Classic Illustration - Drawing From Objects & Images

1. Intro to Artistic Illustrations - Learn how to draw from objects: Hi, everyone. My name is [inaudible] and I'm a pattern designer and illustrator from Stockholm, Sweden. In many of my designs, I like to have a hand-drawn, detailed, and artistic look, whether it's for a pattern or an art crimped, or perhaps a greeting card, just to mention a few ways to use your illustrations. In this class, I will share the techniques and tricks I use when I create my illustrations. Step-by-step, in a very structured and basic way, I will show you how to draw from objects, still lives or images, and how to import your illustrations to Illustrator. This class is really for anyone who wants to learn how to make their own artistic illustration. You can be a total beginner when it comes to drawing. So if this sounds like fun, go ahead and click that enroll button and let's get started. 2. Class Overview: Hi everyone, and welcome to artistic illustrations in this class where you will learn how to make a hand-drawn motif by drawing from an object or image and then turn it into a vectorized illustration in Adobe Illustrator. Eventually, you will have something that is ready to print. My name is [inaudible] and I'm a pattern designer and illustrator from Stockholm, Sweden. I'm really excited to have you here in this class, so welcome, and let's get started. First, I want to show you this class overview so that you know what we will go through and what you will learn. We'll start with talking about what illustrations are, the definition and then we'll talk about different techniques and I will share with you my process, how I create my illustrations. Then we have this section of preparations and we'll talk about ideas and to gather inspiration and we will choose our motifs. Then I will talk about the art of observing as I call it, and we will look at some drawing techniques and then we will do some practicing before we dive into drawing our own motifs. So when we have our drawings ready, we will trace our drawings and after that, we will scan them and vectorize them with Adobe Illustrator, and eventually we will make a print file and print our illustrations to see how they come out. So since this is a project-based class, you also get an assignment for a project if you want to and that is to make your own art print that you can hang on your wall. Perhaps something like this. Before your student project, you will need some tools and materials, and for the sketching part, you need pencils and paper to sketch on and you don't have to go ahead and buy some expensive artistic equipment here you can just use ordinary printing or copy paper, or if you have drawing pad. For pencils, also any kind of lead pin pencil will do. If you do want to have some artistic pencils. As you probably know, there already is a range of different softness to them that you can choose between and I usually use the HB and 2B a little bit of a softer pencil because I'm just like how they have a little bit of a darker creamier texture to them. But any pencil will do as long as it's easy to erase. For the next part, the tracing part, you will need some equipment, you will need either a lightbox or if you don't have that or access to a lightbox, you can use a window, of course, then you need daylight. That's important otherwise it won't work and if you use a light box or a window, just ordinary printing or copy paper will do. If you don't have a lightbox or if it's dark outside when you want to do this, there is this really nice trick using tracing paper so that you can get online or in an art supply store, I guess. Here's the tracing paper that I use and it's from Daler Rowney and it looks like this, so inside you see papers and they are really transparent. This is what it looks like. Then you also need to have black fine-liner to create those really nice black outlines that are going to be a part of your illustration. I like to use Uni Pins black fine liners, and I use them from sizes 0.2 to 0.8 and it looks like this when you make lines with them. So here is 0.2. It's really thin line, good for little detail and if you have small illustrations and 0.5, slightly bigger, thicker line good for stippling and then we have 0.8, a much thicker line as you can see. Just good for outlining and other purposes. For the next part, the scanning part, you are definitely going to need a scanner, but if you don't have one, I guess you can also use a smart phone or a digital camera. The important thing though is if you want to photograph your image with a camera, you have to make sure that you have enough light because that's necessary to create a really sharp image and that is something that you need for the next part, when we are going to vectorize, make them into vectorized images. For that you need your computer and you also need an Adobe Illustrator. You don't have to be advanced Adobe Illustrator user. Beginners can probably keep up to, and because I will do pretty basic functions there. For the last part you need a printer and you need some printing paper and for that, that's up to you your choice. I usually use some art paper. Actually, I use watercolor paper a lot for my prints because I really like the look and feel of those. So that was the overview of this class and also the list for the materials and tools that you're going to need and now let's skip on over to the next segment, which is about illustrations. 3. About illustrations: Welcome to the segment where I will talk briefly a bit about what illustrations are, and different types and categories of illustrations, and also different ways to use them. I will also share a bit of my own journey as a designer and illustration artist, show you some of my illustrations that I made, and different ways I create them and how I use them. Hoping that this will inspire you when you start creating your own illustrations. When it comes to my own journey as a designer and illustrator I just started a couple of years ago. I have been working with marketing for many years and just felt that I wanted to do something much more creative. Since I've always been drawing and sketching and making greeting cards and illustrations for the high school newspaper, I felt that I wanted to do something with that but I never really knew what and how to use it. But one day, I went to this class, a pattern designing class and something just fell into the right place and I knew what I wanted to do. After that, I decided to start my own company that I call Barbell Productions and quit my job in the middle of life, and just started doing this that I love. I have licensed a couple of my designs for the leather industry for example, and material that is now used to make clogs and sandals and shoes. I also have my own web shop where I market a selection of products with my patterns and illustrations. What is an illustration? Well, it comes from the word illumination, which means spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. But, when it comes to a definition of what an illustration is here is what Wikipedia says, a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process, designed for integration in published media. An illustration is really a visual component that helps telling a story I would say. Whether it's a piece of art, or a book like here on a children's book or an advertisement, or in an article. Like here in this example, to the left you have an illustration by Ilon Wikland in the book Ronia, the Robbers Daughter by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. To the right you have a magazine, Jamie magazine, where you can see an illustration by pattern designer and illustration artist, Amanda Dilworth. There are many types of illustrations. You can categorize them in so many different ways. For example they can be made digitally or hand-drawn. They can be stylized or realistic. There are many categories where you can label them in different ways, like animated illustrations, architecture, cartoon, comic or conceptual, and fashion illustrations, technical illustrations, infographics, lifestyle, portraits and decorative or contemporary, so many different categories. Here are some of my own illustrations that I have made for different purposes. As you can see, I like to have this hand-drawn and almost realistic look to my illustrations and then I use them for different purposes. I like to have a lot of details. Usually when I design I start out with drawing my motifs by hand like this, and using objects or images as inspiration or to draw from