This tutorial is a little different; I love mermaids, so I wanted to create an image featuring one but with a unique spin. Why not combine magical underwater worlds with the beauty of nature and flowers?! So in this tutorial, we’ll learn how to draw a magical mermaid featuring floral elements and glitter accents. This project has plenty of scope to truly make it your own, so if you’d prefer to use different colours or brushes to me, please feel free. It’s also pretty beginner friendly so only very basic Procreate knowledge is required, although there may be a few occasions where you want to spend some time getting shapes or colours just right. Below you can see the finished project:
Downloads we’ll be using
There are a couple of downloads for this project which are listed below. Ensure to install the colour palette to your Procreate app before we start, and have a look through the glitter papers download and save your favourite ones to your iPad’s photo gallery.
Procreate Colour Palette Petal Pink
100 Glitter Papers
Let’s draw!
1. Let’s get started. The first step is, as usual, to create a new canvas. Do this by pressing the + in the top right corner of Procreate’s gallery page, and select the option Screen Size.
2. I like to hold my iPad in the landscape position when working, but for this project, we are going to use the canvas in portrait. I’m going to simply rotate the canvas to that it’s in portrait, whilst my screen is landscape – if that makes sense! Of course, feel free to position your iPad however you feel most comfortable.
3. Open the Brush Library and under Inking, select Technical Pen.
4. We can use some of the brush settings to help us draw straight lines; in the Brush Library, tap on the Technical Pen to open the Brush Studio. Under Stabilisation, adjust the sliders next to Amount and Stabilisation. This will smoothen your lines and make it easier to draw.
5. Going back to your canvas, draw two wiggly lines like the one below in black. This is going to be the basis of our mermaid’s body.
6. Let’s add our mermaid’s arms. This part of the project can be pretty tricky and may take a bit of trial and error to get right – but bear in mind that your artwork is unique and will have your own touches. Draw an arm shape to the left of the body, and draw a thumb and the side of the hand like below.
7. Zoom in, and draw the rest of the mermaid’s fingers. This is a really tiny detail so if it’s not exact, it won’t be a big deal.
8. Draw the mermaid’s other arm; again you may need to experiment a bit to get the shape you want.
9. Now, we’ll draw the face. This isn’t the focal point of the drawing and doesn’t need to be exact. Start by drawing the shape of the lower half of the face including the nose and mouth.
10. Now let’s make a top for our mermaid. We’ll make a bikini-type garment using flower petals. Zoom in and draw some rough petal shapes starting from the right-hand side of the figure.
11. Continue drawing petals, they can be odd shapes and don’t have to be placed exactly.
12. Use the Eraser tool to carefully get rid of any overlapping lines.
13. Let’s now add some larger petals around the waist. Starting from roughly the centre, draw petal shapes in an outwards direction. Erase any overlapping lines.
14. Let’s move on to the tail. We’re going to replace the classic mermaid fish tail with a flower – so draw the end of the tail to appear as a stem.
15. And now roughly draw petals to create the shape of a flower head. They don’t have to be exact.
16. Now our mermaid needs hair. Sketch some long, flowing hair mainly to one side of the figure, as below. I’m also going to draw some lines to add dimension.
17. We’re almost finished with our sketch. Draw a simple flower shape in the hand of your mermaid, you could also replace this with any object you like if you’d prefer.
18. We’re finished with our sketch, you should have something similar to the one below.
19. We’re now going to add colour. Create a new layer and in the Brush Library, select Wet Acrylic which is under the Painting section.
20. Choose a green shade, and roughly colour in the tail manually.
21. The reason that we’re not simply filling in the sketch is that it limits us to one layer for all colours. We ideally want each colour and section of the image to be on a separate layer so that we can make amendments as we like. Drag the layer containing your green colour below the outline one. Zoom in on the edges of your coloured area and carefully erase where you’ve gone outside of the lines.
22. Tap on the layer containing your green paint and select Alpha Lock.
23. In a darker shade of green, add some colour on the upper side of the mermaid’s tail, and use a lighter shade on the lower edge.
24. Tap on the Smudge tool, and select the Wet Acrylic brush.
25. Using a brush size of around 20%, smudge your colours together so that they blend.
26. Add a new layer and using the Wet Acrylic brush again, colour in one petal from the tail using a pink shade (or any colour of your choosing!).
27. In darker and lighter shades, draw some vertical lines on the petal.
28. Apply Alpha Lock to this layer and smudge the colours together, the same way that you did with the tail.
29. Add another new layer, and repeat this with the next petal. You’ll then have to continue this process for each petal of the tail. Once you have coloured each section, swipe left on each petal layer until it’s highlighted blue. Tap Group in the top right-hand corner. This will help us to keep our layers tidier.
30. On another layer, colour the petals around the mermaid’s waist.
31. Apply Alpha Lock, draw lighter and darker lines, and then smudge them together – you know the drill!
32. Colour in and smudge the bikini petals and the flower in the mermaid’s hand in the exact same way.
33. Now let’s move on to the mermaid’s skin. In the Brush Library, select Monoline which is under the Calligraphy section. Choose any shade and then on a new layer, fill in the mermaid’s skin.
34. Add another new layer, and using Monoline and any colour of your choosing, fill in the hair.
35. We’re not too far from the end, we just have to add some finishing touches. Hopefully, you’ve selected your favourite glitter papers from the download, now let’s add one which will accent our mermaid’s hair. I’m going to use a light purple glitter paper. Tap the Actions menu, and then Insert a Photo.
36. Select your chosen glitter paper from your photo gallery, and you should see it appear on the canvas. Use the Transform tools to reposition the glitter paper so that it covers the mermaid’s hair totally.
37. We now need to merge our layers, but before this, go to Procreate’s gallery page and swipe left on your project and then hit Duplicate. This will safeguard us from any errors.
38. Go back to your original project, open the layers panel and on each layer (except the one containing the glitter paper) tap Merge Down.
39. When you get to the group, tap Flatten.
40. You should now be left with just one layer containing your entire mermaid, and one with the glitter paper.
41. Ensuring that you’re on the glitter paper layer, use the Eraser tool to get rid of any of the glitter which is showing outside of the mermaid’s hair.
42. Once you have erased the excess, you should no longer see any glitter.
43. Select the Eraser tool, and then set it to Technical Pen, which is in the Inking section.
44. Go to the layer containing your mermaid, and carefully delete lines within the hair. Go over some of those black texture lines you drew.
45. In the Actions menu, again select Insert a Photo and add a gold glitter paper to the canvas. Use the Transform tools to make the glitter paper just a bit bigger than the flower that the mermaid is holding.
46. Delete the excess glitter from the edge, and then draw four curved lines with the Eraser tool to give the impression of glittered stamens. I’m also going to colour in our mermaid friend’s lips and eyelids, but this is totally up to you.
47. Ok, so we’re all done! The finishing touches are up to you, take some time to perfect your artwork and tweak your colours and smudging. You could also add a background; this could be a solid colour, a gradient, or a backing paper.
Below I’ve added a light purple glitter paper as a background and then lowered the opacity, I’ve also created a slightly striped background using Gaussian Blur and a glitter paper. Take some time to experiment with different effects.
We hope that you enjoyed creating this beautiful project, which is a mix of magic and nature! You can truly make this character your own and use different colours, brushes and even styles of flowers. Let us know how you got on in the comments.
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