On this Procreate tutorial I’m going to offer you an outline of my inventive course of, from arising with an preliminary thought, all of the instruments I take advantage of in Procreate, and the way they may also help velocity up the illustration course of. I wish to present you ways I’m capable of create paintings that might be utilized in a kids’s e book, for instance.
ImagineFX has kindly given me the liberty to decide on the topic for this workshop. The very first thing that I do is shut my eyes, and let myself go to the place I wish to be and what I wish to do.
I like to see my characters come to life in their very own world. For this illustration I’ve determined to attract a candy faun boy spending his afternoon making dolls that he can deliver to life together with his breath. With this concept in thoughts, I decide up my pencil and begin sketching…
Fatemeh, often known as BlueBirdy, is a contract illustrator and character designer engaged on kids’s books, younger adults novels. She lives and works in Oslo, Norway, along with her husband and two cats.
Procreate tutorial: my brushes
Listed here are the brushes I will be utilizing on this tutorial.
Default brushes: Stucco
I take advantage of this brush for including texture all through the paintings.
Narinder Pencil
This brush is ideal for serving to me to get the preliminary line work down.
Polygons
For smudging sure areas of my artwork, this brush could be very helpful.
Procreate tutorial: create a fantasy character
Procreate permits me to deliver my creations and imaginings to life. Learn the Procreate overview for extra on how the app works. I hope you benefit from the tutorial – the completed fantasy paintings is on the backside of the web page.
01. Take your small concepts critically
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
If it’s a portfolio piece and also you’re free to decide on a topic, then even throwaway concepts are value contemplating. For each private and commissioned items, I begin by itemizing the issues I have to see in my picture. It is because I can simply develop into distracted once I begin a portray, and find yourself both drawing one thing else or miss out the important thing factors within the unique thought.
Moreover, it helps me to pare again the story that I wish to inform with my illustrations. Listed here are the phrases that I write down for my thought: faun boy, about 10 years previous, heat colors, afternoon, picket toys, mushrooms. I make these fast digital sketches to visualise my concepts.
02. Getting a really feel for the character
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
As soon as I’ve chosen a design, I begin sketching on paper utilizing a crimson pencil. I believe that the traces come simpler and extra naturally if I take advantage of an actual pencil. That is the stage the place I attempt to get a way of who the character is, utilizing a few of the key phrases from Step 1 as a information.
03. Switching to Procreate
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I normally ink the road artwork earlier than scanning it into both Procreate or Photoshop, as a result of this may give me clear traces to work with. Nonetheless, there’s no scanner within the log cabin that I’m staying in in the meanwhile, so I resolve to switch the normal sketch into Procreate and create the road artwork digitally. Pondering laterally, I take a photograph of my sketch and open it in Procreate. Then I scale back the Opacity of the sketch and hint over it, making a clear drawing on a brand new layer. The primary drawing that I fabricated from the faun wasn’t fairly proper; he was a little bit chubby and messy.
04. Preliminary detailing
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I create a second layer and pay extra consideration to my particulars whereas avoiding placing down pointless traces. My go-to Procreate brush for this stage is the Narinder pencil.
I put my efforts into exhibiting the faun’s stage of focus and the strain in his fingers as he grips the picket toy. I additionally make his work space look extra attention-grabbing by including wooden shavings and a pleasant chook. I hold the background line artwork on a separate layer as a result of I’m undecided if I wish to have a background but.
05. Beginning on the colors
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I hold the road artwork layer on high for nearly the entire of my portray course of. Subsequent, I open a brand new layer and color the silhouette of my characters. To create a easy colored background I choose the silhouette layer and invert it, earlier than filling it with my chosen color.
06. Laying down base colors
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I create a brand new layer for every colored ingredient. They’re all Clipping Masks hooked up to the silhouette layer. This strategy helps me so as to add the shading and likewise makes it simpler to pick out sure areas for colouring.
07. Resolve the thriller of sunshine and shade
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I’ve labored out a way that allows me to simply mild an object or determine, which I’d like to share with you. I make the type of my character utilizing Tremendous Sculpey (a clay that doesn’t dry out), then {photograph} it underneath completely different lighting circumstances, similar to vivid daylight, indoor lights or candle mild.
I additionally use the sunshine of my iPad or completely different colors created utilizing my telephone display. As a result of a lot of my work is from the creativeness, it’s nice to know that I can management environmental parts inside each bit, such because the lighting.
So long as you stay constant together with your decisions you’ll be able to obtain something! I additionally discover it useful to attract the course of various mild sources utilizing arrows on their very own layer.
08. Determine on the sort and course of the sunshine
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I nearly have the bottom colors in place, and have determined that the scene will function pure daylight underneath a treetop cover. Subsequent, I work out the place the solar is situated and the place I can add reflection.
Now that I’ve chosen the course of sunshine, I take advantage of a medium Exhausting brush so as to add all of the shadows on a A number of layer. I paint the shadows with a lightweight grey-yellowish color, generally going both a little bit darker or a little bit lighter. I additionally use completely different tones similar to blue and purple, for variation.
Now, on the identical layer I add blue shadows from the cover mild and a yellow-green lighter shadow down the left-hand aspect of the piece, which is mirrored from the greenery across the younger faun.
09. Introducing color tones
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
As soon as I really feel that I’m nearly completed with the shadows, (though I normally have to revisit this layer a number of instances to make things better), I am going again to particular object layers such because the hair or pores and skin and add some color tones.
10. Enhancing the daylight
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I selected a Display screen layer for the daylight, and paint with completely different colors similar to purple and orange, which helps to generate completely different, attention-grabbing shades of sunshine.
11. Altering the color of the road artwork
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
Now I wish to change the color of my line artwork, to make the looks of the traces nearer to the colors round them. I alpha-lock the road artwork layer and make my adjustments. For instance, I lighten the traces that describe the faun’s hair.
12. Pushing the normal portray look
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
I alter the background color utilizing the Coloration Steadiness instrument to make the character stand out extra. Then I add a texture underneath my background layer after which set this to Multiply (the feel layer will be any texture that you simply like – I discovered this one by doing a fast search on-line).
Subsequent, I add some branches and a tree within the background, though I’m not totally proud of the end result so I resolve to maintain the feel layer and the blue background layer, which is on a darker Coloration layer. It provides a conventional look to my portray, which I actually like.
13. Fixing some mild and shadow issues
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
Though I’ve completed working in layers, my illustration isn’t completed but. To do the rendering I normally copy my total canvas, paste all of it on to at least one layer on high of all the pieces and paint over the entire thing in a Regular layer.
I can use the layers beneath to rapidly choose edges for and work on them cleanly on my new layer. I work throughout the composition to drag the entire picture collectively.
14. Placing within the ending touches
(Picture: © Fatemeh Haghnejad)
At this level I’m pleased that all the pieces is in the correct place and I can begin noodling away. I add extra texture with the Stucco brush, and paint in some particulars similar to vegetation within the background and hair strands. Now my faun is completed!
Get extra Procreate tutorials in ImagineFX
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