Using Procreate to Create Color Palettes

1. Parade of the Daffodils - Introduction: Hello. My name is Molly Barker, and today we are going to be utilizing Pintris and Procreate to quickly choose a color palette for a painting. We're going to use Pintris to quickly select several different color palettes and Procreate to take those palettes and apply them to a sketch that will be used later for watercolor. By having your drawing already filled out with multiple color palette choices, it will allow you to choose the best color combinations for your painting while also providing an invaluable complete color reference. By the end of this class, you'll be able to very quickly and easily change color combinations and we'll be able to choose your favorite palette visually. I look forward to seeing you in the first lesson where we'll go over the necessary materials and the class project. I'll see you there. 2. Materials and Class Project: Let's take a minute to go over the materials that you'll need in order to complete the class project. It's fairly straightforward. You'll need a copy of Procreate and you'll need access to Pintst either online or on the app. The other thing that you'll need is a line drawing or a pencil sketch of something that you already want to paint. If you'd rather follow along exactly, I'm going to upload a copy of my drawing, parade of the daffodils. Just check in the resources tab of this class for it. And, of course, you'll be needing an iPad and an Apple pencil. That's all. So let's get started. The project for this class will be to choose at least three different color palettes from Pintrist and apply them to your drawing. The drawing can either be one of your own creation that you intend to paint or color yourself, or you may use my parade of the daffodils drawing. I've uploaded a copy of it to the class resources section, as well as a copy of the color palettes which I will use in this class. When you've finished with your Procreate images, please upload them to the class project section so that I and other students can see them. Alright, let's get to work. Join me in the next lesson where we will be taking pictures of our drawings and editing them to prepare them for Procreate. I'll see you there. 3. Taking Photo and Editing: The first thing that we need to do is to take a picture of our drawing. I'm going to use my iPad to take a picture, and I find it useful to turn the grid function on. So just take your drawing to a well lit area and take a reasonably flat picture of it. Take a few just in case and pick your favorite. This is my favorite, and if you want to use it, I've uploaded the unedited one that you see here, as well as the final one that you'll see at the end of this lesson. After taking the picture, go to your photos and click on the Edit button. The first thing that we're going to do is on the right hand side, swipe up until you find saturation. We're going to turn that all the way to black and white with no color at all. The goal with editing is to make the line drawing as pronounced as possible while making the background as close to white as possible. This will allow us to use the drawing as a kind of overlay for our color palette, laying the color underneath while having the lines visible on top to act as a guide. Before using any of the other editing functions, make sure that you crop the image down to just the drawing without any of the background. This will help you to see how close to white the background of the image is by having it right next to the white of the editing screen on the iPad. After you're done with the cropping, sort of play around with the different editing options, trying to leave as much of the detail of the drawing visible while lightening the page as close to white as you can. Different options will work with photos and different types of lighting. So you'll want to see what works best for your picture. If you leave the background a grayish color, it distorts the colors that you attempt to put underneath it and procreate, leaving all of your colors darker with a sort of muddy look. Since making different color palettes is exactly what we're after with this image. We want to be able to see the exact color that we're attempting to use. Also, if a little detail is lost, don't despair. This procreate image that we're making doesn't have to be extremely detailed. We're here for color today, not perfection. Alright, that looks pretty good. In our next lesson, we're going to head over to Pintris to choose some color palettes. I'll see you there. 4. Pinterest and Color Palettes: Let's go straight to Pinterest in this lesson. I've already compiled a board of some of my favorite color palettes. We really want to have a mixture of a bunch of different kinds of colors. Think, some are dark, some light, some with soft pastel colors, and others that are vibrant. My favorite types of color palettes have several suggested colors in swatches, but also have an image attached to it. When you're using them to choose colors for your painting, you can really quickly use the eyedropper to select a color which is slightly different than something that you were currently using. Another really cool thing that you can do with Pentrist is if you have a board of similar images, when you get to the bottom of it, click on the Find More Ideas button, and it will recommend some other images that are similar, but just different enough that you may have not thought of using them before. You can see that a lot of these images are very similar to what we've already chosen, but there are some that are quite different. I like this one here, but there's no image attached to it. So you can see that there's a bunch that you can choose from. Choose a few, and then let's move on to our next part. Okay, let's go back to our original selection, and we can decide on a few different color palettes that we want to try. I really like this one, so let's go ahead and click on it. I found the easiest way is to simply take a screenshot of the pin, crop it, and save it to pictures. Alright, that looks good. So let's go ahead and grab a few pictures that we want to use. As you look through your color palette Pintresbard, try to choose ones that are pretty different. You don't necessarily want everything to be close to the same colors. Try to use some that are very different or some that you may not have thought you would like. You never know, you might find that you like those ones best at the end. Okay, that seems pretty good. So let's close this down and then go to photos. You can see that all of your selection of color palettes are right here in your photos, ready to be uploaded to Procreate. Now that you have them all side by side, look it over again. And if you want to add a couple more, go back to Pinterest and grab a few. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll utilize our color palettes in Procreate. 5. Uploading to Procreate and Coloring: The first thing that we need to do is upload our new picture to Procreate. I've already done it here and went ahead and named it, but go ahead and click on photos and you can find your image that you want, and it uploads it directly. It'll be in the same format as it was in your photos. But I already named the other one, so let's go back to that and then we'll go on from there. The next thing we need to do is get our reference photo. So go to this button. You'll be able to see reference, turn it on, and originally, it'll just be a picture that you're seeing and then hit Import Images and pick one of the color palettes that we've already chosen. Let's start out with maybe this one since it's nice and dark. And this is the image that we're going to use with our eyedropper to choose colors for our first color palette. The next thing that we need to do is go to your layers tab and click on this little In right here. There are several different things that you can do with this, but we are going to change it to multiply. Let's look at why we want to do that. Add another layer and drag it beneath the one of our drawing. Let's get a bit closer so that you can see the lines really well. Now, if I add a bit of color on this layer underneath the drawing, you can see that the color comes through where the page is white, but the lines of our drawing are visible above it. If I take that layer with the yellow spot and move it above the drawing image, you can see that it covers the lines. Also, if I put it back underneath and have it set to normal or in, the layer is completely invisible. We want the color to be visible, but the line drawing to be visible as well. So let's put that layer back underneath and set the drawing layer above to multiply. For the first color that we're going to do, let's go ahead and color the flowers first, and we'll do the background later. Let's add some yellow to the main portion of these daffodils. We're going to be using our eyedropper function. I have it set as a press and hold of one finger, which is standard. If you've changed your setting, use whatever function you have it set to. We're going to use the image to choose the yellow color. Now keep in mind that we are going to be using a lighter yellow for highlights and a darker yellow for shadows and for the trumpets. So try to pick a nice medium yellow. I'm using a rather large brush of my own making. I'll include it in the class resources section called soft Circle Chalk. You can use this or pick your favorite brush, but make sure that it is completely opaque. We are going to have multiple layers on top of each other, and we don't want them to meld. Now, we don't want to be too precious when it comes to staying in the lines with this color job. Keep in mind that this is not the final painting. This is an interim step that will make life easier while actually painting. So don't go too crazy about perfection. That being said, this is going to be the base of all of our color palettes, and it's how they are all going to look. So do put forth a bit of effort to make it look somewhat clean. Okay, now that you've seen a little painting, let's speed through the rest of this color of yellow. As you can see, I'm staying somewhat in the lines, but I'm not too concerned about perfection. When you're all done painting this portion of your flowers, let's move on to the trumpets. We'll need to pick a different yellow and we'll need to add another layer. Okay, for this section, we're going to add a layer on top of the original yellow and beneath the drawing. Another thing that we're going to do is use the clipping mask function. This makes it so that the color that you add to this layer will only be visible on the layer that is directly beneath it. We're going to be using this function a lot later when we start changing our color palettes. But for this instance, it just makes things a bit easier since we already took a bit of time to nicely add the base color. We're going to use that substrate to quickly add additional colors. This is where we add the highlights. So we need to think about where the light source is going to be in our final painting. As I was drawing this, I kept thinking about having the light shine from the left so that the majority of the parading daffodils are facing the light as if they're marching toward the morning sun. So again, we're going to be adding a new layer, and we need that layer to be on top of the layers that we've made so far but below the drawing. As you add these highlights, just place them here and there about where you think the light would be touching them. Again, we don't need to be too detailed. We're just giving the feeling of what the final painting will look like. Alright, now we're done with the trumpets and highlights. Looking at the petals makes me think they are a little too gray. So let's go ahead and add another clipping mask layer directly above the layer that has the petals that we want changed. Just drop the color in that you want to change it to. We're going to make them slightly more vibrant. I think that looks much better. Next up, we're going to pick a green for the blades of the daffodils. Again, this is going to be sort of a mid tone green, as we will be adding highlights later. This is where having a rather large brush comes in handy. I love the brush that I'm currently using. It starts out at a somewhat fine point and with pressure becomes quite large, which is just right for the shape of these blades. Now, again, we don't need perfection here, but do try and stay somewhat in the lines for this one, as there are some background details that will be showing through. We want an accurate depiction of the drawing so that we have a decent reference later when we're painting this. The next part we're going to color is going to be the highlights on these blades. Take your time while choosing the highlight color. I always find it helpful to have the color that you're going to be drawing over on the bottom half of the eyedropper circle so that you have an instant comparison between the color you've used and the one you're going to add to it. And just like we did for the flowers, we're going to add a clipping mask layer directly above the blade