Botanical Scenes in Photoshop: Incorporating Watercolor Into Digital Design

1. Introduction: Hey everyone. My name is Silvia and I'm a professional graphic designer and artist. Most of my work combines analogue techniques such as drawing and painting with my favorite program of all, Adobe Photoshop. In this class, you will learn how to create your own beautiful digital compositions from hand-painted botanical elements. By the end of it, you will be able to create designs which meet the standards of the world's leading brands in a quick and easy way. It can take years to discover these shortcuts and you will learn them all in this class. I will start by teaching you the basics of watercolors whilst painting simple botanical elements such as petals and leaves and you will be able to turn them into flowers and foliage. I will teach you my Photoshop shortcuts and you will be able to discover how these painted assets can be quickly transformed into a myriad of different digital designs. Whether you want to advance your career or simply create something for pleasure, the skills of combining hand-printed elements with Adobe Photoshop will open a whole new world of possibilities for you. In case you're wondering who I am, I was born in Colombia into a family of artists and for the past six years I have been living and working in London as a freelancer. I paint, work, and teach for my studio in East London. I live in a canal boat which allows me to constantly explore the world around me. My artworks had been sold in high street brands such as Zara, Mango and many others and the skills I'm going to teach you have been developed over years of working for these global clients. Here is one of my favorite prints which went into Mango stores worldwide and was made using these techniques. I hope you can join me in this journey and I can't wait to have you on board. 2. Class Project: Your project is to create a botanical inspired poster or greeting card to say thank you to someone you love. You will compose this artwork with all the flowers and foliage that we create, made up from the leaves and petals painted in watercolor. In this project, we will be learning how to create at least three types of flowers in different positions and three different foliages. By mixing them with text, you will end up with a beautiful botanical, complex composition with a modern look. In your final project, I will be looking for a variety of shapes, size, colors, and positions that reflect that you have learned and apply the skills you have gained in this class. For this class, you will need the following materials. You will need two cups of water, you will need a pencil, an eraser, a paper towel of napkin, watercolor paints of your choice, I'm going to be using pants, watercolor brushes in a couple of different sizes, watercolor paper, which I recommend to use a 300 grams, a scanner or a camera to digitize your paintings, Adobe Photoshop installed on your computer, and any photo references for your natural inspiration are optionals. I will be giving you a few. Once you complete your project, upload it to the project gallery, so we can have a look at what you did. Share your initial stage of the process where you paint your separate elements and surprise us with your final compositions. The more the better. I can't wait to see what you create. You will not believe how much you can achieve by using a single set of watercolor assets and the most basic photoshop transforming tools. This artwork can be scaled to become a poster, used digitally and social media, and of course, paint it and send it to someone you care about. If you share your artwork on social media, be sure to use a hashtag thethankyouproject, so we can all have a look at what you're working on. Also, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or need extra guidance. I can't wait to see what you create. 3. Materials: It's time to talk about the materials that you will need for this class. To paint botanical assets, we will be using watercolor paints. There are three types; pans, tubes and inks. They're all very similar but have slightly different products. My favorite set of watercolors is the Winsor & Newton 12 pan set. It's relatively cheap, very portable, and super easy to clean. I recommend starting with something like this, as it forces you to start mixing colors and applying color theory. You will also need two cups of water. One should get as clean as possible, as it will be used to make our colors lighter. The other one will be used to clean our brushes, and it will be getting dirty quite quickly. You'll need a pencil to make your sketch. I recommend using a 2H. It won't leave any stains on your paper, and it's super easy to erase. You will need one eraser. A paper towel or a napkin is very important. It will help us to take any excess of water out of the brush while we paint. From all the brushes I can find, I recommend using the round one. It allows you to paint larger areas, as well as intricate details with their fine point. For this class, I will be using a Number six for the first stage of the painting, and a Number three for the details and textures. Watercolor paper, which I recommend 300 grams. I'm going to use a plastic palette to prepare my colors, and a ceramic plate to mix them. If you don't have a plastic pallets, you can also use an ice maker to prepare your colors, or a second ceramic plate to mix them. A scanner or camera to digitize your paintings. If you don't have a scanner, you can also use an app to scan your assets using your phone camera. The resolution is never as good as when you use a scanner, but you can definitely do it and it will work fine. You will need a computer with Adobe Photoshop installed, as it's the program that we're going to be using. I really recommend having a drawing tablet. It will make your workflow much easier, as it will give you a lot of freedom when using the [inaudible] and brush tool later in Photoshop. Having photo references for natural inspiration are optional, and I will leave you some on the project gallery. Once you have got these materials ready, come and join me in the next video. We will be talking about colors. I'll explain the importance of selecting a color palette, and I will give you some tips on where you can easily find good examples to work with. 4. Gathering Inspiration: In this class, I'm going to share with you how I gather inspiration when working on botanical designs. I'm always finding inspiration in the internet but it's so much were found going for a walk. No matter where you are, you will find leaves and petals dotted around that could serve you as inspiration. There is nothing like being able to hold the plant and looking at it. Any park, local woods or garden center could be a great place to find references. For me, there is no better resource than analyzing nature firsthand. The great thing is that you can also make it really fun day out. Having said that, I do admit spending a lot of time on the internet when doing research. The internet can give you access to thousands of quality photographs that not only can inspire you, but also inform your knowledge. If you're looking for something specific, you will probably lose less time getting distracted and you will gain a lot from browsing certain websites. Pinterest, for instance, is one of the best websites to research and save your inspiration in different boards. I have made one for you already. Make use of it and get inspired for when you paint your own petals and leaves. Look at different shapes, colors, textures, and use them as reference. Here are my top three tips for what to look for when searching for inspiration, both in nature and online. Colors and textures. Pay close attention to these qualities when looking at leaves and petals. Sometimes we tend to limit ourselves to a small pallet of colors and having awareness of the variety in nature will inspire and expand the richness of your artwork. Shapes. There is an amazing diversity of leaves and petal shapes in nature. Having gathered some inspiration can be very helpful when transforming our main botanical assets into new ones using Photoshop. Structures. Understanding and analyzing how plants are constructed will help you when it comes to representing them in different positions. Now that we've seen where I gather my inspiration from, it's time to start thinking about selecting a color palette for our artwork. This is important for lots of different reasons, which I will tell you more about in the next class. 5. Pencil Sketch: I'll be using a 2H pencil to draw my shapes. These are very basic and easy to follow. I advice you to draw very softly on your paper to avoid leaving anyone. I have left the page with these drawings on the project and resources stuff for you to download if you wish. Just so you understand what you are about to draw. The first shapes are going to be petals. These shapes on the bottom were the leaves, these stems and these center flowers. You should draw a pedicel and we will leave this space down here to do some brush strokes exercises. You can trace them in a nice way by placing your watercolor paper on the top of your sample drawings and using a window to do so. As we saw in the gathering inspiration, listen, it is good to have a look at the different lives and petal shapes that you can find in nature. You can observe, for example, different ways that you can structure the inside area of your live, and what textures you can draw and paint later. As this class is about how to turn simple assets into a variety of flowers and polish. I would suggest that you do at least one simple and basically and petal. We will be a good idea to come back to this lesson when transforming your assets into new ones, using transforming tools in Photoshop. From these, basically, you will be able to cut as many as you like. Look at how many leaves you can create from a single one. This is what I love about working this way. You can use over and over again as simple as it, and enjoy the results of having watercolor hand painted element without having to even print them. Once you have your leaves ready, you will be able to join them to your stems to create polish. This is the same with petals. I would definitely encourage you to search for inspiration and to try to paint different textures, colors, and shapes. Paint at least one generic one, and then tried transforming it into new ones using Photoshop. If you draw a couple of centers of different flowers to paint them, then you will be able to mix and match them with your petals and the possibilities will be endless. By duplicating your petals and rotating them, you will be able to create an inventive different player types and I will show you a couple of tricks to be able to transform them into new ones. I have led to this array of petals and shapes in the project gallery in case you would like to use them as reference. There are thousands more out there. You can get as creative as you want. If you want to follow exactly what I do, then that's also perfect. Once you have your drawings made, joined me in the next class, we will start painting our assets. Remember to draw shapes very softly with your pencil so you can rub it out when you finish painting. As I said, I like to use a pencil, H2 or H3. Once you're watercolor is dry, you can always wrap the pencil very subdued with anyways. 