Create Collages That Tell a Story | A Procreate Class

1. Introduction: We've all seen a digital collage too, but the question I want to ask you is, when you see these pieces, what story do you feel that they tell? See, I think collages can be so much more than random cut and paste imagery. They can speak to someone's history. They can represent all that someone loved deeply. They could be a timeline or they could be simply a motive, working in a way that expresses exploration to put feelings and stories and the art as essentially the definition of embracing the journey as you create, rather than being so concerned about the final results. Staying present through the process keeps us connected to our creative process and I want that for you. I'm Peggy Dean, an author, artist, educator and founder of The Pigeon Letters, a resource haven. In this class, we'll be exploring the steps to building a collage with purpose. I'll be using the Procreate app on the iPad Pro, but you can use any software of your choosing. Not only will we be exploring with unique compositions, but we'll also be exploring how working digitally can allow us unlimited options to make our pieces really stand out. We will be covering: sourcing, royalty-free imagery, building out a collage with purpose, researching meaningful additions to include, building out a scene, working in layers, isolating objects, manipulating elements, taking advantage of blend modes, utilizing the power of color, along with two bonus collage styles to try at the end. When you're finished with this class, you will have a unique to you piece that you'll feel a deeper connection to. This class is for anybody who's looking to break outside the box of the day to day and just allow yourself to play. I'm going to give you permission to play. Are you ready to play? Let's play. 2. Class Project: Your project for this class will be to utilize the techniques from the class to create a collage that has meaning to you. I'm going to show you an example of a project that was very personal to me and really made me truly love this process even more. This is my mom. My mom passed away late 2019, and I wanted to create something that I felt really represented her. I wanted to also feature just different times in her life that I remember being full of joy, and then also isolate places and things that brought her joy. As you can see through experimenting here, I know that she loved going out in nature, she loved flowers, she loved star gazing, she loved the beach. You can see that I'm going through and basically experimenting with different types of things that I felt would be fitting to best represent my mom. She loved lighthouses, she loved roosters. She was very religious, so I threw in some lyrics to Amazing Grace in the sky. You can see how this is just becoming more and more personalized just for her. She loved singing. I did these little illustrative halos above her head to represent she's now her angel self. Then I wanted to throw these images of her to represent just beautiful times in her life that I saw her with laughter and joy. While this class will cover technique on how to actually build out a fun collage, I want you to think about in the process of how you can apply the techniques to something meaningful for you, which will be your end project for the class. 3. Jumpstart Inspiration: Little bit of a bitter-sweet topic for me because collage is so much about experimentation, but I do want to introduce some ideas to you just to get your creative juices flowing. But I really encourage you to look at these and then completely close them as you're working on yours because you don't want that influence. You want this to come from you, and I promise you that whatever you create is going to look just as interesting as these. That being said, I just want to isolate some areas and show you ways that you can incorporate different types of things and use of color, or lack of color and that kind of stuff. So the first one I want to call out is this one. It looks like these are two vintage images. It looks like one of them is an eruption and one of them is a group of people that are looking at something, and it's been put into this image as if it's like a walking bridge, which it probably started off with maybe a boardwalk or something like that. It looks like it's on flat ground, especially because there isn't a railing on both sides, and it looks like there are some areas to the left there that are less stable. This person has gotten creative, probably removed the ground, and then placed this as a bridge as if it is overlooking this eruption. So that's pretty fun. The reason why I want to call this one out is because there's color play. You have separation of black and white image and then color image. Then you also have very few elements for a lot of interests, which means there's a volcano and some people, that's it. Those are the only two elements that have been added to this one, and it still creates a really interesting and effective collage. Now, looking at another one that's really simple, it was this one. This one is just basically this road, and this child has been inserted into it. I don't know if he was there originally or not, but he could have been and then he could have been isolated and turned black and white. That's something that you can do. Then there's some elements in the background that look galaxyish probably met with a blend mode or some stars probably created with a blend mode, and there's also a citrus fruit here, which is fine. This is actually really popular idea. This one looks like it was a flat image that then a piece of fruit was inserted into and then maybe some illustrative elements along with this one, same thing. It looks like it was just one image paired with one other image. That's an idea, you don't have to be crazy with all of the layers that you add. However, I do want you guys to feel empowered and to really let your creativity just go crazy. This example, we've got what looks like a picnic on a hill, then met with some mountains, then some canyons, and then we've got a few different landscapes moving back after that, and then more mountains. This could have been an ocean of sorts or sand. You could use an ocean and then change the color of it. But then on top of that, we've got clouds with the night sky with plan heads with a giant larger-than-life hand. This is super fun. There aren't rules here. That's the most fun about it. There's no rules; we get to play. This is our permission to play. Here's another one where it looks like there are so many elements like that. But then in addition, there were some geometric shapes involved. So long rectangular areas, and then there's a circle, and on top of all the other stuff going on. Then there's a pattern that's embedded into this one, maybe with a clipping mask, and then which you guys don't worry, we're going to go over all this if you're not familiar with clipping masks and blend modes and whatnot, but it does look like the blend modes had been manipulated in these geometric shapes to make it have this like layered effect to where they look transparent. So a really fun one there. You can look up collage on Pinterest, and you will find so many examples. Again, I want to encourage you not to get too inspired. The really cool thing though about looking at collages is that they are so different. So when you isolate the subject that you want to create and then import elements that make sense on top of that or don't make sense and that makes sense to you, then that's where it really starts to come to life. This one's another example that I really like because we've got two isolated images, like mentioned before, really simple. We have like maybe models or something lining up for a runway, and then we've got a cityscape. Then on top of that, we have illustrated about elements. We have our rainbow. It split into two different types of colorways, and then we've got patterns that are put on top. All of these things don't look like they go together. You know what? They don't, but it works. It just works. Basically, my point to you is you can use illustrative elements. You can use black and white mixed with color. It's the most fun in my opinion, to use black and white mixed with color. You can use old newspaper overlays. You can get creative. One of the things that I really like to do is to list things that bring me a lot of joy. I'm going to use this photo and create a story out of it. The story is not real, but let's pretend that it is, and this is maybe what an artist can think of as they go about their process. Let's say this is Angelica, and maybe this is a self-portrait. Let's say it's a self-portrait by Angelica. This is wrong, this is not true, but let's just say that that's self-portrait time. Let's say that Angelica was brought up in the country, and she raised geese, and swans, and chickens, and maybe some other types of animals. But let's say she had a really strong bond. This is a swan. Yeah. Let's say she had a really strong bond with her particular swan whose name was Herbert. Whether or not, this is a picture of Herbert or not. She has found a perfect picture image of a swan, and then inserted that. So let's say she started with an old photo of herself, and then inserted the swan, and that's all that was there. Then she's got that going on. She knew that those were the two subject matters that she really cared about, essentially Herbert and herself. Then let's say in the background, she wanted to share the main street of the town that they lived the closest to, because she really enjoyed walking up and down the street to the library and to her favorite bakery, and that's what she did growing up en route to and from school, let's say. Then let's say that she just had an absolute fascination for butterflies, particularly white butterflies. Maybe these weren't white butterflies to begin with. Maybe as far as like when you are searching for images, maybe there were color. You can always turn the saturation down, lighten them, all sorts of things. Maybe there was a garden, a floral garden, or a garden that maybe her late mom had planted along their drive, and there are always these butterflies that were attracted to them, so let's just say that. Then maybe this newspaper article is something she was really, really proud of that she did for the town or maybe she had some cool publication, or maybe it's like some article that was substantial or for whatever reason. Then we've built this. Now, it just comes time to start to set the mood. Those newspaper, it looks super