WATERCOLOR! Sea Turtle Style in Procreate (EASY STEPS)

Hello everyone, in today's video, I'll be showing you how to create this beautiful sea turtle in Procreate. We will paint together and I will guide you by sharing my favorite techniques to bring this beautiful sea turtle to life. Whether you're just starting out your artistic journey or an advanced artist, these skills will help you take your work to the next level. So take a moment to cozy up, grab a blanket, pour yourself a tea, and let's get started. All the brushes and the canvases I'm using will be found in the description below. You can also download the free sketch and color palettes. For today's demonstration, I'll be using the rough groove canvas but you can use any canvas you like. I decided I wanted to do a sea turtle because I couldn't help but feel like a longing for summer. Maybe it's a sign for vacation. So this illustration became my quick escape. So we can start our escape by painting the bigger areas of the turtle like the shell, body, and then we'll go into the smaller details later on. As you can see, I have already imported my sketch here. And it's important to have it underneath the watercolor texture canvas and all of our paintings are going to be underneath that. And I do recommend downloading our color palette so you can go through it with me step by step in this order. So we'll start with this light blue tone here. It's always a good habit to make sure to check which layer we're working on. And we will start with the wet on dry brush. Keeping the opacity and the size at 100%. So we're going to have three tones on the shell. Light, mid, and dark tone. And I'm portraying the light to come from the left side on the top. So it's going to be a little bit lighter on the top area. And now we're going to work on the mid-tones of the shell. So pick the second tone color that's a little bit darker. And we're going to layer them just like this. And if you find these tutorials helpful, please hit that like button. Subscribe to our channel so you'll be notified when the new videos are released. And now we're going to create a new layer again with the darkest tone color on the third palette here. And don't worry too much with having it perfectly aligned. We can go back and erase them to create a bit more of a shell look with grooves. But don't worry too much about this process. Some people might find this a little bit intimidating looking at this turtle. But I promise you, you can create something beautiful like this at the end just simply following along with me as I do this real time and nothing sped up. It's now time to focus on the body of the sea turtle. So we're going to create a new layer and start with the fourth color palette which is a light blue tone color with a pinch of gray tone. Continuing on with the wet on dry brush. And we'll focus on the light body part tones first just like this. Most of the areas of the top leave some areas at the bottom of the chin of the turtle empty to leave some of the whites of the highlights. And we can go all the way down to the body of the back. Sometimes your layers might be overlapping each other but if you think about a turtle the shell is going to be on the top on top of the turtle so that layer can go underneath at the bottom. So what we will do is now select that layer and drag it down to the bottom piece. This will eliminate the overlapping process of the white tone colors. Now continuing on with the body we can just paint the entire arm with this part leaving a little bit of the tone at the top to be a little bit darker. Sea turtles aren't flat in color. To create the realism we're going to add intricate patterns and natural variation of colors which is a perfect way for you to practice layering color mixing and blending process. And don't forget the back of the leg of the turtle. And then one on the right side is going to be a lot darker because it's going to be covered underneath. We're not going to paint that with the light tone colors for now. So this is how it should look like with the light tone colors put on. Now we're going to create a new layer using this mid-tone color beside the light tone color we used. And zoom in again and focus on the head first and go all the way down to the body. Focusing more on the top of the nose and the forehead and all the way to the back of the body. A great tip is working in a chronological order to avoid missing out some parts of the areas. So before I started with the head of the body and then the legs and I'm going to do the same thing. This helps your brain to reduce overthinking and allowing your creative process to just flow. This is often referred to as workflow optimization which is a simple way to allow your art to evolve naturally and feel effortless. We can put some mid-tone colors in the chest area and underneath the mouth which is going to be slightly covered. And now we can put some mid-tone colors on their arms here just like this on each side. Leaving the middle tone a little bit lighter. Now focusing on the left arm here. Same thing we're going to allow some of the lighter tones in the middle. So we'll put a mid-tone color along the lines like this and darker tones here on the right side all the way down. And since the light's coming from the left side it's going to be a little bit lighter like on the left side too. And same thing with the left leg. Leaving the lighter tones on the edges because the light reflection is coming in from the top. And because the inside leg is going to be at the bottom piece we're going to paint it with the mid-tone colors and the dark tone. And now we're going to add the dark tone color. Now we're going to create a new layer. So pick this dark tone color. Again start from the top all the way to the bottom now here. Just slightly putting the darker tone on the top like this. Around the arms as it has cover