6. Color Palette: Welcome back. It's time to start talking about the importance of color palettes. There are many resources that will help you select colors which will work well together. This topic is often overlooked, but giving a good amount of thought to this is important. It will ensure your designs work well as a composition and look harmonious. You don't have to choose your palette right now, as we are going to transform our assets later in Photoshop. Having said this, I do highly recommend you start thinking about the look that you want your final composition to have. Fonts and colors play a very important role when choosing a style you want to achieve. Here are some examples I did using the same botanical assets. Bright and bold colors. These loud color palette could look great in a summer event, for example. The colors are very bright, fun, loud, and young. The black bold font also contrasts very well with the colored backgrounds and it reinforces its modern look. I would think about giving these cards to one of my friends who has a very loud personality, in a good way. But maybe I wouldn't give it to my dad for his birthday in the winter. This second color palette is very classic. Colors are soft and toned down. Is a much more calm and peaceful design than the previous one, and I think it would be more suitable for a certain older or conservative market. I could visualize it on a very classical wedding, for example. As you can see, the script font adds a vintage and classic look to it. This third example is quite young and playful, but not as bold as the first one. The font makes it look delicate and even if the colors are bright, they are much softer and natural than the previous examples. I would say that this type of design is a bit more neutral and it could be suitable for a wider range of occasions and people. Of course, all these comments are very subjective. In this last example, I want to show you how I adopted these designs to fit three palettes that I download from one of the websites that I will show you in a minute. When you work with Photoshop, you can adapt your palette to whatever you want. My only and big recommendation is, if you think that you would like to play with your colors in Photoshop, limit the amount of colors you use when you paint. Try not to use four types of greens and yellows in your leaves, or red and bright blue or yellow in the same petal. This will limit the use of the Hue/Saturation tool, which I will talk about more in the transforming tools lesson. I am going to choose this palette to guide the colors I prepare in the next lesson. This is a personal choice and I like it very much, but there are certain reasons why I am choosing it. I like the shades of greens, which are not too bright, and I like that there is no bright red in it. Red can also be quite challenging when modified in Photoshop. If you want to use one, I suggest that you paint it a bit saturated that you can brighten it up later in Photoshop. There are two websites that I really like when it comes for searching for color palettes, Color Hunt, and Coolors. These websites are great for looking at different color combinations that exist already. They have thousands of trendy hand-picked color palettes ready to use. They might help you to think if you want to achieve a pastel, bright or vintage look. I have saved a couple of color palettes that I liked in my iPad that I might want to explore with later in Photoshop. I hope this section has been useful in helping you to choose a color palette. In the next video, we will start mixing the colors we want to use in our painting. 7. Mixing Colors: Now I'm going to show you how to mix your paint to create your own color palette. I'm a big fan of mixing my own colors, and I mostly like to use my smaller box of paints. With just 12 tons, you can achieve almost any color you wish, and it will help you to keep sharpening your technical skills. An important thing to have in mind is that in watercolor, there is no whites. They only white you will see is the white of the paper. In order to achieve lighter tones, you have to use less paint and mix it with more water. You will see I always like to keep two glasses of water with me and I always like to give one as clean as possible. If it gets 30, it will make your colors look muddy, though which we don't want to. I'm going to cut my watercolor paper in half. I will paint my botanical assets in one and the other half I will use for testing my colors when a paint, this is a good practice as sometimes it can be difficult to know which colors you are actually mixing. Water colors can often look darker when you put them on your palette. I will use the bottom half of my page to start testing the colors I'm about to prepare, and I will save the top to paint my final color swatches. Once I'm done, I will cut that bit, and have it with me when I paint. This is not that necessary, but it will prevent me from having to stain my color all over again, and it will be a reminder of how my colors actually look. Before we start, if you're painting with watercolor pants like me, at a couple of droplets of water into each one. This will start softening and activating the paint. Sometimes working with plants can get a bit annoying as they constantly dry. This is why I prefer to add water to them and then pass the liquid paint into my plastic pallets. After putting the drop this, steer each color with your brush and start passing the liquid to your plastic pellet. I will also prepare my colors this way. Remember to wash your brush before you stear a different color to prevent your palette from grading dirty. The first color I'm going to use is the cadmium yellow, is a softer and less saturated than the lemony yellow, and this will allow us to transform it later in Photoshop to other hues. If you want to choose colors that are too bright, you might experience some limitations when transforming them with a hue and saturation too. The second color I want to use is an ocher color. This is a paler and earthy color, which will be great when we add details to our yellow petals. The third color I'm going to use is the cadmium red. It is a beautiful orangey color and it will also be easier to modify later on. You can easily transform it to read or magenta, or you can also transfer it to a brown color. This color is easier to change than red in Photoshop. For my first screen, I want to achieve and acquiring soft look. I'm mixing green with a little bit of ultramarine blue. My second green, which will complement the first one, is going to be a very similar shape, but a bit darker. I will make screen with a little bit of ultramarine blue and a drop of burnt amber or brown. I will also add a tiny bit of burnt sienna, this is a light brown with a hint of orange. Orange is the complementary color of green, and by adding a tiny bit of our mix, it will turn the whole intensity of the color down. It is very helpful to know color theory when mixing your colors. I will let burnt sienna to my palette. My last color will be a black or dark gray. This will be very useful when painting the center of the flowers or darkening certain shapes of green. You can go ahead and prepare the colors you want to use for your live them petals. Just have one thing in mind. Try not to use colors that are too bright as you can bring intensity to them later in Photoshop, but you might experience some difficulties when toning down your water color tones if they're are too bright. Now that we have mixed our colors, it's time to start our painting. Why don't you share your color start using the project gallery. Others could find them inspiring and it would be great to be building a whole color pallet library together. 8. Transparencies and Gradients: In this class we're going to start painting our petals and leaves, whilst covering some basic watercolor techniques. Grab the page where you draw the petal shapes and let's start painting. One of the defining characteristics of watercolor is that it is a very fluid and transparent paint. We have to constantly keep in mind the luminosity of the pigment we're using, you cannot paint a lighter color over a darker color, and planning a heavy areas of the painting where we wish to use light and shade is important. I have two glasses of water, one will be used to clean my brushes, and the other one will be used for the wet on wet technique and to make our colors lighter. I am going to start by mixing a very pale orange for which I will be using a lot of water. You can test your colors on another piece of paper before applying them to your elements. We're going to start painting from the top left of the page, and move to the right to make sure we don't smudge any paint with our hands. If you're left-handed, you will need to work from the opposite direction. I'm going to start with my first petal painting from the top to the bottom. It is easier if you move a droplet of water down whilst you paint, that will prevent the pain from drying too quickly and leave in stains. I will be using a round brush number 6, for this stage. Now we're going to work on our second petal, and for this, I am going to create a gradient from orange to yellow. As you can see, I'm preparing the gradient on my palette. I'm going to work from bottom to top this time, starting with the orange and finishing with the yellow. You can do this the other way around if you wish. Keep in mind that your gradient doesn't has to be perfect. Once you have applied the two colors, they tend to blend naturally in the paper. You might be experimenting some difficulties when it comes to painting the borders. The key is how much water you apply to your brush. Simply grab your absorbent paper and take the axis out of your brush, this will help you control the borders and you won't have any surprises. If you have any unwanted stains in your petals or leaves, you can do two things. One, you can accept it. After all, we're painting leaves and petals which in a natural will have a lot of textures, or you can grab your brush and by adding a little bit of water and rubbing your paper, you will be able to get rid of them, or at least stuffed in them. Now I'm going to start the third one. For this, I'm going to use a more concentrated yellow and mixing a small amount of ocher to it. Because we want this petal to look brighter and stronger in tone, the consistency of your paint should be thicker. Try and aim for a melted butter consistency. I'm going to leave out the pain with my wet brush by pressing it slightly in a curved way. Once you have lifted the paint out, you want to wash your brush again and dried with your absorbent paper. You can soften the mark by adding a little bit of water and brushing it with your brush. As you can see, this way of working has given a lot of volume to our petal. Now I'm going to start mixing a light ocher to apply to the circle which will be the center of our flower. For the borders to be defined, you want to make sure not to have too much water on your brush. If you're a beginner, and your borders are not appearing as defined as you wished, don't worry, we can fix these later in Photoshop. I'm going to skip the stem as I don't want to smudge it with my hands. Now, I'm going to go ahead and paint my leaves. Rotate your palette so that the warm colors are on one side and the cool colors are on the other, If you have a square palette, just make sure you start working in order so you have a harmony and the gradients will make sense. Start by applying the premix aquamarine blue next to the yellow, and paint a light wash with this color. This is how you work in watercolor, you work in layers, remember that. It's better to go slowly and start building up your elements than going back and trying to paint the light areas that you have already covered with dark shades. I hope you're enjoying this process of painting, and if you're struggling, you can always paint these light washes, where you should like when you have a very transparent paint. Gradients from dark to light, from light to dark, and these exercises will help you build your confidence when painting the next steps. For the second leaf, I'm going to use both of my premix screens together. Leave the stem until last and apply it from top to bottom. Create a thinner second stem and apply a different shade of green to it. Now that you have your first layer applied, it's time to take a short break, make a cup of tea or coffee, and let it dry. In our next lesson, we'll start adding a second layer to our watercolor petals. As you can see now, there are only flash shapes, and in the next lesson, we're going to start to add texture and volumes towards the borders, and toward the bottom. 