Transcripts
1. Intro: I love jungles. My name is Karina Eibatova. I'm an artist administrator and a traveler. In this class, I will demonstrate how to create a detailed jungle outlook. I will be talking about the materials they usually use for creating such a precise and neat drawings. Drawing skill helped me to become independent as a freelancer, and it helped me to leave in a [inaudible]. At the moment am based in Japan. I love nature, and if you feel the same, you're very welcome to join my class in order to learn how to draw it well. Grab your sketch books, pencils, and let's start drawing plants and animals. Thanks for the attention.
2. Materials: Hello, and welcome to my class dedicated to the jungles. In this class, I will show you how did I make this artwork. Now I'm going to draw a bunch of animals and plants. First of all, let's bring the warmth and love to the creative process. To make the jungles done, we will need sketchbooks. Small ones for carrying around the parks, and big ones for work at home or studio. Let me show you different sketchbooks. This is thin bound moleskine. The sketchbook has smooth, thin paper. It is good for graphite pencils in order to make more detailed results. Some thin bounds sketchbooks can open flat, but some can't, so it's more difficult to draw close to the gutter as the paper there curves in. It's best if it can open flat and you can easily draw across the pages. This little thin bound sketchbook is perfect for carrying around. It has thick textured paper, which is good for pen and soft pencils. The higher the grade of textured paper surfaces, the deeper and more even the result in shading will be. Here is the wire-bound sketchbook. The pages can flip easily and go over making the sketchbook easy to hold and you can hold the sketchbook in a standing position. The other thing, it's ability to open flat. There is one minus with the wire-bound sketchbooks. It is hard to scan the drawing directly from the sketchbook because the paper near the wire will be not in contact with the scanner's glass. It will result to blurred areas of the drawings after scanning. In order to scan perfectly, I had to rip out those pages with leaves I created while traveling around the south. Another type of paper we will need is a sandpaper for your pencils. It is best sharpening method I have ever tried. It is a neat little trick that I use almost always. Try clipping a little piece of sandpaper to your drawing board or table and if your pencil starts getting a little blunt, just run it over the paper a few times to bring the point back. On the back of the sandpaper, you will find a number that will tell you what the grit of sandpaper is. Forty grit will be a very rough sandpaper, while 150 grit will be a finer paper. How to use it. First, use a traditional sharpener or better knife to get the points chartered. Then, take the pencil's lead and place it on its side onto the sandpaper and move the pencil from side to side against the paper while turning the pencil like sculpting the point. It is important to use right amount of pressure to sharpen the lead without breaking it. It is especially useful during quick drawings if there is no time to get out your sharpener. A knife is the most flexible method of sharpening a pencil. It will require a little practice, but it's certainly a very useful skill to master. Unfortunately, it also creates a little bit of mess so don't sharpen your pencils with a knife over your drawings. Do it over a piece of paper or a beam. Makes sure you got away from yourself and always close the knife for safety reasons. The other thing which is soft eraser, it takes away the half tone of the drawing, so it doesn't erase completely, only makes the shades lighter. I haven't seen them anywhere except Russia. But there are similar things, its called kneaded eraser. The flexibility of this eraser is a useful thing. It can be formed to a point for detailed areas or whatever other shape is needed. Of course, just a normal eraser which you can cut into smaller pieces for more dedicate and precise way of erasing. Then the set of magical ones with different hardness. I use the pencils which are popular for the best quality called Faber-Castell. Graphite pencils come in a series of hardness or grades ranking from nine H the hardest to nine B the softest. B means soft, H means hard. The higher the number, the harder or softer the pencil is. The American number 2 pencil usually lines up with the Europeans HB grade. HB is in middle. The hardest pencil from H group create lighter, thinner lines. Hardly goes down much lighter, and it's easier to erase afterwards while the softer pencils from B group create darker, thicker lines.
