Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hey guys. In this class, we are going to learn all about Adobe Fresco by creating our very own story book illustration. I'm so excited to dive in to Adobe's latest release. The app is for the iPad featuring a seamless interface that utilizes both vector and pixel based projects in the same workspace. That's right, both fully scalable and our regular well-known pixel workspace on the same canvas. I'm Peggy Dean, I'm an illustrator based in Portland, Oregon. I'm also an author and my favorite, I am an educator. I am so excited to introduce you to this class offering a quick tour of the user interface along with demonstrating gestures that will make your workflow a seamless one. Throughout the class you will learn the program without even realizing it as I'll be guiding you through creating a darling storybook illustration that can be plucked right out of a children's book or a fairy tale. You'll learn how to utilize layers while illustrating for ease. When applying textures and additional color, you'll be able to make some creative choices to enhance character and you'll also learn the best export options for your piece. This beginner class will introduce you to the first part of illustrating on the app all the pixel fun. This class is for you if you're looking to expand your illustration style or if you're just looking to learn a new software. I'm super eager to get started. Let's jump right in.
2. What You Need: Welcome to the class. You guys, the supplies for this class are very straight forward. You need your iPad, you need your Apple pencil. If you're wondering, I get this question a lot where I got my case, I'm just going to show you real quick. It's a really convenient case. It has the charger that will allow the magnetic charging or excuse me, the holder for the Apple pencil that allows the electronic charging. I've linked that in the project and Resources tab. I remember you need to be on a laptop or desktop to be able to access that and then we need the app, the Adobe Fresco app. You're going to find this in the app store under W fresco this app. If you have the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, then this will be included, which is awesome. If you remember, then you get everything that Adobe creates access to all of it. That will be included. If you don't already have that, then it will cost you 999 per month. It's a subscription-based, but for the first six months they're offering free access to the app six months. That's a really long time. You can really get familiar with the app until then, real quick. Before I jump into the app, I just wanted to tell you that I know that I tend to speak a little bit quickly. You have any issues with that? Please remember that you can always slow the video down into your own pace. You're going to do that by choosing the playback speed pretty straight forward and it might work in your benefit to slow that down if there's something that you just need a little extra time navigating. That's all that we need for this class is pretty easy, so we will jump right on in.
3. Interface Basics: When you open Adobe Fresco, you're going to see this greeting screen. You have some options here. This is your home screen, you can go to learn, which is going to give you some tutorials. Look at your gallery, look at your Cloud documents, look at what you've deleted, and then you can start a new document here. You can choose a custom size, choose your current screen size, a square comic book. I'm going to create a custom size. You can choose pixels, you can choose inches, centimeters, millimeters. I'm going to go with inches for now. I'm going to change this to 16 by 20. This is just a standard that I like to work in pixel size. I'm going to go 300 because I want that to be large enough to where it will print well, 300 ppi, I guess this is ppi for pixels per inch, 300 is the least, I like to go to ensure that if I am to print this work, it will print at a higher-quality, and we can change the background color. And also you have the option to save the size and rename it. I'm just going to go 16 by 20 and then 300 ppi. That's what I like to save my sizes as. Say "Ok", and then "Create Document". You can see that it has opened up a document with a portrait size, even though my iPad is landscape and this is because 16 by 20, it's always going to measure the width and then the height. But this is what I want to work on. If you prefer to rotate your iPad so that it's portrait position, you can totally do that. For this program, I like to use the landscape mode. It's just easier for me and then I can zoom as I need. I'm going to quickly introduce to you some quick controls and what this interface means. This is your home button that's going to return to the screen we were just on the sky here. Then if you need to go back to your document, you can just go to reset and then open your documents. Then you have your document here and this is the name of it. Then you've got 34 percent. What 34 percent means is, since I chose a 16 by 20 canvas at 300 DPI, 16 by 20 is larger than what I can see on this screen. I can choose a 100 and then it's going to show me what that looks like. But as you can see, it's far too large and will cut things off. You can't really see it because it's all wide right now, but gives you the idea. This is just going to show you what it is on a smaller scale. If you were to have chosen screen size, then the screen size would be at a 100 percent. Then as you can see, I'm using two fingers to pan around here. I'll be showing you gestures and just a bit, little tricks that you can do to maneuver with your fingers. From here you've got your undo button. If you tap and hold, it will also give the option to redo. You also have a little help question mark here that's going to show you tutorials, tours, gestures that we're going to go over. All that stuff is right here as a quick reference, if you forget something, you can export. This is your export icon with the little, I guess it's like an outbox icon if you will, but you can have a quick export, which I'll explain in a second, or you can go publish and export. Quick