vintage. It could've very well been well-preserved, and just its normal grayscale, but let's pretend that this pretend author, Angelica, I'm really sorry to whomever the original artist is, and I would love to know the actual story-line as if there is one with it doesn't have to be. But let's just say that that's where this went. There's some stars in here that look like they're a paper cut, and this whole thing could be paper cut. But let's pretend that the stars are a paper cut on top of visual or whatever, and let's say the reason why is because she and her grandfather would always look at the stars when he would visit every other weekend in the summer. Basically, I have now linked so many memorable moments into this fake story of how this collage came about. Now, the cool thing about that and the reason why I like collage so much is because when you're looking at images like this, it's like you can feel something as the viewer, but you don't know what it is that you feel. So being able to portray so much, whether it be just stuff you like or memories, being able to portray that in a piece of art like this that is just so eye-catching, and we don't understand why. It's just so fun and so powerful. What I would say to you is yes, it can totally be random what you create. I'm going to create something very random in our examples, but I also want to encourage you to dig into your personal archives and see if you can find a photo. This could be somebody's great grandmother and it could be a photo that was taken when she was young, and then maybe somebody inserted like her favorite colors of flowers or something, or they just honored her by basically saying like she was always blooming or something along those lines. The more that you personalize it, the more it just becomes so much more in the process. Keep that in mind, play, and let's jump in. 4. Exploration: What it is that I look for as I am exploring subjects to play with in Collages. This could be a number of things. One of the things that is very fun to play with and experiment with are essentially what we would call portals. This could be doorways, so this would be an example, something like this. Typically if you Unsplash, you're going to find a lot of modern ones, and so it would be really fun to pair modern with vintage. If you had a cool moody, mystical doorway and get even larger on it in the actual. If this was your frame and then have something really interesting behind there. That's something to think about to change the dimension, change the space where you are in anything like that. It could be sunglasses. What you're seeing in the reflection of sunglasses. If we look that up, we could see, something like that would be really fun or an image like this and then if that was zoomed way in, you could do something within that space. Portals, that's a good one. It makes things really easy because it's a really easy cut out and really easy insert. The other thing that I look for as mentioned before is I really like to look up certain poses that are not necessarily unnatural, but not your typical sitting or standing just for portrait stuff. You totally could and I'll show you some really cool examples of those as well. But for now, if you look up, again, acrobats, a great one. If you look up circus, then you might find a lot more that are probably a little more cost to me. But something like this could be really, really cool because you could isolate the bicycle, isolate her, and then have her balancing on something strange or odd or something that doesn't totally make as much sense as this image does. Another thing you could do is split the picture where whatever she's balancing on is like a different dimension and then the other half of the photo is something totally different. One of my favorite pairings if you will would be water, or oceans, or galaxies. They just look really good the way that they come up in photos in the background of things. I usually wait until I find my subject matter before I start to explore what I'm going to add to it. I was recently teaching a live workshop on this, and I just want to show you a snippet of my thought process as I was working through an actual image to make it just organically work for me and it happened pretty quickly, so I'm going to show you that real quick. 5. Choosing a Focal Subject: What it is that I look for as I am exploring subjects to play with in collages. This could be a number of things. One of the things that is very fun to play with and experiment with, are essentially what we would call portals. This could be doorways, so this would be an example, something like this. Typically if you unsplash, you're going to find a lot of modern ones, and so it would be really fun to pair modern with vintage, so if you had a cool moody, mystical doorway and get even larger on it in the actual, so if this was your frame and then have something really interesting behind there. So that's something to think about, to change the dimension, change the space where you are in, anything like that. It could be sunglasses, what you're seeing in the reflection of sunglasses. If we look that up, something like that would be really fun. Or an image like this, if that was zoomed way in, you could do something within that space. So portals, that's a good one. It makes things really easy because it's a really easy cut out and really easy insert. The other thing that I look for, as mentioned before, is I really like to look up certain poses that are not necessarily unnatural, but not your typical sitting, or standing, just for portrait stuff. I'll show you some really cool examples of those as well, but for now, if you look up circus, then you might find a lot more that are probably a little more costumy. But something like this could be really, really cool, because you could isolate the bicycle, isolate her, and then have her balancing on something strange, or odd, or something that doesn't totally make as much sense as this image does. Another thing you could do is split the picture where whatever she's balancing on is like a different dimension, and then the other half of the photo is something totally different. One of my favorite pairings, if you will, would be water, or oceans, or galaxies. They just look really good the way that they come up in photos and the background of things. I usually wait until I find my subject matter before I start to explore what I'm going to add to it. I was recently teaching a live workshop on this, and I just want to show you a snippet of my thought process as I was working through an actual image, to make it just organically work for me and it happened pretty quickly. So I'm going to show you that real quick. The reason why I like to do this part first, is because it allows me to envision elements that I could put in here. For example, I'm going to blend backgrounds. I'm going to do a lot of things going on with my backgrounds. I might have rocks, or mountains, or desert, or river, or whatever. The process of this is a very organic process, and I don't usually find backgrounds until I have my subject isolated. For example, this person is basically laying on something. This could be a rock, it could be an object, like a random object, maybe like a gas pump, something weird, it could be anything. This is where you get to be creative. She's leaning on something. Does she have to be leaning on something? Maybe there's another reason she might be holding her arm like this. Maybe there's some weird octopus that is holding onto her arm and hanging down. These are things I could draw, or these are things that I could find. Right now, I am interested in seeing what kind of large rocks or objects that I can find that I can put this girl up on it. Also interested in having a background that makes no sense with what they're doing. They're probably hanging out like a lake, or a beach, or a river, or something. I want them to be super out of place, personal preference, but I just giving you guys more of a permission to explore. I'm going to go to Unsplash. Unsplash is great for landscapes like hands down. I can look up, let's see, swimsuits. Where do they not belong? Somewhere snowy. I could look up snow and see what I come up with here. This is a really good one. Don't look at it exactly as it is. I'll just show you exactly what I would do with this if I was to use this one. I saw this and thought, oh, she could be leaning on this, I'm going to flip it, and I'm going to make it small enough that I can play and manipulate it, enlarge it if I need to. I'm going to dry it underneath them. Look at that. That's almost a perfect lay. She's really enjoying her lay. Here, I can just make that a little bit larger. Look at her lay, that worked out so well. All I did was I found this just on the main sampler page and one and two roll with it, because it was just too perfect. Now, when I saw it, I was not thinking about what I was going to have her lean on, I wasn't thinking about any of that. What I do is I like to find images that I'm drawn to, that seem interesting to me. Oh, you know what? I actually saw one when I was looking up stretching and I liked it. If I can find it. But I like to basically look at what could happen here. This stance, you would do so much with this stance, anything that your heart desires. There's so much, you could do that anyway. But when you find a good pose, then you are really on a role to do something fun. This is another one that's really fun. These guys are cool. I don't know if I'm going to find that one that I saw earlier. That's okay. Basically though, what is interesting to you, what calls out to you as you're searching? Don't think what could I do with certain projects. Don't worry about any of that because it's going to pop out at you as you work. The whole thing with this, is being able to just embrace the process and see where it takes you. I'm just really scrolling. Here it is. This is the one I wanted to use, just because it's so weird and interesting. I think that there could be a lot done with this piece, and maybe not have her be like the sole focus, but have her be a major element in my piece. I also am just going to point out that I do notice that there is a piece of her lower back that's cut off by this image. So I just have to be cautious of that as I'm editing. I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. But anyway, when you are saving, you can press this Download button, her original size, the original size of this photo, I'll download it so I can show you. But it's pretty small so it's not going to make for