9. Layering Watercolor: Now that we have our first layer dried, it's time to start transforming our shapes into beautiful leaves and petals. We're going to do this by adding layers of gradients and textures to them. Remember that if there's any part of your painting that you are not entirely happy with, this is okay. Especially, if it's your first time using watercolors. This is called the wet-on-wet technique. Cover your first petal with a bit of water until it's humid. Be careful not to add too much. Now, mix a darker tone on your palette and start applying to the borders. By tapping the paper, you will be able to start creating a texture as well. As you can see, this technique produces a soft and diffuse look as the color mix. Try not to cover the whole petal and make sure that you see the first color you applied in the background. Make sure that the borders are darker than the center as this will make it easier to make a selection when using Photoshop. Now, pour a little water to your second petal. By doing this, you can soften any mark that were left in the previous layer. I want to make sure the color looks stronger for what I'm going to apply a diffuse yellow on top. Working on the wet-on-wet technique softens the gradient as you apply them. Leave your third petal as it is as we will apply some textures to it in the next lesson. Add water to the circle and with the darker ocher, paint the borders. Now, add water to your first leaf and soften any stains from the previous wash. Mix a darker tone and start working on the border. For our final leaf, I'm going to lift some paints by adding water to our brush and instead of applying it to the whole surface, I will use vertical brush strokes to create texture. I'm going to lift out the paint with my wet brush by pressing it slightly in a curved way. Create a number of vertical lines to develop brush control and try to make some lines thicker by pressing harder. You can also practice creating curved lines on another piece of paper. This will help you to become more confident when we are at final details. Join me in the next class. You will see how adding a layer of details will make your element spring into life. This is one of my favorite bits of the process and I'm looking forward to showing you how. 10. Textures and Final Touches: In this class we're going to add details and textures to our assets. Using darker details such as these are really important in watercolor painting to provide contrast and depth. Sometimes paintings are left unfinished and they can look at little bit tough. In this lesson, we will work on the wet and dry technique, which will allow us to have more control over what happens on the paper. For these are previous layer has to be completely dry. I will be using my brush number three. But for these, any brush below six will give you enough detail. For the first petal, I'm going to mix expediency or brown to darken the orange color. When you apply the final layer to your acids, the one with the darker details, you should use your paint in a medium transparent way. You should be dark enough to add volume and soft enough to look harmonious with the rest of the petal. You achieve these by adding enough water to your mix. It's not completely opaque. Having curved lines not only give texture but also helps to give the impression of volume. These are graphical touches that will give your petals a more modern and less classical look. I like to add small dots to the end of each line. I think they look really nice. If you are unsure about how your colors will look, apply them light, and leave them to dry. Colors stands to change a little bit once they are dry. You will be able to really understand the tone that you are applying. Try to make sure that you can see the color of your first layers through. As you can see in my first petal, we're able to see the first soft being light wash I applied, the texture I added on top and the final lines and dots. There is no point in adding a layer that fills up the petal completely. If you struggle with this, I want you to know that this is completely normal. Just make the exercise of applying your brush strokes in a mindful way and make the effort to always be able to see the soft layer that you applied in the first place. Those really soft colors, form the base of the lighter part of our acids and they are equally important as the darker details that we are adding now. To achieve nice and smooth watercolors when your paper is dry, where it's different than when your paper is wet. When your paper is wet, the job of smoothing or blending two colors will be done for you. You won't to have so much control, but it will happen naturally on the paper. When your paper is dry and you work on what is called the wet and dry technique. You have to smooth the gradients yourself. See how I do this on the second petal. I'm drawing a line in the middle, but I don't want it to be that strong. I wash my brush and with it being clean and humid, not completely wet, I start smoothing the color towards the border of my shape. Your brush has to be clean. Otherwise you will be applying more and more color and you would end up darkening the whole thing. Once I have worked on my soft gradient, I can start working on the line details. When creating the gradient on the top, I didn't add water to the whole petal so it's dry. If my petal was wet, then the lines would get blurry and undefined. This is something that you understand with a lot of practice. You start being able to read the different drying times of your painting and therefore you have more control. If you want to add graphic undefined likes like the ones I'm adding here, your petals should be completely dry. If you want to understand why, just try for yourself on another piece of paper and see what happens. There is no better way to learn than experiencing things for yourself. Painting can be stressful sometimes. Try not to be too cautious and enjoy the process of learning. The best way to learn is by making mistakes. Those called mistakes are just opportunities to understand the technique on how far you can take it. Watercolor can be unpredictable, and that is why I like it so much. You can't always control everything that happens on the paper and I have to admit that I find that challenging sometimes. Being kind to yourself and not getting too attached to certain result you want to achieve, is the key to enjoying the process of painting. Treat this as a moment to connect with yourself and enjoying being in the present. The third petal already has a lot of volume as we lifted up the paint in the first layer. It has darker areas and lighter areas. I will contrast the borders with the ocher color as it will give volume to it and it will also make the process of selecting the background easier in Photoshop. Don't make your borders too white, especially if you're new using Photoshop. I will show you why later on. I will also add some lines towards the bottom part of it. It feels like it has been finished and it fits spatially better with the other two. If your lines aren't turning out to be very thin, observe how you are holding your brush as it might have something to do with it. If you hold it nearer to the start, you will gain precision and control. For the details of this petal, I'm mixing a bit of ocher and brown to the yellow. As you can see, I'm making the bottom of my petals darker. These will be joined together when making our flowers. By making them stronger in color, our flower will gain depth towards the center and light and volume towards the outside part of it. For the center of the flower, try varying the tones of your shades by adding more brown or more sienna or orange to your mix. By adding a smaller circle in the middle, you will have two different levels of depth in your flower center. It will look similar to a sunflower center. Tap on the paper to simulate volume. Don't cover the whole thing and leave a light area towards the center. These will create the illusion of volume. For the first leaf, I'm going to draw a line to illustrate a center vein. I will make it wider and darker as it will give structure and support to our leaf. We will also be attaching it to the stems we paint. It will almost be their continuation. From the main vein, I will start drawing some smaller ones. These will be thinner, lighter, and they will help us give the impression of volume. Give a different treatment to your second leaf, by drawing vertical lines from the top to the bottom. Try to curve them so they all joined together in the highest and lowest point of it. Always apply details with a transparent mix. For the center of your flowers, you can experiment with a couple of circles and lines, tap the paper for some of them, draw lines to a different textures and have some fun. You can also use a pen like the one I'm using. This is a tumble, my favorite brand. We might not end up using all the centers we paint. I end up with touching them a lot in Photoshop and creating new illusions of texture. This is easier if you have a drawing tablet. If you don't, then I would advise you to paint some that you were really happy with. You have more options when creating our flowers. You want to make sure that there is a good amount of contrast between your shapes and the background. We're going to use a selection too later in Photoshop, which will select pixel space on tone and color. If your elements pour dry to similar to the white paper, you might have to use another tool. This is especially for those who are new using Photoshop. Consider sharing your assets in the project gallery. It's amazing to see the elements on their own before they're transformed into flowers and foliage. In the next class we are going to scan our elements.. 