directly, and to create this hand-drawn look that I like. Then I use them in different ways to develop them and for different purposes. Like for instance, this illustration I just used in a monochromatic way and for an art print. This illustration is actually one of the illustrations that I made during that pattern class that I mentioned before. I used it to create my very first pattern so this is a quite about historical illustration for me. This little guy, this little woodpecker, I made into an art print also. Here in the mixed media version where I used watercolor and fine liner combined and printed it. Here are some of the other illustrations in the same collection and that little woodpecker guy to the left. This time I used Illustrator to color them, of which as you can see it creates a totally different look. But I still like to have a lot of details so I put in a lot of effort and time into each illustration. Remember the sea-themed illustrations before? Here I have used them in this monochromatic pattern. I used them to make another pattern but with colored motifs. Here I used one of the illustrations from the same collection for a monochromatic art print, and some of the other ones I have colored, and I colored these ones in Illustrator. Here is another illustration that I created. I did this one summer day by bringing out my studio into the garden and I sat down next to a bush of lilacs and just studied them and try to draw them. Then I used a fine liner to fill in my sketches right on top of the sketches actually. I used the markers to color them and then I scanned them and recolored. Here are the final illustrations that I recolored in Illustrator. Then I used them to create this pattern, and also these art prints. As you can see there are many ways to create them, meet with different ways to color them and also purposes. With one illustration you can make a lot of things and this is quit fun. This was about illustrations and different categories and ways to create and use illustrations. In the next segment, we're going to continue in this area a little bit and talk about different techniques and also my process when I create my illustrations. I'll see you there. 4. Techniques and my process: In this segment, I'm going to talk about different ways or techniques to use when creating an illustration and also share my process that I use when I create my illustrations. But first, I would like to talk about choices and creative choices. Besides illustrating and making patterns, I like to write. There is this book by Robert McKee called Story, about writing for the screen. This quote applies for any kind of art or craft. Creativity means creative choices of inclusion and exclusion. By that, this means that a piece of art, like a drawing or painting, or composing music, or writing a movie script is about making conscious choices. Of course you can create something out of a spontaneous creative flow and just see what happens and what comes out. The risk is that you will end up doing something already done, something quite unoriginal, something of a cliche perhaps. When you develop your craft and skills, you will start to notice that if you want to create something unique and original and a higher level of quality, you're going to have to go about it in a more structured and conscious way. You will not just go with whatever comes up first but try many different ways and test your boundaries and do something new out of your comfort zone. When you have a row of options and alternatives on how to, for example, draw it from an object, you can then make a conscious choice from that and choose what to include and what to exclude and go with the alternative that you think is the best, and hopefully it will lead to something new and unique. Creative choices is about exploring a range of different ideas and possibilities on how you want to perform your art or create your piece of art, and it also applies when you draw. It's about making lots of lines to try and see which one works, but it also applies for developing your idea. Also, it makes it easier for you to choose a motif that inspires you for your illustration. There are of course many ways or techniques to use when creating an illustration. I've talked about different categories and styles already like digital, or hand drawn, or technical or different types, and there are probably as many ways and processes too as there are illustrators. This is an overview of the process I use when I make my illustrations. It always starts with some idea, and the idea can be that I have a specific object or a theme or something that I want to create from. Now that I have an idea and lots of inspiration for an illustration, I start to develop that idea and identify what I'm going to use this illustration for. Is it going to be just a one-off thing? Or is it going to be a part of a pattern together with other motifs? Or is it going to be perhaps a collection of illustrations for art print collection? When I know that I decide what my motif will be. After I defined what to draw my motif, I start doing some collecting and more researching to find real objects or images that I want to use as inspiration or to draw from directly. After that, it's time to make some choices and to be able to do that, it's good to have a mental illustration first of what you want to accomplish. That is to visualize how your illustration is going to look like, how he want it to come out when you're done with it. Because that makes it so much easier to decide the style of your illustration, what kind of illustration you want it to be. There are a few choices that you have to make and I made this map of some of the choices that can come up. Like these two, you want your illustration to look exactly like that object or image that you use for inspiration, almost like a copy. Or do you want to use your collected objects or images as some inspired mix and then make your own version from those? If you choose to make almost like a copy, you can then choose to make it a simplified one or a very realistic looking with every little detail and shadow included. But if you go with the making your own version and just use your objects as inspiration, you can also choose between making a very realistic illustration or you can choose to make it a rendered version. By rendered I mean that you really include or exclude as you wish. You can add things that are not really there, you can exaggerate some features, you can take away things, and you can just make it very detailed or very simplified. This will be your completely own version. Here is this rough map of some choices that you can make and different ways to create your illustration. The next step of the process I call the art of observing or the art of seeing perhaps because it's really important that you just don't draw what you think it looks like but really study your object or image and take notice of what it looks like and how it's composed or how it's built. Then it's time to start sketching and drawing our motifs. When I look at how I do when I draw, I see that I can break it down into different phases or steps, which we will go through all of them when we start drawing or practicing drawing in a little bit. When I have a drawing or sketch that I am content with it's time to trace that sketch with a fine liner to make those distinct black lines and contours that will be or illustration. After tracing comes scanning. Then to import that image to Illustrator and to make it into a vectorized image by using the Live Trace tool, I edit the illustration and clean it up a little bit. After that it's either ready to use as it is, or to develop further by coloring. If I want to color my illustration there are a few ways and techniques that I use to do that: it's either analog with markers or watercolor, or I do it digitally with Adobe Illustrator. If I use an analog media, after I color it I have to scan it again, trace in Illustrator and process it further into a manageable illustration that I'm pleased with. But in this class we will stay with uncolored and monochromatic illustration. Then finally I prepare print file and print. That's about different ways to create the illustration, and now we will get started to prepare creating our own illustrations. In the next segment, we'll talk more about ideas and inspiration, and I'm going to give you your first task. I'll see you there. 