Chinoiserie - Design Your Own Elegant Print

1. Introduction & What You'll Learn: Welcome to the series of short classes where I'm going to share my personal process of creating a print from start to finish. Hi, my name is Vinita, an illustrator and a designer based in Singapore. In today's class, we will be creating a hand drawn print inspired by traditional Sin vasari. The medium I will use to create this print is watercolor pencil colors. You can use any medium of your choice. And I'll be guiding you step by step through my entire process for creating this print in Photoshop. A technique I'll be showing you to create another version of this same print. For your class project, create an illustration of any elements or a pattern inspired by the Shin Wasii style. I have included a PDF file with a mood board, a list of suggested elements, and example sketches of elements for your reference. Feel free to use these as inspiration or even trace them to help you get started with your first Sn vasori inspired print. This resource is designed to give you a strong starting point for building your own unique pattern. I hope this series can inspire you to create your own print centered around similar themes and topics. So see you in the class. 2. Chinoiserie Print Process: Mood board and research. These are essential first steps when creating a print. You can create a very basic mood board as it helps to visually organize these ideas, allowing you to see a cohesive theme. Three important thing that you can observe are the color palette, motive or the elements, and the illustration style. Or you can even create a trend board that can look something like this, a collage or a snapshot of what's trending in the industry around the similar style. Here are the list of common elements that you might want to consider. So once I decide on my elements, I start with my first initial rough sketches. These prints are typically very intricate, featuring lush blooming flowers like peonies or cherry blossoms. A lot of twisted branches that gives a very storybook quality feel to it. Your illustration can be done digitally or with any traditional medium on paper. I have created my print on paper using watercolor pencil colors, and I will be walking you through my entire process. Here I'm using an A three size basic mixed media paper. It's 300 GSM, and the quality of paper you choose can depend on the medium you're using for your illustration. Once I'm ready with my rough sketch, I'll erase and lighten the whole sketch. So the pencil marks are not visible on my final illustration. When I'm adding these colors and shading, I'm also referring to the mood board for the illustration style. You can choose any traditional medium of your choice, like watercolor, guauch or even markers. Fashion brands such as dam and Gucci have recently incorporated this print style into their collections. You can adapt, modernize and incorporate this print to reflect your own unique style. One very important tip is, if you have a clean outline, it is easier to remove the background. So while you are in your illustration process, make sure to have clean and finished lines. Once you're ready with all the elements, our next step is to scan. One of the very important thing to keep in mind while scanning is to scan on a very high resolution that is minimum of 300 DPI. Other than that, I don't use any other editing setting while scanning. After scanning, we import this image in Photoshop. The first step here is to duplicate this image or this layer that is Command J, just so I have an extra copy of it. I'll hide my first copy. Next, we'll go to images, adjustments, and levels. Here you'll find these tiny little three arrows. We'll move the first one that will brighten up our image. Second one for some saturation and contrast. And the third one is very important. It will make our background a little more white and clear. You can adjust them slightly until you're satisfied with your results. Our next step is to remove the background. It is easier to remove when you have a clean white background. Once you're done, click Okay, and we'll move on to the Magic Wand tool. I'll select the Magic Wand tool. I keep my tolerance very high in 50-70, and I'll click anywhere on the white background and tap delete on my keypad. If you see any other white backgrounds in between these illustration, select them separately and delete again. Next, we'll add a black background layer below this. So I will add a new layer and I will fill it with black color. Or any other dark color. This is to make sure the background is removed properly, and we have a very clean, cleared motif. I will zoom in and check each part of this motif if there is any part of white background left. I will select my eraser tool with a smaller brush size. Zoom in and erase if there is any rough edges or white background. There are plenty of ways to remove the background in both Photoshop and Procreate. This can also depend on the type of motif or the medium of illustration you've used. Now I have all my elements ready with cleaned up backgrounds. Make sure you have all your motive files open. Next, we'll create a new canvas so that we can start building up our print. Press Command N on your keyboard to create a new document. I will be creating my print on 5,000 by 5,000 pixel. This can depend on your client or the type of print. Next, I'll drag and drop all the elements into this canvas. Select the layer, hold it, go to the canvas and drop in the center. I'll repeat the same for the other motives too. Once I have all the elements on my canvas, I will select all these elements and group them and duplicate. So that I have an extra copy on this canvas. I will hide the first group and open the folder for the second one. Now we can start arranging our elements to create our print, hide all the other elements, and I will start working with one element at a time. So before I even started my illustration for these motifs, my plan was to create this trailing print where I have these branches connecting each other and creating this continuous flow. Now to place my third motif, I will switch on my Pattern Preview. For that, I'll go to View and click Pattern Preview. I'm trying to place these elements in a way that the branches look connected and looks like a continuous trail. Now, to fill in these empty gaps and the negative space, with my Lasso tool, I will copy paste these tiny elements and arrange them to the different parts of the print. So you can copy paste tiny elements from your main motif, or you can even illustrate separate small secondary elements that you can add in the end to create a nice busy print. So I'm happy with my print now. Let's see some different background colors. For your background colors, too, you can refer to your mood board or the trend board. There's a technique I want to show you to create another version of the same print, for which the first step is to merge all the layers. Before you merge, make sure you have an extra copy of this print. You can duplicate the group with all the elements. Next, open the new group, select all the layers with the elements. Right click and click on merge layers. Now I have the whole print on just one layer. Next, go to image. Under image, go to adjustments. Under adjustments, select Gradient Map. Now, this will create a gradient effect for your whole print. Tap on this little bar. And here I already have some custom made gradient effect here. I'll select one of them. My goal here is to create this gradient effect with just one color. That is the blue color, different tones of blue. Now, on this bar, you can adjust the colors and even change the color. You can hold this tiny square and move around to see the effect on the print. You can adjust this until you're satisfied with the effect. You can even change the color by selecting the square and then clicking on this tiny rectangle, and you can adjust the color here. Once you're happy with the results, click Okay. And again, click Okay. And this is how the print looks like with different background colors. I hope this class and examples inspire you to create your own unique print with this beautiful print style and technique. Thank you for taking this class with me.