11. Digitizing Your Assets: Once you have your assets painted, grab your scanner. I will be running through this on my own Mac, but you should find a way to do it on your own computer. It's important to scan your image at 300 DPI to have a good resolution for printing. You can save it in TIFF, or JPEG format. If you don't have a scanner, you can also use an app to scan your assets using your phone camera. The resolution is never as good as when you use a scanner, but you can definitely do it and it will work fine. Name your files to the location and save. Open Photoshop. On navigation bar, go to file, open, select where you saved your scan, and click "Open". The scan should now appear in the Photoshop window. If your image appears vertically, we will rotate the image to be horizontal as we painted the elements. To do this, click on image, image rotation, rotating the correct direction to adjust. Now that we have our image in Photoshop, we can start to erase our background, which we will do in the next lesson. 12. Shortcuts, Shortcuts!: As you can imagine, I spend a lot of my time using Photoshop. I like to preserve the natural look of my scanned elements, and that's why I prefer to Illustrator. When I started working as a print designer, I suddenly found myself working on files which had easily a hundred layers to a very [inaudible] lengths. I started using several shortcuts to be able to work as fast as I could. If you go to the project resources gallery, I have left you a page with the shortcuts that I use regularly. It's important that you use them, as it will give you a better workflow. You can print this page and put it by your side while working, so you can look at it whenever you have any doubts. Note that I'm using a Mac. When I say command on a Mac, this will be translated into control on a PC. One of the main shortcuts that I am going to be using constantly is moving the layers up and down the layer stack. If it doesn't seems to work for you, check which keyboard you are using on your computer. I find that when I have my Spanish keyboard selected, it doesn't work. To check this, you should go to your System Preferences of your computer and check which keyboard keys are for brackets. Whilst working in Photoshop, you will be seeing a pop-up appear on the bottom left corner of the screen with the shortcuts that I'm using for you. If you forget, then you can just look at it and you will be reminded. I will encourage you to really start memorizing this. Before you know it, you will have internalized them so your hands will be just doing them for you. 13. Isolating Your Assets: Now that we have digitized our image, we will prepare it so that we can individually manipulate the elements. The first step towards doing this is to separate the elements from the background. If you have familiarized with Photoshop and would rather do these your own way, go ahead and skip this lesson. I'll explain quickly in a couple of slides how we're going to do this. First we are going to make our selection with the Magic Wand. Then we're going to apply the master we find a selection. Once we're happy with how it looks, we will erase our background. Now let's go step by step and I'll explain this better so you understand the process. First of all, why use a Layer Mask? Well if you decide to erase your background using the eraser tool, you could be destroying your image. You can always go back to a certain amount of steps by going to Edit, Undo or pressing Command Z. But if you go further in your project too many steps, then you won't be able to go back and you will lose your original image. But if you use a Layer Mask, you can modify it, remove part of it, or even delete it. Layer masks give you all the flexibility to modify them, making parts of your image invisible without actually removing your background. I'm going to duplicate my background image by right-clicking on it and selecting Duplicate Layer. The reason why I duplicate my layer is because I like to keep my originals image intact. Now I'm going to add another layer and fill it up with a strong color, for example purple, using the bucket tool. You can select it from the toolbar or press T. I'm going to lock this layer as I don't want to modify it. This is only going to serve me as a guide for when I erase my background. It will be much easier to see if my assets are well isolated and could work in a dark background as well. As you can see, you can't see this block of color because it's hidden by the assets layer. Now I'm going to show you how to add a mask to your image. On the top menu, go to Layer, down to Layer Mask and you have reveal or hide it all. Let's select Reveal. You will see that it has added a white layer and the image looks exactly the same. Now we go back and select Layer, Layer Mask and Hide All, then it will create a black layer mask. As you can see, now it has actually hidden all of the image. By pressing Command I, it will invert the color swapping it around. You can delete the Layer if you want. You can also create a layer mask from the bottom of the layer panel. You can click on this icon, another white mask. If you hold the Alt key, it will add it black. When mask is black you can see that it has hidden our image. This is very important. When the mask is black it hides the layer, and when it's white it shows it. It's important that you remember this fun when you add your mask. The first thing is that we're not going to erase our background by using the eraser or brush tool as it will be taking a lot of time to do so. Now because we want to erase our white background, we actually want to select it and erase it as it's going to be much easier than erasing it with a brush tool. To make the process of selecting the background easier, we're going to fix the levels of our elements. Sometimes when we scan our image, they can lose a bit of color depth. Press Command L, and the level windows will appear if you can find it, go to image adjustments levels. Move the handles to adjust the contrast. Move the middle handle to increase the color richness. The black one to increase the depth of the darker tones, and the white one to fix the brightness of your assets and make your white background clean. Remember that the Magic Wand tool selects pixels based on tone and color, and so by contrasting your image you will walk much better. Now we're going to select our background. From the tool panel, select the Magic Wand tool and make sure that the tolerance is set to 32. The tolerance options tells Photoshop how different other pixels can be in tone and color from the area we clicked on. By default, the tolerance value is set to 32. This means that Photoshop will select any pixels that are the same color as the area we clicked on, plus pixels that are 32 shades darker or 32 shades lighter. If we increase the tolerance, then the selection will include pale colors like very light shades of any other color. You can play with this handle and click in different areas to understand these better yourself. Click on Contiguous to make sure you only select your background. Otherwise the Magic Wand would select all the white pixels in your image. This means that if you have any flower with white areas, they would be selected as well. Click on the white background and you should see your selection being made because this will only select the white pixels, any dust or gray pixels might have been selected. There is a trick to fix this. Select Modify, Expand and set to one pixel. Now go back by selecting Modify, Contrast and set to one pixel. This is a quick way of getting rid of any unwanted selection that we might not be aware of. As we want to mask our background, to make it invisible we're going to inverse our selection to select our elements. To do this click Select from the top menu and click Inverse or select Shift Command I. The Magic Wand selection tool is great but it can be a bit dirty and imprecise. To fix this click on Select and Mask from the top menu. If you can't see this option make sure your selection tool is active on the toolbar. These will enable us to see the mask before we add it and make any modifications if we need to. In the view mode drop-down menu, you can select many ways in which you can see your mask. Always select on your skin and set transparency to 100 percent. This model works very well when you have a solid color under the image you're applying the mask on. In the global refinement tab, select Smooth and move the handle to 80. Play with the handles to really understand them. Set the contrast to 80 and Shift H to minus 80 as these will reduce your selection getting rid of any white border that might have been made. These are the settings which have worked best for my image. With all these tools I recommend playing with the sliders until you selection is much smoother, and most imperfections have been erased. Once you're happy with the look of your mask, click "Okay". Before applying an opaque mask, select the assets layer from the layer panel and click Q to enter Quick Mask Mode. You can also enter this mode by clicking on this icon on your toolbar. This is a type of mask that will allow you to actually see what has been masked and what hasn't. You can see that the unselected areas of the image are covered with a red mask when this mode is on. You can start modifying your mask by selecting parts of it and erasing them, or using the eraser tool. If for any reason your mask isn't working when you apply it, change the foreground color by pressing X. Because you cannot also struct areas of your mask, sometimes it can be confusing. Just remember to change the foreground to the opposite color, if yours isn't working. Have in mind that if you are selecting and erasing areas or using the eraser tool, your foreground color has to be set to black. If you are using the brush tool, it has to be set to white. I know that this can be confusing. The best thing you can do is press the key X to invert the foreground and the background color every time you see that your mask isn't working as you want. Start selecting the center of the flowers with the Magic Wand tool. Remember that you can change the tolerance if you feel that it isn't selecting all the pixels that you wanted to select. If you want to add a selection, you can do this by pressing the key Shift whilst clicking on the new areas. In my case, I'm increasing tolerance to 50, so it's easier to select the areas of the flowers in a quicker way. Once they have been selected, I can erase them from the mask. Take the time to select your assets modifier mask and really understand how to do this. It is really good to understand how mask work, and I really hope that I am making it clear. Sometimes it's difficult to explain. The main thing is that when you apply a mask, you can always modify the transparent areas without actually erasing them. When you're ready you can click the Quick mask button to see your selection again, or press the Q key again. Before applying the final mask, make sure that your white background is selected. Also make sure that your background color in the toolbar is set to black. Press the backspace on your keyboard to erase the area. Creating a strong mask is particularly important if we're looking to create any add works with a dark background. If you're using your elements over a white background, you can always get away with it being less defined. Right-click on the top of your mask, apply Layer Mask. As you can see, now your elements have been separated from the background. You can erase the brush strokes exercises as we won't be using them. I have some centers of flowers that I did in the end and are repeated. I'll go ahead and get rid of the ones that I don't like. It's better to only leave the elements that we're happy with. Go ahead and save your botanical elements in the folder you created in the format PSD. We're going to use them later. I like to keep all my saved elements into our library as I find they can be invaluable for future projects. I recommend you start doing your own as soon as possible, and we'll talk more about this towards the end of the project. Save your image in your specific folder and see you in the next class. We will start separating our elements into different layers. 