The theme and slogan for today's video is no shortcuts! Which is easier said than done. I love sketching with no end result really in mind and I I pride myself on the process Specifically the early stages of it. And today I want to push myself to go a little bit further. So that I'd take you along as I journey forth and attempt to create an illustration with the theme in mind of no shortcuts. I might miss a few. I'm gonna try my best, if I feel myself cutting shorts Or shorting cuts, i'm gonna take the long route. So let's start in the sketchbook. ♪ Stage one of figuring out what to draw... Is figuring out what to draw. I'm going to try and incorporate backgrounds because that's something I always shortcut and then maybe color. I always shortcut that too. So now, I'm thinking since I want to incorporate color and the colors speaking to me right now are kind of tropical, like reds and blues and greens and oranges, kind of like a, like a parrot. Oh, yeah, including an animal, collect some references. Oh, yes, that's exactly what I want to do. This is going to be so tricky. I mean, look how complicated, look at all those feathers If we like put it on someone's shoulder because obviously I'm including a person. If you thought otherwise, welcome, you must be new here. So we'll put like a parrot. A bigger parrot Oh baby! What if the character is also incorporating similar colors? So I found these really cute sweaters. I don't know. We'll see. [Laughs] What we're doing right now is concepting and finding - Just trying out a little bit of everything. So that we know what we want to keep, And what we want to skip. Now, I feel like tropical birds and sweaters don't really mix, but I don't consider that a shortcut. So I'm keeping it. That's the only rule for today. I feel like I definitely like this little illustration with the wings opened. Because then you get to see more colors, you know. Stripey socks, rainbow. Let's just rainbow the whole thing up. Well, it's not rainbow. It's red, green and blue, but that's like half a rainbow, right? I do think
I want to mess around with the pose a little bit more because like if I just go with my first attempt, that seems like a shortcut. Since I like the back of the birds better. Look at how beautiful the back of the parrot looks when their wings are open. So if we have our character with the shoulders, we can put the bird... Um... More here. It looks like every time they open their wings, they kind of duck their head down a little and then that way we get to include all those tail feathers here and that might mix the brightly colored sweater idea, but we'll see. We'll see. Gotta try it first. Something like that. And then come back behind their head, too. Although I would really like to see the bird's face in some way. [Laughs] I'm thinkin' if we like crop it like this, that would look kind of cool because I need to figure out what the wings actually look like. That might be important. Looks like there's some distance between like the body and the back of that wing maybe. We'll have like wings opening kind of like that [Nervous laugh] I think i'm kind of slowly understanding that there'll be more chances to draw the wings. Oh and then I can add texture to the feathers. That's gonna be fun My favorite part about this reference is the way there's little shadows under the different layers of feathers. I think that makes a really big difference in the overall appearance. So another way to maybe go about it would be... Thinking... Try a side profile. I haven't tried that. Then we put the pair like behind them. That looks like a Pidgeot, not a parrot! Thinking it's too liney-uppy with the face. ♪ I'm trying to be very conscious about the choices i'm making. Whether or not that's for the better with the way I work. We'll see. So far, these two, I like better than this on I guess we could use our little square that we made. See what we can fit in there. Maybe that limitation will cause me to be a little bit more creative and come up with something that we can explore over there Okay, go character! Looks like a hockey player. ♪ Trying to find the shapes Here it is landing. But now she's like so like nonchalant and then there's a flipping parrot landing on her shoulder. Arghh! All right. Let's try again. I like the idea of drawing it inside the box though I feel like it, I don't know, it grounds me. A way to make it look like the bird and the girl are like on a team, would we have them like moving in the same direction and then the parrot's like flying behind her kind of like a Pokemon trainer. [Laughs] Maybe line those up a little bit more. Meh, what about like a portrait? So it's like one of those funky 80s photos. But it's a lady and her bird. What if the bird like looks straight at the camera? Oh my gosh, I kind of really like this one. Especially if I give the character that - Like a sweater with the same colors, they'll look like, like one of those matching 80s family portraits. Do I want the one wing opened? [Laughs] It's