How To Draw A Couple • The Illustration Process, From Sketching To Shading

drawing a cute couple illustration is easier than you think and i'm going to show you exactly how you can do it hello wonderful people it's genevieve and my goal here on this channel is to teach you all about illustration and design so if you're new make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of the weekly videos and so that you can join our wonderful creative community and with that said garbage on tools and let's get started [Music] just a quick little disclaimer before we start this video is a little bit more advanced not in the sense that it's more difficult to follow along or to do it's just because i'm going to go over some of the concepts quite quickly so for example the details of the face the hands the proportions of the body we're going to talk about it a little bit in the video but not a whole lot so make sure if you've watched the how to draw a cartoon face in cartoon body before this video if you're new to illustration otherwise if you already have a style and you're just looking to know how to draw this specific pose you can still you know just start with this video and totally be fine and this is an illustration of my partner and i that i created for a brand new channel which is more of a lifestyle behind the scene kind of vlog content so if you want to check it out it will be link in description below i think it's it's quite fun but obviously make sure that this illustration you adapt to your own situation like don't draw me and my partner i mean you can if you want if you want but i highly recommend you of course customize the characters to fit your own situation now with that said let's go ahead and create a new canvas for reference these are the dimensions of my own canvas it's literally just the size of the ipad screen but make sure you pick something that works for your own project requirements now if you're not exactly sure how to pick a canvas size i have a video that explains everything you need to know in order to make your decision so i will link it in description below it might also be very helpful for you to have a picture here in the corner of your couple so for that go ahead and in the wrench icon menu select canvas and then you can activate reference right here in the middle of the menu and then you're going to get the option to import a picture and here i really recommend you get a picture of both of you it doesn't need to be in a specific position just make sure you have something that you can use as a reference for the colors the haircuts and stuff like that so once that is done we're going to set our background color to whatever we want i'm going with a super light gray and then we're going to create a super rough sketch so go ahead and create a new layer above everything well that's the only layer you're gonna have rename this one to sketch and really here we're going to be super super rough so you can pick any color of your choice because it's obviously not going to be in the final result and in this video just so so we're clear i'm always going to be suggesting two different brushes so one is going to be a free brush that comes with procreate and it's going to allow you to follow just fine especially for this video because it's not necessarily about coloring and everything it's mostly about the sketching part and the other brush i'm going to be suggesting is a brush from my ultimate illustration bundle so these brushes are the one that i use whenever i create children's book illustrations and they're really great in terms of saving time and just getting overall more professional results obviously they are not essential i just want to suggest them as well if you want to use them they will be linked in description below and there's always a special promo code for the youtube people now if you want to use free brush you can go in the sketching panel and pick the hb pencil otherwise if you have the illustration bundle go ahead and pick the sketching brush here we're going to start super simply by roughly putting a line for the ground and then drawing some very basic ovals for where the characters are going to be so this is kind of the general character it's not even the head the body is just the character so whenever you're starting an illustration that has multiple pieces or multiple characters it's always a good idea to really put the basic shape first for knowing what the sizes are going to be and the orientation the angles and all that stuff and once that is done you can go ahead and draw the basic body shapes that we've learned in the how to draw a character body tutorial so starting with a circle for the head then moving on to a rounded rectangle for the torso and maybe a half moon for the pelvis now here the position is slightly different so once you arrive to the legs instead of having two parts to the legs we're simply going to see the bottom part so you're only going to be drawing the two shins and for that you're just drawing ovals like this so nothing super complicated and this is really the basic structure of the illustration so if you are able to get that down then you're good to move on to the rest and you're going to be able to follow along it's not more complicated than that it's just a little bit more time consuming and here you can really decide what your characters are holding if they are holding anything at all for example here my partner is holding a guitar i'm holding my rabbit it's just a really easy way of customizing your illustration even more so figure out what you want your characters to be holding and then go ahead and sketch the ovals that we usually draw for the shoulders and then all you have to do is roughly map out where the arms are going to be with one line for now so just focus on the angle of the different parts this is also where you would sketch what your characters are holding here i'm just going to have my character's arms kind of fall onto each other but if you want your