Decorate Like An Artist: Framed Art Mockups Your Way

1. Class Introduction: Are you ready to showcase your art in a way that connects with people and highlights the beauty of the work you create. Every admire these cool professionals who style their work and quirky ways for beautiful artist designer collaborations and want this for yourself. Then maybe you think about framing your work to market, but feel intimidated. You'd need the commitment to pick the piece, to print it if it's digital and the skills to decorate and take photos future into the online world of art mockups, but fine, they can be a little too generic. I felt the same way. What if I told you you could achieve this look for your art all while having fun and learning to better express herself. Hi, I'm Erica Catherine nickels and Illustrator, Surface Pattern Designer and passionate lover of art and interior design. My art work has been featured commercially on products like prints, packaging, greeting cards, and bags. So by artfully walls, TJ Maxx at some other fun brands. Let me teach you my painless and very fun process for styling, photographing, and editing a captivating frame dark vignette will be playing around with what I call the blank plate technique. Principles of visual and narrative design and items you can shop for in your own home. Then I'll show you how to prepare your photo as a reusable mock-up file, saving you from printing or framing your pieces for online display. I'll do this an apple Procreate, adobe Fresco and Adobe Photoshop. You can use your favorite software when you're finished this class, you'll have your own personalized mock-up to be used over and over across your visual platforms. Give your friends and followers a window into your lifestyle and a well-rounded view of your process pairing these is progress and detailed shots of your art. This class is for all skill levels. So rudimentary knowledge, one of the apple or Adobe design programs is helpful whether you're a beginner or a season decorator, you'll gain new perspectives for styling considerations, for photographing art and a space and editing techniques to enhance color. You'll also be an access to a free mockup I need to get you started. The techniques we review will help people often on the canvas, you'll connect not only with others but to yourself and your art senior surroundings in a new way. Because you know, those cool brands and designers, they really just have a way of being themselves. They take your favorite things, make the most of what they have and create playful arrangements in their own way. It can be free and I can help you do this. I call this class decorate like an artist because having drooled over hundreds of home tours and design publications, I've learned. Vignettes truly are works of art. They are an experiment that expresses something. They evoke an emotional response and help us connect. As an artist in decorator, I'll help you examine the art of the vignette and demystify the process of creating one for your art. Ready for a ton of inspiration to spark your imagination and to create something unique. See you in class. 2. Your Class Project: Okay, so we're going to jump into your class project of creating a frame dirt mockup in a second. But first I wanted to offer a quick heart-to-heart with some words of encouragement. It's normal to be intimidated with design when you see so many gorgeous spaces out there. I was even just making this course. I thought it's one thing to enjoy all these beautiful spaces and design books and online. But it's another knowing where to start and how to create one for yourself. I got stuck in perfectionism and comparison mode, trying to make the ideal arrangement, but it started to sink in. Then my favorite designers and stylists, they have a way of being themselves. They pick the things they love and make them most of their materials, and they trust themselves to create an experiment with playful arrangements. It really is freeing. Once you realize this, there are loose guidelines you can follow, Yes, and you'll actually see a lot of the principles that apply to art also apply to decor. But the most fun can be had when you work just beyond these constraints. Like any art form, It's best when you think of it like an experiment. Your internal gauge should be what my grandma always said. The wisdom of which only sunken recently, did just have fun. Well, that's the main thing. Remember that when you start to overthink, creativity shouldn't just be in your work. It should be how you live your life. It's not necessarily about always creating something new bedroom, having this space and freedom to let something special happened. You already know what you like, what makes you feel happy in this particular moment. Lean into that. The bonus vote displaying a narrative vignette versus standalone shot of your work. And why we're drawn to them is that it gives us a window into your lifestyle. It breathes life into your work, putting it in a fresh context, a new world in itself. I don't know about you, but I love the idea of getting a window into another mysterious world. That's what a lifestyle vignette does. It's like taking a walk and accidentally not to accidentally seeing into other people's windows and seeing how they've decorated their home. It's totally the same thing, right? Just like art, It's a self-contained world, a little frame that allows us to connect with people we may never meet over the narrative. They're objects tell an unexpected arrangement of shape, color, texture, and pattern that can spark ideas, memories, and emotions. It elevates your art and tells a story. Let's tell a story. When you're finished this class, you will have made a personalized mock-up to be used right away and time and again across your visual platforms. It'll be a tool in your toolbox for showcasing your art. Just to give you some ideas on how to use your mockup. You can use it as a static image on your social channels, your website or blog, on your portfolio lookbook or brand guide to pitch your art and story to those publications or brands you admire. You could also use your mockup as a video cover photo, or easily turned it into a video of its own. Download, a free app like in shot to make a slide-show video with your mockup. You could proceed it with in-progress and detail shots of your work to give your community a well-rounded story of your process and that window into your lifestyle. You could even place multiple pieces in one mockup and turn the pictures into a slideshow to make it look like pictures are revolving through the frame. Think of it like a beautiful portal into your portfolio. The portfolio portal. Now here's an overview of what I'll be walking you through during this class. The initial lessons review loose guidelines and examples as inspiration for creating your vignette in the last few lessons contained concrete steps for making your mockup. To start, you'll select your materials, you'll prime your metaphorical Canvas and locate an ideal spot in your house. You'll hone your personal style and shop your home for items to display. You'll review loose guidelines about how to style a vignette. And we'll see three examples, vignettes to spark some inspiration. Then we'll design and photograph the vignette, edit pieces as necessary. Then edit the photo with your favorite photo editing software and open it up in your software of choice. You can choose between Apple Procreate, adobe Fresco or Adobe Photoshop, and add your desired artwork, the best part. Finally, we'll wrap up by saving it for future use, posting it to the class projects page and Instagram if you'd like. When the time comes, Here's how to post your class project. You'll be sharing a photo of your final mock-up image with or without your art added. You'll give it a title and a brief description, right? Whatever you'd like, the story or thought process behind your vignette or any discoveries are happy accidents you made along the way. Most of your class project is a great way to get helpful feedback and get motivated by your community. You don't have to do it alone. And I can't wait to see what you create. Consider sharing it and your process on Instagram as well. Tag me at Erica Catherine design and use the hashtag, decorate like an artist. It's a great way to connect with your friends and family over what you've been working on. I love sharing your work and chatting art and decor. How long should this project take? The whole process of clearing a space, collecting your things, styling, photographing, and editing your vignette mock-up could take you anywhere from an hour or so to a half days time, depending how involved you want to get with choosing your decor and styling your vignette. Maybe you'll decide to block off more time to batch a few mockup photos. This will give you the bug to restyle all the surfaces in your home. And that's all okay. The key is not to fuss or be too precious about anyone vignette. It's best to play around, put some music on, keep things light and experiment as you go. Remember, no need to get it quote unquote, right? Each time you do this, you'll have more fun and be naturally more efficient than the last time around. To help you on your way. Visit the projects and resources section below this class for the following downloads and resources which we'll refer to as we go. In the next lesson, we'll review the materials you'll need for this class, as well as some optional items. 3. Gather Your Materials: Let's review what you need for your mockup. In a nutshell, all you need is a picture frame with digital work to frame like art photography or a message. Items for display from your home or studio, a phone or camera, a tablet or computer, inexpensive or free software and your imagination. But in this lesson, I'll explain why you need these some additional considerations and some optional items below. Look for a full list in the resources section. For this class, you'll need what I call the blank slate. A picture frame containing a blank canvas on which your art will later be superimposed digitally. This blank slate technique can be achieved multiple ways and is super forgiving. But the main thing to consider is that you're using a white or light background. The colors and your creative work can shine. You can use the empty frame or the insert from the store if they're light enough. If not, a white piece of any type of paper can be cut to the size of the frame. Even if photo you've left inside that's white or light, at least along the edges where the shadows are, could work like this. I drawing. This will make more sense once we get to the mockup lesson. You could also use a stiff white poster board or foam board cut to size instead of a frame. If you want to show artwork with the backing and no frame, essentially, you want something to style around that's firm and light on which to project your art. You'll need to core and belongs from around your house. And we're gonna get into that in the next few lessons. You'll need a camera, an iPhone, or smartphone. I'm using the iPhone 12s. Ideally, anything after the iPhone 11 will help you benefit from improved camera settings. But don't let this stop you with the right eye. You can make this work regardless of your equipment. Also, this is why we have a lesson on photo editing. Any other smartphones that have been released in the last couple of years will do as well. If you know your way around a DSLR camera, you're also welcome to use that. You'll need an iPad or computer depending on which software you're using. With Apple Procreate or Adobe Fresco, I'm using an iPad Pro 12.9, second-generation version from 20181 of the earliest versions that or anything later will be great for this. With Adobe Photoshop, I'm using a MacBook Air from 2021. Any computer will work. You can use your favorite software to make your mockup, choosing between Apple Procreate, adobe Fresco or Adobe Photoshop. If you're unsure, I'll offer my considerations on which one to use in the choose your software lesson at the time of publishing this class, apple Procreate software is available for a onetime purchase of $10 through the App Store. Adobe Fresco is basic version. The only version we're going to need for this class is free and available for download there as well. Adobe Photoshop is a paid subscription service available online. You're also welcome to use asteroid pad to Project Adobe Photoshop onto your iPad. But this isn't necessary and I'll be teaching straight from the computer. I wanted to make this technique accessible to as many people as possible. So you can use your finger in Procreate and a mouse in Adobe Photoshop. But an Apple pencil or stylus really helped for accuracy and speed. Adobe Fresco is optimized for an Apple pencil or stylus. However, if necessary for low-light conditions, daylight bulbs for improved light, parchment paper to diffuse them, and a white poster board to reflect light can help more on this a little later. The action item for this lesson is to, you guessed it, gather your materials. In the next lesson, we're going to review locating and prepping a spot to set up your vignette. 4. Prime Your Canvas: Let's prime our metaphorical Canvas. It blank slate technique works best with decent lighting. Pick the brightest spot in your home where you're able to clear off a surface against a wall if you're not sure when you're home for a full day, make note of where the light in your house is best, or note the direction of your house is Windows and use this guideline. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. East facing windows have their best sun in the morning, West and the afternoon North, never, sorry, north-facing windows, but you're very good for naps. And South always also keep in mind any trees or buildings blocking the windows. As you may choose to pick a different spot, even if it was an ideal direction for natural light. Or you can experiment with expressive shadows from trees and even window panes. Also remember trees reflect green light. So we'll keep this in mind when editing our photo. It's best to have your light source or window to your side or front, not behind you when shooting, as you'll cast your own shadow on the vignette. That last part may sound like common sense, but it's easy to overlook. Now a quick late story as an example, our home faces Northeast with west and east facing windows. So depending when I shoot a fancy way for saying FAT along with my iPhone camera, I change rooms, I follow the sun around like a planet orbiting it. I often shoot and my daughter's room, It's west facing with the highest clearest windows, free from trees and buildings. I have to wait until the afternoon when the sun makes its way west. Alternatively, I shoot in my living room, which is also west facing the room I fill in this class and it's not as bright, but it has the prettiest maple trees outside in the morning. I can shoot on the other side of the house, our master bedroom or kitchen areas. But these rooms have more northern exposure. In this case, the lights a little bit duller and cooler. Of course, there'll be factoring in that daylight extends longer during certain times of year, depending where you are in the world. If you don't have decent natural light in your home with a lot of blocked or north-facing windows, you have other lighting options. We'll talk about this more in the photography section. If all else fails, you can always ask a friend or family member with decent natural light in their homes to borrow their space for your class project, choose a level pleasing surface for your vignette, some ideas depending on what look you're going for. It could be a vintage mantle, a cool side board, retail shelves, whatever you'd like, you can even choose a pretty tiled floor for this class. I chose a painted white dresser with an interesting knob designed for my daughter's room. You can choose whatever you like and suits your style. It doesn't have to be white, but my surface just happen to already be sitting in the brightest spot in our house. I liked how it provides a nice neutral canvas for objects and art. Also, light is key, but direct sunlight can be a tad harsh and can cause hard shadows on your vignette. So depending if you want this look or not, if you're unable to wiggle your vignette surface away from this direct light. You can diffuse the light with parchment paper on your window or a white curtain or bed sheet, or shoot on an overcast day as the clouds diffuse the direct sun, now clear it off and make sure the surface is stable and that you anchor any fragile or rounded pieces like mirrors, you can use sticky tack or heavier pieces to anchor them. I don't want you to break any mirrors or frame glass. Your action item for this lesson is to find a well-lit, good-looking level spot to make your vignette. In the next section, we'll look at honing your personal style and review some considerations for shopping your home. 5. A Note On Personal Style: What is personal style, this elusive concept. I know many of us struggle with this, and I'm certainly still trying to figure it out. So let's examine it. Well, it's how you dress and how you decorate. But it's also how you greet people and how you create work. It's so many different things. There's an underlying current running through it all based on your unique senses, experiences, and outlook that takes time to identify and home. It's fluid. It can be influenced by gentle ripples like current trends, or by whaling storms, like changes in your personal life. Over time, you may never quite figure it out, but you learn the skills and confidence to express yourself authentically and to evolve intentionally. This is all well and good. But where to start? Maybe you're someone who already has a very defined style and that's great if you do. But if you're like me and maybe a lot of other creatives, you probably like a lot of different things and feel yourself pulled to multiple, even at times, conflicting styles. I would always read things like collect what you love and it will always work as an arrangement. I agree with this, which helped me relax, grow, and experiment, collecting a lot of different items. But I always felt this advice was missing something. I felt they still wanted specific instructions to hone my style. I wasn't too impulsive in my choices, only to end up collecting clutter that I liked the idea, but wasn't really me. So for those of you who are action driven, follow me for a moment, my style is eclectic. Have you ever said that not knowing exactly what that means or what you actually would call what it is that you love. I always did too and thought I had a very scattered style and couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that I liked. But then I started to notice patterns like overlapping waves among my collections of belongings, certain shapes, symbols, motifs, textures and colors. I think you need to collect what you love. But then after a certain point, you should start to pinpoint the patterns among the things that you love. You can be more intentional with your style and how you mix items. It's not a defined be-all and end-all stance, but it's helpful to be aware of you're about to shop your home. When you do take a moment to look at the pieces you've collected, pay attention to the little details they matter. Are there certain shapes, repeating elements are colors that you see. I'm going to bet my two sense that there are, it's like when you realize you've collected five black card against in your closet, we're creatures of habit. If you'd like, take note in the attached PDF provided in the resources section, eventually maybe not right away, you can start mentally grouping these details into one or several categories or styles. In my case, e.g. I started to notice I loved pedestal bases or neat line work, generally in the form of scallops, frills or shell motifs, teak objects and brass figures, interesting graphic shapes, texts or natural elements like written and Wicker and all kinds of florals. Then after a long while with many false starts, I was able to group everything I like into three style categories. This is a style that I've called retro deco Bobo, which relate to three existing style categories out there. But I've melded them together into something I'm comfortable with. This isn't a perfect science, nor should it be. The only reason I mentioned this is I find knowing this helps me balance out my arrangements when I get stuck, I tried to use my intuition and play around. I find it makes for a more fun arrangement, but often, but I noticed something is off to me personally. I mentally go through my list and find it's missing enough of one-third of these three categories. Also, when I see new trends, I can incorporate them within this lens. But this is just me. I don't say this because you need to do this, do whatever helps your creative process. You don't need to observe in group what you love. This is just one solution. My style might also be the complete opposite of yours, which is totally throwing you off on this whole process. This is also ok. So try to make it your own. If you're attracted to my particular style, I encourage you to explore this. You might love all of these blanket categories like retro, mid-century modern for instance. But perhaps your palate is cooler than mine. Perhaps the particular elements you like about it are different. Like you find tulip table base is little to Judy Jetson. Pay attention to the specifics of what you like. My mix will be different than your mics and have some fun with this and stay open. I encourage you to keep your eyes peeled and start exploring your style forever experimenting and evolving and being gentle with yourself. Now the really fun part, music on that, you love getting your happy place and start looking for items in your home you might want to display in your vignette. As you start to collect these items, you might find it helpful to lay them out on your floor on a large blanket for a few reasons, you can better see what you're working with. Think of it like a big paint palette so they don't roll off anything, preferably away from kids and pets. So little hands or tails don't knock them over. And sometimes by just randomly placing things close to each other, you'll stumble upon new combinations you wouldn't have thought of, like accidentally mixing the wrong color of paint and don't think rooms, specific kitchen, living room and bedroom items can go anywhere. Remember it's a lifestyle vignette if it's yours and you think it's beautiful, display it, including some of your pretty clothing items. Remember to look in your cupboards and cabinets for buried treasures. The action item for this lesson is to shop your home for objects you love. Side note, I know it can be tempting to find new things, but I want to encourage you to start where you are and work with what you have. The guidelines I'm going to discuss in the next couple of lessons will help with this and give you additional ideas. So don't get caught up on this step. And if it's helpful to you, take note of any patterns you see on a PDF included in the next lesson, we'll review some loose guidelines about visual and narrative design, as well as bonus notes about design books and crediting other artists. 6. The Art Of The Vignette: A decorative vignette is a grouping of items that creates a pleasing focal point or tells a story. Before we review some visual guidelines together for arranging your vignette. Remember, everyone and everyone is creative process is different. As we reviewed. Leave lots of room to play and experiment to put your own spin and style on things. This makes for the most magical, curious arrangements and our vignettes, remember those cool artists and those designer collaborations. They do their own thing, experiment and combine items intuitively which make for the most captivating, unexpected arrangements. I want to share some inspiration and guidance I've picked up over the years reviewing countless design books and home tours, these concepts in the back of your mind as a loose framework while cherry picking what works for you. Stay open and don't get hung up on any rules. Zach Mulligan, creator and teacher of the Skillshare class about cinematic lighting, points out the conventional wisdom is often wrong for the story we're trying to tell. It isn't this hit on so many levels as a creative person, I'm going to write those words on my bathroom mirror. So please, please trust your gut, your heart, and your story. On the flip side, guidelines are creative constraints can be a helpful starting point though, can't they? So you can find a cheat sheet in the resources section of the class which provides a brief outline of a lot of the tips are about to review. This way you can keep them in your back pocket and it frees you up to soak up what I'm about to tell you now, I've also linked to pin inspiration board to provide examples of vignettes that follow the guidelines we're about to discuss. Remember not to get caught up in perfectionism or the comparison game. And last, I've linked to Emily Henderson style diagnostic quiz through Skillshare. It's a fun exercise that could help you categorize and evolve your style if you're ever feeling stuck. Now I could talk all day about forms of symmetry, the elements of good design, and then nitty-gritty of setting up a pretty visual composition. But when it all comes down to it, Here's the main takeaway. We're visual people and our eyes are most engaged when they get to do a dance around their Canvas. Whether that Canvas is the artwork, the wall, or the room, the best way to do this is to have the eyes follow us, direct them to the focal point your art, take them on a journey among friends. In other words, through repeated themes or motifs throughout your composition, then give them something unexpected, a conflict, or some excitement, and lead them back to where they started. So they don't want to leave the canvas. In the next several slides, we're going to review how to do this using things like directional lines and areas of repetition and contrast to draw your eye through the composition. First, let's think about creating movement and rhythm towards and around your framed art. To lead your eye towards your artwork, you could start with one of these arrangements, asymmetrical or symmetrical for an asymmetrical arrangement, think of your vignette like a triangle composed of three types of objects, verticals and horizontals and organic shapes in-between. This way, you're using directional or leading lines with the vertical and horizontal to lead your eye into and out of the artwork. And an organic element or elements to break up and soften the distance between the two. It's a nice casual way of arranging and composition and isn't easy formula to remember. Some ideas for verticals, your picture frame, depending on its size and orientation, could work more lamps, books, candlesticks, vases. You get the idea. For horizontals. You could also use your picture frame depending on its size and orientation. Or books, trays, bowls, boxes, I could go on and on. Organic shapes. You could use plants, flowers, or sculptural objects for a symmetrical arrangement. Mirrored waves arranging your vignette like a mirror with matching or similar objects on both sides of your artwork, then providing ups and downs like rolling waves crashing towards your art as the center. Prop your frame in the middle and build out this way. You're leading the eye towards the middle of the vignette with the directional lines on both sides of the artwork. Using symmetry isn't easy framework to start from. As you're getting more comfortable with styling, it can appear a bit formal. So to shake this up, I like to use casual colorful items when possible. And broken symmetry, for instance, rather than using two vases that are the same on either side, used to that are different, but if similar height, size, and color. Now, I'm going to let you in on another secret, help you decide what to use in your vignette. Ever go into a room and think this design is timeless? Or I just, I feel like all is right in the world while being in this space. Maybe that's just me, but that's likely because it's been outfitted with a good balance of what I call old, new, and alive items. These spaces tend to energize and relax you all at once. Similar to a state of creative flow, It's mindfulness at its best. Melodic arrangement of past, present, and future. Employing this mix will help you achieve a coordinated vignette that promotes creative flow. Something old, an element from the quote unquote past could be something vintage or need or worn with muted, gentle colors. Something new and element from the quote unquote, future could be something contemporary sleep or graphic with bright higher contrast colors. Something alive and element from the quote unquote present could be something living or with character, e.g. flowers, plants, fruit or food, objects from nature, personified figures or patterns containing any one of these things. Color palettes could be those that remind you of nature. Remember my retro deco bot hostile. Each group just To mirror these categories, which got me thinking about how they all work together. And I stumbled upon this principle. This is just one way to do it. Now we talked about movement towards your artwork. Now think about building additional movement around the vignette through depth, hierarchy and repetition. Because what happens is the eye, we'll look at the overall shape of your composition, then narrow in on the details, and then back out again. The symmetrical mirrored arrangement, the asymmetrical triangle, or any composition you use around your artwork or mini stories are worlds to themselves and retain their structure as a standalone feature, you can create additional movement within your vignette, layering additional items almost like subplots to the story. This will give it dimension and history to look as if it's been collected over time. Consider these ideas as you do it. Depth, we covered the 2D, but don't forget about the 3D first, if your art has a lot of depth, like a landscape, you might want to end there. However, if not, it can be nice to add some in finance don't always have to be against a plain wall, not depths with wallpaper or if you don't have any in your house, a pattern book or a mirror when adding a mirror and what it's going to reflect. Artwork, a window, a ceiling medallion or pendant light can be its own subplot. Another world within a world, consider hierarchy and