great large canvas. I'm not sure why that's not opening up. Open up. There it is. It's pretty small. My screen, I'm only recording a portion of it, so it looks probably bigger to you. Just for that reason, I'll screenshot it and see which one is larger. It looks like that's going to be pretty small too. Well, that's okay. Sometimes you're set on an image and you want to make it work, so that's what I'm going to do. You'll see the sizes when you press "Download", you'll have the option to do the original size. Some of them might be super, super big, usually that's not the case, so you can just choose there. We will go from there. Intentionally, and I'm sorry, but you see that I just looked up stretching. If you want to grab that one, you'll find it under stretching. But I'm intentionally not providing direct links to the ones that I'm working on, because I really want you guys to feel empowered to do your own projects that speak to you. Because it's just so much more fun, so much better as far as the exploration of what you can do with it. In addition, you do not have to follow along exactly with what I'm doing, because what I'll be doing is improvising and walking you through my process of how I want to improvise this. This is another really great one. I might do something with these. This is another thing I love about Flickr Commons is that I found this flamingo image under stretching. It doesn't make a lot of sense. See this one, the original size is a lot larger. It doesn't make a lot of sense as to why that would be there, but that's what I found. Scroll down and see what it is that you can find, because it's waiting for you. It's going to be so cool. So that's what I look for. Then after that, is when I start to implement the rest of what's going to go in there, whether it be accent, objects, or backgrounds, or anything along those lines, that's where that's going to take me. So that's what I want you to do first. Go ahead and browse, and this could be your personal archives, this could be your ancestors, or maybe there's a really awesome image of your kid, or your dad, or something that you would love to isolate. You can always apply effects to them and make them look black and white, or sepia, or whatever. You can really play with this. My other example I was going to show you real quick, I closed it, but I want to just show you this one. This is one that I did of my mom, see I didn't grab any vintage images. This rooster might look a little vintage, but it was a modern image that I snagged and then I just made black and white. So there's a lot you can do with images that you already have. So don't think that you have to grab something from Flickr Commons, but grab your main subject. It's okay if it's mine, you found it on your searching, but I'm not sorry for not providing the original link, or the exact link because I am encouraging you to explore. It's totally fine if you follow along with me, it's totally fine. But I just wanted to give you that push. Meet you in the next lesson when we have our subject picked out and continue. 6. Isolating a Subject: I'll be using Procreate as we work through this, but just know that it works very similarly to Photoshop when it comes to layers and blend modes and what not. You are more than welcome to work alongside me in Photoshop or whatever editing software that you prefer. Again, I'll be using Procreate, so there will be some things I mention here and there that are applicable to this program. If it doesn't apply to what you're using, just you'll know. The first thing that I want to do is actually open my image, and the reason why I don't have that done yet is because it's our nature when we work in Procreate to create a blank canvas. I don't always want to do this because, for instance, let's say I use that flamingo image that I found, so I could create a canvas that's like, I don't know, 16 by 20, I'll rotate that, and then insert that photo. Then what happens is, it could be super small and then I could enlarge it. But what happens is because it's then so much larger, it's going to lose some of the quality. It's going to get pretty pixelated, and it probably already is if it's a vintage image. I use this as an example because this would be one where I like the framing and I just want to add to it, whereas the other image that I snagged, that stretching one, that one can be incorporated into a canvas on its own. Just real quick, what I usually do is open. When I open a photo, I open a photo. I do that without creating canvas first. I just import the photo directly, and what that does is it's the full frame right away. It basically creates a canvas as the exact same size as your image, which is what happened here. You can see it's on its own layer still. It's just that the canvas is exactly the size. That's going to be tricky with this one because I know it's a small image. If we look at the canvas size, you go to Actions, Canvas, Canvas Information. It's like literally not even two inches by three inches. This image is very small. If I want to work with it, I have to either know that I'm going to lose some quality when I enlarge it, or I need to make something that's comparable. I do want more of a frame around this though, so I would be inserting this into another canvas, but it's just good to know your actual file size first. Two things there. If you want to use the full image as it stands and then add to it, open it as a photo. If you want to incorporate other things, you're free to go larger. Just be mindful of how large you go. I'll probably just go with an eight by 10. I don't have one of those yet, I guess. I'll go eight by 10, and then I'll make that. Let's just go 200 DPI. Maybe like this. Well, I don't know what I'm going to do yet. But when I insert it, she's probably going to be really small. Pretty small, but with this size canvas, I can do a lot with it. If I enlarge it a little bit, it's not that big of a deal. Also, she's already pretty grainy because she's a vintage image. I feel good about the side she imported at. Maybe just slightly larger. Just keep that in mind as you're building your canvas. I think I might actually want her to be portrait. We shall see. I'm going to just leave her there. The next thing that I want to do is isolate my subject. Sometimes you can do this with an automatic selection tool. It depends on if you have like contrasting colors or major contrast differences. In this case, I don't. Automatic selection probably won't serve me very well. It does okay. Actually, it didn't do too bad. Maybe let's just see what this looks like if I select it. It will grab some stuff I don't want. My dog's barking. Let's see what that looks like. Basically, after I select it, I then go and copy it to a new layer. The reason I copy it is because that way I am preserving this initial one in case I want to do further edits and I can just turn that layer off. Copy paste for now. Procreate is constantly changing and updating. But for now, when you have your selection tool highlighted, you'll see copy paste at the bottom here. I'm going to copy paste. Now you'll see in my layers panel, I've got my initial one, but if I turn that off, I've got the one that I selected. You will see some graininess here because my automatic selection tool didn't do the best job. It also grabbed some of this. That's an example of probably want to actually do the real selection, because while that might look cool, if I turn off my background color, it's actually just transparent pixels. This isn't a bad thing at all because this could be a stylistic choice. I personally think it's really fun. But I'm going to go back to that original layer and I'm going to try this again and I would go to my free hand selection and I would actually just go in and free-hand select it. This part can be a little bit tedious, but what I want you to remember as you are doing your selection is that the collage type images are so fun when they actually look cut out. If you're going for something like a super surreal type of image, then this probably is not the method that you want to do. I mean, you could, but you're going to want to get a lot tider with it and probably use a lot more modern images because you're not going to have much surrealism happening from vintage images. Just basically what I'm saying is let go off the need to have this be perfect and just go along the outline. One thing that I also look forward to make sure that I do is when I'm doing my selection, if I am trying to cut out, I go just slightly, see how I'm just slightly inside the outline or the selection of my subjects outline. The reason I do that is because I know that I want to make sure that none of this background is in there. If I go really close to the line, chances are some of those pixels are going to be really light and grab some of the background. Again, this is like something I really don't want you guys to put too much thought into because it's fun to make these look like they're actually cut. I'm just letting you know as we work through it so that you are aware of these types of things so that you can make creative choices with power because you know exactly what you're going for. A lot of that is with practice, but a lot of it also if you can save yourself the trouble and actually get the results that you want to get, then I'm all about that and I want to help. For this part that's cut off, I'm just going to make sure it's super curved right here and then super curved on the way back so that it looks more natural. I might have to sculpt that a little bit more once I have my full selection done, but we'll see. Oh, one more thing I was going to tell you. When you're making this selection, sometimes people do intentionally like to make it look like it is cut, so you could do less smooth edges and have some straight edges and things. That's also really fun. Now that I have her selected, I didn't select the inside of anything that might need to be cut out later because I'm just grabbing the outline. I'm going to copy paste it and now I can go back and remove that other stuff. I turn off my initial layer. Don't pay attention to this one. This was that first one that we did. I'm just keeping it just because I might, I don't know. Maybe I like it, maybe I don't. But basically, this is the new one. This is the one where I actually did grab all the pixels because I did a manual selection and now I can go in and cut the negative spaces that wouldn't have gotten grabbed with the outline selection. This is different. Instead of copying and pasting this, I'm just going to cut it