characters to hold something by all means please go ahead and sketch it here so just roughly mapping out the direction of the different parts of the arm so the top and the forearm and kind of the hands as well and then you can go in and flush it in if you want a little bit so kind of drawing triangles for the hands but again here at this stage we're really just trying to map out where everything is going to be it is totally okay and it should look like a big mess of lines at this point and before we move on to adding the details of the character to start making them a little bit more human-like we're going to mark the head direction with this kind of plus sign so a vertical and horizontal line in the vertical and horizontal middle and that's going to depend obviously on the orientation and angle of the head oh and i almost forgot the feet so for the feet here i'm just pretending that my characters are hanging out inside and they're just wearing socks so i'm just drawing two little ovals while four total two per character just you know super simple like this and this is the stage where it's really important for you to have a reference image if you're not super familiar with kind of illustration in general because we're going to start adding the details on the characters for now we kind of have the basic structure the skeleton i guess in a way now we're going to move on and add the details like the ears the eyes the clothes all that stuff i personally really like to start with the head because i feel like it gives a lot of personality to my character and that kind of informs the decisions that i make for the rest of the body so i like to start yeah for the head mostly kind of roughly sketching the ears then the eyes nose and mouth and then moving on with the hair and any kind of other accessory that might be on the hair hair head for example here my partner is wearing his kangaroo hat so i'm just kind of trying to sketch that and it's totally okay still at this stage you can see it's really a rough sketch we're still figuring out where everything is going to be later in the video we're going to clean this sketch before moving on to the color so here just go ahead draw a bunch of lines don't even bother about erasing like that's not the eraser should not be used at all at this point just draw a bunch a bunch of bunch of lines that's going to help you find your shapes later and that's something that is so important in illustrations and i know it scares a lot of people that are kind of new to drawing this idea of being okay drawing a bunch of lines that look crazy it's fine you know that is how we build illustrations that is how we figure out our characters that is how we create our own visual elements is by sketching completely crazy shapes with a bunch of lines everywhere and then figuring out which lines we actually like and then creating our character from there and at this stage this is exactly what you're doing so again like i was saying i personally start with the head so kind of the facial features then move on to the hair speaking of which for the hair if you're trying to draw characters that have curly hair i highly recommend you check out my tutorial about drawing curly hair because i gave a bunch of tips there i know it's kind of a bit difficult sometimes or intimidating at least so i got your back for that you can check it out i will link it description below and once you have the head and the hair you can move on to fleshing out the body so creating the clothes and kind of how the different body parts are interacting with each other maybe adding fingers to the hands instead of having these weird kind of mittens or something like that so nothing new here we're just drawing a different kind of pose than what we did in the how to draw a character body tutorial the same body parts just with different angles so it's the same basic shapes just organized differently and that is the beauty of drawing in like simple basic shapes as opposed to trying to remember for example how to draw an arm how to draw a torso if you always break it down to the basic shapes then no matter the angle your character is in no matter the position your character is in it's always the same shape so you just draw the same shapes and seriously you're good to go and i say that but you know it does require some practice especially if you're new you really want to use references when you get started because the body is kind of weird you know you we all know what walking roughly looks like because we we've seen people walk before but getting a picture of someone walking is really super helpful when we're starting to draw the human body either realistically or in kind of cartoon illustration like this because sometimes just the distribution of the weight and the slight difference in how the arms are hanging is what make the biggest difference in the end result so don't be afraid to look at references so once you're happy with your super rough sketch and by a happy i mean just once everything is roughly mapped out go ahead and lower the opacity of the sketch and we're going to create a new layer above it on which we're going to draw the clean sketch if you're able to i'm clearly struggling you would rename this layer to clean sketch and here we're going to draw with the same color or darker color if you want that's really your personal preference but we're also going to flip horizontally this rough sketch first so flipping the sketch is going to allow us to see what's wrong with it way clearer so it's kind of like when you leave a piece of paper with your sketch or your ipad for a few hours a few days when you come back to it you realize that it's really not quite what it should be so flipping the sketch is the same effect but you just don't have to wait before seeing the result so flip your sketch horizontally and then you can use the liquify tool to roughly move the things around before re-sketching the clean sketch so the liquify tool is in the magic wand icon