Transcripts
1. Trailer: Hi. My name is Olga. I'm a Graphic Designer and Watercolor Illustrator. I'm really passionate about watercolors, because they give plenty many ways of creativity. Isn't just one type of paint, you can deliver lots of stuff from really simple to extra to much more detail to more color. From softer and transparent to colorful and saturated, and it's really great thing about watercolors. Also, I like to make postcard because it's so cool to have printed postcards in your hand made by yourself. You can make [inaudible] and give to your friends, relatives, or people you care about. As I think it's much personal gift, definitely made with great love. In my Skillshare class, I'm going to show you step by step make, set, design pros from start to finish. We will start from finding inspiration then [inaudible] to sketches, painting, scanning tips, and designing in Adobe Illustrator. It doesn't matter if you're a skilled artist or you're about to make your first steps in to drawing. This class is more about designing and having fun, a lot of our techniques, and the rocket science. As a [inaudible] watercolor chloro element. So you can begin experiments with your design, even draw for watercolors or time to make your own set of [inaudible]. Finally, by the end of the class, whether you can draw on it to have a darker watercolors. Even have watercolor postcards set designed by your own which you can use whatever you want. So welcome to my class. I hope you enjoy it.
2. Class Project overview: In this class we'll create a custom postcard set using watercolor illustration. Our project is almost about design practice and just a little bit about having fun with watercolors. You might not be a skilled artist to complete this one. We will go step by step through process of finding inspiration, sketching, bringing your sketches to live with watercolors. Some scanning tips, then converting your artwork into rectory using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, and finally making ready to print product. It would be really great if you create your own watercolor elements set, but if you're afraid your watercolor skills isn't so good, you can use sediments set, I've provided in one spec. See you in the next part. It's all about finding inspiration and material overview.
3. Materials overview : Let's talk about what you'll need. Here are some basic supplies you will need to get start create your watercolor element set. All the materials we are going to use, you can get at your local art store. First of all, you will need watercolor paper. There is a main different type of watercolor paper like cold-pressed paper or hard-pressed paper with different paper weight, but for purposes of this class, you can have any watercolor paper. You can even use your sketch book if it has mixed media paper. The main thing about paper, if you use paints in your work, they don't bleed through the pages like this one. For this class, you can use liquid watercolor or dry watercolor palette like mine. Any watercolor, what you have at the moment. Also, you will need one or maybe two small round brushes. Number 2, pencil and eraser. Whenever you work with watercolor, you will need a big jar of water. Personally, I prefer have two jars, one for warm colors and another one for cold colors. It help you avoid the mess. Also, you will need a couple of paper towel and the palettes for mixing our color. As a palette you can use palette you bought in your shop, you can even use any bowl right from your kitchen or like me, you can use a sheet of your water colored paper, so you will get the final color as expected. As we are going to digitize our artwork, we will also need scanner. If you don't have, it's not a problem, your smartphone is totally okay because we will make some adjustments in Adobe Photoshop later. For designing and making adjustments, you will need Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. If you don't have, it's not a problem too, you can go on adobe.com and have a 30 days free trial. It's time to start.
