think about. Feel free to paint
along with me. I start with one of the most
saturated areas of the face. The reason is because I
really like saturated colors. So I can't wait to put them
down, which is the nose. What you need to know here
is that I'm not trying to create natural
looking colors, I'm trying to exaggerate
the colors that I see. But perception is for everyone,
a little bit different. So it might be that I see one
color and exaggerate that one and you see another one,
that's completely fine. We should all make a slightly
different version of this. For example, for me, the left side of the face
where I'm painting right now feels a bit warmer
than the other side. This one feels
more to yellow and the other one seems to
have a little bit of pink. Again, this is super subtle. The more you paint, the more you will be able to
see these colors. Just go with what you see
and try to exaggerate that. Then underneath the nose, I feel like it's quite dark. Warm shadow, I paint that. And the thing that you
need to be careful when following this exercise
is minding your values. The colors change from
what we are seeing, but we are trying to
match the values. As I explained before, values is how light or
how dark a color is. For example, this
shadow underneath the nose is darker than
the cheeks, right? I'm trying to create
that relationship. The closer in value you get, it, the more realistic it can look, even though you might be using crazy strange colors like I do. Then we go to the side
of the face and I see some greens and some really
dark yellows over there. I'm painting that down again. I'm seeing them very subtly
and I'm just going full on with saturation and trying
to match the value. The main thing I'm doing here, you can see this right now, is looking at both sides
of the face and thinking, what is the main difference? For example, I see that the
left side of the face is a bit more yellow than the right side of the
face that feels greener. Right then I try to make this
difference more extreme. I go to full on yellow and
to full on green to create more dimension in my portraits
and make it feel richer. Again, I am trying to match the shadow and the light areas and playing with the color. Now I'm making the bounce light on the left side of the face. As you can see, it's, it's not this big at all. But I like exaggerating things. I also think that what
is very interesting is that if I made this portrait
on two different days, it would look very different because my perception
is different. Or maybe I'm in a
different mood, but also because we're
comparing things. If I was to start on the hair, for example, I made
it really yellow. Exaggerated that, then maybe I couldn't use the
yellow I'm using now on the cheek
because that's already taken and it wouldn't make
sense relationship wise. I know it's a little bit
complex to think about this, but just so you know the place where you start
your portrait matters. And the day you painted, the mood you are in,
your perception changes. For example, if you're outside in the sun and
then you go back in, you might actually see
the colors literally different than if you
come from a dark room. You know, Then this shadow area, I just simplify as a very
big area on the neck. I think I could
have gone darker. My value is slightly wrong, but it's something
I'll correct later on. Oh, I find this so
absolutely fun to do. It's my favorite thing
to do as you can imagine painting and comparing
colors and stuff. Another tip I
wanted to give you, If you don't know what value is there because
colors are confusing, you can squint your eyes
a little bit and you will see all the darknesses better than when you
have your eyes open. Don't be afraid. And also
don't beat yourself up if you are putting one color down and it's not the one
that you were looking for, and then you change it and then again and again,
that's the process. It's putting one color
and correcting it maybe 234 times depending on how
lucky you are that day. And then continue to do so. You will see that I am
changing my colors many times and this is completely
normal. You can all do that. And you feel free, don't feel bad about it. I keep saying that
this is a way to make a richer portrait and I
wanted to explain why. So for example, if you're drawing and you're not
using this method, you, for example,
might say, okay, the cheeks are pink and both cheeks are the exact
same pink, you know, and then you look at the
portrait when it's done, and it's completely flat because both sides have the
exact same colors. But nature doesn't
really do that. Everything that's around
you affects the colors on your face or on a
plant or anything. And that's what we're
trying to achieve here. Then the eyes are quite
