Painting Nathan Drake in Procreate and creating skintones

Drake font

Painting Nathan Drake in Procreate and creating skintones

When I was young(er) my wildest dream was to work in the game industry. Yep, I am a funny person! Naturally I abandoned my dream too soon but my love for game art is very much alive. When I saw this poster from Uncharted … all I could do was marvel at the amazing art, game art has progressed so much!

So, I may not work for the game industry, but I can still draw my favorite characters. On IPad Pro, with Apple Pencil, in Procreate app of course. As always!

I started this painting to get back on track challenge myself to create as realistic skintones as I can. I did a similar post on creating realistic skintones traditionally with a pencil, which you can find here.

Let’s get started. When  drawing traditionally, I try to make the initial sketch as accurately as I can, fill in the details as acuuratelly as I can, do everything else … as accurately as I can! Digital painting on the other hand is something completely different, gives you so much more freedom, that’s why i got hooked up. I start off blocking the basic shapes loosely and slowly I build everything up. I use the standard hard airbrush, you don’t necessarily need fancy brushes.

Painting Nathan Drake - Basic shapes
Painting Nathan Drake – Basic Shapes

Super hilarious! However everything will start to make sense in a while. I use the standard hard airbrush, you don’t necessarily need fancy brushes.

After blocking the basic shapes I start adding shadows and highlights so that to have an idea of the face as a whole. Still rough, but it gets better!

Painting Nathan Drake - Shadows, highlights
Painting Nathan Drake – Shadows, highlights

Now I adjust the size of my brush (still using the hard airbrush) and start adding details. I also use the smudge tool to smooth everything that needs to get smoother and make it as realistic as possible.

Painting Nathan Drake - details
Painting Nathan Drake – details

Now that it looks decent enough, I use some fancy texture brushes to create texture, hairs etc etc etc. Once again, you don’t necessarily need special brushes. Being primarily a pencil artist, I know well that all effects can be achieved with just a pixel-width brush. However, brushes can be great help. I mostly use them for the final stages of a painting because I am lazy to speed up the painting process.

Painting Nathan Drake - texture
Painting Nathan Drake – texture

I keep working until I am satisfied. Sometimes I might come back to a piece and rework it. You can never be certain with art. Once I knew this amazing artist who worked on a piece for 10 years! The evolution of the piece over the years was out of this world!

Painting Nathan Drake - final
Painting Nathan Drake – final

That’s all folks. Be sure to check out the speed drawing on YouTube.

You can also get most of my digital resources on my gumroad page, where I occasionally share free assets as well!

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