Stylized Portrait: Coloring Your Characters in Procreate

1. Introduction: If you look at an artwork without color, it looks incomplete. Color gives life and personality to an Art piece. It's also a way to express yourself as an artist. Coloring may definitely seem overwhelming at first, but once you understand the basics and continue to practice, coloring may just become one of your favorite parts in drawing. Hi, I'm Beyonce Flores, a digital artist. And here in this class, I'll be teaching you how to color life into your characters. So what are we going to learn in this class anyway, questions such as, Where do I start or Am I even doing this right, are totally natural. That's why in this class, I've broken down everything you need to know into three parts, base Colors, Shading, and Highlights. Understanding these three points will help you have an easier time in coloring your artworks. My goal in this class is to help you express yourself through colors and inspire you to develop your own style in coloring. Honestly, I can't wait to start. So enough talk and let's go 2. Importance of References: So right here is a sketch that I drew beforehand with this photo as a reference. So why are References important? You might ask, References are always good when you want to learn more about poses, anatomy, proportions, even color palettes. They serve as a guide for both beginner and intermediate artists. Now, if we look at the reference we have for this class, let me show you how we're going to break this down. Firstly, let's determine the light source, and that'll be our guide to where the shadows will be at the reference, there's a yellow light source coming from the left, which mainly hits the left side of our character. There's also a whitish light coming from the right side, and it's slightly brightens up the right side of our character, such as the hair and her cheek. With those light sources in mind, the shadows will be at the center, such as the folding their hat. Beneath the hat, the neck area, and the creases in her clothing. Now that we have a guide for our coloring, in the next video, we'll be learning how to add base Colors 3. Base Colors: So what are base Colors? Let's take the classic sphere as an example. If we remove the shadows and highlights, we're left with this flat gray base color. You can think of it as a foundation in coloring. A good foundation can lead you to a good output. If you open your color wheel, or in my case, a square, you'll see three sliders here. The first one is the hue, or you change the colors. Second slider is the saturation. It changes your color too vibrant or dull. Lastly, the value is the intensity of how light and dark your color is. The same thing applies to color wheels like this. Hue, saturation, and value. You can also look up color palettes that could help you with mixing and matching colors. To start, make sure to add a layer beneath the sketch. And that's where will we drawing our base color? Let's add the base color for the skin first, which is a red, orange hue, and right around the upper left of the color wheel. Once you're happy with the shade that you got to go fill in the lines. After that, I'll add a new layer and put the base color for the hair. Looking at the reference, I'm choosing a slightly red brown shade and just fill the hair in. This time. My strokes are more precise, especially at the bands and the loose strands of hair. Now, another method you could also try is taking the strength tool and on another layer, just follow along the lines. Just until you close it up. Afterwards, you can simply just drag and drop the color into the hat. Clean up the edges here in there. And voila, right here, I'll be doing the same for the clouds. Once you've finished placing your base Colors. Let's move on to the next video, discussing about Shading 4. Shadows: So going back to our sphere, it's got its base color. So now we're going to add Shading. How are we going to do that? Firstly, we're going to need to determine the light source. If our light is coming from overhear, the drop shadow would be over here. Core shadow would be overhear. You might be asking, why isn't the darkest shadow over here? Because light bounces from surfaces, which gives that hint of light, that spot. Now, to apply this to our portrait as we broken down the reference earlier, the main light source is at the upper left and another diffused light source on the right. So our shadows will sit around the middle of our character. Now that we've discussed the basics, let's start Shading our character. Let's start by adding a layer above the skin and setting it to clipping mask. This way, any strokes you make won't go over the base layer. So let's start by taking a light red, orange shade and airbrushing all over her cheeks, nose, and lips. This will give a nice blush and tint to the character. Now I'm taking a darker shade by sliding the value down in the saturation a little bit to the right. This way, the shadows complement the base Colors. This is a personal preference, but I like Shading a bit of the under eye. This is different from ibex doing this makes the characters eyes look bigger and prominent. Now I'm gradually Shading smaller, more detailed areas with a darker and slightly more saturated color. You can also experiment by changing hues, like purple, for example. This adds personality and depth to the Shading. For the lips. You want to take a soft airbrush again and choose a light red shade, gently airbrush around the area of the lips. Then define the inner part of the lips with a darker red shade. I also took a light pink and highlighted the cupid's bow and gently airbrush the center of the lips with the same color. I then airbrushed a light yellow and white on the cheeks for a soft light effect. For the hair. I took a darker, a little bit more saturated shade of brown and on a separate layer which is also clipped on the hairs base color layer. I start Shading the banks in defining the hairs shape. After I take a darker brown and I shade the parts where I'd like to highlight depth. Lastly, with the same tint of yellow and white from the skin earlier, lightly shade the left and right sides of the hair just to give that soft light effect again. Another method of shading is using the Multiply layer. This is a simple and more beginner friendly method. Start by taking a dark red or purple shade and draw the shadows. Afterwards, set that layer to multiply and it will automatically compliment your base color. You can then adjust the opacity to your liking. So now we've finished the Shading. Once you're ready, let's go to the next video. We'll discuss all about Highlights 5. Adding Highlights: We're back to our sphere. And what's left is Highlights. Highlights is where a light hits the object. This gives the sphere dimension and it also makes the drawing look better. Start little by little, because too much can overpower the painting. To apply this to our work. Add another layer, then take a lighter shade of yellow and draw fine lines highlighting the strands of hair on the left side. Then highlight areas where light will hit, such as the tip of the nose, cheeks, cupid's bow, and the center of the lips. Highlights can really either make or break an artwork. So just do it slowly than soon. You'll get the hang of it. Then airbrush the same yellow shade at the left part of the hat and sweater. Then take a white shade for the right side, just gently airbrush the highlight on the top of her hat, on her sweater, and on the right cheek. And that's the Highlights done. Once you're done, you can move to the next video and we'll finally move to our finishing touches. 6. Finishing Touches: This part is really just based on your personal style. What I did here is I added small details that really enhance the artwork, like adding loose strands of hair. So you want to do is take the same color of the hair and draw S3 and loose strands like this. This will give the Portrait a more realistic feel. Now I'm taking a mid tone from the red orange and just draw small strands in the hair like this. This gives a little more shine to the hair. Now I'm taking a black and on a separate layer, align the eyes so it pops out more. For the eyes. I shaded it similarly to our sphere example. And adding Highlights in more details. Finishing Touches is really all about adding your own personal touch to your drawing. And that helps develop your own style. Just keep on practicing and let the creativity flow. And soon you'll find yourself with your own personal style in drawing. And now we finished coloring our character portrait. I want you to go to the next video so we can discuss our class project and some final words. 7. Class Project: Congratulations for reaching the end of this class, for the class project, I'd like you to submit at least one colored artwork with the techniques you've learned today, I've prepared three different sketches which can be found in the resource section below. And I'd be glad if you could submit one as a project. Always remember to keep practicing and experiment with rendering because that's where you can really develop your own style. I'm looking forward to your work. Thank you for joining my class. I hope to see you on the next one.