silly, it's got a little of a humor to it. We'll come back to it, if it's something that calls to me, if I've not found anything better. I feel like when I find the idea, I'll know it. I want to try this again, but maybe change the layout a bit more. Also, I don't want the person look like an afterthought like that one. Let's have him looking at it. They always duck their head down when they open their wings from every reference that I've seen, so if I like... Draw the body with the head ducking to the side here. This wing can like come up straight like this and then this back one will go like this. That way they can kind of be like looking at each other. While we also get that beautiful back action. I think I drew it a little too high. I think it needs to be like... Coming out from there. Oh, what if I turn the character around backwards too, would that be like too much back action? ♪ It's got a certain something to it. I think I want to see more of the faces. I do like the silhouette of this. I might like just make it a bit flowier on another pass. That's kind of a weird aspect ratio. I might have to draw more leg. Yeah, that feels more... Right to me. So, let's try that same concept again, see if we can find something that works even better. I do you like that kind of shape that I had. Problem is the way they like duck their heads when they open their wings. It's proving to be an issue. I kind of like the way this slants. It almost feels like they're floating or like the bird's carrying her. I feel like I just need to keep this arm out of the way But then I feel like I have room over here to do something. Floaty arms. Oooolalalalaooo. For background,. I'm kind of just seeing like leaf shapes. So I think to tone down the rainbow just a smidge i'll just... Although this is the outfit I give everybody. I was like i'll just rainbow up a little cammy. Maybe a maxi skirt. I never draw those and then if that's the case, we can make the hair a little bit more wind blowing in the hair. Uh billowy, flowy. I don't know what the word is. Engaging. [Laughs] Just fill some of that space and we can add like maybe lighter versions in the background, kind of fading off I'm not looking for any perfection here. I feel like that's a shortcut though. Putting her in the outfit I've gave basically every character. So how about like something fun like super high-waisted pants. That are like cut off so they'll be - Oh that brings that sort of same shape of the feathers down into the shorts here. Those could - Oh I see those being like bright white. And then for the top we could do... This feels very vacationy, like tropical, poofy sleeves with a square neckline. Is that trendy? There we go. [Gasps] I'm liking this! All right i'm gonna take a picture of this, so i'll be right back. Mission accomplished. That way I can maybe put this into... Photoshop and start refining it, but I would like to, since I've already like "saved it", just roll over it. I think it'd be kind of cute to duck the head lower. So she's like smiling and gives her a bit more expression. I could close her eyes if she's laughing a lot. Yeah, this is the stage I always skip because I take shortcuts! I want the fingers splawled out kind of like the wings are Create a theme there a bit. That makes more sense. They'd be rolled up and then the roughed edge should be on the top. There's another shortcut I always take. I always, I always avoid like accessories of any kind. So let's give her some earrings. [Ppppfttt] I guess we need to add the bird. Exaggerate a bit of the like motion, I suppose. Looks like the feathers are a bit smaller than I've drawn them. I don't mind simplifying the stuff. If you think simplifying and characterization of stuff is shortcuts, then this is not the channel for you. Don't know if I have enough room anymore, seem to have made the wings bigger. This part's really confusing, it looks like one piece. This is what I mean about not taking shortcuts. This is where I would just like: "Oh good enough, call it quits." [Laughs] But i'm trying my best. Can you even tell us a bird without the face? This is like the stage of art that I get a little bit bored. So i'm gonna try and push through. Because you just keep drawing over the same thing over and over and over again. Okay, right here is a little mushy. Gotta figure that out. I almost want this arm to like come up and mimic that wing. Would be this arm. [Gasps] Oh if I pull this arm up, let me take another picture. [Laughs] "Save it." If you will. Erase this arm. ♪ Because then I can just put in a few extra feathers down here, fill this little space. Let's pull all out the fingers again ♪ A little pinky going down. Some ferns of some kind. ♪ Should look up some references of plants. I think this is a shortcut just by drawing blobs, you know. Go for the parrots. Ooh, okay, that's what i'm doing wrong. So the fern, I mean, I don't think it's a fern but the leaf thing. Is like more sprayed out. Instead of mine's more like a