a different color. But I take a bit of
artistic freedom here and make them super
blue. I felt like it. You can see that I am color picking a color that's
already on the face. And then I'm changing
three things. I'm changing the
value of the color, which is the most
important thing or how light it is changing
the color itself. Is it more to yellow, or to green, or to red? Wherever the changing
the saturation of that color and saturation is a bit more
difficult to explain. It means how pure the color is. The less saturated, the more
to gray is going to go. I'm not very sure how to make the shadow
yet on the mouth. I'm trying things and seeing
what works as you can see. I'm zooming in and
out quite often. The reason for that is that
when things are very small, you can see much better if it makes the right effect
and it looks good. This is the synonym
or the same as artists that you see
that take some steps back and then go back
into their painting, you know, So it's the same, it's just distancing
yourself from the portrait and then seeing
what works and what doesn't. So when I'm doubting
about the color, I normally make it
small and then I make it big again to see
the contrast better. And also another
thing that you can do is to turn your image
into black and white. Which I didn't do here. But it could have been
helpful actually. All right, because we have
some light coming from above. The forehead is lighter
than the rest of the face. It has some shadows of the hair, but it's quite light. I'm putting that down. Now, when you're doing
this for the first time, it might feel very
disconnected and maybe the colors don't
really match together yet. But keep the values as good as possible and the rest
will slowly fall into place. Less value, more saturation. And here we have the shadow. Another thing that
might be interesting for you to know is
that when I make paintings with acrylic wash or any other technique
apart from the ipad, I focus on the same way
of thinking and painting. This is not a technique that you always need to do digitally. It's something that
you can translate to everything you paint and every technique that
you like using. Let's not forget about
the shoulder area, this is how the face is done. Now on the next video, we will continue with the hair. Now that we're halfway down, you will see that
your painting most surely looks terrible,
looks really bad. Looks ugly, mind does too. But when painting, I
found that when I was focused on trying to make the painting look
pretty at every stage, I wasn't allowing myself to go deeper and to actually
build a wooden structure. It's good to not judge your
painting until the end. It's a bit like,
when you're cooking, imagine that you are tasting your meal before it's
properly cooked. You know, Yeah, it
will taste bad, but that's because
it's not done. The same thing happens with art. So yeah, for me, this actually was a very important moment when
I realized like, wait a second, it can look
bad in the beginning. Doesn't need to be always
completely perfect. So I hope this helps
you too to lower the pressure and just build things that are a
bit more depth. This said let's continue
with our painted structure.
9. Painting Planes part II: All right, Let's start with
the hair. Exciting isn't it? The first thing
that I want you to look at is how the
light is working. As you can see, we have light
that's coming from above. That means that the
whole lower area of the hair is in shadow, the part above in light. That means that there will
be a change in value. The values underneath
will be darker, then the upper part of the
head will be in light. Obviously, we will move to
lighter values over there. What I'm focused
on now is creating abstract shapes that can emulate
these changes in values. Again, it's not detail at all, it's just abstract shapes to figure out what color will
go well in that area. Later on during the course, we will add all
those details that you all might be
impatient to add. Yeah, it's the same process. I'm trying different colors
and seeing if those makes sense to me or if perhaps
I want something else. I continue with the greens on one side and warmer
colors on the left side, which is actually what
I see on the image. I'm just following
that in my own way. Then I see lots of oranges and browns on the
top of the head. I will go more to yellow. I'm choosing this brown on
the hair because I'm creating a transition from the green
to very yellow on top. Because again, I'm
exaggerating things. I thought that if I go
green and then yellow, it might look a bit harsh. I'm also thinking
what I want to put in between to make it look nice. As you know, we are
gaggerating things. The hair is blond