away. Another thing to note is that when you're making selections, yes, I could do this on its own, but what if I had a bunch of white spaces I wanted to get and I didn't want to have to keep doing each one individually. You'll see that your selection menu down here is on Add and that means that if I close this selection by just tapping that little initial point where I started, it's going to be hard to see on your screen. I don't know if you see it, but basically there are a bunch of diagonal lines. They're moving like a wave, and then it's going to be hard to see with black and white also, but this is the only area that doesn't have that happening to it. That's basically revealing what my selection is. Because it's on Add, I can now keep going since I closed that selection and continue adding to it. Then you'll see that when I close this one, you might see by tapping that little initial starting point that now these two spaces are isolated. I could keep going as much as I want to, but those are the only spaces I need to isolate, so the only two that I will. Now, again, Procreate is constantly making updates and now you'll want to cut this out. It used to be in the bottom menu, but just as a shortcut so that you guys are aware, the copy and the cut menu you can access with a three-finger swipe down. This is the copy paste, but you'll see that I have the option to cut and paste. That is not what I want to do because what that would do is take the selection off of this layer and paste it onto a new layer. What I actually want to do is just get rid of it all together, so I can say cut. Now if I turn off my background layer, I've got those transparent pixels exactly the way that I want them. Lastly, I do notice her back is a little flat, so there's a couple of things I can do here. I can manipulate this with my selection, but I don't want her looking to like deformed. I don't want her body to start looking like it's really small right in this area and then enlarging. I will actually use Liquify, and I don't usually do that for any collages, but it'll just push that bump up just a little bit. I'm going to go to Adjustments, go to Liquify, and then I can change the size. I'm going to make it pretty small and then just go in here and just push that part. I might actually make this a little smaller. There we go. Just push that selection up. Now it's nice and rounded. That's something you can do if something is cut off. But I will only do it in a situation where it's just a sliver because otherwise you're going to look all distorted. Unless you're going for that intentionally, I would avoid it. I'm super happy with the selection. I don't need to preserve these other layers anymore. You can keep them off if you have the ability to have all the layers in the world. Group them and just say, raw, or just turn it off and say this is the original. I like it. I don't need to keep these, so I'm going to delete them. It just prevents confusion. Then I can say main subject, or I can say a gymnast. I don't know what she is. But basically your topic, if you like to name your layers, you could do something like that. From here, we will move into adding elements and watching this come to life by experimental methods. I don't have a plan right now, and that's the most exciting part. With your subject, you might not have a plan right now. Embrace that. We're going to go into it. 7. Setting a Scene - Pt 1: Now, I have Unsplash open. Now, from here, I am going to probably do some random search terms. This could include galaxy, obviously, any sort of landscape, things like that. Let's look up jungle and see what comes up. This could be something that's really fun to incorporate in different ways because my subject, it's just so isolated. I couldn't think of the word I was trying to say. Sometimes, real quick note, if you want to work in split-screen, you totally could because then it just gives you a better image of how you would like marry both images together. But because my image is so isolated, it's going to let me be a little bit more creative in how I want to put certain things together or not. These could be really fun. Another that I could look up is, let's see, sky or clouds of some kind. That could be cool to incorporate, maybe both of those things. I could look for certain colors. I think I'm really drawn today to this really vibrant pinky-reddish tone, maybe even this one. What I like to do is start saving some of these images even if I'm not going to use them because when I see them all together, in one, next to the image that I'm using, I can be a lot more choosy about what's going to go well together and whatnot. I grabbed a couple of those. This, maybe but I'm not feeling it. I'll go back to jungle, and see if there's something in here that might seem cool, like this one is really cool because it's really strong. It's a very strong image with the isolation of that mountain but with the canopy. I may use one element or both. Right now, we're in the browse mode. This is where we get to have our fun. This one, I love because it's so misty and mysterious, and I might open that up and start looking below it to see if there's any similar ones that I could snag that I like also. She could be just randomly standing, just huge on this cliff, and I could do other things here. Maybe take out all of this stuff and maybe insert objects or wildflowers or something like that. Maybe I could look up city and see like downtown or a city scene. Let me downtown, see just what I can find. Yeah, so these could be of interest as well. If you want to get even more specific like coffee shop. I don't want to do coffee shop with her, but I just wanted to show you different types of scenery. Actually, I stand corrected. I didn't want a coffee shop, but this light really grabbed my attention. So I may not use it, but I'm going to grab it, and then I'm also going to see what I can find that might be also comparable. So many people on Unsplash will save into boards like Pinterest, not backgrounds, or have tags attached to them. So you can see like this one says "light backgrounds". If I was to go back to jungle here, "plant", "fern", "jungle backgrounds", "nature images", "vegetation", "plants". These are tags that people have saved and collected and other types of search terms. So you can look that up and see what kind of stuff occurs. This makes sense for plant, but let's say land. I don't think I've ever searched just land. I've searched landscape. So you just never know what you're going to find. This is actually really interesting to me because it's gritty and dark, which is fun. Something to keep in mind when you're doing this type of pairing, especially when you're working side-by-side, you'll be able to see she's pretty dark and gritty. I like that. If I were to use a photo like this, I would want to lighten her quite a bit so that there's some separation between those two so she wouldn't get lost. Something like this would be lovely. Let's see. Soil was another search term under this one, so I could click that and see what comes up here. Basically, yeah, we're on an exploration. So go through and see what you can find. If you want to use one of those other sites that I initially mentioned, please feel free to. But this is where you can start to build on elements that you love. Again, if it's like I grew up in Portland, maybe I'm doing like a self-portrait kind of thing, I guess I grew up across the bridge, but you get it, I could then find pictures of my city or go and take pictures of my city and incorporate those. Just use your discretion on how you want to go about finding that. Okay, so now, we can start actually building that up. When I see them all together right here, and I see her, I just think this could be a cool pairing with those clouds because there's so much contrast going on. So I'll insert this one, and see what I can do with that, and two things: one, because this image was large enough to fill the whole canvas, I could either stretch it so that it takes up that space, or because I like this full view, I could just drop it in as is, and then I could go and crop my actual canvas. So that it is that size instead of an 8 by 10. Now, it will be these dimensions. Now, I'm going to drag this below my gymnast. I don't know if she's a gymnast. I think it would be more fun to flip her upside down as if she is floating or falling into a space. I also think I want to get rid of this bridge or walkway. I don't want there to be something there to catch her. I essentially want that to be an infinity, which can be tricky because how am I going to cut that out? I'm going to go ahead and since we have this discovery part, you guys go ahead and grab a bunch of images that might work, and then in the next lesson, I'll show you exactly how I'm going to chop this up. It's totally an experimental process. You can watch me work through this as you work through yours. We're going to make this come to life. 8. Setting a Scene - Pt 2: All right, as mentioned, I don't want this walkway here. I do like the water, I do like the mistiness. I may not even save this image. I may go with something else, but for now, I'm going to just experiment and see what I come up with. I'm going to cut this part out and see what I can do instead. The part I'm hesitant about is I love this fog in here, but I don't want to do with soft fade, I want to do a choppy fade. This might not work out very well and if that's the case, then we will know then I will be able to edit from there. I'm just doing something really loose. I think I'm actually going to take this all the way up along this tree because I think that's a nice line for separation. It also makes my job, editing and cutting this out, a lot easier and then you can pick exactly where you want to go. I don't have to go along this fern, but I'm going to because I like it. I like the overhang and it could be really cool overhanging on whatever I decide to insert below. It might be a little bit choppy, in which case I would want to fix that because I don't want it to be too bad, but we can also play with the opacity of just like the edges or blend modes or whatever. This part, as you are chopping stuff up, don't get too caught up on the details of what that separation will look like, just get it done, and then we can go back and play. Before I cut this out, I'm going to cut and paste it, so it's going to still exist. It's just going to be on a separate layer and then I can turn that layer off. Three finger drag down, cut and paste. Now, I have this on its own isolated layer and this on its own