export comes up here again, but you can also export as and then choose the file name and rename it and format it as a PNG or JPEG. These are both image files. PNG will also allow you to retain a transparent background. PSD is a Photoshop file type, so it'll keep it in layers or you can go PDF, which is a readable file. Typically you're probably going to use the top three. But if you want a flattened version, it will be a PNG or a JPEG. Then just export, and then you can choose where you want to export. It can be on your device or it can be on Dropbox, all of those options. Then you have your settings icon, which is where that quick export. I'm going to show you that in here. But first, you can also rename your document here. You can change the size of the canvas or crop it. You can flip the canvas horizontally or vertically, rotate it. Here are some rotation options. In your app settings, at the bottom there, you've got a toolbar interface. The toolbar's on the left, you can change it to the right if you're left handed, that might be more convenient. A color theme, I like it on dark. You can see that it really defines my canvas that way. Some people like light, it just depends on your personal preference. That's in app settings and then "Quick Export Settings". This is what I was talking about. If you don't want to walk through the export settings, if you just want to quickly export it, you can choose the file type that you want your Quick Export setting to be. JPEG is what its default setting is, and that will allow you to quickly create an image file. Can restore the settings to the default. Your input, this is your pressure sensitivity of your stylus, Apple pencil. You can choose what happens with your finger when you're touching it while the pencil is active. Right now it'll just allow me to draw with the brush that I'm using but without any pressure sensitivity. Shows your account about, what version you're using. Any help and then experimental. I think of this is a category for what they're trying out on the app. I could be wrong about that, but I don't see why it would be an experimental otherwise. But let's toggle this on because hold for straight line, this is when you drag, it like, let's say you draw a straight line, but then without lifting up, you're still holding, it will snap to a perfectly straight line. I turn that on because I like to have that feature when I need it. Then that's all for settings. Then the other icon here will allow you to go to full screen so that all this noise is gone and then returned to your interface. [MUSIC]
4. Brushes & Color: Now we'll go over to the left panel. We have our brushes. These are the top three right here. Your first is your pixel brush, your second is your live brush, and the third is your vector brush. The difference here, pixels or dots. They're going to be tiny dots, whenever you expand an image or a piece of art and it looks pixelated. That's what that means. It's that it loses some of its quality, because it's pixelated. Whereas, the vector brushes, you're going to find only, I'm going to make this larger. Also your brush settings down here in this gray, this is where you can increase the size. Let's say, here's my vector brush. I make this as large as I can and it's never losing quality, because it is a vector. It's not a pixel base. If it's a pixel based brush, and if I make that larger, you can see that these dots start to pixelate. That's the difference there. Some additional settings under the pixel brushes are down here. We have our size, like I mentioned that at the top and then we have our flow. The flow is basically the opacity of that. How strongly that brush is showing up. I keep it at 100. You've got your smoothing. For lettering and things like that, or if you want really smooth lines, and you don't want to see any of that wobble, you can turn this up. Then the bottom, we have our brush setting. Every individual brush has its own settings. You can do hardness. You can see if I put this down, it turns into more of an air brush. The blend mode, which is similar to the layer mode. It's just dependent on that particular brush. The shape dynamics. This is going to go over your Jitter. Turning that up creates a rougher edge. The control width, you can change the pen. What happens when the pen has more pressure? When the pen might have more tilt? Things like that. Then change the diameter and angle Jitter. I'm just going to keep this as standard for now. If you want to get more into creating your own brushes, then I encourage you to go over and experiment with these. But for now, I don't want to mess with them, because I just want the brush to do what it was meant to do. Then scattering, same thing. It's going to give you the option. It's not the same thing, but this one scatters basically the stamp instead of the edges. Then transfer Opacity Jitter. As you can see, it's changing in opacity as it works. This is going to be helpful, when you're doing painting brushes and things like that. That's what those mean. Then, you've got your live brushes. The live brushes are essentially watercolor and oil. There is four watercolor brushes that Fresco comes with, and seven oil brushes. These are like live brushes. What that means is, you can see them actually moving and expanding as if they were watercolor brushes. You can change the flow. If you bring this down a bit. It's almost like so, because it's an opacity filter. If you are a watercolor artist, you're probably familiar with paint to water ratio. It's basically putting more water into that selection, into that particular brush stroke, and then this would be more pigment. That can be used in your benefit to play with that. Below that, we've got the water flow. Exactly what I just said. You've got two ways to do that. This really is opacity and this is the water flow. The additional setting on this part is, this will be you actually have physically more water on your brush. It's going to expand more, whereas if it is a lot less, then it's not going to expand nearly as much. This is more of the movement of the watercolor itself, whereas this is more like the opacity. Lastly, you've got your brush