seaweed. ♪ And I want to have like a bunch of these. [Gasps] I like that so much better! Definitely need some overlapping each other. But I think that's something i'll do digitally. And if they're all basically at the bottom, it kind of grounds that corner and then you have all sky space or something up here. All right. I think I am going to go with this version. I'll jump into Photoshop and do a few corrections here and there and then i'll meet you back when it's time to start maybe Working on the next step. So here we are. We're now in Photoshop. I blocked out a background to see what that might look like. Not final by any means. I also added a bit of a gradient overlay on top of this because I figured if I have a background that's really really bright, then
the character would probably be backlit in some way. So that was kind of.... What's going on there. I've hit that point where I feel like i'm bored with it, and I want to do something else. [Laughs] But, no shortcuts. No give-ups. We're gonna see what we can do. I guess the first thing I gotta start adding in some colors Actually, I'm gonna add a layer on top of the sketch. I'm gonna create a clipping mask and that's where i'll add in some color. Let's maybe just block out colors. That way I can like adjust them and make them more cohesive with the color scheme over time instead of worrying about doing it perfect the first time. I'll just do it over top of the blue with a light opacity. But we don't lose any of that shading from the pencil. Now this parrot should have really bold colors. So I don't mind using super saturated stuff here. I need it underneath maybe...? What if I set this to multiply? No. No, what do - Hmm. [Laughs] I don't remember how I used to do this. Shoot! Maybe, let me try something. I'll just duplicate this so I can experiment without ruining what we've already got. I'm going to put the color layer underneath. If you remove the color in this, set it to multiply. It ain't right either. Is it? Maybe if this is more of a purple? No, no, no, no. Yeah, that looks unsuccessful. Let's try an over paint layer. I'm going to work with the face because I've done faces before, so if this isn't working then I know something's wrong Yeah, it's not finding the right colors in here. I guess maybe what I should have done is just... Redrawn in everything. ♪ What am I doing? What am I doing? I'm doing this all in a separate layer. So if it turns out bad I can just undo it all. Lots of freedom to experiment with digital art. Then I can see what it looks like without. Let's see what kind of progress I've made. Huh? It doesn't look worse. So I proceed. ♪ Oh, yeah I'm gonna love that, yeah, dark hair. All over that, then we can clean up those edges later too. I feel like the eyes aren't lined up. Okay, do a check. One or two. One or two. I think using a bigger brush will help avoid me doing too many details right now Mmm. I'm gonna flip the canvas, see how the eyes are lining up. Yeah, definitely, one is dipping. So, what I'm gonna try to do is grab it. Maybe the whole face needs to twist a smidge. Oh, no what happened? Maybe move this side down? That looks a little better, I think. I hate this part of art! Just let me sketch. This is the exact feeling I was talking about when I started this video. About how I get really lazy or just don't want to work on it anymore and i'm at that stage. I don't know if it's that I don't like it. If I'm not enjoying it. I'm a Sketcher. What can I say? I can't even describe the feeling because it's like such an intense desire to not work on it I think part of it... If I was going to analyze myself. It's probably because this is the part of art [Laughs] That rhymed. Where you really come face to face with the mistakes in your art and you have to find a way to surpass them and I'm only at a point where I can see the mistakes and I can't find a way to get around them. I don't have that experience to know, Oh when it looks like, when there's something that looks like this, you can do this to correct it or when something's like that and you want it to be like this, you just do this. I don't know what the this is, you know. I'm gonna try and just work on the feathers and see if... I don't know , see what I find in here. I really want this yellow to be far more vibrant. Hmmmm. So what i'm seeing here is I should have made this red stuff darker and then I could have gone over it with a lighter red. Probably same thing with the blue. Hmm. That looks kind of cool. ♪ Just adding in a darker tone. There's definitely not enough contrast in here Oh that looks interesting! I'll do the same thing down here these lower feathers. Very, very bright. That's what i'm looking for. All right, definitely moving in the right direction with the parrot. I might add a little bit of a background color. Maybe the white is just really harsh with this. [Growling in frustration] This is what it looks like when i'm not having fun.. [Short laugh] Maybe what I need to do is do it my more