and I'm going to go full on with yellows and
see how that looks for now. Here comes the yellow. Finally. Yeah, I've been really
impatient to add this one on. I'm going for a
very saturated one. And then I will break
it into different areas and make it less saturated
and brighter too. Now for example, it's a darker value of the same
yellow, orange color. What we're trying to create is the ness of the head
the same as with it, with the Mandarin where
we had the light area and then how it would smoothly
transition into shadow. But then with the hair, imagine that the hair is
creating a spherical shape, which it is, then
all the light and shadow is transitioning
through this shape. Yeah. Feel free to use your intuition and to
make your own choices. If you were to
paint this hair in a very light greenish color, that would also work. It could also be like maybe light orange
or really yellow. There are just so many choices
that you can pick from. I'm making another layer
for the background. I'm still thinking, I think
a green would be nice. This is a place where I normally change from the reference photo. If I was copying the
reference photo, I would go for a dark gray. But I wanted to be
really fun and stuff. Maybe a dark green
could be nice. I'm working with a
different layer because the background is
something that I changed my mind quite a lot about. I have it already separated and then I can
quickly change it. If I change my mind
then after this, remember to go back to your original layer,
which I didn't. At some point, you will
see that I correct this. Change things from layer again. It always happens here or there. You can either go with it or just change it again to the original layer that
you wanted it to be in. Yeah, for this video, I didn't go too
much into detail, like all the hair could be
broken in a lot more planes, but I wanted to keep it
reasonable for the course. You will see an example later on where I broke the hair
into many, many planes. And you will see what
effect that does. Now I realized that I
painted in the wrong area. And you will see
how I corrected it. I just selected copy paste it and then erase it
from the original layer. I'm sure there is an
easier way of doing this, I just never checked. Another thing
interesting to know is that if you put two layers together and one of them is
hidden, it will disappear. So be sure that all
of them are visible. All right, I continue with
the yellows and I also add a little bit of green because it fits with the whole painting, but also because I can see a little bit of
green in her hair. If you're seeing this photo of reference and
you're like, oh, I can see blown for the hair, light skin on the face and
maybe a shadow on the hair. Don't worry, this is something that grows in time
with practice. In the beginning, I also
couldn't see a lot of colors. As you practice, you will be
able to see more and more. Another thing that I
want to remind you of is that exaggerating
the colors and making them more saturated
or more to the color that I see is just my way of
thinking and doing things. It might also be that you prefer to not exaggerated as much or come up with a different way of doing this exercise.
That's completely fine. It could be fine if
you made a painting of this where you could see the
slight color transitions, but you could make
them more subtle. Or you would keep them into maybe an analogous
color color palette. Or I only want to see that
you can see the subtleties, these changes, and that
your painting is not flat. The rule here is don't make both sides of the painting the exact same
color. That's all. Then the way you go
about doing that, it can be your own way. This is it for the hair? Yeah. Now we will continue with a tiny exercise on how
to blend and look. I also wanted to show you
some different examples of me doing this exercise
with different portraits. As you can see, the one above is where I spend a lot more time on the hair and created all these breaks that you can create on your portrait too. I just wanted to keep
it short and sweet for this video, you know. Yeah. Feel free to create as many planes on the
hair as you want to. Now that we have our
weirdly looking portrait, you can share it in the
project area and we all can see each other and have fun seeing the colors
that everyone chose. Some things to remember
after this class are using Azar's head can help us understanding the planes of the face and then simplify
complex structures. Like to be able to
slowly build them up. Finally, as I said, not all the stages need to look good for the painting to
actually be successful. Okay, see you in the next
lesson where we will start thinking on how to blend those colors to make
them make sense.