5. Preparations: Welcome back in this segment where I'm going to do some preparations before we start drawing our motifs. The preparation phase is about getting the idea and gather inspiration and also to make observations and study our objects or images and then we'll create that mental illustration. When it comes to gathering inspiration, well, if I want to do a series of illustrations of, let's say, spring flowers, if it's spring, I can go out in the garden and see what I can find. I can bring some fresh flowers inside to draw from, or I can go and buy some in a store. But it is not spring, and no fresh spring flowers to be found anywhere I have to go online, for example, and see what I can find to gather lots and lots of images that can inspire me. I would like to give a warning though. Be careful how you use other people's work when you use other people's pictures and images. If you want to draw for an example a daffodil and you go to Google or Pinterest to find images of daffodils for inspiration you should not go for trying to draw and make your illustration exactly like that image. All right, so daffodils are pretty generic. You can't really tell probably from an illustration if it's from a specific image. But just to be safe and just to make sure it feels like it's your illustration and your work, if you use other people's images, you should gather just a bunch of images of daffodils for example and from them make your own version. Like I said, when it comes to flowers and birds, most image are quite generic and it will probably not be noticeable, very clear, if you use a specific image and draw from it exactly. But for other very original or distinct motifs, it might be noticeable. I would like to give you an example of how it can go wrong. There was this beautiful photograph from photographer Nick Brandt of a mighty African elephant and we have this Swedish furniture company that made a mass-produced oil painting of an elephant that they marketed and sold at their retailers and it was just so clear that they had used this photo to make that painting from so that is not okay. To gather inspiration and to come up with an idea of something that you want to illustrate you could just go through your house or your own images. Go to an interior decoration store or visit the grocery store and just see if you can find something interesting or decorative that you would like to use for your illustration. Maybe there is a theme that appeals to you or favorite things like the beach, foods, vegetables, cakes, antiques, old spoons perhaps, or flowers. Anything can become an object that you can use as inspiration for your illustration. Let me give you an example of how I came up with one of my ideas and gather inspiration for that one. I wanted to draw something with hair. I thought that would be quite fun study to make and also a challenge to try to draw hair. But that idea developed into something further and I wanted to do something with this ongoing hipster trend with all these guys that has long hair and have different hairdos and pony tails and men bungs and also beards. That's quite popular. At least here in Sweden, I think it's sort of global now, but I was a little bit shy to go outside, go to the subway and hunt guys with long hair and beards to take their pictures and use for inspiration. I'll try to gather that courage one day, but we'll see. Instead, I looked online, I looked in magazines, and luckily, my husband has a beard so I could have both virtual and live models to use as inspiration. Then I turned it into illustrations and here are three of them, and I use them to make art prints. Just let me show you how I used an image for inspiration for one of them. This is actually my husband and my two children. I used this image to create the one on the right, of course. So this is one of the illustrations in that brooding art print collection. Now, I will give you your first task for the student project to make your own art print to hang on the wall. For this task, I want you to come up with an idea. Either you have one already know exactly what you want to create, or if you don't, you should try to gather some inspiration and to come up with one. After you have an idea I want you to collect objects or images to support your idea. Finally, I want you to decide for a motif. Something that you will like to hang on your own wall. It could be that you draw from a real object or if you choose to use different images for your inspiration or if you have your own image that you have taken, you can use that also to draw from. For my motifs, I have chosen three objects. The first one is a broccoli, and second a pineapple, and final but not least, a coffee cup. I know that sometimes it's difficult to come up with an idea just like that. I would like to give you some help and some ideas because sometimes creativity needs limits and frames to get started and to be inspired. If you can't come up with a motif or topic yourself, I want you to get three or four apples or a coffee or tea cup and you can draw those for your illustration. The next step of preparation is about the art of observation or the art of observing as I call it. I guess that you have tried to draw something one time and like a dog for instance, and it came out looking like a bear or a lion or something that didn't really resemble a dog, a specific dog. Although it had ears and nose and eyes and four legs. This is because your reference and the information on the details of the dog you wanted to draw wasn't specific enough because you didn't know the important characteristic details that build the image of a dog. I mean, did you think of a specific race or size or other distinguished details? I would guess that you used a quite universal or generic notion of what a dog looks like and that's just not enough for us to make a drawing that looks like the thing that we want it to. Perhaps a cup is easier to draw and make it look like a cup but it will probably still be quite generic and simple. The trick is to study the thing that you want to illustrate. You have to look at it and really see what it looks like. Notice all the details. Here is my broccoli and let's just see and study what it really looks like. Let's look at the details. If I look at the shape of it, it's almost like a cone or here's a ball and then there's a rectangle and there is this triangle here comes up like a funnel almost. It has these little branches where it looks like a tree almost. Then they have these little branches with a little leaf. That's cool, that would be cool to use as well. This one needs to be eaten soon. Then it has these little marks, I guess there was more branches sitting there. They have these lines here between and there are some empty spaces here. If I look at the top, it consists of all these little buds, really. Little dots or circles. Then they have these sections which are cool. we have some spaces in between. You see there's lights coming here and shadows. There are some details to recognize. Here comes your second task. I want you to pause and study your object or image, or images that you have picked and just take a few minutes to notice and register all the details that you can see and the specifics about that object that you haven't really been aware of before. It could be how the light reflects or a shape or a line that you haven't really seen before or anything else. I just want you to really take a good look and notice and register all those details. If you want to, you can make notes, you can write some of the things that you see. You can write them down just for fun and save for later. Art is about making conscious choices and to try different options to find that solution that makes it special and unique. It's also important to have a direction. That goes for almost anything you want to achieve. It's good to have a vision of what you want to accomplish so that you won't be stumbling in the darkness, just trying to find your way and hoping for the best as you go along. Make it appear in front of us clear and vivid. Now I want you to create your first version of your illustration and this is a mental illustration. Just take a moment and close your eyes and try to see your illustration in front of you. Notice how it looks, the style. Notice the lines and the shapes. Try to see details like for instance, my broccoli, will it be standing up or a lying down? Is it realistic and very detailed, or is it simplified? Notice what your imagination and mind already has created almost without you. Now you can either choose to just go with this vision or you can challenge that and in your mind, try to adjust it. Was the mental illustration too obvious, perhaps too predictable, maybe? Or does it make you feel something and it connects to you somehow? If you feel like it trying to change that mental image and if it was, for instance, a realistic illustration, see if you can turn it into a version that's a bit more stylized. You can try to over-exaggerate something or turn it to a different angle. You can take away details, reduce it, and so on, and see if that vision or that version speaks to you. Finally, I want you to recognize for yourself which mental image you want to use and then you stay with that and try to memorize it so that you can refer to it later. Now that we have a direction, we have the mental illustration we know where we want to go, it's time to go physical and start drawing. In the next few segments, we will do some practicing and to start drawing. I'll see you there. 