from the light. A bit on the chest and then all the way across the arms like this. And the inside is going to be darker as well. And the left arm is going to be a bit darker on the right side. Adding dark pigments like this not only create intricate texture patterns later on but also creates shadows. Working with multiple values giving that three-dimensional lifelike appearance. And don't forget the back lights. Now we're going to focus on the belly part of the sea turtle. So we're going to pick this bright sandy yellow color and use the wet on dry brush again. And just like this we're going to paint the belly. I decided to pick this sandy yellow bright tone color because it evokes warm texture vibes while cooling down the blues giving a nice contrast. And I wanted to put the same tone colors on the skin of the turtle. So I put two tone colors on the arms like this and also the back leg. Now I created a new layer to use the mid-tone colors focusing on the bottom piece like this. And also the arms slightly adding some variations of the colors in the arms too. And then create a new layer again putting the darkest tone color at the bottom piece like this. Now it's time to start blending them all together. So the beautiful thing about working with digital art is that you can hand pick layers and work within them when you select them. So we're going to combine layers in each category. So the shell the skin and the body and the bottom piece of the yellow tone colors. We can do this by using our fingers and pinching together like this. So you should have three categories like this. So we'll start with the shell first using the moving blender and keeping the size to around 20 to 30 percent and make sure that we have that layer selected for the shell. And the moving blender works really well with larger areas like this. Wiggling up and down giving a nice mixture. And my technique is working with two tone colors to avoid over smudging. So the light to mid and then dark to mid. And after you're done mixing the two tone colors you can do some final touches of mixing to give that uneven texture look. Now go back to the layers tab and now we're going to select the layer for the turtle skin. And now we're going to use the feathering brush. And the reason why I use the feathering brush rather than the moving blender because the specific areas are smaller and requires more accurate blending. So we can keep the size to around 20 percent. And rather than wiggling around the blender we're going to do more of a dragging motion from the mid to light and then dark to mid. This dragging effect gives a nice transition from the mid to light and then light to the bright highlights giving a bit of a washed look. Again dragging the dark tone colors to the mid-tone areas like this. Now back to the arms because it's going to be a bigger area we're going to use the moving blender keeping the size to around 25 percent. Same thing that we did before wiggling around focusing on two tone colors at a time. And don't forget the back legs. And we can reduce the size for the back leg. Now focusing on the yellow tone colors that we had so same thing the moving blender to around 20 percent and mixing them just like this. And increase the size to around 30 to 40 percent for the arm on this side allowing it to spread an even tone color across. Just adding a small detail like this to the yellow gives a nice variation of colors and keeps the colors more interesting. Now because the belly is going to be a smaller area we're going to go back and use the feathering brush to drag out the colors from the dark to the light. If you feel like some of the tone colors have dragged out too much we can always drag it back in to give a nice little mixture of colors. It is perfectly normal to have uneven tone colors because it is watercolor style we're going for and water is very hard to control and that's the beauty of it. Now it's time to focus on the face and the eyes. Create a new layer and pick this black tone color and use the fine line brush keeping the opacity to around 50 percent and 100 percent size. And we'll focus on the eyes first leaving a small area of the light reflection on the top like this and continuing on adding some layers of the lines of the small wrinkles of the turtle. And don't forget the nose and the mouth. I'm going to have some broken lines to give a natural look because having straight line can sometimes have a cartoony feel which isn't what we're going for today so broken lines help with that process. Now increase the opacity to 100 percent and we're going to darken the eyes but we're going to leave a small area in the middle alone to make the eyes a bit more interesting. So I'm going to continue adding some wrinkles of the neck area picking this dark blue tone color here keeping the opacity to around 60 percent and we're going to draw on top of these lines that I made for you guys. Making small lines like this give a nice little detail and makes the artwork pop a lot and you don't have to follow along with the perfect lines. The sketch is a guideline for you guys to follow along but you can do whatever you need to do to make it really special for you and don't forget the lines on the inside of the side of the body here. And now it's time to add some highlights of the shell using my embossing tool and pick this light tone color of the first tone color that we used and we're going with the embossing tool keeping the size and the opacity at 100 percent and just follow along the lines like this and I like to add a bit more ridges in the lines in the center when the lines interconnect to give a bit more realistic feel. I think it gave a bit more natural look allowing it not to be so perfect looking. Now we're going to add some of the natural wrinkle texture look of the turtle arms. By looking at the sketch it might feel a bit intimidating with all