isolated layer. With the bridge, I'm going to put that underneath and just turn it off. Now, this is what I'm working with. It gives me opportunity to really play. I think what would be cool is to do like a mountain range, I do have a mountain that I saved, I don't think it's going to work for what I want, but it doesn't hurt to try it first. I can put it where I want it and then I can drag it above to see. Yeah, that's just not going to work, it's too formed and I want something a little more jagged. I do like the contrasting colors, so I'm going to return to Unsplash here real fast and I'm going to look up just mountains at first to see what comes up. I'm not looking for ice caps and looking for more of canyon style like this. Look, it's canyon. Let's see, this could be really cool. The thing I don't like is that it cuts off here. Let me pull this up. Because the sky is showing it won't work with my separation because I have this hard line here and it just looks like at that point too completely different scenes. It's fine to have things look chopped up like that, but I want it to be a lot more of a natural progression. A totally big shift as I'm exploring, and this will happen to you, is that here I've got a little portal. Remember when we talked about portals, this could be really fun to overlay over this jungle, so I'm going to try that real quick and see how that works. This is where I say don't be married to an idea because you might come up with something really cool like this where you can just make that lots, lots larger, have her falling through that portal. I might have to make her come down a bit and now I can. I'm going to turn her off real fast and then I'm going to isolate the area that I want to cut out. I'm going to get rid of this sky completely. Your automatic selection tool could do the trick, but I feel like the edges are going to be pretty rough, not a bad thing, but I'm just going to do it by hand real quick. You saw how that search rendered an opportunity, so that's where our creativity really gets to thrive when we are able to just give ourselves permission to pivot, to explore, to play essentially. I'm going to cut these now. Just a quick tip, if you're cutting and that's all you're doing, once you have your selection, you can click the arrow key and slide it off the canvas, and then select the arrow key again and then you cut it off. I don't know why. For some reason that's easier for me than to do. I don't know. Now I'm going to turn my gymnast back on and I'm going to select the gymnast and the jungle and I'm going to pull them down to about right here. Now my jungle is looking way less saturated and I might want to actually move it independently of her. I don't know that I like that background necessarily anymore. I'll try upping the saturation, but I feel like even just the background isn't doing what I want it to. I want it to be more lush now because I love this composition and I think it's so fun. I'm going to do that. I'll turn this off for now. I may use it, I may not. I don't think I'm going to, but now is the time that I can really play. I'm going to go back. Opportunity of shifting, embrace. I want to find something really lush just for that contrast. It doesn't have to be a full scene necessarily, it could be, but I think a scene would be cool. If you want to make it even more abstract, you could do something like this and then have some of these like poking out like into the frame. But I think this scene would be really fun. For those of you who aren't familiar with multitasking because I feel like that question will come up. Multitasking is essentially where you're able to open multiple things at once. I'll show you that real fast. If I'm in Unsplash and I'm looking at these results, but I also want to look at my current project, I'm just going to lightly swipe up on the bottom, hold to Procreate. You want to make sure Procreate's actually open so that it's in your bar and then you don't want to drop it right away. It's just going to let it hover on top of whatever you're doing, which is fine. But if you want split screen, you want to make sure that while you're holding onto it, let's just pretend I grabbed it from the bottom. You'll also want to push over to the left or the right until the other window scoots over. It'll naturally put it in half and half, but you can also work in thirds by using this middle slider and pushing it either way. Then when you want to close one, you just hold that and swipe it all the way to close the other thing. Just an FYI. Let's look here and see what we've got. I think this might be fun. Maybe even more lush than that though. Something that just is really dramatic. Let me lookup actual palm trees and see what comes up. That could be cool because it's like the perspective is different. I'm going to see what that looks like. I'm going to want to insert it in between or behind this canyon. So I'm going to the layer below that. Now take a photo, insert a photo. Now I'm going to flip this and just see how I can make this work and does it look better with the small-scale or a large-scale? I think a large scale is good. I got to flip it and see how that looks flipped, maybe flipped horizontally. I like it when it's just off to the side, but I want this whole thing to show. So maybe smaller. Now because this is behind and I don't have to worry about making such a perfect selection since it's behind this one, I can just grab that area and let's cut it out and then insert something else there. Again, I may come back and remove some of this. I think I actually want this to be bigger though. I don't want her feet to get lost. So as much as I loved that little idea, I might change that, but I won't make you watch me do it. We all get into that perfectionist mode where we're like overthinking everything. Don't do it, it's not worth it. Just play. I'll just do a little bit of it. You can see it's a palm tree, it is fun. Now I'll get rid of this part, and then I can find a galaxy. To find a good galaxy, I think I actually have one. It's the same way you'll find on Unsplash. They have a lot of great galaxies and see even just doing that is really fun. It's even more fun I think in the palm trees. So now I'm second guessing my whole life, but let's make this isolated. I like those stars. They're pretty, I want them to be vibrant enough, but just position something to where you like it. So galaxies there, I'll see what this will look like if I snag the background in automatic and then insert a galaxy with the palm trees. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but it doesn't hurt to play and try. I am on the right layer? Yeah. This might totally mess everything up, but we're going to try and we're going to see. I'm going to get rid of that. See it didn't do well, but sometimes it won't matter. I'm just going to try. I'll insert that galaxy. See it didn't do that bad of a job when it has that dark behind it, it doesn't look that far off. Then now I can go back and lighten her and see. That looks much better. It looks like she's falling. I see that there's a little spot in the palm tree that I could get rid of, so I'll select that. I just don't want those white areas, some are okay. I'm not that picky about it. You could be again. You could be totally picky, I'm just not. It took me a long time to get to that point. Don't worry if you are like, "I wish I could be like that because I didn't use to be and I was one that I wished I could be like that and now I'm like whatever, it's going to work, it's going to be fine." Just going to grab a couple of those. There we go. Couple all of those, get rid of it so that I can see the background, but it's so small that it doesn't really matter. Now this part right here, that's part of the palm tree. I don't want that there. It's distracting, so I could either pull it down so it's really obviously part of things or I could just get rid of it, which I want to get rid of. Now that that part's done, I want more to happen here. I'm actually going to crop it just a smidge because I don't want so much weight here towards the bottom. If I go to Canvas, Crop and Resize, I can pull that up a little. Just enough. Now it's like the focus is more central. I just felt like there's a lot of heavy balance there. Now I want to do like some flowers coming off of the cliff area, but I think I want the flowers to be also a vintage vibe. So we haven't gotten to special effects yet. We will, don't worry. But I'm going to speed this part up because at this point you see how I'm looking at things, and how I'm exploring them and thinking about them in different types of ways. That being said, let's continue working on this and then we can get into special effects. Now I feel like for the most part I have things where I want them to go. Now in the next segment, we're going to manipulate this even more so that they look how we actually want them to look rather than just images that we drew together. 9. Manipulating Elements: Now is the time that we get to set intentions for what this piece looks like. You might have a lot of color play about to happen. You might have some blending modes to play with. You might want to apply some illustrative elements. There's a lot to do. The first thing that I want to do is I really want to keep the canyon saturation nice and vibrant, I want to keep it true to tone. I just think that this reddish color brings this to life, it makes me really happy, so I want to keep it. Next, because of that, my flowers blend in quite a bit. The poppies do okay, they are in the red family, so they do blend in a smidge. But this violet desaturated ones do sync in a lot. The daisies are fine, but I want to focus on those ones real quick and just play with their saturation. You'll notice in my layers panel that I have them all in different layers and I only have that because I have, let's see, this one can merge, I just wanted them to be behind some of the other elements. So these ones, you can see it's tucked behind these petals, this one's tucked behind that stem. It's a detail that is not that important, but I wanted it that way, and so that is what I did. I'll have to edit these two separately, which is fine, I'll just remember what I did. Just know that when you go in when you're editing, if you have the same type of element on different layers, pay attention to your workflow so that you can replicate it again. I'm going to go first to color and just see what I can turn up here. I'm going to increase the saturation and then play with the hue. The hue is going to bring this all