6. Practicing Characteristics: Before we start to work on our actual illustrations, we're going to do some practice exercises that are also creating those different options and alternatives to choose between that I talked about before. We are going to start to practice how to sketch and how to use your hand. When sketching, you can hold your pencil just like usual, like when you are writing, but be sure not to pinch your pencil too hard because that makes you probably press too hard on the paper too. You have to have a really relaxed and soft grip and have a relaxed hand as well and so you can make really swift and smooth lines that are easy to erase. That's the important thing right now because if you pinch it too hard, you might actually make those lines too hard and that will be harder to erase. You can also hold the pencil like this. It creates also a very loose technique and more flexible. I use that a lot if I'm standing up sketching, for example, using an easel. This is also a great way. Then you can tilt the pencil a bit and you will have broader lines like this as you can see. Now, grab a piece of paper and just practice holding your pencil. When we start sketching we're going to make a lot of really soft swift lines as if you are sculpturing something. So if I just take my little coffee cup here, you will just use your hand and your lines like this and just make really a lot of swift lines, a lot of lines and just sculpt it like this with the lines and see if you can find those shapes by trial and error almost. Then just don't be afraid to make mistakes or that there will be a lot, too many lines. At this point, can't be too many lines. Another really important thing to think about is that at this point when we start sketching and in the beginning, when we just want to make all those lines, don't bother to erase. There is no point in doing that early on because we need to just find all those lines. Let's continue with our practicing and how to bring out those characteristics in our illustrations. We do that in these steps, shapes, lines, empty spaces, plains, light, shadow and texture. We'll start out with shapes. You can break down any motif into its basic shapes, like circles, rectangles, squares, and triangles and this is also a great exercise for you to warm up. First, I want you to draw a square. Just use really those swift lines. See if you can make a perfect square, something like that. Now also, I want you to make a rectangle. Then you can make it as perfect as possible, line those lines. Now, let's go to the circle, see if you can make a perfect circle. But if you keep going like this with your lines, you will find that some of the lines in there are the perfect circles. Finally, let's make a triangle, see if we can make an even sided triangle, the angles also even, something like this. Here we have our two-dimensional geometrical forms. For example, if you are going to make a cup, you could probably use that triangle, draw another square. Now, we're going to make it three-dimensional just to seen if we can find this body. This is very useful later on when we're going to start with our motifs and make our illustrations join from the objects or images that we have. So two-dimensional and now adding this third dimension. So now I'm going to look for those shapes for this broccoli. I see that there is almost like a triangle here. Something like this, has a little bend thing and then there is this rectangle coming down, it has a little bit thicker interval. Now we have this top here, a crown, let's try to find the big shape of it. Then there we have those little circles coming down here and also other ones coming over here. So this is how we make shapes. You don't have to make the exact rectangle or square or circle, it's finding those shapes that are typical for your object. So here are some shapes. Now, let's do the tea cup. The cup itself has an upside-down cone and an ellipse, so I'll just start sketching roughly. I'll just make the crack now and see if I can find the characteristic shapes. So here are some of the shapes that are inside this cup. We'll have to do this plate too, it's just a bunch of ellipses. You can try to angle up just to see if we can capture that view. Something like this. Here are some shapes that I just practiced. Now, it's your turn to find what shapes your object is made of, is it a single form or a combination? I want you to find the shapes in your object or image and draw them separately and draw them combined and also try to use alternative forms. See if you can make the same shape with different forms and turn your object around, tilt it and see if there are any new forms appearing. Now that we are done with those shapes and forms, it's time to make some lines. If I study this broccoli, it has some important lines, I think that makes it characteristic. Usually it could be a part of the outline, but we'll try to find lines elsewhere too. For one example, I think that this line here, it's important so I'm just going to see if I can find that. Here is something important. Now it starts to look like this broccoli a little bit. Keep practicing on your object and see if you can find some of those important lines and contours. The next task for you is, I want you to pick a couple of lines and contours in your object and draw them. Draw them separately a few times to try to find that specific bend or curve or crossing that makes it so typical. You can use a separate piece of paper or just draw next to the previous exercise for the shapes. After that, we will move on to empty spaces. Sometimes it might be easier to draw the area around an object or the empty spaces in between features of your object. This will make the edges and contours appear much clearer to you. I'll show you how. Let's say I have a picket fence or something. I'll just start drawing what's surrounding it instead. See if you can find those. Now, I'm just doing this on free-hand, but just pretend that I have an image or I'm sitting in the garden just looking at this and I see that. Here like that and maybe this one is leaning a little bit like this. Now, I'm drawing the empty spaces, the negative spaces, instead of the object itself. See what I mean? Like that. Now I have a picket fence, but I didn't draw the fence itself, I drew what's surrounding it, the negative space. For your fifth task in your student project, I want you to study your object and squint your eyes so that you can see those negative and positive areas more clear and draw only the empty spaces or you can pick just one empty space or the surroundings if it doesn't have any in-between spaces, so to speak. Empty spaces could be the inside the handle of a cup or the spaces in between your apples if you place it in the form of a pyramid. Just try to draw those empty spaces. Now, we have come to my favorite part of drawing, which is to give your illustration body and volume by adding plains or areas of light and shadow and texture. There are a lot of techniques of doing this, of course, but I will share with you some of the techniques that I use a lot. They are called hatching. There is cross-hatching and stippling. Hatching is when you create a shape or a body by making shadows or structures with lines. In this illustration that I made, I used actually both hatching and cross-hatching. Cross-hatching is the same principle as hatching, but you use crossing lines. Stippling is when you use dots in the same manner to create shadows or a structure or volume of your illustration. For this one, I used little dots to create that impression of shadows. To show you more examples and illustrate even further different techniques and how to create a body and texture for your illustration, I would like to refer to a couple of the great master draftsman