these lines and like I said before these are guidelines and they're not perfect lines that you have to follow. So I'm going to start from the bottom and drawing in the lines like this almost like filling the light tone color of the embossing tool between the cracks of the textures that I drew for you guys. It's almost like stacking bricks layering on top of each other and allowing them to be connected just like a river and we're going to reduce the opacity to around 50 percent and continue doing the same process that we were doing to the right side and the reason why we reduce the opacity to make it a bit darker in giving that natural faded look. Working with the dark pigment of the values in the back we're going to do the same thing on the left side of flowing like the river again and then reducing the opacity to around 50 percent on the bottom pieces and repeat the same process with the left leg of the turtle increasing the opacity to 100 percent to the areas that will have the most light reflection and drawing some more of those lines in the center of the areas and reducing the opacity to around 50 percent in the center and the top areas where they will have a lot less light reflection. Since we added those light blue tones it's also important to put the yellow tone colors on this side as well. Simply drawing in the lines and don't worry too much of this process it's going to be very faded so we're not going to see too much. Now it's time to add some beautiful scale patterns of the turtle's face so we can create a new layer now and pick this dark blue tone color that we used before and there's a brush that I like to use to mimic this and it's the wet on dry brush keeping the opacity at 100 percent and size 100 percent and just follow along with me like this leaving a slight separation in the center and bringing this back all the way almost giving a nice slip back haircut to this turtle and putting some unique textures of small interlocking scales really giving defining features of this turtle an identity of its own and if you do have a chance to complete these illustrations I would love to see them so please share your work either on instagram facebook which will give inspiration to other artists and I like to reduce the opacity here to around 50 percent to keep it a little bit lighter in the face in the nose areas now we're going to add some watercolor stain looks to the shell of the turtle and this is a new technique that I figured out working with these brushes which is creating a nice light tone watercolor stain look by selecting the layer that we're working with which is the shell and picking a light tone color like this and using the wet on dry brush and we're going to paint on top of it so what it will do is actually push out the pigment by layering it on top of it giving a nice light stain look with a bit of highlight so continuing on with creating a new layer and adding the wet on dry stain look so we're going to pick that tone color reduce the opacity to around 40 to 50 percent and just putting the some of the stain look on the bottom pieces like this adding some stain look on the edges a bit more and move on to the darkest tone color increasing the opacity to again to around 50 percent and focusing on the bottom piece like this and we can increase the opacity to around 70 because it's going to be a little bit darker here now here's another trick because we were working with such light tone colors in the beginning of the face when we do remove the sketch we're not going to have that distinct feature of the watercolor stain edges look we can even create this after the fact by creating a new layer and picking the hard edge brush and keeping the size to around 10 and zooming in and as you can see we can add this by moving up drawing that line and we can do the same technique all around the areas where it requires a bit more darker edges just like the arms on both legs and even the shell can be a bit more enhanced and now we can put the sketch back on by hitting that check mark button and i want to create this watercolor splash look almost like the turtle is popping out of the canvas but we're going to make sure we create a new layer and put that layer at the most bottom layers so there's a trick so we can click that layer hold it and drag it down this will allow the colors to be in the back not in the front not messing with the color of the tone of the turtle that we just painted so we're going to pick this off white with a pinch of blue and use the wet on wet brush and just follow along the sketch like this if you can barely see it that's the perfect tone that we need and now we're going to create a new layer on top of the layer that we just painted and tap on that new layer and click on clipping mask this will allow the layers to be put on only on the areas that we just painted on and once that is completed we'll pick this blue tone color the second tone and it's going to be the same wet on wet brush you won't see it with a slight edges which is exactly what we want and now we're going to the top left corner to the adjustments tool and use the gaussian blur and we're going to tap the screen holding it and drag it to the right slightly pushing it to around 25 to 30 and now we can remove the sketch now to finish it off i'm going to add some epic splash using this mid-tone blue color and we're going to pick this epic splash brush and we're going to create a new layer on top of all the layers that we have keeping the size to around 20 and opacity at 100 and we're going to put some splashes across the canvas like this and since we added some yellow bright sandy tone colors we're going to splash some of those colors on there too and there you have it beautiful blue sea turtle created on your ipad and if you enjoyed this tutorial and want to continue painting with me hit that next video and i'll see you there