settings, so same thing as before. Then, when we move into our vector brushes, we've got basic, round, flat, chisel, etc. Then you'll notice there's no flow setting down here. You've got your size. You've got smoothing options. You got your brush settings, but there is no flow. It's because it's a vector brush, it's a flat color. It's not going to have the same properties as the pixel base brush. Then you've got your eraser tool. The thing about the Eraser tool is it's standard. You've got a size and you've got a flow, so the opacity. It's just going to erase any solid eraser would. Let's say, I have got a brush. Let's say, I put this down. I've got a special brush. Let's say, I have done an air brush here, and then I want to erase this. But if I go to my Eraser tool, it's just this harder erase. But I want it to have the same effect as this brush. This circle down here is your touch shortcut. This can go anywhere that you want it to go on your Canvas. Which is really helpful. But my holding it, while on my brush, and then actually drawing over that, will create an eraser with the same brush that I am using to draw. Really helpful on that front. Then, from here, we've got our arrow. This will allow us to move whatever is on that layer and then say, Done. You have your selection tools, so you can use your Lasso selection. Then, close the Lasso, and then you have that selection. Then, there are options you can do like transform it, which means that you can drag it. So if I press that, it's going to let me do all things, just with the area that I selected. You can also erase. Anything that you erase will only be affected to the selection you made. You can Mask that selection, Deselect it, and then you also have an option to change the way your selection looks. It's just the marching ants, that's how I prefer it. Then you can Invert it, Transform it, Selection Overlay, so change how it overlays, etc. That's your selection tool that you can also change the type of selection. That was the Lasso. If I press and hold, I have the option to Paint my selection. I can also create a selection with a rectangle or with a cylinder shape. See, that's all adding to the same selection. Your fill paint bucket icon. I'm going to make a new layer. I can just Fill the layer, pixel or vector. You can choose which way you want to do that. Then it will fill with the color you have selected. Your eye dropper. This will let you go through and pick a color. You can see this is your previous color on the bottom. This is your current selected color on the top. You can select a color on your Canvas with the Eyedropper tool, and then go into brushes, and then you have that color selected right here. Then you can import images from your camera. You can take a picture. You can choose your files or your Creative Cloud files right here. Then this is your Color Wheel. I can select a color easily like this. Change the hue right here, and change the opacity here. You have the options to go to a quick black, quick white, and then quick transparent here. Then if you don't like working this way, you can go to the sliders which will adjust the hue right here. Adjust the saturation right here. This is how colorful we are, and then you can adjust the brightness here. You can see how that's affected live, which is pretty convenient. Your recent colors will be displayed down here. Let's say you were on a color and you really want to go back to it, but you aren't sure which one it was. It'll be here in your recent colors.
5. Gestures: I'm going to show you some quick gestures that you can do to make your workflow a little more seamless. These are just your standard gestures. As we go along, I will most likely use them, a bunch so you will know exactly what's happening. Probably need a color. I'm going to lay down some strokes so that I can show you what's going to happen. First of all, if you pinch with two fingers, you are able to rotate. You are able to pan. It can just pan around. I can pinch and zoom. Then two fingers quickly together will pinch it to fit the screen. If I want to undo something that I did on my actual Canvas with a brush, I can use two fingers to tap to undo. Then I can use three fingers to redo it. If I want to use my eyedropper, instead of coming over here and selecting it, I can use my finger and just hold it down and then the eyedropper will appear. I can hover over any color and then release and then my color, as you can see, it's red, so I'm going to do the same thing. I can select another color. Now it's this ocher color. That's a quick, easy eyedropper. Whenever you want more options, just long press, and then it will show you more options anywhere that has a little arrow on the bottom right. I know I showed you that when you're on your pixel brush and you hold down on your touch shortcut, it will erase in the same brush that you're using for drawing. When you're on your live fresh the same touch shortcut. It will paint with a clear color. See how that creates movement on those pixels. It's basically adding what would be considered water. But it's clear, it's pretty cool. The vector brush works like the pixel brush. If you're creating with a vector brush and then you hold this down, it will erase in the same brush. If you remove tools on the arrow, I can freely move this, but if I'm holding this down, it's going to lock the x and y positions so that I can have more of a magnetic, I can maintain the center, which is really helpful because sometimes I think I'm centering something, but this will really let me know that it's perfectly centered. With my lasso, my touch shortcut will allow me to, let's say I have something selected, I got it. But let's say I selected too much of something and I don't want maybe like that green in there. I can hold this down and just draw around or I don't want that, and then it will deselect. Let's say I want to do a selection with a perfect circle, I can hold this down and it will make the circle perfect. It won't be oblong in any way. Same with the rectangle tool, it will make it a perfect square. Then with the fill tool, if I hold that down, it will,erase with the tool instead of filling it with that color.