through all time. The first one is Durer. He lived in the end of the 15th century, beginning of the 16th century in Germany. He is considered one of the greatest of all German draftsmen. His style was very realistic. It was almost camera-like, as you can see here in some of his drawings; very detailed. But this is actually a deception, because as the true artist, as he was, he went beyond what the camera can do. He simplified and he distorted and re-breed valued light and shadow. He really extended the natural shapes rather than copying it. His work is really a boil down, distilled version of what he saw. The next guy is of course, Van Gogh. He lived in the Netherlands in the 19th century. He was, as you know, a really famous artist and painter. But his drawings are just really inspiring to. Especially when it comes to the way he uses lines and dots to capture the soul and atmosphere of the subject or an object or a landscape. Would like to show you some of his drawings. Here, you can see how he just uses his lines to bring out those different shapes and areas and shadows and also just to leave out areas with no lines or dots to create those areas where the sun hits or where the light is. To practices how to create a body for your illustrations later on by making the different plains with shadow and light and the in-betweens, we are going to do like the masters and make a study of our hands. Hold up your hand or make a fist, find position of your hand that you find is interesting. I'm going two make a fist like this. Now, just roughly sketch the shape of that hand. From my angle here. Just roughly the outlines like that. Just continue to see if you can find some of those important lines. We have a thumb. Just roughly like that. When you have those, the basic shapes and the basic lines that are important, now, look at your hand and see where are the darkest areas. I can seen that it's actually here, it's those shadows with those lines. Let's start drawing those. This one is actually one of the lightest part, so we're gonna keep that untouched for now. It's those lines, there. Also, we have some of the back of the hand. Here I just made some contours really that are darker. Now, we're going to see if we can make those pop a little bit. Let's see with the lines to make shadows or this darker plain. The back of that hand is a big flat plane like this. That's what I mean with a plain or a plateau. This is darker than here, for example. What we need to do now is find the direction of this plain. I would say that it goes like this, like that, and also like that. You can't have too many lines at this point. Now, I'm going to do this area here, because here's quite some light. I want to keep that untouched. Then I have the round of my hand like this. Just follow that shape with your lines. Make it bend like this. You follow the shape of your hand. Here, go like this. Here actually there some wrinkles, well, we all have wrinkles in our hands, don't we? There, and this finger goes like this. Use the lines to follow the shape of your hand. You can already see that it creates some dimension to it. Here on the bottom of this finger is also a bit of a darker area and I would say it goes like this, the direction. Here, I will do lines like that and here. Here I would say something like this. Just really rough lines. See, wow, this looks like Durer, doesn't it? They can go crossing to like that. The cross-hatching technique. Then we have the wrist. That looks pretty good. Do that to. Good luck with your hands. That was practicing characteristics and warming up, because in the next section, we're going to start drawing our illustrations. See you there. 7. Drawing your motif: Welcome to the broccoli show and the first step of starting to draw our illustrations and we'll dive into it right away with choosing where on the paper that we will place our illustrations. I think it's going to be something like this. Just make those first outlines to decide your size of the illustration. It's important why you have to place it first on the paper is because if you start drawing in one sighed like this, then it's very easy to miscalculate the size because if you start drawing with just one detail in one corner, it tends to get bigger than you have planned or thought. When you start drawing and then you keep going and all of a sudden you come to this part and you seen that, it's going outside of the paper because it's too big. It's planning ahead by doing this and deciding on where roughly your motif will be on the paper. Next step, when we known where we're going to draw this, it's to start with a basic shapes as we did when we practiced before. I have this, hill or a half circle or something like that. Then I have branch coming up like that, and then comes the stem. See, just make a lot of lines, so as this stem, is the width, right compared to the length and then we have this little bulb or circle here, I have this little round shape hear and then pretty close to that and quite see what I've to find is this one comes here and where is it compared to the stem? Just makes it easier when you continue later on. Here are the basic shape for that one, and later on when we continue, we don't have to picture this or draw exactly what we see, as I explained before. We can make exaggerations or you can add things. If we think that the drawing benefits from having another element inside it, like, it will be farther up like this, that ideal word of Plato. What does a broccoli look like? This is your drawing and you are going to make a drawing to that. Makes it what's in your head, your vision, your story come out. If you want a broccoli of a house, more folks or bowl just like this, go ahead, you can do what you want. Now that we have our shapes and forms, we'll continue with some lines to help us capture those smaller shapes and characteristics of the object and also to see if we can found those empty spaces. Keep sketching within swift lines with more and more details. Don't forget this empty spaces, they are important. It's quite a good beginning and continue working on those details. Now to my favorite part, creating that dimension, giving the drawing a body and texture with using those techniques we practiced before, using lines and dots to bring out the different curves and angles and drawing planes of shadows, light and that intermediate. I already began to make some darker areas, but now it's time to emphasize those and make them more of a guide for me. Now I'm making harsh, thick and thin lines by pressing harder to the page. It's going to be difficult to erase those. But I think for this purpose, we don't have to erase that much because we're going to go with this a fine liner later on. Once in a while, be sure to lean back into squint that your drawing to see, is it reassembling what your mental image or do you need to adjust something? This will be blew dots or just maybe like this little half loops that I will make later on. I'm just going to continue to draw those details and try to bring out the forms and you can watch. Now we have brought out some shapes and volume and the 3D effect, by just using shadows with lines and dots and darker areas and leaving out the lighter areas. Now you can start erasing a little bit if you feel like it. You don't really have to you can just keep all those lines, but I can see that there are some margins and so I want to get rid of. Now I just did this drawing on time. But I encourage you to make several versions all your drawing. Do a couple of drawings at least, and see what you learn by each one. Also, if you find that one of them looks better and just works better for you and maybe it's more interesting, just make a couple of versions. Now it's time for my teacup. Here is the final result with shapes and lines and texture and shadows. As you see, I made some lines here just to follow the shape of the plate, just thin lines. They will probably not go into the final illustration later on as you will see, but they are some guidelines so that I known how to use my final lines when I go and trace and fill in with it. Now to the pineapple. I've started to fill in more details, to sum this sketching part is that you start out big. Start with the placement on the paper and the overall shape and the size of illustration just to that. Then you start with the forums, like this one here and this one here, as I did. Then go into putting down those lines and the smaller shapes and more and more details. You go from big and step-by-step, you go further into the details. Finally, we will do the texture and the shadow and the light, those lines and dots that will [inaudible] those impressions. I'm going to finish this sketching this one with one more details and you can watch. Now, it's time for the stem and the leaves. As you see, here I have created an impression of more shadow on the side. I'm just not making as many or thick or black lines or dense lines on this side. Onto the leaves and see what I can do with that. I think I'm going to start with the dark areas, which is in between or where the leaves come up from each other. One trick I want to show you is to really make your drawing pop. Find those extra dark spaces and just fill those in, like here. It will make it more distinct. Find those extra dark places and match them and press. Here you can press a lot harder with your pencil just to make it pop like this. Now, there are no more swift, soft erasable lines anymore. some of them, of course, we can erase, but they will probably leave some tracks. That's fine because we're going to do the tracing very soon. See if you can find even more black areas and just emphasize those to make your drawing. How about from the paper? I think we're done with the pineapple more or less. Let's move onto tracing. 