3. Drawing Animals: Let's start with drawing animals. All the animals you will see here are coming from Australia, because the jangle artwork I'm creating here is meant to be for the bar in Canberra. Another useful thing for looking up on the reference is a smart phone. Of course the best thing is to draw animals in the jungles, or at least a zoo. Well, now we're in the studio and it's much easier to watch the photo on the phone, rather than on the computer. Just put your phone next to the paper, and there will be no need to move your head from side to side like it happens when looking at the computer, so it is easy to copy. First of all, I'm going to draw a tree kangaroo. I didn't know about them before I started the project, and now I am the fan of these creatures. Just google them. It's a heap breed of a kangaroo and koala, or a monkey and a bear. I'm starting with light and middle shades using HB and 2H pencils. Then I will be adding dark alliance with the software pencil. It is very important to draw a lot of details in the fur, so it has an interesting texture. If you think about a kangaroo, unlike their close cousins, the tree kangaroos arms and legs are approximately the same length. Tree kangaroos also have much stronger fore limbs to help in climbing the trees they inhabit. Unfortunately, loss of habitat and uncontrol hunting have forced many species close to extinction. Tree kangaroos can leap 60 feet to the ground without getting hurt, imagine that. I'm rotating my drawing in order to access the different parts of it without touching it. It is finished. Do get it. Then I will show you how to color animals later. Now I'm making him a company. This's going to be an Australian bird-of-paradise, a very beautiful one. The males have very long feathers at the tail that are called streamers, like that. Males put their pride colors in unusual or namenodes to good use when they display for females. They're crazy dancers, composers, and other rituals put in phenomenal show, and it can last for hours. Birds-of-paradise are extremely attractive, and their look once made them target of skin hunters. Now I'm going to draw quite a complicated animal, and its name is a echidna. Just make a shape made out of needles. Then add a volume to it later. I always like to draw eyes, they make drawing alive in seconds. Echidna also has a fur in the body, and might somehow climb up on the tree, so I will draw it. The reason I decided to draw a echidna on a tree rather than on the grass, because it is easier to make this animal visible on the branch rather than in the grass. Well, the echidna, also called the spiny anteaters, have walking contradictions, because echidnas are mammals but they lay eggs. They are spiny though, their bodies are covered with hollow boblous quiles. It is finished and colored. Now I'm starting with the grass as the ground, because the next shy animal have long legs. What has the ears and sides of the rabbit? The nose of an anteater, and the tail of a kangaroo. Those cute guys are called bilbies, and they leave only in Australia. Very funny, but in Australia instead of bunnies, children get chocolate bilbies for Easter. I'm drawing a very kind bilby, so kids might like it. Bilbies don't drink water, somehow they get moisture from the food. I wonder how much moisture they can get from nuts and insects. All those mysteries of surviving in a desert. As kangaroos, bilbies have a pocket to carry their babies. I'm adding a dark shades in the ears, and trying to make it's fur very detailed and glossy. This long beautiful tail should have the forelimb and reflection. Bilbies are expert diggers, they can disappear in a sandy soil within three minutes. Mine is shining in the dark, and don't want to disappear. Sometimes it is cool to make dark background so the light fur starts to shine and stands out. Now, I will draw a sugar gliders. One is going to fly in the air. I will draw it very fast. It's tiny and very funny. The membrane allows sugar gliders to glide from tree to tree out to catch fine insects. I decided to capture that incredible moment. Sugar gliders can glide for quite long distances such as over 45 meters, around 150 feet. Unbelievable, they use their limbs ,tail, and tarsus to control their flight. The next sugar glider will be sitting on the tree. This one is also funny, probably because of the reflection in the eyes, it always makes a difference. Always take extra care when drawing the eyes. Well, somehow I didn't manage to make those two look very elegant. But funny drawings are also correct. However, I will add some quality to them later in Photoshop.
