Still Life Illustration with Decorative Patterns in Procreate

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi everyone. I'm Larissa. I'm a teacher, illustrator, and surface pattern designer. Today, I'm going to show you how to create a still-life illustration in Procreate. Creating still-life works is pretty enjoyable. Because you can just find anything around you and start drawing. Many objects are quite simple in structure. They allow you to use your own imagination to change the way they look or add some patterns on them when you draw. In this course, we'll be drawing a small bunch of flowers and leaves in the container. We will first learn how to draw different types of containers step-by-step, including vases, jugs, and watering cans. Then we'll practice drawing flowers and leaves with different shapes. I'll show you how to build your own flowers using the flower guides provide in this class. After all these exercises, we can put everything together to create a still-life illustration with decorative pallets. I'll guide you through the entire process from sketching, inking, and coloring to adding details. I will also show you how to assess your work at different stages so you can make it better. This class is great for you if you are a Procreate beginner, or you want to practice your digital drawing skills, or you just simply love creating still-life works. Taking this class, you will get a workbook withdrawing instructions, a set of practice sheets, and a number of color palettes and background paper. By the end of the class, you will be able to use a variety of Procreate features to create your own still-life illustration from start to finish. You will also be able to evaluate your work along the way to make it even better. All you need for this course is an iPad and a stylus that works with your iPad. Without further ado, let's get started. 2. Class Project: For our class project, we'll be using Procreate to draw a still-life illustration featuring some flowers and leaves in a container. That container can be a vase, a jug, or a watering can. We will learn how to draw these containers in the workbook. We will also practice drawing flowers and leaves in the practice sheets. Lastly, we'll put everything together to form a still-life illustration. We're going to start by making a sketch, then moving onto inking and coloring, and we will finish the work by adding some decorative patterns on the elements. You will have everything you need on the resource list that I provided for this course. Let's dive right in and I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 3. Workbook: Drawing Vases: Before we start anything, let's have a look at the class resource list. You can find the list under the resources tab on Skillshare's website. Then you can download it and open it up in your iPad. For the workbook, we'll practice drawing some vases, jugs, and watering cans. We'll start from drawing the vases in this lesson. To do that, we need some resources to start with. We will need the brush pack, the two color palettes, and the workbook. We'll be using the Procreate all-star brush pack. If you have taken the last class, you have it already but if you haven't, just tap on the link and download it. It would take us through the website and then scroll down to the bottom and tap get the pack. You can see the file size is pretty big, so it's going to take a while. I'm going to speed up here, then open in and choose Procreate. You will need to open up a file to see the brushes. Let me just quickly create a new one. Then under the brush's library, you will find the brush pack right up here. Now we need the color palettes. Number 3 on the list, you will find quite a few of them. Throughout the whole class, we only need Pallet 1 and Pallet 2. The other three pallets are only for the final work. I'll let you know what to do with them when we get there, but for now, let's just download the first two. Go to the three-dot menu on the top right, open in, then choose Procreate. Then under the colors menu, if you go to palettes, you will find the palette Number 1 just at the bottom of the list. Then we'll do the same for palette Number 2. Then we need our class workbook. Item Number 4 here, you will find two different sizes of the workbook. They can both open in Procreate. One of them is bigger and the other one is smaller. I suggest if you're using an iPad Pro or an iPad Air, you can download the 3,000-pixel version, but if you're using an iPad or an iPad mini, you can download the 2,000-pixel version. There's also a PDF version here for the workbook just in case you don't want to work in Procreate, you want to print it out and work on paper, then you can download the PDF. I'm using an iPad Pro, so I'm going to go ahead and download the bigger version. The file size of this one is also pretty big, I'm going to speed up here. When it's done, just open it up in Procreate and now you have the workbook. Here, if you go to the Layers menu, you will find quite a few sections within this workbook. We're going to draw different vases, jugs, and watering cans separately. Let me turn off the workbook cover and then make the first section visible. Here you will find the text, some examples, and then the space for you to do the drawing and it's the same for the other two sections. Now before we start drawing some vases, let me quickly show you the Pinterest inspiration board I put together for this class. If we go back to the resources list, item Number 1 is the Pinterest board. There are a few sections here and Sections 1, 2, 3 are for the workbook. Let's have a look at some vase reference images. You can find different shapes of vases in here, different styles. With vases, they're actually pretty simple to draw. They're just one shade in a symmetrical manner. We're going to use the symmetrical function in Procreate to do that. I would like you to explore different shapes of vases in your drawings. You can see some of them are tall and skinny, some of them are chubby, some big and some small. Just see how many different shapes you can draw. Let's go back to our workbook. You can see I've got some examples in here. You don't need to draw this many, just try as much as you can. A week maybe draw three or four would be a pretty good start. Now let me bring up the Pinterest board side-by-side with the workbook. In this way, I can refer to the images on the left and then draw on the right at the same time. If you have some vases at home, feel free to refer to them