menu and it's pretty much at the bottom and then all you have to do is set your the setting to push which is on the far left and the sides the other settings are really up to you and then you can just move the shapes and the lines around really quickly so take all the time you need to do that it doesn't need to be perfect still but just having a better idea of basically just fixing stuff very very roughly and once that is done like i was saying we're just going to go over and find our line and pick our line so that we have a better idea of what we're doing once we had the colors so it's not like the clean sketch doesn't need to be perfect either but just kind of a little bit more refined that what we have right now and it's going to be with the same brush either same color or darker if you want to make sure that you can see it really really well and here honestly you're just going over it there's no secret it might take a little bit of time especially if you're kind of new to building your own illustrations but that's totally okay that's part of the process and it's really quite fun honestly and at this stage i'm going to stop talking i'm going to speed up the video let you focus on your own thing but still have the video in the background if you want to use my image as a reference and might as well use this time as the time for the secret password as well so if you've watched this find a video please go ahead and comment oh i haven't thought about it comment couple and if you're new on the channel you might be like what's the deal with the secret password that's something we've been doing here on the channel for a few months and people really really like it basically at one point in the video i just say a secret password and write it on the screen as well and if you've watched this point you just leave a comment with it well in the comments below that's where the comments go but it does a lot of things the first thing it does is it gives me a lot of insight into how to edit and paste my videos better which helps me create you know better tutorials for you guys which ultimately is what we want but i think the coolest thing is that it allows us to see who's part of the creative community here on the channel especially for me because you guys know me in a sense that you see my face in the intro you hear my voice throughout the entire video but i have no idea who you guys are and whenever you leave a comment i get to see sometimes your name sometimes your face and yeah it's just so cool to see the wonderful creative community that we're building here on the channel so just leave a comment with the word couple and then we're gonna keep going so at this point feel free to pause the video take all the time you need to clean the sketch and then we're gonna move on to kind of refining a few things and then adding the colors awesome so once you have a clean sketch kind of like this you know nothing perfect but definitely clearer than the rough sketch you can either go ahead and hide the rough sketch layer altogether i personally like to merge them both in procreate you just squish the layers with fingers to merge them together and that way i just feel like you kind of see the structure behind the character which is really helpful for a bunch of things but again it's a personal preference and once more at this stage before we add the colors feel free to go back to the liquify tool to tweak the shapes even more and this tool is super super helpful and very powerful to move stuff around really quickly but we need to know that it does alter and kind of stretches the pixels which is not super great in terms of quality so try to lose or try to use i should say the liquify tool early in the process if possible when you're doing the sketch and stuff that is not going to be in the final result because here it really doesn't matter if our sketch pixels are all weird they're going to be hidden at the end anyway but if you use liquify on your colors or your outlines and stuff like that you are going to notice it in the final result especially if you make major transformations so try to use liquify as much as needed now and try to get your sketch as close to the final shapes you want at this point and once you're ready we're going to start adding the colors which is super fun and much easier than the sketch [Music] so the first thing we're going to do here is we're going to change the blending mode of the sketch and also just kind of overall making sure it is exactly where we want it to be in the canvas so in terms of blending mode i like to use multiply and then lowering the opacity until i can just barely see the sketch now multiply and opacity combined it's going to allow us to not have the sketch be too in the way but also since we have multiplier we're going to be able to see the sketch over darker colors so it's just a really nice combination once that is done we're going to go ahead and create a new layer put it below the sketch and rename it two colors if you've watched some of my videos before you know that i usually use a bunch of layers when teaching you how to do stuff but for this video we're going to paint all the general colors on one layer because there's just too many things that are kind of overlapping and here in terms of brushes you can really use anything you want because we just want to fill in shapes so you can use in the sketching panel the 6b pencil i'm going to be using the everything brush from the illustration bundle and seriously all we're doing here is roughly mapping out the different color blocks so no texture no details no outline just the general color areas so i like to start with the skin and all i do is i outline the area overall and then i fill it in using the auto fill function from procreate so nothing crazy here and that's what we're going to do for every single part of the illustration it shouldn't be too complicated but it's just a little bit you know it takes a little bit of time and if you have a brush that has