4. Inspiration: Welcome back. In this part, we will talk about inspiration. In my opinion, it's really important to be inspired to a new study design process. Because if you are inspired and excited, you can create something really beautiful. Remember, since our creativity goes from inside. Each reflects our mood and feeling. So where you can find inspiration? My answer is absolutely everywhere. You should know yourself to find inspirational beauty in your everyday ordinary life. You can [inaudible] your child, travel somewhere, walk through the park, play with your dog, listen to your favorite music. In common. Do all the things what you are pleased of. All these things are good reasons to grab your inspiration. Just look around and notice the beauty everywhere. Also, I can invite you to keep your smartphone ready. So we will always have an opportunity to take a photo of some inspiring things. For example, when you're walking through the park, you can notice a beautiful blend or some extraordinarily shaped maybe. So just take a photo of it. Later, when we are working in on some of your project related to your floral stuff, you can simply go to your camera roll and find many different references. Another great way to grab your portion of inspiration is to make yourself a cup of good tea and just dive into the Internet. You can simply Google a theme of your project. But I advise you to use Pinterest, in case you are not using it yet. Pinterest will help you to find a lot of many reference on any subject. Now, let's talk about the way to organize your references. For your photo you can use iPhoto, Google photo or any software or service for collecting photo you like. It's really time-consuming process, but good organized photo [inaudible] , we'll save you a lot of time in the future. So you definitely should spend time on it. Personally, I prefer Pinterest for images I found [inaudible] You can make separate boards for your every single project or you can make more common boards like design, fashion, flowers, food, etc. You can even make secret board and share it only with friends or people you want or just with nobody. For presentation, you want both to your glands sometimes it's really convenient to make. Separate file will be Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop and combine your reference image like I've done for flower project. You can see it in a simple project. If you often say about collecting some scripts of magazine postcards, photo and other stuff, just like me, you can even use Physical Movebot. As for me, I'm billions of staff on cork-board. Physical Movebot has a great advantage. You will often observe your movebot while you're walking by. So you can eventually catch the idea. The main point about finding inspiration is about just looking around and seeing extraordinary in ordinary things. This is how I grab my inspiration. Now you know where to find inspiration, how to organize your references, and how to be inspired. I encourage you to share your movebot and things which are inspiring you in our project gallery. I can't wait to see your inspiration. In our next part, we will use our movebot for sketching. I'll see you there.
5. Sketching : Hello and welcome back. Now we will talk about sketching. As we are going to create a set of elements, first of all, we should think how elements will work together. Our goal here is to create a cohesive multipurpose element set you can use in your future projects. I really love draw things from nature, another great thing about floral stuff is that almost all floral elements work well with each other. I follow only one simple rule while sketching floral. Keeping abstract and detailed things separated. This way you won't be mixing styles and your set will look exclusive. This one is more detailed, more photo-realistic, and takes me more time to draw it. Here, we have another one. More abstract, I really see both shapes and it will work great with very bright solid colors. I would encourage you to make as many sketches as you can. Don't be afraid to extra work. You may eventually use it. When I sketch floral stuff, I always use three ways. Sketching from my imagination, sketching from reference, and sketching from nature. I'll show some examples. First one, a reference. Here are some photos I've taken a while ago. The main thing while drawing from reference, is don't go crazy about copying in detail your reference. Our purpose is just captures a feeling of what you draw. Just so simple. Okay, here it is. Now two flowers. Don't think too much about proportions, lines, details. Just try to translate general mood on general sense of floral. Okay, for our project it will be, I'll assume, something like that. The same thing is about drawing from nature. Here I have my flower and it is nice, isn't it? I just start drawing it. Don't be so serious. Don't have to complicate. Just grab the main feeling of flower. The leaves. Maybe flower. [inaudible]. Here it is. But my favorite way is draw from imagination, because you have freedom to draw everything you want. Personally, I like draw more [inaudible] because it's really simple, really fun, and all this looks good. I'll show you some examples. Strange leaves [inaudible]. Your flower shouldn't be perfect. It's absolute looking. Nature doesn't have any perfect things at all. Again, because I'm thinking ahead, I started in some related to [inaudible]. Like some berries, snowflakes, maybe for winter, maple leaf and acorns and maybe again some Red Bells for autumn. It's all about commonization. Like big for St. Valentine's Day or [inaudible] for Summer. [inaudible]. Something like that. I also advise you to draw some additional elements like arrows, hearts, dots, whatever. They can fit in for creating our postcards and fine tuning the homework. So summary. First of all, while you sketching, think about your whole set. Next, do as many sketches as you want. Next, don't always thinking about details and photo-realistic look and so. Finally, use additional elements. Again, it's not about some artistic technique. It's all about having fun and relax your mind. Do you know, while you draw in your brain produce [inaudible] hormones. It's really great thing to start draw immediately. Now, I really encourage you to share your sketches in Project Gallery and if you're stuck, I'm here to help you. So now we have our element set and we are ready to our next step, painting with watercolors.