normal approach, which is add line-art, color, shading like in that order. I wonder, am I trying to like skip line art? Because that's a shortcut and that would mean that I have to add line-art. Even after doing all this! Ahhhhahhh! Let me see. We'll just see how it makes me feel when I start it up. I mean, it makes me feel a little icky because I just did all this but! Let me just see if it feels like it's the right direction. Just add black line-art and we can change the color of the line -art afterwards because it'll be its own separate layer. I honestly... Looking at this, I kind of want to change it up a bit wait. Let me see. Let me just see, let me just see, give me a second. Because it feels off. It feels really stiff. That way the body's... Got a little bit more motion to it. Where are the shoulders even in here? I guess I don't want it to be too much hair because I don't want to distract from the macaw, you know? Or the parrot. I don't know what it's called! Do I want to turn the barrot - barrot. Parrot. [Laughs] I mean I had the opportunity to color it backwards. Let's see if I can shove the bird's head in here somewhere. What if we just turn it so that this is now the right wing and that's the left wing. I don't know what the wings look like from this side. I've been drawing them the other way! No, no, no, no. No, it's not quite the right shape. ♪ I really like the way it looked. See this is why I have such an issue! I like the way it looks when it's sketchy and imperfect and when I try to go in and like finalize imperfections, it doesn't look as good. Something, something someone explain that one to me why I like imperfections, but then when I try to go in and color them, it doesn't quite... Work. Okay, so I squished a little head in there. ♪ Okay, how's it look with the other guy? Hmm, I could even grab the bird because I did it on a separate layer and twist it around if I want! [Laughs] I see a little less of the bird's face, but I could probably grab it. And twist it. Then we see a little bit more, ooOoo! All right. This looks like I drew it. I don't know what it was about something I did in the last one but it didn't quite feel like me. I'm gonna take that color layer. Oh but I moved everything shoot. Can I layer this back in here somewhere. Oooop. Actually, I don't want the color of the person. That one was a mistake. So let me just go add more color into this. ♪ So just have a layer underneath and just throw in the colors. Make sure I color the tips of everything. I do already feel like I have more control though. Which is good news. Then red! Red, red, red, red, red. Man, that is such a beautiful bird. Not specifically the one I drew but like, scarlet macaws in general. I will go over the line -art layer. Soften that up. Now i'm going to darken this. So that I can add those bright colors on top for the feather texture like I did with the painting. So it's not like I - That was a waste of time, I learned something. Just see what that will look like before I do the rest oooOooo! Yeah, see I learned something. For the character. I think I wanted white shorts If I remember correctly. I think I wanted everything white. Oh, whatever happened to that idea with the stripes? Did I nix that... Entirely? Taking the skin tone from the parrot. And then color the line out of this too. I might actually just grab this red and see what that looks like. Okay, too dark. Tone that down a smidge. All right, line-art is colored. The hair is blending in with the birdie right now. But I think the bird's feathers are gonna end up lighter. Where's the hair, I'm hoping they'll stay very similar to where it is now. I do think I can start adding in the over paint layer. Paint on top I guess. So hopefully those feather texture will really stand out. Do I start at the top or the bottom? I feel like I need to start at the bottom. And work my way up with the feathers because that's the way they're layered, you know? Two sides of each feather. ♪ Do the next pass. Trial and error here, let's see what happens. ♪ That's not needed. How does that look. I had a couple red feathers because it looks like some of them do have... Extra fun feathers. I'm also going to shrink my brush. Just add a little texture like a little stem of the feather. Even add a little texture there. oooOooo. That's my favorite part right there. That looks kind of cool. I think i'm already ahead of where I was before but i'm going to add in these to every feather. What it's missing is like a little shadow under every feather. It has a very soft look to it which I think adds to the feather effect. Maybe space them out a bit, so you see them better. Hey, that actually looks kind of cool! When you zoom in it's not like hideous, hideous. I don't think it could be considered lazy because of all the extra steps I had to take to get here [Laughs] Oi-yoi-yoi. I missed a piece of feathers here. [Chuckles] And now you can see all like the layers of the feathers, looks really good out here. Pretty happy