Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello everybody , this is Yasmeen from Yarkspirifantasyart.com and today I will actually be drawing as you
may have guessed from the title of this video, pink fluffy unicorns, and these unicorns according
to the special request by you guys was that I draw them actually dancing on a
rainbow! So I actually had a lot of fun with this , now because this is more of a cute
style and you don't normally see me draw cute. I had to do a lot more referencing simply
to figure out the color pallet and some of the design elements for it. Now
luckily I do have an animation background because thats my formal training, however
I've never drawn My Little Pony or Carebears so I had to use that as reference material
to get a general idea of the style that I was gonna end up using
for this image. Now I did do quite a few pre-conceptual sketches in order to get some ideas on how
I was going to approach these horses ah, sorry , these unicorns, and I tried some stylized
versions which I really quickly sketched out , scanned
in and then brought into illustrator. And I didn't really like those so I tried a more
detailed version , tried a more stylized version, I tried several different versions before
I ended up actually going back to photoshop. Now the reason why I didn't
end up keeping the designs that you currently see me working on is that they just didn't
fit well with the over all theme. If I'm going to use bright colors, generally we associate
it to cute little characters, so cute characters tend to have
some very specific design elements that are important to take into account. Big eyes,
very cartoony type elements to them, now although thats not always the case, it does lead to
a better design. Especially when it comes to this type of design
element. Now obviously I didn't want to go to the far extreme as really cartoony like
you would see in My Little Pony, or like I said Carebears. So I wanted to find a good
midground for this. And I did like some of the elements that I
already had but once again I didn't like how it was turning out. I really realize at this
stage eventually if I continued with this style , the unicorns would look too serious
which is not what they're supposed to look like in a very happy friendly area
that they're roaming in. That and trying to color the lines so that they fit better with
the overall feel of this , was something that I'm still not used to. So I didn't want to
waste too much time in the video for that. So because I did run into some technical issues
I did not continue using Illustrator at least for not this image in perticular, maybe possibly
in the future once I've become more adept at using illustrator, I may eventually include
some more designs. But as it stands I did not like the way the
design elements were being portrayed in this, so I did not keep the information that I had
in it. So I did try it. I like some portions of this , like I really like some of the line
weight that I can get in Illustrator,some of the design elements are really good, but
the creatures just look too serious for the theme. And I really wanted to make also the
rainbow and I want to add some sparkles all of which require quite a bit more thought
process in order to do those elements because they do have some technical
issues that have to be adressed, so it just didn't fit with this. So shortly you will
actually see me switch to Photoshop, but until then, I'll just walk you through some of the
elements that I had to explore while I was working on this image. So I essentially
did quite a few sketches on the side, as I was working on the sketches I worked on a
side view to get a general idea of what I was going to do. And once I had a rough idea
of how I wanted to structure the animal I essentially put
that next to my desk and when I transition to the digital image, I have that as reference
material at all times. Now as I was painting it out I made some modifications some changes
that worked well for this image. And I ended up keeping a lot of it. So as
you can see right now I'm trying to keep the pallet extremely bright , that was another
portion of the request which I did not mention earlier. They challenged me essentially to
do something very brightly colored. So, which is another reason why I
had to look at the reference material that had extremely saturated colors yet the colors,
are actually very limited. So although I'm using extremely saturated colors, I'm actually
desaturating the colors in order to acheive cooler colors, and only
slightly nudging those colors down the color pallet , to essentially get those colors.
So that blue is not actually a blue, its more I beleive leaning towards a green color, beleive
it or not. So thats how I actually go the different colors.
Once I had my basic colors, I started sampling those colors into the unicorns, into the sun
and from there I started seeing how far I could push those colors. So I would sample
those colors, modify them slightly,and then repaint in certain
areas. Now in the initial stages because I didn't have to soften any of the elements
yet, I actually use my hard brush in certain areas like the clouds and I also use the customized
flat brush, which is pretty much a variation of the hard brush.
Or the modified version of the hard brush that I have, to draw the main aspects of this
peice. The moment I had the main information in this piece was the moment that I actually
started turning off the line art. So essentially the moment
I had all the general information it was very important that I remove the line art, so that
I wouldn't get distracted with that, and I could just focus on the colors and the composition.
Now for obvious reasons, the colors are very important for this because
it is supposed to be a cartoony, a very happy general scene. So colors are extremely important,
they have to be exaggerated they have to be bright, colorful, they essentially need to
be as saturated as I can get them before making
them too saturated, which you can generally actually go quite saturated before you get
to that point. So essentially once I had my basic colors, it was just a matter of adding
some blue tones,adding some pink, to the characters to make sure
that everyting fit and first of all to make sure that they were pink. Because the main
request did include, they requested the request that obviously the unicorns be pink. So its
very important that I actually show this. Now I wanted to show
multiple unicorns in this scene, so the only way to do that was to essentially show more
of a crowd but it still needed to read clearly like it was a rainbow as well. So having too
close of a shot would not work because it wouldn't help me actually
show the entire scene, so taking a slightly outside shot of these characters and then
working on them from that point of view really help make this entire scene much more light
hearted, and for this reason it worked out really well compositionally.
So as you can see I actually added some sparkly effects and I actually do have a speciallized
brush for that, I don't use it very often. Actually this would be the first time I've
actually used it other than the test trial to test it out. For obvious
reasons because I don't normally draw anything that requires a sparkle or glimmer effect.
Now because these are magical creatures I could get away with it so I definetly took
advantage of that and added some rediculous sparkles to these
unicorns. Just to really help showcase this really super happy scene. So as you can see
I have a lot of contrast in the unicorn, I have a lot different colos that complement
each other that still help bring it out from that background as
well. So , going with the same idea for the sun, I wanted to have the sun facing the unicorns
that was extremely important, 'cause it helps draw your eye to the unicorns, which then
draws your eye down the rainbow, and then the clouds
bring you back up to the sun. So essentially you circular effect, with this drawing, which
is definetly something I wanted to have. It helps draw your eye to the important areas
of this painting. So some other things I added in, I added a bit more fog effects and I also
darkened up the base of the rainbow, once again to create some contrast.
So I hope you guys really liked this video, this one was really fun because it was different,
and it really allowed me to explore something that I really haven't explored in, in years.
Since my animation days. So it was kind of a nice change. So thank
you guys for watching and I hope to see you guys soon. So thank you , and take care.