14. Assets Into Separate Layers: This class we're going to separate our assets into different layers. This way we can work with them individually when it comes to building foliage and flowers. We are going to select each element and put it onto its own layer. To do this in a quick and easy way, use the Lasoo tool to select our elements, press "Command Shift J" to cut our element, and place it on a new layer. You can also do this by right-clicking in the element and selected layer via cut. After you have your element on the new layer, click on the hide to hide it from you. Repeat this process for every element on the page. Once you have finished placing your elements into their own layers, we're going to open two new documents. We will transfer our flora elements into one and the leaves into another. Both of these will be larger Canvases as it is better to design a good resolution from the beginning. We will create a poster that can also be downsides data to be used as a greeting card. But if you want to turn a greeting card which is small into a poster, your images will probably lose resolution, and my look blurry and undefined. The first document we're going to create will be named flowers, and the second will be called leaves. When you open a new document, check that the resolution is at 300 pixels. After creating them, return back to the botanical elements staffing Photoshop. We're going to select all of the layers which will be used to create flowers. To select the layer without searching from the layer stack, you can hold Control Alt and click over the element you want to select. If you want to select more than one, keep the Control Alt selected, pressing Shift, start selecting all of the elements. Right-click on the top and click duplicate layers. In destination document, click on the dropdown menu and select flowers, and press "Okay". Group all of the layers with comments and G and make them invisible using the eye in the layer pilot. Now we're going to select the leaves and stems and repeat this process. Your floral elements now appear here. Go ahead and save and close the three documents, flowers, leaves, and botanical assets. Before turning your botanical assets into flowers and leaves, please go to the resources gallery and download the transforming tools I have left for you in there. In the next lesson, we're going to cover all the ways of transforming elements in shape and color. Learning and practicing these skills will allow you to follow the next lessons better. It will also give you the independence when working on your own projects in the future. If you think you know them already, feel free to skip ahead to the next lesson. 15. Transforming Tools: In this class we're going to cover all my favorite ways of transforming elements in shape and color. Mastering these skills will allow you to create stunning new designs. Now, I would like you to open the document that I have lived through in the resources gallery called transforming tools. Here you can see the two layers in one stem. First, the basics scale. Duplicate the first layer by pressing and holding alt. Place it just above the scale text. Press "Command T", right-click and scale. You can do this by moving your mouse to one of the corners and grabbing it to the center. Experiment with stretching your leaf vertically and horizontally to make it bigger or smaller. If you hold down shift was stretching it into either direction, you can maintain the original ratio and ensure that image is not distorted. Not we're going to user rotation tool. To select the layer where the main leaf is press and hold control alt and click on it. This will instantly select the layer without having to choose it from the layer stack. Get used to selecting layers in this way. As it is really important when your document becomes larger and you're managing many of them. Now duplicate it and place it on top of the rotate text. Press "Command T", right-click and select "Rotate." An easier way to do this is by pressing "Command T" and moving the mouse to a bounding box corner where the icon of rotation will appear. As you can see, now we have rotate our limit both clockwise and anticlockwise. You can change the center by dragging it to any part of your image. This will be handy when working on the flowers. Duplicate this by pressing out and drag it to the skew text. "Command T, " right-click, and skew. With this tool, you can slam the image vertically and horizontally. Place another normal leaf above the distort. "Command T" distort. These stretches an item in all directions. Perspective, place another normal leaf above perspective, press "Command T" and then perspective. This will slant the perspective. Place another normal leaf above warp, "Common T" warp. This is one of my favorite tools when forming leaves and petals, it places a mesh on top of your element and you can manipulate the shape in all directions. This is one of the most useful transparent tools as it gives the most flexibility. Get a normal leaf and put it on top of the Lasso tool texts. With the Lasso tool, we can modify the borders of shapes to create new ones. Puppet wrap, now press and hold "Command and Alt" and click on top of the stem to select this layer without having to search for it on the layer's stack. Press "Alt" and drag it to Puppet warp. Now click on "Edit" Puppet warp. This will place a mesh over your image and you can draw pins on these mesh to transform the image using these key points. You can target specific areas to distort walls leaving the rest of the image intact. To rotate around the pin, a fixed numbers of degrees. Press "Alt" and drag to rotate as necessary. If you deform your element and you want to raise that pin, hover the mouse over the pin, press "All" until you see the scissors icon appear and click to remove this pin. You will see that your image is going back to the original position. This is a favorite tool of mine and I have used countless times when creating prints for the fashion industry. I find it particularly useful for creating stems. Hue, saturation, drag another normal leaf on top of the hue saturation and lightness. Now we're going to look at how we can easily manipulate the color of our images. There are two ways of doing this. The first way is to add an adjustment layer. This will allow you to edit the color and tonal adjustment without permanently changing them. It will affect the whole image unless you apply a mask. The good thing about it is that you can edit and discard your adjustments or restore it to their original image at anytime. The bad thing is that you won't be able to move your elements so freely and your file will be getting confusing very quickly. The second way of doing this is by applying the adjustments directly to the image you want to change. This is what we are going to be working on. You get used to using the command. To do this, you can go to image adjustments, hue saturation, or press "Command U". You can move the handles as necessary. You can also select which colors to change separately. For example, if you have a red flower with a yellow center and you only want to change this part, you can select which color to adjust from the drop down menu. Multiply, drag another normal leaf on top of the layered multiply. We're going to select our layer by pressing comment and clicking on the top of the layer on the layer panel. As you can see, this has instantly selected our leaf. Next, we shall create a layer on top of it and we'll fill it up with a solid color. Select your image by pressing "Command D". On a layer panel, go to the drop down menu and select multiply. To see how this can affect our leaf, press "Command U" and move the handles of hue saturation to see a live preview of the changes. When you're happy with it, select "Okay". Select both layers from the layer panel and press "Comment E" to merge them. If you want to play with this color changing tools in your designs, bear in mind the intent of your original color palette and try not to stay too far from this unless you actively want to. Color overlay, now we will duplicate our last normal leaf and place it on top of color overlay. Select your leaf by pressing comment and click on top of the layer preview in the layer palette to make a selection. Create a new layer and use the color bucket from the left toolbar or press "G" and select the color you wish to overlay. In the drop down menu and play with the different effects that can be achieved this way. By pressing "Command U" you can modify the color you have overlaid until you're happy with your results. Once you are happy, select the two layers and press "Comment E" to merge them into one. Well done. We have now covered all the main tools that we will be using to turn our leaves into foliage and petals into flowers. Join me in the next video and let's start getting creative with them. 16. From Leaves to Foliage: In this class we're going to transform our stems and leave elements into beautiful foliage. We will be using mostly the tools we covered in the previous video. As you can see, this can be acquired repetitive process. I'm going over and over again mentioning the shortcuts I'm using, and I hope that by doing so, you'll start using them too. Open your leaves documents and organize your items on the top of your page. By pressing Alt and clicking on the thicker stem you have painted, you will duplicate it and drag into the bottom of your page. This will be the starting element from which a foliage will grow. I'm going to press "Command+T", to increase the height, and narrow our stem at the top by using the Perspective tool. Move the handles to the center until you see the stem has become thinner. Press "Enter" or click "Okay". Now click on "Edit", Puppet Warp, and place two pins on the bottom to prevent it from moving from this point. Moving to the top of the stem, place another pin here. Press "Alt" and rotate slightly to bend it. Press "Enter". Let's duplicate our stem by pressing "Alt" and dragging the stem. Press "Command+T", Right Click, flip horizontal, and move the center of your stem until it joins the first one. We want to move our stem to the back of our layers, so it looks like it grows from the main one. To quickly do this press "Command+Shift" right bracket, and