as your inspiration. As I said before, we need to set up the symmetrical function in Procreate. Let's go to Actions on the Canvas, turn on Drawing Guide, and then Edit Drawing Guide. Then we go to Symmetry and then under the options below, make sure you choose vertical, then test it out. Yeah, it works. Before we move on, just make sure you choose the brush and the brush you like and also pick a color. Then double-check that we're on the draw here layer and you can see the drawing assist is turned on. If it's turned off, the symmetrical function won't work, so make sure it's turned on. Then just quickly have a look at the examples here. You can see all we need to draw is just the outline of the vases. No need to worry about any details in these pictures, just practice drawing the outline. Let me turn off the examples and then I'm going to start from the first one here. I'm going to draw the outline from the top to the bottom. If you're not happy with what you drew, remember to use two-finger tap to undo. Yeah. I'm pretty happy with this shape. Let me just quickly do the color drop to fill in the shape. If you look closely at the top here, and also at the bottom here, you can see they are a bit funny. Let me just quickly fix them. With the bottom here, I'm going to use the eraser to fix the outline. Now we are done with the first vase shape. Because we're going to draw a few more, so what we need to do next is to transfer this shape onto a separate layer so we can draw the others on this draw here layer. What we need to do is that we need to use the selection tool in Procreate. This S-shaped symbol is the selection tool and make sure you choose Freehand. Let me just quickly circle the whole shape. Then use three fingers, swipe down. You can see a pop-up menu. Then we choose cut and paste. Now if you go to the layers menu, you can see the shape that we just drew is transferred onto a new layer. Let me just quickly name it. Now I want to make the shape a bit smaller so I can put it up here, just like what I did with the examples. To do that, we need to use the transform tool in Procreate. This arrow symbol is the transform tool and make sure it's under uniform. Then let me just bring down the size, by this much. Then I'll just move it here. Turn it off. Now we can turn off this layer and go back to draw here layer. Then we can draw the second shape. I'm going to choose this one. I'll pick another color. You can see that when I did the color drop just now it filled out the whole page. What happened was if we zoom out a bit, this edge is not suit. Make sure you suit all the edges before you do color drop. Now let me fix it up here and down the bottom. It looks fine. Now we're going to do the same with this shape that we're going to transfer it onto a separate layer. Grab the selection tool under Freehand. Then quickly circle it, three fingers swipe down. Then choose cut and paste. I'm going to name it Vase Number 2. Now we can resize this second last just like what we did with the first one. Grab the transform tool and then resize it, make it a bit smaller. I'm going to draw two more shapes by using the same process. Now we're done with four shapes of vases. You can see there are like way too many layers in here. With these four vases, we can actually put them altogether onto one layer. What we need to do is just use two fingers to pinch all these four layers and there you go. Now we can again use the transform tool to place them nicely or a bit down here. I encourage you to draw as many shapes as you can so just for practice and get used to the vase shape. Another thing is you can find the basic steps of drawing vases on our resource list. Let me quickly go back there. Number 5 on the list, you can find the instructions of drawing vases right here. You will see a summary of the basic steps. Then you can save this image to your files. Before we move on, let's quickly save a JPEG of our work. Go to Actions, under Share choose JPEG and then Save image. 4. Workbook: Drawing Jugs: Now we can move on to the second section where we can practice drawing some water jugs. Let's bring up our printers board again to look for some inspiration. We can go back to the main page and look for jugs reference images. The difference between a vase and a jug is that a jug has a mouth on top so you can pour the liquid out, and it also has a handle on the side. Comparing to a vase that has only one shape, a jug has two more parts added to the shape. That's something we need to keep in mind when we start drawing these jugs. Again, explore different types of jugs, different shapes, different styles. You can find so many in here. I'm going to draw three different types of jugs. You can draw as many as you want. Now we can go back to our workbook. Make sure we're on the Draw Here layer under Section 2, and we can turn off the examples. I'm going to draw this jug to start with. You can see it has a body shape that is symmetrical in a way, and then it has a mouth on top and a handle on the side. We can still use the symmetrical function in Procreate to draw the body shape, and then we will add on the mouth and the handle. Let's make sure the Drawing Guide is set up properly. We go to Actions under Canvases. The Drawing Guide is turned on, and it's on the symmetry vertical. Another place we need to double-check is to draw here layer. You can see the Drawing Assist is not turned on at the moment. If you draw a line on the Canvas, the symmetrical function won't work. So make sure you turn it on. Now it's working. Let me choose a color, and I'll start from the main body shape. Make sure you've fixed the top and the bottom. The bottom looks fine. Now before we start drawing the mouth and the handle, there's one thing we need to do first, and that is turned off the Drawing Assist because the mouth and the handle are not symmetrical. Now we can resize it and place it onto another layer, just like what we did with the vases. To do that, we need to grab the selection tool under Freehand, circle the whole shape, three fingers swipe down, and then cut and paste. Now, it's onto a new layer. Then grab the transform tool, make sure it's under Uniform, make it a bit smaller, and then move it up here. I'm going to repeat the same process to draw two more jugs. [MUSIC] Now, I'm all done. Let me merge these three layers, and then place it a bit to the center. Then save a JPEG for our work. Again, you can find the instructions of drawing jugs on our resource list, right here. You can see the basic