over so we can see how we can adjust this to where it's not going to blend in so much. The saturation might be a little bit too much, you could also brighten things, so it looks like brightened is what separates this the most for me. I don't love that the center is so vibrant when I change the hue, but it might look cool, so I'm going to give it a chance. If that bothers you, you can always do a specific selection. I'm not out of this yet, so here's what I did. I shifted my hue to the left, I increased my saturation and slightly with my brightness. I'm going to do the same thing to the other layer. So left, right, right. Now it's blending, it looks about the same. There's my edit there. I like the daisies as is. The poppies, just for fun, let's just look and see what happens when we make them a little orangier or little pinker. Pink is fun, blue could be fun, orangey looks like they're getting into the brown area unless we push saturation and brightness, which could be cool. I like I'm just red, I'm going to leave them as is. Now, the galaxy, I typically like those to be like what they are. Which one is it? This one? This one. It looks like I covered that one up and used a sky instead. I got rid of the one I have up here in the corner initially. I'm going to go into my galaxy layer and I'm just going to play around with that and see if I can get any other interesting combination going on with the whole balance. I like the blue. Increase the saturation, I love saturation in these types of things. However, the black and white looks really cool because it's a part of where she is. This is tough. Here's another thing that you can do and I think I'll do it in this case because it's so much fun. Instead of doing the whole layer, I'm going to go to my Adjustments layer, go to Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and go to Pencil. Now it's going to work with whatever brush we have selected. So if I grab my airbrush, I can decrease the saturation all the way and just pick and choose what I want to saturate. See how now I can just isolate only certain areas. I could do just like one side of this where she's fading in, and the cool thing about using the airbrush is that it is pressure sensitive, so if I press down, it's going to get a lot bigger and a lot more effect with the brush, whereas if I just lightly go around, it's going to give me a lot more control. This is fun because I can control it and see this part is grayscale and then it gets brighter, which is fun. Now that that's done, I'm going to do the same thing again but just to the bottom part. So basically, pencil adjustment, and this time I want the saturation to stay but I want to just turn down the brightness a little bit. Looks like the hue was shifted. There we go. Brightness, down a little, and maybe some more saturation. It's getting a little bit lost because of the flowers, so it might be worth it to flip this, so I could do it two ways. I could either actually literally flip it or I could just undo and redo what I just did. I think literally flipping it works just fine, especially since I've got this sky here and then it goes into the sky. Because this is the lightest spot, I could try flipping it horizontally and see how that makes it look like it's the same idea. So that worked really well. Now, I'm going to go to the sky layer right here and I'm going to increase the saturation on that because it's obviously the sky, but I want it to really be the sky. I could change the color, so it could be like a real warm, sunlight or I could keep it nice and blue or teal, maybe a turquoise color, that looks pretty fun, and then I can go back in and saturate again. To do that, because this is the max saturation that it got on that edit, I can just go back and repeat that edit and increase saturation, and it'll get even more vibrant if I want to. Just another little tip on how to manipulate that. Same thing with the palm trees I'm going to go in, increase the saturation, bump up the brightness maybe a little bit, and then make them a little more green just so that they stand out better. So this edit versus this, this is what it was before, this is what it is now. It just brings a little extra life into it. Then I have this hornet that I put in, just a little guy that's hanging out saying, hey. What can I do with him? I want to make him lighter, first of all, so that he stands apart more. Maybe could be silhouette. Maybe increase saturation, decrease. Decrease is fine. I'm going to make him black and white. Instead of playing with brightness, I'm going to play with curves, which basically it's like you can really manipulate contrast doing that. It's under adjustments, under curves, and then I'm basically going to make like an S. This is the brightness here, I'm going to make another dot in the center. Just by hiking that up a little. If I get really close, you can see what's happening here. Is the brightness, the highlights are coming up, but it's not affecting the overall highlights. It's just pushing the middle highlights up. Then I'm going to pull the middle shadows down, just slightly, it's a slight S if I was to turn that sideways. If it was really extreme, it would look something like this. That's just way so much contrast unnecessary. Just as energy on both sides, probably not as shadowy because it's already pretty dark. I can play with that overall and then that seems fine. From here, I want to give him more of an effect. I'm going to now go into a new layer just on top of him. I'm going to play with color, and that's going to look like, I'll pick a color, let's see, maybe a bright, neon-yellow color. I'm not sure what that pink is. I'll have to get rid of that or keep it. I'm going to go into this neon-yellow color, and since I'm on this new layer, I'm just going to color fill that layer. Now, I wanted to only affect that hornet underneath, so I'm going to select the layer and choose clipping mask. It only goes to him. Now, because it's a clipping mask, it's grabbing all of the pixels underneath and it's not doing a huge change or anything. It's actually just going to affect the whole thing. This is where blend modes come into play. I can change the way that this yellow blends with the hornet. By doing that, I go to this N, which represents a normal blend mode. You'll see normal, but I want to change that. The first one that I try is color, if I scroll to the bottom, I'll see color. You can see now it's fully grabbing just as color. It keeps everything else the same, but just puts in those middle tones to change the color. You can also do saturation hue, like just play with those divide. Some of these blend modes are going to look a lot different. Like this one grabs yellow, but then it also grabs a contrasting blue, which could be really interesting. Then you can decrease the opacity to decrease the effect. I would say there's not a right or wrong answer to these blend modes as you are applying them. I say do whatever feels or looks the best. Overlay is a good one. It just all depends on the image that you're applying it to and what effect you like the best. I'm going to go with color. Actually, there was one that was brighter, even brighter than that. See, but I'm not only playing with blend modes, but I'm also playing with the slider of opacity to see if I like it even more with that effect, but maybe the effect is just lessened. Color burn, darken. Yeah, I think I do like color the best. Now yellow, what I can do from here is change the color of the overlay if I want to see what it's going to look like as a different color. Because yellow, I mean, that's pretty standard for that type of animal anyway. One of the easiest ways is to go to your hue saturation, brightness, spot. See I get pink, but I wanted contrast. So I think I'm going to keep it yellow. But I could change flowers too you're just, "Oh, man, I feel so torn." Another way to do this, because you're on this layer is use the recolor tool. In the new update re-color is not as easily accessible as it used to be. It used to be in the adjustments menu. It's not there anymore. It might change in a future update, but for right this second, it's not. What I do is enable my quick menu. You have settings as far as how you want to set up your quick menu, what to press to make it come up. You can do that under gesture controls, but I set my recolor right here. When your quick menu comes up, if you hold something down, you'll find recolor, and there it is again. That's another way I can do this. I can select Recolor. There's a small little cross you can't see, it's hiding in my galaxy, but this is what it looks like. Well, usually if I hovered over what I want it to edit, that's what it'll show, but this yellow is literally all over this layer. It's just clipped so you can only see it on the layer beneath. But I can then go to my disk and see any color edits in live time. Then it's not just playing with hue, it's playing with every thing. Which is really helpful because then you can see like, what if I just slide it down a little bit or what if I decrease saturation, but still have that hue? Cool stuff like that, that you can play with. I like him green I think, because it's weird. Then maybe yeah, cool. Then I'm going to lighten him just a little bit. Just play and allow yourself to go there. Basically in steps; you're going to find your main topic. You're going to find complimentary landscapes. You're going to find complimentary objects, and then that's when you're going to start to actually change the way that things look, as far as color blend modes. If you want to get really dramatic with blend modes, you could take some main objects and do something with them. This is where that starts getting more playful. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. This is really, really cool to me. I have no idea what just happened. We're on Color Dodge. It's basically applying this effect to what's beneath it. But while I have no idea what it's grabbing and what it's not, I just really fell in love with what I made. I might actually save two copies of this, one with Color Dodge and one as a normal blend mode. You might be thinking, "Peggy, you are so weird, I don't see it, I don't get it." But that's okay because we are all on our own creative path as far as this goes. So really embrace what you like because you just never know, like, what's this about? Nobody knows. Also, super fun, so play, play, play, play. 10. Adding Shapes & Lines: If you want to include any illustrative element or geometric shapes or anything like that, this is when I do that apart. Of course, you can do it whenever you want to, but I like to see how things come together, and then I can add them in later. I'm going to do that. I think at this point also, if you're happy with any elements, like my flowers don't all need to be on separate layers anymore, unless you want to change color and stuff individually, I am going to flatten them. I don't need those to be so confusing anymore. Basically, any part that I couldn't merge, I'm going to. From here, I am going to have a new layer on top. I'm going to merge that too. There we go. This is a lot cleaner. Now I can play with elements that are more illustrative. I have abstract stamps that I've created already, and I don't have a class on that yet, but you can look at Procreate's handbook to see exactly how to create stamp brushes, but also just any brush of your own. I could use these. They are fun to have a side so that you can insert stuff like this. It's just very random, and how did it come about? Nobody knows, but there it is. Then drag layers underneath and see how that looks. It's cool. I have this so that when I set it down, I don't know how it's going to come out because it rotates every time it changes. I could keep that, or I could add something in that is like, you could make any shape with the monoline or any brush. But let's say you want it pretty thin, and I want a circle. I can draw a circle and just keep holding it, and it's going to make that circle all smooth. If you want it to be perfectly cylinder, like it's the same width everywhere, you put one finger down. It's going to make it a perfect circle. Then I can drag that where I want it to go, like so. That might be something fun to include. It might not be something I care about. I could throw it right here and have that look like a sun, I guess, in the background, which is weird and fun and make sense for what I'm doing. So why not? Then before I go crazy with, let's see, I want that to show up. I think I might blend these backgrounds now because I'm happy with those. Yeah. If I was to put a blend mode on here, like this is fun, where soft light, you can just see the outline of it. Let's see what else. This one is cool because it adds different colors. I would tell you exactly which ones I'm using. I mean you can see them, but the reason I'm not calling them out so much is because it's really going to depend on exactly what your layers look like, what colors are there, how you have them build, what shapes you're using, what colors you're using. The blend modes are going to affect yours very differently than they might affect mine. So just keep that in mind. I'll use a blend mode. Multiply, that one essentially uses the same technique across the board. it's going to affect the bottom layer in a color way. I always use multiply and then push it down. It's a normal blend mode with the opacity down, but it's a little bit different of an effect. I could use that. Now I'm changing my mind again. This one is really cool because it has a gradient to it, Color Dodge, I don't know if that's, or Add does too. I don't know if that is always the case, but something fun to note, just maybe. Color is good. I'm always a fan of color, but it's not quite as crisp as I want it to be on the edges. So okay, make up your mind. I think I'll go with overlay, and then I might duplicate this and then make one of these layers be something different. My screen just got dark, I'm not sure why, probably because it's hot. I can turn that. You guys can turn that setting off too, if that ever happens to you, but I think you still see the screen okay. I think that that's good. I like that it's green and weird. I can do another circle that's similar in any color. Let's do this one because it's just loud and weird. Then I can take that circle and put it on top of that one I just did or I could put it off to the side just so it's just like an extra added element, which is fun. I could do a couple of those. If I duplicate it and then just move one over and just have it be overlapping, or I could have it be just inside of the other one, this is where you get to play. If I do keep that one I initially put in, it would look like this, so that's too busy. Maybe I can put it behind, and that looks a little more fun, but I still think that's too busy. I'm going to keep one of the purple circles, fuchsia circles, and then I'm going to maybe make this a lot smaller. Yeah. It's almost like a weird ray coming off, so I could duplicate that and put another one next to it. Do that maybe a couple of times and see what that looks like. As you can see, I'm making this up as I go. There's no a method. It's just a matter of experimenting. I don't want it to be too busy. This is starting to look a little bit busy. I'm going to try one more thing, real quick. I'm going to merge these together because I just want it to be one, and then I'm going to fill it. I have to make sure it's connected to fill it. Let's see. This is where I need to connect it. Here and that one is, so let's see. Cool. That's filled. I can turn these back on, and then I can change the blend mode so it's real light and not as obvious. See how this also grabs the palm trees. It's just really fun and weird. I'm like, "Why is it there?" I don't know, but it's cool. This one, I really like it because it just manipulates the background without really being a callout of being there. It just depends on what you want to do and how it feels to you. This one is cool because it subtracts, so it's bringing some of that color back. I'll use that one and then move it. I like where it was. What I do notice though is that now these lines are showing up. That's just part of that shape. I'm going to get rid of them because I don't want those there. Any of that excess shape, I put in, so now it's just like these lines. I'm getting pretty busy. I don't want to do any more than that. I think I might actually take away. I'll move these up more, and then I might not keep. I don't know if I want that circle. I don't think so. That seems good to me. That is where I'm going to stop. I feel good about this. I really like the composition. I don't want to get crazy, crazy busy, but I'm busy enough towards fun. Wait, one more quick thing. If you want to add more illustrative elements that are fun, I'm just going to click a cream or a white, and then I'm going to create straight lines, maybe, and this could be anywhere. I'm just choosing her feet because they're hanging so perfectly. It can look like she's actually being like she's connected to the top here, and I can make it look even more so by giving loops around her shoes. Then another fun part of this, and it would be subtle again, I could make the lines thicker, but this would be subtle, but totally worth it. I could add a glitter overlay to him and clip that to those lines. I'll make that a little bit lighter. Then I've got glittery strings that she's hanging from, and it's just like, how fun? Or I can attach those to her hands too so that she's suspended instead of floating. I want her to be floating. Sadly, I'm not going to use this technique, but it is an option in case that something that you fall in love with as well. That is essentially how I would work through something like this. 11. Quick & Simple - Collage Style #2: Since we went over the main elements of all of those busy elements to a collage, I wanted to also just quickly go over a couple of fun techniques that you can do much quicker in case you have something that's more isolated. I've just gone and opened Unsplash and just looked up hands. There's a couple in here that I think would make for some really cool images based off of what I want to show you. You can grab anything, just I would say to look for something that's really simple. It could be two objects, it could be two people, or it could be something like this where it's a light bulb, hands, anything, and don't put too much thought into this one either because it's very, very simple to manipulate the way that we want it to. Look for something like that. I'm going to now open Procreate again and I'm going to open just the image that I saved. I'm going to go to photo and I'll do this one. When that is open, all I'm going to do is, I'm going to be very careful and make selections around this shape. Notice that the fingers, I picked some that were super separated because this is going to turn into a silhouette, so as you're choosing yours, you want to make sure it's also good for a silhouette. But overall, I'm just going to quickly make my selection and then I'm going to apply an effect only to that outline. I see here, I can come back and clean up that negative space inside. Copy paste, you'll see I have my original layer, but if I turn it off, I have these hands. I don't care how bright they are, I don't care about any of that because I'm going to apply now just an effect. I'm going to go and insert an overlay. I'm going to do glitter, you could do water, just make sure that whatever you grab is also royalty free. It could even be like these cool clouds. I'm going to insert a few things and see how I like them. This is the first one, I'm just making sure it completely covers the object that I'm clipping to. I select that layer clipping mask. That looks pretty cool. If I brighten it up a bit, It's even more effective. So that's pretty fun, but let's see what we can do with something else like glitter. Do a clipping mask. That one's also really fun. I'm going to make the brightness push it up on that too. Yes, so that's also a fun one and then let's try one more. What did I say? Maybe I didn't say it, but I thought it, oh yeah the clouds. I'm just going to push that over where I want it to go and then clipping mask. That one's a little bit dark. I could enlarge it because you can scale, enlarge, change exactly where something is showing up on your clip and then play. That's just another example of what you can do with this technique and to really bring it to life and make it yours. Of course, you can also get rid of the background, and then put something cool in the background of something that you have, basically like this, which is also fun. Different things that you can do. Basically we are just chopping things out and manipulating them the way that we want, playing with color and doing things along those lines. I'm going to show you one more technique in the next lesson and then you guys are going to have so much to play with. 12. Bloom - Collage Style #3: You're going to want to grab another image from Unsplash or maybe one of yours, or anything that's basically like a face, or