Hello! and welcome to this tutorial where I will be showing you the workflow that I follow when making flat illustrations or Flat Illustrations, in turn I will be showing you 5 tips that will facilitate the whole process.

 

If you are not familiar with this type of illustrations, they are those that are made up of simple shapes and colors, we could say that it is a minimalist illustration that superimposes the reading of the image beyond the more complex details within an illustration.

 

This type of illustration is perfect for those who are starting to draw.

 

Here is the video tutorial:

 

TIP 1. Appeal and simplification

We are going to define what we want to illustrate, in this case I want to illustrate the meeting between a child and an animal, everything happens in a forest, the title of the work will be "meeting".

 

The key to this type of illustration is the simplification of the elements within the drawing, for this we are going to dissect the elements of the composition, in this case we have: the child, the animal, and the forest-> the forest in turn It has trees, shrubs, flowers, and vegetation in general,

 

Beyond simplifying, I like to apply what in animation is a basic principle: "appeal", this principle consists of creating visually attractive characters for the audience, it does not mean making them mega beautiful and detailed, but interesting to see as well as easy to read.

 

To extrapolate it to this context, the key would be to identify the most striking characteristics of the elements and/or characters and enhance them, while what is not so important we simplify, and if possible remove it.

 

 

 

For simplicity we are going to reduce the complex shapes into simple and easy shapes.

 

When we already know how to draw the elements within the drawing, we are going to make the sketch.

 

TIP 2. Lineart & Edges

We are going to do an exploration of the main characteristics of this type of illustration (In my style).

 

◆The first thing we are going to take into account is: We do not use lineart.

This does not mean that we will not have lines within the drawing, we can make them to distinguish elements that would otherwise be difficult to understand.

 

◆Edges / borders.

We are going to have several types of borders within our illustration.

As a general rule, I make the characters with hard edges, on the other hand, I like to put textured edges to a greater or lesser extent for the elements for the backgrounds. You can take this as a reference but apply the edges to your liking.

 

 

 

The brushes I use the most are the ones that come by default in clip studio, I mainly use:

 

hard edges use: nib, playing with smoothing. (1)

 

For the elements that I want to add texture to, I use: the wax brush(2), tempera(3), dry tempera(4) and the briselt 03 brush (5).

 

 

There are times when I use more exaggerated borders for elements that are more complex, like the leaves on trees and bushes.

 

for them I use: the pencil brush and the charcoal brush

 

I repeat the same modus operandi with elements that have a gaseous nature, such as clouds, mist, smoke, etc.

TIP 3. Use Harmonies to choose your colors.

The harmony of colors refers to the coordination of colors that coexist in a composition. Harmonies tend to have three types of colors:

 

1- dominant, is the most neutral and longest. Its function is to highlight the other colors that make up our composition.

2-Tonic, which is normally a complement to the dominant, is the most powerful in color and value.

3-Mediation, which is the one that serves as a transition between the previous ones.

Do not get overwhelmed when choosing your colors because there are harmonic schemes that will help us choose colors more easily, there are many but the ones I usually use are the following:

 

1- complementary colors

They are colors that are directly opposite on the color wheel.

 

2- analog colors

Analogous colors are located next to each other on the color wheel.

 

3-close complementary colors

we take a base color (A) and look for its complementary color, we will use that color, if not the closest ones,

 

4- Triadic colors

Three colors are chosen that are the same distance apart on the color wheel.

 

I leaned towards the harmony of complementaries: Red-green.

TIP 4. Order your layers

We will be working on different layers for each element of the drawing, for example: For the child, a layer for the skin, a layer for the hair, another for the shoes, etc. In turn, I order these layers into a folder.

 

In this case I have: A folder for the boy, a folder for the deer and a folder for the background.

 

When we are going to place the details of light and shadow we can turn the folders into a "File Object", for this we stop in the folder, we right click> file object> convert layer to file object.

 

What this function does is create a separate file with each of the layers inside the folder, and in the file we are working on the illustration, what used to be a folder becomes a layer, the cool thing about this is that if we modify the file that was created separately, is reflected in the layer within the artwork file.

 

TIP 5. Shadows & Light. Final details

In this type of illustrations they will be the most simplified that we can

 

we are going to make the shadow in a way that helps the reading of the image, for example:

so that the extremities can be distinguished, we can add small shadow details on the characters:

For this we create a new layer above the layer of what we want to shade, we put it in multiply and with the help of the icon (a) to adjust the new layer to the layer below.

 

The brush that I use for these cases has a fairly marked texture, I like to use the pencil brush.

 

On the background elements I like to add smooth gradients with texture:

An extra that you can do is add a layer with a light color on all the layers to unify the drawing more.

Finally we are going to add the last details and that's it!

End & Acknowledgments.

Well here is the tutorial, I hope it helps you when making this type of illustration, don't forget to practice and see you in another tutorial~