10. Blending Planes: Now we will work on an exercise where I explain to you how
to approach the blending. Here we have this
pair that we worked on during the first
plans exercise. What I will do now very
quickly is to paint these planes so I can explain to you how
the blending works. I'm speeding this up so it
doesn't take a lot of time. What we will do now is
to work on the blending. But here we have
different colors. If you remember the Mandarin, that was quite easy because
we had everything in an orange that we only had
to change the value from. In this case, we have
many different ones. So the blending can
become quite confusing, but it's actually the same. What we want to do is to build from one color
to the other slowly. If you work from red to green, maybe you want to work with
some browns in the middle, which can make it look smoother. Here we have yellows and greens, and you can try to find
something that goes in between. Of course, the structure is there to help you
with the colors, but you will find extra colors on your reference image
that you can add. At this point, what I've
seen a lot happening with my students is to have
a tendency to either make all the values really light or all of
them really dark. Keep everything in the middle. And we need to be mindful
of both extremes. So you need to get your lights right and your shadows
darken off to be able to create something
that has enough volume and that looks really
yummy and round. This will also help you making your paintings
a bit more realistic, keeping your values right. All right, so I'm
adding a lot of browns, I'm adding a couple
of different greens. I'm just doing the same exercise we did when we were
building the structure, but then finding more
subtleties and more changes. What can also be helpful is to put the opacity of
your brush a bit lower. Sometimes you can
build transitions. I normally work both ways
with no opacity changes, just pull on opaque
or with a little bit more transparent to build those colors that I don't
really know how to. I really like this stage. This is where you can
relax and paint and just observe and try to emulate those changes that you're seeing on your painting. I find it really relaxing. I'm trying to build things
in between the planes. All these changes, it's like creating little
breaches of color. What could go here in between this green and this lighter
green, for example? Or between the red
and the yellow? You will find that if
you were trying to start this painting without
painting the planes first, it could be quite a
lot more overwhelming. And sometimes it would be
difficult to understand the structure and
the changes you want to keep between
colors and all that. It's just you're doing
the blending and the structure and the values
all in the same moment. If you don't do the
structure first, I like to either visualize
it very well and know what my structure is
going to be or painted. This makes it
always much better. Yeah, I recommend it. As you can tell, this method really helped me creating
a process that gives me consistent results but that it's not a recipe because it's
still based in observation. At this stage, things start looking more
volumetric and yummy. We can start adding some harsher highlights
to, to make it pop. This is the blending done now. We will start with the details. As you can see,
there are a lot of drops of water on the pair. Each drop has some light
and also some shadow. But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to simplify those details into tiny
dots of different colors. What I'm looking for are those differences on
color on the droplets. Yeah, you can add as
much detail as you want. If you prefer to add the tiny shadows,
that's also possible. Do what feels right to you. Yeah, the way I'm doing
this is to just select the colors and then
change them in value a little bit to
create those details. I will also add some details
on the leaf just for fun. There is no need to, but
I'm just into it now. This is it for the blending. I hope this clarifies the method that we're
going to use for blending. But if you have some questions, feel free to ask them
in the comments. This is how it
looks. In the end, you can see all these variations of color and the droplets, and also some fancy highlights. It looks fun, It looks pretty.
Let's continue with this. Now it's your turn. Find
fruit or something that has many colors like a
mango or an apple. And then you can try and create those planes and blend them together and see how it looks. After this, we will work
on our portrait and create that roundness and those details that we're
all dying to get done. As always, feel free to share
it in the project area. We're creating a
community there of ugly paintings in the beginning and better paintings at the end. Some tips for you are, as I said, values are important. Keep your values right. Objects with a small quantity of hues will be easier to paint. And once you have more hues, you'll have to think a bit
more on how to blend those. But they are also
the most final. And there are different
ways of blending the planes and you can choose the one that helps you the most.
11. Final Piece: We arrived. Yes. Finally, we're going to finish our portrait. It took a long time, a lot of little fruits
that I was adding around. But it's the moment to
yeah at those details, at the drown ness, and to make all of
this make sense. If you watched until here, thanks for trusting me. Let's continue. I'm showing
you a setup version because, you know it takes a long time. But just so you know, it took me about an hour to
finish the portrait. And normally for my portraits, if you see my other work, it takes me 1-5 hours
complete that stage. And the reason is because I enjoy it so much
that I cannot stop. I don't want it to ever end. So I keep adding, adding, adding until I'm done. All right. Get your painting ready and let's start with this. I recommend you
to paint with me. I think it's fun.