6. Painting with watercolors: Hi and welcome back. In this section, we will talk about most fun part, painting with our watercolors. First of all, you need to think about your colored part. What exactly it should be. Keep in mind that particular colors will write our perception, vivid color's excite and subdued color's relax. As I've said before, a lot of colors are something like generals' associations. For example, again, pink for Saint Valentine's Day, green for summer, orange and black for Halloween, and red and green for Christmas, for example, and so and so. I like watercolors because they're like just take some water [inaudible] More paint, more saturated colors. You have more water, more transparent artwork you will get. Just play with it. It's like a plenty room for having fun. I usually don't make my watercolors too photorealistic because more colors means more effort to get nice better artwork. Just try to keep it really simple. Now we have our artwork and we are absolutely ready to digitize them and design our postcards. Don't forget to share your final artwork in our project gallery. I can't wait to see your paintings. I'm sure they are really super cool. See you in the next section.
7. Scanning your set: Welcome back. In this section I'm going to show you my personal scanner setup. Here is my scanning preset. Its interface varies from windows to windows, so you can be a little different but we're talking here about some common things. First of all, about resolution. Here for resolution options in different ways. I've found where it is between 300 and 600 DPI at perfect dwellers to scanning water cups. It has optimal size quality rate to for our purpose. Yes, you can set it to 1200 DPI or even more for example, if your scanner supports it but you will get an image that will be difficult to trace. Its trait will get so laggy, it'll freeze and so on. Just keep in mind that the simple set doesn't require too much quality. Of course in some cases you may need more resolution but it's more about highly-detailed paintings. So we are setting up 600 DPI resolution and go to "Column mode", check the "Color" then go "Save" and here you can choose place where to save your file. You could have some options, I chose my file, my folder, which I might follow a screencast and just open. Then to file that, personally I prefer to save my file in TIFF format. Yes, it's really, really big, but it has really good quality for our watercolors but if you don't have a lot of space in your computer, you can use JPEG and start looking. So I chose GIF and click start. It will take some time, so we will wait. One little note for people who don't have any scanner:. best option for you is to make [inaudible] daylight on flat surface or you can use some scanning app for your smartphone. My favorite one is TurboScan. It flattens some for the issues and gives pretty good results and very good with black and white drawings but you can use any app you like. So we'll wait a little bit and here it is, our digital version. Our next step is preparing our set in Photoshop. I'll see you soon.
8. Preparing in Photoshop: Now, we're going to make some adjustments. There are a lot of ways to do this, I'll show you the very best way I use. Here, we have our image opened in Adobe Photoshop. First of all, I've double-clicked on my background layer to unlock it, then go to my Adjustments panel here in the right. If you don't see it, go to the Window and make sure your Adjustments is checked. Choose "Levels," zoom in a little bit. To zoom in, I use shortcut Ctrl++ on PC or ⌘++ on Mac. Command minus and Control minus are for zoom out. Just drag sliders, and see what is happening with our image. Now it looks more brighter, more vibrant. I think it's really good. Also, I like to play with curves. It's a really helpful tool, and it's here in Levels, in our adjustment panel. Same thing, just drag curve and see what's happening. I think this way our image looks more natural. Something like that. Now I'm happy with it, and I can merge my layers into one. To do this, I use shortcut ⌘+shift+E on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+E on Windows. If you aren't sure with your adjustment, always make [inaudible] a quick chance to come back to your source image. I'm sure, so I click Ctrl+Shift. Now, we only have one left. But we have to still paint the text tone, our image, and white background. To clean it up without the [inaudible] tool, we go to Select and choose "Color Range" [inaudible]. Here, we check "Selection" mode and "Quick Mask" preview mode. Here, we can use what we'll be selecting. Then, click anywhere in the white space. Zoom in again. Let's see. All object are selected. I can't believe it. If [inaudible] you need, go again to Select Color Range, and just drag. It should work, but if [inaudible] you need, again, go to Select, select "Color Range," and just drag the slider until all object you need are selected. [inaudible] , so I click "Cancel." No, we [inaudible]. We selected all besides white space. We need to [inaudible] our selection. To do this, I use shortcut ⌘+shift+E on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+E on PC. I'll choose Selection mode, and click "Select Inverse." Our image looks the same way, but now we have exactly white space selected. If you zoom in a little bit more, you can see that now we need to refine edges. Otherwise, our illustration would look messy [inaudible]. We'll go again to Select, and now choose "Refine Edge" feature. It's down below the Color Range mode. Here's my preset for trace and images, now we wait a little bit. It's quite a long process. We have it. We can see our preview. If you would like to compare the image before and after, Refine Edge function, then check "Show Original," and now we can see it. I'll check it. It's thinking, we will wait. It's a long process, I don't know why. Here it is. Again, Show Original, I'm going to check it. I hope you get it. Click "Okay," zoom out. Again, our image shows the same way, but now we will see some magic. Just click button that will mask here at the bottom. Now we have only our elements without any white space. Also, you can create a new layer and field with white color or any contrast color we like to make it more nice looking. Here, we also [inaudible] using shortcut the Ctrl+Shift+E or ⌘+shift+E in Mac. Now we have very clean version of the watercolor illustration. If you zoom in, you can see it. Now we are ready to convert it into [inaudible]. See you in the next part.