as you can see, our layer has now been sent to the bottom. We are now going to press "Command+Alt" and click on top of our second stem, duplicate it by pressing Alt once you drag it. Press "Command+T", right click, and flip horizontal. We are going to go with the mouse to the bottom corner of the transforming box to make it smaller and we are going to reposition it to make sure the bottom joins with the other stem. Now that we have a good solid skeleton, we're going to start the offshoots. You can do this by using parts of your stem and transforming the shape so that they are smaller. Press "Command" and with the mouse, drag the mouse until you enclose all the elements to select all the layers quickly. Press "Command+G" to group them. If you wish to maintain the stem separately, duplicate the group, name it stems, send it to the bottom of the page, and make it invisible. Now merge the other group and name it stems. Now we're going to start adding the leaves to our stem. Select the leave you want to use, now duplicate it, and start transforming it. I'm going to rotate it, the formula bid with a drop tool, until I'm happy with how it looks. I'm going to move the leave and place it where I'd like to be. I'm going to go ahead and repeat this process to fill up the stem with leaves. I'll be using most of the transforming tools we used in the previous class in a creative and intuitive way. I would encourage you to play around with the scale and shape of the leaves to make the foliage look rich. Once your stem is full of leaves, you can select it all and merge them together and name them foliage. Voila. We have our first foliage ready. Now you know how to create foliage from your stems and leaves. By repeating these steps, duplicate, transform, and join the both stems together, you can go from this to this. Of course you can't just jump from one to another in five minutes, but you can make a whole tree out of a single leaf and stem. Isn't that incredible? Here I'm showing you four stages of the process and as you can see, our four stand on their own. I'm going to show you how to join two stems together to create a bigger tree or foliage. I'm going to elongate the bottom part by selecting it, pressing "Command+T" and dragging it down. Once it looks longer, deselect it by pressing "Command+D", duplicate the layer to create a second stem. You can deform them with the Puppet Warp tool until they look different. Now we are going to join both stems by using our transforming tools. Now that I have guided you through the process of creating foliage, you are going to repeat the process using the second leave. If your two leaves are too similar, you can transform it or change the color using the tools we have learned already. If you're struggling with this process, this is a good opportunity to play the chapter again and have another go. In the next class, we are going to turn our petals into flowers. This will increase the difficulty a little bit, but I think that if you haven't familiarized with what we've covered so far, you shouldn't have any problems following me. I have left some foliage references in the project gallery for you to download. 17. From Petals to Flowers: Remember, all those floral references I said I have lived during the project gallery. Now's the time to make use of them. We're not just going to turn our petals into flowers, we are also going to compose flowers in different positions. It's easy to represent the flower when we look at it from a frontal view. But how does it look from one side or from the bottom? Observation is the key. We're going to open our floral document that we have previously saved. We're going to start by organizing our elements to the top of the page, so that we can make use of them whenever we want. We might not be using all of them and that's okay. We're going to create at least three flowers in two different positions each. Take your first petal and duplicate it on to the center of the page. Duplicate it again. Drag it to the bottom of the petal and flip vertically. Now, we're going to grab the two petals and duplicate them. This time we're going to do this on our layer stack as we want them to be on the top. Now, rotate them until they are horizontal. Select the center that you like and send the layer to the top by pressing command alt and right bracket. You can always go ahead and paint with your brush with some more elements. Now, we have our flower on the first frontal position. We are going to select all the layers and merge them. You can also group them if you think that you want to make some changes to it later. We're going to create the same flower, but in another position by transforming our petals. Duplicate the petal again, duplicate it again, and transform, rotate it to the right. Now, use your wrap tool until you've have adjusted the perspective of the leaf so that it falls to the right. If your borders are not looking particularly neat, then you can grab the eraser and that's a tool and make them nicer. Duplicate the petal we have just transformed and place it on to the left hand side. Duplicate the top petal and place it to the bottom. For the frontal petal, we're going to select the lasso by pressing L and cut and erase the top part of our petal. An easy way to represent the frontal petal is by remembering the heart shape. By this point, you should be familiarized with the commands to select and deselect your items. Now, place your petal on the center of the flower and send it to the top by pressing command shift and right bracket. Select the top petal and transform it's height. As you can see now, we have this flower in a different perspective. Choose the center of your flower, place it in the center and below the front petal so that it looks as is in the back. If you like, you can paint more items to it. You can do this by selection of your brush, tool or B. Go ahead and flatten your flower. We have now transformed our first petal into flower and I hope you have started to understand the logic of how to do so. Now group the two flowers, name them as Florals 1 and put them on the bottom of your document as we're going to save them for later. From now on, you can start creating your flowers or your own way. We're going to select our second petal, duplicate it and grab it on top of the center of our page. Place this duplicate on the bottom of your other petal and flip it vertically. Select the two layers, duplicate them and rotate them horizontally to form your first flower. Select the center that you like and send the layer to the top by pressing command alt and right bracket. You can again go to modify your center until you are happy with it. We're going to select all of the layers, merge them, and put them aside. A useful thing to do is constantly zoom out from our flower to check that it is in proportion. Now, we are going to create our second flower in a different position. This process will be very similar to the first flower, but this time we would not have to cut our bottom petal with the lasso tool as it already has a heart shape. Duplicate your second petal again, and place it in the center of the page. Select your top petal again, rotate it from the center and drag it until it is horizontal. Transform it by using the wrap tool until you have adjusted the perspective and the petal falls to the right. Duplicate the front petal and drag it to the bottom. Now, choose the center for your flower and place it in the center. If you can't see it, your layer might be somewhere down in the layer stack. Press command shift and right bracket to bring it to the top. Send front petal to the front and you have the same flower in the second position. Select them all and merge them. Group the two flowers, send them to the back, put them on the bottom of the layer stack, name the group Florals 2 and make it invisible. If the color of your petal is too similar to the previous one, you can change the color by following one of the methods we saw in the previous class. This time I'm going to form the shape of my petal before turning it into a flower. I will be using both the lasso and transforming tools. With the lasso tool, I'm going to select the top of my petal and erase it. As I've created a new petal, I'm going to duplicate it and set it aside to form more flowers of this type. Now, duplicate the petal, place it on the bottom, and flip it vertically. On the layer panel, duplicate them and rotate them until they are horizontal. Select the four petals, merge them and duplicate the layer on your layer stack. Rotate them and now select all the petals. Duplicate them again and rotate them. Choose the center of your flower, place it in the center and if your layer is not visible, send it to the top by pressing command shift and right bracket. You can alter the colors of the center of your flower if you wish. As you can see, I'm here modifying the border of my center because it was to run and it looks too unnatural. I am doing this by using the brush tool, by pressing alt and grabbing the colors with the eyedropper tool. Go ahead and merge the layers, second position. This time we're going to cheat a little bit. Duplicate the whole flower. With a Rectangular Marquee Tool, click and drag until you have the bottom of your flower selected. Press command T and decrease the head and alter the perspective. This is a visual trick to make our flowers look like it's bending away from us. For the last one, we're going to grab the petal that we previously saved and rotate it by placing the center on the bottom part of the petal. Duplicate it to the left and flip horizontally. As you can see, we have now created an opening flower. Group the three of them and name the group flowers three. As you can see, with these petals, you can create all types of flowers in different positions, shapes, scale, and color. Now that we have created three flowers in three different positions each. I'm going to go ahead and just leave my screen recording and putting on really high-speed. You can keep watching and then this might give you some ideas into new flowers you can make or just like how to combine different shapes or you just I think seeing sometimes can be really good for learning, but if you want to stop this video right now and start doing your own, please go ahead and do so. Now that we have created our flowers. I hope you have got the logic behind it. I have guided you through the process, but if you fully understand it, it will turn into a very intuitive and creative way of working. There are no limits on how many flowers you can create and you can change the colors, the shapes of the original petals. By doing so, you can suddenly have a whole flower library to use across different designs. Why don't you share the page of the flowers that you have created so that everyone can see. The more the better. In the next lesson, we're going to start composing our image by mixing the flowers and the foliage together. We're also going to be adding some texts that it can be a thank you word, I love you, or whatever you want and this will make not only our hard work look more modern, but also it would give it some purpose. 