Join me for it. This process in total
took me an hour. What I did to make it nicer
to watch is to speed up some moments and also leave
some as real time painting. You have a combination of both. Before I start
with that process, I realized that sometimes
you need to get out of the painting
and come back to it again to see some of
the mistakes you made. I realized that my
values were a bit off. For example, the
shadow on the neck, the shadow areas on the hair on the nose
were a bit too light. It's what I said, that our
eyes have the tendency to see things sometimes a bit lighter
than they are actually, especially on the shadow areas. I'm correcting those. If you see that yours
are also a bit off, take a minute to make sure that values are correct and then we will start
with the blending. The idea is to take
the concept of the planes and
start adding more, for example, on the hair. We can start adding more
and more small areas of color to create that brownness that I've been talking
about for a bit. Now again, think of the
Mandarin we made there. We had only one color. Everything was
transitioning smoothly. We want the same
happening with this hair, even though there are
different colors. One tip that was
super useful to me is to not think as a hair, not think about the nose as, oh, I'm painting a nose. Or because then you have
all these misconceptions of how you should paint it and
how you should draw it to. If you think about your areas, not only when drawing, but also when painting
as abstract shapes, you might get it more realistic. If you were thinking,
this is hair, it needs to look like
hair. How does hair look? You know, what I'm
thinking is this shape looks like a tiny rectangle
that goes to this side. Or this is a tiny triangle, or I'm thinking of those, or this curve is really sharp, this one is really smooth. And this is the type of thinking that is going on in my
mind when painting this. I spend ten, 15 minutes
working on the hair. I'm going to speed
it up a bit and then we will go to paint the face. The beauty of this is that while you are building
all these extra planes, you can see the image becoming
more and more realistic. Which is really cool because
you're not forcing it to be, it just happens organically. Once you add more surfaces, more surface changes
throughout your shapes, Then I start with the face. The first thing I do is correct the values on the
shadow under the nose. I think it could
be a bit darker. Not like that, Yes, like this. Now that all the
colors are laid out, you can also look at your
painting and feel okay. Does it need any other color? For me to connect more with it or for me
to feel It's nicer. For example, I looked
at it and it's great. I like that. I followed
the image I saw with all these color
relationships that we gagerated. But my first feeling was
I need more pink here. This is a great moment for you to look at it and
just have a feeling. You cannot explain where
this feeling comes from. It's not like it's something logical or anything.
It's just taste. And this is a very
good moment because you have everything
else setting you up for success and you can be more creative
with your options. I'm not saying change the
colors of everything, it's just if you miss one or two little
hints of color now, it's a great moment
to place them. What I'm doing now, and what
you can do yourself too, is to start adding these details
that really make a face. But we kept in order to work on the planes and that is
the nostrils of the nose, the eyelid folds, all these little areas
that we didn't paint yet. That is so satisfying to
see, because finally, our face will start looking less like a robot and
more like a human. You can also add the pupils. Now another detail that
people tend to overlook, it actually makes the
face really come alive, is the shadow that the
eyelid makes on the eyeball. We have the white eyeball that by the way,
don't paint it white. If it's white, now,
make it less white. Put it like a gray or
desaturated color, like a red or anything. Once it's gray or similar, you can add a shadow
where the eye lid touches it because the light is
coming from above, normally. And then it creates this little shadow that gives a lot of volume to the eye area. Now I'm going to start blending
all these little areas, adding some littles here
and there on the chin, the nostrils, adding
some highlights that I kept because we were
working on the planes. For example, look at
the right of the mouth, on the lower lip, I just added a little bit of a
highlight that is pink. If you look at the photo, you can really see it's there. But because of the work
with the planes we kept it. It's the moment to look at all these subtleties now and start adding them
to your portrait. And that is what makes it
so meditative and cozy. Because you're just observing painting. Observing painting. Oh, I love it. Can you tell? Then I'm starting building
the bridge between the shadow area on the
face and the light area. It doesn't look so
harsh right now. As I said, the light
is coming from above. This affects the whole
