Use lighting to enhance a story

Max Ulichney takes a simple idea of a boy listening to music, and uses Procreate’s brush, colour and lighting tools to ramp up the storytelling

Max Ulichney makes use of Procreate’s brush, colour and lighting tools.

Artists are often taught to focus on design and technique, but it’s also important to consider character motivations and storytelling. Characters deserve an inner monologue and desires of their own. This workshop will teach you how to create a fun, nostalgic scene of a boy listening to his older brother’s records in the warm, late afternoon light after school when he should be doing his homework or tidying his room. The image will also include good storytelling details such as his cat and a poster of his idol.

The workshop will cover basic brush techniques, as well as the creation of a new gouache brush. You’ll learn how to paint in Procreate in an expressive way that reinforces the subject’s playful energy, using a combination of analog-influenced techniques and digital flexibility to create an image that looks rich, warm and traditionally painted, while embracing the strengths of Procreate.

In addition, this workshop will guide you through some complex perspective tricks using Procreate’s drawing guides, which make scene construction easier than it’s ever been in digital painting.

3 Paint the colour roughs

Copy the last thumbnail sketch to all of the frames and flatten them by pinching all four layers together. Make the Background colour layer grey by tapping the thumbnail to bring up the Color Picker. On a new layer, start painting the local colour of the objects in the room. On a new layer above that, darken the room by painting the whole frame a light blue colour and setting the layer blend mode to Multiply. This is all that needs doing here, as the room is dark and backlit, but in most other cases you could paint the shadows more selectively, such as under a character or cast across objects. Consider also using a light colour on separate layers to paint the window light and a rim light on the character and affected surfaces.

4 Fill the room with a hazy light 4

Fill a layer with orange, tap the layer to add a mask, tap its thumbnail and invert the mask. Use the Grain Cloud brush to paint white in the mask to reveal the orange. Set the orange layer’s blend mode to Screen. To place the character’s hand and face in front of the haze, put a new layer over the haze layer and create a clipping mask. This makes whatever you do to this layer act only on the layers it’s clipped to. Add the bright window colour on a new layer to give better control independent of the haze.

5 Use colour filters to generate the right mood

Group all of these layers together. This will enable you to duplicate the group and make variations to the time of day and colour palette. Use Filters>hue, Saturation, Brightness to alter the colours of the shadow and haze, to find a colour scheme that evokes a vintage, nostalgic mood using shades you might see in a Polaroid or 8mm camera. If the colours in your frames feel slightly drab, as with the top four frames shown on the right, flatten those groups and then use Filters>color Balance to push the colours further until you find something you’re happy with.

6 Begin refining the sketch

Establishing your perspective early on will help as you start work on your character, to ensure that they feel grounded. Select Options>canvas>edit Drawing Guide and switch the mode to Perspective. Next, zoom out and tap once to the side of your canvas at the height of the horizon. Tap again to establish a second vanishing point that’s farther off the canvas. This is a good time to flip your canvas, using Options>flip Canvas Horizontally, to check if there are any weird distortions that you might have missed.

7 Draw perfect circles quickly

Begin constructing your scene on a new layer in perspective using Drawing Assist. Use Quickshape for circular records or speakers, which is invoked by drawing a circle and holding the stylus down until it snaps into a clean shape. Still holding the stylus on the canvas, touch the canvas with a finger on your other hand to snap it into a perfect circle where needed.

8 Generate objects with the correct perspective

You may find it easier to draw the speakers and album covers flat, and then distort them into perspective using the Transform tool. Tap-holding the corners enables you to warp them to the corners of the albums. Do this for the speakers too. Once you’ve distorted the records on the ground, make a selection with the Freehand Selection tool and swipe three fingers down on the canvas to open the Copy & Paste menu. A quick Transform moves the record into place.

9 Create a custom brush in Procreate

Tap the + at the top of the Brush Library menu. This will open a blank tab for your new brush, where you can add a Shape Source for the brush tip and Grain Source for paper texture, or bristle texture in this cases. Tap Swap from Pro Library to use shapes and textures from Procreate’s existing brushes. You could also Insert Photo or tap on Select Shape to load your own custom images.

10 Adjust your brush settings

Select Grain>grain Behavior>movement. At the default 100 per cent Rolling setting you can create effects like a pencil-on-paper grain. As you drag the slider left, it stretches the grain out along the stroke, creating a bristle effect. Scale determines the size of the grain, while Zoom acts like a multiplier on your brush size. At the lowest Zoom level is the Cropped option; the highest level of Zoom is the Follow Size option. Use the slider to select more subtle levels of Zoom for your grain.