18. Combining Flowers and Foliage: In this lesson, we're going to combine our flowers and foliage elements to create a botanical library. I want to encourage you to experiment with a few important concepts, vary the flower positions throughout your plants. These will prevent them from looking static. Compose plants at different scales, add flower buds to make your plants more dynamic and bring them to life. Also vary the color of your elements so you can create more than one plant with the same elements. I'm going to go through the methodology that we're going to use before we start designing. We will open the documents, flowers and foliage, and we will treat them as libraries. We will create a third document named flowers and foliage, and duplicate the assets that we want to use in here. We already went through this process at the beginning of the class when separating our petals and leaves into flowers and foliage documents. Once we have the assets that we want to combine, we will start creating new objects to put our flowers, create new flower buds, and add little leaves here and there to make the plan look reach. By using the transforming tools that we have already covered, it will be a matter of moving your elements around and with patients, making them work well together. Once we have our plant finished, we're going to save it. Create a folder within your botanical composition one and name it botanical library. You will add all the new plants in here. Save your first plant as flowers and foliage and close it. It is better to close the documents and open new ones to avoid overriding compositions that we have already made. Then we're going to start the process all over again. Open an A3 document and duplicate the assets you want to use and save it as flowers and foliage two. Before you know it, you will have a whole botanical library made out of the petals and leaves that we painted in whiter color. My top tips are, draw on your offshoots with a brush tool to give dynamism to your plant. If you don't have a drawing tablet, this might be difficult. If this is the case, you can always duplicate your stems and create new objects from them. Add some flower buds, create new elements out of the ones you already have by using the Lasso Tool and transforming them. I'm going to go through this process myself. We are going to be using the transforming tools that we already seen in the previous lessons. I'm going to open a new A3 document and save it flowers and foliage. I'm going to open my flowers and leaves documents and start importing the [inaudible] I want to use. In my leaves document, I'm going to flatten the groups into single layers to make the process of duplicating them easier. If you want to save your layer document, you can save your document with a name foliage flattened. That way you will be able to differentiate which file has layers, and which file is flattened. You might be wondering why does my flower documents have so many layers? It's because the flowers are grouped within types of flowers. But it's not that every petal and center of the flower is in a different layer, they are just grouped by types. I will play my video in high speed so you can understand the process I go through when creating something of this type. Even if the plants are different, the process is always the same. It's about how you multiply your existing elements into new ones using your creativity. The things I'm going to have in mind when designing are the scale and positions of my flowers. I want to make sure that I vary them throughout the plant, and creating new flower buds as they are easy to incorporate due to their small size and make the plant look alike. I'm creating new offshoots with my brush tool as that gives me the freedom to grow my plant in different directions. This is a very intuitive process and zooming out of your file will help you to have perspective and see if the proportions work well. You should have a few here, flowers in different positions and leave the blank spaces with little leaves and flower buds. At this point you can stop this video and start creating your own library or you can keep watching. As I already explained in the beginning of the lesson, whenever you finish a plant, you should save your file in a numbered order and close the document to avoid overwriting the new ones you already have. If your plant is looking too busy, you raze some leaves to create space for new flowers. You can also cut them and make them smaller. Once you finish, try varying the scales and colors to create new plants. As you can see, you don't always have to make intricate volumes. You can create bigger plants using less elements as well. It's important to keep the proportions in mind when doing this. If you're using a bigger flower then it needs a bigger support. This is why I'm duplicating a thicker stem instead of using a brush tool to draw it like I did with the offshoots. You can either import a part of your stem or you can cut it out of the foliage you already have using the Lasso tool. I am changing the color of my flower by duplicating it, placing it on top, and changing its color to yellow. I am then erasing it center with a soft ground brush so you can see through the orange of the bottom layer. You can get very creative when changing the look of your flowers. Remember to send some elements to the front and some to the back. I hope that by the end of this lesson you have start creating your own botanical library. I really recommend you start building a library. Keep all your flowers, plants, and botanical assets saved. I have been working in the visual industry for years in all projects, and you won't believe how handy is to have a well-organized library. Many of my prints and designs have items that I have taken out of my library. I like to use my botanical assets across different designs, be organized, and store your library in the Cloud if possible, and I promise that it won't be long until you have enough material to be able to work in challenging projects without having to paint all of your assets from the start. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about fonts. I will go through the different types of fonts that you can find, and how they can be used to achieve different styles. 19. Let's Talk About Fonts: Let's talk about fonts. In this lesson, I'm going to go through the different types of fonts that you can use to achieve a certain style. Even if I often choose my fonts in a very intuitive way, I think that knowing the different types you can find can be very useful. As we saw in the color palette lesson, colors and fonts play a very important role when it comes to defining a style for your AdWord. There are four main categories of fonts out there. Of course, there are many [inaudible] categories and variants, but these are the ones I would like you to get to know better. Serif, Sans Serif, Script, and hand-written fonts. First, the Serif fonts. This is a great font for when you want to achieve an elegant, old-fashioned, sophisticated, and classical look. These are just a couple of good Serif fonts that you can find out there. Some are more classical, like the Times New Romans and Baskerville, and some are more modern like the Bodoni, which I use a lot when designing the flyers for my workshops. Then, you have the Sans Serif font. With this one, you can achieve a modern, minimalist, and clean look. Some Sans Serif fonts when using capital letters, were great for writing personal messages, like thank you. Script fonts are elegant, romantic, and sometimes they can be fancy. They are great for achieving a classical and delicate look, and they work very well when being used in things like wedding invitations. The handwritten fonts are sometimes similar to the Script ones, but because they mimic the flow of natural handwriting they can be much less formal. You have all sorts of style in the Internet, and they are great for giving a personal touch to your design. You can download free fonts from these three websites. Dafont is my favorite websites for searching for handwritten, old-school, and many other categories which are varied and fun to use. If I need to use a more serious or corporate font, I tend to go for Google Fonts. There are thousands of free license font families ready to use. Font Squirrel is a website that I don't use that often, but I wanted to leave it here in case you want to have a look. Now that I've covered the different types of fonts that you can use, I'd like you to browse the Internet and see if you can find a couple that you would like to try in your final composition. In the next lesson, we will create a minimal composition using one of the botanical plants made out of combining flower and foliage, and a personal message of your choice. Download a font you like to try, and see you in the next lesson. 20. Minimal Composition: Hello again. In this lesson we will compose a poster or greeting card with a minimal look. This will be a fun process and it will be easy to start with. You will learn how to add text to your composition and personalize your font. I will use the first composition in the image, but there are a couple of ideas you could use as well. You can place your word on the bottom, you can split your word in two and place your plant in the middle, or you can place your text above your plant. One thing to have in mind before we start is to keep your design balanced by constantly checking the white or negative space within your composition. The space between the plant and the borders of your canvas, should look similar to the A. Equally, the space you live between your word and your plants should be balanced, so they don't look too cluttered. I'm going to open a new A3 document and save it as thank you card 1. I will create a folder within my botanical composition and name it thank you cards. I will save this design and my future ones in it. The second step is to go to our botanical library and choose the plant that we want to work with. I want to use the first one, so I'm going to open the file. Once it's open, I will duplicate my plant into my thank you card document. For this design, I will use an Arial font, which comes with every computer. Even if it might not seem the most exciting font to use, by changing its characteristics, it will look great. You can download many fonts from the websites I mentioned in the previous lesson, so feel free to do so. To add text, you need to select the type tool. You can press the key T, or select this icon on the toolbar. Click on the image and type, thank you. As I said, I am going to use an Arial font. To change its characteristics, open the character panel located under the Window tab on the tab menu. In this panel you can change all the characteristics of your font. You can change the size, the tracking between your characters, change the vertical and horizontal scale. You can change the color by selecting one on these Window, or selecting a color from your plant using the eyedropper that instantly appears, when you place the mouse over the plant. I will choose an orange color to make my text look lighter and balance with the rest of my design. You can make your text bold, italic, turn it into capital letters, underline it, and a couple of things that I normally don't use. As I am placing the font on the bottom of my design, I want to give the impression that it's working as a