6. Sketching with Imported Brushes: Let's dive into actually creating our illustration. This is the fun part. I'm going to keep this relatively simple for you because I just want to basically show you, walk along with you as you're creating something and then show you some basic techniques that you can apply to an actual working project. We're going to create a little village on a hillside. This is one of the most quaint, adorable types of illustration. I created a Pinterest board that you can access in the project resources. At the time I'm recording this class that's only available from a computer, either a laptop or desktop. Make sure to switch over there to make sure that you can access the downloads in the project and the resources tab. You will find that link there and then you can scroll through here and you can see that I have quite a few options that you can look at and these are more so just for reference and inspiration, I would say your illustrations going to be so simple that, don't overthink this. You are just creating some buildings and some hills. It doesn't have to look exactly like any of these pictures. These are just references, but there are some really beautiful items that you can focus on. Some old houses or buildings, or you can add water, boats, unique trees, unique hillsides. Look at composition if you want to. This'll be a great source for you to get the ball rolling. Keep in mind that if you do follow along with me in the class as far as what I'm illustrating. The work that you create is for personal use only, for learning purposes. I will dive right in and going to my pixel brushes. I want to show you how you can add additional brushes real quick because you might not love the standard options that they have in here. I'm going to select the plus symbol and then I'm going to say get more brushes. This will open up Adobe's brushes here and I have to sign into downloads and make sure that you're signed in. Kyle. If you haven't heard of Kyle's brushes on Photoshop, like you're going to get really familiar with it, especially on fresco. Kyle T Webster has some exclusive brushes that you do want. This will tell you after you download the brushes that you want, launch the files with Photoshop running. But because fresco will also allow those brushes, launch it and then it'll automatically be added. You can see there's all these gritty brushes, dry media omega pack of 300 or something watercolor, wash scatter running inkers, all of these types of brushes. Lettering anyway, you get the idea, it's got a ton. I wanted to show you some of my favorites. I love the scatter. I'm going to download those. Then I have Affinity Designer. It's automatically asking if I want it there, but I'm going to say more. Then I can say copy to Adobe fresco. If you don't see that. You can go all the way over and say more and then you'll see it in your options here. So I'm going to copy it there. It'll open fresco and then it will import the brushes. You can see it's pretty fast. Then they're in here. I'm going to go back and then I'm going to get a couple more of these. You can get them mega pack. It has a whole bunch of different kinds of pens. Smudge tools are in here. I would just go with anything that feels more you. So I really like running inkers. Open those, copy it over to Adobe fresco, imports those. I'm going to go back into my document and then go into my brushes and then you will not see that you've got these other brushes studio from. I'm going to go to running inkers because, the reason I like these because it gives a more organic field to your illustrations. I'm going to increase the size so you can see that better. You can see that it just has a rougher edge while still maintaining a clean line, but it has a little more character to it. That's how I'm going to draw my outlines for this project. Before we get to that point though, I like to do a rough sketch. I'm going to go back in here and I'm going to select sketching. Then just use my pencil and then use a color. I like to use, like a blue or red or something that I know is really bold that I'm not going to be using prominently really in my actual illustration. If you're like me, I like to always tilt my canvas so that it's more directionally toward me versus always shifting the iPad around. It's just easy to get angles with the two finger pan and pinch. I'm just going to draw my basic composition, this is pretty easy when you're doing hills. I'm going to create a couple of hills here. This is going to be my first one where most of my buildings are going to lie and then I've got another one here. Then maybe another one in the background way up here. Leave enough room for your village buildings to actually sit a top. Then you can go from there. From here I'm going to draw just some quick outlines of buildings. I'm going to do some maybe German inspired homes. I've got my sketch here. It's like basically breaking these down into shapes. I got to square, I got these angles here. I'm going to put some windows in and then do another one next to it. Maybe a little taller. I can worry about the details once I actually start drawing it. I'm not too worried about making all the windows right now. But it's fun to make creative choices like do I want a door frame to be normal or do I want it to be arched? Because that will totally change things up as well. I'll add Windows after that. Then the buildings in the background, I'm going to make a little bit smaller. Then the same thing over here. Like so. Maybe a little guy. You can also put buildings in the back of what you've just created. Maybe put a little steeple in here. Then from here, I am going to create a pathway. This pathway can come up to my buildings. This one can come through, gets narrower as it goes. Then up here it can just be really small. Maybe have it coming off over here as well. Maybe put a hill like a smaller version of a city back there. That looks good to me. Then from here I can start actually creating the illustration. I'm going to create a layer on top. Notice that my active layers, the new layer, I'm going to go into my brushes, go back, select running inkers and go to the first one says Kyle's running inker blocks one. Then I'm going to choose the color that I want. For now, you can always change the color later, but I'm going to start off with black. It's just easy to see and then create my first hill. This is a pressure sensitive brush, so I encourage you to vary the pressure as you draw. It just makes for a little