a head, it could be hands, it doesn't matter. I'm going to use this portrait. I really liked the composition here. I might change the background. I will definitely fill it because I'm actually going to shift this over a little bit. The reason why is because my elements that I'm adding are going to be coming from her chest and it's going to be just flowers that are blossoming outward. I think I'm actually going to also decrease size. These can be illustrative. They can be images that you find. So I'm going to show you, as if it's images, and then you can, of course, always change it to more of an illustrative style. Just for now so I have a cleaner canvas, I'm going to select the background. It's going to be really easy because it's a solid color that doesn't have any business to it. I'm going to select "Automatic", just get that as close to those edges as I can. Yeah, that looks good. Then grab this. That's pretty good. I can cut that. Now, here's what I do. I'm going to take the spot of her chest that I want to bring up because this is going to look like we're taking a puzzle piece off her skin and pushing it over so that this blossoming situation can happen. Freehand selection. It's something you can do with, that's too low, this exact style or it can be something that you do and apply it in a totally different way. But I'm taking that selection that I just made and then I'm going to cut and paste it. Let's try that again. You want to cut and paste it because you want it on its own layer. But you want it to be removed from this layer. Cut and paste, I've got it on its own layer. It's going to be a little bit difficult to see the process of this as I'm working but I'm going to show you exactly what I'm going to do to make it stand out even more. I feel like that's good. I think my selection is a little too long, so I'm just going to hit this one more time and just go deeper instead of longer, cut and paste. I like that better because I basically want flowers to be spilling out. We're going to make it look so it's a little more 3D, which is going to be really cool. I already have flowers that I pulled, so I'm going to insert some of those. You can always go on to Unsplash or something like that and find your flowers, and then you'll want to select them. This is something that, again, I'm not super picky about. I just make sure that I'm on the inside of the petals so I don't grab the background. If I grab a tiny bit of the background, I don't really care that much. But you might care, and you can go as slow and perfect as you want. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm going to cut and paste and get rid of the background so I only have this flower. With this flower, I want it to peek out so I think what I'll do is move this part out even more, tuck the flower in-between those layers. See how now I have this separation. It's like her skin is lifted off and this flower is poking through the bottom and it's going to be coming out. I'm just going to create the flowers at the bottom first. A little trick, you can just duplicate a flower, spin it a little bit, shrink the size, and it looks like a different flower. I do this a lot when it comes to this stuff because it's probably sitting at a different angle completely. You can change the hue if you want to, to make it really look different. I like to keep my palette pretty close or limited, so I won't do that. What's another one? I can use this one, that's really lovely. The petals will be good on this. I'm going to select, "Freehand" selection, grab these. You can see even with my quick selection, the flowers that I just put down, they looked great, they didn't look like they were choppy selections that they actually were. This one's really pretty too, so I think I'll do a selection for that also. I'll close this one and continue on. Grab that. Then, I'll just fake some petals here because it looks like it's overlaying and I don't want it to look like it's cut off. I just faked some movement. Then I'll say, cut and paste, remove the flower background, and there we go. I can shrink these. I don't like that they're both face up. I know that the bouquet made sense but it's not going to make sense for what I'm doing, so I'm just going to separate them and then tilt. Now I can move this around. That's pretty. I like how it's coming off like this. You can see it's a flower but it's also opening up. I'm going to push this flower closer underneath. I'll probably just make the contrast on one of these even more intense so that there's some separation. But I'll do that in a minute. Remember, I'm not worried about color yet, I'm just worried about composition so far. It looks like that's a little too out there, so I'm going to push it a little closer and then I'll grab another flower. I don't want to go same flower, same flower, and then the same thing right here, I want to do something different. I will use this but for now, I'm just going to get another one real fast, choose a different kind. This color is really pretty too, so I'll probably keep that. We'll grab this. I'm just faking some movement where it's cut off so that it looks full. That seems good. Cut and paste, get rid of the flower background. Then, I'll tuck that underneath here, like that. That's pretty. I'm going to have it come off a little more. You might be looking at this and thinking like, "Yeah, that's pretty and everything, but it doesn't look realistic." I got you. Don't worry about it. We're going to go there. Once this section is good, I'm going to merge them together and then I have that chunk that's good to go. I want to create a drop shadow. I'm going to start with her skin layer on top. What I do is, I take that selection, I duplicate it, and then I want to make the whole thing just black for the sake of the shadow. I can Alpha lock this, and then I can go make sure my color selection is black and then I can go to that layer again, it's already Alpha locked, I select it and say, "Fill Layer". You can see now it's fully black. Then, this part's important. Turn Alpha lock off, so you can click it to Alpha lock or two-finger swipe again and then turn Alpha lock back off. The reason why is because we're dropping this layer below her skin layer and then we want to make it a blur. It won't blur if it's Alpha locked because that's only going to affect the pixels that already exist. So you need to make sure it's off. I go to my Gaussian blur, Adjustments, Gaussian Blur, Layer, and then I'm just going to slide this up and see how that works. I'm not going to look at this part because I'm going to get rid of that part. That doesn't make sense. I just want the drop shadow to be on the flowers. This is as strong as this is going to get under one setting. Oftentimes, what I'll do is go to that same Gaussian blur and then duplicate that layer and you see how much stronger of an effect that created. I'll merge those together because I liked the stronger effect. Real quick, I'm just going to get rid of the blur on this side so that it's not distracting. Now, you can see it looks like there's some more dimension going on. It looks like her skin has been pulled away and these flowers are blooming off of it. I'll try Gaussian blur and I duplicate one more time, maybe turn the opacity down so it's there. It's more of an intense, but not as intense technique. I like that a lot better. I'm going to keep it as is. Now, I want to do the same thing to the flowers because the flowers are also coming off of her. I want to put this one on its own layer so it's not affected. There we go. I'll put that at the top so it's not distracting me or you. Same exact thing. Duplicate it, make sure it's on black, Alpha Lock on, tap "Fill layer", that makes it black and then turn Alpha lock off. Take that layer, drag it below, and now apply your Gaussian blur. Ignore that side. That looks like a good spread. I'm going to duplicate it so that the effect is stronger. Merge those together. Get rid of the blur anywhere that's off of her skin because it doesn't make sense to be way out there. Now, you can see that it looks like the flowers are lifted off. I'm going to duplicate this one more time and see how that looks. I might spread it just a little bit more and then turn the opacity down. Yeah, that looks better. It's a lot stronger now. It looks like a lot more believable, not that this is believable but you see how the effect is coming to life more. Now that that part is done, I can create the rest of this beautiful floating flower situation. You don't have to do that. This is just what I decided to do when I found this photo I thought it was really lovely. The other example that I had for this was something I did in a live workshop. See how this one was just part of her face and I just did that section here and that's it. You could do something like that as well. I'm not going to walk through this entire thing just because I don't want you guys to have to sit and watch me add flowers for something that doesn't actually apply to this technique. That being said, I also encourage you to play with saturation. You might want to turn down the saturation of whoever you're working on, which just adds that much more of a vibrant effect. You'd have to do it separately because both of those skin layers are separate. But because she doesn't have any distracting clothes or anything like that whereas the other one I did, I chose to isolate just the color of that instead of her whole face because it was just too busy. When I desaturated the clothing part, it just looked flat. That was my decision there, use your discussion. But I really like this image as it is and I'm going to continue on with that. I hope that that part is helpful. It's a simple drop shadow, and you can piece away anything that you want, as morbid as that sounds. That being said, that is this technique. 13. Next Steps + Freebies!: All right, now, that you are equipped with the techniques that you need for this class, it is your turn to create something meaningful to you. I would love to see both your practice pieces and your final pieces in the project area. I know that other people are going to want to see them too. Everybody takes this in a bit of a different route and it is so special to be able to see what everyone creates so in advance, thank you for sharing with me and with others. Quick note, be sure to head over to The pigeonletters.com and sign up to get freebies. I send them out every single Friday, including Procreate goodies. I want to get those in your hands as well. I can't wait to see what you guys create from this class.