9. Converting your set to vector art: Welcome back. Now we're absolutely ready to convert our last illustration to vector. I prefer to move elements from Photoshop to Illustrator, and trace them one by one, not the whole set once. It seems this is really time consuming, but in fact, this way is more efficient because elements trace much faster and Illustrator doesn't freeze globally. Last, using that way, you can control trace not just for every single element, and your final tracing result will be more nice-looking. Also, you can control file-size, for example, if you have a large number of elements, you can divide them into separate file. So let's get started. In my Photoshop here, I have our set. I chose "Selection Tool" using shortcut "M" and make rough selection, this branch for example. Press Command "C" on Mac, Control "C" on PC. Then go to Illustrator, press Command N on Mac, Control N on PC to create new file. You don't really care about our file size because we can easily change it later. Click "Okay" and click "Command". We have our element. I "Zoom in" a little bit. Here it is. Next, we go to our Trace Menu. I have it here on the right. If you don't have trace button, go to the Window and make sure your "Image Trace" is checked. Here it is. Then we can see Sub Menu with different settings and have some built-in presets. Illustrator doesn't have a special preset for watercolor tracing. So you can use, for example, High Fidelity Photo preset or you can make your own preset. Now I will show you how to make it. So choose for example, High Fidelity Photo preset only if you have it and start just pulling the sliders in our settings. I use for my watercolors, trace following settings; Colors 60, Paths 50, Corners 25 and Noise 5. You can use my setting so try find which ones will work best for you. If you're happy with your setting, go to Manage Presets. It's here on the right. Here we have options, "Save as New Preset". You can name it. I will name mine "Watercolors, Okay." Now you can see our Preset here on the bottom of our drop-down menu. Choose it and then click "Trace" button. Let's start tracing. Now we have it. Then we can try to reduce the amount of colors to reduce our file size, just to add it "40" maybe. Let's retrace it again. It's looking good. The main thing here is to reach the minimum number of colors, the image doesn't lose too much in quality. We can reduce this a little bit more. We "Trace" again. It's not big difference, but we have not many colors as first time. Doing this process for every single element, we can significantly reduce file size and make easier our work with it in the future. But if you are going to trace not very many elements, you can trace with a large number of colors and don't go crazy about it. I think it's okay. Now, go to "Object," click "Expand," check object "Fill," and click Okay"". We have our vector object. But, we should make one more thing, fully Un-group it and delete unnecessary parts of our element. To do this, you can use shortcut Command Shift G on Mac or Control Shift G on PC, which are most likely you have to click a few times or just right-click "Ungroup," "Ungroup," "Ungroup" again okay. Here layers spreading we can see fully un-grouped and many different elements. Then I can Select some area and here you can see our mask. Delete them, and then Delete unnecessary parts. Then group our object again using shortcut command. So now we have a group. Now we have our vector object and can use it whatever we want. We can Drag it, Rotate, Change size, then do the same process for every element in our set. To me seems like it takes the whole eternity. As for me it's much faster than train the whole set with trade-offs like a loss of quality or over-sized file which is too large to process easily. It really up to you, how you will do tracing, maybe you can find a better way. I've showed you tracing processing my element. Here is our final elements that I've prepared for you before. I'll see you in the next part.