more interests like that wobbly character in there. Notice I'm doing that on purpose where as opposed to, let's say you might want it to be sharper. Remember I told you you could draw a straight line and then hold it and then it'll snap. You can do that too. But I personally like this character that varied pressure and then wobbly lines will create. Adding my windows in. This will almost act like a tunnel through. Throw a little sign in here. Then my roof, I can actually add additional little overhangs. Then my next hill top. Then as you get further up, you might want to alter some parts of your illustrations. I've actually decided to make this hill a little less prominent in the center, but wobbly and then prominent over towards the right a little bit more. Then I can shoot a little hill off the back here. You can put buildings here. You can leave a bear whatever you want to do. Then I'm going to create that roadway and I'm actually going to have it go through my tunnel like this, but then it can split off to go into this one as well. Then have this go over and select this is another little tunnel. Then another one up here and notice that these are getting narrower and narrower. Destination over here. Since it's so thin and not putting a whole lot of detail in there. I'm going to keep my draft, the first sketch layer, but I don't want to see it anymore. I'm going to select that layer and then go to this eye icon and that's going to turn it off. Then I'm going to return to the layer that I was working on. If I like this, if it looks okay to me, then I can move on, but I'm actually going to clean some of this up. Remember that I can use my touch shortcut to erase with the same brush that I'm using. It'll just make it so that if I do need to do a larger area, it will erase with the same tool, I'll see how it just adds that grid cell so it's not a clean line anymore. Just going to clean that up a little bit. That looks good to me. Then now that I can go over an add like these details where like let's say I want to put some cobblestone in here and just going to create some wobbly lines, they're getting flatter and smaller as they go inward more. The reason why is it's considered further away from us. Like anything that goes further away, we lose the detail a little bit more at flattens out, whereas stuff that's closer to us, we have a better view of the shape. I might move the silver so I can use my lasso tool which had selected, I'm going to select this, close the lasso, select my move tool, and then I can move that where I want it to go and might even make it a little smaller. Then it looks like it would go better maybe right here. I'm going to say done. Then that, and then I'm going to de-select it. That is how to do that part and still on my lasso, so cancel lasso and I'm going to do, go back to my brush. Once it's through there and can continue on this path that these are going to be really small because they're going to be for much further away from us. They become more like dashed lines and then it just becomes noise as it gets further away. You can create as much or as little noise as you want. I always say less is more. I think the character is built up just in the assumption of what's going on without putting too much obvious in there. If you put too much of the obvious of what's going on, it becomes more of the focal point. Where as we want our overall seem to be our composition to be the focal point. Now we'll move into color and how are we going to add color to add interest.
7. Adding Color: One of the easiest ways I find to create color in my pieces is by duplicating the layer and then using it as reference, or I can just draw simple shapes beneath. The reason why I'm going that route instead of using a mask is because I am going to do these on separate layers with my color, and while I could've made my workflow a lot easier as I was setting that up. I wanted to do it this way so that you knew how to approach this once you actually had gotten to the point like, let's say you did a full illustration, you weren't really thinking about it, you just wanted to be able to draw. This is going to allow you to apply color exactly the way that you want to without doing like a fill layer or something like that. While you could duplicate a layer, I'm going to show you two ways. You can duplicate a layer by selecting the Active Layer, saying Duplicate Layer and then going to the bottom, and then you can color fill, and to do that you just go to the paint bucket and you can color fill. You'll notice that you're going to run into some issues where you don't have close lines and you'd have to go back and erase. But the reason I like to duplicate is that way I have one layer remaining untouched. Another way to do this though, I'm going to delete that underneath layer and then just create a new layer and make sure that's underneath the line layer, I do it this way so that I can still see my outlines pretty prominently, if you don't care about that, you can of course do it on the top, and by doing the drag and drop and then that'll be on the top. Actually, I will do it on the top so that you can see how that's going to look as I work. I'm going to go to my Brushes, make sure that I'm on that inky runner that I like, and then I'm just going to create a larger version, and then I'm just going to go over this, like it was the first time, but the reason why I'm doing that is because if I do keep these outlines, I think that it's really fine to be able to offset the color a little bit so that there is some wide space in there. This is just an option, of course you don't have to do this, and then I can fill that layer like this and you'll see a Color Margin here. Notice that after I fill that layer, there's these lines that separate my outline from my fill, so if I increase my Color Margin, then it will increase the amount of space that it covers, so it's still a little blank, you're going to want to play with that and see like the perfect amount, so we do too much, it'll grab everything on the page, but if you come down a little bit, you can fight that, see now that has good coverage. I can go with that, and then from here, what I like to do, I'm just going to show you real first if I was drag this and put it underneath, I have some whitespaces and some offset here, which I think is really fun, it just adds character. I'm going to drag it on top again, and then if I want to do a cool effect to this, I can go into the other Kyle brushes that I downloaded this