Will Ross Draws teach me how to draw in just five minutes? Will today be a color dodge
day? Will I ever think of a serious third question? Grab your brush and let's go.
So yes, it's me. Welcome to episode fifteen of putting, popular art YouTubers, in the
title, for views. And well, well, well, look who's in the related channels section of my
channel: today's victim is none other than the king of color dodge himself, Ross Draws.
Today's video is sponsored by . . . uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . So anyway, if you by chance don't know
who Ross is, his name is Ross Tran. He's an artist, and a small YouTuber like myself,
and he makes entertaining art videos with his dog.
I first came across his channel in 2016, when I watched his Ross Draws MOANA, Ross: "Okay!
Let's just give this a go!" and needless to say I was . . . Confused. However, he is very
good at what he does. I flipped through his portfolio and immediately began to pray that
I would one day be able to master the ways of color dodge like he does. And, as I prayed,
I heard a still small voice say: "you should probably practice". And I was like "ahahah
. . . no". But the still small voice persisted, and thus, here we are.
So Ross has more than one tutorial. The one we'll be watching today is called "Stylized
Portrait TUTORIAL, sideways smiley face". From his comment section, in the immortal
words of Darin Desu, "It seems so easy af". Is it? Let's find out.
Ross: "Stylized Portrait Tutorial! Oooooooh! Yeah, so this is the vibe I'm going for, you
know this is a simple sketch that I had prepared for this episode--"
Oh. Okay. So, I guess we should just already know how to do that.
Hmmm. Cutting out crucial steps of an art process in an art tutorial video. Now where
have I seen that before? But that's fine, let me just . . . This is adequate.
Ross: "Also, I have these colors picked out for me. And what I like to do with these stylized
portraits is have a nice combination of warm colors and cool colors."
SAME! I won't lie, this is definitely me when I'm drawing.
Ross: "One brush blending mode that I really like to use is just a soft round, but turn
down the hardness just a little bit. So it'll have more a fade, like that".
This is actually a really cool brush, I usually just use the default hard and default soft
brushes but this modification gives it a cool feel.
Ross: "Sometimes I use an airbrush, just to quickly . . . ooh this is cool".
Okay I'm less than two minutes in and he's already HERE.
Ross: "It immediately builds form and it is moving forward".
What was that?
Ross: "It immediately builds f o r m--"
Form. Finally, an art principle. So I too, will build up form with the large airbrush.
Ross: "Also the reason why it's so clean is that I have a clipping mask. And this is what
it looks like, oof jesus christ. If I click 'create clipping mask', wow it's like using
some shampoo and conditioner in your hair!"
Clipping masks are honestly a life saver. I didn't begin weaving them into my process
until about two years ago, when-- when I discovered that they existed in the first place. They,
just keep everything neat, and you can have these very sharp and clean outlines in your
illustration, so I definitely suggest looking into using those.
Ross: "As you can see, here's the progress right now. I really broke everything down
into two tones. That's really all you need."
Aha. Another fundamental. I actually read this on another artist's blog; Ethan Becker,
and I will put links to his stuff in the description, it is amazing. And basically, he said you
should be able to show form by having only a light source and a shadow on a flat color.
And really, you should just be able to build up any kind of form you need from there. And
just, ever since I read that, I've been trying to achieve that same effect; and so I've just
been simplifying everything as much as possible, and it really has done a lot of good for my
work.
Ross: "And now I'm going to try some of the dark accents, which I really love."
Dark accents make everything so much better. So I am just adding them to the respective
places. I used to be very scared of using dark accents. I thought, "well, it's not pretty".
But, the thing is, if you use them correctly, it just adds a level of depth which is actually
missing from a lot of peoples' work. So, don't be afraid to go darker. Especially in digital
art, you can always make it lighter if it doesn't work. Now, as far as traditional art--
PFFFFFFFF idk like go watch kasey golden or something LOL-- no that's a joke, I actually
do a lot of traditional art in my spare time, and honestly it's a lot harder to control
the values, but the principles still apply. And I have learned a lot from Kasey Golden,
I just wanna throw that out there. Her videos are great.
Ross: "And I am going to put in some of the light. I love adding this part! I try to light,
not the highlights, but the light."
I mean we're barely two minutes into the tutorial and his already looks like, done. Of course,
he is speeding his video up quite a bit, and there are many jump cuts, but it just looks
so effortless. We're going-- we're looking at hours and hours of work in about five minutes
so it is a bit disheartening but nevertheless I persist.
Ross: "When I try to turn the form, I take the background color and apply it on the side
of the cheeks, so it has that nice three-dimensional global pop."
This is actually a very interesting idea. Now that I think about it, I have seen it
in a lot of professional artwork but I never considered doing it in a portrait. It definitely
does help to add more form.
Ross: "Actually, you know what could be really cool? If maybe we add like a, like a dragon.
Something that matches the character essence, like a tail here-- oooooh! That's cool, I
really like that."
Honestly he just threw that dragon in there and flat shaded it then added a small amount
of brush work so I feel better about half-doing this snake. It's a pretty derpy looking snake.
It's cute though.
Ross: "Make sure that each element has character. And each character is going to mesh within
each other, to make the whole painting. You can see like, the essence of the hair is one
thing, the skin feels like its own character, and we have the dragon! The one thing I'm
consciously doing is trying to match the shape essence of the hair to the dragon".
Yeah I basically did that with the snake. Derpy looking snake. I kind of wanted to make
this a Medusa dreadlocks kinda illustration but I also didn't want to have to draw a bunch
of individual snakes so here we are.
Ross: "I feel like, this is the type of girl who would have a tattoo."
Not in my Christian househo--
Ross: "And now lets do some of the highlights! Nice, look at that! Ooh, I like to save the
highlights for lighter. Before, and after."
That is an insane amount of highlights. That is just . . . but it does look visually appealing,
so it's fine.
Ross: "How am I going to do a painting without color dodge!? So, let's do some color dodge.
You guys ready for this? Yesss! Oooooooh hoo hoo hoo hoo!!!"
We all knew this day was coming. [clears throat] Color dodge . . . I beseech thy power. Bestow
upon me-- no I'm just kidding, it's it's it's not that big of a deal. I just kinda, threw
some color dodge on there, and . . . yeah. It does make it look a lot prettier.
Ross: "When we paint with layers sometimes we're a little mechanic, and we need just
a boost of painterly strokes, just to make sure we have everything blended."
This is a good tactic. This is something I could stand to do a lot in my own work. A
lot of times, it does have a very artificial feel to it, just because of my reliance on
Photoshop to keep everything neat and clean.
Ross: "Of course, we need to make fun of it! So we're gonna draw glasses . . . Okay those
are terrible glasses. I'm gonna try that again."
Yeah . . . I'm not about to hurt my own feelings like that.
Yes. So, I
really like how mine came out but tell me what yooouu think about it. First of all,
the actual drawing portion of Ross's tutorial video was just five minutes long. If you have
seen my other 'I tried following a tutorial' video then you already know these art tutorial
videos have a habit of being a bit sparse on the actual uh . . . tutorial. [COUGH COUGH]
especially if the person who made it has a Patreon where they sell . . . actual tutorials.
But nonetheless, I am extremely grateful to Ross for sharing his information with us,
I actually did learn a lot about how to use the soft brush, and how to build up form with
the soft brush, which is something that results in really pretty portraits, and it gives them
more life, and a very polished look. And that, my friends, will wrap this video up very nicely.
Anyway, leave a like, tell me what you think, and subscribe if you haven't already. Thank
you for watching, and a big thank you to my eight thousand, eight hundred subscribers.
Okay bye.