8. Tracing: In this segment, it's time to trace our drawings. As I mentioned before, you can do that in some different ways, you can use a light box if you have access to one, or you can just use a window, or you can use tracing paper, you can trace right on top of your sketch too, I don't recommend it, just in case you want to use that sketch or drawing for something else later on. I do that a lot though, draw with a fine liner right on top of my sketch. But like I said, there is a downside to it. You can make a mistake, you can screw up the original sketch, and of course that can be fixed later in Illustrator, but it's also good to have that original sketch untouched, just in case you want to use it to make different versions, or new originals, and so on. I think for this class, we will do the tracing by the book and use some of the tools that I mentioned. If you have a light box, that's great, that's a very smooth and easy way to trace. If you don't have a light box, I use tracing paper which works well, or I use a window for tracing, that also works very well. If you want to use a window to trace your drawing, I would suggest to tape it, steady first like this, and then put your paper on top, and now you can see your drawing pretty well. Or you use a tracing paper, and I think that's my favorite when it comes to tracing. It's a really good idea to tape your tracing paper to the drawing paper just in case it starts moving, and I'm using a small size pen liner, no, this one wasn't really, this was the 0.5. I want the 0.2 for this one. Now start finding those lines that you like. Take a look at your drawing a bit first and make sure that you decide and choose which lines you want to use and how you're going to do them. Of course, you can do this several times. You can make a trace of your illustration a few times just to be sure that you practice, and that you have the alternative that you are really pleased with later on. Now you don't really have to look at your object anymore, because now it's about creating that illustration that comes out the way you want it. What you could do is to have in mind your mental illustration, and just see how you are going to mimic that one and what lines resembles your mental illustration. It's just time to start tracing. It's a good idea to start with those lines that's in front of others. When it comes to tracing, now it's time to simplify because if we make mistakes, you can just grab another tracing paper or do another trace, so that's one of the benefits with tracing like this. Here is where the shadow would be, so I will just draw or trace all those little lines because when I come to areas where there is more light, there could bee a point in not making the lines all attached two each other. Just make little like this because that creates the illusion of that there is more exposure to light. This is very simplified now, but as we did when we sketched, we're going to add more and more details as we go. I'm going to continue doing this and finalize the outlines. Now I'm done with the outlines, and now it's time to start bringing in those darker areas, and the shapes, and the shadows, and the planes, so I'm going to make some shadows here, I think, in the stem first to see if I can make it come alive and be a bit more to three-dimensional. You have the directions that you need underneath, so let's just seen if we can find some distinct shapes by doing like this. Now I'm bringing in some of the darker areas, so I want to have some good outlines, and some details, and some dark areas. Now, I think I'm going to start with the shading and the texture on top here on the crown. I've chosen to use all just the little curves like that, maybe some dots too to bring that out. I will start with those shaded areas that I have made in my drawing, just pick those out and follow them. Just make sure that you vary so that it doesn't look exactly the same. Make different directions like this, like this sometimes, and sometimes you can make complete circles to look like an artistic illustrations. It's all in the details. Of course it could also be you do that simplified look, that you find the exact right lines and that is such a challenge, but it's so fun, like when you find that really, really characteristic line for an object or something that you are drawing and you just capture it with a single line or something. That makes it quite varied and gives it dimension, I think, so you can see the detailing there. Then I'll just continue doing this here and there, just pick those shaded areas. For now I did this whole part at once but a smart thing and a tip for you is to just start with the darker areas and then continue towards the intermediate and the lighter because then you can add. Just a lot of patients making all those little curves and dots but it's quite fun to, like therapy, therapy work. I'm very pleased with this one, so I hope you will do your tracing now, and just start with outlining and carefully draw those lines that you can see underneath from your sketch and pick those that you feel are the correct ones that you like the most, and then you work yourself inward again with more shapes, more lines, more details. But this time, as it's not a sketch, be restrictive with your lines from the beginning. Just pick one, and then see if you can work yourself inward. I'm going to go do the tracing for my other drawings too. The pineapple came out quite big actually, I should have made it a bit smaller, but I think I'm going to make it just barely, the tracing paper covers the whole thing. Now where to begin, well, just pick a nice start. I think I'm going to start with really thin lines or contours, start with this part here. Now I will fill in all these, make those shapes, and so now I started with the stem and those leaves, I will just continue doing that. Now I traced all those outlines from the pineapple, and now it's time to add details and some more lines and bring out that three-dimension by adding little dots or lines to create texture, and body, and shadows, and light. Now I have started to fill in some of the shadows and just making them more into shapes, into three-dimensional shapes by using those little hatching lines. I will just continue doing that. Just following those shapes. Then later on, when I go further into detailing and the shadows, I will make them more darker on this side probably than on that side. Depending on what object you have, you use different techniques. But this is quite a good basic technique to use when bringing out the body like this. Now, I have created those shapes and lines and basic shadows for those little sections here. I will now start to make some of the texture of those little peals or whatever they are, coming up on each of those sections. If I take a look at my pineapple, I can seen that they consist of lines too. But since those areas are lighter than these ones, I will try not to make them too dense or lines that are too tight. Try to keep them lighter than the other ones. I will continue doing that and you will see the result, in a moment. I think I now created some difference between light and shadow, so this is fine. I think we're going to start with leaves now. As I did when I was sketching, I'm going to start with the darkest areas. Just to start with some lines there. Though the darkest