steps of drawing a jug in Procreate. You can save it to your files. [MUSIC] 5. Workbook: Drawing Watering Cans: We can then move on to the last section in the workbook to draw a watering can. But first, let's have a look at what their features are. In the Pinterest board, you can find many different types of watering cans. You can see they have many parts. They have a main body, just like the bases and the jugs, but they also have a spout as green color, a handle on the side, and also a handle on the top. We can still use the symmetrical function to draw the main body and then add on the other parts, but you can see they're not all the same. They do have different types, so I encourage you to explore different designs in your drawings. I'm going to draw two different types of watering cans. Now, the drawing guide is already setup, so we just need to make sure to turn on the Drawing Assist and test it out. Let me pick a color. Turn off the examples. I'm going to choose this watering can to start with. As I said before, I'm going to draw the main body first. [MUSIC] Now I can draw the spout and the sprinkler. Let me turn off the Drawing Assist first. [MUSIC] Then we can draw the side handle [MUSIC] and also the top handle. [MUSIC] That's about it. Let me place it onto a new layer. [MUSIC] Now, I'm going to draw another watering can with a different style. I'm going to choose this one because the top handle and the side handle are merged together into one. There's a little bar in between the main body and the spout. It looks pretty interesting. I'm going to turn off this layer, go back to the Draw Here layer, turn on Drawing Assist. Pick a color. [MUSIC] That looks pretty good to me, so let me also place it onto a new layer. [MUSIC] Once again, you can draw as many watering cans as you want and try to do it in different styles. I'm going to finish with these two and save the work as a JPEG. You can also find the instructions on the resource list because a watering can has many parts. If you find it a bit difficult to follow, you can always refer to the instructions here. [MUSIC] 6. Practice Sheet: Drawing Top View Flowers with five petals: In the practice sheets, we're going to draw some flowers and leaves so let's take a look at the inspiration board first. In the fourth section, you can find all kinds of leaves and flowers. You may want to refer to the flowers and leaves that you have either at home or in your backyards or anywhere that you can find them. With flowers, you can see they have many styles. They have different kinds and different structures. I chose a very simple type of flower to demonstrate in this class, which is basically a roundish shape flower with a number of petals. According to this flower type, I have designed some guides so you can practice along. We're going to draw this type of flowers from a top view and side view. We will also practice drawing them with five petals, six petals, and eight petals. Let's download some resources for this lesson. Number 6 on the resource list, you will find three sets of practice sheets. The first one is for drawing flowers from a top view, the second one is for drawing flowers from a side view, and the last one is for us to draw some leaves. You can open these three files in Procreate. Again, if you don't want to work in Procreate you prefer to work on paper, you can download the PDF version. I've bundled all three of them in this file. Now let's download the first file and start drawing some flowers from a top view. Now we have the practice sheets ready and as I said, we're going to draw flowers with five, six, and eight petals. We will explore what they look like when they only have one layer of petals and when they have two layers. Let me walk you through how the practice sheet works. Go to the "Layers" menu, you will find the "Text." You can actually lock this layer so you don't make changes to it because I realized I forgot to do that. Highlight this layer and use your finger to swipe left, then you find the "Lock" button. What that means is that when you lock a layer, you can't draw anything on it. When you draw something and you think part of it is done, you don't want to mess it up, you can always lock that layer in a way to protect that part of your work, and of course, you can unlock it if you do want to make changes. Then you will find the examples. These two examples basically show you how we can work with the guides. We're going to draw the center part of the flower, and then draw the petals around it, then add on some details. Over here with two layers, we draw the center part again, then the first layer of petals and then the second layer of petals. Lastly, draw some details. If we take a closer look at the three main sections in these worksheets, you will see all of them have too many sections. Within each mini sections, you will find the guides and the place where you can draw. Before we move on, let me quickly point out that this is just one way to draw flowers, there are so many other ways to do it. If you prefer to draw flowers in your own way, go for it. But if you're stuck, you don't know how to start, you're more than welcome to follow my method. Without further ado, let's get started. We can find some inspiration from our Pinterest board, or you can refer to the flowers that you have around you. I would like you to pay attention to all the different types of petal shapes. Some are rounded, some are like a diamond shape. You can try out these shapes over here to create different styles of flowers. I'll start from these five-petaled flowers. Let me quickly hide "Examples" and then find the next "Draw Here" layer. We'll draw only one layer of petals first, so let me choose a flower shape. I quite like this one, and then start drawing the petals. I know that I said before we start from drawing the center of the flower and then move on to the petals. That's not compulsory. You can of course draw the petals first, and then fill in the center part just like what I'm doing here. It's entirely up to you. Now I'm done with the petals, let me fill in the color and then we can draw the center part. I suggest you to create separate layers for all the elements within this flower. In this way, we can learn how to work with layers in Procreate. Let me create a new layer above it and then grab another color and then start drawing the center part. You don't have to follow the size of the guide correctly, you can of course make it a bit smaller, or even make it a bit bigger. I'll