Borja Aguado Aizpun

The Whale and the Octopus

The Whale and the Octopus

BY BORJA AGUADO AIZPUN

artist, Motion Graphic Designer

Bilbao, Spain

This precise tutorial examines working in the app “Layers” and takes us on an amazing underwater journey.

I’ve always start my drawings in the same way: with a soft, very small brush. For me, the main point is to not be afraid of the white canvas. Frame and perspective are key points.

The next step is to choose the color palette. I make a new transparent layer under the scribble layer and then I paint with a middle-sized, textured, and slightly transparent brush.

In the next stage, I slightly adjust some details of the subject and choose what kind of light the scene has. In this scene the characters are underwater so all colors have to be slightly tinted with the scene’s general tone.

The brush I use in this stage mainly depends on what area I’m working in, but is usually a small, highly transparent brush. This way, if I need darker shadows, I apply more than one stroke. Once we finished the shadows, we’ll repeat the same process again with the highlights.

Next step: I fill the background layer with color. This is when I give the octopus his color and sharpen his details. With a big, dark brush, I loosely draw the area that later, with more detail, will become the coral.

With a small eraser, I create highlights on the main characters. This is the first step to getting detail in the drawing. When you are drawing an illustration, sometimes as important as what you draw is what you erase.

Now the only thing that’s left to do is the details. Adjust highlights and shadows, draw the teeth of the whale, the octopus’s suckers, the coral’s details, the octopus’s head shades … once you’ve got the general drawing, adding this kind of detail is the easiest part.