color, which will help us to quickly add this color without having to focus on staying within the line so much. Just like before, we know that the light source is going to be coming from the left. So let's just add some highlights here and there on the left side of these blades. This part is just for a little bit of detail on the flowers themselves. Each daffodil has a sort of sheath that covers the blossom head prior to its full bloom. And when the flower is ready, the sheath dries up into this thin papery hood. There are many different kinds of daffodils with all kinds of different colours, ranging from yellows and oranges to whites and pinks, but they all have this hood, so it will pretty much stay the same color regardless of the color palette choices. Alright, this next part is fun. Let's start adding the background colors in. The first thing that we'll do is add a layer to the very bottom, below the colors for the petals or the blades of the plants themselves. Now, if we look at the reference photo for the color palette you can see that all around the flower is quite dark. So let's choose a rather dark color that will allow the greens and yellows to really pop. We lost a little bit of detail from the photo editing that we did. There is a very faint line where the ground is, so try to find it and go from there. It's about one third up from the bottom at a slight angle. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but do the best you can. That color looks really nice, but let's add a little bit of highlighted texture to the bottom around the plants. Let's add another layer directly above the ground layer, but below the plants. Go with a lighter color, but not too extreme. Alright, that looks much better. Okay. Let's add the darkest color directly behind the blossoms. That looks so cool, and it really brings the flowers forward. If you think it looks a little too dark, don't worry. We're going to be adding the rays of light next. Okay, in this part, let's add another layer above the previous layer and use a much lighter color. I had the idea of having the light shine in from the left, so let's just go for it, and we'll see if we like it. If you don't ahead and take the layer grabbing tool and just sort of angle it until you think it looks right. Another thing that is helpful is the smudge tool. If you want to blend the light a little bit, press and hold the smudge tool icon, and it will come up with the same brush that you are using to paint with, just like this. And just kind of smear it around a little bit until you find that it looks how you imagined it. You can see I'm not doing a ton. You don't want it to be too blended, but it does blend really nicely the dark with the light background. So move that around a little bit until you find something that you like. Alright, that looks really good. But let's go ahead and add another layer above this one so that we can have a few more streaky colors in the sky with our different color palettes. Don't go too crazy. Just think about the sky at sunset. It's mostly one color with a few highlights here and there. Let's just do the same and then blend it slightly with the smudge tool. Don't overdo the smudge tool. Otherwise, it won't be very pronounced. Along the same line as the highlights in the sky, let's add some shadows to the ground where they would be cast by the plants. So add another layer above the ground, and let's just quickly brush in a few shadows. This will give the whole thing a more cohesive look. Pausing here for a moment, let's do a quick look at the color palette in our reference photo versus our colors. I think that our yellow colors are a little washed out, so let's add some nice shadows to those with the really dark orange that you see in the blossoms and the reference photo. Again, just add another layer. Like before, we're going to be adding this layer on top of the flower colors. You may be thinking, why all these layers? Why can't we put multiple colors on the same layer? But actually, this is very intentional. As you'll see in the next lesson, these multitude of layers are instrumental in allowing us to quickly and completely change our color palettes. Though it is a bit time consuming at the beginning, by keeping all of these colors separate, we are going to be saving a lot of time and effort in changing our color palettes. Okay, that looks great. Let's go back out to our gallery and see what we have. We'll delete that second photo we uploaded earlier, and then we can duplicate the image we just made. If you click on this duplicated image, you'll see that it is the exact same with all of its wonderful layers. In our next lesson, we're going to use this duplicated image to quickly change to a new palette. I'll see you there. 6. Looking Through All Color Palette Choices: The most enjoyable thing is to see all of the finish color palette choices, and then to finally pick which one is your favorite. For me, I was definitely expecting to like the darker colors with the vibrant yellow flowers. But surprisingly, I really like the light pink background and the one with the whitish flowers. And that is exactly the reason that you go through such an exercise. You may think you know your preferences, but when confronted with some different options, you find that you prefer something quite different. I'll see you in the final lesson where we'll go through the color palettes that we used and our final choices. I'll see you there. 7. What We Learned: Let's do a quick overview of the different color palettes that we chose and how they all look next to the final daffodil drawings. I really like to look at the comparison between the colors and the images we chose and the final drawings utilizing those colors. The differences in color really give off quite different feelings. Using all of these different color palettes, you really have the opportunity to quickly see what works best for your painting without having to paint it first. Though this is a time consuming process, I always find that having a color reference while actually painting is invaluable and saves quite a lot of time and headaches. I hope that you feel similarly. Thank you so much for choosing to take my class, and I really hope that you were able to learn something new and useful on your artistic journey. I so look forward to seeing your class project and would very much appreciate a class review. Thank you again for spending your time with me. And if you're interested in learning how I like to sketch my flower drawings or in watercolor, please feel free to check out some of my other classes.