How I make a painting in Procreate.
Ideas for paintings come to me seemingly out of the blue sometimes. Oftentimes I will see or think about something as I’m going about my life, perhaps on a walk, or even in a dream, that inspires a drawing. Over the course of a few days, or weeks, certain visual elements or concepts creep into my mind's eye and I just can’t help but paint them to make them a visual reality for others to experience. I love using Procreate to make a work of art because of how easy it is to paint something I’ve imagined. I especially love Procreate because it allows me to build a painting up in layers. I have always conceptualized my art in terms of layers, sort of like an onion, or a tree trunk!
Once I have an idea that’s just itching at the inside of my brain to be visually realized it’s time to get started by searching for reference images. Reference images help me understand and accurately depict the forms I want in my composition. Sometimes, before I even look for reference imagery, I’ll begin by drafting a series of rough thumbnails to decide on my concept's shapes, colors, values, and composition. For other pieces, the image is already so clear in my mind that I just jump right into gathering images and sketching. This is what happened when I conjured up images of a flying pink dog in my mind and formed the visuals for the painting Hekatos. I’ll explore my creative process for this painting from initial concept to final touches in today’s blog.
For this drawing, my initial concept was of a large, pointy-eared, pink dog that was jumping over the trees and into the night air to catch the moon. When searching for images of dogs to use as reference, I knew that I wanted a particular vertical, elongated body to convey an upward each and a sense of vertical motion. I sketched out the rough shape of my dog by referring to multiple photos that I gathered from stock images and creative commons sites.
Once the initial sketch was developed, I refined it a bit more by altering the proportions of the dog and refining the linework slightly. The initial sketch I create is always used as a transparent guideline that eventually gets covered and discarded. Once this refined sketch has been established I create a silhouette of the animal and fill it with a solid color. I like to refer to this color as the “foundational hue” of my animal; It’s the color of the animal as it would look in average lighting, not in shadow or direct sunlight. This foundational layer is something that I keep as a completely separate layer so that I can change the hue, value, or saturation independently without affecting other layers of the painting if need be. This is something you can’t do with traditional mediums without completely starting over.
Once the foundation is created, it’s time to roughly block out all the areas of shadow. This is when an established light source in my composition becomes crucial. In this painting, the moon is going to be the main source of light and will be coming from the upper right-hand corner of the composition, above and behind the dog. Therefore, all of the values of my dog need to reflect this. Studying light and shadow by sketching from photos and real life is very useful if one wants to master lighting and shading. This process is something I learn more about each time I paint!
The shadows on my dog at this stage aren’t the hue that I intend them to be in the end. Occasionally, I will paint desaturated values on my animals because it helps me focus solely on value and prevents me from becoming distracted by other elements like hue and saturation. This is something I recommend to drawing students… when trying to master value alone, desaturate! Colors can play an awful lot of tricks on the eye. Eventually, I’ll make the shadows a dark pink color with a simple hue adjustment, as you’ll see in the next few steps.
Once my shadows are roughly blocked out, I like to use a blending brush to soften them. Some of my favorite brushes for blending are Procreate’s built-in brushes called “Wash,” “Water Bleed,” and “Blooming Wet.” I like that they create a more natural gouache or watercolor appearance.
Now that I’ve established the magenta hue for the shadows on the dog, I’ve also provided more contrast by darkening areas that are mostly shaded by the light. I’ve already begun to create more of a fur texture at this stage in some areas as well.
The next stage happens rather slowly and I tend to work all over different sections of the painting depending on where my pen naturally wants to go. I sort of switch back and forth between painting dark patches of fur, medium patches of fur, and light patches of fur to create depth and form. Typically, though, I work my way up from darkest to lightest values by painting large patches of fur with quick strokes using my favorite, customized Procreate brush “dry ink.” I used this same technique and brush when working on the trees in the background of this painting. I like that the dry ink brush has a sort of dry-brush appearance and looks most like my physical gouache paintings. This is the final result of the layers and layers of fur.
Once I was satisfied with the fur, I decided to make some adjustments to the overall value and saturation of the image. My initial concept of the scene was a bit darker. I wanted to capture how it feels during twilight when the sun has just set in the summer and the sky is a beautiful shade of deep blue as a few stars begin to appear. So, I darkened the sky, painted some clouds and the moon, and darkened the values of the dog to match the environment. I also made the dog more saturated to reinforce the whimsical, otherworldly feel.
The final stage of painting an animal is almost always my favorite, and that’s adding the highlights and final details. I was most excited about capturing the magical way that moonlight creates silver linings around objects when lit from behind. I brushed around certain edges of the dog with a pure white, soft airbrush. I added a subtle ‘Bloom’ effect to this layer to make it glow, as a final touch. I also added highlights around the edges of the trees to add some atmospheric magic. I’m pretty satisfied with the result, and I feel as though I learned a lot from writing about my process and techniques!
Martha Neth