solid ground to support my plant. That is why I will turn my word into capital letters and make it Arial bold. Changing the trucking between the characters is one of my favorite things to do, especially when you want a text to breathe and look modern. Now that I have added my text, I will adjust the color, and by zooming out my canvas, check that the proportions of my elements are right and work well. Now we have a minimal look design, that in my opinion works very well and looks great. Once you're happy with your design, go and save it. In the exporting lesson, I will quickly go through the different ways you can save your design, so you can use both in print and digital. Before leaving you to design your card, I will quickly record my screen to show the process I normally go through when choosing a font. This can be a difficult process when you have too many options, the most important thing is to follow what you like and trust that is good for your design. To choose the fonts I like, first I click on the drop-down menu on the character panel. This is where you can select the fonts that you want to use. By pressing my up and down arrow, I can start scrolling through the ones I have installed in my computer. When I see one that I like, I duplicate my layer and make the one on the bottom invisible. Then I start the process again, and by scrolling up and down, I can start saving a couple of fonts that captured my attention. There are fonts that look better in capital letters, and there are fonts that don't, like the handwritten ones. Once I have chosen a couple of funds, I can start changing their characteristics, and pick the ones I like the most. Unless I have a certain look in mind, I go through this process in a very intuitive way. It's about scrolling down until something captures my attention enough to save it. The later fonts like the hand script on, will look better above the plant. This font for instance is very light and airy. We shouldn't put all the heaviness of the plant on top. Imagine a couple of sticks supporting the weight of a whole house. Think about it this way. If you like your fonts on the bottom, make them bold and heavy. If you want your fonts on the top of your composition, make them thin and delicate. There are three design layers that I showed you at the beginning of this lesson. Why don't you try making your own design and share it into the project gallery. You can create one card or a poster for each and every plant that you have composed with your botanical assets. Before you know it, you will achieve a whole collection by working this way. In the next lesson, we're going to design a second type of card or poster. This time we're going to use many of our plants that we created. This will be a more scenic composition, and the focus will be more on the plants than on the words. Make sure that you save your files with different numbers as it's very easy to override designs that you have already made. 21. Complex Composition: In this lesson, we're going to see how to create another type of players for thank you card. This time we will use three or four plans to achieve an atmospheric and more scenic composition. If things to have in mind while designing something like this, is the proportion of the plants. Every plant that we add to the page has a weight. We don't want to crowd all the heavier elements into one area of the composition. This will be an asymmetrical design, and by contrasting some of the larger elements with several smaller elements, we will achieve equilibrium. Imagine that this rectangle is a window that looks into her garden. There were perspective works is that whatever is closer to us looks bigger and the things that are under distance looks smaller. I'm going to choose my heavier and bigger plant and put it on the foreground of my composition. Towards this sides, I will choose plants that are smaller in scale and look more like bushes or trees. If you want to add plants on the top, is better to add foliage on its own as placing flowers upside down would look unnatural. You can see in these two images how important it is to have these things in mind when it comes to composing a balance scene. With this principle, you can go ahead and start designing your own card where you can stay with me while I designed mine. Open a new A3 document and save it under the folder, Thank you card. Open up the plants that you have created and start duplicating the layers into the new document. I will make them invisible and start by adding some texts in the center of my Canvas. If you want to change the size of your font, you can do it in the Character panel as we saw in the previous lesson, or you can press Command T and transform it scale, choose a font and one study found one that works well. Start placing your plants around it. Start moving your assets around and have in mind that it's better to place the heavier plants or flowers on the bottom and the lighter ones on the top, bar the skills of each plant and sends them to the back by sending the layers to the bottom of the layer stack and some to the front, by sending the layers to the top. You don't have to fit all botanical assets in this design. I hope that by zooming in and out and making layers visible and invisible, you will start to discover for yourself which assets you leave and which asset you leave out. When working on the top area of my composition I usually only use foliage to avoid having flowers upside down. For this, I recommend bringing some of the foliage you previously designed on its own without the flowers. You can feel any unwanted gaps by cutting one little piece of foliage out of wonder plans. I'm placing it here and there. Any flower little leaves or flower bud will do the trick. This composition can also work very well on a dark background and it will look like a night scene. Why don't you try and design a cat of your own using all your plants. You can try different layers like the ones I'm showing you here, explore and enjoy the possibilities that mixing your botanical hand painted elements, have when you use them in Photoshop this way, once you're done, share card with us in the project gallery. Remember to use your designs with unique names. In the next lesson, we will go through the different ways that you can export your images to print or share online. 22. Exporting: Now we're going to export our image. It's really important to decide what we want to our artwork to be used in beforehand. It's not the same exporting your art for Instagram posts which everyone will be seeing in a screen like this size or printed on a poster, which is going to be the size. The first thing to say is that I like to keep all my files in a PSD format, Photoshop format. I will maintain the quality of my image and also preserve my layers. These will give me the ability to edit the components of my documents, such as the characters in the text layer, the individual elements, or my adjustment layers. To understand the type of files that we want to use for each occasion, it's important to know the difference between lossless and lossy compression file formats. When we save our files in a looseless format, it means that our file will get smaller in size, but without losing its image quality, this is generally better for printing. A lossy file format is going to sacrifice some of the information like colors in detail, but it will make our file much smaller in size, which will be helpful when uploading our designs to our website. Having said that, when printing your poster or reading it, the best format to go for is the tiff one. It's among the highest quality graphic formats available and it will preserve the quality of your image. Go to File, Save as, and in the drop-down menu, select Tiff. I don't preserve the layers as my file will be too heavy and that is why I like to keep my Photoshop format saved on my computer. On image compression, I will choose LZW, which means lossless type of compression. This will make the file smaller without losing its quality when printing. I normally leave the other options like they are by default and press "OK". Occasionally printers will request a PDF format, go to File, Save As, and select Photoshop PDF in the drop-down menu. If you select small file, then you will lose a lot of quality and if you choose press quality, it will use the highest quality settings. Now let's see how to save our image for the Web. Go to Menu, Expert and Save for Web. This is a great feature of Photoshop. As our image is static and it doesn't have a transparent background, JPEG format will be perfect. These file format does a great job when compressing your files without losing too much of the image quality. Smaller files tend to load quicker and so this is the best option when you want to use your image digitally. Here you have the quality slider. You can increase the number and make your image look better or decrease it and he will look worse. My suggestion is to leave this number at 17. This will make a great medium file that you will preserve most of the quality, but will cut the size in half. Make sure that the sRGB is active. This means that the web browsers will render the color correctly. You can resize it to the size in here, and you can use this Preview button to see how it will look actually on a browser window. This feature is great. You will see the size, quality, and dimensions of it. Now that we have our image exported, we're almost done with this class. Join me on the next video where we'll share some final thoughts with you and I will say goodbye. 23. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You have made it to the end of this class. As I hope you have seen, you can really easily create beautiful digital artworks from hand-printed elements. It still amazes me the practicality and beauty you can achieve by working this way. Have in mind that you do not only have to create a whole composition, but you can use this way of working whenever you need to complement our botanical composition. I hope you have enjoyed this class as much as I have enjoyed creating it. I will be creating new classes in the future where these techniques we have learned will be really useful. Please share your thoughts, different applications of the project. If you print it, take a photograph and share it as well. I can't wait to see what you will create. This is my first Skillshare class, but I will be creating new ones related to watercolor, print design, how to enhance your creativity, and much more. If you liked this class, please follow me and you will be notified for when my new class is out. You can also follow me on Instagram to see what other types of my art I like to do. If you upload your artwork to Instagram, use the #TheThankYouProject, so we can all see what other creatives have done. Also, please leave a review if you found this class useful in any way, enjoyed it, and learned a new skill. Let me know if this class met your expectations, what did you enjoy the most, and what can be improved? All of your comments will be very valuable for when I make my future classes. I hope you enjoyed this class as much as I enjoyed recording it. I have learned a lot from the process and I hope that you have too. Thank you so much and keep exploring your creativity.