do a smaller one. Yeah, that looks good. Now we need to draw some details on the petals. I will need a new layer in between the center part and the petals, so let me just highlight the petal layer and then create a new layer above it. This plus symbol always creates a new layer above the selected layer. If you need to rearrange the order, simply just drag it up and down. Now we have this new layer and we can start drawing the details. [MUSIC] That's pretty much done. What you can do next is to hide the guide so your flower can stand out. Now I can move on to the next flower which has two layers of petals. Before we move on, we can actually collapse this mini section so the interface looks a bit cleaner, otherwise, there are just way too many layers in here and you may find it a bit distracting. Then we can go to the next mini section which is the flower we're going to draw. You can see there are two layers of guides in here. I'm going to draw the top layer of petals first, and then move on to the bottom layer and then draw the center of the flower last. So let me quickly hide the second layer and make the first layer visible. Select the "Draw Here" layer underneath it, then I'll go find another flower shape. This one is pretty good so I'm going to draw this one. Now the first layer is done so we can move on to the second layer. Let me hide the first layer guide and the petals first so we can see the second layer more clearly. Then make sure you highlight the "Draw Here" layer underneath it. I know this flower doesn't have two layers of petals, but as a creator, you can always make changes to what you're referencing, so I'll go ahead and draw the second layer. Now, let's turn off the second layer guide and turn on the first one so we can draw the center part of the flower. Then I'll create a new layer above the top layer of petals, grab a new color, and then start drawing the center part. [MUSIC] Now we can draw the details on the petals. Create a new layer between the center part and the top layer of petals, so you can draw details on the top layer. [MUSIC] Now we can create another layer on top of the bottom layer of petals so we can draw the details over here. [MUSIC] That's how we draw flowers using these guides and just a quick note about the details on the flowers. I see them as decorative patterns because you don't really find flowers in real life that actually look like this. These details come from my imagination, and they are interpreted in simple lines and shapes. I encourage you to draw your own decorative patterns to make your flowers more beautiful. You're more than welcome to check out my first class where I take you through the entire process to draw patterns. 7. Practice Sheet: Drawing Top View Flowers with six petals: Now, I will use the exact same process to draw the six-petaled flowers. [MUSIC] Now, the six-petaled flowers are completed. If you still remember, when I was drawing the flower on the right, I was trying to decide what color to use on the details up here. I used the color disc to help me find it. Just a quick touch on using the color disc. Basically, you can find any color in here. It has two parts: the outside ring and the inside disc. You can change the hue of the color in the outside ring. You can see they have all kinds of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Once you've decided on the hue, you can use the inside disc to change its brightness and saturation. Basically, the colors in the upper half of the disc are lighter, whereas the ones in the bottom half are darker. Also, the ones on the right-hand side of the disc are more saturated, but the ones on the left-hand side are less saturated. That's how the color disc works. You can always use it to find the colors you want. [MUSIC] 8. Practice Sheet: Drawing Top View Flowers with eight petals: Now we can draw the eight-petal flowers and I want to do something different this time. You can see, when I was drawing the five and six petal flowers, the way I use the guides is to place every single petal within these little sections. For the next two flowers, I want to use these lines as the middle line of the petals, like this. So it's about using the guides creatively and by doing so, I believe you can create lots of different styles of flowers. So I'll go ahead and use the same process to draw these two flowers. [MUSIC] Now, I've finished drawing these two layers of petals, and I just realized I'm not really happy with the colors I chose at the moment. I want to use very light colors on this flower. Let me just quickly test it out. If you want to change the color of a certain thing in your work first of all, it's better for you to put every single thing on a separate layer and that's what we've been doing so far. In this way is easier for us to change the color. For this layer of petals, I want to change the color to this almost white. What I need to do is go back to the layer's panel, highlight the layer, and then choose Alpha Lock. You can see there's a checkerboard effect behind the petals. That means the alpha lock function is on. Then make sure you've selected the color you want, tap on the layer, and choose Fill layer. Now, you've changed the color of the petals. I'll do the same for the second layer. [NOISE] You can see because the background color is pretty light and there's not much difference between the first layer of petals and the background color. So to differentiate the two of them, what we can do is to create a new layer and place it underneath the second layer of petals and then choose a relatively dark color. Just swipe over and make it as a background color. [NOISE] Again, it's about using the guides creatively. Now, we can see this flower a bit more clearly. The reason why I mentioned this is that when we create our final work for this class, you'll be working with different background color. If you chose to use a light background color, the colors of your subject matter could be a bit dark or saturated. But if you chose to use a dark background color, the colors of your subject matter could be a bit light or muted. So it's good for us to do all these color experiments when we are still practicing. Now I'll go ahead and finish drawing this flower. [MUSIC] 9. Practice Sheet: Drawing Side View Flowers: Now, let's practice drawing flowers from the side view. You can download the practice sheet from the resource list. If you can't see the file in Procreate, it's because the previous file is still open. In this case, just go back to