spatter_brushes, and these are some of my favorite add texture, so you're going to go through and you're going to see so many texture options which makes this part so fun, but I'm going to probably go with for now just something that has some noise, so I'll go with the Organic Noise 2, and then I want to change my color to something that is either a little lighter or little darker than my current color. I'll go up and choose something a little bit lighter, and for some reason that's on a different setting, let's see. It's on Multiply, so you want to make sure it's on Normal. I'm going to lock the transparency, so I go to my current layer, Lock Transparency and then everything that I do will only be applied to what is on that layer, not anything in the background, so what I've already created. I'm going to put this size down further so I can create this noise that's a little too light for me, so I'm going to go back to the color I had and then just lighten it a little there, that's perfect, so you can see it just creates a little bit of noise. I'm just going to color through here to add that grit. and then I have a little more texture. You can of course, make this even lighter and add it in certain areas to where it has a little more depth with what's underneath, so it's like adding highlights almost, you can also change the brush so that the noise is a little bit different. It looks like these brushes are set specifically to like the flow is pretty low on this one, so you might want to play with those, I'll actually like the way that that looks. That's how you're going to add that added interest. Another point though, if you drag this underneath, you'll see that it has that offset, you might want to change the color of your outline. Let's say I don't like the black, it's too harsh, I can go to the Outline Layer, Select it and turn Lock Transparency and then maybe go in and create an outline, maybe more of a gray or I could do something that has a little more like maybe just this dull brown color. Go to my brushes, probably use something little easier or like my Basic brush, Hard Round, make sure that's all the way large, so see how that's just creating a little different effect, or let's say you want it to be similar in color, you might want it to really stand out, you could also go white because that's going to create those weird, like you see the outline but then you don't, but then it creates this really cool technique to the shape over all you'll get a better idea what I'm talking about when the illustrations done, because I doesn't really give you the idea, but yes, you can change that, but you can also turn it off completely, and then you have this really awesome raw shape, which is what I am going for and that's the reason I like to work this way. I don't want that layer. Moving on, I'm going to continue to work the way that I have that I'm going to unlock this, and then you also have the option of, so let's say I want the same color that I just had initially. I can pick that from there or remember, I can go to my Colors and pick that first one that I did. You can also undock this and have your Colors panel open at all times, wherever you want that to be, and then you can also redock it just by clicking the x. I'm going to do the same thing, I'm going to drag my outline to the bottom and then I'm just going to keep working on this top layer and go back to that brush that I wanted to use, and then I might do some additional buildings in that same color. Just really loose outlines, I don't want these to match perfectly. I've got my fill exactly where I want it to go, and then I'm just going to keep going, so go back to my drawing brash, loose selections, fill, and just repeat that until all the buildings that I want to be this color are completed and then I can change colors, and I'll show you what I do and I change colors.
8. Working with Color in Layers: I'm going to now do some buildings that are a little bit lighter, so I'm going to bring this color up to maybe the slight cream. There we go. Actually, I think I want it to be pink. I think that will really let this stand out more. When I change colors, I'm still going to apply this texture. But for right now, since I'm working on just outlining the buildings, I'm going to continue doing that before I add all the other texture. I'm going to select my new layer and it's going to open up a new layer. I like to work on new layers whenever I do a new color, and I'll show you why in just a bit. Really loose outlines and then fill, so somewhere in here is not completely closed. It looks close to me. That happens then you can just push that down, there we go, a little bit more. Especially when you add texture, it's not going to matter too much, but that looks like a good fill to me. Then I'm going to do the rest of the buildings. Then if this happens, remember you can touch shortcut here, erase it, and then you can go ahead and fill what you just worked on. Now I can add my texture. I want to actually drag this over a little more so the buildings are more touching. Adding texture, so I can go back to that first one that I was working on, lock the transparency again, go to my colors, and then pick something just a little bit lighter. Go to those texture brushes. There are the spatter brushes, and I don't remember what I used. It was the organic noise, I believe one of those. This will work. I'm just adding some texture loosely in here. Then I'm going to go in again with a little bit of a lighter color and a different noise brush. Maybe make that a little bit smaller and then maybe the same one in a different brush. I just go through and play with these. You're going to find your favorites. Once that is done, see how that's just automatically on multiply. Multiply is a blend mode. Of course, you can use those, but I don't like my brushes to be on blend modes. I like them to be normal. That looks good to me for texture on those, and then I'm going to go to the pink buildings, lock the transparency, and then go in and select the pink color but then make that a little bit lighter. Perfect. Then I'll increase the size and just add some noise in here. Once that's done, I might go to a slightly darker color. This is really just experimenting on how you want to do this. I'm just add in some splatter, there's some noise. I'm just choosing random selections. I'm not covering everything on the second go. When I move on to my roofs, I make a creative choice to keep these in uniform. I'm going to show you that next.