10. Making a postcard: Part 1: Welcome back. Now, it's the most fun part of our approach, the design itself. Let's get started. First of all, I create new file in my Illustrator, five by seven inches, in CMYK mode because I want to print my cards. It's 300 ppi resolution and click "Okay". So here it is. It's totally up to you how you will lay out your elements. For my postcards I use, they are all laid out. I will position the elements on shape, then make in some frame elements, then fill in some shape, or just make a pattern. In this section, I'll show you some of my layouts. Okay, let's go, go to my set of elements. In this, I'm going to do seasonal postcard set. I chose some elements, from autumn for example. I really love autumn, it's my favorite season of the year. I'm going to choose some elements for my postcard. Hold in the Shift key on my keyboard. I copy them using shortcut command C and paste in to my onboard and drag away. later, I work with some additional elements and I can always can go to my set of elements and grabs them. Now, I'll show you filling in some shape. For example, holding my shift key and create perfect ellipse. [inaudible] with no filling, just thin stroke. Now, I lock it to using shortcut Command 2, now I can touch it. It's more convenient for me. Okay, I'm done. Just lay off some of my elements, whether vector elements, we can change heir size, you can make it bigger or smaller if you want. I prefer to fill the shape starting from the outline. I just grabs the ends and drags them on the shape, rotates them, reflect them, change size. Well, just playing with them. If you feel you need some more elements, you can easily go to certain grab some more. We go to our open field, and now we start to fill the center area same way. Click on this transforms position of elements. You moved a little bit, then go to "Object", "Unlock All". Now, we have our circle shape selected and just delete it. [inaudible] Now, using shortcut command A, I chose all my elements and then use a shortcut command G, I'll group it. Then, I want to make some background. I will [inaudible] , fill it with some white. I'll make it my document size five by seven, but here zero to zero to make it match with our artwork. Just send it Mac with a shortcut command Shift right bracket. Choose my group, I just did it. I prefer to lock my background. It's more convenient. Maybe next we will make winter. For example, go to my set of element again and choose some, maybe this guy, this blue. Okay, add it slight berries. I advise you to save your file just to cover the card. Name my cards and just "Save". I just start to make my elements. I'll copy to the hold alt center and then "Reflect" it, "Okay". Maybe tilt a little bit, copy it again, rotate it. [inaudible] elements, goes of our borders. Later, we'll make clip and mask. It will be absolutely okay. Again, you start playing with the elements to make our frame. The main idea of the frame is, that it should concentrate all the attention on the gap inside and textmate. So try to keep balance and treat more of your elements in harmony. Okay, it looks good. Now, I've got the "Object", "Unlock All", here you have background, command C and command F. Paste it in front. Now, we have our frame. Now, I do the same things with two other scissors to have my cohesive set. As you can see, it really doesn't matter what shape you use, so we can use any shape you like. I've made a heart shape. Now, we have our [inaudible] and we absolutely made it to our next step. See you in the next part.
11. Making a postcard: Part 2: Now, I'm going to show you how to make another one layout for our cut using simple seamless pattern. First of all, I'll show you my exact process of making pattern. There's several different ways to make seamless patterns in Adobe Illustrator. I'll just show you my own, you can do it whatever you want. I choose my Rectangle Tool and just draw square. You can use not only a square, you can use a rectangle size, but for me, square is really easier. I'm going to five by five, which is for example, just to show you. Now, I go to my set of elements and maybe this time I want to make cuts for some. Maybe I need this guy, and then this, and maybe this one. Okay, it will be enough, I think. So I'll cut it [inaudible] Again, I prefer to lock my background. The main idea of simple seamless pattern is that the whole object that cross in the left edge should match all object crossing the right edge and all object crossing bottom edge, should match all object crossing the bottom edge. So I'll show you what I mean.I just start organize my elements in my square [inaudible] Now, we take our edges, select all objects on the left and I prefer to use shortcut; command, shift M on Mac or Control, Shift M on PC and we can see a move, maybe. Also, to make look frame seam, you can right-click, Transform, Move or you can go to the Object, Transform, Move. So as our square is five by five inches, you have to mix and move. Five inches on the left, and zero top and bottom then I click "Copy" and now we have them. But now, don't touch and go, because if you touch them you will have line in your pattern. Again, you can just locks and all, use the shortcut