the gallery, then you will find the file that we just downloaded. In this lesson, we're going to draw three types of flowers from the side view. Under the layers menu, you can see the layout of these practice sheets. It's pretty similar to the previous one. There is some text, an example, and three different sections for each flower. Under each section, you will find two layers of guides that can help you draw the petals. Basically, the overall size of the first layer guide is a bit bigger than the second layer guide. For the five petal flower, we draw three petals in the first layer and two petals in the second layer. For six petal flower, we draw three petals in the front and three petals at the back. For the eight petal flower, we put five petals in front and three at the back. The entire process of drawing these flowers from the side view, is exactly the same as drawing them from the front view. I'll go ahead and start drawing here. [MUSIC] 10. Practice Sheet: Drawing Leaves: In this lesson, we're going to draw some leaves. Let's download the practice sheet on the resource list. We have just practiced drawing flowers in the last two lessons. Now, we're going to draw the stems and the leaves that are attached to the flowers. Because in our final artwork will go put these flowers and leaves together. Now we have opened up the file in procreate, and you can see what we're going to do. These things in gray are the stems. We need to draw different types of leaves on the stems to make the whole thing complete. Just like the example over here. You can bring up the printer's bot to find some inspiration, or you can just refer to the ponds around you. I'll go ahead and fill in the leaves for stems before we move on to this little section in the corner. [MUSIC] Now, let's take a look at the corner section here. This is a place where you can draw your own leaves. What we just drew are pretty small leaves that are usually attached to a flower. In this corner, I suggest you can draw some leaves that are by themselves, and they are usually pretty big. It's because in our final artwork, we will draw some leaves as well, not just the flowers and these small leaves. It's good for us to practice them before that. I'll go ahead and fill in the blank here. [MUSIC] Now we are done with all the practices. In the next lesson, we'll start working on the final artwork. [MUSIC] 11. Final Work Explanation & Preparation: For our final artwork, we'll be creating a still-life illustration that features some flowers and leaves in a container. That container can be a vase, a jug, or a watering can. I'll show you how to do all three. You can choose one of them to complete. We'll start from sketching the work, and then inking till the end, filling in the details. You can use the background paper on the resource list for your final work. You may also want to look at some other still-life illustrations for inspiration. In our printers board, you will see there is a section where you can find all these examples. Take a look at the way these artists arrange flowers and leaves and the container and see how the details on these elements are treated. That means you don't need to follow my examples and the way I arranged the elements. You can totally create your own composition as long as there are flowers and leaves and containers in it. But of course, don't copy other people's work. You do need to interpret all of your inspiration in your own artistic way. Then let's quickly look back at the color palettes on the resource list. As I mentioned before, we only need the first two pallets to complete our class project. However, I did put together three separate color sets for the final three illustrations. These are the colors I when I was creating these artworks. They are only here for the final demonstrations, because you may find it a bit distracting to see me jumping between pallets to find the correct color. It's better for me to put everything just in one place when I demonstrate making the work. But if you are happy with these three color sets, you are more than welcome to use them as well. Otherwise, you can, of course, use your own colors. I'll go ahead and download these color palettes. [MUSIC] You can also download the background paper that I created for this class. On the resource list, scroll down to the last item. You will find four different colors of background paper. Simply tap on the link, open it, then go to the menu, choose Open in. Then make sure you save to files. You can now do the same to download all the background paper, or maybe choose the ones you like, or even using your own background color or paper is more than welcome. The last thing we need to do is to go to your photo library and find all the works that you have saved throughout the class. These are the artworks that we have created so far. One for the vases, one for the jugs, one for the watering cans, one for the top few flowers, one for the side view flowers, and the last one for the leaps. What we can do now is to put all these works into an album. We have a cleaner interface and less distraction. I'll show you how to do that. Tap on the Select button on the top right corner. Choose all six images. Then tap on these boxy upward arrow symbol on the bottom left. Choose Add to Album. Tap on New Album, give it a name, then save. Then on the left-hand side menu, you can find it under my albums right here. Now we have an album with the artworks we have created just for this class. The reason why we do this is that when we draw our final pieces, we can refer to the designs that we have created already. You can pick the ones you like and put them together to form a new composition. When we open up Procreate, we can bring up the Photo Library, put it aside, and the album is already loaded. In this way, we can make the new work and refer to the old designs at the same time. Without further ado, let's get started. [MUSIC] 12. Drawing Flowers in a Vase: Sketching: In this lesson, we'll draw some flowers and leaves in the box. Let's create a new canvas and make it 3,000 pixels by 3,000 pixels. That gives me 55 layers to use, which is more than enough. If you have a smaller iPad, you may want to change the size to 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels, just in case you don't have enough layers to use if you went for a bigger sized canvas. We'll start the work by making a sketch. In my mind, I'm thinking to place the vase in the bottom half of the canvas and then draw two types of flowers in