some texture to it so the 6b pencil and the everything brushes definitely have texture to it or to them i should say when you use the auto fill function you're going to need to adjust the threshold now the way to do that is you hold the pencil on the screen and then you move it from left to right to adjust the number and you want to find the moment right before the color fills in the entire screen and then that's that's where you you let go of your pencil basically and for this stage of mapping out all the general colors i'm going to speed up my videos i'm going to stop talking and let you focus on your own colors it is literally the same techniques and steps for all of this process i'm going to keep the video rolling in the back so if you're doing your own illustration as well we can kind of draw together and hang out but if you want to just move to the next phase where we're going to add the outlines and the details and kind of want to listen to those tips without having to watch me color everything you can definitely skip ahead i have the chapters marked in the video so you can just click on the next chapter now otherwise let's keep drawing together let's hang out a little bit [Music] [Music] so [Music] hello hope that was going well uh just jumping in to tell you there is one thing that i don't draw on the same color layer and that's the eyes and there's a reason for that it's just really is such an important part of the illustration i want to be able to move it around very easily if needed and also i like to use layer masks so i like to create a new layer above the color layer reading your two eyes and then picking kind of a very pale cream color and then just drawing the i guess the eyeball the eyebrow part so not the color not the outlines nothing else and the eyeball on this layer and from there going in creating a new layer above this eyeball layer and renaming this one to pupil or iris depending on on your own preference i'm just going to draw one oval so i guess i don't know which one it would be i guess the iris since it's going to be colored so yeah and this layer you're going to apply it as a clipping mask so now everything we draw on the iris layer is going to stay within the shape of the eye layer so you can pick whichever color you want for the eyes here my partner has blue eyes so i'm just drawing blue eyes [Laughter] and the beauty of drawing on a separate layer for the iris or the pupil or whatever and having that as a clipping mask is that once you have the basic shape you can use the arrow tool at the top to move the moon there we go to move the direction of the eyes really really quickly so you don't have to redraw anything or erase anything you can just move stuff around you can also use the selection tool if i can select it setting the tool to freehand to move one of the irises around because sometimes getting the eyes to look right can be very difficult i also like to create a new layer above the eyes above the iris rename this one to shadow and this one the blending mode is going to be set to linear burn and we're going to lower the opacity around i don't know 30 for now but we can always tweak it later and we are going to set this shadow color to not a neutral gray we want to have a gray that has some color to it otherwise it's going to look really really muddy i like to go with a purplish gray and make sure that this layer is also applied as a clipping mask and then you can just kind of go over and brush this angled shadow on the top of the eyes it's not necessarily the most realistic thing but it helps bring a lot of dimensions in the eyes otherwise they look super super flat in the end and you can also add some highlights so just a new layer above the shadows renaming this one to lights it doesn't have to be a clipping mask but i like to apply it as a clipping mask and for the blending mode we're going to pick add for now 60 but seriously we can always tweak it later and the lights i just go with pure white and then kind of sprinkle this little oval on the color part or the eyes to just really bring them to life i also like to create a separate layer for the eyes outlines we're going to draw the outlines in the next step but i like to have the eyes outline separate they're not going to be a clipping mask but i like to have them separate so that we can move them around with the eyes without having to select part of the big outline layers it's just way easier that way and since my character is a male i'm going with just a darker version of the skin tone if your character here that has the eyes open would be a female i tend to draw female eyes outlines a little bit darker to kind of mimic the thickness and density and length of the lashes usually on female characters the lashes are more intense so just using a darker color kind of mimics that and once you have all your eyes layer you could definitely merge them together or you can just swipe them towards the right and then create a group with them then you can collapse your group and rename your groups to eyes and that's going to help not only organize the file but then you can just select the group and use the arrow tool to move all the eyes layer just over and around until you find exactly where they should be [Music] awesome so once you have your basic colors we're going to add the details and the outlines to make this look good because right now it is a big mess so for the outlines go ahead and create a new layer right below your sketch but above the colors and everything rename this new layer to outlines and for now we're just going to draw all of the outlines in one same color so you could either draw like all black outlines for now i'm going to draw all of mine in orange and later i'm going to show you a very quick tip to recolor them and here just pick a color that is going to be very different from the other colors in your illustration and in terms of brushes you can use the 6p pencil that comes with procreate so still in the sketching panel or if