with that. I'm so glad I went back around [Laughs] Even though that's only one eighth of the illustration. I would like to thank references. [Giggles] Okay, they don't quite look the same, not sure what I did differently. I want these feathers to be a little bit more aligned. And less sticky-outy. I won't say no shortcuts for taken but I'll say a lot less shortcuts than I would have liked. I'm trying! Let's move on to the person. I'm gonna move into the over painting layer. I forgot I usually like lower the opacity of that before I - Meh, i'm doing this all out of order again. Hopefully this turns out. [Laughs] ♪ Round out this face a little bit more. Just blending out. Oh, it's kind of cute! I mean, I haven't gotten to the mouth but look it, I like it better than wherever... It was before. ♪ Another update, still working on the face. I feel like it's a lot more - I don't know, it has more life to it than the original one. Do I want teeth in here? ♪ Yeah, definitely, tss. Throw in some teeth. Still like a few harsh shadows. Harkens back to more my simple style when i'm being lazy. [Laughs] It's pretty good for the legs for now. ♪ Check back and see where we're at with this. ♪ I'm just trying to think of where the light would hit and the anatomy of an arm and things like that. ♪ Hmm. That's kind of figuring it out. I keep adding extra flesh, until it looks more like a hand. ♪ It's kind of an interesting approach. I basically just sort of color over the lines and then redraw the ones I like. Or the ones that I think were necessary. And hopefully do them a little better...? Why did I decide to paint this? [Laughs] What was I thinking? I never paint anything. Just because I don't paint stuff, doesn't mean it's a shortcut. [Chuckles] Too late to restart now. I like cell shading. What was I thinking?! Like a patch. It doesn't really look like a patch.... Still feels out of place. All right, I think I just reached the 10 hour mark. [Laughs] Oh my gosh. i'm reaching my breaking point. [Giggles hysterically] Errrrghhhh! Ahhh-ooooohhhh-aaaah-rrr? Brrruup, brrrup, brrrup. So I think next step is to add in a little background because I don't think I can spend any more time on this. It needs more work. But... [Sighs] I gotta, I gotta just admit that I have improved - I've gone further than I usually do and I just, I can't do it. [Laughs] [Inhales deeply] I can't stare at this any longer. Let's just add in our background. Ahh, what am I doing? Like a nice bright kind of sky color. ♪ Okay, that's not gonna work that's a shortcut right there. [Laughs] Add a couple of those. Ahh, I wanna be done with this. [Noises of frustration] Hmm. I could do this. I just duplicated the layer by accident. I wonder if I like change the colors I can lighten it up. A palm tree thing up there. Okay, this isn't - Eurgh. Kind of like it with the blue. It's less realistic and more like that abstract kind of thing that I was digging. Copy that and move it somewhere. I wonder if I should change the colors of some of these Because I could, I could grab like all of them and duplicate them. And move them a little. K ind of maneuver them. I do like it. It's got a little extra something and realism ain't that something. [Laughs] I've just drawn a couple extras that aren't copy pasted. Add a bit more texture. ♪ Maybe some vines. There we go, I stuck with it. I wasn't even gonna do a background. I was feeling like cutting that out and then I did So, eh! Yeah! I might add some little particles or something. Funness. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah! Almost like she's underwater. It's a bit surreal. Woo, Yes maximum saturation. That looks nice. I like this. Oh what happened? Me like, I want to give up. I want to give up, oooOooo! [Laughs] I think some of these little plant things should probably go in front of the character, too. Let me just grab some Erase some of these ones I don't really feel like doubling up. Actually. I might get rid of the ones on the top. Okay, so I won't say no shortcuts are taken but I will say a whole heck of a lot less... Than I would normally take and now I have a little illustration, that's uh, you know, I could call done. So that's always a plus. It's definitely a victory. Maybe not a total victory but a step in the right direction So let's sign this guy and definitely something I can take and learn from in the future. And uh, yeah. I - [Laughs] And I think I definitely should do this exercise again in the future and see how much I improved from this one. Anyway, I want to thank you guys for watching. I hope you all enjoyed coming along on this journey. Yeah. Thank you guys for watching. I'll see you guys all next week. I'm gonna try to wave with the mouse [Laughs] Hope you have a delicious evening full of waffles. Bye! Oh, it does need yellow, wait, one second. I'm gonna add some little yellow flowers. Oh, yeah, I like that. There's still like silhouettes, but you kind of can tell that they're flowers. All right, now I'm done, bye! ♪ You