the top half, and also add some big leaves behind them. Let me choose a brush for sketching. You can pick one from the sketching brush set that comes with Procreate, and then choose a color. For the vase I'll refer to this vase shape in my workbook, but I want to make the mouth a bit smaller and the belly a bit bigger. Let me quickly set up the drawing guide. Make sure it's vertically symmetrical, and then start sketching the vase. [MUSIC] Now, let's give this layer a name. We'll be using a lot of layers throughout the entire week, so it's better for us to get organized and label each layer. Then we can start to think about where to put the two flowers. Create a new layer and move it below the vase layer. You can choose another color. I'm thinking to draw one flower on the left and the other one on the right. You can see just the circles and the lines are way too simple to define the flowers, we need to make this part of the sketch much more specific. I decide to make the flower on the left, a top view flower with one layer of petals, and I would like to make the one on the right, also a top view flower, but with two layers of petals. Let me label this layer a rough sketch. To draw these flowers, we can actually refer to the flower guides in our practice sheet. You can see they start from the center part of the flower to a much bigger circle around it. The area in-between is divided into a number of sections depending on the number of petals. We can actually draw these guides in our sketch to help us decide what the flowers will look like. Let me make a new layer to draw the flower guide, and I'll start from the flower on the left. I want to make this flower a six petaled flower, so let me divide the area into six sections. When you draw this flower guides, you can just do it roughly, just like what I did here. There is no need to draw them perfectly. They're only here to help us work out the shape and position of the flower in our work, and we'll get rid of the guides eventually. Now, that the guide is done, I can figure out the shape of the petals. I'd like to refer this to the first flower on my practice sheet, so I'll create a new layer to sketch the actual shape of the flower. [MUSIC] That looks good, so I can go to the Layers menu, get rid of the guide, and start sketching the stem and the leaves. [MUSIC] Now, I'll use the same process to sketch the flower on the right. [MUSIC] We're now only one step away from finishing the sketch, which is to add some big leaves. I'm going to choose these big ones to put behind the flowers. Let me create a new layer and move it below the flowers layer, then we can draw the leaves. [MUSIC] If we take a look at the whole sketch for a second, we can say there seems to be more whitespace at the top than the bottom. We can actually move up the sketch a bit so it's more centered in the canvas. To do that, we need to select all the layers first. Select one layer and then use one finger to swipe right to select the next layer, and then do the same for the rest of the layers. Then we can choose the Transform tool and then move the whole sketch up a bit until you're happy with the position. That's pretty much it for the sketch, now we can move on to inking and coloring the work. [MUSIC] 13. Drawing Flowers in a Vase: Inking & Coloring: Let's bring in the background paper first. I'm going to choose a light background for this week. Now, I'm going to stop inking and coloring all these elements. I will also show the basic steps on the screen so you can follow along. [MUSIC] Now that I'm done with the inking and coloring, I do want to stop for a sec and start evaluating my work at this stage. I want to find out if there's anything I need to adjust in order to make my work better. There are a few obvious things you can pay attention to when you do the evaluation. First is to think about your color choices. Do they look good to you? If not, you can always change the colors. Here's a quick reminder on how to do that. For example, if I'm not happy with the color of this flower, I'll go find the layer right here. Use two fingers to swipe right to turn on Alpha Lock. Then I'll go choose a new color, go back to the layer, tap on it once, then choose "Fill Layer". In this way, you can change any colors that you don't like as long as you put every single element on a separate layer. Another thing you can evaluate is the size and the position of the elements. For this work, I feel like I should make the vase a bit smaller, so there's more room for the flowers. [MUSIC] I also feel the flowers are too far apart from each other. I can bring them closer by rotating the flower on the right just a little bit. Let me go find the layers. Since we have put all these elements into the right flower group, I can simply just select the whole group and then go to the transform tool. Make sure it's in uniform. But this time, turn off snapping. I can rotate a flower by moving this green dot, and I'll bring it closer. Let me fix the position of the big leaves as well. Now it looks good to me. Let me draw a few more leaves down here. [MUSIC] The last thing to evaluate are the shapes of the elements. For example, are you happy with these leaves the way they look? If not, you probably need to redraw them and turn them into a different leafy shape. The last evaluation requires you to do a bit more work. In this case, I'm happy with everything. I'm not going to make any more changes. Just simply move on to the final stage. [MUSIC] 14. Drawing Flowers in a Vase: Adding Details: We're finally here in the last step and that is to add some details or decorative patterns to these elements. I'm going to start from the flowers. Let me bring back my photo library. You can always refer back to your old work to see if there are any decorative patterns you could borrow. By the way, if you'll find this line in the middle a bit distracting, you can always turn that off. Go to Actions, under Canvas's, turn off the drawing guide because we don't need it at the moment. I'll go ahead and draw the patterns on the flowers. The next thing I'm going to draw are the details on the small leaves. You can see the two colors are quite similar at the moment and they blend into each other. I do need to draw some details to differentiate the two. For the leaves on the left, let me quickly hide the one on the right so we can see more clearly. For these leaves, I'm going to use a lighter to color to draw a half leafy shape on top of each leaf. The problem is, it's quite tricky