Cartoon-Style Character Portraits by Procreate by Cristina Gómez (adesignerlife)

Learn to create unique, stylized, and dynamic portraits using character and background references. This course focuses on breaking away from rigid poses to build portraits full of movement, color, and personality.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Master Procreate’s essential tools for cartoon illustration
• Understand and apply facial proportions for stylized characters
• Create dynamic compositions that bring portraits to life
• Develop a complete workflow from sketch to final rendered piece

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic knowledge of drawing and digital illustration.
• Tools: iPad, Apple Pencil, and the Procreate app.
• Hardware: iPad compatible with Apple Pencil.

📝 Description

Portrait painting often feels cramped. You have a tiny canvas to capture a person’s essence, and it’s easy to end up with stiff, boring poses. Illustrator Cristina Gómez knows this struggle well. Her solution? Ditch the static reference and inject some serious energy into your work.

This course is all about dynamic composition and expressive character design. You won’t just copy a photo. Instead, you’ll learn to use reference material as a springboard for creating something new. Cristina walks you through her entire process in Procreate, from mastering the basic brushes and layers to understanding how to push facial proportions for maximum impact. The focus is on practical, hands-on techniques for rendering color, adding movement, and building a portrait that feels alive.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Illustrators and artists, both beginners and professionals, who want to learn how to create dynamic character portraits.
• Anyone looking to improve their digital painting skills specifically within Procreate.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Cristina Gómez is an illustrator and content creator who specializes in cartoon portraits created in Procreate. She is known for her ability to build fantastic environments and atmospheres digitally without getting her hands dirty. An important part of her work involves collaborating with major industry brands like XPPEN and Huion, for whom she has created challenges, competitions, and product reviews. She has also worked on promotional campaigns for Disney+ (Mulan) and illustrated a series of children’s books.

🏁 Final Result

• A complete, stylized cartoon portrait of a character, built from scratch using reference images and rendered in Procreate.