Procreate Doodles #1 - Belle - and an interesting tidbit of History

I'm most likely going to be posting quite a few of my digital doodles and paintings which I'm now much more regularly churning out because of my trusty shiny new Ipad Pro + Apple Pencil and the amazing app called Procreate (yes, yes, weird name) which I'm pretty much carrying around with me everywhere.

So I figured I might as well start putting them under an "umbrella title" for easier spotting when scrolling though my blog page.

I don't know if I'll be numbering them all, because if I continue drawing at the rate I'm going, there might end up being a whole lot, but I thought "hey! the I might want to be able to spot the very first one at some point in the future" so there. TA-DAAA! Number 1.

Though it's not technically accurate, since I've posted stuff I've done on Procreate before, soooo...

BAH! Who cares, right? :P

I was watching a ton of history things about powerful women (and mainly Austrian ones, because, hey, I'm Austrian) and was just sort of idly doodling at the same time and then this happened.

I think my subconscious kinda went: "I love all the pretty dresses, but damn there's way too many white girls all over the place. Let's mix it up a little, shall we?
so out came this lovely lady. ♡

I then remembered that there's this film called Belle, which was inspired by a painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and her cousin Elizabeth Murray, and the very few things that are known about her actual life.

I haven't actually seen it yet, but I really want to, and I absolutely adore the idea of a gorgeous black girl in all the finery of the 18th century.

Belle was extremely unusual for the times because she was the "natural daughter" of a British Sir (the nephew of an earl) and a slave woman from the west indies. She was given into the care of his uncle who, despite her mixed race and illegitimacy, educated and raised her as family alongside her cousin, serving as playmate and later ladies companion to her. Though her social status was a bit ambiguous.
The really cool thing though was that her existence was used by salve trade abolitionists to disprove the ludicrous proclamations of their opposition that people of colour were somehow "sub human" and less intelligent than caucasians.

I find the tale totally fascinating, so I named her Belle. Though of course it's not a "historically accurate" drawing, just a pretty lady in a pretty pink dress who happens to go by the name of Belle.

I have a weird obsession with the colour combination pink and blue lately for some inexplicable reason...

Anywho, here's some process snapshots!

Initial sketch. check out my pudgy 18th century portrait hands ("baroque?") XD happened totally by accident. But they were showing tons of paintings of the people they were talking about and I swear this hand pose is like a "must have" staple in the ladies portraits.
I now know where "Disney hands" come from...
"Disney Hands" btw, if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, is pretty much exactly this pose. It's like an inside joke among animators, because they're eeeeverywheeere. It's that classic Disney princess hand pose where the middle and ring finger stay together while the other fingers are spread, almost no matter what the hand does, because it looks more elegant. It's a more "appealing" way to pose fingers, and everyone uses it. A friend of mine, who also works in VFX, actually told me he's sneaking in "Disney Hands" into a lot of his animation, which is hilarious, considering he's working on "live action" blockbuster movies.)


resized head to look a bit more proportional, added basic colours. The layer with my initial sketch is on Multiply over top of the colour layers, so the lines will sort of "absorb" the colours on the lower layers.


some more colour gradations, plus added a shadow layer over top everything (even over top the sketch layer). The blend mode of my shadow layer is usually set to multiply and I use a purple-ish colour to paint in the shadows, then lower the opacity of the layer a bit.


More colour work here and there, hair shadow and highlights, but the main major step in this one is the "glow" layer I like to put over top to add where the light hits. I call it glow layer because its a layer over top that's set to the blend mode colour dodge, which makes everything AWESOME. and gives it this sweet ass glow. I usually overdo it a bit though so I tend to lower the opacity later. I totally encourage you to play around with that colour dodge a bit over something you've coloured and see what the different colours do to your original (switch between light and dark too ;D ).
Have some fun. You're welcome.


aaaaand here we are at the final result. After the colour dodge I felt her skin got too light again so I darkened it up a bit, added my usual, uninspired background, lettering and "signature stamp".

Hope you enjoyed this,
toodeloo lovely peeps,

until the next time~♡
Jill