Linework and Outlining in Procreate

It was a dark and stormy night, but actually it's not dark and it's not stormy. Actually, no, it's not dark, but it is stormy. It's not night. Yesterday, I misplaced the video of me doing line work after my sketch, so I'm gonna go and record doing the line work again, and let's get to it. It was a terrible take. I might just keep it. I might not. We'll see. Probably not. All right, so this is the third time that I'm actually recording this, because the last time I went to record and I took a photo, and I recorded about 10 minutes worth of audio. Anyway, okay, so we're gonna do line work for this guy that we already sketched in the last video. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna make a new layer, add a new layer above, and we're gonna go to the layer where our sketch is, and we're gonna bring that down to about 30 percent, and then we're gonna lock it. I lock it so I don't accidentally mess with that layer, or drill on that layer, or anything like that. Okay, so these are my favorite two ink brushes. They're in my little favorite brush set, which is just all the different brushes that I really like. Disney ink, I'll go, I'll zoom in so you can really see. Disney ink is just a very like wispy, fun brush, and all that is, is the... just sinky ink. That's what that brush is. I may have tweaked it a little bit in the settings. But that's my Disney brush for when I want to do, you know, artwork like that. You can use any brush. You can use a brush with texture. It'll just give your character whatever that texture is for the outline. But you can play around with that and see, you know, and do whatever fits your character. And my other favorite brush is just a regular ink brush that I call inking, and that brush is simply the technical pen. That's all it is. Pressure sensitive, of course. And my inking brush is a little thinner. I don't think I have it. I have it, so it is pressure sensitive, but it doesn't get too big. Because I kind of want the line weight to stay the same, unless I want it to go smaller. So then I can not put as much pressure on it. All right, so let's get this started for the third time. So the first thing I do is this line where the eye is. I always do this little nub, which I like. I'm not sure what character I've seen it on or where I got it, but I like it. It's really cute. And don't be afraid to use things from other characters and from real life animals. Just draw on whatever you want, whatever your inspiration comes from. That's what all artists do. They just use other artwork, animals, things like that. They use other things to draw on inspiration. All right, this is the ridge above the eye. So this kind of works as almost like an eyebrow. It gives your characters a lot of expression. And you can work in eyebrows. You know, it kind of, if their eyes are open wide, it kind of gives them that surprise or excited look. And if you have any issues, if you see anything, that's not good. If you see any problems, just change them here while you're doing the line work. You don't have to completely stick to the script at all. That's the best part about drawing, is you can go off script and you can create anything that you want to do. If it looks bad, it looks bad. And you know it looks bad, so then you change it. Another little trick I do, is I'm going to make a new layer underneath. I'm going to go to white. I'm going to change my ink to white. Make his little tooth. Make his other little tooth. That way it saves me time later. The teeth are so small that I don't want to make an outline for them and have to do all that stuff later. So I just make the teeth there on one layer. And then I'm going to make another layer underneath, just to finish off this line here. Then I'm just going to merge them all. So they're all still just one layer, but hopefully my head is not getting in the frame. I'd be very upset if it is. I'm very upset. All right. Okay, let me finish off the bottom of the eye. You can see here again, I have the line in front, and the eye going back. It just kind of shows depth. And I'll show you here when I do the ear. Oops, that's a little too much. A little too straight. All right. So I'm going to make this line... So I make this line in front. So this kind of shows that the head is curving behind the ear. This line also comes below. So this all means, you know, this all brings the ear forward and it curves back. So if I was to take that same line and start here. So that means that the ear is curving behind his head. And this one is completely behind. So these lines fall obviously on top. All right. Nice arc for the foreshadowed arm. Circles for the fingers. And foreshortening is kind of tricky. Mostly because, you know, in certain angles things just kind of become these random shapes. But the more you do it, the more you'll kind of figure out what looks right. Now for these, this is really his fingertips. But I'm going to put these little... Put a little bit of the... You can kind of see a little bit of his nails. Again, this line in front of his little stomach, which shows the leg is in front. Nice little rounded rectangle for his big toe. And then the other toes. Just kind of, you know, round little gumball toes. The little nails. His little knee. It's more foreshortening with these toes. You don't have to be that... You know, when it's foreshortened, you don't have to be that precise with it. Because, you know, you're kind of doing the overall look. It doesn't have to be super, super perfect. Unless you want to take the time. You know, if it's for a client and it's only one image, then you can take the time and make it really, really perfect. But a lot of times you can get a lot out of gestures of whatever you're going to have. His little cheek is a little droopy there. That's better. I'll leave this open. It doesn't have to connect where his stomach comes up to. His neck. His other arm. This is where his fingers are kind of like turning in. So he'll have a fingernail there. You're still seeing like the top, but you still want to show some of the fingernail. Give him a better fingernail than that. And here you can have a little bit more because this finger is turned more. This thumb, that would be the back of the fingernail. So you're not going to see them from here. And you can give him a little palm if you want. His little knee. And that's pretty much... He's all outlined. Now in the next thing I'll do, here's a sketch. And here's a sketch with the line work. And there's just the line work. I don't do the eyes because I'm probably going to want to change them. So when I color them, I leave the eyes blank. So that way later when I paint it, I can go in and I can just make the eyes and I can focus on where I want them to be. Because this might not be perfect. And if I were to draw them in, then later on if I want to change it, I have to go and do this thing. Which is, which I never like to do. So it's better to just... So it's better to just wait till, you know, wait till the character is painted. And then you go underneath and then you make the eye. That way you can move it around however you like. So it's my little trick just to make life easier. All right.