to stay in line with the original shape when I draw something on it but there's a way to fix this problem in Procreate, and that is the clipping mask function. To activate this function, we need to create a new layer on top of the leaves layer, tap on it once, and choose clipping mask. You can see there's a little arrow pointing down the layer below, and that means this layer is the clipping mask. In this way, whatever you draw on the clipping mask will stay perfectly within the scope of the shape way. Let me go ahead and draw the details. Now you may wonder why I didn't use clipping mask when I drew the details on the flowers. That's because I didn't need to go over the edges of the flowers to draw these patterns, they all stay inside the scope of the flowers. Except for the patterns on this first petal layer. The color of the patterns is exactly the same as the color of the second petal layer. When I draw over the edges of the first layer, the details just blend into the second layer and it looks okay. It really depends on what you want to do. If you wanted to draw something alongside or across the edges of the original shape, and you don't want to show what's outside the edges, then you need to use clipping mask. Now let me bring back the leaves on the right. For these ones, I want to use a lighter blue to draw a smaller shape inside each leaf. That means I don't need to use clipping mask, just simply create a new layer on top of it. We're done with the whole flowers. The next element we need to pay attention to are the big leaves at the back. But before that, I would like to take you through another evaluation of our work at this stage. You can see I draw quite a few patterns on the flowers, by comparison, the details on the small leaves are simple. That's because I want to highlight the flowers. To me, they are the most important elements in this illustration. If I drew the same amount of detail on the small leaves, they might compete with flowers for the viewers' attention. Do think about what elements in your work you want to highlight, and those elements should have the most details. If we look at all these plants as a whole, you will find the big leaves are even less important than the small leaves. That means they probably don't need too much attention, so I decide to leave them as they are. The way we treat all these elements can form a visual contrast in our work. You may see the flowers as the leading characters in the film. They had the most beautiful costumes and they received the most attention. The small leaves are obviously the supporting characters, so they receive less attention. The big leaves would probably be the backdrop of the film shots, they are simple enough to highlight the complexity of the characters. You can analyze your work in this way to help you form a visual contrast in your illustration, and that leaves us the vase at last. Where does it position in this scale of importance? In my case, I believe the vase is slightly less important than the flowers but more complex than the small leaves. I'll draw a bit more patterns on it. We're done with the first illustration. Now let me just do one last thing which is to sign my work. I will choose a brush from the calligraphy brush pen, grab this one here, and then create a new layer on top of the background paper, but below everything else, and then just sign my name around here. Then save a JPEG for my work. 15. Drawing Flowers in a Jug: Now I'm going to use the same process to draw some flowers in a jug. I'll show the basic steps on the screen so you can follow along. Before we start, I'd like you to pause the video and do some preparation work following these instructions. Now I have finished inking and coloring the elements, let's do a quick evaluation of my work at this stage. I believe everything looks pretty good except for this red flower. I think is too big and I need to shrink it down. Let me go find the two layers of this flower and then grab the transform tool. Make sure it's under uniform, and then just make it a bit smaller. I want to stop here and quickly talk about resizing your work in Procreate. Procreate is a pixel based program. When you draw something and you want to size it up, let's do it all the way up. You can see the image becomes blurry and the pixels starts to show up. That means we need to be cautious about sizing anything up in Procreate. Ideally not to do that, especially in our final work, because it will affect the quality of your drawing. Unless you're making a sketch and you want to find out how everything goes with each other in terms of sizes, then feel free to size them up or down. On the other hand, making things smaller is totally fine. Just a reminder that when you create your final work, never size everything up. Size them down is okay. If you really need to make something bigger, you will need to redraw it 16. Drawing Flowers in a Watering Can: For the last illustration, we're going to draw some flowers and leaves in the watering can. Again, we'll use the same process to create this work. As usual, take some time to prepare your Canvas for this work before we dive right in. I just did a quick evaluation of my sketch and make some changes to it. You can see I made our two flowers a bit bigger and also adjusted their positions. Again, when you are doing a sketch, it's okay to make things bigger. But just remember not to do it when you're finished drawing the elements. Now that I've finished inking and coloring all the elements, out to another evaluation of my work. At the moment, all these plants are behind a watering can handle and it looks a bit unnatural to me. I would like to bring some of the plants in front of the handle. In this way, it creates a sense of depth in my work and also makes it a bit playful. That's why I put different parts of the watering can onto separate layers so it's easier for me to rearrange the order of the layers. I've just finished drawing the patterns on the flowers and you can see the flower leaves in this work are quite simple. In comparison, the big leaves at the back are a bit complex. This helps me analyze the importance of these elements in my work. Obviously, other than the flowers, I would also like to highlight the big leaves. That means I will draw some details on the big leaves rather than the small ones. 17. Procreate 5.2 Updates for This Class: Before we finish the class, I want to mention the latest update in Procreate and how it affects the way we use the program in this course. Procreate