9. Creating Depth with Texture: Now that, that is finished, I can do the roofs. When I do these village roofs, I really like to create them all in the same color. To create a new layer, my active layer is selected up here, and then I'm going to create my roof all in the same color. I just think it's fun to have that consistency and I'm going to select something in the red family. This terracotta color. Go back to my inking brush, and remember you're doing loose outlines. You're outlining everything because you're adding your own layer so if you were to fill that and you don't outline everything and you just connect it like this, then you're going to be coloring everything. You want to make sure that's closed. That's done. You can go in and fill those areas that you just created. I'm going to get the darker color that I want and then just do more of this full saturation of the splatter brush so that the texture pulls the color that I want. I'm going to make that smaller. See what I mean, it's going to create the texture. Yeah, I like that better. This is why I like to do the colors on different layers because I like to really do a broad sweep and I don't want it to affect the other layers. From here, I'm going to do the other parts of the roof on a new layer and I'm going to choose this color and then just flip flop the techniques so that you can see some separation. Now I'll do something just a little bit darker and seems that, oops, have to lock the transparency. I'm going to go even darker than that. Because I'm going a lot darker, I'm actually going to darken the previous areas a little more too. That's a little more cohesive. Now add some depth just like we did with the buildings and it'll make more sense once we have details in here. Now that that's done, I'm going to go in and work on the hills. Create a new layer and drag it to the top so I know which layer I'm working on. I'm going to choose. You can choose green or brown or anything that you want your hills to be, I mean, nobody says they can't be purple. I'm going to run the inks, I'm going to click that first one. I'm going to fill this area and then just make a soft round spot at the bottom and this is where I'm going to, I'll show you actually. Now, so I'll fill that and then I'll worry about adding my texture later. But for now, I want to choose a texture brush to erase with. Let's go with something really dense. This one is the Instant. I don't know what that says, Instant Popp something. But I'm going to hold this down and I'm going to start erasing with it. You can see what's happening is it's actually pulling it away so that it's creating more of a soft exit instead of having this really harsh line and then I'm going lighter on the pressure with my Apple Pencil so that it's fading in. Then I can make that smaller and then clean up just a few of these details so that its little varied. Not everything has the exact same effect. Now that that is done, I can add text here if I want to. I actually don't know that I like this color green anymore. I'm going to bring it down and I'm going to do the same thing where I covered the bulk of it to change the color. Lock in transparency, going into my texture brush, I like the darker. I'm going to go and pick something that has a little more just like regular green and cover that completely with the new color. I'm going to create the hill behind it and I'm choosing the darker color that I overlaid and then I'm going to make that even darker. I'm going to create a new layer and then since I put it behind, it's okay if you draw over this a little bit because it's not going to interfere on the top side. But it will interfere places like this so you have to be careful. But we're probably going to fill those, so it's not going to matter too much. Then I'm just going to connect it here. But remember you have to draw the whole way so that you don't have any openings. I'm actually going to drag this below the other hill so that it's tucked behind. I'm going to fill that, see how that's darker, but I'm going to make it even darker. I'm going to lock the transparency, select a new brush and go through and add that texture in there and then I'm going to do the same thing behind that one. I might actually want this one to travel further. What you can do here is make a selection with your Lasso tool loosely and I can close the Lasso, go to these three dots and then say Copy Selection, create a new layer and then three dots again because I'm on the new layer, Paste Selection. Now, it has copied and pasted the same thing on top of itself. I can bring it over here and flip it and then put it where I want it to go and say Done. Then I can just go in and erase what I don't want showing. Then it looks like that has traveled to that side. Then if you want to merge those layers together, you can do so on the Layers panel by just dragging that new layer on top of the old one and then it creates a group. You can just merge the layers in the group or an easier way to do that would be to select it and then say Merge Down, and then it merges. But I want to undo that so I want these two to be separate. I'm going to do the final two here. New layer, and now to even darker color so I'm going to keep that. Make sure that you close that new layer. I'm going to put it underneath so it's hiding. Make sure to get rid of anything that is not where it's supposed to be. Then I can fill that layer and then go even darker on my texture. Then just because we're getting so dark now, I'm going to bring this one light again just to this version. I'm going to get a lighter version of that color and then create a new layer, make sure it's underneath the other ones, grab my inking brush, create that final area. Maybe have it peekaboo up here and then we can add the darker texture. If you find that it's getting lost at all, you can always return to your layers and get it. Put a little lighter color in there or you can put a little darker color in there. Now that your color is mostly laid, I'm going to show you how we can add details, turn off, and play with outline layers and go from there.