lower bit of the face. If you look at the photo, you will see that the face has the shadows on
each side of the face, from the temple to the jaw. Even though it
looks quite harsh. There is a little bit
of a gradient going on. And we want to make sure
that that's present in our painting because otherwise it won't look realistic enough. So yeah, this stage you can
see how the face is changing. I hope yours is changing too. All right, so this is how
it's looking for now. All these planes are more
or less blending with each other and I'm finding
ways to represent that volume. What I will do now is to just add textures
at little areas. I already added a
couple of hairs going out of the silhouette
because couldn't help it. But we're going to
do more of that. I'm adding some hair
on the eyebrows, now some textures on the skin. I like putting like
tiny dots on it. Yeah, maybe the reference
photo in this case, I feel it's a bit
annoying to have around, but this is how I paint. This was the best way
for me to show you. You can also add some
eyelashes like I'm doing. Think of tiny, curvy shapes. Don't make them straight. Just tiny curves that are coming from the eyelid and
moving upwards. You don't need to add every
single detail that you see. By the way, you can choose
the ones that you really like and want them to be there. Too much detail can draw
in very quickly image. You can choose how
much you want like, it's also a matter of taste. But try to keep it balanced so it doesn't overpower
the whole painting. Yeah, I'm liking it
a how it looks like, all these little
textures on the skin. I'm I like the hair quite a lot. I hope you're liking
your painting too. I hope you're surprised
on what you're making. You can spend as much
time as you want on this. I could spend a lot
more time in it, but I think that this already
represents my technique. And you can see examples of this technique in all my work. So feel free to look at that. Yeah, I really want to
see what you all do. And yeah, after it, if you want, you can also post one where you paint something that
you normally paint or, you know, following this method, we see how that translates into your own voice and your
own way of doing things. I'm a true believer
that everyone has something different to share something unique
and maybe you can find a way to express that
uniqueness with your painting. Some things to remember are go from big areas
to smaller ones. Keep the tiny details to the end and have fun
and enjoy the process. You can relax and
paint at this stage. Okay, so we're done. On the next class, we
will wrap up the course. Yeah, thanks so
much for watching.
12. Conclusion and a Dance!: So you made it.
Congratulations, thanks for following this course. Yeah, congratulations
for sticking with it, trusting on the process
and creating a portrait. As I said, I don't know
how many times during the course share it
in the projects. I love creating a community. I also love it if you
paint it and tag me Instagram so I can
see there and yeah, I'm very curious to see
what you will all do with the portrait and then
if you want to make some experiments after,
that's also cool. When you upload it, you
can also add a couple of thoughts on how it went and feel free to ask
for some questions. And as I said way in the
beginning of the course, if you post your final result, it's nice for me to see
your photo reference, then I can give you even more
detailed feedback on it. I hope this way of painting will help you succeeding
when painting anything. It helped me so much so hopefully it will
also help you too. Finally, to reap, I don't
know if you need it, but just to recap, always
start with the structure. Don't paint the details
in the beginning. You keep it, only the structure. And then start with the blending and then start with the details. The last thing I want to
remind you of is yeah, be kind to yourself
when painting. I don't know why, but with artists we always beat
ourselves up a little bit. I used to do it
in the beginning, like why can't I paint this? I spent, I don't know
how many hours painting. Why doesn't it work yet? To be honest, this stopped
happening once I painted a lot because then I was less precious on each painting
that I was doing. And if I create like one or two paintings a month that I really like,
I'm happy with that. And yeah, just keep
creating as much as you can and you will see that
the pressure keeps lowering. If you have one chance in the whole year to
get a nice painting, then it's difficult to
lower the pressure. Just as a curiosity. The other thing that I realize that happens is if
I sit and yeah, I'm going to make
a good painting today that never worked,
that never works. I just sit and like, yeah, I'm going to paint today.
Let's see what happens. Maybe this attitude inspires you to feel free
to adopt it too. Yeah. Then you get final results that you
weren't expecting, but that I really could,
so happy that you joined. As always, I offer
courses in my own, sometimes lives in Instagram
to paint together. And I'm sure I will create more courses for
skill share too. Yeah, have fun, Create, and see you on the next one.