areas are inside, or where the leaves comes out, where they are attached to the stem. Now, I need to do something about those in-between areas here. I think I'm going to use some stippling. I'm going to do that. You can come back and watch how it turns out, in just a couple of seconds. Here is the finished result, the traced pineapple. The final drawing, the coffee cup. Time to trace this won too. I'm just going to start with the outlines. Here are the outlines of the cup. Now I'm adding more detail, and to think I'm just going to have my cup in front of me to see if I need some guidance. Now to the shading. I think, I'm going to use stippling here. I am using my 0.5, and just start to create some shadowing effect where just making many small dots. First, I'm going to mark with some dotted areas where the shadows are supposed to be, and leaving out the lighter areas. Now, it's really nice to have those sketching lines underneath because now I can use that as a guidance on where I want to have the shadow. Just to start by doing that, then we'll make the three-dimension effect by making the dots tighter in some of the darker areas. I continue to do that, and I'll see you in a couple of seconds. This is three seconds later. No, just kidding. I put a lot of time into making all these little dots off course, takes quite some time. But I want to share with you some tricks to make that three-dimensional look happen. That is of course, you work with a darker shadow here, making more and more dots tighter to each other and then you sorted of make it a little bit loser and further apart as we go along to make this shift in the light. Then I also used here, but also one effect is to, on the opposite side, make a little bit of a shadow as well. Now I have two do something about the inside of the cup. If you take a look at your cup, and my cup, you can see that the shadow is, of course, on this side now. There are some real highlights here that I need to found a way to accomplish as well. Now I'm just going to start stippling away. It's coming along, pretty pleased with how it's coming out. Just one trick to show you when you are doing all those little dots, it's quite easy to make it uneven, like some areas are not as dense as they should be and so on. You just feel that there is some unevenness to the surface. One way to checked that is to take a picture of your illustration, and then it's easier or just film it like I am write now. Throw the camera, you can see quite clearly those areas where I maybe need to even it out a little bit. Try that too. Now I'm just going to finish the cup itself and I'll fill in that black rim inside of it. Now I need to bring out those shapes and shades on the plate too. Let's see, I need to have dark here and the light hear. I'll start with making some dark areas behind the cup. I created this shape here, by just making the shadow work like that. Then I'll continue with the rest of the plate. I think I have come to the final result. Here is the coffee cup. Now, that I have my three illustrations all drawn, traced and ready, it's time to scan them. Welcome to the next segment where we will scan our illustrations. 9. Scanning: Welcome back and it's time for scanning. In this segment, I'm going to show you how to scan your traced illustration. It's going to cover the basics really for those of you who have never used a scanner or never scanned an illustration at least. If you are already acquainted with how you scan, you can skip this part and move on to the next one or just stay with us and see if there's something really you can learn anyway. You never know. I have removed my tracings from the sketching paper and now I'm going to put them in the scanner. Now that the tracing is in the scanner, open up your scanner. Here is that broccoli and it will keep that setting to black and white and a 300 dpi is enough. You can go up, of course, but I think 300 is plenty, so we can stay with that. Then you just pick a folder or a file where you want to save it and I'm going to name it broccoli scan and JPEG. You can go down to setting for correcting your image, your scan and click Manual. This window will pop up and here you can adjust the contrast and the brightness. Usually you just want to make it as black as possible because that will create a better result when we vectorize in Illustrator. But also you don't want it to be too black in those areas here because then all those little dots will just merge together. We can just play around with it a little bit and see what it looks like so that will be too diffuse. I think I might just keep the presettings there and the contrast so you see that it becomes a bit more black. Not too much though. Because when we vectorize it and use satellite trace tool, we will just use black and white. I think I'm just going to keep the standard presets more or less. You select it by dragging a box around it like this, and then click Scan. Now that I have scanned my broccoli, I will go ahead and do the same thing with the pineapple and the coffee cup. Now I just want to make sure that my scans ended up in the write place. I'll just check my folder and here they are. Good. Now we're done with the scanning and it's time for the next step and that is to make them into vectors. That's what we're going to do in the next segment so I'll see you there. 10. Vectorizing: Now that we have scanned our illustrations and made them digital, it's time to process them. We're going to do that by making them into Vectors in Adobe Illustrator. Now I have opened up Illustrator, and just to let you know, I have Swedish interface with a Swedish language. I will try to translate for you when necessary. So go to File and open up a new document, and let's name it. I'm going to use the size A-4. You can use letter or whatever you like. A-4 or a letter would probably be pretty good. We'll use pixels. You can also choose different units, but pixels is good, I think, and C-M-Y-K is what we're going to have, and click okay. Now we have an art board here, and now we're going to import our scanned illustrations. Let's open them up and just select and pull them into illustrator into your art board. Now we're going to turn each of them into vectorized image. Let's start with a broccoli, and place it into the art boarded. Now we're going to use the Live Trace Tool. This one is actually mirrored, so I'm going to turn this around by pressing O, which is reflect, and then do like that, and if I hold Shift, I will reflect it like that. This is what it's supposed to look like. Maybe I scanned it the wrong side, probably. Now I'm going to select Live Trace Tool, and let's use black and white. Now we have this value here that we can adjust. I think I'm going to try with this pre-selected one and just see what that looks like. Click Trace. This message will come up every time. I'm just going to deselect this and it just says something about that, tracing this image can take long time and do you want to continue, and you just click "Yes". Now it's tracing. It's so exciting every time just to see how it will turn out to be. I think it looks pretty okay. Maybe it could be a little bit less than so. We're just going to try and decrease it to 90 and see what happens. I don't want the dark areas to be too dark. I think that looks a little bit better, actually. I think I'm going to keep that one. Now we need to do something called expand. Select "Object" and go down to "Expand" in English, and click that, and "Okay". Now we have a vectorized broccoli, and I'm going to maybe do some editing later on, but for now, I'm just going to pull this one to this side and continue with the pineapple. Okay? I'm going to do the same thing. Live Trace Tool, and I'll start with a 128, the pre-selected, and just trace, see what happens. So that's too dark, I think so. I'm going to take it down to 90, this one too, then see what happens. That's too bright. So something in between a 100, let's try a 100. Some of those shapes here turned out to be black, but this one looks okay. This one is fine. I really like when they become vectors because they become a bit simplified. It makes it look almost like a woodcut, unlike that look. All right. Select "Object" and "Expand". Click "Okay". Now the pineapple is done. Pull that one to the side, and for the final one, the coffee cup and this deep bowl of motif. I'm just going to go ahead and trace, see what happens. I think this one came out pretty okay. I like it, but just for fun, I'm going to take it down to 90, this one too, to see if this one will improve or not. Because some of the dots were merging together too much. This one just brightens it a little bit, and nah, I think I like the previous one, so I'm going to press Command Z, that is "Undo", and it will just take it back to the previous step. I'm going to take it down to a 110. This one is good, I think. Select "Object" and "Expand". Now we are done. We have our three vectorized illustrations. Great, and now to the next step, which is editing. 