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Digital Illustration with Procreate

with Simone Grünewald
4.8 (131)
Learn how to create beautiful digital illustrations with characters in inspiring nature environments!
English, Spanish, 3 more French, Italian, German English, Spanish, 3 more French, Italian, German
5+
hours
37
lessons
Intermediate
level
Simone Grünewald

Your Instructor

Simone Grünewald is an artist from Germany who worked in the gaming industry for over 10 years. She is known for drawing humorous characters and everyday themes.

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5+
hours
37
lessons
Intermediate
level
English, Spanish , 3 more
Languages
  • French
  • Italian
  • German
English, Spanish , 3 more
Subtitles
  • French
  • Italian
  • German

What you’ll learn

  • Walk-through of Simone’s illustration process
  • How to plan your illustration and find inspiration by combining references
  • How to create beautiful environments, including tips for drawing natural-looking plants
  • Integrate your characters into a background
  • Understand concepts like horizon line, perspective and various lighting effects
  • Learn semi-realistic anatomy and structure of a character
  • Use nifty digital tools such as perspective grids, clipping masks, and drawing assist
  • Give a traditional look to your digital illustrations
  • Master blend modes to add lighting, warmth and shadows
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Description

A blank page can be a scary thing! You feel like drawing, so you open your sketchbook. You doodle a bit… but then push it aside, feeling frustrated! WHYYY!??

Rest assured! You aren’t alone. Many artists experience the exact same thing. Simone will show you how to avoid this and get super inspired instead!

She will walk you through her entire process of painting a beautiful background from the ground up, explaining exactly what she is doing and why, and give you lots of helpful advice that you can apply immediately in your illustrations.

You’ll discover how colors and light work, how to integrate a character into a beautiful background, and also learn nifty shortcuts to create structures (like bridges & more) and natural-looking foliage.

Simone will also teach you concepts like horizon lines, lighting effects, perspective, fore, mid, and background planes, giving you a solid foundation to work with when creating your own environment scenes.

Having learned a ton of new skills and concepts in this fantastic course, you’ll be off to the races with a newfound confidence in tackling both characters & backgrounds!

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Who is this course for

  • Anyone who wants to learn how to draw characters in an environment
  • Anyone curious to learn new digital drawing techniques and methods
  • Artists looking to give their digital art a more traditional feel
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This course includes

  • 5+ Hours of on-demand videos
  • 6 Cheat sheets/guides
  • 9 Reference images
  • List of recommended brushes
  • Bonus material
  • Layered Photoshop files
  • Layered Procreate files
  • Certificate of Completion
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Used in course

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What you'll need

  • Digital drawing software such as Procreate or similar (see examplesAffinity Photo, ArtRage, Artweaver, Astropad, Clip Studio Paint, Corel Painter, Krita, Inkscape, IbisPaint, GIMP, Rebelle 4, Photoshop, Paintstorm Studio, Procreate, MediBang Paint, SketchPad, SketchBook, TwistedBrush, Vectr...)
  • You'll learn more if you have a drawing tablet
  • Some previous art experience recommended
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Lesson Plan

with Simone Grünewald
Expand all sections
00

Introduction

02:22

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Welcome to the course! Get to know Simone and discover what is in store for you in her fascinating course.

01

Healthy Artist Habits

12:14

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In this lesson, you’ll discover the essential habits that professional artists use to set themselves up for success.

Simone will teach how to avoid artist block, the importance of doing studies, and tips for doing them on your own. You will also find out how to gather references, piece them together, adapt them, and use them in ways that avoid copyright infringements.


1.1
Inspiration
04:35
1.2
References
03:22
1.3
Studies
04:17
02

Pinning down an idea

17:13

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Learn how to get started by sketching and exploring ideas. Simone will explain what questions to ask yourself, how to draw rough thumbnails, why fore-, mid-, and backgrounds planes are essential, and other pro tips.

This stage will help you nail down a winning concept and establish a solid foundation for your illustration. By following this process, you avoid mistakes down the line, which can be a pain to fix!


2.1
Materials
05:49
2.2
The Idea
02:09
2.3
Thumbnailing
09:15
03

Getting Started in Procreate

12:17

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Simone will give you an overview of the l tools she uses in Procreate when she creates a new illustration.

You’ll discover which brushes Simone uses and why! She also shows you how to use a perspective grid, import reference photos, adjust settings to make sketching feel natural, and transform and tweak your artwork.

Don’t worry if you don’t have Procreate. Photoshop or Clip Studio works fine too.


3.1
Procreate Setup
01:55
3.2
Sketching in Procreate
04:35
3.3
Importing a photo in Procreate
02:36
3.4
Perspective Guide in Procreate
03:11
04

Sketching the background

51:25

Let the fun begin! Get ready to put stylus to canvas in this lesson, starting out with constructing your background with the help of some awesome digital tools.

Grasp key composition principles that aid in good storytelling, such as the low, mid, and high horizon lines, when to use thick and thin line art, and how to give plants a natural, organic look.

Simone will also show you in detail how to draw straight, accurate lines and angles using the Perspective grid and ‘Assisted drawing’. Just these tools alone will make your life soooo much easier!


4.1
Quick perspective explanation
06:13
4.2
Simplified bridge skeleton
19:47
4.3
Sketching the bridge
11:20
4.4
Greenery
14:05
05

Refining the Character Sketch

50:32

Having the background defined before adding the character makes it much easier to integrate them together nicely.