you have the illustration bundle go ahead and pick the outlines brush and this is another step that is quite easy but is you know fairly time consuming you're just going to go ahead and draw the outlines for your entire characters and any kind of other details that there might be so the facial features if you want any texture on your shirt or your pants or your i don't know socks this is where you would draw that and once more i'm going to speed up the video as you can see obviously this is quite sped up i'm going to speed up the video stop talking so that you can focus on your own outlines and then we're going to meet up in the next stage in which i'm going to explain to you a few more tips especially how to recolor the outlines and then we're going to move on to shading and finish this illustration so once you have your outlines all mapped out like this it's going to look absolutely crazy especially if you went with orange like me but we're going to recolor the outlines and for that just go ahead and swipe your outlines layer towards the right with two fingers which is going to activate alpha lock you can also manually activate it by tapping on a layer and then selecting it in the menu and now everything we draw on this outlines layer is going to stay within the outlines that we already created so you can just go ahead and color pick the color of example the shirt make it a little bit darker and then brush over the part of the outlines that are connected to the shirt without having to worry about you know staying within the lines which would be absolutely crazy now this is a really helpful tips when you have you know complicated illustrations because if you were to change the color every time you're just roughly sketching the outlines or drawing the outlines at first it would really really take a long time so in terms of workflow doing it that way is just it just makes so much more sense the more complicated the illustration is to just go over and draw all the outlines at first in one color and then go in and really quickly brush over with a darker version of the color that is in that area so for example a darker yellow for the shirt a darker gray for the socks etc etc so once more here you probably guess it there is no point for me just talking over this endlessly i'm gonna let you focus once more speed up my video take all the time you need to recolor your outlines and then we're going to actually shade this piece make it come to life and make it look so so so good [Music] my [Music] once you're ready for the shadows go ahead and create a new layer it can be either above the outlines or above the color that is really a personal preference whether you want your outlands to be shaded as well or not i really like to have them shaded so i'm just going to keep it above and we're going to set the blending mode to linear burn just like we did for the eyes and set the opacity around i don't know 40 for now now you can go and pick a similar color to what you use for the eyes so in my case a purplish gray it doesn't need to be exactly the same just again try to avoid having a pure neutral gray otherwise it's going to look super muddy now if you have your shadows right above the color you can apply this layer as a clipping mask so that your shadows stay within the shape that can make it really you know really helpful but again i personally want my outlines to be shaded as well so i much rather try to focus and stay within the rough shapes roughly than having to go ahead and kind of recolor the outlines again based on the shadows and here i like to stick with the same brush i use for the outlines since the shadows are quite precise we're you know working on characters that have a lot going on it's a fairly precise illustration so as opposed to having a looser textured brush just sticking with the 6b pencil or the outline brush from the illustration bundle now here when you're drawing shadows it is helpful to kind of roughly map out where the light source is so for that you might want to create a separate layer and just roughly draw kind of either a sun or a light bulb or something where you want your light source to be and then just roughly kind of sketch the rays so something just super simple like that is really helpful to figure out where the lights and shadows are going to be all you have to do is go from your light source follow the ray and see okay for example here the ray is hitting the hair which means the hair is going to cast a shadow on the face and that is literally all there is to shading at least basic shading honestly there's there's like reflecting shadows reflecting light bouncing blah blah blah for this kind of illustration you don't really have to worry about that just worry about basic shading which is what is the light source and what is casting shadows on wasp so here you're just going to go over your entire illustration kind of following this basic method so always referring back to the light source and then seeing okay the light source is hitting the face so the face is going to cast a shadow on the neck and then neck is going to cast a shadow on the body and so and so and since we're drawing with a fairly precise brush you can always use the eraser set the eraser to the soft brush so in the airbrushing panel kind of just like this and then you can just go over and erase some of the edges to make them softer that is a way to blend your edges i personally use the smudge tool so the finger icon at the top right between the paint brush and the eraser right here and i set my smudge tool to the stucco brush in the painting panel so that's a free brush that comes with procreate and i really like this brush because it has a little bit of texture so when i blend my shadows it doesn't look super super smooth like the eraser makes it look it's just it's a way of blending the edges without completely losing the texture that we have within the brush so again once more just follow the same technique remember what your light source