Last week, we experienced some warm sunny weather, enjoying the 18℃ temperatures outdoors. It was also a perfect time for the gardeners to come and plant some flowers in our newly-revamped garden! We were so excited and happy to finally see Spring has come. Sadly, though, this was short-lived as since yesterday, temperatures plummeted to single digits and it even started snowing! Yes, it’s 1 April today, and this is no joke. Although the scenery of the snow is stunning from our windows, it made me sad. I’m worried about the flowers we had just planted. And how annoying: We only got to enjoy just a few days of our recently-bloomed Magnolias which, once at the hint of frost, dies out and won’t return till next year. Oh well. Perhaps a cute sketch about it would cheer me up a little!
The Background
And what a better way than to start with some digital painting! It was also a great opportunity for me to experiment further with a new Brush called “FTOON Crayon” and to play around with Opacity and the Blending Mode. Firstly, I made the background color grey and added some white clouds before airbrushing on a huge red flower intended to resemble a magnolia. Now I know they are not as round as illustrated below but for the purpose of cuteness, I made them so. This was then followed by some plants from Jason’s Expressive Brushes which I initially made green. With the Divide blending mode, though, I was able to convert them into some interesting effects!
Little One is Back!
Oh no! Little One is also sad to see the Magnolias go. I firstly sketched her in with the Procreate Pencil before filling her in. Here was a great chance to play around with some crayons! A selection of possibilities were used: Wax stick for the face and hair, School B for the dress, Fine Tip for the collar and grainy sketch for the eyes. What fun that was! This was also a good time to experiment with Opacity. Although I wanted to enhance Little One, I didn’t want to fully lose the layers below, especially the patterns of the plants, and hence lowered the opacity to 75% for the face. For each part of the character a new layer was also added which I could later merge together. Another tip worth mentioning here is shifting the crayon layers to below the Pencil so the outlines still show up!
It’s Snowing!
And now we have to introduce the snow! Procreate has a brush already included called Driven Snow which I then tapped on around the painting. Following that, I wanted to add more flowers and hence added another layer above the plants and began scribbling in some more with the Procreate-provided Flower Power brush in pink. The flowers were then converted to yet another interesting effect with the Vivid Light blending mode. How cool is that! I like that it adds to the painting without being overpowering. Finally, I merged the layers of Little One together and slightly expanded her in size and repositioned her for a better composition. And now!
Once again, another exciting session with Procreate! I love that there are endless possibilities with this amazing app. At times, you would not even notice that it’s digital. This is why I also enjoy working with the Crayon brushes. Playing around with blending modes is also so much fun, although I need to find out more about them and why and how certain modes react with certain colors. Meanwhile, painting this has cheered me up a little although now I do feel sad for Little One. But the Magnolias will be back again next year, and we can for now enjoy other flowers this year!
My Kawaii Quarter 