height, making different levels, many arrangements on top of trays, books, bowls or pedestals corral and contain these items so you can sprinkle in these little details without chaos ensuing. Remember to leave a little space around items to let them breathe. Also, think of repeating colors, shapes, and motifs from your artwork in objects or elements within your vignette. This will bounce the eye out and back, allowing anyone admire your art to see how it could fit with their belongings and in their space, making a deeper connection with your potential collector. Display repeated trinkets and odd numbers to please the eye to something works as well. Too. Graphic candlesticks. Consider scale using large, medium, and small curiosities to draw the eye. Here, although they're roughly the same scale, we see repeating florals and wallpaper, the artwork, a frame and a small basket of florals. Up until now we've been talking about visual harmony, like the melody of a song. Now let's talk about adding some visual cacophony, a harsh mixture of sounds and a fun word to say, where mindfulness and repetition give balanced and emphasis. Contrast gives conflict and dissonance. It's important to have this push and pull so your eye is engaged and entertained. I like to remember the words pretty but peculiar. In other words, your composition should be visually appealing, but something should be a little bit off. Something should be a bit unexpected to draw you in, entertain you, or pop you into the present moment. We're going to review different ways to do this using conversation pieces, juxtaposition, new uses or contexts, continuation and contrasting colors. Ever hear the term conversation piece? Did you see the episode of friends were Rachel wants to bring home a lamp and a clock from her eccentric upstairs neighbors, old Department, much to her roommate Monica's dismay, this is an example of a conversation piece and would be an obvious example of adding something a little bit off. It doesn't have to be quite so out there though. Simple ways you can inject the unexpected are juxtaposing contrast ID styles like pairing an old oil painting with modern line art or watercolor floral with a graphic abstract, or putting fun geometric jewelry around a serious traditional sculpture. Finding new uses for something, for instance, and unusual use for our vessel meant for flowers. Or finding new contexts for something random spots like propping art on the ledge of your piano sheet music stand for on a window sill. Just like when you shopped your house. Don't overthink how you combine things and where you put things, play around and you never know what you'll get for arranging figures as if they're having a conversation or if they have defined eyes are looking in the direction of your art. This is part of a gestalt design principle called continuation. Your eyes follow leading lines, including where someone in a photo or arrangement is looking. Finally, using color, areas of contrast color, draw your eye creating friction, relate meets dark, bright meets doll or warm meets cool, complimentary colors also draw the eye. Red with green, blue with orange, and purple with yellow. I know we've covered a lot in this lesson, but I wanted to add a bonus section as a special love letter to books, books in general and books about art and design. There's nothing better than books by creators and publishers who takes special attention to make the cover, spine and interior book design as engaging as the written content. Let's quickly look at all their benefits. This will help you in creating your vignette. Visually appealing books or a double duty investment, not only for information and inspiration, but for display in your space. There are fount of inspiration for their content and their multi-dimensional and their aesthetic uses, placing them in your vignette. There are also a source of connection with others when just can't help but gravitate to a book. Now, imagine yourself as an architect wielding books as you're building blocks. And let's focus on the ways to display and combined books as a foundation and structure for a vignette. You can position them vertically to draw the eye up their spine and towards your art or other items horizontally as a plane to corral and elevate other items as sculpture, face first or cover facing outwards to display interesting patterns, color or topography. Adding depth, propped open to an insightful or eye-catching passenger page, controversially spines inward as a neutral point of rest for your eyes. You can also combine them grouped by color or pattern, street or haphazardly, depending how casual will feel you're going for or response lined up to tell a cheeky story and titles. Feel free to pause to read this one. Keep in mind when layering and book art or any artwork, artisanal or designer items, remember to do your best to tag or credit or with the artist or design studio name. If it's not clearly visible in the photo, it's the right thing to do. It helps create brand awareness for the crater. It builds trust and appreciation both between you and the artist and for you and the artist. And allows others to hunt this work down themselves if they're interested and want to connect with this artist. I've tried my best to list sources for everything pictured in this class. That's not my personal artwork. Please reach out if you noticed anything I've missed. This picture is from Anna sparrows book, absolutely beautiful things where she outlines all known and missing sources within her book. If you ever can't find the artist or company name, there's a couple of things you can do. You can look all over the product. The copyright with the artist's name can be on the bottom or sometimes inside it. If not, you can take a photo and do a little digging with Google image search or the Pinterest image search feature. As a last resort, you can post it, but ask people to comment if they know who it's by. Of course, if you plan to sell your mockup photo, you should only use your personal art in the arrangement or obtain permission from the artists first, the action item for this lesson is to take an inventory of the objects you collected. And based on this lesson's guideline, if it's helpful to you, add to them if you've forgotten anything around your house or mentally or literally group them into like things are possible arrangements. This might help you stumble upon an accidental arrangement. The next lesson is the first of three example vignettes. They put these guidelines to use and we'll hopefully spark your imagination to get you started on your vignette. 7. Vignette 1: A Layered Story: The next three lessons will give you three examples of vignettes I stitched together to give you some visual inspiration to spark your imagination and help you create your own. Each lesson follows the guidelines we reviewed to a degree and leaves room for experimentation. Sometimes you start by following the rules. Other times you throw them away. In each of these lessons, I'll review a vignette example, the story it tells how it can be used, the thought process behind the elements chosen for it, and what visual guidelines that puts to use. This first vignette is a layered mix of a mirror, art frame, design books, flowers, and a lamp meant to demonstrate an example of following some of the visual quote unquote rules we reviewed earlier. This is an easy formula to follow when you're first setting up a vignette to attract others to your work. I had a general plan going into layer from back to front for depth and to use the asymmetrical triangle arrangement for balance. I also knew I would be designing around this portrait illustration. Know when you know what piece you're designing around, it's helpful to keep your iPad somewhere close by and staple with the artwork up on the screen for reference. Let's review together how I chose the elements of the vignette and my thought process as I went, I started with the mirror for depth. I layered design books for more depth and interest. I chose books with lovely covers of patterns by Lego Hicks, photography by Alexa Chung and an illustration by Danielle cruel. Remember, it's always important to credit artists. I chose these folks as they repeated eyes similar to my green portrait lady. Notice how the blue Allegro Hicks book also mirrors the almond shapes in the mirror. I propped up a vertical gold frame, a small one to allow the mirror detail to shine. I added the vertical lamp and shows it to repeat the spherical shape of the pendant lamp reflected in the mirror. I lined up the frame and books to make horizontal line, rather than adding a horizontal tray or bowl to an already busy arrangement, I added a small scalloped vase of flowers to balance out the organic and quote, unquote alive categories. The vase also mirrors the shell compacts on the red Danielle cruel journal. To summarize, here we end up with a deep, the vertical, the horizontal and the organic. To bridge the two, I decided to shoot this vignette as a slight worm's eye view to show the mirror reflecting the pendant lamp and it's medallion on my ceiling. Reinforcing the round shape of the mirror and adding an element of an old ornate motif. Paired with the old ornate is the new or sleek of the brass frame and pendant sphere with the live flowers. We're striving for a timeless look. Happy accident. I realized that I placed the read journal next to the frame in which I plan to put the green portrait painting. Red and green, as we know, are complimentary colors. They're also the most contrast in the image which draw the eye to the artwork. Speaking of color, this arrangement is color heavy and makes a strong statement with the layered patterns. It may not be neutral enough to work for all my artwork, but luckily it reflects colors I use often switch it still worked for multiple other pieces I've made. This is the benefit of choosing your own elements for your mock-up. They extend and display your creative choices in a context outside your artwork. This vignette uses the following guidelines. The asymmetrical triangle arrangement with tall, wide and organic shapes, layers for depth, repeating unexpected motifs, all new and alive items, and complimentary color contrast, even if you and I have very different styles, these examples should help you see the guidelines I mentioned in practice. If this seems a tad overwhelming or nuanced, this will get easier. A lot of it is intuitive play. Happy accidents often happen as you choose your items. You'll see as you refine your personal style, you'll become more intentional with what you surround yourself with. Then more and more pieces will work together and you'll have more to work with. This will help inform your artistic choices within a Canvas as well as it's all connected. So keep going with this. In the next lesson, we'll review another vignette example for further inspiration. 8. Vignette 2: A Studio Story: This vignette is a layered mix of an art frame, desk lamp, open design book, flowers and art supplies meant to tell the story of my studio space. Hopefully you can use this as inspiration to display some of your favorite items from your studio or workspace. I didn't plan this vignette around specific artwork. I simply started picking items that I use in my space and love. It's a really relaxed way to design and gives a window into your process, helping others connect with your art together. Let's review my thought process as I went. I started with my favorite frame and prompt her vertically. She's an old charcoal drawing I made and I call her my sleepy muse. You'll see later how we can seamlessly integrate art over her eyes and actually put her to sleep. Which sounds really dark as I say that. But hence the magic of the mock-up. I added some flowers in an old milk glass phase. I knew I wanted something to fill the space below the frame that was interesting and wide and would be on my actual desk. So I flipped you the first book I saw with illustrations by Megan has found the first image that caught my eye once placed, I liked how the red lips acted like leading lines to draw your eye to the art frame. I added an older neat lamp. I got secondhand from a friend because both the lamp and the phase were old and ornate. I didn't want them to compete. So I switched out the face for something new, sleek and unexpected for balance. I noticed after that it makes me think of a smile and references the lip illustration. But maybe that's a bit of a stretch. It may seem like I'm really focusing on little details here, but it's those details that we pick up, if nothing else, subconsciously really add depth to this space to reinforce this as an art space, I added some pastels in an unexpected open shell vessel. A new use for this found object. I wanted to lay or more items in and enforce that the artwork should be the focus rather than the design book. So to lead the eye upwards again, I angled to paint brushes pointing to the frame. To summarize, here, we end up with an asymmetrical arrangement using vertical, horizontal and organic shapes. We use old pieces in the lamp and frame, new in the vase and alive in the flowers and shell pieces for balanced mindful mix, I decided to shoot this straight on to a slightly elevated bird's-eye to show the detail on the design book pattern, I decided later I'd add this floral artwork into the mock-up. I liked how the green background contrasted with the red lips of the design book, but I could just as easily add any of my artwork into this one. This is the benefit of letting your favorite pieces lead the way in your vignette design and to honing your personal style so it easily pairs with your work. This vignette uses the following guidelines similar to the last one, the asymmetrical triangle arrangement, layers for depth, repeating motifs, unexpected elements, old, new and alive elements, and complimentary color contrast if a green image is chosen. In the next lesson, we'll review our final vignette example. 