is and then draw the shadows that are cast by the different body parts and the different elements and illustration so go ahead take all the time you need to do that but don't agonize over it the beauty of illustration is it doesn't need to be perfect it doesn't need to follow all the rules of physics as long as it looks good to you and it's believable that's what we want so go over and shade your characters to bring it to life and then we're going to add the highlights so like all the final little details are really really going to make it pop at this stage it's normal if the illustrations still look a little bit dodgy really the highlights are what going to bring it all together so take the time you need again i'm going to speed up the video and we're going to meet for the highlights so once you're happy with the general shading go ahead and play with the opacity of your shadow layer so you get something that you're really really happy with here again it's a personal preference and it depends on your colors and just the situation in general in your illustration so here it's going to really depend for one person to the other or vary from one person to the other and before we add the highlights we might want to add a shadow on the ground as well so that our characters look like they're sitting on something and not just floating so create a new layer below the color and then rename this one to floor shadow or ground shadow something along those lines go back to setting the layer mode to linear burn and the opacity to whatever you set the other shadow layer opacity and with the same brush same color you're just going to roughly brush your shadow on the ground so nothing super precise here just a general kind of blob below your characters do and with that we're ready to start bringing this illustration together with the highlights to make it pop and make it look really really good so we're just going to create a new layer above the color layer because this one we want to apply it as a clipping mask on the color so for the shadow that was a personal preference but for the lights this is probably the easiest way to do it because we're going to draw our lights mostly on the edges of our color so a new layer rename it to lights applying it as a clipping mask and the blending mode for this is going to be add now add is a very strong blending mode so i recommend starting with opacity around 20 25 and then later tweaking it so here the color you can use for your light is really you know it depends on you i like to go with a super light yellow because it feels like it's the sun it's a nice warm color and here all you're doing is you're going to i guess outline your outlines with this color so it is not necessarily the most realistic well it's definitely not realistic way to add lights but it makes everything pop and just looks so good it's super easy that's the technique i use and pretty much every single illustration to add the highlights and just really make sure that my characters pop from the background so super simple technique you just outline your outline with this bright color you can also add some little dots for example on the cheeks like i just did here if there is a part of the body that you know would have shine or that you want to highlight and add a little bit more emphasis on i guess so same thing here you're just gonna you know go over your illustration at the highlights and you can already see it took like what 30 seconds one minute and everything looks so much better already so this little step by this point in the illustration honestly all the hard work has been done but this little step it's so satisfying because stuff finally starts to look good and you know this illustration um when i filmed the tutorial i did a very rough version of the illustration like i didn't go in and add the texture on the face um and stuff like that but it's normal if it takes time when i did the example it you know i spent most of the evening working on on the example not the most focused drawing session i was watching youtube videos at the same time but but still so illustrations like these take time and that is okay it's totally fine if you know you're working on this illustration for three four five hours maybe six seven eight that's okay you and i who draw you know all day every day it takes me a few hours to make these illustrations so that's okay that's part of the process and honestly that's that's fun so yeah like i was saying i didn't add the texture on the face because it's just this video was already long enough and it was 2 a.m by the time i was finished filming but i have a bunch more videos that you can watch if you want to dive deeper into how to draw hands for example or how to add the texture and details on the face so if you want to check these out and kind of get your illustration a little bit more polished like the one in my example right here with like freckles texture in the hair maybe even like an animal on the lap i highly recommend you check out this playlist because i have a bunch of video in which i detail the process of drawing specific things like the face like different kind of pets but before you leave make sure to give this video a like and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of the weekly tutorials then click on the link right here pick a video and i'll meet you there

Channel: Genevieve's Design Studio

Views: 16,661

Keywords: procreate illustration, procreate tutorial cartoon, procreate drawing, how to draw cute, procreate, procreate tutorial, illustration, procreate art, how to draw, drawing tutorial, learn to draw, you can draw this digital art, digital art, illustration tutorial, cute art drawing, procreate cartoon, couple illustration, wedding invitation, relationship art, digital art tutorial, genevieve's design studio, digital illustration, character illustration, digital painting, art, draw

Id: Tjs7jGXV2wE

Length: 44min 20sec (2660 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021