Stylized Illustration: How to Shade Skin in Procreate

1. Introduction : Ever find yourself looking at a colored artwork in that incredibly soft and wy style, and wonder to yourself, ah, I'd like to color with this style, too. But how? Well, look no further because you came to the right place. Hi, I'm Ganz Flores, a digital artist, and in this class, I'll teach you all about treating soft and wy skin. When we look through artworks with this art style, at first, you'd feel intimidated because it's hard to know where to start. But in this class, I'll be teaching you that it's easier than it seems. So here are a few points we'll be focusing on this class. Applying base colors, rendering shadows, and highlight placements, and adding the finishing touches. Knowing and practicing these points will help improve the way you render your art. My goal by the end of this class is you'll gain much more confidence in coloring your character portraits. I'm excited, and I'm sure you are too. Let's go. 2. Getting Started : Our first step is preparing our sketch layer. Let's take the sketch I prepared for this class and set that layer to alpha lock. Now, let's take a dark brown shade and air brush it right at the skin parts. After that, let's add a layer beneath the sketch for the base colors. Feel free to choose any skin tone that you'd like. I'm now taking that color and filling in the sketch. Okay. And afterwards, I'm cleaning up the edges if necessary. Another method of applying base colors is by using the lasso tool. Right here, I'm taking the lasso tool and I'm tracing the outlines until it closes. Afterwards, simply color drop and you're done. Once you finish this step, head to the next lesson where we'll learn all about blending and rendering. 3. Shading & Rendering: Okay. So our next step is to add blush in these areas. So now I'm taking an air brush and choosing this light pink red blush shade. And I'm coloring over those areas that I showed you earlier. Okay. Right now, it looks a bit too heavy. I'm taking the skin tone color, and I'm lightly diffusing the color of the pink just so it blends nicely. Once you're done, you should have something that looks like this. Next step is taking a darker shade for the shadow and placing it on these areas right here. Using the medium brush, I start coloring the areas by the eyes, the ears, and the nose. And I'm starting to blend it softly, making sure it blends nicely with the pink shade. Now I'm shading around the eyes and the nose bridge. I'm adding now the shadows by the neck extending to the collar bone. I'm just color picking the shades that are on the portrait already and using it to blend out so there aren't any harsh lines. Now we're going to add highlights and I'm just going to take the same skin tone shade, and I'm going to place it on these areas right here. Starting by the tip of the nose, I'm lightly coloring a small do that I will blend in. I'm putting highlights by the side of the nose and by the nose bridge as well as the upper lip. After that, I'm putting the lighter shade to her under eyes and around the cheeks. Now here, I'm making sure I'm seamlessly and naturally blending it with the blush. This process takes a lot of patience because you will be blending of the colors. I'm now adding a little highlight by the cheek bones, then blending it with a little shade of pink. Right here, I'm just fixing the overall shape of the nose because I wasn't too happy with it. And after that, I'm now adding a darker shade to her under eyes just to create more depth, as well as her double eyelids. I took a darker shade of shadow and I'm adding it almost to the same places of the shadows, just to add more depth. Now, I'm adding colors to her eyes. I took a dull shade of light pink and filled it in. As for the lips, I'm taking in a bright red shade and just airbrushing it over the lips. Now, with a light red, almost pink. I'm taking that color and I'm brushing it right over the lips, as well as putting little dots just for the highlight. I'm also putting a highlight by the Cupid's bow. Now I'm taking a more wider shade and I'm highlighting the already highlighted parts just for the extra shine. Now when we take a step back and look at our portrait, it almost looks complete. But right now, we're practically just starting. So now we're going to merge the sketch layer with the base colors that has our rendering and shading. By doing this, we're going to be coloring over the lines, and that'll help with the portrait to more soft, Tint will be coloring over the line art that we may have on our artwork. I'm taking the shade of the under eyes and coloring it in a bit more just so I can blend it in with the line art of the yes. This will help to soften the look of the line art, so the portrait itself would look softer and dewy. I'm going to continue to blend that and I'm going to take a lighter shade, similar to the blush. And I'm adding it towards the middle part of the under eyes. This serves as a highlight. Then I'm taking an even brighter shade and I'm going to highlight a smaller part of the same part we colored. Now I'm taking a vibrant red orange shade and I'm going to put it in the inner corners of the eyes and going to blend it out. Afterwards, I'm going to take the same shade of the linear and I'm going to re add the lower lashes. Okay. Right now, I'm adding another layer and setting that layer to clipping mask, and I'm setting it to multiply. Now I'm going to be adding some shadow towards her eyes just to give it a little bit more dimension. I'm now going to lower the opacity, so it doesn't look too. So right here, it's already, but on our next lesson, we're going to tackle the touch ups and finishing touches. Okay. 4. Touch Ups & Finishing Touches: This lesson will be all about the small details that can either make or break your artwork. The touchups I'll be doing is completely optional, and if you find other final touches you like, feel free to share it with me in the class discussion. For the first touchup I'll be doing, I'm going to take a bright vibrant pink, and I'm going to brush it right across the lower areas of her eyes. I'm also filling in the inner corners by a little bit. Now I'm taking the smudge tool and I'm slightly blurring out the edges of her eyes. This is to create that dreamy effect. Now I'm selecting the shade of the line art and I'm taking a medium hard airbrush, and I'm going to re a more defined and sharp wing to the end of her eyes. So now I'm just cleaning up a bit, and then I'll be adding some color to her eyes. Okay. I chose the shade of brown, but you can choose any eye color you'd like. I'm first starting off with the base color. Then taking a slightly darker shade of that color and I'm putting it on the upper side of the eyes to serve as the shadow. Okay. Now I'm taking a slightly bright but muted shade of orange, and I'm putting it at the lower part of the rises. I'm taking a brighter yellow shade and putting it at the center of what we drew with the orange. And then I'm taking a white and I'm adding a small highlight at the center of the eyes. Lastly, I'm redefining the upper and lower eyelashes. Okay. And once that's done, we're pretty much done. From here, you can continue the piece by adding your hair or clothing or any type of accessories you'd like to customize your own portrait. For our next lesson, it's your turn and we'll be talking about our class project. 5. Your Turn: Okay. We're close to the end of this class. Last step is application. It's now your turn and I'm excited to see your project. I'd like you to submit your own colored artwork. You may use the sketches available in the research section and download the PNG files, or you can draw your own base sketch. When you finish, don't forget to submit your work in the class project section. Thank you so much for tuning in on my class, and I'll see you on the next one.