has released their 5.2 version on the 1st of November, shortly after I finished filming this class. I feel the need to let you know what the changes are if you have updated Procreate to the latest version. Obviously, the new version can do so much. But for this class, there are only a few changes you need to keep in mind. They're all about brushes and colors. When you go to the Brush Library, you can now find this Recent tab at the top. What it does is that it can save up to eight brushes that you have recently used. For example, I have three here. I use the Procreate pencil to make the sketches. I use this Stef's sketch brush to do inking, coloring and draw patterns. I use the script brush to sign my work. They are all from different brush packs. The steps sketch brush is from the all-star brush pack. The Procreate pencil is from the sketching brush pack, and the script brush is from the colleague free brush pack. But thanks to this new feature, I can now have all of them in just one place. If you're like me, who uses a lot of brushes when making a work, this feature is really handy. It just helps you work faster. You don't need to waste any more time on jumping between brush packs to find the exact brush you need. You can just find them all under this Recent tab. Now with these brushes, if you swipe left, you will see three options. You can find where this brush is originally from. If we use this brush a lot, you can pin it to the top, so it always stays there. You can also remove it from the Recent tab if you don't need it there. Another feature relating to the purchase is the brush size memory. Over here on the brush size slider, you can change the size of your brush when you draw different things. For example, when I draw the flower on the left, I would use the brush at size 10. When I draw the stem and the leaves, size 10 is probably too big, so I'll change it to size 5, that's about right. That means I may use size 10 and size 5 quite often throughout the entire work. I can now save these two sizes so I can go back to each one pretty quickly. To do that, just set your size and then tap on this plus symbol. Now there's a memory slot at size 5. I'll do the same for size 10. I can just tap on these two saved places to change the size. It can save up to four different sizes. If you don't need it anymore, just simply tap on this minus symbol. This Size Memory function can also apply to the opacity slider, the eraser tool, and the smudge tool, because we didn't really use these functions in this class, I don't want to overwhelm you by explaining too much. I'll let you explore these areas in your own time. See if you can save a number of sizes for the opacity of your brush, for the eraser that you use, and also the smudge tool. Now let's move on to colors. Under the Colors Menu, go to your Palettes. Other than the usual List Views of your color palettes, you can now also see them in Cart Views and you get to know the names of the colors. For example. I always thought these two colors from the still life palette number 2 are in the pink family, but obviously they are both red colors. The real pink color is actually this one in the still life palette number 1. It's a good way to help us identify colors. Just quickly about defaulting a color palette. Let's go back to the List Views. There used to be a default button on the right-hand side of each color palette. Now, it's hidden under these three dot menu. So just simply choose Set As Default, then you can find your default palette under the Color Disk. The last new feature I want to mention is the Dynamic Brush Scaling. While it's not a new feature to be exact, this function has always been here in Procreate. It's just now we have the option to turn it on and off as we need. Let me explain what it does and why it's a useful feature to have. If you go to Actions under Preferences, you will find the dynamic brush scaling is switched on by default. That means when you draw something, it doesn't matter when you zoom in or zoom out. The thickness of your brush always stays the same. Now let's turn it off. I'm going to draw the other flowers so you can see the comparison. Let me draw by zooming out first. You can see the change in thickness already. I didn't change the size over here, but the brush becomes thicker. If I zoom in to draw this bit up here, you can see the brush is much thinner. Still, I didn't change the size. When the Dynamic Brush Scaling function is turned off, the thickness of your brush varies when you zoom in or out to draw. This feature is very useful when we do coloring. If you don't want to do a color drop, you want to do it the traditional way. This feature is good for you. Let me show you how it works by coloring the flower on the left because I've done the outline. Make sure the Dynamic Brush Scaling function is turned off. If I color this flower by zooming out like this, you can see the brush is a bit too thick. I can easily go off the edges. So I'll zoom in and the brush becomes thinner, so I can color along the edges a bit better. If I zoom in a little bit more, the brush is even thinner. I can actually do some detail coloring in this way, especially when I'm making a very complex work. Hopefully you will find this feature useful. If you think there's too much to consider, you can just leave the Dynamic Brush Scaling function on and color your work the old way. Otherwise, I do encourage you to explore this feature in your own time so you can get used to it. [MUSIC] 18. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] I'm so glad you made it to the end of the class. I hope you enjoyed it and created a beautiful still life illustration in Procreate. In this class, we have gone through a journey from drawing different types of containers to building our own flowers to the end putting all these elements together to form a still life illustration. I hope the methods we used in this class would help people get better at using Procreate and inspire you to create more still life works. I would love to see what you have created for this class so please do share your work. You can do it right here on Skillshare under the Resources tab, or you can tag me on Instagram or Facebook. If you have any questions or feedback about the class, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can contact me on Skillshare under the class discussions, send me an email, or simply DM me on Facebook or Instagram. Thank you all so much for taking my class. I'll see you next time. [MUSIC]