10. Details: Less is More: Once you have the bulk of your color on here, you can see that my outline layer's still here. You can turn that off, turn it back on. But when you turn it off, you can really see all these fun characteristics to your piece. You can choose to fill those areas or you can leave them blank. I think I like how they look when they're blank. So I may leave them that way, but I do want to also show you if I turn that layer back on and I drag it all the way to the top. For instance, I forgot that I had this path here and I do want to add that in, so that's where you're also going to find some detail that you may have missed as you were filling things in if you did it on top. I'll do that real quick. I'm going to create a new layer, and I'm going to maybe select a gray color, and then select my drawing brush that I want, and then just follow that out. It's okay that I'm going off the edge here and I'm actually going to connect to that so that when I fill it, it will fill where I want it to fill maybe. It's because I didn't draw right here. That's the troublesome part of drawing in the same color. There we go. I might want to keep that gray, I might not want to, but for now that's what I'm going to do. Then I'm going to come over here draw my lines and then I can move this down underneath so it's not covering those buildings. But just for right now I'm just getting it placed in here. I'm going to fill it. Then this last piece, I'm just going to draw it in there. It's a live brush. Draw it in there so that it is in. I'm going to drag this layer underneath actually in between the hills and the buildings. I'll turn that top layer off to make sure I have that place where I want it to and then maybe remove a little piece of that. Then here, remember, we were able to erase the bottom of the hill. We're going to do it the same way. I'm going to find a brush that will work with that. It was that poppy, weird one. I'm going to select my touch shortcut and just get that out of there. I'm going to go real light right here because I don't want too much green to show up, just a little bit is fine. But for the most part we're insinuating that this is coming off and continuing. That looks good to me, really brings it together. Now I can add my texture that I want on top here and I think that I might choose more of a brownish gray. I can have that noise I want, lock the transparency on the layer I'm working on, and then once I have my noise in there, I do want to go in and add some depth, some darker shadowy areas. I'm going to change the color, make it a little bit darker, and then just add in where they're connecting to the buildings or in the depths of the hills. Once you're finished there, I'm going to go to the top, create another new layer, go to my drawing tool, and then I'm going to add the details that I want. I can do this in any color. I would encourage you to be creative. I think that because I like the white open right here, I might actually go with white, and I'm going to select that quick white here. Yeah, I like that. I'm just creating a couple little n shapes, horseshoe shapes. Then here, I'm going to create these really small rectangular shapes, just alluding to some texture. Maybe some more shadows up here. Same thing here. Then I skip some areas because I want to remember not too much focus on detail. Then I can go in and add just those details on what would be a cobblestone. I don't think I'm going to do as much as I had planned because I like just the texture as is. Now I'm also questioning that white choice. I think I might just darken it, just a smidge. I'm going to turn on my transparency locking and then just go down a little bit so it's a little more of a mutant tone. Yeah, that's better. That's basically why it's just a little bit more of a cream color. From here I'm going to turn my layers on or turn my outline layer on, see if I like that still. If I did, I would want to get rid of this mark here, any mark that's coming off, and then probably my hills I would want to get rid of because my hills are pretty well-defined. Then my trail area I'd want to get rid of. Basically, just an outline for the buildings and I may not even keep them. But let's just assume I erased everything, I'm only looking at the buildings, and I want to change that to not quite black but pretty close. It's going to look like that. It can definitely add a lot of interest, but it's really just up to you and if you like that. Now I want to show you what white would look like because I know we were talking about that. See how it just adds some extra interest. I think that's really fun. I think that you totally could go with it or just turn it off and keep it more of like that children's book illustration style, which is what I like the most about stuff like this. I'm going to say done and then I have that finished illustration.
11. Saving & Exporting: When you're finished, you're going to export. Right here I can export my art piece. I can say "Publish and Export". This will bring up my options to export. I could do my Quick Export, which will be your program settings, the default is JPEG. I can also Export As, change the name right here. I changed my mine to Storybook Village. Then I'm going to just keep it on a PNG. But you could do a PNG, JPEG, PSD, which is your Photoshop layered files or your PDF. I'm going to stay with this, say "Export." You can send it via AirDrop to one of your other devices. You can save the image to your iPad. You can email it to yourself, save it to your files. I'm just going to save it to my device. Then once the export's complete, I can go into my photos, and there it is.
12. Project Time!: [MUSIC] Thanks so much for taking this class with me, you guys. For the project, for this class, I would love to see your story book illustration. We're looking for some fun hills and some fun buildings and a limited color palette. I do want to challenge you to try that because I think it adds a lot of interest. Don't forget that if you need the class resources, the Pinterest board is a great resource. You can find that along with any other mentioned items in the class in the resources tab, and be sure to follow me so that you don't miss any of my new and exciting classes, they're always on something very different and that's my favorite thing to bring you guys, a good amount of variety. I can't wait to see what you create and I will see you next time.
Peggy Dean, Top Teacher | The Pigeon Letters