11. Editing: Welcome to the segment where we will edit our illustrations. We can start editing and polish our victorized illustrations if necessary, I might want to do something with this grid-like shadow here. I want to have it more diffuse. I think I'm just going to do that and I'll select and Ungroup. Now I can use the white arrow tool and now I can go ahead and select same filling. Now, all the white areas in this document are now selected. Then I can go ahead and delete them there. Now I can go over with the eraser and see if there are areas I want to adjust or just use the brush or the blob brush tool and make the adjustments I want to. I'm just going to go through it and look and I might want to work on this grid area a little bit. It's just too perfect, too geometrical and I wanted to be more irregular. I might just go ahead and do like that in some of the places. I know you think is cheating but this is the great thing about computer. You can manipulate your images the way you want them. I sometimes found myself in my daily life and I do something, maybe I spill something or break something and I just want to press command Z and undo, but that's not possible. Not yet at least. I think that will just do. Now you can just edit your illustrations, if there are things that you want to change or make better, improve them. There is one thing that I want to do with this coffee cup and I'm not completely pleased with the underneath here. It just picks up too much. The perspective is not correct. What I would like to do before I consider it finished, I would just erase this bottom here. I'm going to go and do that before we start preparing the print files. I just want to show you the final result for the coffee cup too. Now I edited and took away the very bottom part of this and I think it came out better perspective wise. Now this one is ready to prepare for printing. 12. 11: We're coming closer to the end of this course and it's time for printing our art prints and in this segment, we will make print files and we will do some printing settings so that we can do the best printing version that we can. To create our print file for the illustration, go to file, create a new document. I'm going to name mine Skillshare Artprint and I want you to set as many artboards to the amount of art prints you want to make so if you have three illustrations like I do, I want to make an artprint of each and one of them. I'm setting my artboard to three and if you just have one illustration, you just have to pick one artboard, that's enough and columns, I want them in the rows of that's fine with three and my size, I'm going to create my own size and I have a paper that I want to print on that has the measurement, the width is 24 centimeters and the height is 32 centimeters. You choose which format you want to use, you have a paper that's letter-size or maybe A4 or whatever paper you have to print on, you pick this alternative. I'm creating my own, so 24 by 32 centimeters. I set my unit here to centimeters and for vertical, and now keep CMYK. This is fine and click "Okay". Here I have my three artboards. Now, I want to go to my previous illustrated document and just select all my three illustrations and I copy them by pressing command C and then I go back to my new document and paste them with command V. There they are and now I'm just going to place them in artboards and I 'll adjust it, each and one of them. If you have your smart guides on, you see those little red lines that appears, you can find the exact middle, you want to place it there. Then I have my pineapple, it's a bit too tall, so I'm going to select and press S on my keyboard, that's for scaling and I press downshift and then I just drag it down like this and make it a bit smaller like that and I think this one would actually benefit from being a little bit broader. I'm going to scale it that way too. I'm pressing S for scale and now I'm not pressing downshift, I'm just trying to see if I can make it a little broader. Yeah, I think that looks better. Now I think I'm actually done with this, I'm going to save this document, command S and I'm going to save it as Skillshare Artprint print and I'm saving it in my folder, Skillshare, it's saved and okay. For the best printing result, I just recently learned the best way to print your artwork that is to use preview. Go to your folder where you saved your document, select and right-click and then you open with, in Swedish, it says, [inaudible] , that's open with. Now you learn some Swedish too and then you go to preview that's [inaudible] in Swedish okay so click "Preview" and now this will come up. Now you go to file and you have preview, open press Print and this message box will appear and now we're going to do some settings. I'm going to create a new setting for this one, select "Black and White" and one unit for me this time I'm not going to produce ten of them at this point, I'm just going to make this test first and I don't want to print all pages at once, just one at a time. I'll select the page that is marked here in this side menu, see there is this gray frame around it. That marked one and the paper size. I have one setting that I did already for my 24 by 32-centimetre paper. I'm going to use that one, but if you have another size of paper, I want to show you how you do this in case you don't know it. Go to, what could that be in English, customized or something like that, it's the one on the bottom and here you can make another one, I'll just press this plus sign and I can name it Skillshare Artprint and I want the paper size to be 240 millimeters by 320 millimeters and the margins should be 0 and now this one changed. I want to warn you about this. I don't known why that happens, I'm not that far in my learning in preview printing yet, so I'm just going to have to do it again. two hundred and forty by 320 there, so now the margins are still 0. Okay, so now we're done with the paper setting and I'm going to click "Okay" and let's see what I have. I have a Skillshare Artprint and just check here just in case so it's the write size, 240 by 320 and it's horizontal and then click "Preview" and go to medium and quality and for the paper, if you have a certain paper that you have preset here, you can choose that one, I don't have it. I don't have that at this point, but I have this one it's called [inaudible] in Swedish, but I think I would translate that into sum ink-jet paper and then I want to have the highest quality. Now I'm ready to print, so let's see what happens when I press the print button. Now I'm going to do the same thing with the pineapple and the coffee cup and print them too. To see how all three art prints came out, then hop over to the last segment. I'll see you there. 13. 12: Welcome to this last segment of artistic illustrations, learning how to draw. It's been so much fun doing this with you. Now it's time to see the final result of my art prints and also to make that final touch. Here is how my illustrations came out. Now for just one final detail, one last touch, don't forget to sign your work. Now I want to see your work. Of course, I'm so excited to see what you will create. If you feel like it, create a project in this class and go through all the steps that I have showed you. Start with coming up with an idea and motif, and just write that down and post that in your project. Gets some pictures of your objects or your images that you have gathered and include them. Just gather more inspiration and do the practice exercises I gave you. Then start sketching your motifs, and post pictures of your sketches. After that, trace your sketches like I showed you, and also it would be great to see images on those too. Then you scan and vectorize and print your illustration, make your own art print. Of course, I want to see that final signed art print too. Good luck and I look forward to seeing your projects. Now the final note, if you want to follow me and see more of my work, you can visit my website and blog at bearbellproductions.se, or follow me on Instagram @bearbellproductions. Thank you for joining me in this class, and I will see you around.