4. Drawing Pineapple: In between drawing animals and plants, I would like to show you the process of drawing a pineapple. First of all, draw an oval, then draw a diagonal going lines down the fruit. Try to make them evenly spaced apart. After, draw a diagonal going lines crisscrossing the other lines in the fruit, this should make little diamond shapes. Add small dots or star to the center of each diamond to represent the spikes of the fruit. Pineapple is definitely a fruit of the tropics, and with it's somehow spiny appearance, it is an interesting fruit, especially to draw. Then work with each piece and add volume to it. In the end, draw leaves on to the top and the bottom, make them as long as you want. I'm drawing the pineapple which is still growing, so it has a lot of long leaves. Pineapple is a good source of many nutrition such as vitamin C. Also, the only surface of the plant compound bromelain a unique protein digestive enzyme only found in pineapples. I'm adding shadows to each leaf until it looks perfect, in broader. Now, I will show you how to draw just leaves. Then you can copy them, Photoshop to make the whole field of grass. I'm drawing contours with folding leaves. Then I draw a middle line and lots of straight parallel diagonal lines coming from the center. In one part of the leaf, next to the middle, I leave wide space and in another I draw dark lines coming from the center. So it has a touch of folding. Then next to the edge of the leaf I add the lighter shades as a reflection. I'm adding dark shades to the place where the leave is folding.
5. Plein air / Drawing Plants outside: Then they're drawing outside is known as Plein Air. Literally translated this French term means in the open air. It's always important to check the weather before you go paint outside. It's good to take something warm with you. Also, it is important to choose the right light. This photo was done one hour before I started to draw, the light here looks great for photo shooting. The sunlight brings magic to the atmosphere. However, for the drawing, it is better to wait for soft light. This drawing of banana palm tree, I will finish later and then it will look like that. I started to draw these plant in the evening when the light became soft and the leaves are not transparent on the sunlight. It was almost dark already, I had to finish the drawing and adjust some details when I then returned back home. This was happening in Georgia. Drawing and painting outside is a common thing for artists today. Artist stride and Marion Body Evans explains. In the past, the impressionists ventured out of this studios into nature to investigate and capture the effects of sunlight and different types of days on the subject. It was quite revolutionary. Honestly, I rarely draw outside that is this actually a nice thing to do.
6. Postproduction in Photoshop : To make the process of the color correction easier, you will need a pen tablet. The best will be a tablet which is also a monitor. However, it is very expensive. If you're just starting, get a basic pen tablet, it is also very good. When I travel and I always travel, I carry my legal Intuos Pen and Touch made by leading public company called Qualcomm. I scan the drawing in 1,200 DPI resolution and now I will show you how did I color it with brushes in Photoshop. In the next part, I will make post-production from the beginning. But here I already have four layers. Three of them are colored, all with different effects, linear burn, overlay and soft light. It is hard to say in advance which effect will look better. You have to experiment with that. I always do. For example, now I'm on the Linear Burn layer and I will use the brush to put some dark shades, dark green colors and the effect of the brush is multiplied and then transparency of it is 21 percent. We can see that on the panel at the top. I color everywhere I think it should be darker, to justify linear shadows. Then I switched the soft light layer and using the lighter color adjust some light where it is needed. The effect of a brush is again multiplied and it is 71 percent transparent. You can zoom in for the precise corrections or zoom out for the faster way of work. Let's start to color a monstera leaf, But first, I want to share with you one thing that happens as a wrong, when I open the Photoshop each time. I open the program and this particular picture shows up. It is a street art project I did in collaboration with my friend. This posture we hanged in 2008 in Sweden, and later along with other our conceptual postures, the project was recreated in Bangladesh. This picture is from there. As you can see, the text on the posture is very catchy. Every time I have to ignore that, picture closing the file in order to continue working. But what if one day they would have been reading the secret of happiness. But I would ignore it as I usually do. Anyway, since I see these photos every day, I question myself what is it? The secret. Well, surely everyone has its own secret of happiness. Back to monstera leaf. Such a legendary famous leaf which appear everywhere in states. Though after cutting element, I chose the layer and click the right button of the mouse and pick, choose selection. Then I'm creating a new layer and choosing the green dragging with colors I want. Then I'm trying 1,000 times to apply these gradient the way I like. I decided to color only the leaf first. This is it. Then I'm changing the effect of the layer to multiply. Then I'm copying the layer, dragging it to the bottom. New layer and change the effect there to overlay. To make it more interesting, I select only one half of the leaf, while half should be darker. I press command