9. Vignette 3: An Art Story: This vignette is a mix of an art frame, candles, shells, basis of flowers, and a ceramic hand figure meant to tell the story of a chosen floral art piece. It was rather easy to style is eye-catching and tells the story of your art. I reinforcing colors and motifs you'll see in the piece. In this case, florals and hands. It helps others connect with your art and see ways it could fit in their space. This vignette as well as the first haven't catered around a specific piece of art, this could limit them for use to this piece or a similar collection versus the more neutral second studio vignette, which could work for multiple pieces. As a trade-off, it really enhances and speaks to this work together. Let's review how I chose the elements of the vignette. I kept my iPad open in a safe space nearby with the art on the screen for reference, in this case, a red floral bouquet. I chose my favorite gold frame again, my sleepy muse, as I thought her frame would fit with the old romantic nature of the art. I knew I wanted to try a symmetrical arrangement this time, given the art is symmetrical itself. So I added candlesticks on both sides. I picked similar but different Gold candlesticks to add some interest. They happen to have two candles in the same color. So I put those into reinforce the orange red color of my art. I felt I had too much gold, so I switched the frame out to a light would one that references the woven pattern of the candlesticks. I love Michelle's and like the idea of using them in a symmetrical way to flank the art. So I put those up. I then decided I wanted some height and repetition with a second floral pattern. So I added this bloom in-house magazine. I also have a lot of hand figures and wanted to place one here that reference the hand holding the bouquet. I knew I needed something sleek and modern to balance out the ornate nature of all the pieces in this vignette. So I added these wooden ring makeshift phases and added some camel meal flowers that looks a lot like the delicate white florals in the picture. This vignette uses the following guidelines. A symmetrical arrangement, repeating motifs, unexpected character with the hand, bold, new and alive elements, and complimentary color contrast with the red candles and Greenbook. A pattern between these three vignettes I didn't plan. It gives me a window into my apparent love for these colors. Your action item for this lesson is to pick out a frame and some decor pieces to arrange on your chosen surface. You can choose to pick your art for it at this point or not, then begin styling your vignette. In the next lesson, we will review how to photograph your vignette. 10. Photograph Your Vignette: In this lesson, I'm going to review some general guidelines for photographing your vignette than a real-time demo shooting one of the ones we made in this class. Don't let this photography part intimidate you. Photography is a profession for a reason. It's nuanced and tricky and isn't art in itself. But for our purposes of capturing a vignette, I can show you how to work that camera. Lucky for us, smartphone technology has come a long way, even with older equipment though, if you practice and have a great subject, you can capture a beautiful photo. Follow the basic tricks I provide you with about composition and you'll do just fine. Here's what I've picked up over the years. Your eyes and imagination edit better than the lens of a camera. The camera provides an objective, unbiased picture and a better sense of what a third-party we'll see where our eyes alone edit and minimize any hiccups in the composition. So try taking photos as you edit decor items and their positioning in your vignette to get a great angle of your artwork and its context. You may even want to add and subtract items as you go. A couple other things to remember, consider first, where you plan to use this photo and the orientation or size required for various platforms, apportionment works best for most sizes for social media and can be cropped to fit as 16 by nine ratio required by Instagram Reels and TikTok these days. But it might be worth it to snap a landscape as well if you're planning to use it as a Facebook cover photo or on YouTube, when in doubt it never hurts to snap both. So you have options. If you have low-light conditions and want to try getting creative. As I mentioned earlier, you can use a daylight bulb from the local hardware store in a compatible lamp. Daylight because incandescent bulbs can cast an unnatural warm tone covered with parchment paper to diffuse the light and use a reflective white poster board to bounce the light. Skillshare has a number of great courses on this. I'll link one in the resources section I liked by Sean Dalton, where he talks about photographing art indoors. It's important to explore different camera angles while snapping away. So you capture a great vantage point for your art and decor. We'll review this in the demo. So first off, you always want to think about the shapes and details that you want to capture and then adjust your angle accordingly. So we're going to try a few different angles and we'll take some shots as we go. First of all, it's a straight on is always a safe bet. For this. You want to take the shot from the edge of the table or whatever surface you're shooting on. Line up the shot with your phones grid. The grid isn't always on as default with iPhone. So I'm going to show you how to set that up if you don't have it all ready. Scroll down to camera. And then see down here where it says composition and there's little spots that says grid. You turn that on. Now that we have our grid, it's helpful to line up. I'm going to line up as you can see, the edge of the table here. So it's roughly level with the grid. Now there's a time and a place for grids. You don't maybe always want to use them. But I find if it's a shot like this where there's a lot of straight edges. It's helpful. You could always adjust the angles later on in your editing software though I find that can sometimes work the edges of your photo. So it's maybe not always the best to do it later, but you can, as long as it's not like vastly skewed, it might just the edge of your photos white, it'll just read pixelate in those edges so you might be able to get away with it. But I'll show you this way. Then. Sometimes if you find the grid is a bit off, you have to remember that the lens of your camera isn't straight in the middle. It's up here on me. Let me check actually notes over here on this edge. So if you find there could be two things wrong. If your grids off it could be that you're holding your camera angles. So you might need to adjust the depth of one side of your phone. And it could also just be that your house isn't level. So then you just kinda adjust as you go and as best as you can. This is the straight on shot, which is a good one. The other angle you could do is a slight bird's eye or top-down angle. So I like this because you see the inside of this little hand dish, though we don't have anything in it right now. So maybe it's not the best for this. And also it kind of cuts off our art a little bit. Unless we go way up here, which, well, that's kinda pretty too. But I think I'm gonna try. There's also the worm's eye or the bottom up. So just a slight worm's eye, which I do like that because you see the detail on the hand. So I might actually do this. Yeah, I like that. So I'm going to line it up. Take a shot. And just for comparison's sake, we'll try the straight on shot and the aerial shot. Cutting off a candle here. So those are all good options. And another side note here is use a pillow or like a kind of one of those gardening knee pads for your knees. If you're shooting head-on or from a bird's eye view, if you're over 30, your knees will. Thank me if you're doing a lot of these. Also, another side note is reflective surfaces, so we don't really have any in this particular vignette. But if say for instance, this gold candlestick was super reflective, you just want to make sure you don't reflect yourself. There's actually no glass in the frame, so it's kinda handy. So that being said, now that you've taken quite a few different shots from different angles, It's good to go and look at the thumbnails. Here we go. And you can just have a look and see if there's any that grab you. See, obviously, this one's a little bit warped. I'm going to delete that one. Yeah, So just kinda find one that stands out. Looks like the last one we took pretty good. I think I've cut off these little phases at the edges, so I might to retake a shot. This one is pretty good. It's a little bit off center two. Let's do one more. Now that we know what we're working with. We're going to line it up. I'm going to go a worm psi, go back, line it up with the grid. Okay, take a deep breath and shoot. Okay, great. Your action item for this lesson is to take a variety of photos of your vignette from different vantage points. Don't be afraid to move your things around either. Pick your best photo from your thumbnails to edit in the next lesson. In the next lesson we'll review how to edit your photo. 11. Edit Your Photograph: Now to edit your photo, I like to use the free Snapseed app. Or sometimes I'll use iPhones built-in editing software that you can use any program. If you use a DSLR camera, you're welcome to use whatever editing software you're comfortable with. I'm gonna be showing you how to edit them on my favorite app, Snapseed editing app, on my phone. And you can download it for free from the App Store. So quick side note, I'm gonna be showing you how to use this app in landscape mode so that you can see better for this class. But when you use it on your phone, it'll likely be in portrait mode. So the only difference, and I don't want you to be confused. In this case, the Tools menu see this little pencil on the right. It'll be on the bottom instead of on the right side here. If you go to do it on your phone, worst-case, you can also just turn your phone like I have here if you find that better. But I'm just going to show you so don't get dizzy. I'll just flip it. Your screen, it'll be over on the left, but that's what it looks like in portrait mode. So blink and I'll flip back. Okay, So now under tools of little pencil over here on the right, I know there's a lot going on. All the tools I use can be found on this top bar on the right, under Tune Image Details and white balance. Once you're in any of the editing menu. So I'll go into tune image. You scroll through the various enhancements by moving your finger up and down on your phone. And then once you pick one, you would just hit sliding your finger right and left. So see that little bar at the top. Then once you pick whatever it is, there's a little check mark in the bottom right, if you like it. And then if you don't like the enhancement, you click the X, which actually brings you out. You can also choose the Undo button, which is in the top right, regardless of which orientation, it will always be up there. And there's an Export button at the bottom right. Regardless of what orientation you're using, those are the only buttons we'll be using, essentially the edits I'm going to show you will help brighten and balance your photos so that you don't have to spend money on fancy filters. I'm always happy with my results editing just over a handful of enhancements which I'm going to review. And I think once you get the hang of it, you will be two. Let's learn by doing so. First off, I always turn the brightness up on my phone to make sure I can see properly. I'm just going to pull it down. It's already way up. So that's a little brightness enhancement. I always start off with brightness. So I'm gonna grab that. And brightness increases the overall lightness of the photo. So I generally bring it up and I know this is subjective, but I'll try and tell you the way I gauge things. So I just bring it up until it starts to look washed out. I don't like it when it's yeah. See how it's getting kind of washed out. So I'll bring it back to about here. So you just don't want to burn out the shadows or wash out all the shadows like that. I'm going to go back down a bit and you also don't want obviously way too dark. So I'm going to bring it up to about here. When you save all of these edits, you save it in a way you don't destroy your original, so you can always go back to your original if you goof. That's my mom's expression. So I'm going to hit the checkmark back into tune image we're going to do because he didn't have to hit the checkmark right away. You can do each of these and then do a final check. Now I always change highlights which makes the light parts of the photo lighter. So I bring those up a little bit. And obviously you don't want to go way too far up because then it just looks blown out the exposure. So I usually just bring this up a little bit. The next enhancement I tend to do is contrast. With contrast, it makes the lights lighter and the darks darker in an equal fashion, either up or down. If you want to make it a bit sharper, you're gonna go to the right, see how it kinda makes everything pop. It's a little too far. Then if you want more of a dreamy look, you go over to the left. I think it actually makes it kind of washed out. I'm thinking for this one, I might leave it right in the middle for now. The other enhancement that I really like is ambiance, ambiance, ambient lighting on beyond. Anyways, that one is a special type of contrast through Snapseed that balances the light in your photo. So I play with this and I don't usually bring it down. I tend to bring it up. I find it's just a subtle, it makes things sharper and richer. So I really like this one. You can also pinch to zoom if you're wanting to see a certain part of your photo and then you can move this little square up or down. Around. If you want to zoom out, you can do that as well. So I'm gonna hit the check and I'm gonna go back to my editing menu and I'm going to go into details. And I don't usually touch structure, but sharpening I find is really helpful to zoom in a little bit so you can see it just makes any letters a little crisper. So see you on the Alexa Chung book. You can bring it up and it tends to just make it so that any lettering is sharper depending what you want to display. This is a good one. It also tends to bring your textures to the forefront a little more. So you can see on the book, both books actually, the texture just gets a little bit sharper. So I'm going to zoom back out just to get a big picture shot here. I'm just going to go about halfway. Now the final enhancement that I really love is white balance. It's your best friend. So I'm going to select that. Now. There's temperature and tint in temperature, lets you either go warm or cool. As the name would suggest. To play with this, I generally find my photos run on the warm side, so I tend to make them a little cooler. So again, this is subjective, but what I tend to do is move the temperature cooler until I see where it's starting to get blue. -11. I noticed it. And then, oops, I should mention when you click and hold, it brings you back to your last edit before the current one that you're on. If you want to hold it to compare it, you can do that. So I'll just let go. Now I'm going to bring it just to the point where I don't see the blue anymore so that it looks like a general weight to them. Alright, so I think we're going to bring it back here and, and six or 76. You can see this one's finicky but you'll start to get the hang of it. Okay, So now we're gonna do tint. Tint goes from green to pink. So you want it where it's not too green, not too pink. So I tend to bring it over until I start to see pink and note the number around six, I noticed it. Then I bring it this way and note where it starts looks green. So it looks green even at minus three. So I want somewhere in-between there. I'm thinking I'm going to end up going towards the pinky side, which I tend to do. Not too much, I'm gonna go plus two for now. It looks a bit green in the mirror. So I'm gonna go plus three. Okay. Maybe plus two is right. Okay, it starts to trick your eyes a little bit. I have a trick though after this, okay, I know this sounds really confusing, so I'm going to accept this for now. Before I show you this last trick old mentioned, I'm going to be attaching an article in the resources that'll really help you get to know what each of these enhancements do if you're curious, and it'll show you a little bit about some of the names that are interchangeable across different platforms. So if you end up using something other than Snapseed, you'll know what each of those enhancements mean. So for instance, ambience tends to be Snapseed, whereas in the Apple photo editing software it's called brilliance. Both a special type of contrast. So anyway, it'll give you a little more detail about each of these things. And that way you can play around because I know this is all subjective. But if you stick to the few tips that I've given you as a good start, you'll be well on your way and then you can play around from there. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and export this photo. The bottom right, the little arrow outside of the square. We're going to click that and we're gonna do save a copy. Like I said, you can go back. It'll save your original, so select that. Okay, So we're gonna go ahead and I'm going to show you my trick. So here's the trick that I was talking about for white balance. You can save it in your photos and then look at it with the surrounding whiteness around the actual photo to see if it's a true white. This isn't a perfect science, but I find it helps me notice once I pull it up, I can see whether it's a little too blue, a little too yellow if the temperature is off or the tints off, whether it's a little too green or a little too pink. And I would say this is pretty good if anything, it could be a touch on the blue side, but I'm going to keep it as is. I'm likely only thinking that because within the gold frame looks a touch blue, but we're gonna be putting our art in there anyways. So it's a safe bet that it's going to look a okay once we turn it into our mockup. Your action item for this lesson is to edit and brighten up your vignette photo with your chosen app. In the next lesson, I'll offer some considerations to help you decide which software to use to turn your vignette photo into a mock-up. 12. Choose Your Software: This class is called framed art mock-ups. Your way. This is because I wanted to offer a streamline solution to suit any creators workflow. Well, I'm most comfortable in Apple Procreate. You might be used to and comfortable with Adobe fresco or Photoshop for your work. I find whatever you choose. It can be nice to keep it all in house or in one app. I like to call Procreate my art studio. On the go, there's something to be said for popping your iPad and your purse and doing work in cozy coffee shops all over the city, regardless of which app you pick. I've distilled the mockup process down into 12 steps. I've linked these steps in the resources so you can refer back to them anytime with any program. A little disclaimer. I taught myself how to do this process in Adobe Fresco and Adobe Photoshop for the purposes of this class, these methods will get you where you need to go as efficiently as possible. But you'll see there's multiple ways to do any one thing in these programs. If you know of any workarounds that I haven't followed in these lessons. Feel free to use those, of course, and don't hesitate to let me know if you see something I could have included. I'm always happy to offer a bonus lesson. Now, if you're new to these programs or have dabbled in some or all of them, you might ask, which one should I choose? My answer to you would be whichever one you're most comfortable with. If you've been using Adobe Photoshop, use that. If you've been using Adobe Fresco, use that. A few other helpful tips if you're still not sure. At the time this class was published, procreate has a onetime fee of $10. That's it. Fresco is free for our purposes. It has a premium version that's paid, but you don't need this for our particular technique. Photoshop is a paid subscription which makes sense as it's so powerful. And I find they're blending tools to be especially nice for what we're doing. If you're new to using design software, adobe Photoshop is a little more involved and less intuitive to learn than the other two, but it's definitely doable. Just follow the handy steps. Will review. Fresco is the newest of the three programs. Any limitations you notice will likely be updated in the near future. One last quick tip before you import your vignette photo into your software. I wanted to mention you could even look back and use photos you've taken of your framed art in the past, then turn them into a mock-up. Their art would need a light background and we'd have to be centered in a way you could erase it without changing any shadows inside the frame. I wanted to mention this to give you more options. Our action item for this lesson is to choose a software you want to use for your mockup and watch the corresponding lesson that follows. In the next lesson, we'll review how to use Apple Procreate to make your mockup. 13. Mockup 1: Apple Procreate: Okay, so now I'm going to review how to create a mockup in Procreate. So first we're going to open the program. And we're going to import photo up here on the top right. So we're going to find our vignette that we created. And we're going to pinch to zoom just so we can see what we're doing a little better. The first thing we're gonna do is blend out any marks or imperfections that we see inside the frame. So lucky for us. We don't have any. But let's just, let's just say maybe we did. So we can have certain things like little marks or smudges. We might have a drawing that already is preexisting in the frame. Or a little factory inserts sometimes there's writing on it. I wanted to just show you what what you would do to cover those since we don't have any, which is pretty rare. So first I'm just going to show you some quick little housekeeping. There's a default gestures that you can use it procreate. So you might see me doing this. So just so you know what I'm doing. So two finger tap is undo and three fingers is redo. So in case you're wondering and you weren't already aware. So let's get rid of this small mark up here. So we're gonna go into our Blend tool. I like to use the air brush, which is a default Procreate brush, the soft brush. I tend to use a pretty small size, so like a two or three. And then I just smudge right in on itself, so I just bring the surrounding area in. You don't have to be too precious with this, the main thing to keep in mind because your artworks can hide a multitude of sins. The main thing is you just don't want to disturb any shadows that you currently have on the picture because that's what gives, it's going to give your artwork depth and help it blend into the photo below it. So if you have something bigger like this, I'm gonna do something a little bit different. I'm going to go into this selection tool under the freehand selection. And I'm going to draw an area above it are both the same size. It doesn't have to be above, but it's just anywhere where the color is gonna be the same. Close the selection. I'm going to tap that little dot. And another gesture control I'm going to use is a three-finger swipe, which allows me a number of options. But I'm going to duplicate this little area. And I'm just going to drag it down over the eyes and I'm gonna do it for two reasons. It's faster than smudging them all out, but it also retains the texture of the canvas. A canvas has a lot of texture. You can either touch the actual selection or you could even touch outside of it. And it's going to do the same thing. You're going to move it right over. And then we're going to get out of there. And now you can still see a little bit of it around the edges. So we're gonna go back into our airbrush tool to blend it out. But first, we're gonna go into our Layers panel and we're going to blend or merge this layer down to the layer below it. So you can do that by tapping the layer and selecting merge down. Or you can do another gesture and just pinch to merge it. And what that does is it allows you to blend the surrounding color in on itself. And you could, if you wanted, you could copy the initial photo layer, your original photo layer before doing that, before merging it. Just so you have one to go back on if you, if you goof. But I tend to just import it again, which you can do up here, which I can show you later, because we're going to be importing our artwork. So I think that looks good. We're going to zoom out. Yeah, alright, so that, that part is all nice and smooth. The next thing we wanna do is select this frame, the area inside our frame, so that we can create something where we can put our art. So there's two ways to do that. And I'm going to show you both ways because you're going to go up into the selection. So there's the free hand, which is what we just did. Or there's automatic. Automatic. You can, once you're in the selection, you can go back and forth between the two. So you can use a little bit of both. And I'm going to start with automatic. So what you do is you. Press where you want filled. And then you hold and you can move it from right to left. And see up here there's a little bar and it says selection threshold. So the further you go to the right, the more it's going to select the left, the last. I always go as far as it goes without overstepping outside the frame. I'm going to bring it back a little bit. That's pretty good. And then this button down here, it says add. You can keep adding to this selection. So you can also remove which I'll show you, but you can just select rate in here. And just do the same thing. The zoom out so I can see it's not selecting something I don't want it did a pretty good job. There's a few little spots down here. And I think that's the best we're going to get. Okay, so that looks really good. Now, I'm going to show you how to do it with free hand though. So if you wanted, you could like there's some areas that have gone over a little bit. You could switch into free hand right now and you could do Remove and then just select those. And it would remove them from your selection. You could do that. Or I'm just going to get right out. I'm going to show you purely in free hand. So we've got it set to add. This tool actually reminds me a little bit of a combination of the pen tool and the pencil tool in the Adobe programs. So like the pen, you can create little anchor points, which is really nice. So it helps you. If you have a straight edge like this, then you can draw just like the pencil. So you can come around here for any kind of more organic areas. They're both really good tools, really nice. Okay, went over a little bit. I'm just going to do that again here. However you'd like to do it. I just wanted to show you you have options. Go ahead. Okay. So now the next thing we're gonna do is we're going to fill this layer. We're going to create a new layer, actually not this later. We're going to create a new layer and fill it. And we're going to fill it with white. So I know this is white because I already set it up this way. But if you didn't and you had a color and you weren't sure you would just go into value and just turn the saturation all the way down, the hue all the way down and the brightness up. Then we're just going to literally take this color and drag it into our selection. The reason we use white is so that when you're adding your art underneath or on top, the white underneath won't block any colors or alter any colors of your artwork. But it's obviously pretty glaring right now. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna go into this little normal n here on the layer and switch it from normal to the Blend Mode, Multiply. And what that does is it essentially blends it with the layers underneath. And because it's white, it makes it really disappear. So you're left with a window to your art or a portal to your art, if you will. And I'm calling this the blank slate selection layer. I might refer back to that a little bit. So that's all well and good. I just want to show you one other way to use the selection tools because this was a pretty straightforward selection. But what if you had something like flowers, dirt into your Canvas? Let's pretend this book is the canvas for a moment. Let's go back onto this layer and we're going to select automatic selection again. So automatic selection, She's, she's temperamental, but she's a sensitive soul and she's really good at getting close to these kind of fuzzy edges. So I'm just going to drop, dropped in on here a little bit. And I'm gonna go a bit closer to these flowers here. I'm going to bring this threshold up to the point where we're not where she's not overstepping her boundaries. So that's probably pretty good. Then I find the manual or the free hand brush. He's he's, he doesn't think for himself at all, but he's he's dependable. And you know what you're gonna get. I'm going to switch to him. And he's a little crude, but he's, he's dependable. So you have these add and remove buttons. So like we did before, we're going to switch to whichever one we want. So we're going to add any spots that are gray. They're not selected, and you want to add them to your selection. So I noticed there's some gray down here. I'm going to adjust to that. And then I noticed some gray around this leaf. So I'm going to add to that. Like we did in the beginning, you can do use these tools interchangeably. I'm going to add a little more around this leaf. And there might be parts you want to remove. So this stem here, we're going to switch to remove and we're going to take that part out. So just showing you how you can do this pretty straightforward. And you're going to want to also remove some of these leaves that she, she added on us. Tricky girl. Okay? And that actually is a good example. So I accidentally got out of here. And if that ever happens, sometimes you click something and your little tool menu disappears. What I used to do is I tried to undo and whatever I did this, these tools didn't come back. I recently learned, if you hold the selection button, they come back. So if ever you hit brush or something and it disappears, all you have to do is hold that and it'll come back. So we're done with this anyway. We're gonna get out. Get out. And even if you totally got out of the selection, you want it to come back to it. There it comes. Let me do that. Do and there comes. So that is a life-changing little tidbit. Okay, so now we have our selection. We know how to use our selection tools. We're going to now import our artwork to add. But first I'm just going to mention anyone who works in analog. I'm going to add a little link in the resources with a class on how to switch your work into digital. Because I don't want to leave anybody out, anyone who's not familiar working in digital but wants to use this technique. Those classes will help you get started. Okay, so we're gonna go into this little wrench tool up here. And we're going to select, Add, insert a photo. And we're gonna select this guy right here. Okay, So we're gonna pinch to see what we're doing. We're also going to switch her blend mode to multiply as well. And we're gonna do that for two reasons. Number one, we want to see what we're doing when we're going to place her in the frame. Number two, we ultimately want her blended with the layers underneath so that she looks realistic and blends in with the photo. So I'm going to show you how to transform her. So this is the transform tool. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to get her setup in the corner of the frame. And I should just mention if you click out at this point from here, what's going to happen is she's going to get cut off. So just be aware. You can always undo. Another thing to be aware of. You don't want to actually ever size up the original art because you'll lose quality. You only want to be sizing down, which shouldn't be an issue. Usually, the art that you import is going to by default be bigger than your photo, but just something to keep in mind. The other way you can lose quality is when you're doing all these manipulations. If you keep doing something and then going out and then going back in and doing something else. You tend to lose a bit of quality each time because the layer tends to read pixelate. And all the pixels just settle a little differently and you lose quality. So just another thing to keep in mind. We're going to put her in the corner again. And the uniform selection tool is the default. And what it does is it retains the ratio of the photo are the dimensions. So I do that first to get her in place and I leave a bit of room for a buffer. Then the free-form tool is if you just want to move aside at a time. If you want to move the top or the sides and the distort moves the corners. So it actually shows on each of these tools, these little black boxes show what they do. But it's a little confusing until you actually know what they do. So that's the distort the warp tool would be if your Canvas was curved for whatever reason. I haven't actually had to use this tool. But you never know, you might almost gives it a surreal, surreal look. So I'm not sure if you hit, you might end up using that. I don't judge. But I don't think yeah, it's kinda almost Ghostbusters. I don't know if that's really what we're going for. So I'm gonna just stored it and just get because the frame is sideways like this. I'm going to just bring the corners and then I'm going to pinch back to see how she looks. And if you need to, you can just click. You need to make a minor adjustment. You don't want to move the whole thing. You can just tap to move her a little bit at a time. I think we're going to click out of the transform. So she looks good there. So the next thing we're gonna do is create a clipping mask, which is my favorite part. It's really cool. So I'm going to zoom in so you can see how the painting goes right over the edges, all this green. We're going to select the painting layer or the illustration layer. And we're going to select Clipping Mask and so watch what happens in the corners. Now she's just all nice and her little frame. That looks really good. But now what we wanna do is check that there's no glaring kind of areas that we missed along the edges. Sometimes you'll have like white bands where it could be one of two things. It could be that the picture wasn't far enough to the edge. And you can check that by going into clipping mask, turning it off. And as we had already seen, she is going past all the edges because it's probably hard to see, but see there's green That's going beyond the gold here the goal is green and gold, so it's hard to see. The other option. What could be wrong is that your complaints late selection layer isn't so far enough. So I'm gonna show you how to fix that. We're going to turn the clipping mask back on. And then essentially what we do is we just take a brush and just paint it in. So you can see on the corner here it's a little bit and white still. We're gonna go and select, I like the painting round brush. It's another default Procreate brush. And we just select the same color, the white again. Make sure we're on the right layer. Then I keep it pretty small. And then I'm just going to paint in the areas we missed. Um, and it's it's pretty, pretty hard to tell until you zoom in, so we could probably get away with it, but we're just going to for the sake of doing everything, just so another thing, I don't know if you can see that well, because it's darker here, procreate will make a straight line if you hold at the end of your whatever you've just done. So I'm gonna do this and hold and see it says line created. You can kinda see it out here. So that'll just help you if you want to cover a big portion. I find that's handy right here, you can do that. Another thing I noticed is it's always good to draw into the shadow if you go over. Oh, it's okay. It doesn't really show. So err on the side of the shadow. So here is our highlighted side of the frame. There's a little reflection there. So it tends to UC it more. So if you just err on the side of the shadow, lines should look nice and crisp and clear. Okay, So the next thing I wanna do is I just wanted to show you how easy it is to use this mock-up for multiple pieces of work. So now that you have this blank slate selection layer, we're going to just go in and add another photo. I'm going to take this one. And we can just turn this girl off and set this one to multiply and just follow all the same steps to transform it into the right spot. And you can until your heart's content, whatever artwork you'd like. And we're gonna just distort this real quick here. There you go, There you have it out. And then we can do our favorite part. I'm going to create a clipping mask. If you put it under a clipping mask, it just makes it a clipping mask. And voila. Okay, so easy as pie. Now, the next thing I just want to show before we wrap up is you're gonna wanna do share it and save it. So I learned the hard way with procreate. They don't have a Cloud Storage file like Adobe. So it's always good to save your work as soon as you're done your layered file so that you don't have to redo it all. I just go into this wrench the Action menu and go into share. You can share it as Procreate or PSD. Procreate just retains they're the same essentially, but it retains any recording, it's green records, you, you're doing this. So I just save as PSD because it takes up less space. And then I just put it in my G Drive. So I give it a name. Usually, I'll just whatever naming convention you like, I tend to put my name and what it is, the date. Then. I just put it in my drive and I tend to just have a mock-ups folder. So for easy retrieval, retrieval they're all in one spot, one handy spot. Okay? Then the next thing you're gonna do is you're going to share it as a JPEG. And I'm just going to save it right to my device. And that way you can upload it to your class project and put it right on Instagram and put it on your website anywhere you'd like. There you have it. Now here we have our final mock-up with our image superimposed. We thought the whites in this image where a tad blue when editing our photo. But with art added, it looks balanced. The action item for this lesson is to create your framed art mockup in Apple, procreate and add your work. In the next lesson, we will review how to use Adobe Fresco to make your mockup. 14. Mockup 2: Adobe Fresco: Okay, so now I'm going to show you how to create your mockup in Adobe Fresco. So we're going to open up the program. And with this program, you're actually not able to open a photo as a base layer that acts as the canvas. So we're going to get around that by creating our custom canvas. But first we need to know the size of the photo. So we're gonna go back out into our photos and open this photo. And we're going to look at this info button. And the dimensions are 30, 24 by 14, 32. So we can write those down somewhere. And I'm going to go in here. I actually already made one that size, so I'm just going to select it, but you would just go into Custom Size. And you would put the pixel dimensions right in there and hit Create Document. I see mine is actually already in here. We're going to open that up and we'll just pinch to zoom so you can see what we're doing. We're gonna go into this little button, photos. And we're going to select photos. We're going to bring in our vignette. So it fits in there nicely. And now we're just going to hit done. But because this program fresco works in vectors and pixels, we have to convert our image later layer to a pixel layer. So we're going to hit Convert to pixel layer. That just recognizes it. Mom, the program knows what to do with it. We're gonna take these bottom layers here. We don't actually need them, so we're going to delete them. So you just tap on them and delete. Okay, So now we have our canvas. The first thing we wanna do is blend out any marks or imperfections in the Canvas. So Marx could be little smudges like around the edge here. Bigger your writing or a picture that's on the Canvas. Sometimes the factory insert has something on it. If you're using that. Or you might want to blur out any kind of glaring reflections. This one's not super noticeable. So we're going to start with these little smudges up here. So we're gonna go into the blend or the smudge tool, which is right over here. And we're going to choose, let's see, I'm going to choose one of the default brushes. This graphite brush. We're going to use a pretty small size because we want to get right in there. And we're going to leave the opacity full. Yeah, I think that's a good size. So now you just want to blend with the color palette. You don't have to be too precious about this. Your artwork is going to hide a multitude of sins once you import it. The main thing to keep in mind is just not to disturb as much as you can. The photo beneath. You just kind of blend within the color palette. If you just keep even sure what these things are. I think they're actually, when I mounted this painting, it rubbed some of the paint off of it. The frame. Yeah. So you're going to blend these in. Just go around. I'm going to tell you how to tackle some of the bigger items. You're going to use a different technique. Yeah, it's important not to disturb these little shadows here. So I can blend out this obvious one. But I want to keep that shadow because the shadows are what give it its realistic look. So it makes it look as if it's part of the photo. Once we blend our art over top. And just realize these taps or might be loud in your ears. So I apologize. Get these little guys here. Requires a little bit of patients this process, but it definitely is worth it in the end. So now we're going to tackle this bigger area. So what we're actually going to do is we're going to select our last Sue tool. And we're going to select a portion of the frame and just move it on top. And the reason we're going to do that it's faster and also it retains the texture underneath. We're going to draw an area that's roughly the same. Shape. Doesn't have to be perfect. And I'm going to hit these three dots. And Copy Selection. And hit the three dots again and paste. And we're going to drag it right on top. So you just select right on top. Move it over so that it looks pretty, pretty seamless. I'm pretty happy with that. So it's good to choose a portion of the frame that flows with how the photo underneath should go. For this one. I'm thinking I'm actually going to select this side because see how the shadows a little darker. So I'm going to move on to this layer. And we still got our last two selected and just go ahead and draw something roughly the same shape. You can always stretch your selection a little if you don't get it just so, so now we're going to copy and paste. Drag this one over. I think I've just barely have it the right size. Alright, now we'll hit Done. Okay, so this one's a little bit darker. So now we're gonna go back into our blend or smudge tool. And we're going to pick one of the mixer brushes. And it's called the ammonia mixer. And it's a default brush. You don't have to pay for it or anything. Now, we're going to leave it the default size for 50 to 500. And the strength that about 50 of the opacity. And we won't bother with these ones down here. And now we're just going to blend these. But first actually, I'm going to merge these onto the layer below, merge down. And that's just going to allow us to blend the color underneath over top. We're just going to kind of almost airbrush. And we're going to retain the vibe we have going on over here. Trying to be quiet with my tabs because I know the microphone picks it up really loud. Could even probably leave it like that. Just do a little more. It really blended. Zoom back. It's pretty good. While I'm at it, I could even blend out this reflection. I didn't do the greatest job at hiding. See there's a highlight where the side of my arm is here. So I can just blend that little highlight out. If I want it. Just kinda working with the shadows. Just extending the shadows. I think that looks decent. Alright. So now we want to select inside this frame. Let's see. The first tool that we can use is the magic wand, which has an auto selection tool. Or the current tool we were using, the Lasso tool, which is more of a manual selection. So I'm going to start with the magic wand. So these are the little buttons that you use related to it. So this is called the color margin and the color margin. And the higher you go, the more it's going to pick up, the lower you go, the less it's going to pick up. So you can play around with it to start. So I did this previously and I know that around 16 is a good spot, but I'm just going to show you how I did that. So you're just going to select within the frame. Takes a minute to show up and see how it's really picked up. Not just in here, but all around here. I'm actually going to change with these three dots from marching ants, these little things, to selection overlay. So you can see a little better. You can toggle between those, whichever one helps you see better. So the white parts are the parts that are selected and the gray or the parts that aren't selected. So we just want inside this frame so we don't even really worry if there's parts that get selected outside of it, because we can just, when we go to fill this layer after we can erase those spots, we just care that it's nice and close to this frame edge with nothing on the frame. That'll make it easier for us. If I had turned it down to let's just undo that. I'm not sure if I mentioned if you see me tapping two fingers to undo and three fingers is redo, it suggests or control that works in fresco. Or you can use these little buttons up here. Let's try with a color margin, 16, and we'll see what we get. So we'll select inside. So that's a little better. So it really just selected in the frame and a couple of other spots. But it didn't do a good job at getting these areas. So there's these other little tools down here. This is the addition tool and this is the removal tool. So if we want to add areas, we're going to go on the addition tool because it shows that there's two squares adding to each other. Then we're going to tap those areas. I'm going to try with the color margin at 16. That seemed to work okay. And to get into the really close areas like maybe over by these flowers, see it selected out here, but we don't worry about that because it's still nice inside this frame. But yeah, if we want to select maybe some smaller little nitpicky areas, a good way to do it is to turn it down to maybe about half or just under half the 16. And I'm going to just select some of these areas behind the flowers because we want to add those as well. I might have to leave these areas and add them in afterwards, which I'll show you how to do that. I'm going to show