But, how do you fit a character into a background and ensure that it’s the correct size and angle? Simone will share her personal tricks to accomplish this and explain the basics of semi-realistic anatomy, including how she draws hands, heads and torsos. Sweet!!!

You’ll also learn the steps she goes through to take a rough character to the final line art stage, such as starting with the ‘body bean’ and why, using the Warp Tool to adjust size and angles, drawing joints to help with proportions, thinking about volume and more!


5.1
Semi-realistic anatomy
03:47
5.2
Size Reference
03:40
5.3
Constructing the character
08:55
5.4
Refining the character sketch
17:42
5.5
Character line art
09:45
5.6
Accessories
06:43
06

Local Color Distribution

38:46

Moving on to the exciting part: adding color to your illustration! Simone shares industry techniques for coloring such as blocking in the base colors, using clipping masks to color different elements quickly, and adding variance in hue/ saturation.

Plus she also explains personal hacks she uses time and again to create a more natural, traditional feel, such as painting red as the base color, using Multiply for shadow, and manipulating watercolor brushes.


6.1
Block in
12:43
6.2
Watercolor brushes
03:23
6.3
Local colors with Clipping masks
12:03
6.4
Adding color to the background
10:37
07

Lighting and Shading

59:17

Explore the fascinating topic of painting light and shadows, giving your artwork a sense of depth and realism. You’ll learn about indirect, direct, bounced, and rim light, ambient occlusion, and more and understand how to add them to your digital painting.

Your instructor will also show you the tools to adjust your lighting and shading until it looks just right! She’ll continue working on her background scene, explaining exactly what she is doing so you can follow along!


7.1
Ambient occlusion
10:44
7.2
In-between clean-up
02:22
7.3
Shadows
10:23
7.4
Indirect light
09:27
7.5
Direct light
11:15
7.6
Color burn
06:41
7.7
Editing light
08:25
08

Detailing

01:00:17

Learn how to add finishing touches in this last session that really bring all the elements together for a cohesive final look, with the character fitting seamlessly into the background.

Simone will teach how to color the line art, intensify lighting and clean up messy edges, use blend modes such as soft light and screen, and more to achieve the desired effect.

Well done! You’ve made it to the end and acquired lots of new skills on the way! Bravo!!!


8.1
Brushes
02:00
8.2
Line coloring with Alpha Lock
05:03
8.3
Paint over
33:53
8.4
Finishing touches
09:46
8.5
Take a break
09:35

Student Feedback

131 customer reviews & ratings

4.8

Course rating

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5 star
88 %
4 star
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3 star
5 %
2 star
1 %
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Best Suited for
Intermediate
The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

(Based on 131 reviews)

Most Liked
Great step-by-step process 102
Clarity of Instruction 98
Helpful Examples 95
Showing 10 reviews of
131
reviews & ratings
MG
M. G.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
What a perfect find for the end of the year! This course was everything I needed. Simone is a phenomenal artist and easily a new idol for me.
I recommend it for Intermediate
4 people found this helpful
DM
D M.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
What an inspiring course! Schmoe is an amazing teacher, she explain step-by-step, give some many tips and show all her process to create beautiful masterpieces!
I recommend it for All levels
3 people found this helpful
AE
Amelia E.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
This course has really helped me, particularly with learning how to better use light and color. amazing teaching thank you so much.
I recommend it for All levels
MB
Marc B.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
art is about mileage. Finding your own style. When you have inspiration, do studies. References are a good starting
I recommend it for Beginner
1 person found this helpful
LM
Lulu M.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed this course, there is a lot of information about the nuances of painting and it's information you can use for both digital painting and traditional. She shows you her whole process and if you are in a time crunch she kindly adds some icons where she doesn't do the voice over and you
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can fast forward to her next explanation skipping over the more mediative parts that you can certainly learn from but are not essential. Basically she has something for everyone and I highly recommend this course.
I recommend it for All levels
LD
Liz D.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
Simone just gave me a light to my digital painting process. I needed to improve my composition and lighting and this course was a big help. Going to buy her books as well. Thanks ☺️
I recommend it for Intermediate
1 person found this helpful
GG
Gracie G.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
Fantastic demonstration. Excited to adopt so much of these tips and this process
I recommend it for Intermediate
Minty S.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
I love this process and it was very helpful to my learning :)
I recommend it for All levels
1 person found this helpful
Janet G.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
was very good explaining her thought process while developing a concept
I recommend it for Intermediate
1 person found this helpful
AV
Avegail V.

2 years ago

Verified Purchase
I’ve learned new techniques. Thank you.
I recommend it for Beginner
1 person found this helpful
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About the Instructor

Simone Grünewald
Visual Development Artist and Illustrator 1 course

Simone Grünewald, also known as “Schmoe”, is a Visual Development artist from Germany who worked in the gaming industry for over 10 years as an art director, character designer, and 2D animator.


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21 Draw is an online learning community where students of all skill levels can learn how to be a better artist. Our contributing artists and instructors are the best in the world.

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Many lessons in our courses apply to both digital and traditional art. In a few tutorials, digital drawing software, e.g. Photoshop or Procreate for iPad is required. However, for the majority of lessons it is more about the underlying concepts and all that is needed is a pen and paper.

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