or Control L, four levels and change the contrast, there. Then you also can apply some more gradient on the half starting from the center. Also changing the colors by pressing command or control D is very easy and fast. Then in this first half I'm making some parts lighter with the brush and it's effect to items. The opacity is about 20 percent. Then you can add some more colors because things are never just green or white, everything has this whole spectrum of different shapes, and then I'm doing the same thing on the other half. It is important to make the middle bright. Now I'm coloring then rest of the leaf the same way, looking for the best gradient to apply. If you want to add more effects to the whole thing, just copy the layer, make it less transparent, and erase the parts with the selfed transparent (phonetic)Raser. This way, I'm adding more volume. Something become more darker and deeper. Something lighter and softer. Reflections are very important and never leave things flat, in the style of the drawing. In the end, you can experiment with the transparency of the layers, making it more or less intense, and always just the color but less. You can do it different ways. By clicking command or control B or L or H or go to the panel on the top. Choose Image, Adjustment, selective column. Then save the file in PSD because you might need to change the image. In order to save all layers choose PSD file. If you need it for printing then save it also as tiff file, but also always keep the PSD file. I decided to offer a composition of just leaves as a printer canvas in my online store. You are very welcome to see my previous class in which I showed how to deliver the art with this way, how to present and sell works online. Now we will show you the magic of copy-pasting and distorting elements. For example, I need to create a huge, aloe plant. Actually, I think aloe is a miracle plant and I use it every day for skin, worth trying out. I made a drawing of two aloe leaves, and now I'm cutting it out with a pen tool. The most complicated here are those tiny spikes, but it looks great. Then I'm moving those two leaves on the main file and copying it by dragging one layer pressing the other. I press command or control key and choose frei paris on top. The objects are mirrored. I press command or Control T again and choose warp, the image and then moving those dots in order to make different from the copied layer, and to make it more [inaudible] for AV. You can experiment with different transformation options and rotate objects. Then I'm copying the layer again, make it smaller and reflect the small leaves off. After embracing the lines in the middle using the soft raser. To make it more real I'm adding more small leaves, in the bottom, distorting the leaves again, so you cannot see it is copied. Afterwards, I select all the layers and press command or control E. All the layer are merged into one layer. Then, as usual, I'm going to the layer panel and press select pixels with the right button of the mouse. Afterwards, I'm adding the gradient. I'm selecting the style of the layer, multiply. On top of aloe, I decided to put another plant and I will be doing it the same way. Cutting out, repeating, distorting and coloring. Remember my paradise quote. Now it is time to finish it the same way I colored the plants, but just with brushes. I haven't thought of the actual bird just next to the drawing, and it is very useful if you see, you can just choose the colors of the elements from the folder directly, with the eyedropper tool. Also I find Burn tool and dodge tools, very useful for making images look crispy and darkening objects next to the H, adding more violim and shadows, and then lightening the objects in the needle. You can choose what exactly you would like to darken or lighten,either [inaudible] , shadows or highlights of the objects violated on the top panel. Now you can see the difference I made before and after using Bird and touchstones. Very cool.
7. Final work: Ready to see the final work? Here it is. Well, it took me a while to draw and color it all and then to manage the composition. Well, I was moving things around for hours. It might be easy to draw for me but then, when all the details are separated, it is hard to compose everything together in one masterpiece. I was working with a drawing scanner, the basic scanner with a resolution 1200 dpi placed in the file with the resolution 300 dpi. This way, I have the final work ready to be printed as a big scaled drawing. Since the printing quality tiles is extremely good, people even think that my jungles are handmade, done directly on the tile. Nobody actually knows how did I do it, but now you know. Keep my secret and use it for your work if you can. I hope my jungles inspired you and you will make
8. In the Previous class: In my previous class, I was teaching a very informative class about selling and promoting art online. Flicker, Behance, Threadless, Printalloverme, Society6, Bigcartel, Tictail, Printful, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, linkedin, and cargo collective. Politely, my career would have been completely different without the Internet. To become a well-known for as artist, I just had to work hard to stay passion, and the most importantly to allow for the grade. Don't hesitate to follow you dream. Money will always follow. Let's start learning how to deliver your content online.
9. In the next class: In the next class, I will be doing some amazing watercolor paintings. Starting from the detailed way of painting flowers and stones, ending with abstract works filled with beautiful colors and shapes. Thank you for joining my class. Goodbye.