you the manual selection. You can decide if you maybe like that better. See, if you zoom in. Sometimes it gets it better. Keeps wanting to pick up that pedal. That's okay. We'll get these spots for now. Here I might actually turn it up to something like ten, see if that gives me a little more purple stubborn areas that those parts are easy enough to add in manually later. The main thing is, it's nice this auto selection tool tends to get right up to these little nitpicky spots so that you don't have to draw it yourself. So you can use a bit of both of these tools. You can switch into the manual selection to add these little parts. You just literally draw a little last two here. Now that we have our selection, we're going to create a new layer on top. And we're going to fill it with white. The reason we fill it with white is because it's going to be the spot where we're going to put our art. We don't want to have any colors in there because that would block or change the colors of the art itself. We're going to select white and the paint bucket. And we're just going to drop it right in here. And we're going to select pixels because we're working in pixels. Okay, so now we have this white layer. It's pretty glaring. So what we're gonna do is we're going to set the blend mode, which is this little button up here of the layer from normal to multiply. And now it's going to blend with all the shadows underneath. And essentially it disappears. So you're just left with this almost a window or a portal to your art. And I call this layer the blank slate selection layer. So now that we have this one, we're going to leave it and we're going to de-select. We're gonna do the same thing we just did. We're going to select the bottom layer again. Instead of the Magic Wand, we're going to use a b last Sue tool, which were on. And we're gonna do our manual selection. So I'm going to start up here. And it reminds me a little bit actually, the combination of the pen tool from Adobe, from other Adobe programs and the pencil tool. Because you can do like anchor points, similar to the pen. If you're familiar with that. You can actually just draw like a little pencil. So it could be more particular with this, but for now, I'm just gonna go in and do this quickly. Okay, so now we've finished this portion of the selection, but there's a couple of little spots that we missed in here. So we're just going to put our ad tool and add tool is the white area. And the grey tool would be if you're removing. So we want to get this gray into white. So I'm just kinda saying this out loud because I find sometimes it's tricky with the it's almost like a double negative or something. And if you're not happy with this, you can always fix this after. And I'm going to show you how to do that. A little slow. Pieces stubborn. Okay, so we're going to close last Sue. Okay. So now we have our selection and we're going to add the same thing we did with the automatic selection. We're going to add it and wait, layer on top. So we're going to add a layer. And we're going to take our paint bucket tool. Mary have white selected, drop this in as a pixel layer. And then we're going to set it to multiply. And I'm going to name this layer just so we remember which is which. So when we look and compare the two, we will know which is which. So we'll just put Name annual. What's his name? Okay. I can spell it. Okay. Super. So now that's already get rid of that and we'll de-select. So we have those in there. Now, we're going to add our artwork. So we're gonna go. Before I do that, I'm just going to mention anyone who works in analog and maybe isn't used to using bringing their art in digitally. I'm going to attach a couple of links, one or two links in the resources about how to do that. Because I don't want to leave anybody out. So we're gonna go into photo and we're gonna pick our photo. I'm going to bring it in here for now. We're just going to put done because we're going to set this layer first. We're going to convert it to a pixel layer, which we always do with our image layer. If you forget, it will just prompt you. But we're going to put the blend mode also to multiply. And that's going to do two things. It's going to let us see what we're doing when we're positioning it. And ultimately it's going to help it blend with the photo underneath. We're going to hit the Transform button. We're going to line it up right in the frame. So we have to select on the actual image. And if you need to tap a little bit, you can use these for minor adjustments. And just going to zoom in here. So if you move it by the corners, It's going to keep your ratio or your dimensions. And then if you want to just move the edges, you can move these little dots on the sides. Think I went too far because down here we don't want to go into far. These dots will just move these areas. I'm going to zoom in because it seems to be snapping. I wonder if I have. We're going to finish this part and then we'll get rid of this grid. We have out how we want it, this little side, we could probably bring it in a little more, but that looks pretty good to me. Now, the last thing we're gonna do is I noticed that we're going to have to commit to those changes. I noticed these little shell areas are a bit off. So we're going to select another tool that's the, you can see the names down here, the warp tool. And it allows us just to move the corners in just how we want them. So it lets you get all those stray areas. And I'm just going to do that. I'm going to move this bottom piece up because we missed him. Okay. Now, let's figure out how to turn this grid off, Shall we? This is what we wanted to, okay, so we don't want a grid. We're going to turn off the grid. If you need to. Yeah. Sorry for the little brain **** there. If you want something to snap into place, like if you're working on really right angle areas, this is where you would do it. But I'm going to turn the snapping off for now and we'll get rid of that. Okay, so now the next step, now that we have it all blended and exactly where we want it, we're going to do what's called a clipping mask to put it into our blank slate selection layer. So if you just watch, it's my favorite part. You can do it on our manual there. Alright, so that's the look I was going for. Our automatic selection layer. Maybe not as great. We missed a spot here. Wonder, we must have filled that whole spot and we completely missed it. So now we know for next time, if you want to fix this, you can use when you're on the magic wand. While you're in there. You can do the Remove tool and just tap on those areas. And you can toggle between the marching ants and the selection, or you can fix it after the fact. So you can go right on this layer here. And we're just going to erase those spots. So we're gonna go to our eraser tool and I just use the default, one of the default Fresco brushes. And I'm going to bring the size down a little bit. And you literally just go in and just erase these offending areas here. I won't bother doing all that. But now let's move our clipping layer down to here and turn the visibility off on the automatic. So here's manual. He's our hero. Now we're going to actually add. You look around and zoom in if there's any glaring spots, this is jumping out at me where we missed, then you would just instead of erasing it, you would add. So you would take just a regular brush painting. Basic hard round. And we're going to just bring the size up, touch. And we're just going to make sure it's on weight similar to this layer. And we're just going to paint in the areas we missed. Now you see it? And I could be a little better with this, but I think I've taken a lot of your time up already, so that's pretty good. There's some spots here. I'll just clean this up and it's always better to go a little further into the shadow, into the dark side, then the light. Because even if you go over onto the frame, you don't see it as much. Alright? I'm just going to show you how you can add any work you want in here. So now that you have this blank slate selection layer, you could take really any photo you have. And just do the same thing. So set it to multiply and move it where you want it. And just do a rough one here. We'll say that's where we want it hit Done. And you can just turn the visibility off for this one and put this all over manual as a clipping mask. And then once it's under a clipping mask, it just turns itself into a clipping mask. There you have it. You can put as many photos as you want in here now that you have your mock-up made. Now I'm just going to show you how to export it. So you go into Publish and Export. And I'm gonna do Export As you always want to save it with your layers. There is cloud storage through Adobe, which is really nice, but it never hurts to put it somewhere else. So I tend to just save it to my G Drive. It's gonna be slow so I won't do it here. I changed the title to something that is that all remember, so I usually put my name and then what is mock-up the date. And then I save it into a folder of mock-ups. So I have them all in one spot for easy retrieval. And then you also want to export it as a JPEG. And I keep the quality at high. And that way you can export it to your class project and Instagram. Now we have our final mock-up through Adobe Fresco with our chosen art or image added. The action item for this lesson is to create your frame dark mockup in Adobe Fresco and add your creation. In the next lesson, we'll review Adobe Photoshop for making your mockup. 15. Mockup 3: Adobe Photoshop: Okay, so now I'm going to show you how to create your mockup in Adobe Photoshop. So the first thing we're gonna do is come over to the left here and click on Open. And we're just going to import our art vignette photo that we created earlier. Okay, so the first step is we're going to remove any marks or smudges that we have inside the frame. So you might have some smudges just on this paper here. In this case we have some writing that's from the factory insert that we've left in the photo frame. Another thing you might have is some reflections from Windows. If there were glass here. In this case, we don't actually have any reflections, but I'm gonna go ahead and create one. You're going to make my brush a little bigger. Just to give you an idea of how great the blending tools are in this program. So let's just pretend we had a little window reflecting in here. Obviously it's little brighter than what we actually are going to have, but it'll be a good little demonstration. So first I'm just going to, before we do that, I'm going to talk about some quick housekeeping for Adobe Photoshop. So in this program, just like any program or life, even there's multiple ways to do any one thing. With the other two programs that I showed you, we had gesture controls, but in this we have keyboard shortcuts. So I'm going to show you the ones that I think you'll use the most and use them if they work for you. The first one is the undo redo tools. You can find them in the menu drop-down up here, and you could select them that way, or you can use these little keyboard shortcuts. So in this case it's commands ed or Shift Command said similar to what you would do when you work on a keyboard, just typing. I think a lot of people are familiar with these shortcuts. But I say command. And this little cloverleaf button here, I want you to actually just look at your keyboard for a second. If you look to the left of your space bar, if you have this little symbol, then you're likely using a Mac keyboard. If you don't, then what you probably have is four little squares are a little window symbol. And that's called the Windows symbol. And you have a PC keyboard. So the two keyboards are different, but these two buttons are interchangeable. So you've got the cloverleaf command or the windows Window button. They do the same thing. The other buttons that do the same thing are the Option key on the Mac or the Alt key on the PC. You might use those as well for some of these shortcuts. Then the only other shortcut I want to show you that I tend to use in this often is the Zoom. It's right under the View menu. You can zoom in and out either by selecting it up here or by using these commands. Just the Command Plus Command Minus or Windows plus Windows minus. If you have a PC. This is a unique one where you actually this command, you can do it a third way on a mouse pad or a mouse. So if you have a Mac book, what I do is on the most pod you can move your fingers in and out to zoom in and out. And certain other keyboards or laptops likely have that as well. Another thing, certain mouses or mice. Anyway, they also have a little toggle button or a scroll button, and it allows you often to zoom in and out that way as well. Okay, So moving on to removing these marks, I'm going to zoom in and I'm going to show you the tool that I think you'll really like. It's this spot healing brush tool. So if ever you want to look what it's, what any of these are called, you just hover over them. And if you click and hold on any of these tools, it'll bring up this little menu. We're not going to use any of these today. But if for some reason you thought you were in the wrong one, you can just go in here and check and it'll show you the name. So we're going to select this spot healing brush. And essentially what it does is we just paint right over. It looks a little intense at first. But it's going to remove any marks, but retain the highlights and shadows underneath. And it's really nice because it doesn't disturb anything on a canvas. But it just, there's a bit of a delay, but it clears it up really nice. I'm going to zoom in and just show you. You might have to go over a couple of times just because it's the opacity, It's not totally opaque. But usually the second time you'll grab it. And I'm going to zoom right in and even retained. So not only the highlights and shadows, but it effectively retains the texture of the canvas, which is awesome. So I'm gonna do these as well. Just to know here, you don't have to be super precious about getting rid of all this stuff. Like just so because your artworks going to hide a multitude of sins, the main takeaway is you want to preserve any sort of shadows in your frame. Because these shadows are what give it depth when you put your artwork on top, it makes it look realistic and it blends really nicely into the photo underneath. So I'm going to just bring this one out and then I'm going to show you how we do this window as well. It takes a little while, but then it's worth it. Missed a little spot here. Okay, so for this, I'm going to make my brush about the same size. It's probably, probably was fine the way it was. But what I do is I because it's more of a glaring difference with this particular mark. By I don't just willy-nilly paint over it all. I just paint the actual areas that I see and I just do it a few times. And reason being is that this tool essentially picks up the pixels around the area that you're masking or blending and superimpose them on to that area. So because there's a lot of different kind of shading around here in this area, whereas this was all basically white or lighter. I just want to make sure that it covers with the pixels that we want it to cover with. This tool takes a little patience, but