A digital drawing
On this page I'm going to walk you through my process for a digital drawing! I'll be using a piece you can find here on my digital gallery page. I used Procreate to draw this, but the instructions should be general enough to use on any drawing platform.
Every good drawing starts with a sketch. For figuring out posing and anatomy, you can search on google for photos. Sketching should be pretty free and rough.
Now it's time to clean up the sketch. I create a new layer and lower the opacity of the sketch layer so I can see my new lines over my old ones.
I open up another new layer and this time, I just flat in a solid gray color underneath the lineart. We won't be using the gray for anything other than something to apply color overtop.
Now we're going to use the gray. We're going to flat in the colors using a Clipping Mask . A clipping mask is a layer that goes overtop of another layer and can't move off of it, so we can feel free to color without going over drawing. Flatting in color is simply just applying the base color to the drawing.
Next, we're going to start shading. Objects closer to the front are going to be lighter than the objects in the back, and since the person here is on his side, that means his left arm and leg are going to be darker. Other items to keep in mind for shading- Skin tone varies. I tend to apply a light blush to the cheeks or nose in most of my drawings, as well as to the fingers. Shading also goes under fabric like the sleeves of his shirt, and on the neck below the head.
Now you've got the base colors, you can add lighting overtop. I did this by drawing yellow lines overtop the color, and lowering the opacity and switching the layer from normal to screen. I chose screen by messing around with the layer options, just play around as well until you find something that looks good.
And there you have it- a completed work! Again, this was just a general overview of how I liked to do things, but if you draw by yourself feel free to work around until you find a process that works well for you. I really enjoyed how this piece turned out, although I do dislike the anatomy a bit- I didn't use a reference for this piece, it was more for fun, but overall I feel it turned out well. It's important to keep a critical eye on your work, while also enjoying it, so you can feel proud of your accomplishments but understand where some growth is needed.