Command Tool. The same process, Command, Shift, M, but now we don't want them to move horizontal, we want them to move five inches down. Click "Copy" again and now we have them. Now, you shouldn't touch them again. So just touch, feel our pattern center. [inaudible] And now I can't touch these. [inaudible] Now, I can't touch my flower because I've locked it. So I go Object, Unlock All, unlock just my [inaudible] and track in, drag it, hold them up, and there you have a copy fit. Like this, you drag [inaudible] you want to be in my pattern center. Again, don't remove elements on [inaudible] pattern because you will have many pattern. But if you want to move some of your [inaudible] you should select top and the bottom, element for example and move them together. So now, we have our pattern, go to Object, Unlock All and to make our pattern work, chose our background, copy to using shortcut, command C and then best in behind using shortcut, command B, and give it no fill and no stroke. Then select all, using shortcut, command A or Control A and we'll see. Just drag it into our swatch pan. So now, [inaudible] can just create rectangle again, five by seven inches to feet. [inaudible] need to go to the Object, Transform, Scale, or again you can just right-click, Transform, Scale. Then we should uncheck Transform Object and to transform only our pattern. Here, come different [inaudible] and retained maybe 60 percent will be okay. Then I click "Okay" then I can delete it now. So we have our button background. Now, we can add some rectangle, make our Postcard layout, maybe give it some stroke; five, one inch. Okay. [inaudible] So now we have our cut layout and we can add some text to it.
12. Typography : So we almost have our crafts, but now we will talk about another important thing, typography. While your designing your card, you should follow the general idea and typography is a tool that should enhance it, not oppose. Here is some classic wedding card for example. Font is more classic too and here we have some cute card with cat. The font is like cozy, homely, handmade like, and so so. I hope you get it. Now, couple of boring things.As you may know there are free fonts and fonts you should buy. In my opinion, creativemarket.com is the best place to buy fonts for our purpose, while fontsquirrel.com and dafont.com are best places to get free fonts. Most fonts on fontsquirrel.com are absolutely free for personal and commercial use. While most fonts on defont.com are for personal use only. Anyway, you should double-check font license to avoid possible problems in the future. I've attached a list of my favorite free font set with download links in resources. You can find it there. We are all about to hit the finish line. Our next lesson is about putting together our elements and typography. See you soon.
13. Putting it all together: Hello and welcome back. As I've told you in previous lesson, fonts should enhance our card mood and feel. We just can play with them to find the more suitable one. Zoom out, in again. Now, you can see that we have our postcard set and it look really cohesive and really funny, I think. Here's some another set I've prepared using pattern layout. I've separated button and shape layout because in my case, they don't look like the whole, but you can try to mix them and combine all layouts in one set. Now, it's time to prepare it for print. As we make our cards in CMYK mode in advance to prepare them for print, all we should do is go to "File", "Save As", name it my cards for print, for example, choose PDF format, and click "Save". Here, we have some options. If you uncheck this option, you won't be able to edit your file again in Illustrator, so I'll check it because I want to edit again, and click "Okay". Save our file. Next, I'll go in my desktop and I'll print. Then it prints all our cards. Then I can print it directly from this PDF. I can print all of them, but just some of what we want. You can print it at home or in typography on special kind of paper which works great for postcards. Then you can buy envelope and you can send it to your friend. But if you want to save your postcards to print in separate files, you can just create new file. Again, five by seven inches. Makes sure it's CMYK mode and 300 PPI resolution, and click "OK". Then just copy this card, paste it, then select it. [inaudible] Now, your finished. Now, you can simply go to your file and save it. Let's save it as PDF, again, or you can export it into a JPEG. Click "Export", name it again. Just choose JPEG, then name it, and click "Export". I prefer maximum quality and click "OK". Now, we will have your file in PDF and JPEG format. You can choose which one you want to use for print. Finally, we have our postcards set ready.
14. Final thoughts: Well, congrats,make a flower portrait set. Now you can send them to your friends, make gift to your loved one, or even start your portrait factories, why not? Now you can see it's really simple and easy and it's really fun. So you can do it just to relax your brain. Owners could, for example, and don't forget to share your final set in project goal. Hope you enjoyed my class. Thank you.
Olga Sh, food illustrator | graphic designer