it's definitely well-worth it. And we're going to just go right in here. Let me go over a couple of times. Yeah, that's actually a good way to do it. Make it a little thicker. You just keep going until you have it, how you want it. And like I say, you don't want it. You don't want it. Perfect. If there is such a thing, but you want it just so that it's hiding the main reflections and these reflections I'll give you were pretty bright. You probably won't deal with anything quite so intense when you're covering yourself. Okay, so we're going to zoom out. And I'm going to just maybe fix this area a little bit here. They're just kinda go over these spots, any kind of glaring differences here. Okay, I think that looks pretty good. Then over here, if you wanted to get really fancy, you could blend this kind of fold out that I notice in the paper here. Let's see. It's probably could make my brush a little bigger. But you get the idea. Make it a little more subtle. There we go. Now. Alright, if you wanted to get really fancy, I'll show you one other trick, what you could do. I'm going to hold and use the Healing Brush Tool. What the Healing Brush Tool does, It's a little more specific than the spot healing tool. The spot healing tool is kind of a patch. It just does its own thing manually. This one, you have to press the Alt key on the PC or the Option key on a Mac. Press and hold. And then you're going to sample an area that you want to blend. So I want to blend this dark over this light. So I'm going to sample this dark area and then let go and then blend it over the light. That's just one other tool in the toolbox. I'm going to sample and blend of something that you could use. Sample. Yeah, so there's a few things you can do. But when it's all said and done, I think this area is looking better than we left it. We're leaving it better than we found it. Alright, Okay. Now, I could spend time on this all day, but we don't need to because when you zoom out, it's going to look great. You'll see, okay. Now the next thing we're gonna do is select inside the frame here. And that's gonna give us a spot where we're going to place our artwork. I'm going to show you two ways to do this. So there's the automatic way with the Quick Selection Tool. The manual way with the Polygonal Lasso last Sue tool, I always get stuck on that one. Okay, So for the Quick Selection Tool, you're going to, I'm going to make the brush a little bigger. And essentially what you wanna do is just start clicking within the area you want to select. Until it makes a selection for you. Then there's certain parts it might miss, you can just keep adding to your selection. So in this case we went over. So there's buttons up here where you can switch to remove from your selection or add to your selection. So we're going to select remove, and we're going to bring this area in up to the frame. So that's all well and good. One other way you can do it actually, if you're on the plus sign, you can hit Alt on your PC or Option on your Mac to switch to the negative selection release tool. So it's a little quicker to work this way. So if you want to toggle back and forth between the two, the only thing I find with this particular tool, the way it selects, what it selects is based on a color change. And here at the corner where the highlighted side of the frame, there's not a huge difference in color. See the shadow sides. Okay. But I was finding with this tool, oftentimes it won't pick up this side of the frame, which is fine. So you want to go in and you can always just remove that. The only thing is I find it doesn't make a straight line. So I looked at some workarounds for this. And what I like doing is using this tool over here. I'm going to de-select this selection. You can go in the menu and hit de-select, or you can do command or Windows button D. And I'm going to show you what we can do with this little tool. So it's our manual selection. Manual is his name. So we essentially drop anchor points in the corners. That way we're always guaranteed a straight line for the frame of our mock-up. Here, we just put an arbitrary point and we just want to get to where the frame is so that we can do these as a straight line. And then we're going to fix these after with, we're gonna go back into our Quick Selection Tool. Lovely. Alright, so we've got that. Now. We're going to switch back into here. And we're on the minus tool. And we're just gonna go in and remove around these shells. Shell, one shell to this way you're guaranteed you have on the organic areas you can use the nice quickselect butt with the straight edge. We can use the polygon tool. Of course. Your picture might not be as pixelated or grainy as mine. You might find that you can get away with just using the auto select tool. It might actually fill this in great for what you're doing. So keeping that in mind, you don't have to do this, but I just, I like to give you options. Okay, so that looks great. So now the next step we're gonna do is we're going to fill this area. We're going to create a new layer over in the Layers panel. We hit the plus sign down here. And then we're going to fill this area with our paint bucket using white paint. To make sure you have white. You can just bring this all the way to the corner. Or you can just type zero into hue and saturation and 100 into brightness. And the reason we care is we don't want the art to be blocked by any sort of color or altered by color that's effectively shining through from this layer. We're going to drop that down. And we're going to, it looks a little like glaring at us right now. So we're going to switch it to blend mode Multiply. Now what we have is it made it, this layer basically disappear and it's going to act as a window or a portal to our art. And we're gonna call this the blank slates selection layer. So we're done with the selection now we can go up into Select, de-select, or use the shortcuts. And the next step we're gonna do is import our art over this blank slate selection layer. I just want to mention to anybody who works in analog, I'm going to be linking a couple of classes in the resources section. I'm telling you how to import your art into a digital setting because maybe that's something you haven't done before and I just don't want to leave you out if you want to try this process. So the next step, we're going to go into file, the top-left open, and we're going to import our artwork. Now, it's in a separate little window over here. So to bring it to the next window, we just click and hold it. And we're just going to drag it and drop it. And obviously it looks huge cutoff here. So we're going to resize it. And as you can see, there's little arrows are little squares around it, the edges of it. To see what we're doing, we're going to set the blend mode to multiply. And ultimately we're going to leave it as multiply because the other reason to do this is so that it's going to blend really nicely into our frame, into all those nice shadows that we preserved earlier. So I'm going to show you how to resize it. So you make sure your move tool up here is selected. And then you're just going to drag it over and drop it in the corner. It kind of snapped it in there for me. And then you're just going to click on this other corner and click and drag and move it into place. So easy as that, to re-size it. I'm going to just zoom in so we can see a little bit better. And I'm going to show you a couple of other tricks. So while it's selected, you can use your arrows on your keyboard if you want to just move it a little bit into place. Then another thing you can do is you can hit Shift if you want to just move this edge or just this edge for whatever reason, you click and hold Shift and it'll let you do that. Then you can do that. You know, wherever you'd like. Another tool that I like is up in the Edit menu under transform distort. Now, if you want to just change, say, your image, your frame was propped up on the wall and it was kind of slanted like this. You could play around with these and just put it to the edges. I'll just send you back buttons a little sticky on my keyboard. One too many drinks. Just water though. Okay, so I'm going to make sure that we're where we want it. Okay, So now we're gonna do my favorite part. I think you're really going to enjoy this. We're going to create a clipping mask, and it's going to clip it to this blank slate selection layer underneath. So we're going to right-click on our layer and we just selected Create Clipping Mask. Now watch the little shells. There she is. She's all nestled in. Okay. So we're essentially done. But we're just going to double-check that we haven't. I'm going to zoom in. We're going to check that we haven't left any sort of glaring areas where you might see white along the edges or you might see red or the color of your painting into the edge. If you see white, it could be two things. It could be that your, your painting or your image is not placed properly. And the way you could see that is you would just turn your clipping mask off. So just right-click, Release Clipping Mask. And then you can just check along the edges and make sure it's over. I'm going to turn it back on now. The other thing it could be is that your blank slate selection layer. You just wasn't the right size or you didn't paint it right to the edge properly. So we can fix that easily enough. We just go and use our brush where we would just paint extra white. Where we anywhere where you see white, you would just confusing, but you would paint the white onto here to drag this color a little further. So we don't have any white that I can see, so I'll just erase to show you. So this is our Eraser tool. So let's say you have like some area where you were just a bit wobbly down here. You could just take your brush, make sure white is selected, and just paint right in here. And a nice trick if you want a straight line, you click and hold Shift, and you can just paint it in like so. And you can do that with the eraser. I'll zoom in so you can see a little better shift. Yeah, there we go. So this is why it's kinda nice to have this done with the last sue tool versus having to do it after the fact. It's just a little more exact with the anchor points. But if there's a will, there's a way you can always tidy things up. Then I'm going to show you as well on the shells over here. So you'll notice. Um, there's a little bit of red on here. You can just erase that switch to our eraser and move that over here. Anytime. When I am doing this, fixing the edges, I always try to retain the shape of whatever is underneath it. So if it's here, it's kind of a frilly shape. I'm going to want to keep it freely. I'm not going to want to do a severe edge because it wouldn't look obviously as realistic. Or if I had flowers, I would kind of feather them. So you can play around with it a little bit. Hopefully your selection tool will do all that for you, which is really nice. Okay, So that's good. So the last thing we're gonna do, I just want to really quickly show you how you can easily use this mock-up to add more artwork. So we're going to turn off the visibility of this one. And we're going to open a new photo. And we're gonna do exactly the same thing. We're going to select, drag it into our mockup. Set the blend mode to multiply. And we're going to zoom out. Select the Move tool, resize and transform. Use our little arrow keys. Mover into place. Let's try again. My computer has a little, little delay with Photoshop. There we go. Now we have other artwork. And now the fun part. In this case we can just drag her below the clipping mask and then the program just creates a clipping mask anywhere that you are under a clipping mask. And voila, you could switch back and forth if you wanted to do a slideshow of your work, like a little slideshow video. You could save these and do that. It's totally up to you. And the main thing is just don't forget to save. You always want to save your layered files that you don't have to do all this over again. Even though once you do it a couple times, It's pretty speedy. But still what I do, I just go under File and Save As. And then I'm going to save it to the Creative Cloud. It's nice. Adobe programs have this cloud Storage. And then I'm going to name it whatever naming convention you tend to use. Just your name, the piece of art, name, mock-up, the date. And then I save it into a file called mockups. And that way, it's easy retrieval for all my mockups. They're all in one spot. And then the last thing we're gonna do is we're going to export it to a JPEG. So Export As and I tend to just the only thing I touched as I turn the quality up to seven up too high. And then I just click export. And basically you just export it to your class project and Instagram and anywhere else you'd like. So if you want to put it on your website, social media, It's good fun. So there you have it. Now we have our final mock-up through Adobe Photoshop with our chosen illustration or action item for this lesson is to create your frame dark mockup in Adobe Photoshop and add your work. The next lesson, we'll wrap up. 16. Congrats & Thank You!: Congratulations, you're done. Thank you for coming along with me on this journey through the intersection of art and decor. I hope you took away plenty of inspiration to spark your imagination, hone your style and design a vignette or vignettes that represent you or your work, as well as the technical knowledge to photograph, edit, and create a quality Mockup to promote your art when making your vignette more than anything. Remember my grandma is wise words. Have fun. That's the main thing. You know what you like, you know what makes you happy now, follow that. Give yourself the space to experiment and let something take shapes. That's where the magic is. Remember to also post your class project, export your finished mockup as a JPEG and upload it to the class project section. Give it a title and a brief description, right? Whatever you'd like if you're feeling up to it, share the story or thought process behind your vignette and what it's made of. Many discoveries are happy accidents you made along the way. I'd love to hear more about your story and to share your work online. If you have a question, there's likely someone else in our community who has a similar one, so please leave it here. I'm sure I'll learn from you just as much as you learn from me. Share pictures of your process and your final mock-up on Instagram and tag me at Erica Catherine design with the hashtag, decorate like an artist. I love sharing your work, cheering you on and connecting over art and decor. I can't wait to see what you make. If you enjoyed this class and want to stay in touch, sign up for my newsletter for free editable PSD mock-up. It's free for commercial use and can be used with any software. I've thrown some other freebies in there too. I'd also really appreciate it. If you could take a moment to leave a written review of this class, I'd like to make more classes that provide you with the most value possible and this will help me do just that. If you want to be one of the first to hear about future classes, please give me a follow on Skillshare. I'll be in touch with more classes about art and decor until next time. Friends don't be a stranger.